Falkon Swiftblade

from my understanding from other developers, it would be a lot of work to transfer over from one release to another major release. from a 4.56 to 4.73 might not be a big headache, but a 4.5 to a 5.0 or 4.0 to 5.0 would probably add a fair bit of development time. I asked the same question because I want to take my project to kickstarter and I knew 5.0 was coming out during my development cycle, and they pretty much told me not to do so unless I really needed a specific feature.

very neat loading screens thank you for sharing. They're a little more real than i expected in the exteriors, i like the interiors a bunch, though i wish there was some kind of narrative element in the scenes, but maybe its intentionally left out at the moment. by narrative, i mean story element, a wagon or a character on the path, or a glyph, etc. its starting to come together more and more.

can anyone share screenshots of the new loading, or anyone doing a quick video of this build? It sounds like the changes are a big.

ram should be a non issue. man, think of how good uncharted 3 looked on ps3 with only 256 meg and 256 meg video memory. These guys are not doing anything that I've seen remotely intensive for your computer to run it. If they are, they're doing a good job of hiding it. Not to sound negative in any way, but I was just stating it didn't seem they're trying to do anything spectacular with the performance of this game to make it demanding at all. But if you're running a computer in 2014 and still only running 4 gig or less of ram then maybe you should get with the times, you can buy 8 gig's for like $60-80.

sweet so this can run on pretty much a smartphone, gotcha!

I'm glad we have lots of folks beta testing. I'm curious to know how many beta dl there have been to date? I know there's got to be a pretty large amount which should really help them flesh out the game compared to when the old I.E. games came out. Does the beta collect any info behind the scenes of play mechanic's such as how many quests were completed, or most killed enemy or anything else like that?

AHA I found it. This, this is what they should recreate for Pillars of Eternity, I don't care if it's just for nostalgia, or for solving puzzles on a wall, or for scavenger hunt to find secret loot in the game, but this would be so frikkin cool.

they should give those guys with the physical rewards one of the cypher wheels they mocked up several months ago. I forgot the game I played in the 80's or early 90's that used that so you could continue your game. That was so much fun.

Maybe they're not using photoshop CC yet, but now it's really easy to manipulate images and completely move objects and you can add too or take away super fast. Techniques that would normally take 30 min to 12 hours can be done in seconds or a few minutes now. Shoot I'll do it for min wage haha cause it's that easy. I wonder if they know about the skew tool? Also, why can't they just change the way the plane lays. In the first video they showed the 2d plane of the image, and I would think they just need to tweak it and tilt it a tad?

Thanks for the update! Can I make a suggestion or request that probably wouldn't eat up too much time on your guys part? I gotta say I appreciate all the work your team has put in the game so far, so please don't take this as me being nit picky, but from all I've seen so far for the player faces in the game, they're all so dark, too dark. You would think they would be painted or textured to indicate more highlights on their faces instead of the very dark muddy tones. If the game takes place at night time more than daytime that's one thing, but something in the pipeline is making them unnaturally dark. I understand it's a 3d model exported out in 2d against 2d background, but someone should have thought about the environmental effects on the characters a tad more. Also, it's kinda immersion breaking for the people warming their hands in the fire inside the inn when it's 76 or 80 outside. thanks, and really I do appreciate the work that's gone into this and that continues to go into it!

just curious, are the characters faces normally kind of dark? I would think they should have a little more light contrast. They seem like they're under some kind of shadow. The art certainly looking much better now.

Hopefully the spoiler isn't showing in this, like it is in my preview, but I'm not in the beta and I noticed an odd greenish opaque circle under the feet of the player that make me think of them as miniature's on a map. I think the color is off putting to me, what and why are they there? On the other hand, if they were trying to implement miniature's like a tabletop experience, I'd prefer maybe a silver color or gold. I'm just trying to figure out what's going on in the image.

I'm not in the beta, but I have been reading some of the posts on here and I don't recall anyone discussing the crafting or any of the other types of rpg systems yet, how is it, what's the perks, etc?

I actually like that, I hope it's on purpose. I don't care specifically if it's female or male being taller than the other, I just appreciate that there are different body types and sizes.

indeed the animations were much better, and I like the fact that they move with consistency. As much as I hate traffic and wished when you were at a light when the light turned green everyone would just go at the same time, the idea of everyone running and stopping at the same time like they do in PoE is just really awkward. At the very least, there should be some easing in and easing out when moving. Not that they necessarily need such a long delay.

dang, that game went into development like 6 months after this and already their characters, animation, cloaks, etc looks twice as nice as this game. Even the running animation trumps the bb so far. Obsidian better get cooken man cause pillars is one of my most anticipated games.

I found his method very effective for testing playability and enjoyability, and it may give Justin some ideas of how to write his music! Plus the guys just a boss

Actually, based upon the current state of the game, I'd prefer to pick my background before I picked my stats. Once I level up the first time, then I'd rather pick which stats I can influence. I think these types of games are silly when you start out you just happen to be as smart as you'll ever be, or as strong as you'll ever be in the beginning before you even play the game. I'd rather end the game with having the highest "roll" stat's available to me based upon my choices or playstyle as I progress. Possibly more like some games do like the ES, the more you do something the better you get at it. Although, I think I may have read that our stats will be out of 100. In that case, I'm ok choosing a starting base with a rolling feature just to get started. Now I want to express I'm only talking about this as it's first game. If I was playing POE 2 or something like that, then I would rather choose my starting stats, because by that point the story or character should already have a history and playstyle established. It also depends on the scope of the game. If in game terms the story takes all of 2 days or a week to finish the plot I'm ok with preset stats, but if the adventure is going to take me months to complete in game, no way do I want preset skills for the whole game. Even though you find a +1 this or that, that's not the same.

I just finished watching a fantastic GDC session on animation that an indie dev team did with two people, and it was about a thousand times better than the stuff Obsidian has put together so far. No disrespect, but I'm just saying even the most basic animations are pretty awkward. Here's some good ideas. http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020583/Animation-Bootcamp-An-Indie-Approach

well one thing's for sure, this may actually be the first rpg you really need to be prepared for once you leave town, that i've played in a really long time! I got the impression from the first footage we saw once we start, we're in the caravan and we can immediately change out the gear from the merchant in the party. I think I like the option of selecting my options from the store based upon it's stat's rather than how I look wielding it. Although, I do appreciate having the opportunity to wield different weapons in character creation.

My least favorite feature in any type of RPG is a weight mechanic which immobilizes you for picking up stuff that you need to progress. It's ok for short durations like a quest that's timed, but I'm all in favor of a shared inventory space. I was happy with the way Titan Quest handled their inventory space so as you progressed in the story it eventually opened up more inventory space or added tabs for new inventory. I would like a party based inventory, but admittedly, I'd like a space to organize items too. I think our player house is supposed to allow us to display things also. I sure hope so at least.

thx mate i had no idea that forum existed!

To my great wonder and surprise, I saw the announcement that Pre-orders are now available for Icewind Dale Enhanced Edition! I completely expected this to be redone by Obsidian after the release of Pillars, but it looks like the same guys who put out the Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 have the rights to do this version too with a host of new stuff similar to the EE they've already released. I'll admit, I was totally caught by surprise, but I'm sure to pick this up when it comes out in the near future. It's going to be $19.99 for all the similar platforms as the other EE versions and will include quick loot bar from BG 2 EE and over 40 classes and new content that was cut from the original game that's been finished. Learn more here, http://www.icewinddale.com/ PS I didn't see an off topic section to post this, so if a mod needs to move it to the appropriate section please do so.

To be fair to Obsidian, I purchased the Enhanced edition to BG 1 and 2 which came out I think 2 yrs ago, and even though they were using a much improved engine, they still had hundreds of bugs they managed to fix, and they've gone through several huge patched since and I think last count they were well over 700 bugs fixed from the old game and the new version and counting even with the help of the old modders and newer tech being used. Similarly with this game, there's a ton of systems in the game with a lot of choose your own path to play, so that compounds things. Finding the bugs is a good thing. However, with all due respect to Obsidian, they have a rotten reputation for putting out some really buggy games. This time though, there are a LOT more people helping them test and balance things, so this might be well worth the headaches now. I'm sure we've got a solid 3 months before launch which is a long time to iterate and polish this off

Hi Justin, I'm not a beta player so I haven't heard much of the music, but I managed to watch a stream for about 20 minutes and actually got to hear a bit more. Overall I think you're doing a pretty solid job. I liked the opening title from about the 30-45 seconds I've heard. I'm loving about the first 8 seconds of the battle music right up until one part, but I gotta tell you, I couldn't take more than 3 battles with the repetitions of the dadada dada dada of I think the french horns or maybe trombones part with the choir that's ~ 15-20 seconds onward. The horns sounds a bit muted swells and then the drums come in. From about that part on it's very abrasive sounding. If your attempt to make us cringe in our seats you get a hi5, but it's almost too harsh to my ears and I honestly can't sit through more than about 30-45 seconds of that part of the music, it's that strong. I will be forced to turn the music WAY down if I have to listen to that track every 45 seconds as I battle for 2-5 minutes each. Everything else in that battle music is very good I think. Can ya try taking that drum part and the swelling dada dada da da horns out of the mix and turn down the choir by about 20% and see if it still works? If there's any real weakness in your music I can hear, it's that just sometimes you have too much going on at once and the clarity is missing of the emotion or mood you're trying to invoke and the repetitiveness is jarring. Some stuff is super though. I guess it's a balancing game to find out what needs to be in there, vs what's too over the top. Keep up the good work, and have fun!