BAdler

You should just contact support. We can make sure you get the proper tier.

Also, if the articles and interviews are not live yet, give them a bit of time. We told them the embargo was 2:00 PM and we just gave them the okay to post the articles.

Update by Brandon Adler, Producer After months of hard work we are happy to present to you with Project Eternity's BIG update. We have lots of stuff to go over, so let's get into it. Teaser Trailer Through the hard work of the Project Eternity team we are proud to present our first in-game teaser trailer. Click to view the gameplay teaser. New Name If you've finished the teaser (and you've finished it, haven't you?) then you know we have another big announcement. Project Eternity is now officially known as Pillars of Eternity. In addition to that, we have a nifty new logo courtesy of Kaz: The new Pillars of Eternity logo. Backer Portal Pillars of Eternity now has a new Backer Portal! You can visit it by going here. First things first, let's get into how you manage your pledges. To manage your pledge, click the link in the highlighted area. In the image above you will notice a section outlined in a red box. Inside this box is a link to the pledge management page. There are actually a few different ways to get to the pledge management page (there is also a link on the top bar, for example), but this is the easiest from the home page. Click the link in the box and you will head to the pledge management page. From this page you can manage all of your pledges or link new ones. The pledge management page is your first stop in collecting rewards. On this page you can do the following: Review any pledges linked to your account’s email address.Under the Your Pledges section we will list all of the pledges that are linked to the email address you have listed in your account. You can review these pledges and make sure that everything is correct. Link an additional email address to your account.You may have multiple pledges from multiple email addresses that you would like to associate with your account. By clicking the link in the Your Pledges section you can enter in another email address to link to your account. You will then be sent a confirmation email to the address provided. Once confirmed, any pledges linked to that email address will be shown under the Your Pledges section. Confirm what pledges should be used for.If you have pledged an amount equal to your selected tier on Kickstarter or PayPal the Backer Portal will automatically figure out what your pledge should be used for. On the other hand if you pledged an amount different than your selected tier level you will need to specify what the additional money or pledges were intended for. This can be anything from an add-on, to shipping, to a donation. If you need help you can select the option for Obsidian to contact you. We will contact you as soon as possible and get everything squared away. Keep in mind that if you choose for an Obsidian employee to contact you, your account will be locked until a representative has helped you. This is to prevent any incorrect selections. You can confirm and upgrade your tier on the reward management page. Next, you will be taken to the reward selection page. On this page you will be able to confirm your reward selection by selecting the appropriate tier listed. If you are eligible for a tier upgrade, you can select one of those options instead of what you originally pledged. Don’t worry about the price differences, we will take care of that when you checkout. If you missed any add-ons during the Kickstarter, you can add them here. Did you forget to grab a Pillars of Eternity t-shirt during the Kickstarter? No need to fret, after selecting your rewards, you can choose any add-ons that you would like to add to your pledge. You will find everything from shirts, to mouse pads, to Chris Avellone’s novella. You can review your order before finalizing it. Once you are finished choosing your rewards and add-ons, you will have an opportunity to review your order before checking out. Fill out your shipping info, if needed. If you have any physical goods, you will need to enter your shipping information. If you upgraded or added rewards, you will need to pay with a credit card or PayPal. If your pledge covers all of your rewards and add-ons you have selected then you just need to confirm one last time. If you have selected a more expensive tier or additional add-ons, then you will be prompted to pay with a credit card or a PayPal account. Fill out surveys for any in-game rewards. For those of you that have in-game rewards that require your help (Credits, Memorial Stones, NPCs, Items, Inns, Portraits, Adventuring Parties, etc.) or add-ons that require more information (shirts), we have surveys for you to fill out. Just click on the link once you have checked out or go to your profile to find all of the surveys you are eligible for. Filling out the surveys is as easy as choosing whatever you would like from the various selection boxes and filling out any text for in-game rewards. If you don’t have enough time to fill out the survey in one sitting, just press the save button at the bottom of the page. Your answers will be saved for the next time you enter the survey. Once you are happy with your answers, you can choose to submit your survey. Congratulations! Your rewards are now confirmed and any surveys you have are filled out. All that’s left to do is check out the areas of the Backer Portal. You can find more information about the game, videos, screenshots, and wallpapers. Stretch Goal Poll We've always taken your pledges seriously and we remain committed to giving our backers every stretch goal you reached during the Kickstarter campaign. Budgeting a game of this size can be daunting, but we always remember the cornerstones of our pitch and the features you funded. Even so, there are two things we know a lot of you have asked for: more wilderness areas and more companions. Both of these are very time-consuming, but we understand why so many people want them. Because we've seen these requests more than a few times, we would like to ask the community if you would be interested in new stretch goals to fund additional development. If not, no worries: we're still going to deliver on everything you've backed. Please let us know your thoughts in this thread on our forums. Interviews and Articles That’s not all. We also have a plethora of new interviews with members of the Pillars of Eternity team. Check them out below. GameBanshee Interview Eurogamer Article Kotaku Article PC World Summary Article PC World Interview Rock, Paper, Shotgun Interview VGS - AM 640 Interview (YouTube version here) That’s it for the update. The Pillars of Eternity team and the whole Obsidian crew would like to thank you for all of your support and help in creating the game over this past year. You can’t imagine how rewarding it is to get to work on this game with all of our Backers. Here’s to another great year!

We've always taken your pledges seriously and we remain committed to giving our backers every stretch goal you reached during the Kickstarter campaign. Budgeting a game of this size can be daunting, but we always remember the cornerstones of our pitch and the features you funded. Even so, there are two things we know a lot of you have asked for: more wilderness areas and more companions. Both of these are very time-consuming, but we understand why so many people want them. Because we've seen these requests more than a few times, we would like to ask the community if you would be interested in new stretch goals to fund additional development. If not, no worries: we're still going to deliver on everything you've backed. Please let us know your thoughts in this poll. Rock the vote.

We haven't started the project planning on an expansion yet. Once we start getting into the specifics we will probably do an update about it. I don't think that will be for a while, though.

Modding is definitely something that we are considering, but there would need to be some technical hurdles that we would have to solve first. Maybe we can do an update about it in the future.

There are different variations of trolls in the Project Eternity universe. To be completely honest, though, I am not sure how many variations we will get to by the end of development. Some may have to come in an expansion.

Hey, everyone. I just wanted to share a really awesome piece of fan art that we received this morning from Chris Bischoff. It's inspired from the Twin Elms concepts that we released in our last update. If Chris' name sounds familiar it's because he has his own Kickstarter going for the game STASIS. If you haven't checked it out yet you should. What's not to like about a 2D, isometric, sci-fi, horror adventure game? It's in its last few days so lets help him push it over the edge and get it fully funded. Click for a larger image.

Even Character models hunch over at idle. This is incorrect. The trolls are not on the Skuldr rig. The trolls are sharing a rig and animations with other creatures but still need to have their pass for tweaking and creating new anims.

So far we know that (most) Wilderness areas are being handled by outsourcing. Hector did the Vertical Slice ones AFAIK. At 3 weeks per wilderness area that is two wilderness areas per production milestone. However they also may do propping and unique asset creation for existing areas. I meant man weeks, not calendar weeks. Also, multiple areas can be done at the same time.

We have been outsourcing wilderness exteriors. The process is slightly different every time, but we usually do a quick concept, hand it off to our parter for a more fleshed out concept, and then spend lots of time collaborating about the area. We share all of our wilderness props with the partner and anything they create can be used in wilderness areas we make on site.

*mumbles something about expert opinion*Maybe the missing red circles around them makes them seem to blend in with the background. The characters in the other screenshot has their blue circles, making them stand out from the background at a quick glance. I did turn the GUI off when I took the shots.

There is still plenty of work that needs to go into these areas. Keep in mind that you are seeing areas that are currently being worked on in this milestone so you will probably see a few oddball things from time to time.

There is some pretty good variation in our wilderness areas throughout the game. In future weeks we will show off some additional areas that will have more visual variation.

No paintover pass yet. That is usually one of the last steps in the process. These areas are considered at a first pass level. We will still need to go in and rework a few things before it will be at an Alpha level.

The outsourced area? It depends on how complicated the concept is and how much can be reused from previous areas. It took about three weeks for the team to create the area to a first pass quality.

There will definitely be some larger structures. You are just seeing a small portion of one area. It isn't really Machu Picchu or Viking... it is closer to Machu Picchu with Viking layered on top.

Update by Brandon Adler, Producer Hey, everyone. We decided against releasing the Backer Portal right before the holiday break. We wanted to make sure that we had a full staff on board to solve any technical issues that might arise on the site during its launch. We are just as excited as you are for the Backer Portal and we want to make sure it has a smooth release. To keep you sated in Project Eternity goodness we decided to show off some of the artwork we have been putting together this milestone. We are pretty proud of it. Hope you enjoy. Areas Last week on the forums Sensuki, Tagomika, and coffeetable brought up questions about areas we were outsourcing. I figured it would be better to show you the areas instead of talking about them. Take a look. A shrine to the god of the hunt. A drake skeleton amid thick overgrowth. Both of these images come from the same wilderness area. While this area appears thick with foliage now, it was previously the site to horrific fires caused by drakes. Large swaths of ground were burned and only now has the land started to recover. Concepts Kaz and Polina have been hard at work getting concepts prepared for our current milestone and the next. Polina has been focusing on creating the look and feel for our next big city - Twin Elms. Twin Elms is a unique mixture of ruined architecture from an ancient civilization with a layer of Viking-inspired Glanfathan buildings built into it. Glanfathan buildings built into ancient ruins. Line work for environments in Twin Elms. While Polina has been helping to plan the future, Kaz is firmly entrenched in our mega dungeon, The Endless Paths of Od Nua. Take a look at some of the prop work that Kaz is doing for one of the Engwithan-inspired areas. Engwithan props for use in Od Nua. Creatures One of the creatures that has gone in recently is the troll. You can see a few of them in the area below. A group of trolls in-game. That's it for this week, folks. Have a great Thanksgiving.

I can't speak for others, but I usually work on an update over the course of a few days. The breakdown is close to this: Create Update ContentTwo to three hours. Collect ImagesThirty minutes to an hour. Depends on what we are showing. For this one, it didn't take long. ReviewThe leads review the update a day or two before. Usually spend about thirty minutes updating everything. Coding the UpdateI will then take the update and hand code it in HTML. This is because some of our distribution methods (specifically Kickstarter and our newsletters to PayPal backers) require it for proper formatting. This takes me an hour or two depending on the complexity of the update. Posting the UpdateThis is the actual posting of the update and any prep work for it. Our images all have to be placed in an S3 bucket and videos need to be uploaded. Overall, this is probably another two to three hours. So this update probably took about half a day to a full day of my time over the past week. This is fairly typical of our updates.

I wouldn't worry about that. These processes aren't something that's specific to Eternity (or Obsidian, for that matter). Also, a little bit of pressure to perform usually draws the best out of everyone.

It is still on.

I have played around with Access years ago, but haven't touched it in relation to work. Although on the topic of mixing Excel and other software, we do have a really cool spreadsheet that makes calls to our SharePoint servers. We use it in our issue tracking. Makes it really easy to pull in the information, analyze it, and send it out to the team.

Every project is different, but there is no specific methodology. Mostly waterfall with heavy amounts of agile thrown in. That said, we are trying to get all of the projects under one set of processes. One thing that I find to be helpful on our larger projects are feature strike teams. As an example, on Alpha Protocol we had strike teams for things like AI, cutscenes, and areas. The strike teams are a collection of people from different disciplines that are trying to create a specific feature. When a strike team is first created a person is designated as the strike team leader and they are in charge of creating a step plan (milestone independent steps to get a feature from zero to complete). The strike team leaders also direct the team and hold the vision for that feature set. Eternity uses strike teams for some features (areas), but it is much more difficult with a small team because people wear many hats. If we used it for every feature then most people would end up on most of the strike teams.

Trust me... it is much better to have this process than to wild west the development. When I was working in mobile software, they fought against this kind of process and it created products of inferior quality that cost WAY more than they should have.

A lot of the earlier areas have been heavily modified. This isn't unusual, though. As the pipelines mature and we figure out better ways to do things we normally have to go through and clean up the older stuff. I am not sure I could give an estimate on that, though. I could figure it out by going through all of the info, but I am feeling lazy right now.