Pipyui

Can't argue with you there. I did set up my pc to a 1080p 53" TV once though, and couldn't stand to read text on it - not because of the text size, but because of the screen's pixel density. I'm not arguing against TVs, but for myself I don't think I could read through PE without sitting in front of a proper moniter. Actually, I forgot what this thread was about. UI! Flash-thought: isometric camera, the perspective on the lower end of the screen will be notably more limited than the top. Please don't put too much UI there, I'd like to see on all sides of my party.

I'm certainly pretentious for saying so, and am likely off base completely, but I suspect that most of us here aren't against sex scenes outright, just the manner in which such are so often portrayed. We've already more than discussed the issues of PC ego-stroking romance harems in RPGs; I don't think it's the sex people don't like, just the shallow portrayal of what sex and romance is. In terms of oversexualization, I don't think this will be an issue. We don't need to go full-puritan sex-smashing here; hints of femininity and fertility aren't strictly misogynistic or belittling, and are often quite the opposite. I don't think completely erasing sexual distinction is a proper solution (sexoclasting, if you will). A hint of "boob plate" need not be oversexualization, or even completely crush suspension of belief regarding mechanics of armor. My own thoughts are that the line between appropriate and objectifying in terms of sexualization isn't particularly fine or binary, and that responsible developers can tastefully address femininity with little difficulty.

Actually, there is little difference between an LCD monitor and an LCD TV. 1080i existed for scanning televisions that drew an image from the top down - the interlacing helped keep the image from tearing, and was better than progressive scan for such TVs - but an LCD TV can display 1080p properly, as it can draw an entire frame at once. Input lag however is a notorious concern of high-def TVs.

Possibly related: am I the only one who doesn't have the Project Eternity logo at the top of the forums anymore?

The impression I got was that it would be a game of mature themes, but not a game made to be explicitly mature. Works for me.

A picture is worth a thousand words. You only gave me 45 to work with.

Don't worry guys, I'm on the job. No need for thanks - I'm just doing what I love.

Love interest acquired. I'm totally not trying to incite heated debate or anything.

All that lead up ... to nothing. Whew!

Thanks! So, I guess the lighting techniques used for the 2D environment don't translate perfectly to the 3D space, so Obsidian had to use some cheats to sample environment lightning to reproduce for the 3D models. ... Did they try poking it with a stick?

My own german is shody at best, and google translate isn't providing much better, so if someone could translate or paraphrase some of the more important bits into english, that'd be swell. Most of the article I could glean from google translate, but it'd be nice to have some clarification on some parts, particularly:

Yes, saving game files into the My Documents folder is a windows convention, but it is by no mean a rule. There is nothing stopping a developer from keeping the save files within the game directory. As to another question, the code to recursively access an Override directory is also trivial, there should be no reason that PE can't do it.

Yeah, I think we're effectively talking the same game. The difficulty I had in contemplating a purely nonlinear game was due, I suspect, to a predisposition to equate nonlinearity to narrative entropy that I couldn't fully shake myself of. A nonlinear story doesn't mean one without stimulus for the player, I was just using the structure of those stimuli to define my idea of ideal linearity - without any meta-game forces driving player action. If we are to define linearity as a meta-game mechanic to push the PC down particular paths, however, then yes, I agree with you that nonlinear narrative is absolutely superior. As you say, our debate seems to center around semantics. I think if I'm to produce a metaphore regarding any diffence of opinion, it'd be that your ideal narrative is an empty journal and a pen with which to write your own story, where for uncreative clods like myself, I'd be happy with a complete novel given a pen, whiteout, and full creative license to change it as I see fit (even the entire thing). I had a strawman in mind initially to reflect your argument in the best way I knew how, but immediately after found better words. I just never went back to remove the preceding sentence. Yes, but unfortunetly that post well defines the limit of just how intelligent I can feign be!

The thing I don't like about click-and-travel point-to-point travel maps is the volume it tends to take out of the world. DA:O (the goto game for cRPG criticism, it seems) is a particular offender - there were but a handful of locations to visit on the travel map. All of the effort the devs made in trying to flesh the world out with lands, cultures, and histories was contrasted sharply by the very few settings one actually visited. The world became a set of points including a city, a town, a sub-terrain city, a forest, a tower. These locations were such isolated campaigns that they never, in my mind, coalesced into a whole world. The game thus became not an adventure through Fereldan, but a series of scenes in a play (Scene I: Osmar, Scene II: some town), which never let me get my imurshun settled. I would like to imagine that PE would combat this with a greater set of locations, but I don't think this perfectly solves the problem. I'm still not exploring the land, I'm going from points A to B in a puff of smoke. "Mountains?" *POOF* "Beach." Yes, the dotted line is supposed to abstract my travel, but there is such a thing as too much abstraction. I much prefer the macro style map that I can traverse by my own power. Sure, the setup is effectively the same, but I have one fewer abstraction layer, which is enough to grant a boon to my imagination. Making areas inaccessible until the time is right is easy: broken bridges, denied access to cities, caverns that cannot be traversed without a certain ability/item, etc. It's just the macro map, so I'm willing to tolerate most anything short of invisible walls guiding my progress at this level. Of course, the more natural the obstacles, the better.

Damnit Gifted1! We all know who you're talking about, and if you're gonna talk about me at all, I'd like the decency of being addressed by name! Anyway, in terms of the topic at hand, I like the forced artistic perspective that isometric games can lead to the medium. The artist can portray a scene in exactly the way they wish to protray it. On the other hand, I like the control of perception that 3D games give me, where I can view a scene from any perspective I choose (within the confines of the camera). 3D games are getting increasingly better at building a scene beautiful and complete from any angle, but I would argue that the art isn't perfect yet. The only particularly irritating problem I have with fixed isometric view is occlusion, but it's a problem I'm willing to ignore if the scenery can dazzle me.

I think we're running straight out of the scope of the game here.

Ok, so I'm late to the party here, but how "big" is a 5 point difference in accuracy vs. deflection score? Will I be unable to crit half the enemies I encounter (presuming approximately same level) because they have good armor? At the beginning of the game this difference may be huge, but late game will it be trivial (>=5% chance to crit a guy in blue steel plate, 0% to a gal in marginaly shiny blue steel plate)?

While this is also true, minmaxing (or minimaxing) is an algorithm to create aritficial intelligence in turn-based systems. It is infeasible to calculate more than a very few moves into the future, as the complexity is exponential. It almost certainly won't be used in PE, but it is relevent to the AI topic and how AI generally works. (it was the only one related to games we learned in AI) Wikipedia It is also true that we haven't yet (or likely ever will) solved chess. The warehouse computer example is decades old, though. Recent chess programs can beat grandmasters not uncommonly, and fit in one or two server blades (not much space at all). Wikipedia

I don't know anything about video game AI, but a popular trick (or at least the one I know) is Min-Maxing. Min-Maxing creates a tree of which each level represents a turn (though the game need not necessarily be turn-based, just turn-abstracted), and each node a possible action of that turn. Thus the tree maps all possible immediate futures of the game, and the computer chooses it's own move based on some heuristic that either minimizes its own potential loses after X moves, or maximizes it's potential gain after X moves. Lecture over. Anyway, what I'm saying is, it's not unreasonable to think that the AI is calculating your party's potential responses to its own actions, and using this to minimize or maximize its own harm or damage dealing, respectively. I'm almost certainly completely wrong though.

Well, they stuck with PE anyway. I'll admit to being a tad disappointed however. It lacks a certain pizzaz.

To my eye, I'm less confused by the mild disrepair of the stronghold walls as to the odd lack of rubble their holes have. Chunks are torn out of this wall, but there's not a misplaced brick to be seen. I can imagine others coming along to collect stone for other works, as history shows happens quite frequently, but then why just the rubble? That makes no sense to me. Did the previous inhabitants clean it up then go, "Well, guess we're done here" and leave? Were they conquered in seige shortly after clearing it up, whereafter all parties just up and vamoosed? NOW I NEED TO KNOW. And I know this is dumb, but I wouldn't mind if the wall repairs appeared in a slightly "off" color, as to show difference in age or material. Just a thought. But great update! Lovin that stronghold!

Fulfilment site on standby? We've been teased about it for ages!