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Comment by djur | Hacker News Reader

Semi-jokingly: he should just dig up the Exile I tileset he included a screenshot of in the article and go to town. IMO that's the best his games have ever looked, aside from maybe Nethergate (and some of the more artfully done Blades of Exile scenarios, of course, but that wasn't him).

Vogel should peek over the fence at the adjacent roguelike community and do what they've done: custom tileset support. He's clearly not that invested in his games as aesthetic experiences, and that's his prerogative, but in the year 2019 it's actually not that uncommon for game communities to scratch their own itch in that regard when allowed.

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I think Exile I's graphics look pretty good, yeah. For me, it's the Exile III version of the Realmz graphics, followed by the original Exile I graphics. (The backported Exile III graphics to Exile I and II look weird to me.) His newer background/tile graphics look just fine to me too, though.

I built a couple full-tileset mods for Blades of Exile back in the day. You can do it with the new Avernum engine too. Of course, he could definitely make it easier.

I kind of understand why the graphics were redone for Exile III, since there was a need to add a lot of aboveground tiles, and also cave tiles were needed for caves that were not Exile proper but just troglodyte dens or whatever. But the gray cave floor never felt as alien to me as what Exile is supposed to be. It bothered me less in Exile III since you spend so little time there, but it was weird backported, as you say. And of course it also ended up affecting BoE.

Now I'm feeling nostalgic. Wonder if I could get BoE running again.

There are fan ports that run BoE on modern computers. Or, if you're on Linux, it runs well on WINE.

(Are you...the Djur? ;) )

Yeah, I got as far as building OBoE a while back but ran into some issues with the UI. I think screen magnification would do the trick.

(Guilty as charged, I'm afraid! Been a long time.)

> the Exile III version of the Realmz graphics

What do you mean by this?

I miss Realmz¹, and until today didn't realize that the developer of Realmz was also the publisher of the Exile series. But I still can't figure out what "the Exile III version of the Realmz" graphics is referring to.

¹My ringtone is actually the Realmz outdoor theme.

Spiderweb Software and the Realmz folks collaborated to buy an art set, which became the Exile III graphics (and fans kinda just call them "the Realmz graphics"). They were then (somewhat) modified and backported to Exile I and II in ways that didn't always work great, which became the Exile I/II versions of those graphics.

Ah, interesting. I loved the heck out of the Exile games but I was unaware of details like this. I didn't even realize Exile I/II got graphics updates.

Old Exile graphics:

http://i10.tinypic.com/2lbkruv.png

New Exile graphics:

https://lparchive.org/Exile-2-Crystal-Souls/Update%2018/1-01...

That first screenshot looks like what I remember. I guess I never saw the graphics update.

I remember a lot more red in Exile I. The caves got more dull and gray in Exile II.

Here's the OG splash screen: http://macintoshgarden.org/games/exile-escape-from-the-pit

And here's the update: http://macintoshgarden.org/sites/macintoshgarden.org/files/s...

Interesting -- I actually see three different versions of the splash screen at that first link! (One with red text on a gray background and 1.0 graphics, one with blue text on a gray background and 1.0 graphics, and one with gray text on a gray background and 2.0 graphics.) There's also two different 3D-rendered splash screens.

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