Hormalakh

Ultimately, does the ethnicity choice that I, as a player make, limit the, for example, skin tones I can choose for my PC? Can i toggle epicanthal folds, other physiological traits and still be a certain ethnicity? an example: can my oceanic dude have white skin tone with nappy hair or can my savannah dude be black (i've also seen this)? it's rare, but it happens! Bless America with its crazy mixture of people...

right, i understood that. i don't assume that ethnicities are equivalent to cultures. i think this is a step in the right direction (more anthropological in its description) and so that is why my question is "are these three human (i'm sticking to human for now) ethnicities limited only because of outside resource management, or are these three ethnicities the only ones that exist in the PE world?" You don't need/have to have everything described/flesh out in the first game but has this consideration been made? not to belabor the point (sorry!) but here are a few good wiki articles on the topic. this is obviously an anthropological subject of study and has been heavily studied for many years. from what i've gathered (and I am by no means an expert), anthropologists have always gotten it wrong (and probably continue to do so). but the main idea is that many of the main differences in physiological traits we see between humans (black skin, epicanthal folds, deep rosy cheeks, etc) are due to evolutionary adaptations over thousands of years. however, we continue to categorize people based on very varying physical traits and sometimes these things are not as clear cut (nature rarely has absolutes) as we sometimes make them out to be. Ultimately, does the ethnicity choice that I, as a player make, limit the, for example, skin tones I can choose for my PC? Can i toggle epicanthal folds, other physiological traits and still be a certain ethnicity? an example: can my oceanic dude have white skin tone with nappy hair or can my savannah dude be black (i've also seen this)? it's rare, but it happens! Bless America with its crazy mixture of people... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craniofacial_anthropometry#Modern_anthropometry_and_biometrics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongoloid#Criticism

I can dig that. Most middle-easterners are considered "white" afterall. It's just, I don't know, I feel that the ethnicities as described currently are a little difficult to swallow. It seems like we got the whites (which we can't ever forget about) and the "token" black ethnicities "check." then we got mesoamerican because you know, that's "cool." but then it's really difficult to categorize people in this way. "Black" means different things. You've got jamaican black, haitian black, african black, middle-eastern black (yeah really. check out persian gulf people. Some of them are quite darkly toned.) So I understand the whole "let's move away from white,black,latino" and describe where people are from. coastal places, mountainous regions, desert people, etc etc. It makes sense from a evolutionary biology/physiology perspective and basically "cleanses" it of any racial stigmata. At the same time, i'm sure some people want to play "yellow" mountainous people and "black" mountainous people or "scots" mountainous people, etc etc. Is this possible? Do these specific ethnicities limit the physiological makeup of the players you can choose? For example, if you pick the "coastal" does your PC automatically look darker skinned? Do all Player Characters have specific physiological characteristics picked for them? etc etc It's a dangerous road to walk on in my opinion and perhaps some further thought should be put into it. I'm OK with people being described as from certain geographically descript locations and at the same time certain aspects of their physiology should be customizable. anyway, i'm ranting. this deserves some further explanation and thought in my opinion. or maybe i'm completely misunderstanding this.

that's like the worst of both worlds.

Thanks for the info on the ethnicities. Josh you live in California and you have no East Asian or Middle Eastern/Persians or Southeast Asians in your ethnicities for the humans?! For shame... Edit: I understand the difference between the cultures/physical attributes distinction. I'm just interested in knowing which humans have specific physical attributes like epicanthal folds, rosy red cheeks, e.g. human's (and other races) physiological adaptation to geographical limits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_physiology#Emergent_properties

hello. nice to see you again. thanks for the update. surprisingly informative. one question. i am assuming that the PLAYABLE ethnicities and cultures (unsure about races) in this game are limited only due to the limitations of time, money, budget, computer, whatever. thus there are other ethnicity and cultures in the game that we are just unable to play, is that correct?

please see a doctor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkGrkNu6mDg Your turn animal lovers.

I'm not going to read all these comments and hopefully someone has already mentioned this: it seems that if you want your lighting to be more "perfect" you'll need two light sources on top of each other. One light to visualize your 2d image and then one light source for your 3d objects. So for example, when it goes from morning to night, you have your 3d "sun light source" moving across the map and this would give your 3d objects their dynamic lighting. Then you superimpose your 2d "sun light source" in the same way. If that's too difficult, i imagine you'd definitely have to do this with your little globes of light (torches?) in dungeons. You have a 2ed light sourec raytracing your map and then a 3d light source superimposed so that you can have your 3d models shadowing correctly. anyway, my 2c worth. i imagine this isn't new info to you but i thought i'd mention it.

eh not bad. justtttt kidding. cool stuff.

yeah seriously...it's ok it happens dudes. no worries. the obsidian guys could have been going home by now so ....thanks for staying and updating us.

april fools was 8 days ago but better late than never. there's no video tonight folks! go home!

Hi Obsidian. So here's an idea for your UI. Have you ever played Baldur's Gate or Baldur's Gate 2? You have? Good. So have you ever considered where most people pause the game? It's mainly during combat if you didn't know. Now what specific part of combat do most people pause the game? The answer is likely to be parts where multiple clicks need to be made: specifically during inventory management (getting potions) and spell casting. So my idea: We were having a discussion on the glorious codex about good UIs for Torment and someone mentioned the NWN2 "spell hot button" used to bring up the spell list in that game. I thought to myself, you know, it would be nice if the game would autopause whenever I bring up my lists of spells to cast one during combat. So my idea is basically to take the old BG2 autopause conditions and to come up with a few new options. Set it up for players who really do like to pause but only while battling. Give us a few toggleable options to autopause the game when the "cast spell" list comes up, when the "use item" command is used, or other locations in game where the amount of time it takes to do an action is longer than a few seconds. So for example, i probably won't pause when I kill an enemy (althought that mgiht be an option for other people who do) but I definitely pause when I'm casting a spell with my mage. I need to click through a list of spells, make sure I got the right spell, click a target, etc. That takes time and it's difficult to do that when I've got enemies in my hair. so the system autopauses whenever i pick my mage and i hit the shortcut button for "cast spell." same for other similarly sensitive sections in game. (yeah i hope you noticed the shortcut button for cast spell). hope this makes sense.

I've had a DRM discussion before on these forums and it wasn't very liked by most people and when I think back on it, really most people realize when you're just being a jerk to them and might even go out of their way to bite their thumb at developers when they feel that they're being singled out as being "pirates." so to me, the best way to deal with this is to have a honest discussion in all your games, and place something at the end credits for all players to see. something like "we hope you enjoyed playing P:E. If you were one of our backers during kickstarter, we'd like to thank you. this game wouldn't have been possible without you guys. If you purchased our game after the kickstarter, thank you for supporting us. Your money goes right back into making future games for our gamers. And if you pirated this game, we hoped you enjoyed it too and will be willing to buy a copy to help support us. Every sale helps us in creating these games for everyone's pleasure. If you cannot pay the full price, etc etc (go into details about "donating money, or other ways of supporting obsidian)" that, in my opinion is probably the best way to "sell" your game to pirates. You'll never convince every pirate, but by being honest with your players and treating them like human beings, you'll more likely convert those into buyers or at the very least, donors to your company.

Well, that kind of settles what race my first character will be that...is...#%#$%@#$% AWESOME! that just made my day. haha

I have never seen Brennecke as excited as I have seen him in that picture. nice update.

I guess it does bear mentioning, that each character on the party should have their own skill check. We will be making character decisions for them during the game as well and we might not always make the same decisions for our companions as the developers would (making these decisions and thus the skill checks important, imo). For example, we might not increase our dexterous companion's jumping skill but might have spent all our skill points for the last three levels on their lockpick and find traps skills. We'd then have to use another way to get across. there are certain skill checks that might need only one check, but something like this bridge jump should probably be more like the "camping resource management" where you have to make decisions for every character in your party. edit: in this particular example, anyone who doesn't make the jump is left behind until they find another way of getting them inside. Perhaps your NPCs get left behind (they wait there) until you get back. These make for interesting "loss states" that aren't complete losses.

im sure they'll figure that out. it's the main concept that matters at this point. the details will come with time.

i really hope you guys use those static screen skill checks (i don't know what else to call them. the multiple choice options you have at the top, with the jumping of the bridge) effectively. Make sure to give many many options to us, make sure that we don't have one every 5 minutes (you can have plenty, just don't let it mess with the flow of the game). I love the art for it, thus far. Finally, use this to make camping a resource management part of the game a la darklands. best of luck. will be waiting for 2 more weeks.

I think many people would negotiate for a piece of MCA *swoon*

Screams of the Biamhac Dyrwood: Shadows of (Name of continent) Hammerfall Citadel: The Watcher Sleeps

Dyrwood: Spirits of Eir Glanfath

It's hilarious how unrelated the wasteland post is to JFSOCC's idea. I haven't seen this idea used before, to be quite honest. Generally speaking, most pickpockets are simple pass/fails. It seems to me that JFSOCC is saying that with a pickpocket, you'd always be found out (or the person will always find out) but it sort of becomes a dice roll as to whether or not they find out its you based on your skill. Fallout 1 and 2 didn't allow window shopping. But the pickpocket there was just a basic skill check (a tad bit random if I'm not mistaken). I would take your idea further and say that once you pick a pocket and the person finds out, he will accuse the closest individual to him. If that is you, then watch out. He might accuse an NPC nearby and in that case, perhaps he'll call the guards on him or start a fight with him, etc. If you're closer, that individual would be you.

The cave level is being developed for technical purposes (developing organic cavern levels) and is small in overall size. The level above it has two entrances (though in this dungeon they are relatively close) and can be explored non-linearly. In terms of labyrinthine layouts, we will generally avoid long dead-ends in favor of loops (small dead-end branches are fine). E: In my own campaigns, I always try to design dungeons with multiple entrances and multiple ways to explore them. I'd like to do the same in PE when the size of the level supports it. Thanks Josh, for clearing that up. All the best to you and the rest of the team. We all look forward to hearing from you guys in a few weeks.