Elerond

Pretty sure there are more practical uses for carbon fiber than a Ferrari, but what the hell. That is what I said, so you agree that magical chainmail bikini is only expensive ego stroking thing that don't give any actual benefit to cheaper magical armours and in some cases it is even worse? If so don't see any bad in it, as my beef is that in ego-stroking things that are better than functional things and only reason for this is "magic" that don't have any logic in it.

I see mixture of real world cultures in every culture concept. Drywood: looks to me culture that is bit poorer than others, as their clothing focus more in function than looks. Their clothing also looks like it is designed for seasonal weather. Ixamitl: Looks culture from much warmer climate and and wealthier as clothes have much more decoration than what they have in Drywood. Vailian Republics: Looks also wealthy culture, but from looks of it they come from more seasonal weather climate than Ixamitlic culture. Aedyr Empire: Looks culture from warm climate and they have same low decorative style as Drywood, but with bit more dyes in their hands. In my opinion these are quite good cultural concepts. Monk seems to be cool class, as to max benefits your soul power, you need to sacrifice your protection and weapons, but without making more geared up build useless, as it sounds that torment reach with long range melee weapon can be quite devastating, even if you can't hit as many times as you could with unarmed build. And it also looks like class for those who want chainmail bikini/speedo wearing characters, that don't lose their effectiveness in battle because of that choice.

People don't buy (at least usually) those mint-condition orginal #1 issues to read them but own them because they are rare which gives them value over their normal price. So if we use this analog to magical enchanted bikinis, then they have value only because they are rare, not because they are good. And if magic is costly resource one could think it would most likely be used more functional items than chainmail bikini, which would cause expotential price rise for those, without giving them any actual bonuses over "normal" magical armour. And when we are speaking about PE, then magical bikinis lose lot of their usefulness, because of firearms, which magic can't stop (as is metioned in updates), so in PE world they would cost more and give less protection than even non-magical armours in some cases. But of course enchanting items could use some different magic than what wizards use to protect themselves.

If it is not broken don't try fix it, is first thing that comes in my mind about this topic.

You should calculate amount of energy needed to do such fireball and if we take hypotese where one can create such amount energy from vacuum then it should be logical that you can also decimate that energy as easilly or at least call same amount energy to counter act with that energy. And what comes to lightning in BG it's not lightning itself that moves slowly, but that energy masses, like two energy balls which have big potential difference between them which creates lightning between them that moves with slow base towards place where wizard aimed it. Or some other similar explanation that works with science.

Resting, inventory system, etc. game mechanics support game's design, instead of designing game to support specific mechanics. So for example when we speak about limiting rest areas we should think why this game needs such thing, what such limitations bring in the game. Like do they balance some other mechanics in the game, or are they for verisimilitude, or is it mini-game, etc. As current plans of game includes per rest abilities and healing only by resting in the game, limiting resting becomes game and difficulty balancing tool and therefore quite important part of sensible game design. That is because limiting healing and some abilities with rest become quite meaningless design choice if there is no restrictions for the resting or at least some consequence like time limits in quest etc. So question rise which path to choose or should we drop resting and rest limited mechanics from the game. Of course we could go with path that resting is in the game only to add verisimilitude and not limit it all, but this path can also bit back and cause player’s suspension of disbelief to be broken as player starts to rest after every encounter as it gives him/her characters back their per rest abilities and heal them, which can mean that player’s characters rest absolute unbelievable amount of time and sometimes they rest in illogical and unbelievable places. Which is why usually resting for verisimilitude sake also needs restriction mechanics to work as it was intended.

It is to show that upscaling don't make it look bad. Of course they could add more details to it if they render it to higher resolution, but that would add production cost so much (as Josh has stated), that they don't feel that higher resolution renders would be worth of it.

I scaled example screen from PE's kickstarter campaing to future proof 12800x7200 resolution to check how it would look Warning picture is over 12 MB https://8uuxpq.sn2.livefilestore.com/y1pG-zQAVObVBzKCO_TkMkIBua0lNN7DG3_EpobLBZwbDeTjW0MnAAhq9CHTb04meFWruRmTjv4Wbekl1aQoHTOITVfgYScQukq/PE-TempleEntrance01-areasize.jpg?psid=1 Here is orginal (1 MB) https://8uuxpq.sn2.livefilestore.com/y1pjZEGfD6qGmWYFZApw329XhIrGtoiJ5hs6vt-U1rUghann_wvvktLrfS5UJlxzV4vVxGImTfIGbb0tzKcLblkKr-pUyVtvt2Q/PE-TempleEntrance01-2560x1440.jpg?psid=1 So you can compare them in full screen mode and check if there is any difference.

"Fantasy" clothes in German style (warning link includes pictures of nude woman)

All of the pictures have made after KS ended. Armour concepts ( 27 March 2013 ) http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63557-update-47-odds-and-ends/ Godlike concept (20 February 2013) http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63395-update-43-pretty-and-technical/ Orlan concept (30 January 2013) http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63273-update-40-orlan-first-look-and-ziets-on-pantheon-design/ And in that concept from Larian we don't see any armour, only prudish dryad (how else you describe tree spirit who wears clothes, to cover sensitive areas ).

They can and probably will do it so that you see same ammount map regardless what resolution you use, by upscaling or downscaling their rendered maps, instead of scaling how much they so map to player, I suspect this because of zoom function and what Josh have said about their plans. Biggest problem in IE games was that they didn't have dynamic GUI-HUD, which caused lots of problems in scaling game to different resolutions. And because IE games didn't have good inbuild scaling, they need mods to work on different aspect rations and high resolutions, which mod gui to work with different resolutions and zoom map to fit new gui. I don't know if mods use map zooming because of lack of scaling support in engine or because modders like better view where you can see more action and less detail. But PE should have real time rendered GUI, and Unity supports scaling of maps instead of only showing more of the map on the screen. Screens scaling is common place technology in consoles, where games are rendered to specific resolutions and then scaled on tv-screens resolution. Same goes with PE, their maps are rendered to specific resolutions and then they scale them to right size for monitor, so that game looks somewhat same on all supported resolutions. IE games did same, but they had inbuild support only for few resolutions, because of infinity engine's poor support for multiple resolutions. Unity don't work same way if Obsidian don't make some changes how it handless 2d scaling. http://beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=46241

Put if map is rendered to 2560x1440 resolution and 4k support is implement by scaling it to 4096*2160 resolution, it will look same in both of those screens. similar when comparing watching DVDs (720x480/576) in 32" pal tv, 32" hd ready tv (720p) and 32" full hd tv (1080p). picture is same size in all of the tvs as picture is scaled from dvd resolution to tvs resolution. Only way to make game look smaller in same size monitor is to mod it to show more map, which causes game to zoom out, similar how PS:Ts high resolution mods work.

If you play game now in 27" screen it will look same in future on 4k 27" screen as there is as many pixels for every inch of the screen, there is of course possibility mod more map to come visible, but without such there is no difference, except that text will maybe be more pleasant to read in that 4k monitor.

I think one of the bigest reson why I think this topic is quite moot is because that Obsidian has represented us their vision of aesthetics style which they plan to use in PE (functional, only minor differences between sexes and historicaly influenced but adapted to be its own style) in their updates considering project and backers have given this style somewhat unanimous approval.

Ask GR Anything: Do boobs actually sell games? http://www.gamesradar.com/ask-gr-anything-do-boobs-actually-sell-games/

It takes some skill to know how to take hits right when you are wearing armour, as you don't want to get any direct hits as those can hurt even if hit don't penetrate armour, so you want to position yourself so that hits only bevel your armour instead and that needs some skill to do right. Of course this could be part of fighting skill, but as usually style of fighting quite different when you wear armour and when you don't wear one, which gives some reason for armour wearing to be its own skill.

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams also finished kickstarter project (rised 186k, asked 150k), but it was almost ready when it come in kickstarter. It is 50% off in gog, for couple hours still. http://www.gog.com/gamecard/giana_sisters_twisted_dreams

http://warhammeronline.wikia.com/wiki/Calendar This gives some light how calendars work in Warhammer universum.

Its an argument for argument's sake, as most of the people (my estimate) think that choosen approach is excelent one.

Intresting point to bring up when we are talking about game that those owners of those multi-million dollar properties don't see worth their time or money. (And maybe should I point out that some of their best selling procts like Battlefield and Call of Duty aim towards realism in their art style). Of course world best selling (or at least most downloaded) game products Angry Birds which have quite fantastic graphics style (Angry Birds titles have now over 1.7 billion downloads), so maybe all games should look like them.

I have always liked open map exploration, like in fallout, darklands and arcanum. In my opinion SoZ map is modernized version of those, why I usually put it in same category. But BG style map is also okey if it works better from game design perspective.

I am not sure if this is the right terminology, but that is how I meant it. In scaling you take already rendered item and stretch or shrink it to fit on the screen, but if you want item to actually have same PPI than monitor you need to render it to monitor's resolution.

If pixel density is enough for current monitors, it is also enough for future monitors if you don't plan start use much bigger monitor from same distance. Although it could be handy trick if you could adjust text for higher PPI as it would make text more readable. So for example in 4k monitors you only scale backgrounds for bigger resolution, but text is renderer for target resolution.