Pool of Radiance:RoMD Info

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(Originally posted by Nazgul)

From Chuck Yager, Associate Producer, PoR:RoMD

We do have powerful magical items in the game, some of which were indeed lost in the last fall of Myth Drannor, but I'm not sure if I would label them artifacts. THere might be one or two items of sufficient power that I would bestow upon them that mastery of all magical items title, but for the most part I would feel more comfortable saying we have really, really, powerful magical items.

As for sound, we have spent a great deal of time reviewing the coutnless ambient sound effects, atmospheric tracks, and monster/character sounds that Stormfront's genuis sound designer Andrew Boyd has constructed for Pool. It is amazing the listen to the above ground areas that have things swishing around in the grass, hear hawks keening their cry, and the chirps of birds....only to have that all slowly transition away as dusk falls and night settles in. Then the sounds of crickets and wind replaces the daylight cacophony you were used to. It is so subtle but really makes the world come to life.

The same exists in the dungeon levels, where you can hear doors opening and shutting, moans in the undead ladden portions of the catacombs, and other sounds that set just the right mood for suspense while dungeoneering.

Regarding the characters and their voices, although your own party memebers will not have a voice attached to them in game (we did this to allow for the player to conceptualize the sound of his or her own character's voice in game), the NPCs have a wide range of voice talent for Pool that really give them a depth and personality all their own.

Lastly...the AI. It will gain in intelligence and tactics as the characters progress throughout the game. They might at first just try and rush you and follow your bait but as the game moves on the AI will ambush more, utilize its spellcasters to their most effective strategy, and generally capitalize on the turn based system for setting up their units as much as it can. It will truly be a challenge at times, but then again, that what we are shooting for in the first palce....a fun challenge.

Unfortunately I can not assuage your requests for a setting for Ai difficulty. However, there will be higher intelligence AI creatures in the early part of the game that will maximize tactics to their effectiveness. Sorry if that was misleading earlier.

Yes, your characters will make sounds as far as battle is concerned. They will make the standard grunts and groans, death wails, etc. to give combat a semblance of life.

As far as the AI goes overall, I think there will be plenty of scalable encounters based on the story and party levels as you adventure throughout Myth Drannor. However, this is not to imply that there are not sufficiently difficult encounters at the start of this great mission. In fact, some of the early battles really give you a good idea of what later enemies wil be able to do. We just didn't want to create a phalanx of Cult mages to assault you with undead drow, dark nagas, and margoyle cheiftans at 1st level! But I'll be sure to through that battle in later on for those of you who want a good fight. The point I am trying to make though is that the orog/skeleton/ghoul/zombie/Cult fighter/gargoyle encounters that occur early on have a sufficient level of intelligence and AI to pose a threat, but not the same degree of strategy that the higher level monsters do later on in the game.

Hope that helped to answer some of those questions. I enjoy hearing your thoughts on AI especially and we are currently play balancing the game right now to ensure that we don't have encounters that nuke a party in the first dungeon, but also that are not so easy as to be a waste of a good adventuring party's time. You let me know if we succeeded when you get the game later on.