Falkon Swiftblade

Don't be hasty on the patch notes. It's been a month of tuesdays since the last update. The previous patch notes are confusing as to what's actually been fixed vs known issues. Are there still daily builds? Did Justin have a chance to go through and tweak the combat music fade in and out? Previously that .5 sec delay was too fast!

Man, for some reason this guy just pops against the bg, yet in game ya guys lose the contrast pretty bad. Maybe a happy compromise for this or the expansion is to give the hero's rim lightning so they stand out, kinda like mobile games do in flash.

can you change dye color of the clothes, those examples above are fantabulous

Also, these types of fx are WAY better than the ugly green and yellow selection circles currently being implemented. More of these types of circles and less of the regular circles. Not to say they all need runes on them, just this feels like it fits the context in the world than a simple circle does with ugly yellow and green.

Nah, it's totally doable. Think of how they do matte paintings. Or maybe you're unaware, basically everything is done with little sections composited together which give the illusion that it's together in one scene, but it might be 3-10 sections strategically placed so it blends together. Most films use this technique and the actor's are just standing on the foreground on a green screen, yet you think they're on top of a mountain or a ship for example. In fact in the very first video Josh showed us the scene of the characters running across riverbed and had the waterfall in the background, yet they pulled away and everything was just a 2d plane with another 2d plane on top. It's a very similar technique.

I'm sure at some point they'll update their engine to 5.0 which will make it easier to mod the game. I already have an idea to greatly enhance the animations across the board, but I don't know how to swap out their rigs or if I can somehow include motion capture files. As long as they keep their stuff on their end fairly open so we can access it, there's a lot of possibilities.

As far as art critique goes they may have the best floors in a game I've played, I love the water in the environments. Although, I really wish they'd have some more environments where there was a change in elevation so the foreground may be a cliff or plateau (spelling?) And the background were rolling waves coming in below. Or your crossing bridges fighting enemies with huge waterfalls coming down vertically in the background. Also the beds seem too squarish shaped vs rectangular and too hard. I hope they retouch the art to make them look soft.

Man, I've rewatched it a few times and every time I get that feeling of panic that your team must've felt. Also, not sure if it was intentional, but it certainly effective to film everything almost barebones so it looked empty and minimally manned. I'm sure as it progresses the narrative will change, but there's a level of authenticity here they've managed to capture and I'm hopeful for the outcome.

the animations have REALLY leveled up since this post originally was created. I'm hoping they're still working on them every day but they have improved overall.

I think the old game was a star wars sith game, but it was yrs ago and can't remember. I used to follow that more than lately. When 38 studios also went under my passion for game studio's kind of tanked. Saw hundreds of folks let go over night, saw it happen again at zynga, and about 3 other studio's in just a matter of month's. Hopefully this will alllow obsidian to regain some control.

cool! how long is the whole thing going to be? This would make a great movie. Also, is that bearded guy in the video around the part with the black guy Tim Cain? He looks like Tim, but I've seen Tim with the goatee and I was thinking how much he's changed. Josh's hair was uber short compared to now haha. I hope you guys film the game going gold!

Ha, that's bonkers what a huge increase.

I think there's a free 30 day trial, I'm pretty well versed in 21 industry related software, so I'll see what I can do over next few weeks, but I think once I have time to sit down I can bust out a lot in one day.

I don't own adobe cloud, but if anyone does the newest version of illustrator can turn dang near any image into a vector image which can scale any size and you don't lose quality. Which reminds me about custom portrait sizes, should be easy to do as well. So if you want to turn the lil icons into bigger one's it should be pretty dang easy to resize them. I only have Sundays off, but I do love creating this kinda stuff, so maybe I can make a go at it over the next few weeks.

Nah, I'm sure they're gonna put one more out, but just how much it helps for day one update will be interesting to see. I do suspect the guy's reviewing the game's are either going to test on near final build, or will only have a few day's to play it and that will cause the review's to be delayed at launch I bet. It sounds like the main campaign is pushing over 40 hrs and that's with someone who knew what he was doing.

umm thing's never calm down before a game ships, it only get's more bonkers hahaha. I bet they're kicking themselves now for all the long lunch breaks and slacker day's they took. Just kidding, I'm sure everyone worked real hard on this. Well almost everyone. There's still a few thing's that concern me after 2 and a half years at this point, but I've seen bigger miracles come together.

I think I saw Bester posted a link to a mod which allows you to modify some assets in the game. I don't know if those are considered shaders or how they're classified in the engine, but I think there's a chance it's possible. When Obsidian makes the change later on to Unity 5 not only is it free to use, they've made it much easier to mod stuff in that version. So maybe in the next few months after release we can do stuff like that a lot easier.

Probably later this week. I think they're gonna be trying to add in a few minor tweaks like combat music fade in and out which Justin said is very easy for him to do. It also sounded like there's still a lot of thing's they're working on.

I read or heard somewhere that the monsters in game do not have levels and I don't remember if that's how they were in the I.E. games or not, but wondered is there any way we can distinguish when encountering a monster how hard it will be without having to kill them several times and the bestiary fills itself out? That seems potentially counter productive knowing when to engage in the encounter. Also will the monsters respawn or change in areas or dungeons other than when you change difficulty? Finally, if i change the difficulty do the creatures in the area automatically swap out, or when i reload the area?

Other than choosing higher resolutions and scalable ui/font's is there anything else being done to make thing's shiny or cool?

I'm kinda ignorant, on Steam I have games that are both Mac and PC and it allows me to download both, will this work the same way, and what would be the difference on GoG?

Justin, How much music is in game vs what's on the CD?

Also, as far as environmental music vs combat music it might be appropriate for a short version of it to play upon entry into a particular zone, and a longer piece to play somewhere as you explore the zone. I like how Kingdom's of Amalur did it when you entered in the faction halls or when you quick load into a town you've visited so it was ~10-30 second snippet of a larger piece of music. Here's a lil example of how it all came together. Notice how thing's fade out over time and you can still enter combat for a few seconds before the combat track kicks in. There's area transitional music ~ 0:25 and 3:25 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEdc3NWq2io

Fade out I feel like should be over a few seconds 3-5 also fade in should also be about 1-2 seconds. pause should be much more, at least 10. I guess it's tricky to know when to start combat music. Is there a difference between combat start and combat music? I feel like as long as there's some time ~ 10-30 seconds when music is not playing in between combat and environmental music it's ok. Sometimes even a few minutes is fine because just listening to birds and running water in an environment can help ground you in the moment.

OK, so I rewatched the stream in a quiet place so I could take in everything and few thing's stood out. The Cool stuff : noticeable polish has been put in the character art portraits and ui from a few months ago. It does feel more modern, yet there's nod's to the old games. Wow that music leveled up. The combat music in the Beta few versions back was actually borderline painful to listen to in parts. This was exciting, felt familiar, yet unique enough I don't think I'll get worn out listening to it, Hi5 Justin! Love the scripted storybook stuff with the sound fx, though it would be nice if the companions could also have little blurbs like gasps of surprise, banter like complaining to be asked to go swimming or cheers or something based upon the encounters. Overall, the companion VO turned out much better than the initial stuff shared with us. It kinda sounded forced for the guy initially, but these were pleasant. (Is there a player voice to choose from as well?) love multiple ways to do content such as alternate entrances and I hope there are secret passages in the game you would miss out on if your skill points are too low. I like the bounty system. It would've been cool to have a trophy wall for the heads or items you collect to display in your stronghold. The stuff still needs some tweaks : The Combat music needs to fade out slower over a second or two after the fights. It ends too abruptly and doesn't transition well. Also I think I saw someone say the combat music and environmental music needs to pause and have some breathing room in between and that's exactly right. We need to have some moments of silence and certainly after a fight could use a breather. Combat animations and running need a little stutter when they take off and the characters need to lean forward before they actually run and maybe when they stop there's a little wobble or at the least they slow down when they stop. Anticipation and follow through are missing from the animations. Everything is too rigid and mechanical. Some legibility issues. It's a horrible idea to have fonts on top of a graphic that's not a solid color unless the background is a very light texture, and by light i mean barely noticeable. There's still some kerning and leading issues I hope are possible to give some space in the text walls. vfx should appear and disappear to serve a purpose. The visual clutter with 6 people on screen plus the numerous monsters is a bit chaotic and I don't know what can be done this late in the game, but it really messes with the flow. Something I don't know if it's possible to include and may already be in that would be nice is if there were hot keys to switch players and their abilities without having to click on the icons would be cool, but not necessary. As long as they continue to work on it post release I think between the community and the dev's this should be super great!