Luridis

I believe they explained already in several interviews that they intend to make extensive use of dialogue. And, far too much to ever make voice overs even remotely affordable on the crowdfunding budget.

What I find funny is that you seem to think that you speak for everyone's taste in sexual partners. The world doesn't revolve around you and what you want. There are more people here than just you. There are more tastes in sexuality than your own. Finally, there are more people that supported the project than just you. The other people I speak of are here, and they have a voice too.

How about giving it a few months and seeing what's coming out of the pipeline before throwing in the towel, eh? There are all kinds of costs I can see showing up in publisher funded projects that I don't see here: IP License (Wizards of the Coast, Lord of the Rings, Lucas Arts, etc.) Engine License & 3rd Party Software (Unity is a flat $1500 per developer seat with no maintenance or per-copy fees.) Cross-Platform Development for Consoles & Mobile Devices (Linux & Mac support is far less work as they run on the same hardware architecture.) Voice Acting (LOL @ $300M) 3D World Environment (World space needs to be designed to be seen from all viewable angles.) Multiplayer Integration Bulk Retail Packaging, Distribution & Product Placement (Obsidian can wait till they come knocking if the game becomes popular.) Fatty publisher markup and exaggeration of the costs on some of the above. So, basically game publishers are now doing to game studios what music publishers have been doing to artists for 40 years. Cut Obsidian some slack and give them time to produce before turning into a fool of a doomsayer.

If the world is sufficiently sandboxy huge, lots of time passed since you last did it, and it makes sense that it's repeatable from within the context of the quest; then yes. IE, clean the giant bats out of the cave they nest in that the village water supply comes from.

And on the day "The Dark Lord" becomes "Lord of the Flies" and he looks in the mirror one last time. Will he be unhappy because time severed pretty from that visage so long ago? Luridis listens and hears the chattering of Darthy's teeth at the mere mention of those horrors called age and death. tic... toc... tic... toc... Muhahaha! <Grins> Oh, don't worry about Trethon, he'll be fine. Just leave him there, chained to fate...

Well, personally I am hoping one of the options for picking a class on the new game screen is...

I didn't pay for multitouch and tablet support, neither did the other kickstarter backers. The project's stated goals are excellent CRPG in style with the old IE games. If you funded expecting a tablet version then you're the one who failed to read the project's stated goals. Goals that specifically excluded non-personal computing platforms. If you didn't fund the kickstarter then what are you doing in here trying to ride your desires on a development team you didn't even bother to support? Don't like it? Tough! The world doesn't revolve around what you want.

I object! Mine isn't in the list! I want Project Eternity to be most like: something not already done. Don't get me wrong, I like those games... But those mechanics are tired. There is already a remake of BG coming out. Lets have something new, something risky, something edgy with an old-school flavor.

I love exploration... However, I think you should still run across The Welcome Bear from time to time. I know I won't get everything I want from PE, but it will still be awesome in it's own right.

Ah, let me translate this for everyone, "I once changed the oil in my car so I think I'm fully qualified to estimate the time an expense involved in removing the transmission and completely rebuilding it in a mechanic's garage." The arrogance in that is astounding to me... Multiplayer? Sure, after the game is released if they have the resources or they perhaps kickstart a MUD expansion for it. And, as long as it's done right. No central servers, LAN parties encouraged, no microtransactions etc. I really detest multiplayer and especially MMO's myself. They're designed to string you along as long as possible, not advance proportional on the time you put in and hook you into coming back to play every day even when you have other things to do. Mechanics like dungeon finders are pushing people apart, encouraging them to bail the minute someone makes a mistake, and ensuring you don't have to build any sort of reputation as someone who is fun to play a game with. It's perfectly okay for you to act like a total jerk because the system will roll you into another party. God-forbid you feel left out because you've pissed off any and everyone who might have played with you cause you want to have a tantrum every 5 minutes. Heavens no, we can't have social consequences because that would mean people unsubscribe. Edit: Okay hehe, I guess that last part was more a rant on how people abuse features than the features themselves.

They tried to make money off of it for consoles... They shopped it around to publishers and they didn't want to fund it because they think you, the console owner, don't want this kind of game. So, maybe you should stop buying consoles, and console games. If you show the console publishers what you really want by voting with your dollars and buying a PC game made for enthusiasts, then Obsidian would not have needed to appeal to their fans for money to support their business while they make what we really want to purchase. Do you console guys want to know why asking what you are is hacking all of the PC gamers in here off? Do you really want to know why we find it so offensive? Because you are part of the problem! Do you have any idea why this kind of game doesn't get released anymore? I'll tell you... You buy all those games that publishers strong-arm studios into making so much less than they could be, so you can have things like cheat codes and quest goal arrows to follow. You're the reason RPGs have been reduced to no classes, 3 attributes and a one size fits all hero who can do anything from sneak to casting spells in the top tier while wearing plate armor. "That's too hard", "that's too complicated", "where is my god mode," is what the publishers hear from you and then you wonder why nothing is challenging anymore. Why nothing has depth, story or consequence for anything you do. Choices in games have become a joke! We have talent trees and dialogue that has been reduced to just two choices: this or that, good or evil. Do you really think for one moment that the people who work in game studios have no more talent, no more creative vision than 2 freaking choices? Go and look at the concept art! Those pictures do not come from the minds of people who can think of only two options for a dialogue answer! It's not what they want to do, it's what the publishers force them to do so you will buy that garbage. Console publishers didn't want Project Eternity! Then... you have the audacity to come here and say, "what about me?" after we paid for this thing over a year in advance with no guarantee that it will actually happen. No, I'm not saying I don't think Obsidian can do it. What I am saying is we don't have an actual guarantee that it will. We weren't handed a box with a disk in it before turning over our credit card numbers, this is entirely an act of faith on the part of the kickstarter supporters. And then you strut in here and say, "oh but they could make money" and "oh but they could please us". News flash pal, the people in this world don't exist solely to please YOU. I'll tell ya what... Go home, scoop up those consoles and all those console games and sell em back to whatever rip-off artist (game store) you bought them from and then get on the internet. Look up overclock or anandtech or any of the PC gaming enthusiast sites an look for the latest article on "budget gaming PCs". Go to newegg.com and buy all the stuff and put it together. Get your new computer on the net and download Steam, or GoG or look for Indy & studio game distribution. Then, buy a few of those games and take a chance on actually seeing what it is that you have been missing while you were sitting around playing with your wee.

I've seen the developers say, on more than one occasion, they're tired of compromising for consoles. So, I think they've already answered that question. Follow the links in the thread...

So, it seems scripting - if available - will be independent of how the game engine itself is built, and hence modders will very likely not be using the Unity IDE, but instead be writing scripts in LUA (or whatever scripting language the developers make available) using whatever editor they like. So the pertinent questions are: Will the developers actually choose to provide such a scripting system? How much of the core game content will be implemented using said scripting system rather than directly using Boo/C#/Javascript in the Unity IDE? (Compare to the Infinity Engine games, where pretty much all area/entity/abilities behavior was implemented in the form of overridable LUA scripts) Actually, one of the nice things about Unity3D is that there are many such script-parsing plugins available on their store with inexpensive, perpetual and blanket licenses. If Obsidian is looking for fast iteration; there it is, and for many existing languages like Lua. It's the world editor that I see as a more complex issue. All the things we've been talking about here are why Unity is so entrenched into the Indy community. It makes a great many things easy and profitable for small groups of developers without milking them out of house and home in expenses and fees.

That is entirely possible that the game world is backdrop images as you said. However, there are plenty of license free 3D models out there for to use to make their own scenes. Blender has great community support and good tutorials, and it is open source. Look at the photo below and then go here to see how it's done. Never underestimate your own potential for creativity. Edit: Apologies, forgot to credit the linked photo:

Lots of us got beta keys with our pledge, I planned to take a look-see at the package myself then. Obviously, those supports in beta could not talk about or publish any info if there is an NDA attached to the beta.

I love the idea of it and the idea of it getting ridiculously difficult at the lower levels. What's lost on me is why we'd see such a large concentration of presumably mutually hostile and predatory beings in one place. But, I'm quite sure they'll come up with some perfectly acceptable explanation for this in the game lore.

Exactly Althernai! But, no how many times you say, "things just aren't that simple" people will continue down a path of thinking that they are simple until they have their own experience that proves otherwise. I'm just glad Obsidian decided to stick their neck out and give us a chance to vote with our dollars. I've bought maybe 5 games a year for the last few years because publishers just aren't publishing what I want to buy anymore.

Okay, here we go... A bit dated but a good read on adding mod script support into your Unity3D game: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/2018-Lua-support-%28or-any-other-scripting-language%29

Unity does not use the Microsoft Dot.Net common language runtime because it's not cross-platform. Unity has a customized version of the Mono C# compiler built into the IDE, and it pre-compiles all code as far as I know. This is likely due to the interpreted code prohibition on things like iOS. Edit: nevermind lol... I see what you're saying now slowdive, you were talking about unity itself and not trying to plug Visual Studio IL into a sealed Unity build. Edit2: I haven't had all my coffee yet and I'm working too, taking a peek here when I can because Obsidian has me all excited like about loveable hugable classic CRPGs.

Well, it's not entirely dependent upon what tools Obsidian makes available. Many gamers are game makers, or are in related technical fields, that put their own time into tools for the gaming community. The free version of unity itself could be used to create another application with a custom UI that parses and renders Eternity game assets, allows the player to make changes and then dumps out mod files. Should Obsidian not have the time or resources to make a world editor themselves, a community member may decide to take up that work. However, we're not likely to hear about such a thing till it's nearly done. Player communities have a way of nagging people to death about modding tools if they even mention plans to work on them. The problem here being the same one Obsidian themselves have run into on Eternity already about things like multiplayer and console support. When it comes to development lots of people have the it-looks-easy-so-it-must-be attitude. And, no matter how many times you explain that something isn't trivial, these folks simply will not believe that until they have tried to do it themselves.

I wanted to come back an post on this after I'd had a chance to dig through Unity3D's manuals and developer forums. So, here I am! I need to make a couple of things clear first: I don't speak for Obsidian and I don't speak from the seat of a professional game developer; though I'm in a lateral field. What I'm about to write is purely conjecture based upon what I have read and the things I personally know. I have no real idea what Obsidian plans to do regarding player content. Note: When I write "we" or "us" below I'm speaking of the Eternity player community in general. The Unity3D IDE, even the free version, is a full fledged game development environment. This tool has more in common with Blender and MonoDevelop than it does with something like Creation Kit. You would see far more game object exposure there than is normally seen in modding tools. Things like: AI code, background processes the game engine loop, etc. We, as the customers, don't really want or need to see these things to do what you would consider traditional modding. Do I think they're going to give us the game "project" to open and modify in Unity3D? I think that the answer will probably, most likely, almost definitely be absolutely not there. There are so many potential issues that would create that I just don't see it happening. First, we'd see all the internal source code of the game; a lot of which could be trade secrets or code they may not be able to distribute in source form. We would also see things like how the game interacts with the steamworks API, which is probably a no-no with Valve. Last, if we accidentally changed something that is part of the game itself and was distributed as a mod it could flat-out break everyone's game. I don't mean oddly behaving NPCs or some amusing glitch. No, I'm talking real crash-to-desktop windows error reporting type of broken game. Last, since Obsidian is likely using Unity PRO, we couldn't re-compile the project without that version of Unity ourselves, at a cost of $1500. From the things I've read on the Unity3D developer forums, most of the modding support is coming in through a native code plugins. The developers write a code module that interacts with the game engine at run-time and imports mod data into the game. They can also leave certain types of game assets, like artwork or configuration files open to modification. The catch here is Unity does not support importing game code at run-time. So, Obsidian would need to write the script support into a code module that reads mod script, validates it to prevent crashes and then passes those commands on to the engine itself. This is actually a good thing because they can parse the script language(s) of their choice, such as Lua, and prevent mods from accessing things outside the scope of modding that would cause crashes. The down sides are that it's quite a bit of work, unless they already have a similar in-house component they've written in the past. Now, onto world editing... How or if they will implement a world editor is anyone's guess. Unless they're working out some kind of agreement with the Unity guys; I don't see them being able to strip out the development parts of the Unity IDE and sending it on to the community as a modding tool. Sure, they can do this with in-house toolsets, but the Unity IDE is someone else's software. Finally, obtaining the Unity3D IDE source code is likely expensive and out of the project's scope. I do see a couple of options for a world editor. They could use one of their own previously developed modding tools and modify it to work with Unity assets. There is also the possibility that they could provide us with a Unity3D project template that we copy came data into, make changes and then export into a mod directory that Obsidian's native code plugin could parse when the game starts. However, this likely couldn't be setup with warnings about inter-mod dependencies or conflicts. That's about as much info as I can give here. Again, this is all purely conjecture on my part and Obsidian could already have well conceived plans for modders. We will just have to be patient and see what happens...

These are the reasons I personally think that they chose Unity3D. So, these reasons may or may not be Obsidian's reasons and you should take this post with a grain of salt. Technical Reasons Stable & capable graphics and game engine. (Audio, HID, Physics, Asset Pipeline, Navmesh / Pathfinding, AI plugins, etc.) Cross-platform for the 3 major PC operating systems. Graphics engine renders well in both the OpenGL and DirectX APIs. Team oriented version control server. Finished Unity3D products successfully deployed through Steam. Custom shader support. Platform specific script compilation to native code. 3 Scripting languages, all of which I believe can be used at developer preference do to the native code compilation. Business Reasons Simple and straight forward licensing model: $1500 per developer seat. No third-party license agreements beyond a click-wrap. No publishing fees or royalties that would create sale revenue deductions. No annual or maintenance fees that would create ongoing overhead costs. Other available engines offer as many or better features regarding the game engine itself. It's the business reasons that make Unity3D very studio, indy publisher, and Kickstarter friendly. Engine licenses can eat up a ton of revenue that would otherwise be rolled into expansions and other projects. Maintenance fees take operating money away from more valuable things like employees and their health plans. You can relax, Unity3D is good stuff. Endless Space was written on Unity3D and it's a fantastic game if you like the 4X space genre in the spirit of Master of Orion 2.

I could shoot so many holes in your theory with technical explanations that I could use it to drain my spaghetti. But, if you have never written code for, or spent time reading about how complex CRPGS operate then you're simply not going to understand what I would say. Capability does not equal triviality in such an endeavor. Porting the game, featured as they have promised, is thousands of man-hours of work unless they design the game mechanics (not engine!) cross platform from the get-go. There is more going on in the code than pipeing scaled down eye candy to the rasterizer. Again, the kickstarter supporters funded the development of a deep and complex computer role playing game. Not something less than that designed from the ground up to be console friendly.

I support the developer's vision. I'm happy to make suggestions when they're looking for ideas, and I've even made a few along the way here. But, in the end, it's up to Obsidian to decide how they want to do this. If I have a vastly different vision and want to see that, then it's my job to make that happen, not theirs. Additionally, I think dlux's leaving may have had to do more with unkind words than whatever the developers are planning.

From GameBanshee: Buck: What are your plans for supporting the Project Eternity community up to and beyond its release? Have you considered the possibility of releasing any content-inducing patches or even a toolset of some kind? Josh: Our testing and beta processes will minimize the need for patches, but we like to support the longevity of our products. We recently made an update on what our plans are regarding mods. We've partnered with the Nexus Network to host mods. Additionally, we will be releasing file format information and leaving a lot of our data tables open for easy modification. Unity3D is free to download and use for not-for-profit releases. Using Unity itself to add mod content shouldn't be an issue if they provide some sort of an overlay that allows the community to generate mods, or at least add game assets. This would make deep and intricate mods possible due to the direct access to the game code compiler. Unity accepts Mono (C#), Java and a flavor of Python I believe. I'll be thinking about this myself once we get our hands on some of the lore.