Falkon Swiftblade

ahh, well if they could animate the circles to alternate lighter shades of green or red or blue, etc or glow a bit that would help too.

are all the shadows darker than the players? that's a little backwards. Shadows should probably be about 20-30% lighter, if that's possible to mod.

Hypothetically, if I were to create some vfx or animations to mod in, does anyone know what file format they're using? I know how to create that sort of stuff, but I typically do it for web and video, so I'm not sure how it translates into a game engine. PS: Why do sometimes I see blue circles instead of green? I would think blue would stand out against the backgrounds in any circumstance more than green.

what's bonkers is I'm fairly certain their animation team rigged their models and animated them in maya too, when unity comes with software that basically does it all for you in minutes. Where as their older methodology takes days or weeks per rig. I feel bad for saying it, but they could have spent $200-500 for an animation software that already has most animations already done and the stock animations would have looked better than anything I've seen since this was first shown.

I suspect part of the reason progress to the first big city was due to lack of narrative direction, and also combat/learning curves. Most speed runs avoid as much combat as possible, so it would be interesting to know how much the designer talked his way through things.

very nice, those portraits are very handsome. The dark haired lass is kind on the eyes too.

it sounds like they're making a buncha changes in this build since it's been in the works for several weeks now. Hopefully, it's a lot of fine tuning that went into this one. Somehow I feel like they're taking it more seriously now that they are internally playing it and can give an honest critique about the experience they're trying to create rather than everyone just working in a vacuum and not knowing what everyone else is working on. I expect this patch and the next one to really have the most notable tweaks.

Obsidian and releasing buggy games go hand in hand I'm curious to know how many folks are beta testing this sucker now. Surely they're getting invaluable feedback from anything they've put out before. I hope this next patch has a bunch of the vo work done in it. Finger's crossed it's not the same guy doing all the voices trying to sound like he's not the same guy doing all the voices, if you catch my drift.

Edit: I've got to admit i'm very curious as to how Monks fit in to the cultures of the gameworld, the other classes seem mainly self explanatory, but Monks i'm just not sure what their role is. Honestly, I think they're not sure either. It's clear the dev's are pretty anti religious in their beliefs, so their world view seems to skew a realistic depiction of how a monk class would fit into the lore of their world. They've already stated that the monk is not inherently motivated in the way, such as following a particular deity. They seem to be designing them to be masochists which seems like it would be a better mechanic for the barbarian really.

one thing TOEE did that i liked better than their current build was how the ui reticle appeared contextually in a circular manner once you clicked on the party or enemy. I think that could still be modified a little bit more, but i think it was headed in the right direction.

Is that the same thing that you see Jackie Chan do against the wooden board with the pegs on it? That would be cool. I think whatever method they'd use it should appear that there is a discipline to it and it's not just a buncha punches and hooks in there.

I could see elements of that style fitting into some aspects of the game, though since so much emphasis is on the metallic armor and weapons I don't see how they could withstand the brutality. The style also seems to be more of a submissive style of fighting by overpowering the enemies to the ground, but I don't know how lethal they'd be? It would be a big change of pace for what most monkish styles have been like in games. I think it would benefit the style possibly in the druid class when they shape shift into a creature, and use like the ram strike to stun or confuse the enemies for example.

I don't know if it would be any more difficult for the programmers to give you like a 5 pixel padding around the character or selectable objects so you can't accidently click into objects. Maybe an easier solution would have movement need an extra click, so you double click to move to x spot. Also, the text in the combat log could benefit from having tab's so you can filter out content that doesn't need to be there since it scrolls by so fast anyways. I almost feel like the combat log needs to be about 20% wider and include the content more unified. I think Sensuiki made a similar suggestion of how I imagined it would work. Right now it's a bit too much work to have it as is. I think middle bottom and about 50 pixels taller and about 20% wider would go a long way.

When you make a claim like 'a child could do it better in a day than these so-called professionals have in two years', it helps to back it up with actual evidence in the form of videos and such. Well, I never said a child could do it in a day, but I have already posted in the threads a few times some suggestions, and I've emailed their lead animator months ago. Without knowing their pipeline specifically, I don't know the best method for them to use, certainly there are much better method's for giving better results in less time. this is an older version of unity, i think 4.2 and beta for 5.0 is out now with even more control. Using cheap/free mocap for motion builder and unity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tHAXiN0Ffg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5PwBzYrC_I you can check out his channel for several other videos for more complicated things, but still it's much faster and easier since you're not having to rig the characters like you would for old methodology. Not to mention they sell a huge library with the animations already done for like $200 and something like 5,000 animations already done for you. I understand they had a tight budget for the game, but a few hundred $ is way cheaper and faster than what they've hired someone to do so far. Not to mention you can still modify and change the files once they're in the system. The great thing about this method, is you could just put random people in the room with props and have all your animations 90% done in like a week, and not have to use the same rig over and over for every creature and humanoid like the trailers show.

The process for animating in unity is pretty easy. I feel like anyone who can sit through an hour tutorial can create anything they want in less than a day. How it fits into their pipeline is another story though. I really was hoping there would be a combination of playstyles for all classes in their animations. So far for the budget they've raised, I'm less than impressed with what they've put out. I'm just really confused because Unity does most of the work for you, and the stuff it doesn't do, there's already free or very cheap rigs out there that's a lot better. Even indie games that are 6 month's in, with one person coding, doing the art, and animation look better than this project so far. I'm not trying to sound like a troll and nit picky, but really it's been over 2 yrs now, and the stuff shown looks like student work at best. I want to remain optimistic though. With as much time that's left, there's still plenty of time to do hundreds of new animations. On topic, just out of curiosity Flayeriv, what would distinguish your ideal monk with sword and buckler style from a paladin? I'm ok with them doing something other than martial arts, I just don't want them to change the color of the model and his weapons and call him a monk.

eff that's so lazy. I hate the whack a mole mentality of making the monk just an extra body to fill space and adjust some #'s behind the scene, but yet we had to raise $100-200k for them to include them in the game. That's the kinda things that really make me so frustrated. Honestly, other than a few minor behind the scenes checks the monk looks just like any generic character. I surely hope they remedy that. I've already sent them an email with step by step instructions of how to rig a char in like 2-20 min from scratch and it includes how to have idles or any movement really easily.

i think the music is the same as the original, I can't distinguish anything new. The Dragon needs a bigger selection circle though, he looks great, but the team still hasn't found a solution to make the characters and npc's feel grounded in the world most of the time, and I think it's the specific angle they're using for some reason. However, it's certainly looking to shape up like I anticipated.

very nice teaser, it's shaping up better and better. did I miss the release date though?

In my experience, they finish these books prior to release by a few weeks. Also of note, usually they're working with an older build of the game when they're doing the walk throughs or giving hints. So the final game may change from what was printed. I wish they would've gone through Future Press though, they put out the very best books I've ever seen. The quality is fantastic. I still think the Amalur Reckoning one was easily the best purchase I've made, it was a 600 page hardcover tome and was less than $30. I would have gladly paid $20 more for it. I wish they would have had time to include the extra stuff they released afterwards in pdf in the book, but it was brilliant.

any way to find out how many people are participating in the BB? I suspect there's several hundreds, if not thousands of folks who've elected to participate. I know some people had downloaded the game, and found it too buggy to test out and shelved it, hopefully they're back at it now. Since I'm not in the BB the only major thing I'm seeing in posted videos that feels like it needs help at this current stage that hasn't been addressed is the combat dynamics. I feel like there's way too much micromanaging going on and way too many pauses per encounter, which is very immersion breaking. Hopefully combat ai is greatly enhanced, or they adjust animation/fx timing's so there's transition time to enjoy the combat encounter. It's nice to have a lot of options to choose, but keep it simple Sam. I feel like it's a basketball game with 0:34 seconds left in the game and it still takes 5 minutes to finish because of the time out's.

honestly, with as many issues as they're still having with the current version, it wouldn't bother me if they transitioned to the new one if it would free them up time in development and improved performance and made the game's longevity worthwhile. However I understand if they couldn't do it, but I'd hope they at least take an honest look at it.

agree with the rest using a 64 bit system and even just 4 more gig of ram would really help. you can find it on newegg.com for very cheap.

I've never seen the show, but I know it's very popular here and I think he succeeds in the music not being so grating even though it's repetitive. So maybe something in his technique could be used in the battle music?

I haven't announced it yet, but it's going to either be an animated interactive storybook you read at the basic level, or depending on funding I have a lot of material it could be an episodic series, or an animated feature, or a rts game, or a film. The main character is a musical savant that grows through the course of the game into a cross between a bard, a shaolin monk, and possibly a cleric or combat mage on an epic journey. I'm still creating him visually.

I'm not in the bb, but if I understand you correctly, you're saying someone in your party is saying, "show me your wares." You're requesting that the player or party member has a bit more personality in how he asks to see the goods right? I think there should be some kind of personality or lore option that allows things like that to come up. It's difficult to read context in writing. Sometimes our inner chatter is more harsh than it's meant to be. I've had many an internet argument because someone misread what I typed for similar reasons. I could see something being added to tweak that request, but maybe they could have certain characters have a distinct dialog option based upon the personality they've designed. However I think your party leader should have final say so unless it's a scripted event.