Jump to content
The Community Blog (An Invitation)

anek

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    169

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by anek

  1. anek
    Then couldn't they also use that to adjust the character's position while walking over uneven terrain? Right now, the character crossing the stream looks like he's walking on an invisible, flat bridge.
  2. anek
    Note that the animated environments from Torment were created at the same time as the Eternity one, using the same engine, with the same people working together. InXile are cooperating with Obsidian, they didn't have to do any of the pre-production, they're simply leveraging the work that Obsidian has already done. Because of this, both games are going to have pretty much exactly the same graphical quality (it's down to the artists of either team when creating the areas, since they are using the same tools). I don't think they're cooperating that closely. At least not yet. If I remember correctly, Brian Fargo said at the end of the kickstarter that his artists/interns experimented on their own over the weekend to find a way to produce those animated scenes in Unity. Also, I think they said that they were produced without assistance from programmers, and that once programmers will come in (during pre-production) and improve the dynamic lighting it will be more realistic.
  3. anek
    I don't like this either. Well in the actual game you won't see the day/night cycle fast-forward like that, so it will be much less noticeable what changes and what doesn't. While having the shadows change would be nice attention to detail, it's not really necessary.
  4. anek
    The BG2 intro combined 2D drawings with some blending/panning animation quite effectively:
  5. anek
    I hope that with regards to moving the party through confined spaces, it didn't capture the IE feeling too closely...
  6. anek
    They are already 83% there (2.89 mil / 3.5 mil)... Well, inXile claims that this will not interfere with Avellone's work on Project Eternity. Let's hold them accountable to that!
  7. anek
    What does a new video streaming codec have to do with Project Eternity's data size? PE's data will consist of pre-rendered background images, 3D models and textures for characters, etc. All of that will presumably be compressed using appropriate image/texture/data compression technology. Video streaming is something else entirely.
  8. anek
    George answers this concern on Formspring: http://www.formspring.me/GZiets/q/434424012253185870
  9. anek
    Doesn't the fact that it's concept art imply that it does not show the final style?
  10. anek
    Did Fargo or his team claim that it is, somewhere? In the interview linked by the OP, only the intro text added by the magazine calls the game a sequel, not Fargo himself. On the game's official website, the About page introduces it as: "Torment: Tides of Numenera™ continues the thematic legacy of the critically acclaimed Planescape: Torment™." This is not fundamentally different from how Project Eternity is introduced on its own website: "Miss classic cRPGs like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment? So do we! Introducing Obsidian's PROJECT ETERNITY." Both play on the nostalgia of existing fan bases. So what? The main difference is that for Torment they're actually adopting a part of the original name, but I don't see why that's such a big deal. It's not called "Planescape: Torment II", it's called "Torment: Tides of Numenera". This, I think, makes it pretty clear that there are strong thematic ties to PST, but it is not a sequel but rather a separate game in a different setting. What's this got to do with Obsidian?
  11. anek
    Well, if they actually manage to make a game that feels a lot like PST and appeals to the same fanbase, that's not a bad thing right? I think it's too early to pass judgment on this game, either way.
  12. anek
    Have of ever played one of the Infinity Engine games? Blocking wasn't a problem there. First of all it didn't occur all that often, as the maps were intelligently designed for the static isometric usecase from the ground up. And when characters did get (partially) obscured behind objects, the blocked parts would shine through using semi-transparency / dithering / silhouette-highlighting. You'd get used to it pretty quickly. I, for one, didn't feel like it reduced the fun of playing those games in any way. What *would* have killed the fun, though, would be having to rotate the camera all the time to play the game. This happens in all games that support camera rotation - the engine and map designers take this feature into account and stop worrying about blocking - so for the users, constantly managing the camera becomes a mandatory chore. It takes attention away from the actual combat and world exploration, messes with your sense of direction, etc. All this just because it's more "modern"? No thanks.
  13. anek
    Sawyer answered here: http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/432792143375920971
  14. anek
    Don't forget that PE will be a computer game, not pen & paper. Things that might have been too "rules heavy" and "slow" for P&P, might very well work great when the computer takes care of evaluating all the rules for a particular action in a fraction of a second.
  15. anek
    I really hope they won't include any artificial convenience indicators for area effects - neither in this case, nor in the case of AoE spell placement etc. This is an RPG, not an RTS game or a CAD program. For example, in the IE games I always found it a lot of fun to try to place Fireballs in such a way that they would hit all visible melee enemies at once, but not hit my own front-line melee fighters. It wouldn't always work out, so there was a risk involved - but when it did work as intended, it felt really satisfying. A circle indicating the exact area that would be affected on release of the spell, would have negated much of the risk and fun and immersion (and sense of achievement for becoming better over time at placing the spells). I think the same would be true if a circle would show where exactly your characters can move without being engaged or disengaged. Combat isn't something sterile and precise comparable to placing objects in a CAD program, it is messy and bloody and often unpredictable. An RPG should reflect that.
  16. anek
    You know you can have up to six party members, right?
  17. anek
    The next time Obsidian does a kickstarter, I know what one of the stretch goals is going to be: $ 10,000,000 Chris Avellone will dress up as an elf, pointy ears and silly costume and all, and sing one of those high-pitched elvish songs from the LotR soundtrack.
  18. anek
    Just FYI, that is a good level of zoom/character model size ( I don't mean the size of the viewable square). That + 1920x1080 (or what have you) worth of background would look sweet I wonder why the blue circle is so big though, it feels weird to me.
  19. anek
    Best update yet. I vote for more Adam Brennecke updates.
  20. anek
    In some countries of the world, unfortunately not so historically.
  21. anek
    In BG2, there were so many rings and ioun stones etc. which gave slow but continuous health regeneration, that beyond a certain point in the game I never had to rest due to low health, only due to running out of memorized spells (and to get rid of that annoying "fatigue" icon on the character's portraits... ).
  22. anek
    You can get a search page for the most recent posts by a specific developer (or any other forum user) like this: Click the developer's name above one of his posts, to get to his profile page Click "Find Content" near the top-right Click "Only posts" near the bottom-left Then you can bookmark that page, or "App Tab" it, or whatever. Here are a few examples: [searchInKey]=&userMode=content"]Adam Brennecke (executive producer and programmer) [searchInKey]=&userMode=content"]J.E. Sawyer (project lead and game designer) [searchInKey]=&userMode=content"]Rob Nesler (art director) [searchInKey]=&userMode=content"]Steve Weatherly (programmer) [searchInKey]=&userMode=content"]Bobby Null (programmer) [searchInKey]=&userMode=content"]Justin Bell (composer) Their profiles show that all of them are either in the the "Developers" or "Developers+" forum user groups, but I haven't found a way to list all groups members or search for posts from all group members in one go.
  23. anek
    With character models this detailed, faces will be clearly discernible (unlike, say, in the Infinity Engine games). What will this mean for the protagonist? Since, according to earlier kickstarter updates, the player is supposed to be able to freely conceive pretty much everything about the protagonist they want to play as, from personal background to career to age to alignment/beliefs, this should be reflected in his or her appearance, and especially the face. In the Infinity Engine games this was easy - character models were so small and pixelated that not much could be discerned anyways, so a character's look was pretty much defined by their portrait - which was just a 2D image that players could easily customize. How will Project Eternity solve this? Will the character creation screen give users so many customization options for the protagonist's 3D character model, that one could, say, create a 50 year old fighter with a rough and scarred face and steely glance? Or a 19 year old mage with a soft, tri-angular face, narrow eyes, and an appeal of playfulness and irresponsibility? Or will we simply get a few fixed 3D models to choose from?
  24. anek
    Even without an explicit queuing system, one way to improve interaction would be to at least optimize the order in which the steps of a single command are executed. If I remember correctly, in the Infinity Engine games, if you selected a party member who was currently in hide-in-shadows mode, and click an enemy, what happened as a result of that click was: the party member becomes visible the party member walks towards the enemy the party member attacks the enemy I would have found it much more convenient if the order of 1 and 2 had been reversed.
  25. anek
    It wouldn't be impossible to achieve, but it would be annoying to use.
×
×
  • Create New...