Sensuki

Does this differ to the IE games where every hit played a hit animation ?

No update tomorrow either right? I assume the wait will be a full month (or one of those 'when it's done' cases).

elitist REAL PC gamer reporting in. We are not a dying and diminishing segment. Keyboard and mouse is not dying out. There are certain types of games that will always be best on PC, to be played with keyboard and mouse FPS - despite them being popular on console, an FPS is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better on a PC, especially for competitive. RTS - games like Starcraft: Brood War, Company of Heroes, Age of Empires etc would be unplayable on a console. Isometric RPGs like Project Eternity - are inspired by an RTS contol schema and interface design. As proven by BG:EE you 'can' play them with a touch screen but Baldur's Gate 1 doesn't really require too many inputs per minute in combat. BG2 Mage fights will get quite hairy and Eternity is being designed with even more constant inputs in mind. Most importantly - any resources spent on providing a console or touch interface will hurt the size, scope and quality of the game, and could compromise the design. Get a Media PC and wireless keyboard and mouse and play on your couch - problem solved.

I am a bit concerned about the display of target 'DCs' or values on attack rolls in Eternity, although I'm only concerned about Expert Mode. When I make a roll to hit or something, I do not want to know the target number. The Infinity Engine games obfuscated these values like D&D I guess. For example Sensuki attacks Adam Brennecke: 18 + 4 = 22: Miss Whereas in later games the target values have been shown, so a 'modern example' would be Sensuki attacks Adam Brennecke: 18 + 4 = 22 vs AC 23: Miss In some recent Something Awful posts, Josh has explained that target values will be shown in pop-ups (of which can be disabled, and are turned off in Expert Mode) and I believe he is talking about avoiding obfuscation in an upcoming GDC talk - I wanted to know whether the target variables will also be obfuscated from the combat log in Expert Mode (or when whatever setting that disables popups will be disabled) , and if not could we have an option to be able to disable the display of target values in the Options Menu. --- From the Dialogue UI screenshot Brandon posted a while ago, the speaker's name was the color of brown. In Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 and Icewind Dale 2 the speaker's minor or major clothing color (I think it was major) was the color of their name in the Dialogue UI and combat log. In Icewind Dale 1 the colors were simplified and light blue was always the color of an NPC speaker. How is the color coding of names in the Dialogue UI and Combat log being handled in Eternity ? --- What is the size of the current largest external area in 1440p per screen render size ? --- In recent examples Josh gave on Something Awful, the War Hammer and Morningstar use Pierce or Crushing damage (whichever is better), is this correct in that they both have those properties or was one of them swapped ? --- A while ago I asked about attack animations and how attack speed would end up affecting them. It was stated that at the present time (may or june i think) attack speed increased the speed of the animations only and not downtime between animations. Josh said that they will probably be eventually changed to a combination of animation speed and downtime or just downtime between animations - has this been played around with yet or is it something that you're planning to revisit during post-production ? --- Since attack bonuses were moved to a 100 point scale up from 20 (+15 now instead of +3), will other systems follow suit ? (skills, attributes etc)

If the circles aren't green it won't feel as much like an IE game.

It's pretty simple. I want them to be the same as the IE games, simple as that. I would like to be able to change them back to legacy colors. I understand the reason for the default being blue, but I will be disappointed if I cannot change them back. Call me strange, but I think it's really off putting, especially the unselected royal blue color they're using - that looks ****ed. The multi-colored selection circles in BG:EE are absolutely retarded as well.

They're gonna do the same thing tomorrow guys. Prepare to get trolled.

Not many of the design decisions have been what I would call my first preference, but not necessarily bad. I only have minor gripes. This is a bit of speculation but I fear that the devs have gone 'full retard' if you will regarding design of feminine proportions because of their frustration in having to over-sexualize their characters in previous titles. I just hope that the female models are not all like Asha Greyjoy or Brienne of Tarth. I like that they've gone naturalistic in armor design and whatnot, but I hope the definition (hips and dugs etc) are still there on the base models. The Dungeon screenshot didn't look too promising there. ---- I would have prefered a |_| shaped UI to the bottom bar only, and I do not agree with the reasons given for it. I think the portrait size in the UI is too small, which is a shame. ---- I don't like the fact that attack animations will not have early cancels as I believe that will end up making the game feel a bit clunky and the responsiveness will end up not being as crisp as the IE games, we'll have to wait and see there. ---- I don't like the fact that the legacy selection circle colors have been changed - I understand why, but I have a feeling that people who preferred green & red will have to put up with blue for PC controlled and not have the option to change it. That is immersion breaking for me. ---- I fear that the combat log will be more revealing of information than I think it should be, even on Expert mode. Recent examples lead me to believe that when I make a roll to hit or a skill check, the game will give me the target DC. I do not want to know the target DC I think that is stupid. I prefer the legacy Infinity Engine style of 18 + 4 = 22: Hit (or Miss) without giving away the target DC. ---- I would also be annoyed if the default IE mouse controls were changed. I want left click and hold to be marquee select and right click and hold to be re-position party formation. This is pure speculation but I have a feeling they may have taken away the IE style right click functionality in favor of something else. ---- That's all I can think of that I would find really annoying at this stage and most of them are speculative.

In the RPGCodex Q&A, I asked a question about the Voice over distribution in Project Eternity. Josh Sawyer responded with: Icewind Dale 1 had 24 Voice sets (12 Male, 12 Female) in the default game, and 6 more in the expansion. The male voice set is mostly the same guy doing different voices and there's a couple different ones. The female voice set is kind of similar although I think more actresses are used. Anyway Eternity is more nuanced than Icewind Dale is as far as races, culture and ethncity goes. I think it will be very interesting to see what we end up getting for player voices, because I wouldn't be surprised if Josh Sawyer has pronounciation guides for accents from different regions or something - that would be cool. I'm really interested in the Vailian accents in particular, a combination of chocolaty dark actors/actresses with the pseudo-italian/occitan pronounciation will be very interesting (if they end up being accented, it might be more expensive to do because it will take longer to get right). Having some Cultural or Ethnicity based voice sets would also be cool because you could throw in some conlang words or phrases for battle cries, curses etc. It would be funny if a particular culture had a tendancy to mix common tongue words with their own when they get angry. Here's also hoping that we get a similar amount, or perhaps slightly more voice sets. Another thing that got kind of monotonous in the Infinity Engine games was that the game always played the voice set of the highest party member in the formation order every time you had a group selected. It would be cool if it played a random character's voice instead or the option of randomness was available in the sounds menu - something to make voices less monotonous anyway.

Three we know of so far: Eld Aedyran, Glanfathan, Vailian There's probably a few more but I forget.

They'll be using one of J.E. Sawyer's conlangs if they do incantations (and I hope they do).

I liked the IE right-click functionality of where you could spin the direction of your party formation. Are you keeping that function to right click+hold when interacting with pathable terrain ? Left click+hold was marquee select IIRC.

I'll pass that on to the guy who asked those questions, I'm sure he'll be happy to hear that

Loot and bragging rights I guess since there's no XP reward (unless there is actually an optional reward for defeating that group, but there probably isn't).

Actually now that I remembered, when we were doing the Codex Q&A, the editor cut most of the programming related questions from the form. Here are some of them

Very cool

Cool cheers rj. One other question I can think of We haven't heard much information on the Godlike race for a while. It was previously stated that the Godlike race was going to be a "sub-option" of all races, not just humans. Does being a Godlike give different bonuses depending on race, and are the Godlike 'types' being handled by the Ethnicity option ?

Who managed to beat it ?

Sweet. Sweet. Hope that encounter stays!

Cheers for the reply Adam. That goes a ways into explaining why you guys don't want to do a video just yet Keep on Trucking! Where is this magic button ? I've never seen it.

you can ignore people?

Looks like the Environment Art Intern position was filled. Job listing and forum thread both deleted. Now just for the full time position.

oops

How did your Fog of War implementation turn out ? How is the UI coming along ? the longer the Contract VFX Artist position is open, does that mean you will have to wait until someone is hired to get VFX for spells etc or will you pull staff from the project / other projects to fill in ? What format are the game audio files going to be? Will you be using a form of compression or going for a higher-res format (such as uncompressed wav). Did you end up doing dynamic hair as well as dynamic cloth ?

NDAsoz