Falkon Swiftblade

I'm just curious since you guys are working with cloth dynamics, what are the chances you all could incorporate cloth banners or tapestries hanging in the halls? Or maybe have flags waving in the wind?

I timed out as I was trying to do a quick mock up. Well what ever the the UI ends up being, unless you're from a country east of Jerusalem we all read Left to Right, Top to Bottom in a Z formation. So hopefully the most important stuff reiterates that. Also anything that limits me from having to backtrack all over the screen to complete an action the better. If I'm going to have anything on the edges of the screen I would prefer they are for informational purposes only. Especially since the game play is going on inside the screen and I want to stay in the game. If it's possible I wouldn't mind contextual text to float over head and fade out after a few seconds. I liked how BG did the text bubbles in the cutscenes and faded away, but you could open the text window if you wanted to reread it. Otherwise I think when I'm not in combat I'd prefer the UI to fade out after a few seconds. I would prefer action buttons in the center bottom. I made a quick mock up of stuff I mentioned earlier. http://flic.kr/p/ex6vLp

Well what ever the the UI ends up being, unless you're from a country east of Jerusalem we all read Left to Right, Top to Bottom in a Z formation. So hopefully the most important stuff reiterates that. Also anything that limits me from having to backtrack all over the screen to complete an action the better. If I'm going to have anything on the edges of the screen I would prefer they are only for informational purposes only. Especially since the game is going on inside the screen and I want to stay in the game. If it's possible I wouldn't mind contextual text to float over head and fade out after a second. I liked how BG did the text bubbles in the cutscenes and faded away, but you could open the text window if you wanted to reread it.

Another thing I was thinking about with the layout of the levels and maps that I think would make your designers jobs easier for combat encounters, design layout, and potentially may change the way the ui works is by using a hex based system for how maps and props were laid out. This would also make it easier to create interior spaces. It would also make iterations much more flexible for designing encounters.

Hooray for an ART update!! Thanks for the info. OK so the UI I have feedback on since usability is something I'm passionate about. First off good job emulating the IE UI. The color pallet is kinda neutral and not an eyesore. I actually prefer the characters on the bottom of the screen like ya have vs the side because it's awkward to keep clicking the sides of the monitor when encounters are almost always at the bottom of the screen or in the center and you still have to waste time clicking the side portrait then the bottom to select skills. (Pro Tip: Design your encounters to compliment the ui to limit user fatigue of scrolling all over like you're trying to whack a pinata.) Especially for users having to work on a laptop and it takes several swipes or gestures sometimes to get from one side of the screen to the other. Also I'd add a little breathing room for your hero's, so status changing fx have enough contrast the user knows what's going on. Might include tool tips as well. Its too close together and too close to the bottom of the screen now. I'm also a fan of how Apple does their dock so as you hover over an app it magnify's and raises above the bar and then conforms to the dock bar as ya move away. Having a feature like that as I am selecting my hero would help picking my characters in a pinch. In addition, can ya guys add a frame around the hero's portrait or lose the box around them? The boxiness of the frame is kinda ugly. Finally, maybe you guys could add an opacity filter to the ui, so as it's not being actively used the alpha might be a little transparent, and grow opaque as you hover over it. This could be in the options for users to adjust to their preference. Overall I think its pretty solid. My only nit-picky things I'd like to see is stronger contrast between whats selectable and what's for aesthetics. Like that middle section by the clock could be a little more emphasized. The other thing regarding the other window with the egg. I love the style and the texture. I do not like your border. If your artists are using Adobe Illustrator and Indesign, they made it really easy to make intricate patterns in just a few minutes. I don't feel like that arc border fits with the other themes you have shown us up until this point and because of the broken flow it seems icky. Maybe this tutorial will give ya some inspiration. http://www.webdesign.org/vector-graphics/adobe-illustrator/intricate-patterns-in-illustrator.17047.html Also this link has some really nice pencil brushes your artists might like to use to add some value to the images for these types of screens. http://frenden.myshopify.com/products/real-photoshop-pencil-brushes You didn't mention your new tool you guys were experimenting with from like a month ago, is it still going well? Would it work on the UI as well? Polina is a champ, love her work I saw a technique being used in another game recently that made the characters pop a lot more in the isometric game that you guys may want to try out. They use a gradient mesh on the character so the feet area is darker, and the more to the top they are the more vibrant and colorful they are. Here's an excerpt from the team and an example. I think that used with the other software I eluded to would really make your characters more lively. Not that they need to be cartoony, but at least this will make them stand out in the environments. Animated hair and capes sound like a winner!

From what I remember reading Matt and Trey keep getting ideas and it almost sounds like they're feature creeping the game. Meaning they get an idea and add it in over and over which is pushing the game back. I've also heard its super offensive, so maybe the powers that be may be asking them to tone it down.

Any chance of giving us an idea of how many baddies are confirmed so far? Using words like "large" is subjective. That could mean a lot of things. What is an ideal amount of creatures for this game to you guys? Personally I'm hoping for at least 4 flavors of each type of beasty where it makes sense. So like a Kobald for example might have a brutish Kobald, a sorcerer type, a scout/ranger type, and maybe one who tosses grenades or make-shift aoe types of attacks. However I hope that they would still vary in size and possibly have a rank system like jewelry they use, or head dress for example and not just recolor them. Maybe one clan is more sneaky and assassin like, while another is more military and strategic in their tactics.

I could have sworn I saw it was coming out in October, something like the 8th or 18th is what I thought I saw but I can't remember where i would have seen that. I'm sure we'll hear more next month at E3.

Maybe there could be a mechanic that gives the monk an ability to adapt a fighting style of certain types of creatures. Similar to how Rangers have an enemy race like Kobalds or Trolls etc, except this one allows them to find a spiritual creature they can emulate that mimic animal styles. Similar to Drunken Monkey or Tiger, etc. It doesn't specifically need to be martial arts, though I hope its more sexy than just rockem sockem arms swinging as a bear attack. I see this different than a Druid, however I could see how it might work with that playstyle as well.

Josh or someone from Obsidian, can you give an example of Monk gear versus something for one of the other fighting classes and how it's designed for them? It seems like you're giving us a lot of freedom to play any type of character we want which is nice, but I'm trying to envision why I would want to use specific gear for my monk. Also what will be the monks primary stats? Are you guys using the same Str, Wis, Dex, etc system in PE as ya did in the IWD games?

I think the monk class is interesting. He seems more like a berserker type of fighter which might be fun. However they turn out, I hope they are distinguishable from other fighting classes and not just re-skinned. One pet peeve of mine in these games is everyone has the same attack swings whether your unarmed or armed with a war hammer, big or small, lady or gent. It would do well to give the monks several extra attack animations so its not the same 5 attacks the whole game but with bigger glows around his fist. Also maybe your animators can develop a specific fighting style so its not just a bunch of rockem sockem robots. Maybe he can wear shoes with knives in the toe, or wear battle gauntlets that are basically knuckles. I'm just tossing ideas out there. If I had 3 wishes for my monk, it would be he has very fast flurry of blows type of attack that stuns the enemy, some kind of parry attack that uses the enemys attack against themselves, and the dynamic cloth clothes on their pants or robes so they flow when they attack. The concept art is pretty cool, I don't ever remember playing a game in that period style of gear so thats original to me. Better make sure dynamic cloth works though. Also is this game gonna have merchant ships or pirate ships? I would have fun as a swashbuckler

danget I'm impatient today waiting on the update and want to see the new video. It sounds like a lot of bits and bobs are almost up and running.

is next week update prototype 2? I'm not sure if thats gonna show interior cave space or that village, but that would be mega sweet!

Elerond, you forgot to factor in the size of the image and the monitor its being seen on. If it stays on the same 19" or smaller monitor for example, on screen it might not change the image too much, but viewing it at it's full size at that resolution on a larger monitor it does make it look a lot worst than if it was created originally at the bigger size and made smaller unfortunately. Maybe you didn't click on the image to see it with the added artifacts, but its not helping. Nice effort though. I think there's still options they can use. My Skyrim on PC is really high quality, almost photo real and I'm pretty sure I'm under 14 gigs with mods. Maybe they can look into making the game procedural like Skyrim in that manner.

There are a number of tricks that they can use to improve the final output files for the game without needing it to be 6 Blu-ray's worth of data. The biggest one is they would need their source files to be created in a higher bit rate quality before exporting to the final render. Here's some tricks I use in my line of work as a multimedia designer. I try to always work 1.5x larger than the final output in 16 bit or 24 bit color mode so I capture a much broader range of values and colors. This also allows for flexibility and allows the image or video to be able to scale up without looking like crap. The final image just pops more than working in standard 8 bit mode after I compress it, versus starting at 8 and going to 16-24 bits. One thing I noticed in the video was the values seem to be kinda narrow versus preferably 7-9 step system. (More specifically related to the characters versus their environment, which makes them just blend in and not really stand out.) The added contrast in each map will give the appearance of more details and better graphics without needing to do a bunch of extra work. I understand too this is early and they're still testing some ideas out. I hope they create the models in a higher quality and scale them in a bit better though. Maybe they could render the characters and textures out as an image sequence inside Unity to help with their animations and save space. I know they have also been experimenting with a new program in the past few weeks that should really make their final images pop too. As long as they keep a strong color and lumina space, I think it will really be fine even at 2560x1440 resolution.

I'm not sure if it would be possible in a game like this, but it would be cool if there were parts in the game we get ambushed from behind or maybe as your crossing a bridge we get stuck over a cavern and enemy's come out from both sides to flank us. I hope technology has fixed the pathing issues from 15 yrs ago in these games.

I completely agree. My biggest pet peeve in any game is not letting me move because of some arbitrary design flaw such as bad camera angle or in this case being so over encumbered we can't walk, or if we do, we'd fail at the turtle Olympics. I'd much rather prefer we had a pack mule who followed us around that we could load our stuff on, except a handful of items as we progress. In fact It might be more work initially, but I'd rather have something like a pack mule or whatever creature you want to use as the inventory component, rather than having 270 items on your person or limiting just because someone uses magic they're too weak to hold a big weapon or have bulkier armor. Maybe I want to be a magic user who uses my magic as a big opener or finisher, but prefer swinging giant axes in the meantime...

As far as future updates, I'd like one on systems design and whats being used from the old IWD games versus what's being changed or enhanced.

Oh, another request regarding the bestiary. I'm pretty burnt out on vampires, zombies, and excessive gore in games. If your gonna have those things, I hope you all go a completely different direction with them, and maybe even use sound to substitute the gruesomeness. Maybe consider a pacifist play style for creature encounters and have several ways to gain xp.

Great update guys! I have a fair amount of feedback this time. First congrats on all that's been established so far I am glad to hear about the goals and capability's of Armor in game. Can you please design the crafting system so that player crafted weapons and armor don't look like the same ones that we find in the world? I would like at the minimum to choose the dye color or possibly have the quality of resources I use to craft with show up in the final weapon. If I create a steel long sword, maybe its a little shinier than one dropped off a baddie. It would also be nice if a rusty long sword really was rusty. Also hopefully a +1 weapon isn't the same looking as a +2. Hooray for the bestiary. Here's my pet peeve with fighting in these types of games. There's not enough variety in encounters or types of enemy's. If you're going to have fewer types of baddies, please don't just change them from red to green and give them spears, work on making them intelligent encounters instead. Maybe its fewer tougher battles, but I like variety if I had my choice. Whatever ya can do to remove grinding across the board please do that. Although I still think it should be optional. As far as voice sets go, can ya guys try to create a few options for each type of class. I felt like in the old IE games there was like 1-3 good ones max and everyone sounded the same because I had to pick a voice. It would be superb if we had up to 4 battle cries per class character voice sets, because I think realistically after about the 50th time I hear the same battle cry I may really want to cry. I'm totally feeling the concept art for the small village, it would be swell if you guys can create random puddles of water and mud to walk through in places like that. Especially if you guys do weather down the line. I'm really glad you have lots of ways to completing quests. I would like it if sometimes there are quests like scavenger hunts to maybe collect parts to build an epic weapon, or treasure maps that lead to booty hidden behind the right rock, etc. Holy happy days, I'm really excited about dynamic cloth! I'm excited for how that will effect robes, monk pants, capes, etc! very cool Finally, you mentioned making things organic. That's my hope as well. As much as I'd like things like duel wielding and choosing when to use left or right attacks to parry or block, I'd prefer things were organic more. By the way, here's a trick you can do in your artwork to give the impression of things moving. I feel like if you paint leaves like that for trees or on plants, it'll probably trick our eyes more than the previous attempt in the video we saw.

If anyones curious how big this level is compared to their end vision, Rob Nessler said this was a 2x2 map, large dungeons & exteriors will be 8x8

I'm really glad you posted this, because one of my biggest hopes for this game is still keeping the old IE feel, but also changing the perspective so maybe we have a similar level where we cross a bridge or cliff and there's a canyon with birds flying around and water falls coming down, etc.instead of the same camera perspective the whole game.

Cool stuff, does this video show the new tool you guys were experimenting with last week? I still wish the models were scaled about 10-20% bigger. Although I liked the scale of the forest, I just wish it wasn't as linear- though I realize this is a demo. It is very pretty, and im glad you guys added in animated grass and water.

Very cool LordCrash, that's certainly the best for everyone involved

The BG2 intro combined 2D drawings with some blending/panning animation quite effectively: I remember those days It reminds me of what 38 studios was doing for their MMO for Kingdoms of Amalur. You can see the parts I'm referring to here.