Obsidian General Discussion Thread

[Duraframe300]

New Obsidianities

Craig Marschke (Senior Environment Artist)
Jason Lewis (Senior Environment Artist)

 

[Sensuki]

They both Armored Warfare?

 

[Duraframe300]

They both Armored Warfare?

Dunno.

 

[Sensuki]

One of them definitely is. Ex Titles including Call of Duties.

 

[Sensuki]

Craig Marschke is def Armored Warfare - past titles include CoD W@W, CoD Black Ops, Medal of Honors (newer shitty ones)

Jason Lewis worked on Enter the Matrix with Rob Nesler, has a wider range of titles, but his most recent title also suggests Armored Warfare.

 

[Duraframe300]

One of them definitely is. Ex Titles including Call of Duties.

Well, yes. But, thats not a confirmation. (Especially with the new unannounced project) Thats why I said dunno.

It does make it very likely.

 

[Sensuki]

Yeah either that or the new unannounced project I guess, whatever that is.

 

[Infinitron]

New MCA podcast: http://eightbitradio.com/episode_146/

Chris Avellone, Creative Director and Co-Founder of Obsidian Entertainment comes on the show. We ask him about tabletop games, hate and his creative process, The cancelled Fallout 3 project “Van Buren”, Kickstarter games, and we proceed to drool all over ourselves with hero worship. After this we end with a not at all anticipated E3 PlayStation prediction segment.

 

[Duraframe300]

Sounds like Liam Eslers Fellowship at Obsidian is over.

 

[Sensuki]

In the interview it says MCA is Creative Lead on another project. Would this be the new AAA title, the upcoming Kickstarter or the PE Expansion ? (or some South Park DLC)

 

[Ninjerk]

You can pretty much stop listening after MCA.

 

[Abelian]

You can pretty much stop listening after MCA.

Are you talking about the podcast or just in general?

 

[Ninjerk]

MCA is the Alpha and the Omega

 

[Sensuki]

Another thing is that may mean that Chris won't be doing much non-CNCP dialogue in PE ?

 

[Infinitron]

Oh god that guy actually called it "Planescape Tournament"

 

[Duraframe300]

In the interview it says MCA is Creative Lead on another project. Would this be the new AAA title, the upcoming Kickstarter or the PE Expansion ? (or some South Park DLC)

My bet

AAA

 

[Infinitron]

Alpha Protocol interview, also with MCA: http://duckfeed.tv/woff/74e

 

[Sensuki]

In the interview it says MCA is Creative Lead on another project. Would this be the new AAA title, the upcoming Kickstarter or the PE Expansion ? (or some South Park DLC)

My bet

AAA

Yeh he loves teh_cinematic

 

[abnaxus]

MCA is the Beta and the Omega

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Well, they might announce two new games at E3. Looking at Megan Parks' LinkedIn page (she was an environment artist on Fallout: New Vegas), she worked on two unannounced projects, one in the Onyx engine and one in the Unreal engine. The studio she is at right now is working on The Order: 1886, which isn't being made in either of those two engines so she must have been working on them when she was at Obsidian.

The Onyx engine game might have been South Park, but she still has it listed as 'unannounced'.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganaparks

 

[Duraframe300]

Well, they might announce two new games at E3. Looking at Megan Parks' LinkedIn page (she was an environment artist on Fallout: New Vegas), she worked on two unannounced projects, one in the Onyx engine and one in the Unreal engine. The studio she is at right now is working on The Order: 1886, which isn't being made in either of those two engines so she must have been working on them when she was at Obsidian.

The Onyx engine game might have been South Park, but she still has it listed as 'unannounced'.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganaparks

Nope, we know the projects Obsidian has worked on from 2012-2013 thanks to interviews etc. Theres no hidden project that was secretly developed in that timeframe, much less two of them.

One of those projects (onyx) is the cancelled Sawyer rpg as well.

 

[throwaway]

A post-FNV canceled Sawyer RPG? I thought he managed to break that curse

 

[Duraframe300]

A post-FNV canceled Sawyer RPG? I thought he managed to break that curse

That cancellation is the reason for this threads very existence.

 

[agris]

Is there any info on Onyx one could read?

 

[gromit]

Is there any info on Onyx one could read?

The second question in this article is probably the most informative thing you'll read about it, at least as far as "high-level goals" go.

(...) are these other engines ideally suited to making the type of games we make? RPGs have a lot of data behind the scenes, a lot of tables and charts, and not all engines necessarily handle that as elegantly as we'd like for making our RPGs.

So we decided as a company we wanted to develop our own technology that was focused on the type of games we made. So it's good at managing the data and putting a lot of creatures on the screen. It has a lot of tools for designers to rapidly develop the class features.

For example, the abilities the classes have in the game are largely implemented by the designers without a lot of code oversight because they're able to manipulate data, attach visual effects to animations and link animations together. The end result is the designer can sit down with an idea for an ability and see it to fruition.

Another thing that is important to the games we make is the conversation editor, which lends itself to Obsidian-style conversations with branching dialogues and the choices. So by setting out to make our own engine we were able to make one that catered to all the things we prioritize when we make games. Having Onyx as an internal project has been great in that regard.

It seems like a string of mundane no-brainers, yes. Bear in mind most general-purpose game engines, until fairly recently, weren't toolkits: just swaths of code that conveniently included rendering, pathfinding, asset handling, etc. Code that may or may not need to be rewritten entirely, depending on what assumptions were made when it was written. Nothing inherently wrong with that: it's just how foundations are laid, how things get out the door, and how you can get it to run on a toaster-oven.