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coffeetable

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Posts posted by coffeetable

  1. The game's official launch is at 9 AM PST / 17:00 CET. Almost 24 hours away... :)

    In case anyone's confused like I was, it's 9AM PDT/4PM GMT/5PM CET.

     

    The US changes from PST to PDT on the second Sunday in March; the UK and Europe change from GMT/CET/whatevs to BST/CEST/etc on the last Sunday in March. So for these three weeks, it's a 7hr difference between California and the UK rather than the usual 8hr one. Hooray, timezones.

    • Like 1
  2. I was a big proponent of group looting. In fact, I am the one who moved that suggestion to the top of the bug queue.

     

    I have been using it for a few builds now and, to me, it feels much better. How it works is that when you click on a corpse it pools loots from any corpse within three meters. The UI has not changed. There is no indicator of which piece of loot came from which corpse, but I haven't seen it as much of an issue while playing the game this weekend. There is still lots of looting (because not everything dies within three meters of everything else), but it definitely cuts down on some of the repetition.

     

    I understand that some may not like this new feature, but I would ask that you give it a chance. I am not sure what kind of options we will add for it, but there was talk of an loot distance slider that could go from 0m - 3m. If you want individual loot back, you could just turn it to 0m. That isn't currently in, but it is probably something we could add into a day one patch.

    could you also track the stats of how many people actually turn it to zero, and for how long they leave it there

     

    because im betting 'almost no-one' and 'for five minutes'

    • Like 3
  3. Instructions for decompiling the beta:

    1. Go download and install ILSpy: http://ilspy.net/
    2. Run it, then use it to open "Steam\SteamApps\common\Pillars of Eternity - Public Beta\PillarsOfEternity_Data\Managed\Assembly-CSharp.dll"
    3. You can now explore the decompiled code via the "Assembly-CSharp" node in the tree on the left. Thanks to this being C#, it's pretty readable. Most of Obsidian's work is in the "-" subnode, indicating the global namespace.
    4. Optional: to export the code from the tool, click on the Assembly-CSharp node in the tree, then File->Save Code. It'll create a .csproj which can be loaded using Visual Studio, or you can just poke around with the text editor of your choice.

    This thread can be for discussing anything you come across. Be warned, there are obviously gonna be a lot of spoilers in there.

     

    If any of the Obsidian programmers happen across this: how did CharacterStats.cs and StatusEffects.cs come about? I know some of it is bloat from the compiler, but both are north of 4,000 lines. Do all games look like this internally? How do you debug them?

    • Like 2
  4. We haven't been tracking additional money as it applies to stretch goals. We did toy with reintroducing stretch goals months ago, but ultimately decided against it. That doesn't mean that we haven't been making the game better with the extra money (we have), but it isn't something that was stretch goal related.

    Back in April, Feargus said 

     

    Urquhart: I think, obviously, it's money; they're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. They also get to involve themselves with a little product that's high profile. I mean, it's not Titanfall, but it's a game a lot of people are really looking forward to. We've got 100,000, or 120,000 backers now.

    http://stevivor.com/2014/04/obsidians-feargus-urquhart-pillars-eternity-partnership-paradox-interactive/

     

    Seeing it's $35 a pop and there were ~75,000 backers originally, that's $1-1.5 million more since the KS. And you're saying that's all been sank into the game? Wow.

  5. Great update! Technical question though: going by this old cookie

     

    eternity_resolutions_iwd.jpg

     

    the high res maps are looking to be ~15,000x10,000 pixels. With two layers of 24 bit colour and one at 8 bit monochrome, that works out to ~600MB of raw data a map. Are you using lossy or lossless compression or no compression? If you're compressing it, does the decompression take a notable amount of time during level load? Or do you stream it in a tile at a time?

     

    Also if you've got dozens of maps like this, just how big of a download is the game probably gonna be?

    • Like 1
  6. I have an idea for Obsidian.  Offer to trade your in-house dialogue writing tool to Bethesda in exchange for the rights to do another Fallout game.  You get to make another great Fallout and they can potentially improve the weakest point in every game they make.  Win-win. 

    Alternatively, trade some beads for the rights to another Fallout game.

  7. The only scaling in Baldur's gate 2 was during "you have been waylaid by enemies and must defend yourself" moments. Theurgist - I believe (not 100% sure), that you are mistaken on the unseeing eye bit. I'm pretty sure the beholders are there no matter what. Even if you're only level 9.

    No, there's definitely parts other than the Beholder one where encounters are scaled. The one I remember is the golem in Firkragg's keep, which iirc could be stone or adamantium depending on your level. Doing a bit of Googling, Dan Simpson's walkthrough agrees with me (AR 1202, second paragraph).

  8. In this interview Feargus mentions that PoE has

     


    got 100,000, or 120,000 backers now.

    which is pretty impressive compared to the ~75,000 that backed via Kickstarter & Paypal originally. At $35 a pop, that means PoE has gained $900k-$1.5m from slacker backers, or equivalently 20%-35% of its Kickstarter budget.

     

    This is obviously great news, but If a dev happens across this, is it great news for PoE's budget specifically, or is that money considered profit to be channelled into other projects down the line? If it's the former, was this why extra wilderness areas and characters were being considered over Christmas?

    • Like 2
  9.  

    All they have to do is hire a person experienced at writing romance who has a talent for it.  Also doing that costs far less both in time and money than say..... developing an interior for a blacksmith shop.

    FALSE.

    Unless of course you make romance an out-of-the-blue option after 5 dialogues without any buildup like BioWare.

     

    If you want romance you need to pay;

    * Writer for a full year (say, 10K)

    * Actual gameplay dev(s) to implent said writing (triggers, script, writing) (another 10K)

    * If aside from just the writing you want more (say, a quest)... add 30k minimal (for a short one)

     

    Total cost; 50k (and as stated, this is a low estimate). Feel free to pay OE that for the romances. I won't stop you... but I doubt you will.

     

     

    lol

     

    double fine shared their budget in one of the early documentaries. labour was budgeted at $10-15k per developer month.

  10. The Death Godlike...yikes! Wasn't expecting something like that at all. They look really disturbing and over-the-top. That's not necessarily a bad thing, if it's what you were aiming for, but it really needs to be reflected in the writing and presentation. I can't imagine someone like that fitting into most societies.

    I'd put the Earth Godlike in the same category. They're either gonna need a lot of custom dialogue, or they have to be common enough in the world that they aren't often worth commenting on.

    • Like 1
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