rjshae

I don't know why everyone assumes people are talking about "pitch black like you're blindfolded" when people say they want it darker and want light sources to have more of a visual/gameplay effect. Some parts of an area map are going to be darker than others. Just look at the illustration above: the pools of darkness are near impenetrable. That means lowering the lighting levels will create areas of pitch black. I've played in games like that, and there was little to enjoy in the experience. I think Baldur's Gate 2 had a few underground areas that were very difficult to navigate because they were so dark. But if necessary I can use the game calibration feature on my monitor to brighten the dark regions, so no matter.

Casting my Summon AH-46 Apache spell now...

It will be interesting to see what fog and weather look like... some sunny day. Can't wait!

I kind of like the look of the dialogue system for D:OS:

Playing in a dark environment is about as much fun as a bag full of mixed nuts and bolts. No thanks. If you need to play in a pitch black environment, I suggest wearing a blindfold.

Perhaps they could illustrate the penalties from lighting effects using the character portraits? When a character is in darkness, their portrait could go to a dark gray near-silhouette with a monochrome background. Characters with night vision could transition to a reddish hue. When a torch (or light spell) is active, the player portrait can light up with a flame hue and the background go darker.

I completely agree. The game designers can model the night effects just by applying combat and skill penalties; there's no need to make the players go groping around on a pitch-black screen.

You must have the wrong country. We use advanced airborne robotics to smite our twits now...

I don't like this either. There is absolutely no dynamic shadowing. None. Zero. Zilch. The shadows from trees, bushes, etc. never move. If you watch the character cross the river, you can see his shadow shift. But yeah, that's about it. Dynamic shadowing would probably be a very hard problem to solve with these 2D graphics, so I think we just live with it. Then again, maybe in this world the sun doesn't set... it just turns off for the night. Nah...

In update #49, I was trying to figure out how they got the character shadows to shift when he crossed the river. My guess is they have built a gray scale depth map for the area that gives the actual surface depth once the water and vegetation is removed. That can then be used to compute the perimeter of the water surface and to determine where the projected shadow falls. However they do it, that's pretty nice work; it's an effective illusion. The shifting highlights from the moving point light source is presumably computed from a bump map. But I could have sworn I saw some shifting shadows as well. Maybe it was just my imagination? There were only a couple of really very minors issues. The first was that light from the camp fire was pretty weak even at night. I'd have expected a more expansive lighting circle to appear. The other one was the motion blur, which didn't seem very natural. But perhaps that was an effect caused by the video? The ambient sound was very nice and I thought I got a good directional sound from the water.

Whoa! That is very cool. I had to watch it in HD a dozen times to catch all the little details. Very, very nice. Maybe a little blurry with the character moving, but otherwise just fantastic! The work and the technology is sublime.

^^^ Funny dat. The dude with the crazy tattoos used to be the one you worried was going to rob the convenience store. Now he's the guy behind the counter.

Urge to donate screeches to a halt: there's no Paypal option for the boxed copy. Not good.

You're free to be a complete twit. You're also free to loath a complete twit. Freedom: everybody wins.

15 pounds for what looks like an RPG Maker game? Wow! This guy is charging $1-$4 for his. That one by the students I think is really to go help buy new computers or something. An okay work around IMHO. Thanks for the enlightenment.

Some perspective might help you. Try taking a long walk.

A-10 Warthogs rock. Saw one at an air show once. Their engines make the coolest sound during an approach run (although if I were an opponent I wouldn't want to be hearing it).

Weresheep give me a warm fuzzy feeling. At least they will once I grab the shears...

The End of an Age: Early Remnants It has an early-Ultima look with decent, blocky graphics. Not sure how serious to take it with such a low funding goal though.

Try applying the CoE enhancement mod.

Hurray!!! Now I can finally use PayPal.

So that's why they haven't been showing us much lately...

Never had a desire to play in MMO games; the thought of playing with a mob of needy 14-year olds isn't appealing. I'll stick to the single-player experience.

It's not what powers you gain that's important, but what you do with them. To balance things out, the gaining of any type of superpowers should be counterbalanced with major drawbacks. Scaling up the potency of the PC by granting him superpowers would push him/her above the capability of most opponents, essentially diminishing the capacity for dramatic conflict and linearizing the progress of the plot. The game may then need to move the story to a different part of the world where the hazards are greater, thereby raising the question as to why the powers in that region haven't spread widely and taken over. I suppose the plot could thereafter be about stopping the spread of those powers, turning it into another "world in peril" fantasy. Since this setting is soul-centric, one of the hidden goals of a character with an unbroken soul could be to become transcendent; to ascend to a higher level of existence. Gaining superpowers could be a representation of this process. But to make it dramatic, there would need to be some type of resistance to this ascendancy. Someone or something either needs to stop other creatures from ascending, or draws their powers from incapacitating those with superpowers. The greater powers of the PC may draw in those hungry to draw upon their capability. This in turn may significantly endanger others in the surroundings. Perhaps the religious practitioners of the land have gradually devised a means to deal with this danger by dispatching the source (the PC) elsewhere? As a result, those characters developing superpowers are gradually weeded out of the local population: a PC can choose the path of the normal power level and remain in the lands, or strive for superpowers, be perceived as a threat, and then be voluntarily or forcibly sent away permanently.