I've been asking to get Nethergat for a while now, while it may be one of their worse titles it's still worth playing, and since it was the only one that was missing on GOG up until now seeing it here makes my completionist heart go all aflutter.

The problem is that if I choose "change resolution" at startup the game ignores it and is launched as "do not change resolution", in a tiny windows in the middle.
That is a problem that I do not suffer in old avernums or geneforges. they render as you choose at te beginning.

Greetings

EDIT: So the only solution is to change compatibility mode to 640x480 and at the beginning choose "change resolution" or "always change resolution". In that way the game fits all the screen and is correctly scaled as the rest of the games with the similar engine.

You *should* absolutely expect lack of cloud saves on a 2008 game.

Steam does not (and cannot) retrofit all old games with Steam features that didn't even exist at the time the game was released; that's something that generally only the developer can do.

Actually that applies to new games too, just like adding achievements, but naturally it's more common for devs to add cloud save to a new release than to retrofit it to an ancient game that they typically don't patch at all anymore.

tl;dr: Steam doesn't guarantee cloud saves, nor should they, nor could they.

(Gog added cloud save to a whole bunch of DOS games by modifying DOSBox itself, so there may be an exception to this topic when Gog or hypothetically Steam can modify an emulator or engine, but that will be the exception to the general rule. Also I note that Gog did not advertise that *all* DOSBox games supported cloud save -- only a specified list that they had debugged and tested.)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/d3c10i/im_jeff_vogel_founder_of_spiderweb_software_since/

Jeff's hosting an AskMeAnything here.

Thanks for the heads up.

I would say so, yes. Apart from the graphical upgrades, the newer engine provides all kinds of welcome UI/UX/QoL enhancements.

While I don't think it'll happen, I would really love to see Vogel do remasters of Avernum 4-6 (or at the very least, 4 and 5, which were the last of his games to use the old engine). Those games are still far and away my favorites out of his library.

Yeah, I still find that so amusing. Doubly so now, since the 2D style of Queen's Wish is apparently simply because the majority of his fanbase actually wanted it that way.

Edit: I need more sleep.

Avadon 4-6? An interesting time you must live in for that many sequels to exist. ;)

Oh yeah. I have them up there on my GOG shelf alongside the Blades of Avernum remaster. :P

Let me quit beating the bushes; you've got the wrong title in mind. There is not Avadon 4-6. Those stop after 3. But there is an Avernum 4-6. :B

Oh I know, I know. I even changed my post earlier after your first reply. :) That previous reply to you was me continuing your joke, as people have been clamoring for a remaster of Blades of Avernum for years. (...And people are still clamouring for it on Vogel's AMA!)

In the AMA, Jeff has said that he missed the 2D style.

Actually, the new look in Queen's Wish is not the old 2D style. There is a pseudo perspective that IMHO looks way better than the original 2D of the first Exiles (which I loved at the time). Whether you like it better than the view in Avernum-Avadon or not is a matter of taste. I do: he made something different and it works for me.

BTW, the new art and UI look really nice.

I do not like much the new art in Queen Wish, Nor the palette/colours nor the pseudo cartoonish/pseudo figurative world graphics nor the hybrid perspective.
In the other side the portraits are amazing, but there are not much quantity of them to choose from. In combat the icons change to a different graphics and moves and It is a good thing, also the polishing of the UI is something I like. And the combat. I feel it better.

I consider that If the developer does recognize his limitations in graphics (money, quality art, etc whatever) the approach to a retro 2d perspective and palette should have been something different, somethig maybe more iconic but artistically atmospheric.

I always thought that the graphic problem in Spiderweb games never were graphics themselves but the aestethic approach.

Greetings

That is mentioned to Jeff quite often. Jeff has publicly addressed it (lately in his talk at the 2018 GDC). Art direction. The problem is, he runs a tyny, low budget, low production values mom & pa operation. Art direction costs money that simply makes no sense for him. Diminishing returns and increased risks: the extra money that art direction might take (and he knows what things cost in his world) would require maybe doubling the sales. Will the extra niceties double the sales? The answer is: most likely no.

Actualy, he tried at the time making a bigger effort aesthetically with Nethergate and people never apreciated it: a tough lesson he remembers well.

So, he humbly makes games for people who enjoy them as they are, always trying new things (he remembers also the single game where he did not innovate so much) and with steady improvement in the engine (about a 25% rewritten with each new game written with a given engine; Queen’s Wish boast a new one), UI and graphics department, but that is very much it. No hired art direction since he cannot affort it. The people who play his games do so because of the stories, the mechanics, the worldviews that transpire from the games, the gameplay.

So, yes. With Spiderweb games, as with many other things in the world, it is a matter of loving them or leaving them.

He knows what he wants, what is convenient for him and It is fine to me, really, but just a tiny example:

Look at these graphics below. I consider that this shouldn´t have been the most expensive or artistically complex aproach to some basic graphics. They are the old geneforges but reskined. and only that thing changes a lot visually the games:

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/geneforge-graphix-enhancement.98222/

Greetings.

Sorry for being late, but as it's not explicitly announced: There's an additional bundle discount when you buy Queen's Wish together with the hintbook and extras.