Hi Dark, Agreed. I sincerely doubt any side-scroller could cover the whole of Middle Earth unless a developer wanted to dedicate the rest of his life to writing the game. For one thing you are limited to a 2d format where the only directions are left, right, up, and down. There isn't any north, south, east, and west so right there you couldn't lay out the location of towns, rivers, woods, and other aspects of the world in anything remotely realistic. About the best you could do is have a linier progression where you start in Hobbiton, walk right until you reach Buckleberrry Fairy, continue right until you reach Riven Dale, and so on. Its OK, but not very flexible since you only can continue east with no opportunity to go north or south along your journey.
The other issue Charles probably hasn't considered is that of sounds. If I am writing a roll playing game or text adventure I can certainly get sounds for swords, axes, spears, as well as for rivers, farms, woods, etc, but can use Sapi to describe everything that isn't audible as well as give details of the world around you. With a side-scroller or FPS style game I have to come up with a sound for every single person, place, and thing in the game world. That would not only be expensive but I think would be unnecessary to boot since there are easier ways around this problem. Plus as you said I think Charles has the wrong idea about what constitutes a roll playing game in the first place. He is talking about design issues that are more specific to straight up table top roll playing like Dungeons and Dragons where it doesn't have to be nearly that complex. The Eamon system, as you mentioned, is a lot more realistic for something like this than anything else. Cheers! On 4/19/13, dark <d...@xgam.org> wrote: > Hi charlse. > > This is a design issue with rpgs, however if they are properly! designed > then you shouldn't have to read through the rules accept as reference > occasionally, or maybe have a short introduction. > > Again, this is something great about eamon, since the system is so simple to > > understand you can just pick it up and play it. > > As to a side scroller with exploration, even speaking from the perspective > of someone who plays huge! low vision accessible full side scrollers like > turrican and metroid, I'm not really convinced you could get anything that > would contain enough teretory or diversity to really fit even a tenth of > middle earth, since a side scroller is limited in it's setting, you can just > > throw anything in in terms of trees, standing stones, landscape etc, much > less have enough diverse locations or locations that were far enough apart. > > Beware the grue! > > Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
