Pipyui

Yes, not all wolves, tigers, bears, should be hostile unless provoked (or otherwise desperate) - forgot to mention that one. And of course, the modders! How could I forget about them? Considering that being (if all goes well) modder-friendly was a solid factor driving my backing of this project. I don't need birds clouding my vision and rodents harrying my steps. In fact, if some elements are rare enough to surprise and dazzle me after many hours of playing, I'll be delighted. I was just hoping that with all of the emphasis that Obsidian is putting into turning the static environs of IE into more dynamic wonderlands in PE, that I'd see a few birds, insects, rodents, predators on the prowl (though not necessarily for human(-esque) meat).

Watching the Rezzed video and hearing talk of creatures that are meant to fit seamlessly within their environments got me to thinking - if the room exists for such polish, I would also like to see more wildlife scattered around, maybe even hints at ecosystems existing. Simple things like birds flying above/between trees, fish (maybe jumping upstream), the rare dive of a bird of prey to catch a fish in a river, or a fisherman leisurely casting a rod in the shade, skittish deer with faun, occasional trade caravans traveling or camping by the roads, bees and butterflies floating about, rodents scattering into bushes on your party's approach. These little things are not uncommon in RPGs, but I always appreciate the little extra touches thrown in to help immerse me in a world teeming with life and (in the case of traveling caravans) economy. While they may seem insignificant, I feel they can be important to creating a living, organic landscape, and would love to see such things taken the extra step in Project Eternity. Such are my thoughts anyway. What about the community's?

Well, what I think he meant was that making a quantified disposition bar visual to the player is kinda silly. If my companions like or don't like me, I should be observant enough to recognize this through my own interactions with them. It's not rocket science. And if I don't interact with them at any significant level, it would be fair to say that I don't understand them well. I don't need nor deserve a bar telling me how much somebody likes/respects me that I can watch like a hawk as I throw meaningless gifts at my party. He meant* that interpersonal relationships should be abstract, not discrete gauges visible to the player. *Far be it for me to say what other people mean.

Sorry, that was something of the impression that I was trying to impart, but got lost in the rambling. I don't want my companions to ignore me entirely, and I'd like the option to potentially converse or intervene in an issue should I choose, but I don't want to be the go-to guy for every single problem, especially if I'm not the right tool for it.

I actually agree with everying from the OP, but would reiterate: and To elaborate on this last point, I think it's important that NPCs and your companions can maybe interact and rely on one another rather than take every problem straight to you like a child trying to get help from their parent. I don't want every concern of every companion to come to me like: "Glorious Leader! I'm having trouble finding spirituality in this cold and merciless world! Please advise!" Now maybe this guy doesn't respect the monk as well as you, or finds him less charismatic, but if I have no reason to suspect this, wouldn't it be reasonable for some of this guy's questions to find direction towards the monk? Maybe I can go out of my way to influence him should I choose, but I don't think I should just be everyones' immediate go-to guy/gal. How about: "Hey, I'm going out with our assassin to kill my wicked step-mother. Cool with you?" and maybe you say "NO!", in which case she replies either "You're not my mother either!" and stomps out, or accepts your decision like a good trained slave dedicated companion. These people clearly have a relationship and some level of respect for each other that doesn't revolve entirely around your guidance or your approval, though they may seek and/or respect it in any case. tl;dr: I'm not the only consious being that can help solve your problems!

The only real concern I have with the clunky UI as shown is that on most laptop screens (1366x768), the bar is likely to monopolize what little vertical real estate there is. I've seen this before, and it looks dreadful. Age of Empires 3 UI took almost half my screen! So please remember those with crappy laptop screens. Also, I've been toying with the idea of having the UI react to the environment for immersion or somesuch. Thought it might be a neat idea, wanted to know what you guys think (sorry I'm such a bad artist): Tundra environments: Dungeons: Forests:

This vision is glorious. Success shouldn't always be measured in binary.

Others seem to have alluded to this argument as well, and while I think it holds merit, I don't feel that it is correct alone. I'm sure that somebody somewhere can roleplay Call of Duty, and you do play the role of a soldier, but I would never call it a RPG. No matter how attached you may feel to your PC and the companions around him, the mechanics simply don't support roleplaying at any meaningful level. The narrative is entirely linear, your PCs character, emotions, actions, interactions are defined for you, you can not interact with your setting in any way except killing characterless automatons. There is no roleplay in it to my mind - even if you are emotionally attached to the story and character - any more than there is roleplay in watching a TV drama. Oh gods, what have I done? In trying to enlighten this world with a glimpse into the machinations of my mind, I have done naught but drag it into horror and purest madness! But really, I am rather self-ashamed at this image I have provoked. I shall retire immediately to a quiet corner and reevaluate my own failings. (though dramatic, I am far from being sarcastic)

Good poll and good discusion. I suppose that if I have to define pure RPG myself, I have to agree with Mcmanusaur that simulation of an organic society and sandboxing are probably the most important factors in my mind. I imagine that a pure RPG isn't so much a game, as it is a society and setting, and an extensive set of rules the player can exploit to interact with it. I suppose that the more extensive the ruleset is, and the more options this opens to interacting with the player's environment, the more RPG-ish a game is. If I were to make a bad analogy about it, I'd describe it like a Gary's Mod (sandbox Valve Source game mod thingy), that excercises a society engine instead of a physics engine. Wherein the player is given all of the tools needed to carve themselves a niche in society, but there are no driving forces except those defined within the rules of the simulation (e.g. no food = die, no money = hobo & likely die without food, influence = wealth & power, and whatnot). Note that this is my imagination of something purely RPG, and I think there are more factors out there as to what makes an RPG. Though I've never played the ever-popular pokemon games, I imagine them to be RPGs, though they don't fit well within my definition (the only real interactions with the world are through combat).

Ideally, a GOG option would be great. Barring that, I'd prefer my physical copy not be tethered to any particular distribution service. A tarball would be excellent, though I can understand concerns that installation may be too confusing for the layman on his Obscurolinux distro. I can hope that dependencies shouldn't be a big concern - Unity, maybe audio and video codecs (if not handled by unity). Desura can of course be made an option for DRM-free (I've never used it, myself), but I'd prefer at least one of the two aformentioned be made available as well, especially if a VM is necessary (in such a case, I would break down and get the Steam version). And thank you for giving us a voice on these concerns!

I admit, I was a little baffled when reading the monk description. I read about the Wounds resource and went: I see where this is going. Neat! But then I read further and got to being: this is a little different than I had expected. Huh. I had thought that Wounds would be a temporary resource that hold hitpoints, to be affected onto the player when they use special abilities. Thisto me felt the natural way to take it. In martial arts movies, monks always seem to be able to suppress pain with disipline. When the time comes to use super special awesome moves, it often takes a toll on their own bodies, especially if they had already been injured prior. This is cool, because the monk can turn his own pain into power. In game, this would mean that monks would suppress an amount of damage taken into Wounds, then receive this damage upon use of those Wounds to power abilities. You could only carry so many Wounds at once, and must be careful that you don't kill yourself with your own last desperate feats of power. So I'm a bit baffled that Wounds serve a different roll. Instead, special abilities mitigate damage from Wounds. Instead of the monk gaining power from his own injuries, it feels more like he heals himself with offense. I guess this represents that the monk is like a mirror that absorbs damage and reflects it back, which is kinda neat, but I can't help but imagine a dude like: "Ouch! That thrust got me pretty bad. I better quadrupple roundhouse kick somebody to stop the bleeding!"

Indeed. Though it wouldn't kill me to live without of course, I'd love to see shadows that moved with the sun. I mean, the only real advantage to fixed isometric camera is eyecandy, and I for one want my eyecandy, damnit! No but really, I just like how a scene can change with time of day. The forest behind my house looks cheery as any other during the day, but when the sun falls, the light turns golden, and the shadows stretch across everything, things get kinda somber and surreal. Of course, I also see the merit in static shadows. Details can be much more accurate and defined, and the forced perspective allows the artist to portray light and shadow exactly as they like. I prefer "dynamic" - whether or not they're generated real-time - shadows though, simply because it helps immerse me, where weird inconsistencies like "stuck" shadows warp my head a little. I like the subtle change of scenery that comes with it, and to imagine that I'm not walking on a time-stuck painting.

Well, to be fair, I think the OP tried to account for sun movement by using shadow elipses rather than circles, such that his example would be better represented as such (I'm sorry I don't have gimp on the machine I'm using, not that it would make my drawings much better): As said though, this does not account for shadowing other objects, or irregular shapes. Shelf shadowing, or at least an aproximation of it, seems to have already been handled with normal maps as shown in the demo video. My own implementation mentioned previously using dynamic lighting should "work" with irregular shapes, and other-shadowing has already been shown in the demo video and should work here, however this method only provides a very crude approximation of a 3D model shadow. Things would get weird as objects get more irregular (pretend the bases of the two planes are attached, I'm sorry I'm so very bad at this. If it comes to it, I'll use gimp next time): It's clear here that angled lighting would produce less accurate shadows. A 45 degree or so light would even create a two-protrusion shadow. And lighting from the top is still unaccounted for (I don't think I can just staple another plane on in the x-y plane to produce even remotely accurate shadows). Does this idea have any merit at all? Maybe a little? Probably not. It's all I've got though.

Interesting thought. I've considered this issue briefly myself, and though I have no graphical processing knowledge, and to say that I understand exactly what you wrote would be grossly inaccurate, I have my concerns. If I understand correctly, this shadow map would always be a solid oval rendered from the trigonometry of the sun and the edges of the object. Then, a 2D rendition of the object would represent the shadow and reveal the shadowmap underneath. As the 2D render would rotate, so would the shadow move. My concern is that this only seems to work for objects symetric along the axis perpendicular to the sun's movement (if that even made sense). Such that while this may be accurate: This would not be: So far the best idea I've managed to come up with (and by best, I mean really aweful) is to maybe create two 2D planes for each shadowed environment piece. The regular one would be parallel to the screen and be visible to the player, but this would be bisected by another, invisible 2D render of the object derived and placed at a normal to the first only used to generate shadows (and maybe hit boxes): Trouble is, I don't know just how to account for light sources from at or close to directly above.

The fact is though that dogs have long been used as effective hunting companions. Big cats, not so much. This is an unfair comparison, but the analogy that comes to mind is that of disregarding a sword because it's too overused in fantasy in favor of using a lance unmounted (that is to say, rejecting a hammer because pliers can put in nails too - perhaps they can, but between the two, why not the hammer? Don't look too far into these please, they're truely bad analogies). Don't get me wrong, I have 2 (3) cats and I love them all to death, but can't manage to picture them following me around and fighting for me so readily as I can for a dog, even if they were bigger. I sympathize with the need to go against the worn grain a little, but also feel I need a practical reason or insight to oppose it. All in all, dog, cat, or (hopefully) detached hawk, I don't care with any particular passion.

I like this idea, really, but fear it might produce too much micromanagement to be a regular mechanic. Terrain modifiers and the like would be cool because they add tactical complexity, but are simple to grasp and static. Lighting can dynamically change the combat environment anywhere that's otherwise dark though, and I suspect this might add a bit too much complexity to chew down properly. As I said, I otherwise do like the idea though. Between having to deal with a dark screen and shorter perception range, the choice immediately seems obvious, but then maybe you can't fight so well in the dark. A torch would improve your melee prowess, but what about rangers? You limit the sight of your own, and provide easier targets to enemies. Provided these enemy archers are smart enough, perhaps they take advantage of your relative blindness and stay out of your path as they fire on you, who can't manage to find those damned buggers with your torch equipped. There's a lot of potential here, but the real real trick is to employ such with elegence and mechanics simple enough to not overload the player, I think.

What about a pet hawk? With every map change it could just fly in and perch somewhere, only occasionally moving to stike at a sneaking rogue or something. More low-profile and out of the way than your standard pet fare. I've already got a party of (up to) six - any more is just a mob hogging my screen real estate and making an ugly mess of pathing. No thanks. Maybe a flying scorpion? Part spider, part wasp, part bottom-dwelling sea creature with claws, 100% nightmare.

I don't know, while I usually prefer my game nights darker, I think the night is almost right in this demo (maybe just a little darker). Moonlit nights can get pretty darn bright, and the scenery here looks beautiful under moonlight. Also: This. The perfect light-circle always kinda bugged me in a weird frustrating way ("I have a torch, but I can't see a sheer wall 15 feet in front of my face."). Depending on how their rendering engine works for dynamic lighting on 2D surfaces, this may be entirely possible, and I'd love to see it implemented. On a completely unrelated note, a stealth system modified more by light contrast rather than light magnitude would be great. A dude with a torch should be noticible by anybody at night. I wouldn't even argue against enemies fading into view when they approach or are noticed. Like an invisible fog of war.

Quoting myself here. Relevant, though not perfectly: I think this puts it in the realm of somewhere between >6 months and perpetually.

Probably not, no. Graphics cards have enough vram I should think now to keep loaded other characters off screen so the party can travel without loading seams though. Hopefully then I could play out epic battles that flesh out more distictly than the brief one-card-tricks I usually end up seeing (e.g. "We're breaking the siege of the fortress today! We'll need you to pull the lever on the gate to let our forces in through the front door. Don't forget the second lever on the other side now! Alright! You did it! We win, battle over!"). I wanna see my battle play out and evolve, even if along a prewritten script. More combatants on screen at once might make this feel cooler, but I think this could be accomplished even without, so long as there's enough action going on onsceen to make me feel the combat around me.

I'm sure he knows what he's doing then. To me the idea seems like it could be neat, but could just as easily end up annoying. I suppose it doesn't particularly need stating, but I'd rather devs put frills into my games only if they are inspired, and not just for the sake of tacking them on. This early in development sounds like inspired frilling. And that is a whole other ball game, my friend. A difficult one to address at that, I would wager. I'm with you on these sentiments though - I'd like to see a lot of consideration put into the economy game of PE. I actually had a thread about it at some point, but suspect I made a mess of it. Edit: Tomorrow morning I shall return to these midnight ramblings and surely offend or otherwise confuse myself, so I'll apologize in advance: Sorry.

While the currency division doesn't particularly bother me, I see no real reason to have separate currencies for different locales. Presuming in this case that all currency is valid anywhere, that is. And in the case that it isn't, it might just feel needlessly impeading unless there is a method to exchange currencies, in which case I ask again: what is the point? I understand that sovergn nations have their own currencies as a result of history, pride economics, etc; but these things seem of little merit in a video game when compared to how it complicates the system. On the other hand, I can get on board having particularly currencies that serve for different merchants and/or items. Like in Neverwinter Nights, you could collect smuggler's coins to purchase special items. Perhaps certain collectors or factions (maybe only in a particular culture) deal only in rare artifact pieces that can only be found through adventuring, and can be traded for regular or unique services/goods. Just my 1 silver 2 copper, anyway.

I'm kinda ambivalent on the codex idea. I prefer my lore to come from ingame texts a la TES style. On the one hand, I absolutely did not like how the codex was implemented in Dragon Age. There was too heavy a disconnect between what I was percieving in the game and what knowledge I was aggregating in my codex. It seemed I could walk into a room and a little hud popup would inform me that I had learned advanced economics because I might have witnessed a coinpurse lying on a desk somewhere. On the other hand, the Witcher 2 had a codex, and I rather welcomed it. When I became acquainted with somebody, I was usually well enough informed ingame of their background and relationships, but would also get a codex entry detailing their background as should be common knowledge in the world, and some of Geralt's immediate impressions of them. As more information was gleaned through the story, the codex was updated accordingly. Creatures upon first encounter would get a basic desciption in your codex, and would only be detailed further upon the reading of particular books (I prefer this method as opposed to having my codex fleshed out dynamically as I fought them (e.g. "you killed 10 goblins, you now know a weakness of theirs!", "you cast a fireball at a troll, you now know trolls are susceptible to fire!")). Basically, I like it if a codex would reinforce knowledge I have already acquired ingame, and don't like my codex to be the first to acquiant me with it. If I open a book on hyrdodynamics of submersibles, it's fine to me if I get a codex entry summarizing it - whether or not I as a player read the text - so that I don't have to lug the item around with me for later perusal, but can if I want to. I should not get an entry on the hydrodynamics of submersibles simply because I encounter such a vessel though. Also, broad-knowledge loadscreen tooltips are cool. Edit: spelling.

Hello all, I've been a long time inactive on the forums lately, so apologies if this has already been addressed, but I've just gotten to wondering of how many 3D models can be rendered on screen in a 2.5D game, and of how many of these models can have advanced or basic AI. Actually, I feel this is a gameplay impelementation request more than anything, but what I really want to see in game at some point or another is full scale battles being played out. In the old IE games, technology limited what could be rendered and controlled on screen, and so battles were always fairly small and isolated affairs. Given that our computers have improved quite a bit since then, I wanted to be able to play out a battle or two on even grander scale. Everyone on these forums has seen the LOTR movies, or at the least read books depicting epic battles of full armies I can fairly assume. The battle at Helm's Deep, Minas Tirith, etc - you get the picture. Those are abolutely awesome, and I'd love to be a part of one, even if just as a little game avatar. Full scale battles crop up now and then in modern games, but as I've seen them in full 3D games tend to be extremely limited by rendering capability and processing power. This usually means static battles - groups of warriors fighting endlessly around you in simple animation, untouchable by the PC. While this itself is perfectly acceptable to me, I wonder if using 2D maps in PE can reserve some more horsepower for drawing more 3D models (bigger battles, better animations). More, I wonder if modern processors can handle advanced scripting of several models or groups of models (platoons) such as to create a dynamic battlefield. This doesn't mean that each indivual combatant on screen needs to have advanced AI, or even that AI needs exist at all outside of PC combat. Maybe the battles could advance in real time along a prewritten script in response to player events (for pacing). Maybe the player needs to respond to battle events to shape it accordingly. Anyway, what I'm getting at is: how feasable is this? How big, dynamic, and epic do you speculate these battles can get? Are such scenarios even an element you would like to experience in PE? Should I add a poll?

But how am I supposed to feel like an elite backer if everyone can get the same things I do? No, I get your point that digital goodies cost nothing for the developers to continue distributing, and can even net them more for those like yourself who would choose to pay for it, but I think that they have a legitimate reason not to do so. When someone funds towards a kickstarter, they are funding an unknown quality. Before these many updates we've been getting over the months, all solid evidence we had about this game - at the end of the kickstarter - was a screenshot, some music, and a little concept art. Anybody in their right mind would pass this up and wait for the final release, or at the very least, more information before committing any more than maybe a few measly coins to purchase. The developers can't make the game without this funding first though. To entice potential backers to take this risk on a promise, the devs provide extra goodies to those who fund. The more you fund, the more goodies you get. Though I'm not against it myself, I think that providing these goodies to late backers who have had the privilege of being further informed about the project breaks the unwritten agreement of, and undermines, this model. Backers only fund these early promises in exchange for extra benefits. If there are no particular incentives to backing earlier rather than later, people will back later, and the project will never get funded in the first place. This being said, I believe that all backers to the point of the fulfillment site launch will be able to modify their reward tiers and such, so don't give up on getting those extra goodies just yet!