alanschu

Seems a bit pricey!

Point lights, I would imagine (based on their name) could illuminate in all directions. But basically they are a single light pixel light source. May or may not have a direction (probably does, as there's "directional lighting") Ambient lighting would likely be the general "background" lighting. If you set your ambient lighting to max, you likely wouldn't be able to detect any other lighting at all, while if you set your ambient lighting to 0, you will not see any of the area unless you have other light sources. Best comparison is probably simply "brightness" on a monitor. Directional lighting is probably light that is assumed to be "infinitely large" coming from a particular direction. So it'll assume many rays of light that are all traveling parallel to each other. I can understand how you may think this is ambient lighting, since it probably applies across the whole scene. But it's what you would use if you wanted to simulate where the sun would be (a light source bright and far enough away that we can safely assume all its rays are parallel). At least, those are the more general, compsci interpretations. If you need better explanation I can try, although admittedly this is just from schooling, not from the editor so if they are different....

I believe it was a retort to some people that were getting on his case on Twitter or something. Fish was definitely a belligerent individual that responded out aggressively to perceived sleights.

Yup. Free for preorders, and I think $9.99 post release. Works as a DLC for CK2, that takes a save game and converts it into a mod for EU4 (not a save game, which gives them more flexibility for custom countries).

I heard that, but I haven't heard too much more beyond that. Does the self-publishing literally mean that any joe that wants to put something up for sale can, without any sort of cert process? Or does it just mean that every console works as a devkit, so you're free to start making and testing stuff out on it if you want.

Yeah, we call them modal abilities internally. The idea is that you're turning modes on and off rather than gaining a passive benefit or activating a single-use ability. If a class has more modal abilities, we're designing them to be more low-maintenance. Fighters fall into this category. That said, you can buy Talents that make fighters more active if you want to, but their core design leans more heavily toward passive and modal abilities. Do you anticipate allowing several different types of modals? Often modals are exclusive with some other type of modal, but not necessarily all of them. EG: You can't have "berserker stance" and "Defender stance" active at the same time, but while in one of those stances you could still have a different, unrelated modal active. Just curious what your plans are with this. It sounds like this, but I may be reading too much into it.

I definitely do not agree with this. I also don't agree with this. I have never played a BG mod. I'm a huge fan of Obsidian as developers though, and consider Planescape: Torment my favourite game. This pitch took 7 seconds for me to be in. Am I atypical? I suppose I can't say for certain, but by the same token neither can anyone else here. I think that you have a valid logical construct, but at this point it only serves as a hypothesis. Does Wasteland have an avid modding community? Because it's a direct sequel to a game of that style. While it also appealed to Fallout (and "old school" RPG) fans as well, I think it serves as a counterpoint to your hypothesis. I think there is a non-trivial amount of people that enjoy the experience that these games provided, and would have contributed regardless of how much exposure they receive with mods. Now, the type of people that contribute to a Kickstarter I could see being well represented from people that still play BG for the mods. But I think you do people's love of Baldur's Gate a disservice if you think they'd only be interested in more Infinity Engine style games because mods have allowed it a longer shelf life to some people. Given that those two games saw the majority of their sales go to unmoddable platforms, my answer would be "not much." Again, I never used any mods for Fallout 3, and the only mod I used for New Vegas was Sawyer's mod. Which I played *years* after I played vanilla FONV. I enjoyed FO3, and FONV was a no brainer Day One purchase because I like the setting and I am a fan of Obsidian's work.

Which one would you like to use? That's fair, but you're saying that Obsidian should be actively trying to woo these people. I'm curious, did BioWare actively try wooing these people? Or did they just make a game on an engine that people enjoyed and were willing to play around with? Even when I go back to play classic games I have heard about, I almost never use mods. I am definitely a "what were the developers looking to deliver with their game at the time" sort of person. I can embrace something like KOTOR II Restoration Project, because in the end it still grants a peek into what the vision for the game may have been. As a gamer, I find that more interesting than a fan adding a new joinable NPC to the game. It gets recognition, but how much? I still speak highly of Baldur's Gate II despite not playing it in over a decade. I still speak highly of Deus Ex and Planescape: Torment, though I haven't played either in probably 8 or so years. So I guess my question is, if modding simply wasn't an option for Baldur's Gate, how much of an impact do you think it would have on the amount of people that go "I would like to see another game like Baldur's Gate?" I mean, for all the goodwill BioWare may get by the modders keeping Baldur's Gate relevant, it doesn't really seem applicable since BioWare has gone into a different direction since the Baldur's Gate days.

If the deviations were things people liked, they wouldn't be hoping for an IE themed game! (To be fair, some people do like those deviations and they continued on their merry way). I didn't mind the "stand and attack" at the time, in BG2 (I played a Paladin), probably because I had enough other stuff going on. By the time NWN came around, however, it definitely came across as quite boring. Perhaps accented by the fact that I played only one character.

I enjoyed playing the IE games. That doesn't mean that I'm not open to a combat system overhaul. The combat was never what I liked about the IE games, and I wouldn't agree that the attribute system of AD&D really worked all that well either (other systems, like SPECIAL, I think are much more interesting and better fleshed out in their CRPG experiences). And as such, we come full circle back to the problem: what people like about the IE games isn't the same. You feel that, thus far, what is presented is not what you would like. It doesn't feel like an IE game anymore. For me, it still does, because I haven't seen anything that indicates that the important stuff I loved about the IE games has really changed. So who is right? And how do we reconcile this? I'd be disappointed if they just took Infinity Engine and wrote a new story campaign for it, but you would be happier. The reality is that, by stating "we want to make a game in the vein of the IE games," there was no way that they were going to please all the fans of those older games. I would consider it unfortunate if they didn't look to change things up. There's nothing saying that I may not find combat in Project Eternity way better than I did in the old IE games. In fact, there's nothing saying that you won't actually like it more, either. That said, maybe it won't be as good. I don't know, but I find the anticipation of what may come a lot more interesting. The idea of effectively just taking the Infinity Engine and writing a new story for it is much less appealing to me. I can also appreciate that, as a content creator, Josh and Co. may just want to try out some stuff that they think will be a lot of fun. The only advantage using something like 3rd edition would provide, for me, is that I would know what I am getting. Which isn't something putrid, but also isn't something that I find particularly interesting either. It definitely won't make me go "Ooo, what sort of interesting things could they do with this that I have never seen before?"

It'd come down to "is it worth the time and effort to make the necessary changes to the interface." A large part of that is going to have to go through any certification processes and so forth. The game could sell digitally (which helps a lot), but ultimately it comes down to whether or not they WANT to port it to a console, and then whether or not they feel it's worth the effort to do so.

I did a Q&A session with some kids at the local science center that were taking part in a game camp over summer. We got to see the games they created. One had a moving target that would shoot every second or two that he called his "boss." What I liked the most, however, was when I asked him about it he was all "Yeah but it was really hard to do! I had set up all these event trigger things and then I had to figure out how to get it to keep doing it over and over and it had all sorts of problems. I didn't think it would be so hard!" Sometimes stuff that seems trivial and easy actually gobbles up a non-trivial amount of time to do.

Modding communities are great for longevity, but how relevant is the longevity for someone like Obsidian (or even BioWare). Most games are moddable on some level (since development is mostly data driven for convenience). I think it's interesting that 13 years after BG2, there's still BG2 mods. Great for people that like to play those. It garners some good will which is never bad. How much coverage do mods for games like BG2 and KOTOR II have, however? How important is longevity for success? Would Baldur's Gate 2 be less successful if the modding community didn't exist? How about System Shock 2 (though you could argue it wasn't really that successful). In some cases you can definitely go "That mod really helped that game." Half-Life was a great game, but I'm not going to say Counterstrike didn't help sell the odd unit or 2 or 60.... But would the Elder Scrolls games be that much less successful without modding? (I don't think we can fairly answer this, but we can speculate). The game is absurdly successful on the consoles too, which are not nearly as mod friendly (is it even moddable at all? I don't actually know). Further, it's a game that sold like hotcakes right at release, when most mods won't even exist yet. Mods may keep a person playing the game (which may make them happy because they continue to get great value for their dollar, which probably even helps future purchases). I rarely mod my games, and typically I only mod strategy games. Though even then it's still pretty rare. Unfortunately for most mods, I often move on to other games before I even receive exposure to them. I only picked up KOTOR II's restoration mod because a friend of mine was playing it for the first time so I had a twinge of Nostalgia. The only real exception is when I hear about mods made by the devs themselves. I gobbled up Sawyer's mod for FONV. Although it was mostly by pure fluke I happened across it still, so there's still some level of luck involved.

Who made the movie? Also, was it done specifically to generate hype, or is that just the type of person he is?

I think on some level it's a degree of being a "grognard." In that "That's the way it was done in stuff that I really liked, and the best way to capture the stuff I really liked is to not deviate from it."

That seems *very* ambitious for the amount of reactivity that I *could* be led to believe based on the RPS interview. It's likely not what I would figure would be "ideal" (though as I said, I would be surprised if any game truly could be). Certain cost saving mechanisms are obviously "still going to the same places" and so forth, so as to not need new levels for different decisions, and some stuff like that. I think, for my own safety, I'll still temper by expectations in this regard. Expect "the worst" (or at least less awesome) and hope for the the best, so to speak.

I believe he has that as a goal. I just understand the combinatorial explosion. My first guess is that situations must be somewhat isolated from each other, but his example of Ranger HQ hunting you down certainly does change things. I'm curious how long he expects a single playthrough to take, as it will give me a better idea as to how much branching actually exists. For it to meet my expectations (in terms of branching and reactivity), I am pegging a single playthrough to top out at around 10 hours or so. Probably pretty close to Shadowrun's campaign (which I enjoyed, to be clear).

Well just as a note, on my second playthrough I was much more direct to the person, and the guy just told me to pike off. So there is certainly some level of reactivity, though it all seems pretty micro in scale (which is fine).

Hmmm, I don't know if I'd factor in time elapse at all. I did quickly read over the article before I went in to get my braces tightened, but did they say that they expect the game to react to time use? Reactivity doesn't mean that the game world is no longer 100% dependent on the player doing things in order for it to occur. I am a bit curious how things play out, because I remember (like a year ago now, so it's been some time) Fargo getting excited about a quest idea that showed player reactivity, which was a quest about resolving a dispute between two people. With great enthusiasm he described how you could side with one person or the other, or continue on, find more information, and get a superior outcome as a result. I remember him being a bit surprised when people were actually not superbly thrilled with the idea. A lot of good suggestions came up (including from yours truly ^_^) and Brian was certainly receptive to feedback, but it was somewhat surprising that what I considered a fairly typical scenario in RPGs was cause for such enthusiasm. Which leads me to believe that Brian may be the type of guy that gets enthusiastic about a lot of things he's working on

I don't recall any either. I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't able to implement them in content for release, or if it was stuff slated more for Berlin. Could be a situation where the system is in place, but design/content weren't able to put it to use in the main campaign.

I think almost everyone would agree that, for the game player, this is ideal. The problem often comes with cost, as well as with what the goals of the project itself are. I know just from my own experiences with the NWN toolset that the combinatorial explosion of having divergent paths gets pretty daunting. I hope he delivers, because I think that that will be fantastic. Although I actually am finding myself intrinsically hardwiring myself to not expect too much in this regard, because if I let myself expect what *I* consider to be ideal, I still think it's a particularly lofty and borderline impossible to achieve goal. Hopefully he recognizes that, while he saves on having to do any voice work or cinematics with last minute changes, there's still the localization costs (unless he plans on only localizing after content is officially locked down, which may cause issues with scheduling in and of itself - depends on how much text is actually in the game). Rest assured, when the game goes live we'll immediately put more time into the game than the whole development team could even dream of. I expect there to be issues simply due to the extreme reactivity he is promising, let alone the willingness to keep open for last minute changes. It all depends on how severe the bugs are, in the end.

He would have been quite dehydrated after that too. I assume he tried knocking, but yeah I can't imagine the experience was all that pleasant.

That does happen from time to time. Present company excluded, of course.

Alan this is possibly the best thing ever posted on the forum. Thank you. I love the QA video Haha that video is what sold me on sharing the link too.

There is a degree of irony, yup. Hahaha.