J.E. Sawyer

At the extreme end of the spectrum, ideally I could write everything in IPA and every player (also well-versed in IPA) would read the words perfectly without the need for anachronistic orthographies. Since our game will be primarily read instead of listened to, I'm currently leaning toward using anachronistic orthographies to convey the feeling of the inspirational source languages. That's not necessarily "the right" way to do things, which is why I started this thread. You've made a perfectly valid point, though.

It doesn't make sense, but we're viewing everything with Latin orthography and we're going to hear very little of it actually pronounced, so the "cultural feels" of it (IMO) have to come through orthography rather than pronunciation. If I were to write everything with English orthography (still problematic in many ways due to huge inconsistencies), there would likely be little apparent inspiration for the language/culture. In the original example I gave, Cornish is much more intuitive to read and pronounce than Irish, but is much less obviously Celtic in origin/flavor. In something like the Game of Thrones TV show, the pronounced sound of Dothraki and High Valyrian are much more important than the orthography because we're hearing everything rather than reading it.

There is a bit of this already. The "Bael" in Bael River is pronounced differently by Dyrwoodans and Glanfathans -- "bæl" vs. "BAY-ul". It's most common when one culture appropriates the term of another (in this case, "Bael" is the Glanfathan name).

That's what I expect, but I wanted to find out how much players care about their expected pronunciation matching the "real" pronunciation (for whatever that is worth). My assumption was that players don't really care as long as they don't stumble over the words while reading them, but it's a baseless assumption.

kohn-SWAH-ylee ah-SAY-djah

I have been trying to keep things in the realm of the comprehensible/not ridiculous, e.g. Cean Gúla is inspired by the banshee or, in Irish, Bean Sí (woman of the Sidhe). In Irish "woman of blood" would be Bean Fuil (the genitive of "fola", blood). No matter how we set up pronunciation expectations, 90% of readers will read "bean" as what they eat in a burrito, so I just shifted the initial letter for woman over to "Cean" and made the Glanfathan genitive "of blood" the creepier-looking "Gúla" which isn't too wacky, all things considered.

This thread is about the technical aspects of PE's constructed languages. If you don't find the subject interesting, it may be very boring to you. For PE, I am developing a number of constructed languages (conlangs) to a limited extent to help establish the flavor of the world and the distinct cultures within it. With each conlang, there is (or are) a number of real-world languages used as a starting point. Eld Aedyran is based on Old English with elements of Danish and Icelandic. Vailian is based on a mixture of Italian, French, and Occitan. The ancient Engwythan language (used by the previous residents of Eír Glanfath) is based on Cornish. Glanfathan (used by the current Glanfathan tribes) is based on Old Irish and contemporary Irish. The orthography of most of these languages is relatively straightforward. A moderately-informed reader will likely mentally read the words and names with 80% accuracy, pronunciation-wise. Players may read the Eld Aedyran name Durnisc as "DUR-nisk" instead of "DUR-nish", but most of the time, they're going to be in the ballpark. If players read about the Vailian consuagli asegia (siege councils), they may not get the stress "right" or hit every consonant cluster correctly in their heads, but they probably won't stumble over the words. The exception to this is Glanfathan, based on Irish. The foundations of Irish orthography in the Latin alphabet go back over a millennium and had to adapt to using Latin orthography for sounds that probably didn't exist in Latin, like /v/. Irish orthography also uses a set of rules for consonant pronunciation that are based on the surrounding vowels (slender or broad). Irish cased grammar can also mutate words in a way that forces the insertion of additional vowels to maintain their "slender to slender, broad to broad" vowel rules, which means the consonants in between can wind up changing pronunciation as well. The result is Irish's distinctive "boatload of letters" appearance and unintuitive (to most English-speakers) pronunciation. In contrast, Cornish (another Celtic, but not Goedelic, language) did not develop standard Latin orthography for many more centuries. Its pronunciation is much more intuitive to the uninitiated. Despite the fact that Cornish exists in a different branch of the Celtic language tree, it shares some etymological roots with Irish, but the pronunciation is almost always more intuitive. However, written Cornish is much less distinctive from written Irish. When you see something written in Irish, there's little doubt what language you're looking at, but the pronunciation will quite often not be "right" in your head. As it applies to the languages, names, etc. in Project Eternity, how much do you care about the intuitive pronunciation of our conlangs? E.g. in the various Icewind Dale/Dark Elf books, Drizzt's panther is named Guenhwyvar. Most people don't know that the Welsh pronunciation of that name is close to "Guinevere". Does that matter? If you see a name like Dair Bhriste, how important is it to you that the way you pronounce it in your head is the way it is "supposed" to be pronounced?

Yes, spellcasters have a mix of unlimited (at-will, to use a 4E term), per-encounter, and per-rest abilities. Their most powerful spells are always their per-rest abilities, with lower-level spells eventually flipping over to per-encounter as they advance. We have no "mana" or equivalent universal resources, though ciphers do have a Focus resource and monks have Wounds.

A minor note for clarification: our dialogue window will be a different interface from the dialogue log. The former will be prominent and display larger character portraits (among other things). The log itself is really just for scrolling back through the conversation if you want to review it. It can be toggled with the combat log in the same window.

The elements are symmetrical by default, but we're designing with the goal of allowing you to disable segments (like the combat log) if you would like to. I.e., there's a gap between the two "sides" of the UI, but the two sides will be equally-sized unless you start disabling elements.

This mockup is not far from where we are going with our revisions. To correct one statement you made: it's not true that the majority of players will play at 1920x1080, but more polled Steam players play at that res than any other. If you combine 1920x1080 with 1336x768, those two blocks form a majority. That's why we're constantly checking both 1920x1080 as well as 1280x720, the latter of which will be our lowest supported resolution.

What are these differences? Physically these differences are where hair grows on them. Wild Orlans are covered with a coat of hair on every inch of their bodies, including the face. On the other hand Hearth Orlans have tufts of hair the ears, but otherwise the face is covered with hair much like a typical human. The Orlan detective concept depicts a Hearth Orlan. Dimitri just showed us a render of his Zbrush model for a male wild orlan head and it looks very cool. In early internal polls (and on our message boards) we found a strong divide between people who wanted relatively "normal" looking orlans and people who wanted them to be even more animalistic. Both hearth and wild orlans have vertical slit pupils, but the hearth orlans look more like the cipher concept that Kaz did. Wild orlans are more evenly covered with hair to the point where it looks more like fur.

Everyone has access to soul magic (if not through Abilities, then through Talents), but not every character type has to build characters that use it. There's a Talent that allows short-term "real" Invisibility, but it's not an inherent part of the rogue class. On a side note, stealth as a general mechanic is in no way exclusive to rogues. Rangers, rogues, monks, and chanters all start with the same class bonus to the stealth skill and other classes can trail very closely from level-to-level.

Most of the magic-flavored things that fighters, rogues, et al. can purchase will wind up being optional Talents instead of core class Abilities. If you want to play such a character with entirely non-magical abilities, you will be able to do so, but there will be some supernatural options for players who want them. I believe that right now all of the core class Abilities that fighters and rogues (specifically) have are described as being more-or-less mundane/non-magical.

A lot of the more "magic-y" flavored things that fighters, rogues, et al. can take will probably wind up being Talents (optional) instead of core class Abilities. If you want to play an effectively non-magical fighter or rogue, you will probably be able to do so, but there will be more fantastic options available for players who want them.

What game design principles do you think are most important when creating new game? I think it's important to consider both what you are setting out to accomplish and who your audience is (and isn't). Game development can take as little as a few weeks or as long as several years. If you get lost along the way, you can always return to these two questions: what am I trying to accomplish and whom am I making it for? The answers to these questions may change over the course of development. If they do, they allow you to change course. If they don't, reminding yourself allows you to refocus on the big picture when considering even small details. Which area of the design process do you find the most difficult and why? Pre-production. A lot of people like pre-production because it's a "blue sky" phase. The problem comes when questions aren't answered in pre-production and production begins. Then those blue skies turn grey and black and then the tears flow. Pre-production should be harder than production. If it winds up the other way around, not enough time was spent figuring out the big issues up front. What element of game design do feel gets neglected the most? The player experience. It's ultimately the most important thing to consider, but game development involves the creation of so many things and the troubleshooting of so many problems that the player's thought processes and emotional changes often drop out of sight. It's important for developers to play their own games, but that's not enough. We also have to consider how different members of our audience are going to think and feel their way through the game. There's not one way, but many ways. We don't have to accommodate them all, but at our best, we should consider them all and make an active choice based on the spectrum as we understand it.

Whether it's action icons next to the portraits or below the portraits, keeping them in the same "zone" of the screen is what I would like to do if we were to do a vertically-oriented bar. Ultimately, whatever the orientation and placement of elements, I think it's good to keep the portraits near the action icons.

I don't think your mouse sensitivity is typical. Mouse travel is important not because of the distance it covers once, but because the distance it covers literally thousands of times over the course of the game. UIs intended for long-term use should have ergonomic considerations. Left-side L is also creates the most uncomfortable direction to move the mouse in (assuming you're right-handed): upper left to lower right. Given the choice between a left- or right-side L, I'd prefer a right-side L. But I'd rather not have an L for portraits/action icons at all. The combat log is one of the most domineering elements of the UI but it's also one that could easily be separated from the rest. If we were to have some sort of an L layout, I think a right-side pane containing portraits and action icons with an adjustable combat log on the bottom could work well.

Many of the proposed mock-ups (other than Sensuki's) use more screen real-estate than the original.

We are designing the GUI to be mouse-friendly. Designs that put character portraits on top of Old Smoky and action icons on the bottom of the Mariana Trench go very strongly against that goal.

I never really thought about those things from a usability point of view, though it certainly does sound somewhat self-explanatory. Nevertheless, if given the choice in a customizable UI, I'd put the chat/log-box to the left side of the screen everytime... from an explicitely subjective point of view, the left side of the screen feels simply more important to me than the right side - which is why I prefer to have all relevant information focused on the left. I believe that the character portraits contain more vital information that the player looks at with higher frequency than the combat log.

Even if that is the case, players are going to be looking at/interacting with the portraits and action icons more than the combat log.

The right hand generally has a greater and more comfortable range of motion to the left than to the right.

It really ruins the mythology of historical metallurgy but yeah, even relatively low-grade chromoly made any ol' place today is much more consistent and workable than the best stuff from ages past. Today, we can control heat to such a precise degree and we can refine ore so well that it's pretty easy to make and shape good alloys. Still, even metals of the 20th century that weren't practically available in Olden Tymes (aluminum, titanium) can't compare to good steel when it comes to making weapons and armor. As the old timer cyclists like to say, steel is real.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone, divergent though it may be. Here are some things we are going to continue to look into: * Better use of space overall. Not all of the decorative elements need to be there. We would like to have more room for the ability icons in particular. * Re-working and re-positioning of the player menu (inventory, etc.). * Possibly vertically orienting the character portraits and ability icons on one side of the screen. The combat log pretty much has to be horizontally-oriented, but other than scrolling through it, that's a non-interactive element of the UI. I have to say I think it's strange that people are requesting UI layouts with character portraits far away from action icons, floating wireframe UIs, and similar features. While it's true that BG1 and IWD1 used wrap-around UIs, that was because 640x480 base resolutions didn't allow us to fit all of the elements along one edge of the screen. As soon as we went to 800x600 in IWD2, we immediately went to a consolidated UI layout that made mouse movement much more efficient. I understand that a lot of people use hotkeys and we certainly plan to support that, but GUIs need to be functional for people who use them. Putting abilities 75%+ of the screen width away from the character portraits is really inefficient. While I certainly think the idea of a bone and obsidian UI could be really cool looking, it would also be very stark and high-contrast. I think it would wind up dominating the screen, regardless of the environment. Our outdoor environments, especially, will fall more in the BG and BG2 spectrum of colors, which is why we went with more subdued natural tones and copper accents. We can certainly look at alternatives, but I wanted to give feedback on that particular idea.