General:Greg Gorden's Posts

Greg Gorden's Posts
Medium/Format	Online Forum
Interviewee(s)	Greg Gorden
Hosted By	TES Forum

These are a few notable comments from Greg Gorden on The Elder Scrolls setting. Gorden went by vbggreg on the official forums.

2003

Forum Introduction and Future of TEST (2003-06-03)

Hey folks,

My name is Greg Gorden, one of the principal designers on The Elder Scrolls Travels. They unshackle me once a week or so to stretch my legs and read and respond to parts of the the forum, and this week it was Tuesday. :-)

The game will be more like Battlespire. Will future TEST titles always look like this?

No. I see cell games evolving at about triple the rate of PC titles these days. If Dawnstar and Stormhold are not your cup of tea, just wait a while. That said, we did cram a lot of game into a tiny space.

On Designing TEST (2003-06-03)

Dawnstar and Stormhold are as much of The Elder Scrolls as we could fit on any given carrier or handset constraint. Bethesda was involved in the major design decisions. Ken Rolston and Todd Howard worked with Anthony and I to get the look and feel of Elder Scrolls.

The games are dungeon-based, with character interaction limited by handset. The Nokia 3650 version has character interaction critical to the resolution of the adventure.

On Gameplay Features in TEST (2003-06-03)

On Game Play:
All attributes were taken from The Elder Scrolls mythos.
You character improves skills by using them.
You start with one of the given character class, but can add any available skill later in the game.
Experience progression is based on other versions of The Elder Scrolls.

On Game Memory Size in TEST (2003-06-03)

With any cell phone game, designs are gasping for memory. The Elder Scrolls stressed current devices beyond their breaking point. Even on more powerful models we came within a handful of bytes of hard limits. And yes, to keep even the basic flavor of The Elder Scrolls many JAVA phones couldn't make the cut. In the end there is as much The Elder Scrolls on each phone as is possible.

We hope you enjoy it.

On Monsters in TEST (2003-06-04)

The number of monsters is another handset-dependent variable. The larger phones have 41 monsters. The full game also has about 100 items and 25 spells.

Werewolfish? Hmmm...didn't stat any werewolves. The Gehenoth perhaps looks werewolfish. Of course it is darn hard to get werewolves to sit and stay, so maybe one wandered in somewhere. ;-)

On Differing Versions of TEST Apps (2003-06-11)

Must be Tuesday again, 'cause here I am. :-)

The Nokia 3650/ 7560 has the fullest version of the game. Story is limited, but the full version has NPC's who help you and want specific things to ease their stay in Stormhold prison. Traps had to be discarded from the design. I figure the next gen handsets will handle them fine. As handsets grow in capability Elder Scrolls Travels will grow with them.

Each dungeon level is designed to have monsters which are relatively easy and some which are challenging.

Thanks to all for asking; now its back to work for me.

2004

On Sequels to Shadowkey and design limitations (Dec 24 2004)

Just some thoughts on Shadowkey as a stepping stone to the next TEST.

Yes, there is another TEST planned, but we cannot reveal it yet.

Localization contracts are done long in advance of a game's completion, often before the design team has been assembled, and the constraints are often corporate rather than design centered. The text in Shadowkey was already twice what had been contracted for, but I lobbied successfully for most of the text.

Next time I will try to get involved earlier in the loop, but don't expect huge increases in Lore.

Art variety is not a function of MMC size, but of available RAM into which instances of the objects are loaded. Engine tweaking may change this, but it is a hard, fundamental limit. Essentially to have more weapon types you would have to exclude previous weapon types from later levels. This could lead to really odd, bad behaviors where weapons could disappear from your hands if you entered a certain level.

Greg

On what year the TEST games are set (Dec 24 2004)

Heck, I work on the games and depending on what 'time of project' it is, I don't always know the era. Usually about the same time I can firmly repeat six or seven digits of my 10-digit phone number. blush.gif

2005

On playtesting Shadowkey (Jan 31 2005)

There is an N-Gage emulator, but playing Shadowkey on the emulator drove me crazy. Its slower than the hardware, the colors are not true to the hardware (so the artwork looks funky) and the control layout is not at all optimal. Its a real chore which I quickly discarded once I had working hardware.

I believe you can only get the emulator through the Nokia N-Gage developers program, which requires a bunch of paperwork, so the emulator is not a vehicle for casual play.

Greg