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mstark

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  1. mstark
    I think that's exactly what Josh is explaining in the video. The more you understand reality, the more convincingly unreal you can make your game. In other words, you need to understand the rules in order to break them. You can only gain understanding by reading, studying, and/or experiencing. Any author and designer worth his salt knows this and takes it to heart. The most fantastic sci-fi and fantasy books I've read (Hyperion Cantos springs to mind) are those that incorporate a deep scientific understanding of our real universe, and yet manage to convincingly break all the rules.
  2. mstark
    I'm glad someone noticed . I based it off of the information available in the BG2 combat logs, and did what I could to make the same amount of information more consistent and clearer. I was unsure if I should add the target to a cast spell, it certainly does make sense for single target spells. I believe the system can be extended to comfortably include forms of ailments (it would probably make sense to add the fail/success message within the attack/save rolls): Wicht: casts Confusion Aloth: save versus Confusion (save roll: 1 + 1 = 2 fail) Aloth is confused. and Wicht: hits Aloth for 10 stamina and 2.5 health (attack roll: 10 + 2 = 12 success) Aloth: “I need healing!” Aloth: save versus Morale (save roll: 2 + 1 = 3 fail) Aloth flees. and Slime: hits Aloth for 4 stamina and 1 health (attack roll: 10 + 2 = 12 success) Aloth is poisoned. Aloth: loses 1 stamina (poison). Aloth: loses 1 stamina (poison). Aloth: loses 1 stamina (poison). Aloth: loses 1 stamina and 1 health (poison). Aloth: drinks Acid Antidote (no effect). Aloth: loses 1 stamina (poison). Aloth: drinks Poison Antidote (cures poison). I still think the open/close quotation marks may act as enough of a visual indicator of where speech starts/stops without having to resort to italics. I experimented with making the interjecting descriptive text a slightly darker shade of grey, but I thought that, too, broke the flow too much. I should probably add that the text I suggest should be in italics doesn't immediately belong within the conversation, and can show up at any point outside of conversations, too. Like when entering a cave, stepping on an alarm, or other such occurrences. It acts as a completely different form of flavor text.
  3. mstark
    @Ineth, I believe there should be a difference made between descriptive text that is not part of interaction, and descriptive text that is, hence the italics when there is no preceding "Name:" (i.e. when the descriptive text does not belong to anyone). Also, italicizing all of it makes it a pain to read! In other words, I think interaction should read as a book (PS:T style), with the P:E style descriptions adding manuscript style flavor.
  4. mstark
    Pretend Excerpt from Project Eternity Game Log 23/08/2013: As you make your way through the debris, the smell of rotten flesh makes you cringe. Wicht: “Mommy?” Wicht: attacks Forton PAUSED Cadegund: “Yes?” Cadegund: “I shall rip your limbs off!” Cadegund: attacks Wicht Aloth: “Sire?” Aloth: “Any time.” Aloth: casts Lightning UNPAUSED Wicht: misses Forton (attack roll: 4 + 2 = 6) Cadegund: hits Wicht for 12 stamina and 3 health (attack roll: 8 + 2 = 10) Aloth: hits Wicht for 16 stamina and 4 health. Aloth: hits Forton for 22 stamina and 5 health. Wicht is unconscious. Forton: “Ugh” Forton is unconscious. Cadegund: hits Wicht for 4 stamina and 1 health (attack roll: 12 + 2 = 14) Wicht dies. Aloth: “What is it now?” Aloth: “Sure.” Aloth: casts Restore Stamina Forton gains 6 stamina. The stench of spilled ale, rotting hay, and firewood assaults your senses as you enter the inn. Edair: “Huh?” Edair: “Sure thing!” Osmaer: The innkeeper digs inside a mug with a dirty rag before raising his thick eyebrows to your level. “Welcome! Welcome! Please, make yourself comfortable, traveler.” Osmaer: “Food's hot and my rooms keep cool. Holler whenever you need, I always got time to spare these days.” A strange silvery tooth appears behind his fat, shiny smile. Thunder strikes in the distance as you consider your options. Cadegund: “We should rest until the storm passes.” Edair: “We're in a hurry. We better be on our way soon.” Osmaer: “How can I help ya? 1. “I have questions about the area.” 2. “I want to order food and drinks.” 3. “Let's see what rooms you have.” 4. “Goodbye.”
  5. mstark
    Good point, Ineth. If it were to be adapted for P:E I would change the en-dash for a colon, don't quote me on it but I believe that makes more sense in the context. I would keep italics for descriptive text that is not an immediate part of the interaction. I'd also get rid of the uneven indentation they used for the dialogue, it's not required since there's line spacing between paragraphs. Using a colon after "Truth" in combination with the quotes makes sense here, as it's not used as a segmental, but acts as a syntastical-descriptive. The cave's dank air assaults your senses, and you struggle to focus as the woman addresses you. Ravel: The woman digs inside her mug with a dirty rag before raising her thick eyebrows to your level. “I see you have not forgotten…” Ravel smiles, her yellow fangs gleaming. “What is your answer?” 1. Truth: “I… don't know.” 2. Truth: “Love.” 3. Truth: “Hate.” 4. Truth: “Power.” 5. “I would rather answer this question at another time. Goodbye.” Adapted, then, it'd look like: With the stench of spilled ale, rotting hay, and firewood assaulting your senses you approach the man standing behind the bar. Osmaer: The innkeeper digs inside a mug with a dirty rag before raising his thick eyebrows to your level. “Welcome! Welcome! Please, make yourself comfortable, traveler.” Osmaer: “Food's hot and my rooms keep cool. Holler whenever you need, I always got time to spare these days.” A strange silvery tooth appears behind his fat, shiny smile. Osmaer: “How can I help ya?” Thunder strikes in the distance as you consider your options. 1. “I have questions about the area.” 2. “I want to order food and drinks.” 3. “Let's see what rooms you have.” 4. “Goodbye.”
  6. mstark
    Numbers are nice because it clearly indicates that you can use your keyboard numbers instead of clicking on the replies
  7. mstark
    The following options are interchangeable (em-dash, colon, or quotation marks to signify speech, italics reserved for descriptive text, calls to action indented [proportionally to line height] for emphasis). HEX colours stolen immediately from screenshot: The innkeeper digs inside a mug with a dirty rag before raising his thick eyebrows to your level. A strange silvery tooth appears behind his fat, shiny smile. Osmaer—Welcome! Welcome! Please, make yourself comfortable, traveler. Osmaer—Food's hot and my rooms keep cool. Holler whenever you need, I always got time to spare these days. Osmaer—How can I help ya? 1.—I have questions about the area. 2.—I want to order food and drinks. 3.—Let's see what rooms you have. 4.—Goodbye. The innkeeper digs inside a mug with a dirty rag before raising his thick eyebrows to your level. A strange silvery tooth appears behind his fat, shiny smile. Osmaer: Welcome! Welcome! Please, make yourself comfortable, traveler. Osmaer: Food's hot and my rooms keep cool. Holler whenever you need, I always got time to spare these days. Osmaer: How can I help ya? 1: I have questions about the area. 2: I want to order food and drinks. 3: Let's see what rooms you have. 4: Goodbye. The innkeeper digs inside a mug with a dirty rag before raising his thick eyebrows to your level. A strange silvery tooth appears behind his fat, shiny smile. Osmaer “Welcome! Welcome! Please, make yourself comfortable, traveler.” Osmaer “Food's hot and my rooms keep cool. Holler whenever you need, I always got time to spare these days.” Osmaer “How can I help ya?” 1. “I have questions about the area.” 2. “I want to order food and drinks.” 3. “Let's see what rooms you have.” 4. “Goodbye.” It's surprising how far your can get with Georgia. Most versatile font ever. I like the em-dash, but the colon option is neatest as it allows you to comfortably get rid of the period after the numbers.
  8. mstark
    I must say I really don't like the split dialog layout suggested, it works OK in your example, but won't play nice with varying line lengths and it's a very unnatural way of reading. I much prefer it as it is. A note on margins for the dialog window, I'd suggest having them at least 1x the line height of the text (possibly even 2x the line height, though in such a small window that might make the lines of speech look disjointed). I really like the amount of words/letters per line, perfect for reading. Aside from the terrible kerning the text is well set for comfortable reading. The contrast is appropriate for onscreen reading, and the cool blue for dialog options is unobtrusive, yet its emphasized enough for it to be obvious that an action is called for. 1.—I don't like what you're suggesting about the margins. 2.—Your paragraphs are too short for indented paragraphs, ever heard of the Enter key? 3.—I'm not sure I like the sound of this, prepare to meet the sharp end of my sword! 4.—I've had enough, goodbye.
  9. mstark
    (Sorry, I didn't mean to *like* the fact that you both have partial color-blindness, just the fact that it means the game will be color-blindness friendly by default!)
  10. mstark
    If you decide to use quotation marks, I'd love to see “ ” instead of "".
  11. mstark
    May I suggest using tabular lining numerals for dialog options rather than old style ones? Old style numerals work well in paragraph text, where numbers have to sit within a paragraph, as they blend nicely with a proportional font. [Tabular] lining numerals are more appropriate for list use. I'd like to see: 1. "I have a question about the area." 2. "I want to order food and drink." 3. "Let's see what rooms you have." 4. "Goodbye." rather than (issue most noticeable on number 3 and 4): 1. "I have a question about the area." 2. "I want to order food and drink." 3. "Let's see what rooms you have." 4. "Goodbye." Also, seeing as the dialog options are a simple list, a '1."..." ' or ' 1.— ... ' system should suffice, '1:— "..." ' is overkill, seeing as an em-dash and quotation marks both signify a line of speech, either can be used, but not both at the same time (BG2 used just the em-dash, it's less disruptive than the mass of quotation marks).
  12. mstark
    The screenshot of the dialog window provided looks just about the right size on my WQHD 27" monitor, I would assume it was taken with the UI scaled to its largest setting. The dimensions of that dialog window is 1090px*475px, almost enough to cover the entire screen of a 720p monitor. I'm worried that at even its largest setting it'll look tiny on 30" 4k screens at native resolutions, and it certainly will on a few 13" laptops on the market with WQHD, QHD+, or higher resolutions. While you could play the game at a non-native resolution to bring text up to readability on these screens, this could potentially destroy the appearance of the bitmap fonts used due to physical pixels not lining up with digital ones, causing untold things to happen to text anti-aliasing.
  13. mstark
    I was unsure about the choice of wood until I remembered that the main setting of the story is the Dyrwood, it makes a bit of sense that way. Ideally, I'd like to see the UI inspired by some architectural vogue of the area (which might well be what it currently is), though I'd be equally happy for a "leatherbound" look to conversations.
  14. mstark
    This this this this this this. Along the lines of: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_klDNivkicgw/TBue-6-wlgI/AAAAAAAAE1g/2MIFb-jOeFU/s1600/1990+Pig+play+script2.JPG, which is not far from the current system, descriptive text and action just needs a visual separation (italics!) from speech. I would also love to see manuscript like use of em/en-dashes, ellipses, brackets... where it makes sense. Maybe we could encourage people to read up on their punctuation
  15. mstark
    Ahh, thanks a lot! The name makes more sense with that history behind it.
  16. mstark
    I don't mind it too much, but it makes me wonder what kind of people the first settlers were... Defiant Settler 1: We be defyin' this wood place real good! Defiant Settler 2: Yep, two defiant bastards, you n' I! Defiant Settler 1: So, what d'ya think we should call that bay we campin' in, eh? ...
  17. mstark
    I should add that I really like the choice of font! What is the name of it? Has it ever been proven that sans serif is more legible than serif? I thought all major studies that tried to find out, came back inconclusive. There are lots of differing results in research on the subject, but generally they all agree on the following points: -Sans serif fonts that have been especially designed for digital mediums (think Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, Tahoma) will always read better on low (~100) DPI monitors at smaller font sizes. Print is usually 300DPI+, while 95% of computer screens today hover around a very low 100DPI. This is mainly because sans serif fonts are much easier to anti-alias (read "fake"), giving them a smoother on screen appearance, where the rich details of a serif would get lost. At large enough font sizes they both read at equal speed. -On new "retina"/high-DPI screens, where the DPI breaches 200, legibility of sans serif & serif fonts is considered equal even at small sizes. The same results have been observed tests with printed material. -You read best what you're used to reading. If you read a lot of books (almost always set in serif), your brain will be more used to following the flow from letter to letter created by the serifs. If you read a lot of academic texts, often set in sans serif, your brain will be more used to following the shape of words without serifs.
  18. mstark
    Incredible feeling of nostalgia rushing over me as I read through the update, love (and hate) the IE feel of the dialog UI . Curious as I, and many others, surely are about defiance bay and a demo of the fog of war, I'm glad to see that what most people seem to think is most important is the typography of the game. Pretty much all points—regarding good typographic practices & monitor DPI discrepancies—that I worry about have been covered, re-covered, put into lists, and reiterated so many times in this thread that I don't feel I have much to add, other than my support for the suggestions. Beautiful as the scenery surely will be, the real beauty in the game will lie in its story, which we will be reading. May I go so far as suggesting that you employ a freelancing (digital) typographer to take the reading experience to new, hitherto unseen heights in computer games? (Otherwise, a good primer: Thinking With Type) I don't envy the job of manually kerning the font for all possible letter pairs (and for at least 3 different font sizes [normal, large, extra large]), and would suggest doing everything to avoid having to use bitmap fonts. Unless, of course, there's some other, greater, benefit to this in game design that I'm not aware of. You also can't leverage a system's font anti-aliasing capabilities, which will wreak havoc on the font in instances where the letter pixels don't line up properly with monitor pixels (when not playing on native resolutions, eg. up/down scaling). mstark will go mad if they don't, lol. Havoc will be wreaked! Souls will be harvested! I must correct this suggestion, though. It's not the resolution it has to scale with, but the DPI density. A 13" and a 24" screen can have the same 1080p resolution, and a font size "optimized for 1080p" would look terribly small on one of them. PC screens nowadays range from DPI densities of 90dpi-275dpi, and the font sizes available to choose from should read comfortably across that entire range, regardless of the screen size/resolution.
  19. mstark
    I'd make that my #1 mantra if there wasn't the saying 'correlation does not imply causation' The video makes me look forward even more to the 'making of' documentary, I wanna know about all the hoops they've jumped through :D
  20. mstark
    I think this is quite relevant to the PE board since that's the game he's currently designing! If he went camping in the Mojave desert & partying in Las Vegas for Fallout: NV, what adventures has he gotten up to for Project Eternity? I'm sure the frequent D&D sessions (as evident by Josh's twitter) are part of it! Good design practices are good .
  21. mstark
    (re-reading your original post on RPGCODEX I now realize that's exactly what it says! English not being my native language sometimes gets me confused :/ ) Is noise and vision detection two separate mechanics?
  22. mstark
    While that would be neat, I'm still more inclined to let the "targeting skill" be entirely based off of my own skill and judgement! After having thrown fireball a number of times, I'll be able to judge, from personal experience, what sort of area it'd cover. If I make a mistake, my real life "experience" with the skill simply isn't high enough, and I'll either need to practice or be more careful. I see no need for it to be represented in game by a circle, wobbly circle, diffuse circle, or otherwise. It's nice to level up your party and attain helpful skills, it's also nice to "level up" yourself by learning how to aim, and dealing with the consequences of a mistake (if the game helps you so much that you'll never make a mistake, you'll get into very few interesting situations!). Since I can see it's a very helpful feature for casual players I'm guessing targeting circles will be included. Will it be disabled in Expert Mode? I'm very happy that there's friendly fire in game. (/random I strongly believe BG/2 lives so fondly in peoples memories because it developed you as a person. Make a game hard, with a compelling story that makes you want to complete it regardless, and it'll force people to adapt to complete it. It builds character )
  23. mstark
    Thanks for clearing that up!
  24. mstark
    The weakness of the proposed system is that it sounds like the detection radius will be entirely based on the character doing the sneaking, say 20 yards while standing still, and 40 yards while running in full plate. This makes it sound like the perception of any antagonist plays no role, meaning that all enemies, be it an over sized bat or a half blind pig, will have the same ability to detect you. Unless the character stealth+action sets a "base" detection range, which can then be modified by the antagonists detection capabilities.
  25. mstark
    Known Info, answered by Josh Sawyer: Based on this, I believe stealth will be used mostly for positioning, especially since all classes have limited access to the skill. However, if you're a stealth based rouge, you may be able to sneak through entire dungeons in stealth mode, avoiding all combat, resulting in you bypassing combat to reach the loot/objective at the end. I also imagine it'd be possible to sneak one of your characters to the far end of a room, trigger the "investigation" state of nearby enemies, which will make them start moving around. Once that happens, maybe you can take your entire party and sneak by without being noticed, or get into a better position before the fighting starts.
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