Obsidian General Discussion Thread

[Roguey]

Why, denigrating his colleagues is yet another thing only Josh can do properly. Seriously, I have never heard him complement another designer, especially in-house.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/55586-why-is-obsidian-making-this/#entry1048227

Nathaniel understands combat mechanics very well. You have nothing to worry about in that department.

 

[Azrael the cat]

RPGs need more Sawyers.

blah blah blah turn off the majority of the audience.

If this is the stance that Sawyer takes when it comes to all game development, he's part of the problem. I can't say if this is truly his stance because I've never actually seen him design his own game, From scratch. He's always had an excuse as to why he couldn't do it his way: with NWN it's because he came on late into the project; with FO it's because he was working with a shitty engine; with PoE it's because he can't disappoint the fans who backed, etc. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt in these instances but if this continues whenever he designs and it becomes his trend, then that just means that josh loves blaming others for the inability to create a creative game system.

Josh needs to take a stand one day and make "fuck you: suck my dick, the Josh Sawyer experience" so that he can be judged upon his own merits and his own creativity as a designer. It's like the adage goes, "If you've got such a great idea, then why don't you just build it from scratch?" So far, Josh's achievements have been upon the shoulders of others.

In fairness, professional game development (and capitalism generally) means you never get to do that, unless you're insanely rich and can self-fund. And self-funded vanity projects rarely go well, due to the lack of brutally honest feedback letting through ideas/designs that should go through many more iterations.

 

[Copper]

Why, denigrating his colleagues is yet another thing only Josh can do properly. Seriously, I have never heard him complement another designer, especially in-house.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/55586-why-is-obsidian-making-this/#entry1048227

Nathaniel understands combat mechanics very well. You have nothing to worry about in that department.

 

[Sensuki]

Avcon Q&A with Chris Avellone summary from bos_hybrid over at the Obsidian forums:

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66459-avcon-avellone-qa/page-2#entry1468438

So I asked about Obsidian doing different genres in the future. Chris response was that they have an unannounced game from a publisher in the works that we'll hear about in the next year

No new info, people just asked Chris the same old questions / Chris answered every question with the same shit he always says every con / interview

 

[Athelas]

What Chris did in Alpha protocol. Apparently he only came onto the project 2 years into production, watched a lot of 24, enjoyed that the timed dialogues stressed the play testers as much as combat and that Obsidian built a mo-cap studio for the game that is now used as a place where the team has DnD nights. Said it was a learning experience.

They actually set up their own mo-cap studio? I guess they were expecting to regularly land AAA contracts. Oh well, I guess it made for a nice tax-deductable.

 

[Hormalakh]

If this is the stance that Sawyer takes when it comes to all game development, he's part of the problem.

Not at all. "Audience" in this case doesn't mean "widest potential audience possible."

Josh needs to take a stand one day and make "fuck you: suck my dick, the Josh Sawyer experience" so that he can be judged upon his own merits and his own creativity as a designer. It's like the adage goes, "If you've got such a great idea, then why don't you just build it from scratch?" So far, Josh's achievements have been upon the shoulders of others.

Josh doesn't co-own Obsidian so he doesn't make those decisions. Moreover, there are no RPG systems that can be made from scratch because there will always be inspiration from something.

True, but there have been games made that were creative and original. Josh hasn't headed them. alpha protocol in obsidian. The other greats (avellone and Cain) have these sorts of games: fallout and torment. They were creative and proved to be amazing. And while torment was based on DnD, it also wasn't. It was more of an inspiration. Same with fallout, gurps, and SPECIAL.

As for josh, when he has the chance to trek away from his inspiration like he does here in Poe, (and mind you, there have been moments where josh for all practical reasons said that he'd do it differently but has to appease the masses) he doesn't. Like I said, I understand the decision. He's lead designer on a game that may change the trajectory of the company he works for and so he makes the safe choices.

But that doesn't mean he won't get the chance to show what he's made of in a future game. I don't think his Poe mechanics are "inspired." They're just house rules for DnD. Some of the monsters too. At least as far as I can tell.

There are inklings of creativity here and there: wounds, ciphers, the mmo-based class system. Those will show us a hint as to whether sawyer's got "the skills to pay the bills", so to speak.

 

[Sensuki]

As for josh, when he has the chance to trek away from his inspiration like he does here in Poe, (and mind you, there have been moments where josh for all practical reasons said that he'd do it differently but has to appease the masses) he doesn't.

Which is good, because I want a game that captures the IE experience.

 

[Hormalakh]

Yep. Is good. Poe is Poe. Sawyer as "greatest designer" isn't proven by that.

 

[Sensuki]

So?

I think recognition of "the IE feel" is something that would have likely whooshed straight over many, if not most other designer's heads. He is probably the best person for the job in regards to being Project Director / Lead Designer of PE. I don't necessarily agree with all of his design decisions but if it were anyone else instead, things would likely be MUCH more different from the IE games than what he's given us.

When we get our hands on the beta, that will be the telling of just how well PE captures the IE feeling.

As far as Sawyer's own RPG free from such "constricting" boundaries such as an IE spiritual successor, I reckon it'd be 50/50 as to whether I'd enjoy it or not but I'd sure like to see him try.

Anyway, back to reverse trolling Roguey.

 

[Duraframe300]

Obsidian/POE related

And yep. Holly Wilson wrapped up her POE work in june. She's now at Ready at Dawn working on Order 1886

 

[Sensuki]

Wonder if she left of her own accord

 

[Volourn]

"And while torment was based on DnD, it also wasn't. It was more of an inspiration."

Bullshit. It was D&D.

 

[Duraframe300]

Wonder if she left of her own accord

Considering the game is nearing release its more than likely she just wrapped up her work and for whatever reason decided to move on.

So, first assumption yes.

 

[Akratus]

Obsidian/POE related

And yep. Holly Wilson wrapped up her POE work in june. She's now at Ready at Dawn working on Order 1886

The order?

Spoiler

 

[Abelian]

I think recognition of "the IE feel" is something that would have likely whooshed straight over many, if not most other designer's heads. He is probably the best person for the job in regards to being Project Director / Lead Designer of PE. I don't necessarily agree with all of his design decisions but if it were anyone else instead, things would likely be MUCH more different from the IE games than what he's given us.

In before Obisdian licenses the PoE engine to Trent Oster for BG3.

 

[Volourn]

He's soc heap he woudl give them a cent for it. And, Obsidian is so desperate for cash (as proven by begging on KS and accepting Bethesda's 'deal with the devil') they'd probably take it.

 

[Duraframe300]

Robert Lee who recently rejoined Obsidian is working on Skyforge.

 

[Duraframe300]

Another Ex- Black Isle member joined Obsidian back in february. Programmer David Vodhanel.

Credited mostly QA, though his Linkedin lists him as a programmer from 2001-2003. Probably worked on cancelled stuff.

Recently he worked on PS: All Stars. Also Gothic 4.



In other news Brian Macintosh has now been hired as a programmer at the end of his interneship. No idea if that was already mentioned.

 

[Sensuki]

For some reason I can't find the JES thread so:

I mentioned turn-based combat outside of the context of IE-style games. Turn-based combat in a Darklands-style game, where exploration only occurs on relatively constrained maps with small numbers of combatants, would not suffer the same problems. I do not think it is a stretch to say that if you took all of the core content of Darklands and instituted a good turn-based combat system, it would be fine (arguably much better if the character system supported it). The maps are never particularly large and in 90% of the fights, there are less than a dozen combatants including the party. A good turn-based combat system needs to give players significant choices to make on each turn, often weighing individual tactical considerations against longer-term strategic considerations. Movement and positioning should have tactical importance. I prefer small hex-based spaces or raw distance for movement and targeting over square-based. I think it's also important to think about phase/character order, how NPCs play into that, and how those interrelationships affect the overall pace and length of combat.

That said, I think a weakness of many combat systems is that they often don't give the player much to work with in terms of character development and interesting turn-to-turn choices. Fallout had different firing modes including targeted shots, but combat generally devolved into eye/groin shots on every turn. Combat was enjoyable and character building strategies could be interesting, but the tactical combat became rote fairly quickly. Darklands gave martial characters standard/berserk/parry/vulnerable attacking modes, but you had those from the beginning of the game and the characters generally did not evolve much beyond that. Even though the Gold Box games used the 1st Ed. AD&D rules, they were a lot more tactical. Melee characters weren't particularly complex, but positioning them was extremely important in those games. Especially in Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, and the early Dragonlance games, spellcasters changed a lot every two levels and their strategic resources were very valuable. Games that tightly focus turn-based combat and give the player a set of interesting tactical/strategic challenges and options can be great.

Sawyer also posted an image of Ars Magica + Darklands = Sawyer game.

 

[tuluse]

Roguey Josh likes gridless turn based combat

 

[Sensuki]

I have to agree, hex / gridless > square

 

[imweasel]

gridless >>>>> hex/square

 

[Gozma]

Grid/gridless being better depends a lot on how you are doing environments. Like in Infinity Engine games with "big jpeg" backgrounds or stuff like Dragon Age where you only really know where you are allowed to step by looking at the mini-map, stuff with really mysterious collision information basically, I'd really like a grid to show me what is actually a walkable path, what things are really chokepoints I can block off, etc. If you have a genuinely informative environment you can get away with less intrusions.

 

[Sensuki]

if it's a top down/isometric game, simply changing the mouse cursor type when mousing over terrain without navmesh works.

 

[Infinitron]

You could also have a hotkey or something for drawing an outline around the walkable terrain. Actually, if the game visually displays your movement range then you basically get that by default.