Other games similar to Drakan?

Discuss anything related to computer games and fantasy in general. Other fantasy games, games with dragons in, fantasy artwork etc are welcome here too. Posts are auto pruned after 3 months if not viewed. Please post Drakan related topics to the relevant forums below.
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yangez93
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Re: Other games similar to Drakan?

Post by yangez93 »

Nowadays we like that someone in YouTube play game instead play it ourself. Maybe because we want to know something interesting about game? In past we used to buy some game magazines such as (Mechanist, your are from Poland :D) "Click" or "CD-Action" I always read it to know much more than just play it. Or english websites such as "Game Spy", I was searching everything that is related to Drakan. I remember when my friend used to buy it regularly and he had "CD Action" edition with Drakan:TAG and I was very happy that at last there in these magazines is mention about Drakan :)

When we talk about OpenOOTF. Some mention will be nice as bonus content:)

It'll be hard to record good quality Drakan:TAG. You can start LP only Drakan:OOTF and in future you will can make LP of TAG.Summarizing I wish you luck in recording LP :) I will definitely give you thumbs-up and subscribe :) My suggestion is that, you can try something crazy for example playing without Health Potions, it is possible to finish game? :)

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Mechanist
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Re: Other games similar to Drakan?

Post by Mechanist »

UCyborg wrote:It is blurry alright.
Sure, but still better than nothing.

The first time I played OOTF, I hadn't bothered to read the manual first; having been spoiled by other, much more modern games in that regard.
That didn't go very well. At all.
Similarly to Zergem, I didn't even know about the combo attacks until I performed one by random chance while mashing buttons.
Even worse, I somehow didn't realize that Arokh's weapon can be switched, which caused me a lot of grief after picking up the poison rune - again, until I hit the wrong (right?) button and switched weapons by accident.

yangez93 wrote:used to buy some game magazines
Ah yes, around that time Internet access was a very expensive luxury. And even with a 56k modem, downloading more than a few floppies' worth of data took longer than forever.
It was actually much faster (and WAY cheaper) to drive all the way across the country to physically bring back a CD, than to try downloading such staggering amounts of data :D
CDA's CD's used to provide a decent amount of fun, although IIRC the games they included full versions of weren't too great, for the most part.

Wait, what? TAG was featured in CDA? I must've missed it somehow. :|
Maybe it was after I stopped buying CDA. Or I just disregarded it altogether because at that time, PS2 :arrow: totally inaccessible for me.

As for recording PCSX2 output - granted, I haven't actually tried it yet, but my new rig should be sufficiently overpowered to not have any trouble with it, even at HD quality.
If it comes to that, I can just dump the raw uncompressed video stream straight to disk, which should result in only a minimal performance penalty. While also filling the entire 512GB SSD in under 15 minutes, but that's what you get with uncompressed video.
And if all else fails, I can record the controller input while playing in PCSX2-rr, and play it back (as a TAS) at reduced speed while rendering the output to disk. This results in a proper 60fps HD video, even on machines far too slow to render anywhere near 60fps, but there are other problems - including frequent input desyncs due to emulation inaccuracies.
Definitely doable either way, though.


Regarding my LP, the basic plan of action is as follows:
  • 1. Play OOTF :arrow: TAG normally first, taking notes (never played TAG before; also it's been a good few years since I last completed OOTF).
  • 2. Do a recorded test run ("simulated LP") of OOTF, then TAG - this will be helpful regarding update segmentation and pacing, and also to weed out any technical issues with recording.
  • 3. Record the actual "main run" footage for the LP (ALL of it, both OOTF and TAG!).
  • 4. Record the first few bonus videos.
  • 5. Start writing the commentary and editing the first few updates.
  • 6. At this point, it can be posted to Something Awful (which marks the official starting point), and continued as normal.
Attempting to record the main run on an "as-needed" basis would likely result in a disaster - it would be far too spread out in time, and cause more problems than it would solve.
I want to be sure that I actually have the crucial footage before I do anything else. Don't want to start anything that I can't finish.
Also, the delay caused by recording (most of) the footage up front is absolutely insignificant when compared to the total amount of effort involved.

yangez93 wrote: My suggestion is that, you can try something crazy for example playing without Health Potions, it is possible to finish game? :)
It is very much possible to complete OOTF without any healing quite easily - by savescumming: save very often, and reload if you get hit. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Doable? Certainly.
Fun? Not by any stretch of the imagination.
In any case, savescumming tends to break most games quite badly in general (in the balancing sense, not the technical sense).
Also, it would look very poorly/unprofessionally in an LP, due to lots of quickloading/cuts.

The alternative would be to treat it like a segmented speedrun: play a whole segment (in this case, one LP update; ~20-30 minutes) without taking damage.
Given the amount of enemies/hazards in a segment of such length, it would require either divine gaming skills (reliably avoiding taking damage) or saintly patience (lots of restarts) - of which I posess neither.

Finally, I want to show off reasonably normal gameplay, not some crazy gimmicks.
Sure, it's possible to do insane things (ie. no potions, no crystals/charges, no armor, no bows, Atimar's Blade only, avoiding using Arokh as much as possible, etc.), but that's far removed from the playing experience intended by the developers.
Occasionally taking a bit of damage is both normal, and expected.

I might, however, try going for avoiding combat as much as possible (stealth/running away) when playing as Rynn. Of course, when controling Arokh :arrow: wholesale slaughter :mrgreen:.

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yangez93
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Re: Other games similar to Drakan?

Post by yangez93 »

I searched some archive of CD Action game magazine but I haven't discovered any mention about Drakan TAG :( It is possibility maybe it appeared in another game magazine or I miss some editions.:) I remember also that I had CD with "Drakan:OOTF Demo", but I had Full Game i definitely installed it and check how demo looks like. And this demo appeared in polish game magazine but I forgot what name it has :)

I want to help you in some way so I discovered something useful to better understand Drakan World and Drakan gameplay (forgive me if some of links are obvious and you know it well :)):

Drakan Order of The Flame official manual:
http://manualmachine.com/games-pc/draka ... er-manual/

Drakan World "Wikipedia":
http://drakan.wikia.com/wiki/Drakan_Wiki

Very nice animation of book, by Metalfist, you'll probably need to get permission to use it.
https://metalfist0.deviantart.com/art/D ... -317084328

Here we have Rynn Combo in-game tutorial. It can be useful to represent these special movement in your LP. When I was playing Drakan, I never use it because I didn't know that Rynn can make such combo skills:) You can make in Full HD these tutorials as bonus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zChcMT7s_R0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd_FiHjsLH8

There a lot of possibilities that you can record in interesting way. You can do even some surveys to viewers "What is your favourite Level?","What is your favourite weapon" all that in order to increase number of comments and views:)

When we talk about something crazy. For example you can use cheat "gimme runeblade" at the Ruined Village and record some actions using this sword. You said about no using "Bows", but I can be nice to overcome evil dragons using Bows instead Arokh, I haven't seen very often gameplays that players overcome Dragons in this way :) Nice will be LP that you'll discover all secrets :) But of course, better to record in normal way :)

It'll be nice that you will make some subtitles in another languages. German, French, Polish etc.->To increase the number of potential viewers. Nowadays players/viewers usually watching new games that have modern graphics, Drakan is somehow forgotten, so let's make this revive:)

I have also questions about what software you'll use to record, edit videos? And devices: What microphone you use?

Next very good concept is to make Audiobook of Drakan: The Order Reborn and upload it :) I would definitely listen to it all, maybe record and upload it to YouTube with fan art pictures. If someone has very good microphone and tells stories in interesting way he can do it:) I skip matter YT monetization of course.

UCyborg
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Re: Other games similar to Drakan?

Post by UCyborg »

Didn't know crouch sneaking was a thing. It's a bit slowish. Rynn also makes footstep sound while crouching unless you hold Sneak key. There's also a bunch of interesting commands.
"When a human being takes his life in depression, this is a natural death of spiritual causes. The modern barbarity of 'saving' the suicidal is based on a hair-raising misapprehension of the nature of existence." - Peter Wessel Zapffe

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Mechanist
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Re: Other games similar to Drakan?

Post by Mechanist »

Personally I find Arokh's interpretation of "sneaking" funny: he doesn't even try; just walks instead of running. It's not as if a 20+foot dragon could hope to stay unnoticed anyway :D

YanGez: thanks, I already had both of the manuals though.

As for my LP, the intention from the start was to do it in English only.
You don't really get a much wider audience than that; also the LP Archive only accepts LP's in English.
It would be a heck of a job to do a multilanguage LP of such scope - I don't think I've ever seen one, and I've seen hundreds of them.

Then there's also the little issue that I only really know English and Polish.
I also have a limited understanding of Russian, but can't cobble together more than a few meaningful sentences.

Just because something is possible to do, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good idea. Which I learned the very hard way.

Also, some ideas/gimmicks are just patently insane: for example, I've once heard an idea for a "pacifist" God of War speedrun. IIRC, with all the known skips and glitches, it would be possible to finish GoW1 with only 100-150 kills, which can be considered a very good day indeed for Kratos :roll:.

Bows: putting aside the considerable difficulty of hitting a quickly moving target with non-magical arrows (multiple times no less!), it seems silly (and out of character) to try and fight dragons with bows, when Arokh can make short work of them with his insanely overpowered attacks.
And I've never been a big fan of archery in most games in general.

Recording setup: haven't settled on the recording software yet, but either OBS or HyperCam2.
My current microphone is a heavily modified electret "cheapie", complete with an internal preamp (added by me). Quick initial testing seems to indicate it's at least somewhat decent (as opposed to its original state, which was utter garbage), but I haven't yet had the opportunity to test it fully.

Drakon Rider-16
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Re: Other games similar to Drakan?

Post by Drakon Rider-16 »

yangez93 wrote: Wed Mar 14, 2018 5:06 pm You can rarely find games Dragon+Woman combined,
There is a text-based novel and a small amount of painted artwork about bipedal-women+Dragon-like furry creatures. It is not ancient(fantasy)-based but space-based science-fiction. Dimar world - http://www.dreslough.com/main/lostwaters/LWTOC.HTM .

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Re: Other games similar to Drakan?

Post by Drakon Rider-16 »

yangez93 wrote: Sun Apr 01, 2018 1:07 pm My suggestion is that, you can try something crazy for example playing without Health Potions, it is possible to finish game? :)
Health potions is just equal to build-in body reparation system. But works faster. You can try to make a mod of Riot Engine with same looking health-restore system. So after each strike with significant health lost you will need to rest a real long time for health restore. Like weeks. Typical player real body restores cut wounds in about 3..4 weeks or more. Though in a year or 10 years it is also possible to finish game :) . Just do not got killed completely in local strikes.

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