Grimrock

Anurias wrote:To clear up a few things;

Anurias wrote:As for 'Escape from Dragon Mountain', that is a completely different project from 2001 that was being worked on by a different team of people. Petri may have been part of that team but he was not the entire team for that project or for LoG. Anything related to Escape from Dragon Mountain is connected to that project, not LoG.

Escape from Dragon Mountain is NOT LoG. Do a bit of research on that game. I checked it out and it was being made by a different team, Petri was on that team but the rest of that team was not involved in LoG.

First, I don't have to do my research... as I did it years ago. So, put your accusations somewhere else. I followed Petri's announcement in the dungeon-master forum & the development & change of his project and team over time.

Despite the claims & public announcements (I never argued that AH didn't claimed things), LoG is 90% DM.

Anurias wrote: "Legend of Grimrock is a dungeon crawling role playing game with an oldschool heart but a modern execution." -Taken from AH's description of the game at http://www.grimrock.net/games/

Yupp, a proper and truthful description. DM remade for the modern time. (as in "dungeon crawler" synonymous with "DM clone")

Anurias wrote: That is stating the genre of the game, a dungeon crawler in the same vein as the old school dungeon crawlers. What you are experiencing as DM inspired mechanics are things that ALL dungeon crawlers of that era and genre shared in common

No, what you are experiencing is the innovative power of DM who kickstarted the genre of the dungeon crawler (real-time version), which was synonymous in the 80s/90s with DM-clone, & created a horde of clones (EoB etc).

Wizardry kick-started this genre, not DM. That's a historical fact.

badhabit wrote:DM was infact the core inspiration for LoG

That is your perception, not a fact.

badhabit wrote:pretty heavily DM inspired (~90%)

Perception backed by imagined math is 100% self-defeating.

Since historically Wizardry began the dungeon-cralwer genre, LoG is 100% a Wizardry clone, which did a better job at cloning Wizardry than DM did. Thus, DM is failed clone. More proof that LoG has no properly relation to DM. Hooray Wizardry!

Pretty off-hand subject to interject my thoughts into but. . .

Totally agree with badhabit here. If you were around and involved in gaming at the time of DM's release, and you were just as involved during Eob's release, he is stating the general perception nearly perfect. DM changed the gaming world as a whole. Albeit, it was a much smaller world then. DM was Atari ST or AMIGA. We're talking before pc was a standard, and Bill Gates was broke. In that frame of reference, the game changed the IDEA of what was possible. There was A DRAGON, chasing you up flights of stone stairs, with its head ducked because the ceiling is so too low for the sheer damn size of it. . .In first person view. Real Time. I was 9 years old, NINE, my dads at work,and I decide to play Dungeon Master, alone. but I'm home alone, playing this game, real time, 1st person (10th level, the knights, for anyone who understands the significance of the parties situation at that point). And it just shifted my whole concept of what gaming could "be".
By the time EOB was released (Six years later), I was 15 years old. I played D&D, it was standard role playing acumen in those days. And a new "dungeon crawler" was released. 1st person, real time, 4 characters. . .But D&D 2nd edition ruleset. Monsters, classes, stats. . .All math and interconnections that I understand. Well, "Count me in!". Aaaand it was AWESOME, even possibly eclipsed by part 2 (Part 3 was meh.) If I was 9 when EOB came out, and missed the DM craze entirely, my perception of their association would be different. Sorry for the pointless rant

Unfortunately the debate isn't about perceptions or whether DM changed the world of gaming or not. So far no one has contested DM as a pivotal point in the history of gaming. The debate is about an opinion that DM is the sole influence behind Legend of Grimrock. That opinion is, to put it bluntly, incorrect. It goes against what Legend of Grimrock's creators have said about the multiple games that influenced the creation of Legend of Grimrock.

I agree that DM had broad implications during its time and those implications are now a matter of recorded history that can be reviewed and verified, but those implications are simply irrelevant to the debate as they have no impact what-so-ever on the piece of evidence that trumps any and all speculation on the subject at hand; what the developers stated as their influence.

That blind fanaticism of Dungeon Master gamers is quite fascinating to witness

There are plenty of games from different genre's that have never been influenced by neither Wizardry nor DM. These games are legendary, but there's no sense making them a single point of religious faith

The only thing badhabit said that anyone can agree with... is something that no one really has to say, which is that DM is a good game. Not much of an observation there.

Without getting too wound up in the debate, here's something to consider.

Since not everyone played Dungeon Master, dropping names such as Eye of the Beholder and Ultima Underworld is a good way of getting the type of game Grimrock is across, regardless of how much influence they had.

So, this debate is all about LoG1 been influenced mostly by DM?
It's quite logical to say that EOB/LOL were based/influenced entirely on DM basic mechanics, not rules (etc. AD&D) but movement, graphic style, mosters and scenario setup in general.

In the same way Doom was based/influenced heavily by Wolfenstein 3D, although this is not fair since the same team had worked with this However, games that looks like Wolfenstein 3D are called nowadays Doom-clones. I never heard anyone stating Quake as a Wolfenstein 3D clone.

In my opinion this has to do with the era and the influence of these games upon future games. EOB/LOL games were certainly DM-clones, although in no way just clones, as Doom was in no-way a just clone of Wolfenstein 3D. EOB/LOL and the likes took the basic stuff from DM and polished it in a level that make them everlasting.
I can still play Doom 1 nowadays (first level music is a reason ) but i can't really touch Wolfenstein 3D, although i melt the title back then. The clone beat it's influence and took the genre forward. This is always happening.

In the future, dungeon crawlers may be called Grimrock-clones (if not already) by some, not DM/EOB/LOL clones and that's perfectly OK. This has to do with age and general reception of players. If you say to a 20-25 year old guy that this is a DM-EOB clone he may looks to you confused as he probably never played Dungeon Master or EOB in his life but knows in depth MMX and LOG.

In my humble opinion, clones that surpasses their influences (iwhich takes years of general acceptance) become an influence themselves.

Ixnatifual wrote:Without getting too wound up in the debate, here's something to consider.

Since not everyone played Dungeon Master, dropping names such as Eye of the Beholder and Ultima Underworld is a good way of getting the type of game Grimrock is across, regardless of how much influence they had.

Right, without you getting "too wound up in the debate" you decide to make a claim that the only reason AH included 3 other games as Grimrock's inspiration... is to lie via false advertising. Way to avoid getting too wound up, mister

Besides, your logic is flawed. Dungeon Master is much more legendary than the other titles, so if false advertising was the strategy here, name dropping Dungeon Master would be the lie used to get the type of game Grimrock is across, regardless of how little DM influenced it.

By my count, there are at least 3 people in this thread who refuse to believe AH was being honest when they proclaimed 4 game titles as the inspiration for Grimrock. One of these 4 peeps is the author, Frenchie. Yet this was Frenchie's original question to AH:

"LoG1 was a tribute to Dungeon Master, but there must be more games that can get a tribute? "

Therefore, will all the information we now have we can safely rephrase that question to be much more accurate:

"I perceive LoG1 to be purely inspired by Dungeon Master and Dungeon Master alone, but there must be more games you can force me to perceive?"

I'm sure AH will put that at the top of their To Do list

Hey! Let's get fired up over what we want to assume someone else is inspired by! Flame War!!!!! No really, we have room for a fun discussion, no need to derail it because someone disagrees (about something so abstract and pointless as personal perceptions). There is no correct view, or incorrect view, just some guys offering different opinions from different corners of the globe. The only person who could possibly take an "I'm right, you're not" attitude to this subject, is not a part of the conversation. Let's just talk about old stuff, and our differing views of it, without feeling the desire to get pissed off and confrontational.

Now, another unpopular opinion for your perusing pleasure

I don't consider Wizardry, M&M and Bard's Tale as the same genre as DM and EOB. Turn Based gaming is a strategical foundation, while real time is an action foundation. In wizardry or bard's tale
a dragon cannot chase you up flights of stairs while you are screaming, terrified, scrambling for your life. Well, sure, you can read it in the text box ("A dragon is chasing you up the stairs!") before you fight a photo of the dragon. It's this real time aspect that (in my esteemed judgement) changed the "concept" of gaming. Frame rate is a non issue in a turn based game, because moment to moment is not a deadly, harrowing scramble for your life.

Discuss!!

edit:
I also think that knowing/googling what Petri was doing for the 10 years before he founded Almost Human is important to this convo.

Saying someone was inspired by X, when they have already stated that they were inspired by Y is like saying the world is flat when it has been proven to be round.