pid

I forgot this: - an option to increase the time "examine" text is displayed on-screen. It's sometimes to fast to read and switching the message log is cumbersome.

The current build is totally feature complete but I've noticed these tiny things that I miss and somehow wonder why nobody implemented them: - you can pan the game screen with keys (say arrow keys, they are configurable), so why can't I pan the boundaries on the map? It would make totally sense to use the very same keys to move around the map -- right now you can only click on a new location to move the boundaries, so... add those keys please! - three buttons on the map for slow/normal/fast speed -- fast is often used to navigate the map but there are no buttons on the map itself to change speed. - saving may take some seconds, it's annoying that there is no feedback about the START of the saving (there's only a log message when save is complete). It would suffice to blend in a green "Saving..." message on the bottom of the screen. - during save it is possible to press the pan keys, once saving completes the screen snaps to the very extreme of the pressed key (e.G. when I press "left" during save the screen scrolls to the very left right after save). It would make sense to disable all input when the UI is unresponsive or to clear the buffers right after save. - the bestiary is updated "behind the scenes" but I don't like to miss out on those updates. would it be so difficult to mark updated entries? just color-coding (yellow highlighting the updated entries) would be enough, much like quests white/grey colors. anything would do, really. - I've seen what you've done in the documentary "road to eternity", obsidian!! I've seen IT!!! so... where can I send my money to back "Eternity 2"? SUATMM!

Good idea and post, I agree with OP. Older games had an "obstructive" UI, meaning that they took a fixed amount of space away from the viewport. Modern games normaly "detach" single UI elements from each other (hotbars, windows, etc). This allows those elements to be overlayed and scaled independently. So, beyond the availability of high-res UI elements the UI should also be scalable independently from the background. Now Unity is VERY bad on the UI side. There's very limited support for it, so I think this will require a lot of work. And rendering text with a scalable font size (beyond the general UI scaling) is even more tricky. Much tricky work, but it would be perfect if those elements were combined: - ultra high resolution assets (2D UI and 3D world); - independent scalability of world, UI and fonts.

Yes, yes. I admit it. That was a crazy idea :D That's why I gave it that title. I already knew it would be absurd.

You, sir, expressed my thoughts better than I did myself And, I want to add, we backers should have more power in those decisions and be allowed to decide if we want more content or an engine that is more open. We pay their bills now!

You're right. The point is that it's not about just "modding" but digging deeper into the game and changing more then what is envisioned to be modded.

Unity as a development environment frees you from a lot of technical stuff without restraining you too much. It does not exclude those bullet points unless you don't want to break their paradigm for cost reasons. For example you can create a map right inside Unity and import models and animations from Blender, code C# with Mono and "stitch" it all together with as least coding as possible (btw, that "other" language *IS* javascript at 100%, it's context is not a browser but it still is javascript, just as a pointer look at Rhino, which is javascript server-side, or actionscript running in the shockwave flash VM -- language and context are two separate constructs, so Unity has not a "form of javascript" but *actual* javascript). But you can also plug in anything you like, just run Visual Studio 10 and code away 10 months in C#, then plug it into your game and profit from that extensions to Unity. As an example, see Castle Story (was also on Kickstarter). The voxel space data is processed into a model of the terrain that is then rendered by Unity, and modifying the terrain causes a tiny portion of the model to be recomputed and updated inside Unity. The conversion from voxel data to the model, rendereable by Unity, is not part of Unity, it was coded outside of it. Generally, Unity's maps are pre-processed up to the shadows, ambient occlusion and trees to speed up real-time rendering. This is fine, but when you want to break that paradigm (modifiable terrain) you have to code it. The poll was just about this: stick to Unity's quite static approach or make it as dynamic as possible (which requires much more work). There is absolutely no need to open-source Unity, the engine and the game are two different things. You can open-source the game that runs on Unity without having to open-source the engine itself. This way, you YOURSELF can use Unity directly to "change" the game. This is very different from modding, because modding is restraint by how much the game uses documented data structures (they don't need to be really open like XML or plain-text, they just have to be documented, see the WAD fileformat for Doom which was reverse engineered and opened up the doors to modding). Btw, that was one of the first modding communities. I remember it was quickly clear to all that the documentation of the data was the culprit of modding. So what I said is not just "modding" by delivering the documentation of the fileformats, but allowing us to use directly Unity to change an if() in the code and recompile the game... (and NOT recompile Unity itself). That and modding are two very different things. For scripting outside Unity it would be possible if the Javascript was compiled at runtime. Instead, it's precompiled and only JIT compiled at runtime (just-in-time compilation). Reference: http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/index.Script_compilation_28Advanced29.html As you can easily see, without Obsidian coding to circumvent this limit of Unity and open up scripting, this will not happen. You'll just be able to change data. Admittedly a data-driven engine can be very flexible, but it won't still be the same as true scripting. WoW's LUA scripting for the GUI as an excellent example. With LUA, XML and images you can obtain next to any kind of GUI in WoW. But it's just the GUI, you can't change the innards of the engine, which also is running server-side, so it's twice no dice. That said, modders or coders (I'm a software engineer myself but I don't work in the games industry, I work in the management software field, that's totally different) should very well understand all I wrote and confirm that the poll makes sense. TL;DR: the poll makes sense, both ways are possible and good, it's more a matter of what backers want or maybe to push the boundaries of how games are designed today in contrast to 20 years ago.

A game is not just content it is also an executable program (data and code). With a limited budget (albeit very high) you have to decide what to spend money on.

I know, I know... I'm mad. But this is my idea and it's totally... mad. PE will be a single player game, right? And you may play it offline, right? BUT... just in case... think about a global chat box in the SINGLE PLAYER game... while you play you could still chat as in an MMO. no other feature would be online and "online" would not be required... in fact imagine this: there's sitting a tiny icon in the corner and when you hover it, it says "chat offline". and you can play to your heart's content. BUT... just in case... think about clicking it and a spinner appears and after some 10 seconds your little chat box is online with many channels (general, help, "by zone", etc.)... wouldn't it be great to keep the Kickstarter/Obsidian community somehow still connected even after or, better yet, during play? Obsidian would just have to put up a next-to-no-cost server for chatting, even a meager bandwidth would do. Need help? ask for it online without leaving the game!

Your reasons are obvious. In fact, I can't say what I voted myself or I'd be accused of trying to form opinions. But I can tell you I was uncertain and maybe still am.

gah

Companions are great and dogs a great companions, but it would be best to have more choices. Just no silly companions like flying book familiars or hamsters. Oh wait, hamsters are ok. I said they're ok! Arraraghh.... no Boo, no... not the eyes, not the eyes please...

Generally, classic "races" in RPGs define factions. As long as good/evil factions are preserved (no evil halflings and no good orcs) it's alright with me.

Back then in the old days boxes were made with papyrus not plastic. 'nough said :D

Since when UK is NOT european? Just because you kept the Sterling doesn't mean your island is attached to south africa... And further north those countries are still european, so how comes? And (still!) Switzerland has still theit CHF but they very much are european... So please stop that nonsense. UK actually *IS* in Europe, no matter what that whishful thinking would suggest.