Ambrosia Software Web Board: Do you think LKH is unfinished - Ambrosia Software Web Board

I do not think it's finished

Proof: Crystal ball and dresser. Also a Carpet

Why did they cut it? Sometimes during the game if I spend to much time in LKH everything dissappears (ecxept for the landscape and people (though they freeze) but I put up the memory and it didn't happen that often)

I think it is finished so it can be played. The little things here and there are signs of un-finishedness, but it is fine to play through. Perhaps those little things are easter eggs.

I am a believer that you should have been able to walk through that void into another dimention or something like that, maybe that's what Cythera 2 was going to be about though

That disappearing-LKH thing happened to me all the time, that's why I still hate spending time there @_@

I think Cythera is unfinished, and that includes LKH.

I cast my vote for no. There are many elements of the game that are not "finished," even in Land King Hall, but there is a fine line between what was intended but never completed and what was merely a bug.

It was a difficult decision, though, because I can easily see why one would vote yes. The crystal ball and dresser would seem to indicate a lack of completion, but then again, that may very well be accidental, as I said earlier. However, there are definite parts in the game that I believe to be indisputably unfinished.

I'm not sure. There are many aspects of the game which seem obviously unfinished – although it is a vague sort of game, so maybe it's meant to look that way. It puzzles me as to why Ambrosia would release an unfinished game by accident, so I reason that this is how they wanted it to be.

This post has been edited by Sprong: 15 November 2006 - 09:47 PM

I agree with Sprong - maybe they had an amateur programmer doing landking hall, or something.

I also agree with The Wizard.

This post has been edited by CrazyChick: 15 November 2006 - 11:26 PM

CrazyChick, on Nov 15 2006, 10:25 PM, said:

Actually—as far as I know at least—Ambrosia didn't make Cythera; Glenn Andreas (gandreas) did. I believe that Ambrosia is the company through which the game was released or some such thing.


There are probably unfinished elements in the game (such as Tavara and other such potential plot lines)—some of which may have been designed to be in a sequel. Also, some of the strange things found in Cythera are probably bugs that were never fixed.

This post has been edited by Selax: 17 November 2006 - 12:44 AM

Selax, on Nov 17 2006, 06:41 PM, said:

You're right, of course, I'd forgotten. Just like ATMOS makes the EV games.

Selax, on Nov 17 2006, 06:41 PM, said:

Cythera does seem to be a very sequel-able game... if some professional programmers and graphic designers got in on the project, made an OSX-based Cythera 2 with modern graphics and updated playing interface, I think they'd have a seriously marketable (not to mention awesome) product! But the chances of that seem small, which is a pity.

ATMOS made EVN, not EV or EVO. EV was made by Matt Burch, EVO was made by someone else.

Anyways, my oppinion is that Glenn simply didn't go over the game and look for bugs enough, and in that sence, Cythera is definately unfinished.

I don't think that the "secret room" (which we used to call the "white room", because it was the fashion at the time :D ) should be counted as evidence that LKH is in some way "unfinished". It's just a few objects stuck on the side of the map. I don't know what the particular reason for its existance is, but I am reasonably certain that it isn't intended to be reachable.

It is possible that the secret room is just an artifact of "uninitalized data", but that seems rather unlikely. This is speculation, but if anything I would guess that the things there were for testing the game engine during early development. When one is writing a game, it is very useful to have a level where a large number of elements are in close proximity to one another for testing purposes. (So that the programmer or alpha-tester does not have to trudge through six levels of Garden Invaders to find the first Gnome-cannon power up each time he tweaks the pointy-hat-drag-coefficient.) Certainly just about every entertainment program I've written has had something like that, Battle for Wesnoth has it, etc. It is too useful a thing to be without, although most of them don't make it into the final version. I think the "white room" in LKH is all that remains of such a "testing level".

In any case the white room can be reached by a trival application of save-file hacking. No secret door leading to it has ever been found, and if one were, it would also lead to the large "backstage" area in LKH which is filled with obvious junk, because the "white room" is contiguous with it. (So it would be a bug more than an easter egg or secret.)

One also should take into consideration the 'second path of the lightningbolt' egg in the Land King Hall regarding the Braziers in the secret antechamber to Alaric's study. Honestly, Glenn went to all the trouble of adding that in and it really doesn't do anything. No environmental changes, and no insights into Cythera Lore; just a bright flash of light and line of text that could mean just about anything. Personally, I imagine that if it worked as it should, properly lighting the braziers would open the pathway to the 'white room', as Bryce so eloquently puts it. Of course, Glenn is not known for giving up many secrets, large or small.

The Land King Hall is playable, sure, but it lacks the extended qualities that were originally intended for its debut. Otherwise, it is a rather complete area (at least compared to some of the other regions in the game).

Perhaps the white room was a place for Glenn to drag objects into the place and he forgot those last objects.

I still don't understand why, if Glenn forgot something, that he wouldn't just release a patch later on to correct it. I mean, he would have been informed of things like the "white room" by players if he hadn't put it in on purpose, and (although admittedly I know very little about game programming) something like the white room should be relatively easy to remove, I'd have thought – surely not impossible.

Unless he just decided to keep things like these in to give the game some ambiguity, some controversial issues to be talked about. If that was his aim, hey, it worked

I dunno, maybe he intended to make a editor for Cythera and the White room would be a place to drag objects.

Or maybe he did both of the previous two posts. Forgot the objects, then didn't fix it to leave something to talk about.

~vIsitor~, on Nov 20 2006, 10:36 AM, said:

The second path of what? Am I missing something?