Nathaniel Chapman
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Posts posted by Nathaniel Chapman
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Imposing looks with lots of red inside?Also, if DS3 was a fruit, which fruit would it be?A melon obviously.
I leave the interpretation to you my young padawans.
Don't disappoint me.
Especially you Nathaniel.
I think it largely depends on what kind of melon we are, doesn't it?
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Mr. Chapman, you gave us enough info to fill in for a gamescom preview. You're so awesome, you just peeked Matt Rorie in my appreciation!
So, from what I gather, the "auto-aim" feature works more like a "pathfinding" option, for those that want to play the game in the isometric view on consoles, like correcting our course towards the nearest target, but it will also work as a sort of targeting mode for using the "vanity"/over the shoulder, viewpoint, am I correct? However, will a gamepad shoulder button be mapped for targeting the next nearest enemy? Like, what happens if we are surrounded by enemies and the auto-target system keeps us focused on a certain mob? Or does simply tilting the analog stick towards a different direction automatically change our target? How hard or easy will it be to target a specific mob out of the bunch? If I recall, games like Bayoneta and DMC both had that feature. All in all, sounds like the standard adaptation of KB&M controls for the gamepad capabilities. Honestly, it doesn't sound all that bad to me.
Are you aiming for a more arcade-y action feel for DSIII? At least for the console counterparts? And if you do, would you say it's more complicated, like the aforementioned games, or something more akin to Dynasty Warriors? If not, how would you describe it? Most importantly, are you even allowed to discuss the battle system this in depth?
For the PC, as I understand, we will have the LMB for moving, targeting and the standard attack, RMB probably for rotating the camera, unless you've mapped a different function to it that we've not established yet, the mouse wheel for circling through the combat styles (one handed, two handed etc.) and the 1-0 hotkeys for special abilities. So pretty much what someone would expect from a hack'n'slash RPG on the PC. Am I correct?
I'll be honest, the reason I avoid going into this level of detail is not just that I'm not supposed to, but also that this stuff is so fluid in pre-alpha development that anything I tell you will be out of date by the time you actually get to play it.
Suffice to say, we'll try to make both our console and PC versions play like an awesome ARPG. We are putting more of a focus on the action itself than in many other ARPGs, so the combat may feel a bit more "action-ey" than, say, DS1 or 2. Which is not to say that it won't be tactical, but the tactics will be grounded more in action gameplay - for instance, you do get tactically rewarded for swapping between stances based on the makeup of each encounter, or for tactically using your abilities to their greatest effect. But at its heart we've focused the game on fun, deep, action RPG combat.
It's hard to say where we fall in the DMC->Dynasty Warriors spectrum. I think we're actually on a slightly different path, because we are a lot deeper in terms of ability and stat customization than either game, really, and we have a bigger emphasis on tactical ability/stance selection and a smaller emphasis on reflexes and timing gameplay than games like DMC and Dynasty Warriors. So, I guess my hope is that DSIII will feel like it's on a different spectrum, even though it's got a few similarities to those games.
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This is Dungeon Siege territory, I choose blindly and ignore the consequences.
Not in Obsidian's Dungeon Siege, baby.
By the way, any info on how exactly the teleportation system works? Is that screenshot with the floaty landmass in a sea of blue the area where you fight enemies before teleporting?
We need an answer Nathaniel! AN ANSWEEEEER!!
The floaty landmass is part of a "world between worlds" that you use to travel long distances quickly.
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It's unique, it has it's own style. But I don't like the inventory though.
Was the inventory shown? Were you at the gc? Do you have a picture?
Can you explain the inventory?
Yup, I saw it at the gamescom. I don't know if im allowed to talk about it, if I am, I will gladly tell you about it, and maybe even make a sketch of it. I dont have pictures, we weren't allowed to take pics, but I do have a nice inflatable sword with the DS3 logo on it, and a Fallout: New Vegas shirt
.Did you sign an NDA? If not, you're allowed to talk about anything you want!
I'm the one that's not supposed to talk about anything!
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P.S. : Not completely connected, but AFAIK the demos weren't really quests in the game but more like simplified quests that used areas from the game? Or did I misinterpret?
No, that's correct
It was a very simple quest mostly there to just show off the breadcrumbing feature, which is directly tied to your quests. -
Oh cool! Any chance you'll release them for the public too?
I suspect you won't have to wait too long
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Strange, according to K0771 the demo was press-only. Still, good to know.
We actually had video from our E3 demo on the floor of Gamescom
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I have played DMC4 before and to me that's more like a single player, 3rd person shooter view, action hack and slash game.
I saw that DMC4 has been mentioned couple of times. So is the developer basically changing DS3 to be like the gameplay of DMC4?
Maybe i have the wrong expectations that DS3 would be played like Diablo, Titan Quest, Sacred 2 top down isometric 3rd person view that you can see your player character and your party characters (since previous Dungeon Siege has been always a party based hack n slash game).
You basically just left click to move or attack and right click for a special skill/talent/power. Hotkeys 1-9 can be mapped for skills/power and you can basically target(be it AOE or single target).
My concern is that if i press/click/use a skill/power and it randomly (auto target nearest enemy).. then it's a dump down gameplay for me.
As i said, if the gameplay of Dungeon Siege 3 is like Devil May Cry 4 then i have mistaken it for a different genre of action hack n slash rpg like Diablo/TQ/Sacred/etc.
Thanks for your time.
I hope I've been clear that I'm talking about the console controls for the game, not the PC controls. We will probably not use the same auto-targetting on PC and console.
I also think, if you look at how this kind auto-targetting functions in other games, it's not "random" at all. You press the stick in the direction of the guy you want to attack, press the attack button, and you attack them.
I don't think there's much else I can say to elucidate the subject:
- We want our PC version to play like a PC game, and our console version to play like a console game.
- We don't want to cram inappropriate controls from one platform onto the other.
- We don't ever want it to be hard to physically connect your attacks with enemies. That's not at all intended to be a challenge in our game. Therefore, we have some auto-targetting logic on the Console version that makes sure your attacks line up properly and you don't miss by a couple of degrees.
- We don't want it to feel like the game is playing itself, we want you to feel "in control". That's actually what the auto-targetting is designed to help.
- Our auto-targetting on console versions will not dumb the game down any more than click-to-move pathfinding dumbs down a PC game. If anything, pathfinding dumbs the game down more.
- We want to allow you to ground target AoEs in both the Console and PC versions of the game, and we currently have a method of doing this on the console that we're pretty happy with. Obviously on the PC it's pretty standard to allow you to ground target AoEs, so we'll probably do that the way you are familiar with from other games like, say, NWN2
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Guy on another forum said that he thought the UI was smart, basically they seem to have included a grid inventory and they use a "trick" to enable the use of multiple abilities even on the limited number of buttons on a console controller. I'm betting the stance system is that "trick".
You guessed it! There are other cool things about the stance system, but that's the fundamental sauce.
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By the way, if you find this discussion at all intriguing I strongly recommend you pick up Devil May Cry 4 or Bayonetta and play them all the way through. They're actually really rewarding, enjoyable games once you figure out how they work and get good at them. Plus you'll understand better what I'm talking about
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Nathaniel, in what way is the game more strategic and tactical with "auto-aim"?
If our characters are auto-attacking an enemy can we make them focus on another enemy instead? Will they only initiate combat when we tell them to? Can we turn auto-attack off?
There's no auto-attack, maybe I need to be a bit clearer.
Functionally, if you've played Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry, this system works exactly like those games.
Say you are playing the game on a console. If you point your stick in the direction of an enemy and press attack, the game will steer you so you line up with the target perfectly rather than letting you miss by 5-10 degrees. It will always select the target closest to where you pointed the stick, so it's not going to point you at an enemy you didn't intend to attack (unless you're giving bad input, heh). The game will not autoattack for you, you must press the button every time you want to attack the target.
The reason why this is important is that players are actually quite bad at giving precise stick input, particularly when they are mapping the 2D analog stick coordinates into 3D space in their head. There was a really interesting talk at the last GDC by one of the developers at I believe Sucker Punch (the guys that made inFAMOUS) in which the developer set up a very simple test where a character was rendered in a very simple Grey Box 3D environment from a standard 3/4 view. A red ball would appear at a random point about 3 meters out from the character. The player had to try to align his stick with the ball (without onscreen feedback), and the game secretly recorded how much their stick input diverged from the actual ball in degrees.
The test revealed that actually stick input diverged quite a lot - up to about 10 or 15 degrees, with a median of around -3 degrees (which is really bizarre, I have no explanation for that). Those numbers might not be exact, I don't have the talk on hand, but the point is that players are a lot less accurate than they think (and than developers think) when it comes to pointing out directions in 3D space using analog sticks.
Rather than force you to struggle with the fact that it's actually a really hard math puzzle to map your 2D stick coordinates in 3D space, we fudge it a little, because the point of most of these games is not to force you to point your analog stick literally perfectly in order to even hit a target. In a platformer, it might be more acceptable to forego automatic course correction because the core challenge in those games *is* to perfectly line up the target (and they usually give the player a decent amount of wiggle room - you don't have to hit an exact spot when you jump). But in DS3, like in NG2 and DMC, the challenge comes from how/when/how often/who you attack and choosing what attacks you use. We don't intend for the challenge to be in actually being able to physically connect with attacks.
If you think of this in PC game terms, actually, you get this auto-targetting automatically from the pathfinding system. When I click a monster in Diablo/Torchlight/NWN2, the pathfinding system takes over and not only aligns me to my target but actually navigates me there automatically!
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There's nothing wrong with brainless button mashers, as long as the gameplay is good and the class/skill system varied.
I don't think that auto-targetting inherently makes a game a brainless button masher. This is not an FPS, the core gameplay is not aiming, auto-aim has literally no relevance to the depth of the game.
Isn
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There's nothing wrong with brainless button mashers, as long as the gameplay is good and the class/skill system varied.
I don't think that auto-targetting inherently makes a game a brainless button masher. This is not an FPS, the core gameplay is not aiming, auto-aim has literally no relevance to the depth of the game.
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haha
Was that your "professional" response?
No, I sincerely thought you were joking.
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So, this will be a brainless button-masher then?
Color me unimpressed.
haha
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We use essentially the same auto-targetting system as Ninja Gaiden 2 (the 3D one, not the NES one). I don't think anyone would consider that game dumbed down
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4players.de
They are complaining about the inventory ui, stating it's the most complicated thing they have seen for years, especially for a PC interface.
That's... interesting O_O
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You will be able to make the game look much, much better on PC than it will on consoles, much like other cross platform games. The game looks amazing at 2560x1440 with FSAA and AF cranked, and that is something that you can't do on consoles. Seeing as the game is in pre alpha, and our featureset isn't even locked down, I wouldn't get too worried yet about what we will and won't support on a given platform :D
If it makes you feel any better, I've got a souped up PC at home (which is why I know how it looks at those ridiculous settings) and I advocate for our PC versions to be scalable graphically. It's something that I do feel is very important.
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First, I'm not sure if it was an initial communication confusion or the haze of Google translation, but there were some miscommunications there.
On the textures and AA option, what I said was that our current pre-Alpha build, we havent finished our options menu and we are still focusing on getting the core game content done. Once we finish the core process of making the Game, we'll be able to give definitive answers on other features and tech things we will or won't implement.
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Those are projectiles launched by those skeleton guys in the corners. They're actually pretty mean because they track you very slightly, so you have to dodge around them while fighting stuff in the center of the room if you don't take out the guys on the corners.
One thing we've found with enemy spells is that it helps to make them a bit "over the top" visually so that the player notices them in the heat of combat.
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I'm glad you guys are getting more screens, these ones are more representative of the game camera/gameplay than the others you've seen!
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We will have more media out before too long that will give you guys a better look at the visual quality of the game. I would hold out your judgement until you've seen the game in motion!
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the article didn't mention that I said FF Tactics too ><
You mean use the setting or make a FF Tactics-esque game?
I'd love to do either.
On an handheld maybe? I'd love to see a game that focuses on the meat (tactical gameplay) instead of super shiny graphics.
I think that, while turn based tactical games are easier to sell to publishers on handhelds, turn based tactical gameplay actually works fine on consoles. See: FF Tactics
My personal platform preference for a game like FF:T would be the iPad. I think touchscreens provide the most natural, relaxing input scheme for point-and-click style games (at least, ones that don't require rapid input, like RTSes). But, I think that playing a deeply tactical RPG with the corresponding breadth of gameplay options on a smaller touchscreen like the iPhone or DS could be a bit fatiguing. I think they're also great on the PC, but I do like the sense of not being restricted to my desk when I play games, so the iPad is nice in that regard.
On the other hand, if I was using the setting, I'd love to make an open-world C&C driven RPG set in the FF: Tactics universe, dealing with similar themes. FF:T (particularly the re-translated War of the Lions version) has one of my favorite JRPG stories.
It was a very simple quest mostly there to just show off the breadcrumbing feature, which is directly tied to your quests.
gamescom previews
in Dungeon Siege III: General Discussion
Posted
You guys better get the loot thread to 12 pages before you make me look like a liar.