Ambrosia Software Web Board: Editor For Cythera? - Ambrosia Software Web Board

I personally loved Cythera, great game, plot all around great time. Graphics a bit dated, but gotta cater to those non-PPC people. Anyways This is for Ambrosia more or less, but i'd like to see how much interest could be generated for a Editor to create your own worlds/characters/plots etc. Basically allowing the editing of every visual aspect of the game...Make a total conversion etc etc, the plugin abilities of the EV series, or the new scenario editor Hera for Ares...I might be really behind and Ambrosia may well be making one or someone else as well...But i'd really like to see this game get new life. Once you beat it, unlike every other ambrosia game...the replayability is non-existent, and only to go back and find something you missed. I don't mean to beat the game, it's just a general feeling i've noticed from those who've beaten it.

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"To the creative mind, there is no right or wrong. Every action is an experiment, and every experiment yields it's fruit in knowledge."
-Hagbard Celine

I agree that it would be great to have an editor, but it just won't happen. Firstly, I believe that Cythera didn't give Ambrosia nearly as much as they put into it, and they don't plan any further developments. Although it might seem that dedicated players would be able to come up with something, this is highly unlikely because nobody knows what is in the ResEdit files. However, Cythera was designed on something called the Delver engine, which is highly customizable. Whether Ambrosia ended Delver work along with Cythera I don't know, but it's quite possible they did. I've finished the game and I agree that beyond trying a different character, there's not much else to do. Sure, you can buy the house, but there's only one way to win the game, and it's reached along one set string of missions (although they branch together, they never branch apart) Also keep in mind it might actually be impossible for Ambrosia to come up with something most people could use. They're probably not very motivated either, since, as I said before, Cythera wasn't a big sales success. Oh well.

-Talos

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Bronze: the other gold metal.

Most of the reasons it probably didn't sell to most Joes on the net were purely superficial:
- the introductory sequence (before you meet Alaric!!!) is pretty wierd. Joe (and me too) will wonder, "Is the rest of the game like this, all dreamy and incomprehensible?"
- the isometric offset is (-1,1) instead of (0,1). That is to say, what your character would see as a line perpendicular to the ground (a lamp pole, a wall, other characters) you see as a line slanting up-left on the screen. More normal is a system where vertical lines are still vertical lines - height of objects only changes the Y-dimension on the screen. In Cythera, the non-vertical mapping is eyewracking until you get used to it (even then it's sort of odd). Joe, who is used to his isometric offest being purely vertical, will be driven nuts and may choose not to buy the game before he gets over it. Also,the surreality of this property does nothing to alleviate the incomprehensibility of the introductory sequence.
- The character walking looks like he/she is lifting both legs at the same time.
- Magpie's guided tour is not human-controlled. Joe wants to look around at the diagrams. Joe wants to go to the library. Joe doesn't want to follow Magpie, who doesn't respond to many words, thus giving Joe the impression that most characters have few things that they say (which is not true).

Note that those four occur even before the player even gets a chance to take a single step under his or her own control! The player has nothing to do but watch and get the impression... and so far it is unlikely to be favorable.

- Omen's test has an annoying unmarked teleporter section. Joe doesn't like those. It also has a moving-boxes section, which can be annoying since Joe can't move boxes through diagonal gaps and he can't push them, two things Joe expects to be able to do. And if Joe fails to find the reward, Omen will deprecate his abilities, which is something that Joe will _Not_ like, especially since Joe can search for some time and not find it (I still haven't).

- Joe has made it past the Test, and is going to rescue Ariadne. Joe didn't catch the bit in the rules about aptitudes, though. Joe will think to himself, "I chose fighter. I can attack and defend at skill of 4 each" BUT he CAN'T. The little italic means Joe has to be trained to get it... Joe does not know this. When he tries to fight, his character will die.

These problems are pretty superficial, but they could well be enough to prevent someone trying it as shareware from register. And that means no sale, NO MATTER how good the rest of the game is.

[This message has been edited by Shagrat (edited 07-22-2000).]

[This message has been edited by Shagrat (edited 07-22-2000).]