Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Pre-Release Thread [ALPHA RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Infinitron]

FPS drops aside, I really like the visuals. I don't mind "clumsy"-looking characters. In fact, I think it's pretty charming.
I dig the environments.

But they're not that clumsy. Check out that guy in black with the glowing white weapon at 1:06, the way he slashes at the dude in front of him and then smoothly swivels around to fire a bolt thingie at another guy. A common complaint about turn-based combat is that there's an appearance of sharp discontinuity between animations, but I'm not seeing that here. That guy looks elegant, like some kind of Darth Maul-esque Sith Lord.

 

[prodigydancer]

I think it all looks fantastic, combat animations included. Codex needs to institute a purge of graphics whores

I'm a 100% pure certified graphics whore - and proud of it! - and I still agree that TToN looks fantastic already.

This video seems unnecessary

Nobody's forcing you to watch it. Not long ago I asked on inXile forums if they could release some combat footage. Of course I'd like to see more but it's at least something.

 

[Jimmious]

I don't get how someone would see this video and say that the game looks bad

 

[Seari]

Very nice. Character models look bad, but nowhere as bad as in pillows.

 

[Sensuki]

Those are more a function of having had to record a few scenes in editor rather than in build. The regular framerate is what the build runs like, but a few scenes had to be recorded running in Editor and that's just always choppier.

Ah fair enough.

FPS is an issue in Pillars of Eternity though when there are many units in a scene. I spoke to one of their programmers via PM and he said the cpu time was being eaten up by the Unity Renderer which is code that they don't have access to. You guys have different character pipelines though so that may not be as much of an issue here.

 

[Ulminati]

3d models look bad. Music is bleh. Voiceover is awful. But the backgrounds look interesting.

 

[Infinitron]

3d models look bad. Music is bleh. Voiceover is awful. But the backgrounds look interesting.

This is the voiceover: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Brandon

 

[Ulminati]

Still sounds boring and awful. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, backgrounds being weird and interesting gives me hope that the setting might be as interesting as planescape was. Time will tell.

 

[ZoddGuts]

The animation looks fine, the models could be improved a bit but other than that it's looking great.

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

This is the voiceover: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Brandon

He is such an awesome composer!

Is there any hope that he make some contribution in T:ToN music? Brother None

 

[Anthedon]

UPDAAAATE: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera/posts/1216569

Are those novellas worth reading as an introduction to the setting or am I better off spending some time with other online sources?

 

[felipepepe]

Can we please mod the TB combat over to PoE? Thanks.

 

[Brother None]

Is there any hope that he make some contribution in T:ToN music? Brother None

He's doing sound design on Torment (as he did on Wasteland 2). I do not believe he's contributing to music, no.

Are those novellas worth reading as an introduction to the setting or am I better off spending some time with other online sources?

They're not necessarily focused on being setting introductions, but more on giving added understanding of the tides. Though I will say with Ray's indepth knowledge of Numenera his has a lot of great hooks into the setting. If you want a purer introduction to the setting I'd recommend Tales from the Ninth World

 

[ksaun]

3d models look bad.

Could you please be specific? (This is a serious question.) I know what I don't like about them, but I'm curious what exactly you are seeing that makes you say this. One of our reasons for keeping the camera distance pretty far from the characters is that it lets us make them more cost-effectively. But the intent is that they look great for the size they'll be on screen. So anyone who thinks they look bad -- I'd like to hear why.

(For example, we're were using an awesome Unity plug-in called Shroud for the cloth. Unfortunately, it's not yet available as a 64-bit version, which means it doesn't work with Unity 5. So our entire cloth solution has been defunct since we upgraded to Unity 5, and we're hoping the Shroud guy comes through for us or we have a much bigger problem to solve there.

So if your critique has to do with the cloth being rigid, for example, then I can safely dismiss it. But there are many other things that could be critiqued and that we have to fix still regarding the characters. Knowing which of those people notice (and which they don't ) can help us prioritize our efforts.)

Music is bleh.

It's adapted from a combat track for the Bloom. We like it, sorry.

Voiceover is awful.

As Infinitron noted, that's our audio director, Alex Brandon. It has to be close to the most cost-effective voiceover ever. (We're not going to spend big $ on actors for a video.)

But actually I think Alex did a pretty good job with it. (And I really liked his Artaglio for the First Glimpse video, though we spoiled the quality a bit by taking lines from different reads in some cases. I loved that one read of "this is how you face your fears" and insisted we keep that read even though it created some inconsistency in his accent/tone.) So this may not bode well for you ultimately liking Torment's VO quality.

However, fortunately for those who aren't fond of the video VO, it'll much more likely be George Ziets and Alex who are directing most of our VO. (We managed to keep George pretty much undistracted by the making of this video so that he could stay focused on more important things.) Incidentally, that pair oversaw much of the VO for NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer. So your opinion on the quality of the voice acting in that game is probably a better indicator of how you'll feel about TTON's. (I expect TTON will have less voice and fewer characters overall, though.)

But the backgrounds look interesting.

Glad you think so!

 

[Infinitron]

No more Torment: Cloaks of Numenera? :/

 

[Cazzeris]

ksaun I didn't know Alex Brandon did the voice over for both the narrator and Artaglio in the last video. Although I agree with it sounding a bit boring while being decent enough for a teaser, the lines he did for Artaglio were really good in my opinion; but I thought there were a few inconsistencies in his interpretation. Maybe it's just me, but he sounds way more "rusty" when he says "what do you want now?" than when he talks to his soldiers; making him sound like two different people.

Also, I must say that your approach towards sharing information and bringing TTON's new details is truly remarkable. Thank you so much for not trying to overhype things too much

 

[Sensuki]

(For example, we're were using an awesome Unity plug-in called Shroud for the cloth. Unfortunately, it's not yet available as a 64-bit version, which means it doesn't work with Unity 5. So our entire cloth solution has been defunct since we upgraded to Unity 5, and we're hoping the Shroud guy comes through for us or we have a much bigger problem to solve there.

I thought Shroud was no longer in development? At least, I remember Obsidian's Dimitri Berman saying something along those lines earlier this year as to why they were having such difficulties with cloaks in Pillars of Eternity. They were never able to get them completely right either.

 

[Infinitron]

NICE GOING REX http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/...-a-new-trailer-and-it-looks-absolutely-alien/

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

You have some nerve thinking you can use his newspost

 

[tuluse]

The only minor problem I see is that sometimes the characters have that "floating above the ground" effect we saw in early PoE trailers. This is especially evident in the very first scene in the trailer.

Everything else looks great.

 

[ksaun]

ksaun I didn't know Alex Brandon did the voice over for both the narrator and Artaglio in the last video. Although I agree with it sounding a bit boring while being decent enough for a teaser, the lines he did for Artaglio were really good in my opinion; but I thought there were a few inconsistencies in his interpretation. Maybe it's just me, but he sounds way more "rusty" when he says "what do you want now?" than when he talks to his soldiers; making him sound like two different people.

No, you are right (and this is what I was trying to explain). If I recall correctly, both Colin and George wanted to use some other reads that were more consistent. But this was the video, not the game, and I overruled their judgment in this rare case. =)

The line where he talks to his soldiers was from his very first read. We changed some of the text later on, plus other lines from that read were not as awesome. So to keep that read (and possibly some others), we had to accept some inconsistency. (As we foolishly had him try some different voice qualities in later reads.) Alex could also have kept doing more recordings to make them consistent, but you have to stop eventually and as it was he'd worked past 3 AM with us more than once during that video's finalization.)

(That's not to say that we won't have to choose between such trade-offs for the final game (you have to choose wisely where to spend your limited Perfection Points), but the considerations (and decision-makers) are different than for a video.)

Also, I must say that your approach towards sharing information and bringing TTON's new details is truly remarkable. Thank you so much for not trying to overhype things too much

I appreciate your appreciation. =) We're doing our best, of course, but I think we have to be realistic -- I'm not sure it's even possible to live up to the hype invoked by "thematic successor to Planescape: Torment." (Fortunately for RPG lovers, we have Mr. Brian Fargo to focus on the business side of things. While I do think TTON backers are more "monocled" than the "average" gamer, I'm not sure my approach to communication is conducive to maximum crowdfunding. So hallelujah for Fargo! Plus it lets me stay more focused on the team and the game.)

(For example, we're were using an awesome Unity plug-in called Shroud for the cloth. Unfortunately, it's not yet available as a 64-bit version, which means it doesn't work with Unity 5. So our entire cloth solution has been defunct since we upgraded to Unity 5, and we're hoping the Shroud guy comes through for us or we have a much bigger problem to solve there.

I thought Shroud was no longer in development? At least, I remember Obsidian's Dimitri Berman saying something along those lines earlier this year as to why they were having such difficulties with cloaks in Pillars of Eternity. They were never able to get them completely right either.

For purposes of Obsidian's timeline, it's possible that was effectively true. The Shroud developer has told us that support for Linux is on the roadmap and also that 64-bit support is coming. But we shall see! (I am hoping this is one of the issues where you just have to wait long enough and it fixes itself. At some point we'll need to address it if Shroud hasn't, though...)

 

[Sensuki]

Hopefully it sorts itself out, yes

 

[Stainless Veteran]

As a 100$ russian poorfag backer here -

My two main problems with this pre-alpha trailer are: a) lightning and b) characters animations. (Also I dislike view distance, while original Planescape's models were larger then IE ones, in this TToN video characters look like it's not a Planescape successor, but Arcanum's - minimum details, very large distance from camera, smaller in scale than background details. Old Bloom proof-of-concept video had closer camera, and it looked way better).
So, for my a) point - lightning is very flat, which wasn't the case in earlier video. I even got confused and re-watched old Bloom proof of concept video

and no, it wasn't my imagination. Then I re-read Update 41, which states:

We need to fit this shader’s lighting into the rest of the awesome lighting pipeline. While not complicated, it does require duplication of the lighting code into this new shader, so that the pylons can be properly positioned in the vertex portion before the lighting calculations take place.

With all this in place we get a dynamically moving floor, rendered at interactive rates, that looks like this:

Note where does "awesome lightning pipeline" leads. Yeaah. Now I understand why characters suddenly look very flat and are blending too much into environment. I get that it's probably a fast-and-dirty system. My 3D modeller friend said, when consulted, that it probably enables to make quick and hassle-free lightning effects on overpainted low-poly 3D models. Big drawback is that it doesn't look good, and characters often look flat. We all saw it in PoE, and now in the new video. I really don't like it.

For my b) point I'll be more brief - running animation is atrocious, it doesn't look remotely realistic, and characters kinda glide over surfaces. Really don't like that either. Walking animations are better, but still very meh.

Of course, even with bad lightning, models and animation TToN could still be a game with awesome music, plot and quests, and also TB combat, and it could be enough. But after the disappointments from W2, PoE and D:OS I really wanted it too be at least good in all aspects, not merely passable.

 

[Infinitron]

Uh. It's not like they weren't using PoE's tech when they made the earlier video.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Uh. It's not like they weren't using PoE's tech when they made the earlier video.

PoE's tech is a variety of tools, they could use different combinations and versions of them in making these two demos. Also older video probably wasn't made on Unity 5, which mean that on newer one they can't use all the same plugins - not only cloth plugin.