the itis

It's a question, not an accusation. Inspiration is a natural part of the creative process. I was just curious if I had stumbled upon the inspiration for that image. I hope Kaz chimes in.

Here's a cleaner version of the wilderness map shown by Sensuki edit: this isn't an in game shot btw (my conclusion, not definitive), you can see the PS added flowers, textures, terrain etc if you look at the full resolution picture.

Gorth, are you talking about a workstation for compiling / code execution? What exactly is your question?

Yea it looks good and nails that IE feel, but how is no one more excited about the SOUL BATTERY in the middle of dungeon?! I wonder if the concept of electricity doing work (in the thermo-electric sense) exists in PE?

Thanks Josh. Any comment regarding plans for spell icons?

It's good for the developers to get this kind of feedback. To be fair, the IWD1 spell icons were better than PST's/IWD2's (not neon, runic look), but they didn't have the same charm as BG's.

Something like this? I think that's a good idea. Though the level of detail would probably need to be dialed down, somewhere between the runes and illuminated manuscript illustrations, due to icon size. Readability and ID'ing effects at a glance are the primary concerns, followed by aesthetics.

@curryinahurry Sure, more options are always appreciated. Like all things, there are finite resources and the pros / cons of each option have to be weighed but I get where you're coming from. If such a UI could be offered and players wanted it, I think it's fine. I just hope it wouldn't be the only UI offered.

I think the current mocked up UI looks great- very befitting of a spiritual successor to the IE games. I actually don't like the MMO'ified mock-ups that others are posting. Minimaps, floating transparent windows etc don't evoke the aesthetics of the IE games. I understand not everyone will feel this way, and those are technically good mockups curryinahurry, just not to my taste. I do think the first modified mock-up by Zed represents a good UI option. The original UI could offered as the minimalist default, while allowing users to enable a vertical BG-style portrait bar. TALKING IN ALL CAPS regarding the spell icons: please don't use those colorful, modern looking icons! The BG-type rune-on-parchment aesthetic was wonderfully evocative, and fit in quite well with the game world. The runes weren't perfect and should be improved, with more information coded into the icons (certain colors and patterns indicative of spell school, damaging vs. healing vs. alteration etc) but from a purely aesthetic point of view, the flashy colored spell icons from IWD2/PST always looked out of place next to the rustic UI and gameworld. Thanks for such a meaty update!

Agreed. That update was phoned in. At the start it read as if we were going to get some info about the monster but instead we got half a pipeline, vague information and told about a lot of cool concet art not show.

Fallout map and random encounter system, with the BG map art and icons providing the right amount of embellishment.

Yea, step 1 is exactly that: generating a shadow map for the entire path of the sun. Doing it for an entire rendered map makes sense tho, and I agree about the resources vs. pay-off. It's a fun problem to think about tho.

Thanks for thinking about my post guys. I think you both have some good points, it was a naive attempt at solving a complicated problem. Pipyui, I'm going to address your points by first addressing AwesomeOcelot's concerns. The first issue about the sun rising from east to west is trivial. Rather than making a shadow circle, as I've drawn for simplicity, it makes an oval. More accurately, it looks more like a p orbital with a node/minimum in shadow density when the sun is at it's peak. Since part 1 generates a radial distribution of shadow 'states' it doesn't matter the arc that the sun takes- all shadows that are generated are captured. Additionally, objects whose shadows interact or self-shadow would still generate this radial shadow projection. If two environment objects are placed close enough that their shadow maps overlap, then they overlap. Just as if two textures were placed overlapping, and you were able to view them both. The hairy issue you both have raised, which I didn't address in the first post, is how to deal with complex shapes whose shadow-mask can't be represented by a simple cut-out that is translated radially. I agree, I think the solution is to generate these cut-outs via silhouetted projections interacting with the shadow mask. Where the projection intersects with the the mask, it creates a cutout. This means that rather than a static shadow mask rotating around a shadow map, there is instead a dynamic shadow mask being generated by a projected polygon intersecting with the mask, being generated as the sun ascends and descends. To capture the multifaceted nature of buildings, there would likely need to be 4 basis object projections (generated at 0 deg, 90, 180, 270 and 360). These would be at the correct corresponding position of the sun with the projected polygon based on one of the four bases (but still projected for all sun positions between the 4 predefined polygon positions). Linear algebra handles this projection quite easily, any graphics programmer would be quite comfortable with it. 4 basis sets might be too much, you could potentially get away with 2 or 3, it would take some experimentation to figure out. The question now is: is this a benefit to just generating dynamic shadows on the fly for buildings (i.e. is what I'm proposing worth a damn)? I don't know. Computationally, generating these shadow masks on the fly via projected polygons sounds very similar to generating shadows (on the fly projections) dynamically. I think this idea is similar to what you're suggesting Pipyui, but I'm not following you 100%.

I'll keep this simple and straight to the point. Apparently there will be two types of shadows in PE: shadows for things that move (dynamic shadows generated by light sources interacting with height and specular maps), and shadows for things that don't move (environmental 'stuff', these are baked on during prerendering of the map, I *assume*). There is a problem with baked shadows: they don't shift with the time of day. Making every environmental art asset contain dynamic shadows is not feasible, I assume, because of the resources required. Using a computationally light method that requires minimal programming, can the PE team make baked shadows that shift depending on the time of day? I think they can. Here's my idea. 1) For each piece of environmental art ID'd as requiring a shadow, generate a baked on shadow into the environment by rotating the light source representing the sun through it's full morning -> evening cycle. 2) For each baked on shadow-circle (oval, actually), generate a perspective-correct shadow mask. This mask should be transparent to the MAP textures (onto which the shadow-oval is baked), but entirely OPAQUE to the shadow layer. Cut from this shadow mask the shape of the object's shadow. This cutout is opaque to the map textures and transparent to the shadow layer. 3) Overlay the shadow mask onto the shadow-oval generated in 1, and rotate it as a function of the time of day. You now have a baked on shadow that shifts with the time of day. The nice thing about this method is that you only need to do this process once per environmental asset. Every time an art piece is inserted into a map, add it's shadow-oval as an additional texture. Bake everything, drop the correct corresponding mask onto it afterwards and use the same general script regime (rotate X radians per game time Y) to control the rotation. Sorry for the low-fi graphics, I hope it gets the point across.

This is a great example of tone / atmosphere that BG1/2 brought with them. I really hope the item stories and the sketches (if I had to pick one, it would be sketches) make it into PE.