villain of the story

The character models only have one shadow cast from the scene's directional light. Per-character point light shadows (especially multiple point light shadows) would get computationally expensive very fast. The characters are lit using dynamic lights placed in scene, but real-time lighting is never going to perfectly match the pre-rendered lighting of the scene. For what it's worth, I think circular shadows in no particular direction might be less jarring. The shadows being, at times, cast against the lighting of the characters' surroundings has a strikingly unnatural effect in the screenshot (though I don't know if this is less or more apparent in motion). It looks lovely otherwise. Maybe we could have the option to switch between the two? Shouldn't be much trouble, I think.

Let's not pass your opinion as fact and anything to the contrary as nostalgia. To this day, I loathe transparent floating interface elements. To me, they lack character. They interrupt view. They are ugly. Imagine if Start button in Windows and all the icons on the start bar were floating at various places on the screen instead, blocking the background in an arbitrary pattern. My enjoyment is actively diminished due to crappy design of UI elements in games like NWN2. An interface element should be firm, present itself boldly and it should compliment the game's visuals through functionality, good design and good aesthetics without being a detraction or an obstruction and interacting with it should give a punch. It should not try to be a shadowy figure lingering in corners and whispering in your ear, always reminding you of its existence that it tries to pretend away like when you are panning/manipulating the game view because you can't see that one guy blocked by the minimap on the top right corner, or that door on top left behind the floating quick items or whatever. When that happens, then the UI has failed. No single element of the interface should make you a slave to itself. When you have to pan/manipulate the game view, it needs to be a holistic need where the entire UI feels unified. In this aspect, modern GUI design is an absolute mess without character, function or form. In my book, any affinity for these GUI abominations is the same as punks who litter their windshields or rear panels with stupid stickers. And when I'm buying a car, if the salesman offers me free stickers to "decorate" my car and say it's the new trend, I'll punch him in the face*. Just say no to modern GUI abomiation, rotten to the core. *: I will want to anyway.

Considering that the idea originally came from RPG Codex and that Chris Avellone will be playing a copy of Arcanum that was gifted to him by RPG Codex, I think it is only proper that he makes an LP thread at Codex Playground, the glorious LP subforum of RPG Codex. And also make 10-20 minute YouTube LP bites with commentary.

Good thing that she has just enough sense to wear protective gear her right shoulder while leaving her chest bare open; I predict a long and healthy life for her. The face is very familiar, did you base it on a specific person or artwork?

My position, which might have been voiced by others in 26 pages: For creatures: Limit XP you can get from killing one type of creature. Beyond that limit, you will no longer get XP for killing that type of creature. For races: (1) Limit XP you can get from killing with one type of weapon, with the exception of (2) (2) Give XP only for killing those with superior levels, skills and abilities. If the system doesn't distinguish between such fine details, I'd rather not get any XP from kills at all.

And will you perhaps explain the relevance between the game being isometric and the level of authenticity of weapons? I don't see one. Was anyone somehow asking for a realistic physics simulation of weapons or something like that? Ultimately, we aren't asking for "overly" realistic weapons. We are only asking for reasonably realistic weapons instead of NON-RIDICULOUS weapons that has been the staple.

It would be nice if you could sell people into slavery so if you had a hostile encounter during your travels and beat the enemy, you would enslave them and sell them for money or favours. Or let them go free and spread the word of your actions. A slave society will think of you as a lawless heretic, letting the weak go free and upsetting the balance of mankind while a more "liberal" society will look at you more favourably.

is just posting to pick at the OP about something that doesn't really matter. Posting to "pick" at the OP? Calm down and get a perspective. It's merely meant to be a scholarly point of interest for someone who seems to have a curiosity in swordsmanship beyond cliched tropes. Not a call to arms to include historical minutia details in PE. I must, however, add that, being a detailed study in the field of actual research as opposed to armchair nerdistry over internet, it does actually matter, though of course not in the sense it matters to most games or Project Eternity. Classifications don't really change what swords are and how they're used. Of course not, it's the other way around: the different ways things are or have been utilised lead to classifications and they help us understand things by putting things into perspective. Once again, not relevant to most games or PE here. As mentioned, the use of "longsword" for one handed swords is a DnD trope, HEMA people use it for swords handled mainly with two hands. Larger swords are usually called greatswords, or swords of war. Cool story, bro. Does it matter? Nope. Which just got cooler. An oh wow, you know of Oakeshott's typology, gee, you must be an expert. Or not. Don't be that guy. How many people here actually remember which type is which? HERE, of all places? I would expect a total of zero other people to even know of such a typological study. It's pretty esoteric even by the standards of most students of medieval martial arts. I don't. Well, we can't all be perfect, you know. After all, I doubt even the medieval fighters were so very aware of it all, so don't sweat it. If I wanted to communicate a very specific type of a historical sword to someone, sure, I'd go see an Oakeshott website and find out which type of pommel, crosspiece and blade it is. Good for you. I hope you will find it useful under the unlikely situation that you will need it. Does it do anything for PE? Not really. Indeed. Still, thanks for those links I guess, some people here may be not aware of this. Some? I doubt if even a few is. Bottom line, I don't know why you thought of my links to Oakeshott with regard to PE and gave such a knee-jerk reaction, even though the links were explicity addressed at the OP, since he showcased a deeper interest than cliched tropes. So the next time, try to keep the attitude in line and there will be no hostile derailments. Note: quote block limit is ridiculous.

By the way, the OP seems to be unaware of the many longsword classifications. Functionally, medieval and late Renaissance swords today are called divided as one handed, one-and-a-half handed and two handed. You might also find it worth your time to familiarise yourself with "Oakeshott typology", simply for the sake of learning: http://www.albion-swords.com/articles/oakeshott-typology.htm http://www.oakeshott.org/home.html

I will be overjoyed if Obsidian can do only the following two things: - Avoid resorting to the ridiculous cliche where bigger the weapon, the slower but "harder" it hits. - Amour that actually does what it's supposed to: protect where it requires skill -NOT large damage- to get through the armor to hurt an opponent. I cringe hard every time I see dudes in plate killing each other with lame sword cuts that aren't supposed to cut through anything at all, in films and in games. I will be particularly disappointed if they don't take anything from Darklands -allegedly Sawyer's favourite RPG- in terms of damage and weapon mechanics.

Umm, no. That's Hollywood. You don't use a hammer the way you would use a sword. If you did, only then it would be legitimate to say that it's slower due to physics. Different weapons employ different techniques, also based on physics, however, which make up for the relative speed differences. As I said before, that's physics. You can't cheat physics. You move mass either way. And while you don't use them both completely the same, in some cases you do. Even worse for hammers it they don't have a piercing tip, since they depend on large swings, and not short jabs/stabs. Nope, it's not. The center of mass for an axe will always be higher, making it inherenlty less balanced. Umm yes, because you don't use an axe like you would use a sword therefore it cannot be less balanced. Different physics = different techniques for maximum efficiency. You could argue that the specific functions that specific weapons serve when used with maximum efficiency may or may not match one another due to physical differences but that's a far cry from "balance". Every tool, whether a construction tool or a weapon, is made to have its own internal balance for maximum efficiency in its intended utilisation, therefore you can not rate any tool based on the criteria that apply to another tool. You can't say that a simple household hammer has better balance than a crowbar because they are different tools made to serve different purposes. Their fields of use may overlap and then you can compare and rate their usefulness in those particular fields of use. But saying one is better balanced than the other is a mediocre understanding of what physics is. Physics isn't a WIN button that provides all answers in one package. To try and get some perspective, try to think of it like this: "a sword is inherently less balanced than an axe because when you use a sword like you would use an axe, you wouldn't be as effective as you would with an axe". The underlined latter part is an undetestable fact but it doesn't make the former part true.

Hey, if people throw enough money at me, I promise to make a very professional romance/sex/BDSM mod that will add multi-dimensional polygamous polyamorous depth to all the major characters in the game, companion or no companion. I already have two very talented guys working for me, one an excellent model and texture artist, the other a brilliant animator. We will bring your wildest fantasies to life in Project Eternity. Can we throw sand into the eyes of the fans of Biowarian Romance?

That's Hollywood-level understanding of the weapons. Current understanding and studies point to otherwise. No, that's physics. Bigger mass takes more effort to get moving. It is slower to accelerate. It is also harder to stop. Center of mass affects balance. Mid-swing a two-handed hammer is just as fast as a sword. But it takes slightly longer to get up to that speed. The difference is minimal tough, but it exists. And it might very well make a difference in battle. Umm, no. That's Hollywood. You don't use a hammer the way you would use a sword. If you did, only then it would be legitimate to say that it's slower due to physics. Different weapons employ different techniques, also based on physics, however, which make up for the relative speed differences. Actually, they can be poorly balanced. People used not only what was best, but also what they could aford. Some used makeshift weapons, some used weapon made by sub-bar blacksmiths. Some weapons were made to be used by masses of dirty pesants and survivabiltiy was not a big issue. As long as pesants take some enemeis with them, that is. Of course, absolutely true. But all things being equal, different types of weapons, produced with the same level of quality and craftmanship, can not be compared and rated as "better or worse balanced than each other" which is how I interpreted your previous statement. A fine sword is just as balanced as a fine axe or mace or hammer or halberd or whatever.

Yes and no. "Giant" weapons, greatswords, polearms and the like were not SLOW for sure, especially not as described in the post you were responding to. They were definitely slowER than their smaller counterparts however. This is in fact one of the main reasons why rapiers (true rapiers - not the smallswords that many people think of when they think of rapiers) came about as a natural progression from arming swords (your typical one-handed "knight's" sword). And even those arming swords were used partially for speed and nimbleness at handling, especially since their lighter, quicker, one-handed nature freed up the other hand for a shield as you mentioned. So I'm all for seeing relative speed differences between weapon types, but nothing along the lines of "this sword attacks twice every round, that greataxe attacks once every 3 rounds" sorts of differences. Of course. There certainly is a relative speed difference but the main point is that it's not always about "speed" as all weapons employed a wide range of techniques developed to handle a range of other weapons. Eg. look at those videos I put. A pollaxe wasn't made to "hit hard" with its edge only. It's a complete polearm package that serves several functions employing a lot of techniques common to all polearms plus a few of its own. You don't just "hit with the shaft", you do whole lot of other things with it which puts it up against other types of weapons as well that negates speed differences up to a point. So I'd say that as much as a person with a polearm might have hesitated facing someone with a rapier, someone with rapier might have hesitated facing someone with polearm just as much because it's not only about speed. As for rapiers, I'm not sure of the "main reasons". I've always attributed it to firearms gaining a foothold as infantry weapons and armour slowly disappearance from the battlefield, becoming more and more niche and such, the need to carry lighter and more flexible blades. I might be wrong. Absolutely. Alas, I'm pretty sure that Obsidian won't introduce that kind of penalty. Ideally, I would discourage against wearing armour at all times and instead, carry it with you and wear it beforehand when you are anticipating a fight and if you are caught unprepared, you make the best of what you have. Or wear it all around and suffer fatigue and whatnot.

Well, most tabletops are horrid derivatives or copycats of D&D and all the bad things about it. See Codex Martialis and The Riddle of Steel for reasonably authentic martial combat done right without reducing the gameplay to an endless borefest of statistics and rolls. On the contrary, combat resolutions are very pleasingly fast and straightforward in those. RPG tropes, tabletop or otherwise, are a disgrace. Yeah, this. It's all about tactics, not ridiculously false statistics such as speed and whatnot. Also, awesome solution^ there. Congrats to the players.

One of my favourites is the flamberge type: I've long been puzzled by this form but once I understood the reason, I couldn't help but love them: I can see how that would help against enemy pikes among pikemen formations and how it would hamper and possibly disrupt the winding movements on blade and the counter-attacks of an opponent in a one-on-one sword fight. If your opponent had such a blade, you couldn't wind or drive your own blade up or down on it upon contact for a counter attack without disrupting your technique and risking yourself. Then again, using such a blade would most likely require extra training as well. At any rate, it seems to be a pretty late development to have had any impact on the martial trends of the period.

That's Hollywood-level understanding of the weapons. Current understanding and studies point to otherwise: A weapon cannot be slow and cumbersome (eg. poorly balanced) to use. There is no "attacks slow, HITS HARD" in real life. A single cut or a shallow stab could be all it takes to kill a person. You couldn't afford to be slower just because you were somehow supposed to "HIT HARD HURRRR" while your opponent will be faster, "hit LIGHTER" and still end up killing you with a simple cut. If a weapon is poorly balanced, it's no weapon at all. These people didn't fck around LARPing ridiculous tropes. They meant business and business was kill-or-die. Most importantly, weapons served special functions. They didn't go around like "oh hey, the enemy has sword so should I take the sword or the spear? gotta weigh the ups and downs". They didn't invent bat**** crazy weapons because they were bored. They had to invent them to face newly emerging threats and develop the tactics to handle them.

Could that perhaps be because of lack of your understanding of them? Medieval+renaissance periods saw possibly the widest range of martial weapons with unique capabilities, designed to adapt to the quickly changing landscape of warfare and with them, wide methods of fighting any of which has yet to be mimicked in a computer game (though a few pnp RPGs have realised them well with excellent results, such as Codex Martialis and The Riddle of Steel). I would have never thought that I would have something positive to say about Bethesda but one thing they did sort of right with Oblivion and Skyrim is the design of armour (except for the highest tier armours, eg. Glass, Daedric). They are mostly, mostly, very reasonably designed and proportioned and more rooted in authenticity than most other games.

This absolutely ridiculous. There is no such thing as "giant weapons that are slow". Even the largest IRL infantry weapons that you can think of are handled with relative speed and ease. Because that's what weapons are for, they are made to be handled with relative ease and sped. I've always despised it how in games, bigger the weapon, the slower it is. Makes absolutely no sense at all. Even the biggest RL axe you have seen is a very versatile and agile weapon. Likewise, a two-handed weapon is a weapon that just takes a total of two hands to use instead of just one which is what it takes to land it on equal footing with one-handed weapons: that you don't get to have an off-hand for second tool of war. I don't know how this retarded trope came to be in the first place. It's a horrible and inherently broken element of balance. Likewise with armour. People wearing mail or plate in ancient and later times were likely far more faster and agile than just about anyone posting on these forums. I say get rid of this mockery even if just for once.

In DMG 1st edition there was actually a table to generate random prostitute for a character. Good to know that you hold romance on the same level as prostitution. That almost sounds like an admission of something but I can't quite put my finger on what. And a lot of them don't. I was talking about Gary Gygax in particular, though. You don't have to weasel out by shifting focus. Yeah, so is mine and mine negates yours. Please, produce real arguments, not drivel.

You should choose your words more wisely. BG and BG2 - are Bioware's games. And there would be no PST or IWD without BG. Uh, and the point is? Is there an actual argument in there? Also, you should choose your words more wisely. BG and BG2 - are D&D licensed games published by Interplay. And there would be no BG or Bioware without Interplay or D&D, and no Interplay or D&D without Brian Fargo or Gary Gygax. And neither wrote any romances for their games. (see, I can do it too! R00FLES!)

And just for fun, here's Bioware writer Patrick Weekes' somewhat amusing reaction to that: http://www.rpgwatch....98&postcount=32 AMEN! Now, if you want Bioware romances, well, knock on Bioware's door, perhaps? Not every game needs to be dragged down by the same kind of sexist tokenist drivel. However, I'd LOVE it if you could "romance" companions and they committed suicide or left your party because of how cookie-cutter flat and boring the player character was.

God, romances should be included when they are appropriate, not as an arithmetic function. People are suggesting that if you include Romances there would be "far too many combinations" I am merely saying that only 4 combinations should be needed to keep almost all people happy. Not enough. I want every combination of those plus transgenders plus all the races plus all the cultures. Don't want to give a message by leaving out some of them now, do we? I don't hate dislike romance the way it was in PST but I HATE it the way it was in Bioware games in general where characters exist merely to appease the player's and only the player's sexual preferences and don't have their own individual integrity where all it takes to bed a character is to play the ridiculously gimmicky gamist system to "unlock" "sex". No one calling himself liberal or progressive big on social justice or whatever should support that kind of disgusting gimmicky tokenist attitude towards romance, sex and maturity in general. BioWarian Romance is the antithesis of these things. Look at Fallout: New Vegas. There is a wide spectrum of representation of various sexual orientations and though you can attempt to flirt, or in Biowarian terms, "to romance" some of them, you don't get to "sex" anyone because there are greater objectives which the characters recognise and most importantly, they have individual integrity. They won't bend over just because you are the player and must be appeased to, to boost your ego and provide a false sense of feel-good. They don't exist to appease the player, they exist on their own for their own reasons and had you not talked to them extensively, you wouldn't even know of their sexual orientation. That is how it should be done. And that is an Obsidian title.

Like personal pets or player housing? Sigh... It doesn't work like "a scene from 4 directon vs. 4 times more areas". A 2D background is a 3D scene rendered to a 2D image from an angle plus post-rendering touches to make it look better. 4 renders of a scene = you change the camera in your 3D scene and render it to a 2D image. It does, however, mean 4 times the post-render work but that could be as easy or difficult as one might guess. I am not following the logic here. But IE games had their share of areas that were confusing because view of some areas were blocked by structures. It is however correct that if they decide on an angle early on, they will make 3D details in scenes to be visible from that one angle, which is a valid concern but is ultimately irrelevant because as I said earlier, this is only a question of WANT, not "thinking for developers". It's not that I'm annoyed by disagreements but poorly thought, invalid or irrelevant arguements.

Have you even look at the videos for an example? I prefer 2D to 3D any time of the day in this type of game. It doesn't mean that it has to be a dogmatic affinity heavily absorbed in nostalgia, disregarding new possibilities of improving the base model. But if you prefer it that way, that's as valid as it gets, of course.