Shroud of the Avatar Manual

I am hugely disappointed at the manual of SotA.
Three and a half pages of lore is a bad joke.
It doesn't come nowhere close to the manuals of Ultima 9.

Ultima 9 came with two separate manuals: Journal and Spellbook.
Spellbook has 40 pages in it.
Journal has 60 pages in it.
57 pages of Journal is lore stuff.

Sources:
http://www.realmofultima.com/docs/UltimaIXManual.pdf
http://www.realmofultima.com/docs/UltimaIXSpellbook.pdf

 

At this time, dear Darkmoon, I really don't understand this contradictory comment
Now you are disappointed about the information, they will not implement POT in offline mode?

Beside all the things you're criticized in the past I am agreeing with, at this point I am just wondering!
Offline mode now is without any POT, no player decoration will be inside giving a strange feeling while following the story.
It's what you and a lot of others who like the storypart wanted for a better atmosphere.

So: why is THIS deeply disappointing in the context of the manual? It has nothing to do with it.
It's really understandable to be disappointed, because you expected another kind of manual - accepted!
A lot of people are disappointed, because of expectations - accepted! It's always a personal thing what we're expecting.

But a point you and a lot of others mentioned and told in past was, how awful all the decoration and POT in offline mode would be.
And now, as they agreed with you and a lot of others, it is deeply disappointing? Sorry, I am really confused about this statement.
May be I got this wrong, so please forgive me!

Sorry to say that, because I like most of your comments for improving the game

 

Of course I don't want all of those POTs in the offline mode. But being able to have one and experiment with it would have been interesting .

 

That was a FINISHED game. This is why we don't get upset when release dates get pushed out.

 

Ok, I understand this, but therefor we have all the online modes to experiment
I don't think we need everything in every mode - especially if it makes more effort, which can be invested for more important stuff.
So I am thinking it is very important to have Companions in offline mode, even if they decide not to make them available in online mode (also it would be nice to have them ).
And I am with you, a satisfying bag mode would be great. But to have it not in yet, mustn't mean, they can't do it in future releases after a rework.
Often I was surprised with small things they did I wouldn't have expected - actually the Skill changes from Chris for a better balance.

May be these things were and are, what made a lot of problems with a definition of an "Ultima successor" and what's the meaning of

I believe an exactly definition of what can be expected from which mode is very important for more clarity for future releases - as Darkstarr tried to do this in the last Q and M Release information in his announcements.
Also not as easy for the Developers, I suppose ...

Well, beside this: thank you for clarify this point of "POT" - you really scared me for a moment

 

Hey man, no matter what else, I would just like to say that I really appreciate your in depth, thoughtful, and professional responses to criticisms in this thread.

Its like a breath of fresh air. Thank you.

 

This was definitely a case of poor planning and prioritization. It's not like there wasn't 5 years to plan for and set aside budget for this...but uhm, "please, be patient", right?

In any case, thank you @Scottie for the thorough responses to the concerned backers on this thread. I'm very much looking forward to seeing what you can do with what you have. If you can recapture the style and feel of the manuals of the older Ultima games pre-EA, that would be great. Those manuals sparked the imagination even before playing the game and were critical elements to the experience, imo. It's exactly why I chose an illustration from the manuals as my forum profile pic.

 

I want to make clear that I don't want to talk down Scotties work. I believe that he does his very best and the pages he has shown so far look really good.
I blame Portalarium. Like Smack said I believe it was poor planning and I think that the physical goods didn't have priority... Very disappointing

Here, the video makes me cry... Especially from minute 3:30 onward.

 

Not thrilled with the direction of this either. Nothing really to add that hasn't been said already on that. Big thanks to Scottie for coming in here a number of times and explaining things. And leaving the thread open for more replies.

 

Here's the important thing to remember... This wasn't a "decision to add limited lore"... What's limited is the actual amount of lore that has been codified, either in-game or out, for the sake of acceptable presentation as a "whole"... Many people assume that the lore I offer when I write about the areas that I am crafting is being drawn from an overarching collection of lore that has been codified for the sake of building this game,... when in reality, I am merely personally drawing from the fiction presented in The Sword of Midras novel co-authored by Tracy and Richard. I then take the time to personally compose the most compelling fiction I can, surrounding whatever ancient location I'm working on, imagining how the (sometimes limited) details offered in the book might expand further to inspire the entire contents of, let's say, the Obsidian Keep under Desolis... Merely four or five locations of that entire area (which we have to build out in complete and vivid details so you can actually walk around in it 360-degrees) are described in the book (which we all have access to), and everything else must be extrapolated by us.

But speaking of that book,...I want you to consider that for a moment... Each of you who is concerned about no "book of lore" being written and made available to help prepare you for playing the game seems to forget that, as part of the efforts made when utilizing the money we've gotten to help create this experience for you, we HAVE commissioned a book of lore... It's already been published and made available to the public at large...and it's called The Sword of Midras: A Shroud of the Avatar Novel... It is literally billed as "The thrilling prequel to Shroud of the Avatar from Portalarium!" .....In general, "game novels" are either made after the fact, and are based on an existing property to capitalize on some game's enormous success, or they were well-established, popular novels that already existed which some game-maker wanted to capitalize on by making a game about it... I could be wrong here, but to my knowledge, no other creators of a computer game have actually commissioned an entire novel to base their game upon... But Richard wanted to do that for the sake of Shroud,...and he got Tracy Hickman involved as well!

The rest of the fiction we work with, especially pertaining to the areas being built that reflect everything that's happened SINCE the events of that book, comes from only two places; (1) the essential but very basic story outline document written by Richard and Tracy pertaining to the Truth, Love, and Courage quests,...and (2) from our own individual imaginations as artists, designers, and world-builders as we create areas for the game that need to expand in detail BEYOND those of the primary game quests... With the exception of the very brief time we have to write posts about it from time to time, there's really no other time we can spare composing eloquent fiction... The rest of our time MUST be spent actually building these zones you enjoy playing in, basing them on the crude fictional outlines we're able to create on the fly (with Richard's help, to maintain his vision)...

To make a game of the scale we're trying to make it, in the time we have, with the limited team and budget we've got,...has simply not allowed us the resources to put all of this together to create a presentable set of cohesive fiction ready to just cut and paste to place as part of a manual-sized "Book of Lore" to be included in the Collector's Box... What Gina just wrote for us recently, those few pages at the beginning of the Adventurer's Manual, is the closest we've come so far... Everything else (beyond The Sword of Midras, of course), exists merely as lengthy outlines full of the data we've used to help build the world you play in, written either by Richard and Tracy, or by people like Scott Jennings (Lum) and the other world-builders and designers... These outlines have not been codified into beautiful writing... We simply don't have the time nor the staff for it...

Our budget isn't "now short", nor is the fact that we've had to spend our money in the ways we've spent it a "sign of bad budgeting".... Throughout this entire process, since before I even joined the team many months after the Kickstarter, we absolutely understood what that money represented;....a "runway" for our game's "airplane" to take off from... And that runway is composed of the amount of time Portalarium can continue to pay its employees to build this game... It was a very short runway, at first, and believe me when I say that, though the runway is constantly expanding, we are always working just a few months behind it as it does so, as we pour all our efforts and resources into building this game... We honestly work with very few excesses! Most people don't realize what it takes to make a game like the one we're trying to make for you, with such a limited number of good folks... And we love what we do so much that there have been times many of us, with personal savings enough to do so, have actually gone without pay....for months...just to stretch that money out... We spend our money on "time"; the time of the people who work with us on a daily basis... Time, and specifically staff, must be used to build the game FIRST, for the sake of those who want to see this game completed and playable... Anything else, MUST take a back-seat, when it comes to spending the money that backers like you have graciously provided us... To do otherwise would be both a dishonor and a disservice. Our only concession was The Sword of Midras, because that was meant to be the game's fictional basis from the beginning...

As I mentioned above, The Sword of Midras: A Shroud of the Avatar Novel...is literally meant to be the prequel to Shroud of the Avatar game... If you want to understand our game's lore, then you SHOULD be reading that book (as well as any in-game books on lore you may come across)... You've indicated you "havent read any books",....and that's exactly why you feel you "have almost no idea about the lore of the world and feel daunted every time I log in." Actually reading the book we published as an introduction to our lore just might help with that... And as I've mentioned elsewhere on this thread, our game has been set up to discover our lore through fiction presented "in-game" whenever possible, as opposed to some book or repository of lore Portalarium provides...

And, as I indicated above,...time, and specifically staff, must be used to build the game FIRST, for the sake of those who want to see this game completed and playable... Anything else, (including things like cinematics and such) MUST take a back-seat, when it comes to spending the money that backers like you have graciously provided us... We simply don't have the staff or the time for something as complex and time-consuming as a new cinematic right now... The playable game must take precedence...

 

Thanks for the thorough responses @Scottie and for allowing continued discussion. Nothing but respect for your posts here, despite the harsh news. There's a lot to learn from this sort of sincerity and professionalism.

I wish you the absolute best in completing the projects with the limitations you've been given. It's obvious you are trying to provide the best result you can. It is a shame that backers were not informed earlier about the level of quality they should expect.

 

Thank you, @Scottie. I totally understand where you are coming from.

My issue with relying on Sword of Midras as *the* lorebook is that it is hundreds of years out of date. It doesn't even explain the fall of the Obsidian Order, much less the rise of the Cabalists and the Ebon Cult. Only a handful of current location are mentioned. Really, it's best use is to introduce us to the (ancient) history of the world, and to better understand the Titans.

I do dearly wish we could see the world building outlines. Not regarding the quest lines, but the background.

 

I want you to consider something for a moment... All the lore presented in all the books and journals and spellbooks and such from the Ultima games of the past grew lengthier and lengthier, and more and more amazing as time went on, didn't it?... The very examples you are giving above pertain to a game and a world that had, by that time, been through at least nine iterations... NINE! I should know, because I was the art director for that game.... I literally helped design those books, which were then put together by our Creative Services TEAM... The earliest Ultimas simply did not have that degree of voluminous lore to provide... Most of what you got to know about those earliest iterations came from playing the game itself... Later editions, such as Ultima 5 and 6, did indeed have nice "books of lore" based on everything that had happened in previous episodes, plus a magic system that lent itself to having its own "spellbook", and a host of strange creatures established in the earlier episodes that could fill a decent-sized "bestiary"...

Though our game is meant to be a "spiritual successor" to Richard's earlier games, it doesn't mean we are jumping right out of the chute with that level of established lore, with the exception of what we have ALREADY provided for you in the full-length novel The Sword of Midras, which is already out there and available to the general public... Unlike the game represented by the examples you mentioned, our game,...Shroud of the Avatar...is merely "Episode One"... The lore for the present day of our game is something meant to be discovered "in-game" as you play... The reason the Virtues have been "forsaken" is meant to be a mystery... That sparing amount that Gina recently wrote for us for the first three and a half pages of the Adventurer's Manual was intended to be all that beginning players are told about what's going on in this strange world you've found yourselves in...

Of course, assuming our game continues into new episodes, our existing lore will become more common knowledge, and I'm sure we will begin codifying it in ways more conducive to beautiful, voluminous literature, either online, in the game, or in later books of lore we might present... But for now, understand that the lore we choose to present is no "joke"... You may have wanted more, in the form of the large and beautiful books once created for a game in its ninth iteration by an entire team of Creative Service people using the deep pockets of EA, but that was never intended for us at this stage; a game in its infancy presenting itself in its very first episode, created by a relatively small team on a budget that is purely driven by backer support and the investments of other partners who want to help bring our game to audiences outside of the US market...

I promise I don't take this personally. I totally understand that you're not talking down my work, and I really appreciate that... But as I mentioned above, in my opinion, and based on being on the "inside" of this process,... it's honestly not a result of either poor planning OR poor prioritization... But it apparently IS a problem with properly managing expectations concerning what would be in the Collector's Box... For us, the "beauty" of the manual (or any of the other included items) was never in question. Even though it may not be bound and put together in the same way that the slick tomes included with Ultima 9 were, I assure you I will do my best to make the pages themselves look beautiful, hearkening to the style of art that I always like looking at when reading things pertaining to games I've made and like to play...

All that being said, I can only further assure you that, as far as "planning" goes, the plan was never to include the physical Manual as merely a "book of lore"... It was always planned as a lore-based introduction followed by a brief user's guide as a gate-way to diving into the even more comprehensive online instructions to help folks navigate through "how to play the game" as opposed to "what the game's about"... As I mentioned to several folks earlier,...because we're merely on "Episode One" for this world and its offerings the only lore we wanted the players to easily consume is the lore from the past as depicted in The Sword of Midras, which the public has general access to... Everything else (with the exception of what brief introductions we've conceived) is meant to be discovered as one plays the game, and begins to learn the ways of this new world they've been drawn into... This game's initial lore was never meant to be presented as a "tome" to be included in the boxed set of the very first episode...as far as I know...

As to the prioritization of our tasks, I want to also assure you that we've had our eyes on this for awhile, and prioritization is a very crucial part of deciding how we spend the money we've been given.... I know it pains Starr that the limited amount of time each week that I can give Portalarium (once three, but now four days a week, since I've started sacrificing a day of my own self-publishing time to help them out) must now be totally consumed by these physical goods, which leaves me no time to continue making in-game content... This is, and must remain, Portalarium management's priority, for the sake of the game itself... As I mentioned earlier in this thread, time, and specifically staff, must be used to build the game FIRST, for the sake of those who want to see this game completed and playable... Anything else MUST take a back-seat when it comes to spending both money and the time of those of us who are desperately wanting to make a game you'll enjoy.... An example of this is the fact that I'm actually online spending hours answering these posts on the weekend, using my own time instead of the time Portalarium pays for...

None of this is the result of poor planning or prioritization... Quite the opposite, from my point of view.... It's actually the result of damned-good planning and prioritization in the face of very strict limitations of time, resources, and a small team of very dedicated people... We push very heavily against all of these limitations (which is why we weren't done long ago), squeezing the most we can out of all of them in ways that constantly amaze me, just to make the best game we can under these constraints... There's an old saying that "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy." For us, the "enemy" has always been time and resources,...but that hasn't stopped us from trying... In my personal opinion, we promised a heck of a lot based on the resources of time and money we were asking for, and this became an undeniable truth almost immediately,...but, again, this hasn't broken our will to keep on with the good fight... And I'd like to think that, despite all these limitations, what we have achieved is nothing short of exceptional... Compare our efforts to others who've recently tried to make playable games in this paradigm, with far more money and employees at their disposal... Despite the "nay-sayers", I've personally been very impressed at what we've accomplished...

Scottie ^_^

 

I absolutely understand your desire to know more of the recent history before-hand... But like I said, so much of this was created "on the fly" as we built out these areas... The Cabalists, for instance, were something that were created "recently" from a production standpoint, as we breathed life into the basic outlines that helped us come up with side-quests and other activities... When Bob first created the Darkstarr Moondial, we hadn't yet conceived of the use we would put to the various moons and their positions in the sky...

All of this "new" lore, which we as designers and world-builders carefully wove "backwards" into the existing fictional basis, has never had the chance to go through a final polishing pass as we've created it... It simply got inserted as quickly and efficiently as we could, while tying it to as many functional in-game systems as we could manage (without making the programmers want to slaughter us)... In the aftermath of that chaotic creative process, one can look back and see the gory results of the fictional prototypes of our Frankenstein-ian creations crudely laid out on our archived examination slabs... For some of us, like myself, these fictional snippets exist only in brief write-ups and outlines (for myself and others), or in the forum posts we've made describing the fiction of our areas... I can't speak for Lum, but I'm assuming he has a similar archive of stuff thrown together or hastily added to Richard's original plot outline, just to preserve as much as he could before moving on to the next task of fiction-writing, mostly for the sake of the incredible amounts of NPC dialogue...

And sadly, none of this is in any condition to be released to the public (except in forum posts here and there), and all of it is admixed with plot-specific "spoilers" that would be a terrible thing to make available to the general public before they even had a chance to discover it themselves by playing the game... Perhaps one day we will be given the chance (and someone given the hideous task) of trying to codify all that stuff into a cohesive, presentable format... But our goals and priorities of the present simply won't allow any of that at this time, or in the immediately foreseeable future...

Scottie ^_^

 

Thanks so much.... And I totally agree that it's unfortunate that we weren't able to easily manage expectations about the specifics of the Manual... But then again, it's not easy to manage such expectations when they seem to lean towards the quality of goods made for past games that were already well into multiple iterations, like I mentioned earlier in this thread... By Ultima 4 and 5 the lore was well-enough established that including lore-books of that (and later) quality level was a viable plan (pertaining to both what it contained, and how fancy and "rustic" it might look)...

For us, with this being "Episode One" of our game, having those kinds of full lore-books this go-around simply wasn't viable or even justified... I mean, even if I turned around and begged that we spend extra money on making our Adventurer's Guide have a cover that looked "rustic and embossed" (for instance), it wouldn't change the fact that our manual was intended to show merely a short introduction to the lore, followed by a brief overview of the lengthier player instructions to be found online. Our lore (the bulk of it) is meant to be brief and incipient, with the lion's share to be something discovered in this first episode, and with many mysteries hinted at and possibly left to be uncovered in future episodes. To us, that meant that we should physically present it using a more "modern" style for the cover and back, while making the interior as beautiful as possible, without feeling "out of place"...

We honestly didn't inform backers of the exact quality of the Manual really early on, because we weren't yet sure exactly how we wanted to physically present it until we got closer to a state of completion... This has only recently come to pass... As with all such decisions, they are a work in progress...

Scottie ^_^

 

Thank you @Scottie - really appreciate your explanations and involvement here. Exemplary communication. Still don’t like the outcome, though

 

Heh,...I totally get it... I'm hoping that at least understanding the "why" of the outcome helps take some of the sting out of disappointed expectations... But short of somehow going back in time and cutting other elements or features of the game itself, there's literally no way that we would have been able to create the kind of full-fledged tome of lore that it sounds like you folks were hoping for... To my knowledge there has never been a detailed discussion of this up until now, and even if the community were to somehow convince Portalarium's management to scrape up the means to hire someone to go through and try to collate and organize all the fictional snippets I described above into a cohesive volume that we could provide, the process would be incredibly expensive and could take months! And, unfortunately, doing so would also go against their desire to present our new world's lore primarily as part of the in-game experience...

Instead, it is my hope that, once our game has established itself properly in Episode One and moved forward with future episodes that continue to expand upon the lore we've created, Portalarium will find ways to present the lore of Episode One in a variety of formats as part of an ever-growing collection of lore in later episodes, as Richard did long ago with the various episodes of Ultima... Perhaps then, as in the past, you will begin seeing the kind of "lore-books" you were expecting, appearing in much the same way, and in much the same time-frame, as those earlier games. Perhaps even earlier, if I have anything to do with it...

Scottie ^_^

 

You Sir, are a scholar and a gentleman!

 

Great replies Scottie ^_^

 

Thanks for the feedback @Scottie ! Totally get the teams position. Perhaps the success of E1 can lead to greater things for E2 thru E5, where more existing lore should be available to build on and expand.