Ambrosia Garden Archive
    • The only problem with PoG...


      All right, I forgot about PoG for a bit, as I had other things to do, other games, other aspects of life, other projects. But I got back into it recently, and was reliving the great enjoyment I have for this game.

      Unfortunately, I also had to relive something else. The text in PoG has a serious problem. It is full of typos. Punctuation is almost nonexistant. All the dialogue reads like an AIM conversation with a pretentious 14-year-old fantasy nut. Where are the commas? Why is "strength" spelled "strenght" so many times? Why is "morale" spelled "moral" which is a different word entirely? Why does everyone in every town talk like they are in such a hurry that they can't even take an appropriate pause between words? Why are we subjected to dialogue like "Thank you for visiting our humble town brave adventurer, we wish you the best of luck in your travels." instead of, "Thank you for visiting our humble town, brave adventurer. We wish you the best of luck in your travels."? There are some times when I want to scream at whoever wrote the text, because it destroys the atmosphere, and throws me right back out of the game, and right back into reality.

      I'm not talking about plugins here. I'm talking about the original game and Trinity, both of which were official releases. User-made plugs are one thing, but I'd expect better from professionals.

      Does this bother anyone else, or am I the only one?

      ------------------
      AIM: Cavanoskus

    • You've been away from this board for a while. There are long lists of "typos" (to use the polite term) which have been sent to the authors at Beenox. They have turned a deaf ear.

      Two of my pet peeves are, "filter of healing" which should be "philter of healing," and the response to Fungus which has words to the effect of "I think I will buy you some food or potions" when you really want to buy them for yourself. Also, the large lake is sometimes "Verandeep" and in other places "Vanderdeep." Cyclopes (the correct plural of Cyclops) are in places called cyklops. The list goes on . . . . .

      It has been said that when (or if??) the new version of Coldstone is ever completed PoG will be corrected. In the meantime, I shall not hold my breath but just play the game, and it's growing number of plugins, without paying much attention to the words on the screen. 🙂

      ------------------
      My Doctor said I was having too much wine, women, and song - so I gave up singing because 2 out of 3 is not so bad.
      The (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/")Kingdom of Garendall(/url) sectional map is easily printed from gif format pages.
      (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl/damsels.sit?path=pog/addons&file;=damselsV1.1.sit")Damsels in Distress(/url) - A plugin for PoG. (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/RD-DEL.jpg")RD-DEL(/url)

    • AFAIK, the creators were French-Canadian and they wrote the dialog. I somehow don't think they are very good at english 😉 . These errors are meant to be fixed in the update. The thing that bugs me more than the content of the dialogues is the lack of text smoothing. After using OSX for so long it is really annoying

      ------------------
      Pilky
      (url="http://"http://www.mcubedsw.com")M cubed homepage(/url)
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    • Yes, I have been away for a long time. I stopped playing PoG for about a year before I "rediscovered" it.

      Does the actual font in the game annoy anyone else? I find it hard to read at times.

      All right, if Beenox never gets around to it, can it be fixed with a plugin?

      ------------------
      AIM: Cavanoskus

      (This message has been edited by Cavanoskus (edited 06-01-2004).)

    • Yes, the font should be improved. No, it cannot be fixed with a plugin. The problem there goes back to Coldstone which does not support changing fonts. As a plugin author, I would have liked to do things in other fonts but there was no choice available. I honestly don't know if this will be changed with the new version of Coldstone, but it is one of the items on the "wish list."

      Quote

      Posted by Pilky:
      . . . the creators were French-Canadian and they wrote the dialog. I somehow don't think they are very good at english

      Was the small "e" on English used to make a point or are you really a French-Canadian who happens to live in England? Something about a pot and a kettle springs to mind here. 🙂

      ------------------
      My Doctor said I was having too much wine, women, and song - so I gave up singing because 2 out of 3 is not so bad.
      The (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/")Kingdom of Garendall(/url) sectional map is easily printed from gif format pages.
      (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl/damsels.sit?path=pog/addons&file;=damselsV1.1.sit")Damsels in Distress(/url) - A plugin for PoG. (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/RD-DEL.jpg")RD-DEL(/url)

    • Quote

      Originally posted by Pilky:
      **AFAIK, the creators were French-Canadian and they wrote the dialog. I somehow don't think they are very good at english;) .
      **

      My thoughts exactly.

      You're not alone, Cav. PoG has waaay to many bugs and typos. It reminds me of #ev3 twitch
      PoG is really poorly done, as well. Traveling around to get from one end of the continent to the other is maddening, even with tunnels and gatestones. Hey, Beenox. Slapping monsters on a screen who either hit you hard or hit you soft won't do.

      Aside from that, PoG has a rather bad storyline. It doesn't even come close to beating Cythera++, or even primitive games like Ultima IV for that matter. Both of those games have some construct for history built in to them, and that's why we Cythera Chonicles. PoG has very little history and other things built into the game. There are hardly no optional quests. It takes plugs like Trinity and SE to make it fun, and even then it falls short.
      Did I mention typos make it look even worse? 😉
      =LK

      ------------------
      "Monkey buisness is booming" -SecretChîmp | "The lawsuit is stupid. Stupid things should die." -Me | "We do not put EVula links in our sigs" -Mantaray | "I heard beta is closed hehe" -hector
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      Official member of WORRPBOITAMPSH, founding member of FOSTI and SNUB, and official nemesis of Divals the Conquerer

    • Hey LifeKnight, you sure have a LOT of minus's about PoG 🙂

      ------------------
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    • I do. It's a poor excuse for an RPG. Yeah, you should be surprised, PoG is why I registered here (actually you can blame RD 😉 ).

      ------------------
      "Monkey buisness is booming" -SecretChîmp | "The lawsuit is stupid. Stupid things should die." -Me | "We do not put EVula links in our sigs" -Mantaray | "I heard beta is closed hehe" -hector
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    • Quote

      Originally posted by LifeKnight:
      **(actually you can blame RD;) ).

      **

      And how do I get the blame when a few thousand people disagree with you? :rolleyes:

      ------------------
      My Doctor said I was having too much wine, women, and song - so I gave up singing because 2 out of 3 is not so bad.
      The (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/")Kingdom of Garendall(/url) sectional map is easily printed from gif format pages.
      (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl/damsels.sit?path=pog/addons&file;=damselsV1.1.sit")Damsels in Distress(/url) - A plugin for PoG. (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/RD-DEL.jpg")RD-DEL(/url)

    • Okay, can the TYPOS (not the font) be fixed with a plugin?

      ------------------
      AIM: Cavanoskus

    • Quote

      Originally posted by Rubber Ducky:
      **Yes, the font should be improved. No, it cannot be fixed with a plugin. The problem there goes back to Coldstone which does not support changing fonts. As a plugin author, I would have liked to do things in other fonts but there was no choice available. I honestly don't know if this will be changed with the new version of Coldstone, but it is one of the items on the "wish list."

      Was the small "e" on English used to make a point or are you really a French-Canadian who happens to live in England? Something about a pot and a kettle springs to mind here. 🙂

      **

      There is a difference between posting on a forum and writing a game (though as you should be able to tell me after your extensive list of spelling errors in GoT 1.0 that is a hypocritical remark). I hope that OSX's spell checker gets added to the new CS. It would make fixing all the spelling errors in PoG easier

      Quote

      Originally posted by LifeKnight:
      **I do. It's a poor excuse for an RPG. Yeah, you should be surprised, PoG is why I registered here (actually you can blame RD ).
      **

      I've never really got into PoG because I thought the story wasn't strong enough. Though I think its a bit far to say that its a poor excuse for an RPG.

      I swear that if CS doesn't get updated with new features I'm gonna get a team together to beg for the source code for it so we can improve it.

      ------------------
      Pilky
      (url="http://"http://www.mcubedsw.com")M cubed homepage(/url)
      (url="http://"http://www.mcubedsw.com/network")M cubed Network(/url)

    • Quote

      Originally posted by Cavanoskus:
      **Okay, can the TYPOS (not the font) be fixed with a plugin?

      **

      A plugin can remove a character, or sign, from a map if you know the name of said character or sign. Signs are actually NPCs that don't move around, but their names are not easy to guess. You can then replace them with new ones with dialogue changes. Each replacement would need a different name, of course. You would also have to set up a whole new global/conditional system to keep track of what gets said when in the game. That is a LOT more work than adjusting the dialogue if the source code were available. You also have to have a load call for every map in which one encounters dialogue which needs correction. In addition, many errors occur in the item descriptions which I'm not sure one would be able to replace.

      I can easily see one person taking as much as a year just to do those replacements. If the source code were available, it's just a matter of proof-reading all text - - a matter of a couple of months or less. That's because none of us can afford to do that as a full-time job without remuneration.

      The result of this is not worth the time and effort if one cannot work from the original source code.

      ------------------
      My Doctor said I was having too much wine, women, and song - so I gave up singing because 2 out of 3 is not so bad.
      The (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/")Kingdom of Garendall(/url) sectional map is easily printed from gif format pages.
      (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl/damsels.sit?path=pog/addons&file;=damselsV1.1.sit")Damsels in Distress(/url) - A plugin for PoG. (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/RD-DEL.jpg")RD-DEL(/url)

    • {Post removed}

      ------------------
      "Monkey buisness is booming" -SecretChîmp | "The lawsuit is stupid. Stupid things should die." -Me | "We do not put EVula links in our sigs" -Mantaray | "I heard beta is closed hehe" -hector
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      Official member of WORRPBOITAMPSH, founding member of FOSTI and SNUB, and official nemesis of Divals the Conquerer

      (This message has been edited by LifeKnight (edited 06-07-2004).)

    • Quote

      Originally posted by LifeKnight:
      **I registered as a result of your plugin.

      And it's a few hundred, not a few thousand, and you haven't even seen #ev3 😛

      **

      64,082 downloads of Mac PoG Full - - rating 91
      9,777 downloads of Windows PoG Installer - - rating 83
      20,650 downloads of Trinity Plugin - - rating 94

      IMHO #ev3 is a place for malcontents to go and bitch about something when they've got nothing better to do. No, I don't go there.

      Does everyone like it? No. Do most people like it? Yes. A few thousand people disagree with you.

      I rest my case.

      ------------------
      My Doctor said I was having too much wine, women, and song - so I gave up singing because 2 out of 3 is not so bad.
      The (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/")Kingdom of Garendall(/url) sectional map is easily printed from gif format pages.
      (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl/damsels.sit?path=pog/addons&file;=damselsV1.1.sit")Damsels in Distress(/url) - A plugin for PoG. (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/RD-DEL.jpg")RD-DEL(/url)

    • Quote

      Originally posted by Rubber Ducky:
      **IMHO #ev3 is a place for malcontents to go and bitch about something when they've got nothing better to do. No, I don't go there.

      **

      It's still a few hundered, if you go #ev3 + JC. And #ev3 is much worse than that, it's literally hell on earth, and that's why I don't go there anymore.

      Okay, enough about #ev3. To answer your question Cavanoskus, yes, they can be fixed with a plugin, provided the one making the plugin has the source code.

      ------------------
      "Monkey buisness is booming" -SecretChîmp | "The lawsuit is stupid. Stupid things should die." -Me | "We do not put EVula links in our sigs" -Mantaray | "I heard beta is closed hehe" -hector
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      Official member of WORRPBOITAMPSH, founding member of FOSTI and SNUB, and official nemesis of Divals the Conquerer

    • Quote

      Originally posted by LifeKnight:
      **yes, they can be fixed with a plugin, provided the one making the plugin has the source code.

      **

      LK, sometimes I don't know why I bother answering you, but if one has the source code there is no reason to do a plugin, just fix the game. That's easier and better for everyone.

      ------------------
      My Doctor said I was having too much wine, women, and song - so I gave up singing because 2 out of 3 is not so bad.
      The (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/")Kingdom of Garendall(/url) sectional map is easily printed from gif format pages.
      (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl/damsels.sit?path=pog/addons&file;=damselsV1.1.sit")Damsels in Distress(/url) - A plugin for PoG. (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/RD-DEL.jpg")RD-DEL(/url)

    • Because fixing the typos by updating the game would mean the update would be over 120 MB, as the main data file would be changed. With a plugin, the fix would be very small. Quite simple really. 🙂

      ------------------
      "Monkey buisness is booming" -SecretChîmp | "The lawsuit is stupid. Stupid things should die." -Me | "We do not put EVula links in our sigs" -Mantaray | "I heard beta is closed hehe" -hector | (url="http://"http://home.earthlink.net/~catlover77/titles.htm")*** The Ambrosia Conspericy page ***(/url)
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      Official member of WORRPBOITAMPSH, founding member of FOSTI and SNUB, and official nemesis of Divals the Conquerer

    • Do you want it fixed which is actualy fairly easy, or do you want it patched which is considerably harder to do and requires everyone to load the plugin. With some of the OSs, running a bunch of plugins slows the playing of the game.

      If I had access to the source code, I certainly would NOT attempt to replace so many NPCs, items, dialogue from the Learning Tree, road signs, etc. with a plugin. I'm not sure it could even be done. There would be a new load call for every map which housed an NPC with faulty dialogue. Every merchant would stock the defective items from the game as well as the new items (with new names) in which the text was corrected. After all was said and done, the plugin would not add anything to the game itself.

      You can replace NPCs, albeit with a lot of work, but you cannot eliminate game items with a plugin. It just ain't worth the time and effort to do it that way.

      That's all I have to say on this subject. Call me when you figure out how to get "Filter of Healing" replaced with a plugin.

      ------------------
      My Doctor said I was having too much wine, women, and song - so I gave up singing because 2 out of 3 is not so bad.
      The (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/")Kingdom of Garendall(/url) sectional map is easily printed from gif format pages.
      (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl/damsels.sit?path=pog/addons&file;=damselsV1.1.sit")Damsels in Distress(/url) - A plugin for PoG. (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/RD-DEL.jpg")RD-DEL(/url)

    • You mean you want it changed to " Philter of Healing?" I could do it with the shops, but it might be tough to do on all the monsters without the source...

      ------------------
      "Monkey buisness is booming" -SecretChîmp | "The lawsuit is stupid. Stupid things should die." -Me | "We do not put EVula links in our sigs" -Mantaray | "I heard beta is closed hehe" -hector |
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    • Quote

      Originally posted by LifeKnight:
      **My thoughts exactly.

      You're not alone, Cav. PoG has waaay to many bugs and typos. It reminds me of #ev3 twitch
      PoG is really poorly done, as well. Traveling around to get from one end of the continent to the other is maddening, even with tunnels and gatestones. Hey, Beenox. Slapping monsters on a screen who either hit you hard or hit you soft won't do.

      Aside from that, PoG has a rather bad storyline. It doesn't even come close to beating Cythera++, or even primitive games like Ultima IV for that matter. Both of those games have some construct for history built in to them, and that's why we Cythera Chonicles. PoG has very little history and other things built into the game. There are hardly no optional quests. It takes plugs like Trinity and SE to make it fun, and even then it falls short.
      Did I mention typos make it look even worse? 😉
      =LK

      **

      Ugh....I realize a lot of people disagree, but I hated Cythera. Granted, I first tried it two or three years back when PoG had first come out. I tried to like it, but just...didn't. IMO, PoG is a great game and will always be better than Cythera ever was.

      And getting from one end to the other really isn't too hard. Name one RPG where you don't have to run around a lot. One well known RPG, anyway. Morrowind got GOTY award, but you run around a ton in that. Diablo II has you running around too. As does Icewind Dale.

      PoG has a simple storyline, simple as that. I don't care as much for a great storyline as do others, and the simplicity lets you just get into the game almost right away.

      Quote

      Originally posted by LifeKnight:
      **It's still a few hundered, if you go #ev3 + JC. And #ev3 is much worse than that, it's literally hell on earth, and that's why I don't go there anymore.

      **

      Heh, don't make excuses LK. The only reason you stopped going is because you were banned. 😛
      ------------------
      Member of WORRPBOITAMPSH
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      (This message has been edited by Tanis Half-Halo (edited 06-16-2004).)