mstark

They're Aumaua. Their concept art is reminiscent of what D&D would call Half-Orcs, but we don't know too much about what the Aumaua will be like.

Haha I was lucky enough to play that game when I was 10, the Butcher scared the living **** out of me when I first opened that, seemingly innocent, door. I don't expect anyone in this forum to actually be scared, but moments like these certainly add to the memorability & legacy of a game that, without them, would be fairly plain. This type of encounter, obviously, has no place in a game like PE (I agree with your previous point), but I believe the idea of it is still valid. As I think darkness (fear of the unknown) should matter in Project Eternity's dungeons, and items to deal with it (Eg. torches) to be present, I voted "yes" to a horror element. Not in a way that severely impacts the gameplay of a top down story-driven isometric party based tactical combat RPG (tdsdipbtcRPG?), but as something that adds to it.

This, because this is exactly my situation, too It's just an absolute must.

Uh, horror has no place in an isometric game? The Butcher begs to differ...

If you read about Project Eternity you'll quickly find out that it's a 2D game (with 3D models walking on top of a 2D landscape), as such it will be locked to a fixed angle.

Interesting ideas! I'm all for a journal in the style of the IE games, which basically acts, and is written, as a diary. The main character writes notes about any encounter, quest, or story related event in diary form. Entries include detailed impressions, character names, and what was discussed / what events took place. The notes usually make it clear what motifs different characters involved in the plot has, but it never makes assumptions about what action I might want to take ("Go to location X and find cave Y" vs. "I have marked the location on my map and may investigate it in the future"). It also lists what choices You made as a player character, and what the result was. The problem, in BG2 at least, is that there is no way to separate out journal entries relating to each other, so if you go and pick up several quests, you end up with several pages of journal entries to scan through in-between entries that actually relate to each other. An immersive, diary style journal would probably fit a game in the style of PE, and while I wouldn't like to see it highlighting objectives in red, it'd be good to have some modern sorting features & view options available!

things that got onto my mind when seeing it (yes, I accept it's work in progress): backtracking nightmare, but maybe that's something we'll simply have to accept in a game of this type. I certainly wouldn't like a "teleport to surface?" shrine at the end of every single dungeon. Also, lots of reused props/sprites (would prefer a less detailed dungeon, or smaller even, if it means less repeated models).

and possibly a few dialogues in game, too, I'm sure there'll be a character or two fit for his... distinct eloquence

Is the building a textured 3D model(!!) or a drawing (concept art)?

My six ½" tall party members are going to have fingers and shoelaces on their character models? *speechless* It's officially the future, folks! Update is beyond amazing! I hope to see more of updates this long, or longer Love the Minecraft mention, and everything else in the entire post (coincidental, or a reference to the Minecraft mention in the torch thread!?).

I wouldn't mind having to rely on torches early game, but the game fairly quickly giving you access to trinkets/items/spells that provide more permanent light. Keep in mind that this wouldn't be a dungeon crawler like Grimrock, you're not going to need torches all the time. It won't be so bad if torches are limited time, you'll only need them occasionally, you're not playing the entire game in a pitch black dungeon. Darkness has the potential to be a great addition to the game, requiring various ways for the player to deal with it, but it won't be the entirety of the game.

FF9 used a similar technique, where 2D backgrounds have perspective and as your character gets further away from the screen he becomes smaller: AFAIK, this particular effect is impossible to achieve in PE because we'll have a free roaming camera, as opposed to a camera view locked to character movement. That said, there's nothing stopping them from rendering interiors orthographically at a lower angle (as they've said they're experimenting with), but this still won't achieve depth.

Boom.

Windows using C:/Users/<USER NAME>/AppData/ as the save game folder is a security measure, and not one that'll be easy to side step for the developers, I believe. Windows 8 (and to an extent 7, AFAIK) doesn't allow programs write permissions to the C:/Program Files folder as it's a huge security risk (creating some strange issues for playing old games like Baldur's Gate on it, since it can randomly migrate all the save files from the default save folder to AppData, breaking your save games, you will then have to move them back manually and give the game correct permissions with an Admin account). While not friendly to the average user, since there's no clear information about where your files are stored, keeping the files separate from the installation folder is a huge benefit, as outlined by anek.

@OP A problem that I can see with the idea is that the game is going to have an orthographic projection, where objects that are further away from you still appear at the same size as those closest to you. The more you angle an image while using this technique, the stranger it will look. Perspective Projection vs. Orthographic Projection illustrated: If you lower the camera angle, you'd also expect things further from you to appear smaller, and things closer to you to appear larger (eg. your idea of a lich in a tomb "coming out of it"). This means you'd not only render the areas at a different angle, you'd render them using a different kind of projection. Perspective would also mean that, even though the background your characters are standing on is a static 2D image, the characters within it would need to appear slightly larger or smaller depending on the distance from the camera. It would be very hard to give something the feeling of coming out at you using orthographic projection. Just a few thoughts, assuming I understood your idea correctly . Edit, as was pointed out in the post before mine, the technique to achieve what you're asking for was used in Resident Evil 2 (perspective 2D backgrounds with real-time 3D "depth" overlaid), though probably at a much lower angle than what you are imagining . On Commandos: All their assets were rendered from 4 different angles from the original 3D piece. That's 4 times the rendering time, 4 times the amount of assets produced, and 4 times the post-production time painting over them & creating collision coordinates.

The gamma mentioned earlier would refer to Gamma Correction: http://en.wikipedia....amma_correction In short, neutral gamma should give you accurate colors and shadows, unfortunately not many screens have accurate color/contrast reproduction, and as such raising gamma above default will make the screen appear brighter and may reveal more details on a screen with bad contrast. On high-end screens, with accurate image reproduction, raising gamma in game will do nothing more than make it appear whiter, with no actual improved visibility.

You do realize that both of these "dungeons" were very well lit and inhabited interiors? The torches you carry with your character aren't going to be the only light sources in the whole world. The only place I'd expect serious darkness to be in place, and add to the gameplay, would be for example when exploring tombs, long abandoned dungeons, natural cave systems, or night time in a forest. Think along the lines of the uninhabited parts of the Underdark. Also, I don't think anyone is suggesting designing darkness in such a way to make it inhibit gameplay, the designers aren't stupid, they wouldn't use it in an area where you're required to make out details in order to solve the puzzle. Unless torches are part of the puzzle. Carrying one or two light sources would likely light up a large enough area. By the way, "darkness" is already in most of the IE games in the shape of "fog of war", although that is more of a line-of-sight that's not dependent on a light source. With darkness, line of sight would act as normal in any decently well lit area. I imagine that in a dark area you'd require a light source to get your line of sight.

I'm glad to see a sensible discussion in a thread that could potentially have turned very bad I'd love if the devs showing more forum presence, but there are many hours required to follow the forum closely enough to get a feel for what to add to a discussion. It's already quite apparent that they read the forums very carefully (several of their updates and interviews touch directly on issues that have been discussed extensively on the forum prior to the update, to the point where it can't just be coincidence). But I do agree it'd be nice to see more of the Developer green around, voicing their thoughts on issues, it might help keep some discussions from straying in ridiculous directions .

You're both right. I'm just very curious about what the dynamic lighting tests with moving torches looked like .

Since the kickstarter ended, the flow of updates and information has dropped severely, which is fair enough, the dev team is busy making the game now, rather than advertising it. The weekly newsletter is great, but I have to say that, to me, it feels like the developers have now slipped in behind closed doors, possibly unintentionally. Part of the reason behind the crowd funding was not having to do everything in secrecy. We get to hear hints about the work that is happening, awesome effects being tried out, systems being developed, and solutions being tested through the occasional interview (most recently the TotalBiscuit one, the hints dropped in it triggered this thread), but we don't get to see any of it! Maybe it's a case of "we'll show something when it's ready to be shown", but, frankly, that's not quite as transparent a development process as I was hoping for. Why not show us the demos you come up with, share videos and tests, failed or successful, that you like for some reason? Even share some spectacularly failed renders! Now, I really don't want to sound like I'm speaking for everyone, but... we are all great fans, we are aware of that it's work in progress, and I think we will behave fairly well (I might regret saying this ) even if the dev team shows us something we don't quite like. We'll even understand if something that looks awesome in a test doesn't make it into the final game for x reason. What's keeping it from happening? It'd also make it possible for us to create more relevant discussions here on the forum. Maybe there really isn't as much material to show as is hinted by (I mean, they may be running lots of tests, but they may not produce publishable results in the shape of screenshots or video), or maybe it's kept for the documentary? Or maybe it's too time consuming to spend the time writing up updates? Am I just being impatient?

Anyone remember the man who falls from the sky and smashes into the ground right at the start of Morrowind, if you go in the right direction? Whatever you do, don't use his Scroll of Icarian Flight (+1000 acrobatics for 7 seconds) and jump xD.

I'm going to assume you never played Diablo 1 as a kid. I'm also going to assume you never played Tibia in it's early days of extreme darkness. Even Diablo 2 used light radius to great effect, but was never as scary as Diablo 1 due to more exterior areas and less reliance on it for survival. I literally jumped when I saw these words here. Never thought I would in a place like this! Old Antican here . One of the first things I think about when I hear the words "dungeon crawling" is a limited light radius, with absolute darkness and mystery around the edges of your party. Diablo 1, Tibia, most early games with dungeon crawling scare-factor elements in fact, had this. I think this is a perfect place to drop this interview with Adam by TotalBiscuit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-TBCrqERus&feature=g-u where Adam briefly talks about torches and how they are working on trying to get dynamic lighting into a 2D landscape, and how that's possible with today's technology. I can't wait to see examples of this in action. In case you didn't listen through the interview, this also means that, yes, torches held by characters are at least being considered for the game . If darkness in dungeons (complete blackness), deep forests (dull blue/grey twilight/darkness), and night-time (blue-ish twilight) has to be considered as a gameplay element, we'll start valuing weapons or pieces of equipment that glow (add light radius) so much more! I can't even begin to describe the feeling I get when imagining this in PE. Awesome. If darkness is going to be as common, or more common (night cycle + dungeons), than normal daylight, equipment with light modifiers will become very desirable (and look graphically stunning with new rendering technology). Torches, lanterns, candles... and in a magical world, maybe all wizard staffs glow innately? (I imagine a staff channeling the powers of a soul lighting up when being held) . Maybe warrior adventurers always carry their precious Right of Light? Maybe Paladins glow with righteousness if they are devout enough (read: strong enough soul)? Maybe Monks are trained in fighting in the dark, giving them infravision? Maybe Ciphers, supposedly reading a lot, have access to lanterns that don't require a hand to hold them? Just some ideas. If there's darkness in the game, there should be plenty of ways to deal with it. It'll be scary at the start, when you enter your first dungeon and realize "oh ****, I can't see anything", and the next time you go to the shop you won't ignore that torch again.

Without introducing arbitrary queue limits, I am 99% sure that in 99.9% of situations a player will never queue up more than 2-3 move commands + 2-3 action commands. Remember, attacking an enemy already includes moving up to that enemy by default. Even the most complex of movement paths, a half circle to skirt around the battle field, could be executed with 4 movement commands, then add stealth & attack move in there and we're at 6. But queuing up 4 movement commands + stealth + attack may very well already have changed the tide of the battle, so, while it'll be useful in a few situations, 6 commands is still almost an extreme limit of what you'll ever be using even without introducing arbitrary limits. So what am I trying to say by this? Just that an action bar showing the earliest 6 queued actions for that character will be plenty, and further queued actions can appear outside of it and once the first action has been finished, each queue item is shifted one step, putting another one in view. There could be a subtle glow showing that there are more than 6 actions queued. 6 actions visible in the bar sounds like quite a good number, at least in the scenarios I can imagine. It's going to be exceptionally rare that you have 10 actions queued up and figure out that you just HAVE to change action 7 right now or everything will go to hell, without being able to wait for the first action to finish so that it gets into view. And if that situation happens, it's a matter of seconds to reassign those 10 actions from scratch in a new order (simply click anywhere without holding shift and the entire action queue is cleared, as an action that isn't explicitly queued by holding shift will overrule the queue). For people wanting mini-games, this is actually one I can get behind, it's like a mini-game of tactical planning before every fight. It encourages thinking the fight through before unpausing and charging in, and allows for fine tuning by adjusting/changing queues during battle. Either way, what I really only want queue-able actions for is to be able to cast a few spells, and then queue a ranged attack with my mages. Or cast heal, and queue attack. That's where it'd help ease up on micro-management the most, the whole "tactical planning mini-game" that would be allowed by endless action queues sounds like being potentially awesome, though. Another thing, let's assume we're going to have queued movements displayed similarly to how they are in StarCraft 2, where each waypoint has a line drawn between them. Potentially, this would mean we don't have to display movements in the action queue, or a movement could "intersect" actions in the action bar with a slim green line. Say you have 2 blue icons for defensive spells/abilities queued up, then a slim green line indicating movement, then a red attack icon. And, as Pipyui said, actions assigned to a certain waypoint would show up as mini icons in that location. And in case that'd make the battlefield too messy, with icons everywhere, you'd also have a very clear relation between the number of movement waypoints and the number of green intersecting lines in the action bar, making it very easy to make out at what time an action will be performed. Remember, unless you're just playing around with the system, you'll never have more than 4 movements queued with actions in between. Easy to glance. And if someone's brain can handle more, there's nothing in the system hindering queuing more actions . And a final thought, between waypoint matrixes, actions bars, and action icons on waypoints, the battlefield could become quite confusing for anyone not familiar with the system. This won't be a problem, so there's no need to make the functionality an optional one. Why? Because it's completely unobtrusive. You'll never see it unless you know it's there, and once you find out about it, you'll learn it intuitively. It's also something you can learn about in the external tutorial area, or stumble upon by intuition (trying to execute commands using shift). The game will still function by issuing commands one by one.

omg, I didn't know that, must buy it now :D

EH.... I played Watchers Keep and it has been years since I ran through Baldur's Gate 2, which makes my reply slightly more relevant because that much time has passed and it isn't "fresh" in my mind. This is important to mention because I don't remember anything in particular about the place other than some basic story beats, it was kinda long, and harder than the rest of the game. So since I don't really remember feeling it sucked or was great I can only conclude that it may not be quite as bad as people are making it out to be. In fact it was probably just gosh darn average. After all if I thought it was that bad, I would have remembered a lot more about it. Trust me . It's been so long since my last play through that I can't remember much details from the mid-game at all, only glimpses of scenes and scenery, and a general remembrance of the main plot points. 10 years is a long time. I can remember areas and the quests associated with them with fondness, but I don't distinctly remember details other than immensely enjoying exploring the world (including Watcher's Keep). I'm replaying the game just to get to see some of these areas again, even though I can't remember how to get to some of them. Also, I was 12 the first time, and certainly not as picky as I am today (don't quote this out of context). Yes, my fond memories are likely glorifying the game, making me gloss over some of its weaker points, but I distinctly do remember Watcher's Keep with fondness, because it was different (in a good way) from the rest of the game . I do think the end fight was pretty badly designed, without mods.