First Impressions

I don't post on the forums much, I sometimes lurk and read things. I don't like the forums on most games, and the ones for this game aren't any better, they may be worse.

That said, I was happy to try logging in to the pre-alpha, it's interesting to be part of the development so early. And a bit weird. I am a girl, so I made a girl character.

I know it's not a bug, but the hair is terrible, it looks like the plastic hair you can take off and put onto lego people. And I know and understand this is pre-alpha but if you wanted to give us just one good hair, it would be better than 3 plastic hairs.
I play a lot of the Sims 2 and Sims 3. There are young teens who have made nicer hair textures for those games, as a hobby, in their free time. I sure hope you fix that hair issue...

Next, the houses and walls and fences and whatnot all have really great textures. Much better than my character's hair... They looked great though, very rustic and cool. I followed a bunny (super cute bunny) and he led me to finding a chest. He had nicer fur than my plastic hair too, by the way. I went into town and found some more chests, I took a lot of furniture into my pack. I liked the animals walking around, I think they added a more realistic touch to the town.
I like the market old lady npc's hair better than my hair too, just for the record.
And the cool bartender in the Fire Lotus Tavern, he looked awesome! So unique, what a cool nose! He had much nicer beard hair than my hair.

Ok, I hope you get my point about the hair.

I got stuck a couple of times when walking out of a house area through the large gap in the fence and had to quit and restart to get out. The first time was when coming out of the wizard castle area. The second time was on that dock by the little brook near the spawn in point.

There are some village ladies in red dresses standing around everywhere and they look like weird mannequins. They are just standing very oddly and their chest skin had a really weird shiny glowingness to it.

Oh and my clothes sleeves were cutting a lot and it kind of looked like they had a bunch of moth holes in them around the shoulders and upper arms. And there needs to be an option to hang your sword on your hip or something, it's weird to have your character carry it around everywhere.

I liked placing thing in the houses. I used the tiniest house. I will probably never own a house in the real game when it comes out because I can't afford to spend that much real life money on one video game. And it has been sounding like there won't be land to place houses if you have to wait until you can buy a house with in-game gold. That is my impression, and I must say I think that is lame. It's pixels, can't more pixel land be made in the future?

I loved when it got dark out and it was getting so dark in the tiny house while I was trying to place furniture. I put some candles out and the light effects from them were awesome! It was very pleasant!
I liked looking up and seeing that cracked moon, cool, though I am not sure would something like that work to produce any kind of light to a planet, but whatever, it's magic.
Also the flowers and grass were nice.

 

Are You an hair dresser in real life?

 

Nope, but I have been a professional sim make-over artist for 6 years in my sims games. And I will say that EA sims 3 hairstyles aren't all that great either, which is why people made their own custom hairs and textures. Also, the star wars: the old republic hairs, only about half of them are decent. Which is why I play a Twilek.

 

Yeah the textures and shadows are very basic at this early stage, I agree though.
Plastic Hair and somewhat Barbie and Ken dolls

I'm still happy with what's been put together in such a short time.

I agree the lighting effects from the sun, candles, torches, lanterns etc. are amazing.

I just noticed the fireplace light on my character looks excellent.

 

Yea I think I found probably 8 different styles of lights and they were really nice, even wall sconces and an outdoor brazier.
The placement was super smooth, but I read something else that suggested a lockdown option on placed items, which would be vital to add, I think.
Even though the tiny house was tiny, I was able to put a lot more into it than I expected would be possible at first glance. And it's cool to be able to place things in the yard as well.

 

Before I say anything concerning this game, I should make mention of a few things.

- I am using an integrated video card on an Acer laptop to run this game, and as such, the framerate is awful. Playable, but awful.
- I've only played for fifteen minutes so far, but intend to go back later today for a longer session to really look at this build.
- My Ultima experience is limited to Underworld, Ultima IV, and Arx Fatalis, which I understand was supposed to be Underworld III at one point.

First impressions about the look of this game are very good. Graphically, it's not great, but in the aesthetic sense, much like Deus Ex, Tropico 4 and Geneforge, this game looks good, which is how I prefer games to be on the graphical side. Very little of it screams 'high fantasy', like Two Worlds II or Guild Wars II do, which is nice to see.

Talking to the first guard, and realizing he had answers and speech ready in the classic Ultima-style of answering what you ask of him, was fun to see. It took me a minute to realize that I had to initiate conversations by standing close and using the Enter prompt, but reading it helped me get a grasp of what the response expectation was. I've seen some of this in Ultima IV, although I couldn't grasp it as well in that title. I may go back to that guard and ask him, "May I ask you a question?" to see what his response is.

However, when it comes to dialogue in any RPG, I am always reminded of Daggerfall and the system it had when addressing someone in game. You had three ways to address someone about a topic -- being nice, being blunt, or being neutral -- and certain folks would only respond to certain kinds of etiquette.

The bag system was fun to use and right now is my favorite aspect of SOTA. (Watching a whole wood-working desk fit into the burlap sack made me laugh. Could be a fixed thing later maybe.) I did notice however that placement of carried objects inside the house I used -- the empty one immediately to the right of the entrance to the castle -- was limited, as was placement outside of it. I couldn't figure out how to rotate items before placing them either, if it was possible.

I'm looking forward to testing more of this game as it continues to grow, given what I've seen.

 

You have to use q and e keys to rotate items. I kept trying to use the < and > which didn't work, so I finally went back to read their notes on key controls.
Speaking of which, my hubby and son are both lefty's and there are many more left handed people out in the world. I hope that key binding is added before final release.

 

I see. I jumped in without looking at the key bindings before, so I'll keep that in mind for my next session.

 

Release 2 is supposed to implement some additional character creation features (i.e. more hair), so hopefully you'll have something better to choose from.