Wench

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A little bit annoying that it keeps giving me And returning to https://eternity.obsidian.net/store/address Will try again another time to see if the problem is fixed.

Mods are great for multiplayer games and can really extend their longevity and then get questions raised about X game is destroying the industry cause everyone only plays that, not new ones. Of course that's quite irrelevant to this discussions. Mods for single player games on the other hand are not so important. Unless the game itself already has good longevity, by the time good quality mods start coming out, most of the player base will have already left. I have personally made a few mods for a few games, and do enjoy playing around with mods from time to time. The only single player games that I have *really* played with lots of mods would be Fallout 3 and Fallout NV. My first play through of those took so long that by the time I wanted to do a second, there were heaps of mods to play around with. Lots were pretty forgettable, but sometimes you'd find something special. The world in PE though is going to be difficult to mod so I don't think relying on people modding the game for longevity to be a particularly good idea. The chances that we'll see people making new areas is going to be remote at best. That said, there are ways that the game could be constructed to make things easier, such as lots of unused buildings in cities that modders could use to do things with, as well as reusing premade areas for new situations. Such ideas "worked" for Bioware in Dragon Age II *shudders*, so tbh if its not hard to do, it would be a good option for modders.

Not really. A few asides, first... LoL and Dota are not strategy RPG's. They are Moba games, which is a dumb name for Multiplayer Action Game. They are designed to be fast and brutal, not slow and tactical. Screen space as a result is less important, but their UI's are still crap anyway and anyone who understands design can give you a laundry list as to why. As for complaints about why a 16.3% brick covering the screen is no different than the 5-8% of floating icons in a strategy RPG... well all I gotta say is uh..... if you think it doesn't make a difference I doubt you have ever actually played a strategy RPG. Because you definitely need to see as much of the screen as possible. For the haters who still think you need some retarded brick of graphics to do this UI right here comes Kark mark up 2. So what do we have here? Well the party window is pixel for pixel the EXACT same size as the original mock up. There are 12 buttons, exactly like the original mock up. The useless brick of buttons I personally will never use is still there just flipped on it's side and repositioned to take up less space. It is literally the same exact UI as the mock up, just all the useless nonsense like statue graphics is removed, the chat box is bigger, and the chat box fades out when not in use. That's it, everything else is the same just repositioned. I didn't even change the size of the clock/pause button. While I do think this UI looks nice, it has functional issues as I'll outline below. If this was a 3D game with rotating POV then its lovely, but this isn't. Firstly lets add an obvious area transition to the temple screenshot. Click to change maps... simple stuff. However what happens when we overlay this UI. Uh oh, the UI has now made it impossible to click that area transition. So we're going to have to allow some extra scrolling so the transition appears above UI so you get something like this. Uh, can't say I like the empty region. But wait, we really should be clearing the right UI element to. Even though it pops in and out, you could be in combat attempting to run away from something and you'll want to be able to use a transition that's in the bottom right corner. Eek, this have even even more empty regions. Now you might suggest that the area transitions always be placed so they take into account for the UI. However that then means if UI gets changed you then have to check/change EVERY area so the transitions do not get obstructed. I'll repeat that this sort of UI is absolutely fine for a 3D game that can be rotated. PE is not one of them so various considerations need to made.

Additional comment about multi monitor systems. Where are you going to put a sidebar? Its really obvious where you put a bottom bar, bottom of centre monitor. Sidebar not so simple. Edge of centre screen creates a scrolling discontinuity. Putting it on the edge of an edge screen makes it extraordinary annoying to use. Thumbs down to sidebar from me as if that wasn't obvious.

As mentioned by centurionofprix any UI that only partially blocks an edge of the screen causes minor problems with scrolling. Either need to make sure nothing can ever get under the hidden part of the map (which will cause issues with transitioning along edges of maps), or let you scroll past the edge of the map (ugly). Another thing chances are the UI will be at a fixed resolution designed for widescreen monitors. If you placed the UI elements that were the same size on the edge of the screen, it takes up exactly the same amount of area on the screen, if the monitor is the standard 16:9. If your monitor is like mine and is 16:10 the a sidebar takes up more because extra gaps will need to be filled (I'll have an extra 120 pixels vertically that will need to be filled by the sidebar). Considering that the UI is going to be designed for the widest displays around why do people think that it takes up too much space. You can't get monitors wider than 16:9. There are alot of monitors that are taller though (16:10, 5:4, 4:3) and all of those will benefit from having the UI at the bottom. Don't think about it taking away at the default aspect. Think about how it will affect all aspects. Having it at the bottom is best for all. Doesn't matter where on screen it is, it still takes up the same amount of screen real estate if the elements are the same size.

I think the UI looks pretty good. However really not liking the Ctrl-c Ctrl-v infinity ability icons. Something newer and different would be much better.

A simple bonus isn't going to be something that will convert pirates. The idea doesn't sound well thought out as the *bonus* requires a form of DRM to work, or else it not a bonus. We'd need to be authenticating the key on an online server or something (even if only once, its still DRM) . If the bonus doesn't use need a form of DRM, such as release day DLC for registered owners, then there wont be anything stopping pirates having it. If it does use a form of DRM, it would be cracked. I think that there is some serious underestimation of what happens in 'the scene' going on. Time and money should be spent making a great game, not about pirates and how to make them buy the game. As a backer, them thinking about pirates isn't good value for money for me!

Good looking dynamic shadows are extremely demanding on the graphics card and wouldn't fit well with the 2D nature of the game. PE has a big a advantage being Pre-rendered. The artists can go and tweak the shadows generated in Photoshop if they don't quite look good enough. If you want shadows to be realtime dynamic there will be a decrease in quality. That most games out there do not even attempt to do day/night cycles or large scale lighting changes. Its one of those things that's really difficult to do real time. I'm quite impressed by what I've seen. Especially with the way that depth has been preserved in the backdrop. Wasn't expecting to see dynamic water that can be raised and lowered. Also wasn't expecting to see the shadows projected by the characters to match the contours of the background. Quite curious about the tricks they have done to do it.

Copy protection is largely pointless and only buys you time before your title is completely cracked. Pretty much doesn't matter what method is chosen the crackers will find a way to get around it. The only exceptions are always on DRM where you play on a server like say Diablo 3, or certain types of hardware based DRM that can't be emulated. Having messages appear or changing content/gameplay for pirated version can backfire. Been cases where copy protection has acted on legitimate customers who when attempting to get help from the community have had the community turn on them and accuse them of being a pirate and generally being nasty and horrible. A pirated version of the game will quickly have this code disabled and will then mean that pirated users will never actually have it happen, where as legitimate customers might still manage to activate it by accident some how. If you give out specific bonuses to customers based on things like where they purchased the games, it can alienate the customer who wants to get the game from one place and but wants the bonuses from another (classic preorder dlc problem). Pirates however rarely have that problem because they just get all the bonuses from all sources included and can pick and choose what they like. Of course this is largely an irrelevant discussion though because we are already promised a DRM free game.

I decided to make a few simple html pages to demonstrate somewhat how the games scaling will work (from what I understand). Things aren't ideal of course as there has only been one screenshot released and its only at a fixed resolution. Would be really nice if we had one showing more around the edges (like a 2560x1440 image at the low DPI) so these sort of demonstration work nicer. *sighs* Anyway, this first page simple selects the image for your window size. Best viewed fullscreen (press F11). This second page scales the image by half and designed to demonstrate how different resolutions will affect how much game world is seen. Best viewed in a window so you can resize it and see what happens. The selection criteria that I'm using for the scale is quite simple and as follows: 1) If the window is less than 2560px wide or less than 1440px tall then use the standard low DPI image 2) If the window is at least 2560px wide and 1440px tall then use the high DPI image 3) If the window is at least 5120px wide and 2880px tall, then use the high DPI image but at double scale. Not sure if the game will do this last one, but it seems reasonable. I also have a couple more pages that do things slightly differently. They include some extra steps for 1080p and 2160p which use a 75% and 133% scaled high DPI image respectively. As far as I know this wont be the way things are done but I made some example pages because some people seem to be suggesting the idea. Alternative for viewing fullscreen Half sized alternative for viewing windowed and resizing

Bad puzzles that are too hard/annoying to solve are often cause save scumming. Can't lay the blame with one specific sort of puzzle type either. You'll always get someone who just isn't as capable as someone else solving a puzzle and they'll just resort to trial and error. I personally find riddles and word plays particularly annoying. Language just isn't my speciality.

l prefer a system thats a combination of both. The player can if they want can increase a crafting skill so they can make exotic items OR they can spend currency and get an NPC to do it for them. It would be nice if there is a good balance between crafted and found items. If one is always better than the other, it makes the other pointless. Nothing wrong though with using crafting as a shortcut to generic better items then found items, and the finding uniques that are bettter. I personally didn't like the BG2 system. The ingredients were too hard to get and by the time I could get the items made I already had better loot gear and it was only possible to create 1 of each item. The crafting systems that I really like though let you pick and choose what properties you want the items to have and their appearance. Choosing the items properties of the items lets you create an item that fits your characters build closely. With appearances I do find it most annoying that I'd have a low level item that I love to appearance of and then can not have it upgraded or when making a newer high level item the appearances aren't anything that I'd like. Its nice being able to choose a style and appearance for all aspects of a character, not just their hair and face. Thinking about that I guess I want a system with ultimate flexibility. Don't really think we'd see that sort of thing, but I can dream.

High triangle counts on the characters shouldn't be that much of a problem. Normally games need to split the rendering budget, for example, between characters, clutter, decals and the environment. With the environments being prerendered in PE it will free up a lot of resources for other things, such as high quality character models.

I'm probably one of the few people around here not planning on buying it. I am disappointed that as enhanced as it is, I was hoping that they may have considered improving the interface to match more modern titles... like not an interface covering 3 sides of the screen and adding action queuing. Even the improvments that Black Isle made to the interface in IWD2 were nice and I would have liked it if a similar interface was used here at least. *sighs* Seems like a missed opportunity to me.