Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

[eremita]

Dont be ignorant eremita, thief had arguably a couple of the strongest skills in the whole game in BGII.

Ex.: Backstab for quintuple damage, traps and use any item.

Come one, he can backstab sure, too bad his THAC0 is the second lowest in the game (I'll admit it might be sufficient against mages). Traps are good, I completely forgot about them...

 

[Lhynn]

Come one, he can backstab sure, too bad his THAC0 is the second lowest in the game (I'll admit it might be sufficient against mages). Traps are good, I completely forgot about them...

Provided you are high enough you can use any item in the game with no prerequisites.

 

[Zombra]

Josh did say he's not interested in replicating the "one-attack-per-round" feel of early D&D. Combat feels better when you have 3 attacks per 2 rounds.

Um ... are you serious? One attack per 0.66 arbitrary time units is a conceptual revolution compared to one attack per 1.00 arbitrary time units?

 

[Grunker]

Roguey, Sensuki: fair enough, that's all good enough for me until I see it contradicted in actual gameplay

 

[Roguey]

That's not an answer. Surely you've played a game that doesn't have floaty attack animations. Don't go doing an Excidium where you make a statement and then just essentially say "because" when questioned about it.

The tech/time/money isn't there. I'm fine with it since floatiness is a spectrum.

Josh did say he's not interested in replicating the "one-attack-per-round" feel of early D&D. Combat feels better when you have 3 attacks per 2 rounds.

Um ... are you serious? One attack per 0.66 arbitrary time units is a conceptual revolution compared to one attack per 1.00 arbitrary time units?

One attack every 4 seconds feels better compared to one attack every 6 seconds, yes.

Knights of the Old Republic shortened rounds to 3 seconds so of course it got really crazy end-game when you had all those natural attacks plus the extra attacks from force speed, flurry, and dual-wielding. Floating numbers everywhere.

 

[Zombra]

Ah, OK, if you're talking about a "round" as an objective, specific length of time, rather than something totally arbitrary, then that makes sense.

Of course originally in D&D, a round was 60 seconds long ... so that's something to chew on.

 

[Sensuki]

We have a decent number of Vailian slang words.

bazzo - (m) dick (a person, in the pejorative sense)
madiccho - (m) curse ("spoken evil," also used as expression "Damn!")
postenago - (m) idiot (literally "carrot")
scioderie - (f) nonsense (a "stupid thing")

 

[imweasel]

Scioderie! Madiccho you, postenago bazzohead.

 

[Roguey]

Returning back to

There are no motherfucking classes in fucking D:OS, there are certain archetypes you can choose to follow, but there are no classes, get that tru your thick skull. If the characters were to have a class itd be source hunters, and its a completely flexible one with only a single class skill, the ability to shoot balls out of staffs.

In PoE your class is "someone infused with soul power" with certain archetypes you can be locked into.

 

[Lhynn]

Returning back to

There are no motherfucking classes in fucking D:OS, there are certain archetypes you can choose to follow, but there are no classes, get that tru your thick skull. If the characters were to have a class itd be source hunters, and its a completely flexible one with only a single class skill, the ability to shoot balls out of staffs.

In PoE your class is "someone infused with soul power" with certain archetypes you can be locked into.

So you really want to put together D:OS and PoE when it comes to tone?

 

[Sensuki]

Keep in mind that all battles shown in the demo feature 2-3 party members vs. 1-3 enemies. You eventually have up to 6 party members and many more enemies, so the pace picks up quite a bit.

 

[Rivmusique]

It would be an enormous amount of work to up-res all of the character models for a marginal gain in image quality on two screens in the game. At the beginning of the project, I did say that we were going to be keeping the view of the characters relatively limited on these screens because it would be prohibitively expensive to model and texture them all at a high level of detail. We have six races and two sexes that can equip dozens of different suits of armor/clothing with dozens of different weapons and shields. The only way we could author all of these models with our budget was to limit the mesh density and texture size. Sorry.

Character creation screen and inventory screen should just use portrait art and a small zoomed out character model (like in ToEE) for showing the customisation options. Don't really see the need for close ups of models that were designed to be viewed from a distance from specific angles.

 

[Hormalakh]

so i'm deciding whether to get a beta backer. anyone know how i can add that espcially after I've finalized my order? sensuki's youtube-athons will be good, but I'll need to play this myself to make sure the whole game is up to par.

 

[Sensuki]

Contact Obsidian support about it

 

[Nikaido]

I'm confident that this game will live up to Obsidian standards.

Damning with faint praise. I like you.

 

[Hormalakh]

One of the things I think would work really well on the character creation screen is if the model had a bit more animation to it. It would be nice if the model walked around the stage, looking at the cardboard cutouts of the adra. Then when you double-clicked he'd run back to the center. He could put the weapons down, follow the mouse cursor, etc. Just something to make him not look so zombified. Yes, yes it's only two screens the CC and the Inventory, but doing something right really makes games look polished even if it's two screens. Especially two screens you're constantly looking at. The CC is not a short block of time and a lot of players make first impressions off that (they're regarded highly by many players) and the invetory screen isn't really a screen you only see once.

These sorts of things matter. They're what give you the >85 or the measly 84 on a metacritic score. Sometimes it's important to present things well to a majority of players. Yes, a few people aren't bothered by it. I think the models just look too pale, but are otherwise ok. If a majority of players noticed it and are shitting on it, it's worth considering quick fixes or any minor adjustments that can make a difference.

I'm not trying to advocate for wholesale remakes on these issues, but a creative well-thought-out approach can really make a difference.

 

[Sensuki]

I'd prefer that animation time be spent on actual in-game animations.

 

[Perkel]

Keep in mind that all battles shown in the demo feature 2-3 party members vs. 1-3 enemies. You eventually have up to 6 party members and many more enemies, so the pace picks up quite a bit.

Yeah that goes without saying.

 

[sbb]

I'd prefer that animation time be spent on actual in-game animations.

Like Hormalakh said, that shit matters like this shit matters. It's a big presentation thing that I noticed too and made me think twice about it, and it's as early in the game as the character creation screen.

 

[Sensuki]

Sure, in a perfect world I'd absolutely agree with you. However this is a limited budget game with a shit load of characters and creatures to animate. Not to mention the player models are customizable, which usually ends up looking worse than unique models "such as a Geralt or the Diablo 2 ones".

The models look better than Titan Quest's from 2006. That's good enough for me.

 

[Perkel]

Fuck that and 3D model in character creation menu.

I want fucking paperdoll.

I don't see why they should waste time on high quality by game standards and low quality by 2014 standards model of dude which you will see for 3 minutes before you will never seen that dude again that close to his ugly face.

That is like creating lip-sync for Eternity characters.

 

[Sensuki]

I want a paperdoll too. But it's just more expensive to create.

 

[Perkel]

How is that more expensive to create ? It doesn't really need to be paperdoll model at all. Instead of some shitty 3D model it could be as well nothing or 2D art of barbarian from insert_background. Even miniature of 3D model would be better as it would show how actually character will look like @ default zoom level.
I am talking about character creation not inventory.

 

[PrimeJunta]

I'm not sure a paperdoll would be more expensive. The way it's currently done requires pretty meticulous debugging for the meshes—stuff you wouldn't notice in the normal game view will stand out. Paperdoll+inventory icons would get around that, and even if you made a dedicated paperdoll for each race and sex that'd still only be 12 drawings. The inventory icons are there anyway, or alternatively you could just use the armor/weapon models in isolation.

 

[Sensuki]

PrimeJunta

I dunno, I think there'd be a bit more work involved than that, particularly to do the Godlikes - they would need to do a head for each godlike variant in male and female. They would also need to do four variants for Orlans (Hearth and Wild look really different), Aumaua (Coastal and Island look different) and *technically* Elves as well (Pale Elves are supposed to be taller and look different).

Also all of the armors, helmets, shields and weapons in 2D, and any other items that characters can equip that are supposed to show up as well.

The work they've done on the character models is for in-game models and they just make sure there's enough detail on those models so they look alright upsized in the character creation screen. Making Paperdolls requires them to still do ALL the work they did on the characters (but perhaps in a bit less detail) and then do extra 2D art for Paperdolls (which they REALLY can't afford, they only have TWO 2D artists on the Project and they are stretched to the absolute MAX). The amount of stuff that Kaz has to do is insane. It's a real shame too because I'd kill to have Kaz do the majority of the portraits for the game because he's just so good at it.

But he's also done all the UIs, Scripted Interaction and Interstitial drawings, Main Menu art, Chapter screen art, area paint overs, 2D Inventory icons .... etc etc