Black & White sold well for the same reason Project Ego will sell well.

Hype.

People were looking forward to it, so when it came out they bought it. End of story.

aDasTRa:

quote: What really shocks me is that here, in a game development forum, game DESIGN forum yet, hardly anyone has mentioned any of the technical leaps and bounds this game makes.

Surely you don''t think issues such as consistency and tutorial integration are irrelevant to game design? If I comment on the negative aspects of the game it''s because that''s what I notice the most, and because looking at others'' mistakes helps us avoid these ourselves. I welcome you to mention more of these technical leaps and bounds you speak of. So far you''ve mentioned only creature AI, which I feel is too dependent on interaction with the player.

a person:

quote: i agree with aDasTRa when it comes how many ppl are portraying this game (especially chronos who said nothing good aobut the game yet).

I know I''ve focused on the negative aspects of the game, but you''re quite welcome to discuss those aspects of the game''s design which you feel are positive ones.

My guess is the game was expensive to develop because they had to keep replacing all the beta-testers that shot themselves having to go through the tutorials over and over when looking for bugs. The tutorials definitely should have been skippable... and as for your advisers popping up to tell you things, the adviser should poke his head out and let you know what he wants to tell you, without taking control away from you. Then you can click him and go through the usual deal (with him controlling the camera to point things out, as they do now) or ignore him.

~CGameProgrammer( );

HEY,
To anyone that think B&W has too many bugs. I have to agree that I don''t think they planned the whole thing that well at first, but maybe you should look into how it was done. B&W is a project that became bigger and bigger as they where programming it. They talk about Millions of lines of code. They talk about being lost in their own code. I think it is a pretty nice accomplishment. I am impressed by what they have done. It is avant guard for sure, and the AI is quite nice for a GAME. I don''t think you guys that are complaining about DETAILS have any idea what is involved in creating a game such as B&W. I use B&W as reference. It will stay with the all time best created game of its time.

I think a prior poster summed it up well when he said the game''s flaws are the result of breaking their internal world rules. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the last land (yes, I did finish the game). The last land is so horribly designed that when you finish it you don''t get a sense of accomplishment so much as a sense of relief, kind of like recovering from the flu: "Glad that''s over, but I never should have been subjected to it in the first place".

I think the specific flaws have been enumerated already. The opponent god chain-casting spells even though he has no worshippers, the opponent creature walking around with 0% health and stamina (which instantly goes up to 100% if you send your creature to fight it), etc.

The enemy AIs in most games cheat in some way. This is pretty much just a fact of life, but the Black & White AI just rubs your face in it and laughs at you. Besides the relatively minor bug and performance issues, that''s the biggest flaw I saw.


--
Eric

Did any of you ever have pets? Usually you feed your pets. When you keep feeding your pets they expect you to feed them and they don't go looking for food, they wait for you. That is damn near perfection B&W had on AI right there...
And Maybe you guys didn't get the new patch, but that thing fixes a LOT of the bugs.

And Whats everybodys problem with the saving? Your creature files are saved CONSTANTLY. Your creature is basically the only important thing to you because you can use it in your missions, skirmishes, and multiplayers. The creature is used to take over other villages in case you can't reach that city, so creatures do have a purpose! You teach your creature to cast spells, and where to cast them, if you teach him to cast good things on your villages, and bad things on other villages he will do it. The leashes help you teach him if you havent played enough to figure that out...

The controls are made so you can do everything you want with the mouse. And there is no console, giving more room for gamescreen.
So I recomend to all of you to play the game a little bit more before coming on here and making asses of yourselves.
There are a lot of opinions which I've seen can be countered by actually playing the game. Which brings me to another point, the game is ORIGINAL, which means its going to take a little getting used to, but new style is a lot more fun than the old.

The game isn't perfect, but neither are any of you.
(NOTICE: if you think this message is directed towards you, it is. If not, ignore it.)

Edited by - phil_b on February 3, 2002 7:03:50 PM

quote: Did any of you ever have pets? Usually you feed your pets. When you keep feeding your pets they expect you to feed them and they don't go looking for food, they wait for you. That is damn near perfection B&W had on AI right there...

Not a good analogy. The nature of houses is such that pets do not have access to food except when provided for by humans. Let that same pet go free and deny it access to your home and it will most likely scavenge around for food. In B&W we're talking about an antropomorphic creature. He should be able to catch food on his own, even if one might teach him better ways to find it.

Edited by - chronos on February 3, 2002 8:17:00 PM

quote: I don't think you guys that are complaining about DETAILS have any idea what is involved in creating a game such as B&W.

What is anything but a collection of details? Certain details are essential or conspicuous aspects of a game. Such details, right or wrong, are anything but insignificant.

Edited by - chronos on February 3, 2002 8:37:43 PM

I didn''t even get into the real game. I couldn''t make it past the tutorial because it was so boring. You couldn''t even skip through the character text. Why didn''t they make it skipable?

B&W was groundbreaking from a technological point of view, I don''t think anyone would dispute that. However, while it was a very interesting concept, I think that it sounded a lot more interesting than it actually was. When it became apparent that the concept alone was not enough to carry the game, the designers were forced to bolt on a story line to try and keep it interesting.

Oh, and land 3 was probably one of the worst examples of level design EVER. It removed the single most entertaining point of interaction (the creature) forcing you to expand with micromanagement and repetitive spell casting to progress. To put such a level so near the beginning of the game was completely crazy, and was probably responible for putting off 90% of the players, including myself. By the time I actually got my creature back I was so pissed off with the repetitive spellcasting and micromanagement that I never felt the need to play the game again.