Luridis

Luridis makes serious face so he can be taken very seriously. I already answered how the use of Unity doesn't change a whole lot. But, your mention of 2D textures is legitimate, so I will answer. Large textures must be scaled down and verified to be viable on consoles and altered if they're not. Why do textures need to be scaled down? RAM!!! The teaser screen shot is in WQHD 1440p which is 4 times the resolution of 720p. Scaling is a lot of work for these guys, and so is verifying them on each platform. Processing power and RAM in particular, both system and video, have a major effect on what you can do in a game: Number of objects in the scene, number of opponents in combat, complexity of artifical intelligence, number of variables in the combat calculations themselves; which directly effects the number of classes you can have and the depth and complexity of their mechanics. But, you don't have to belive anything that I write here. How about we take this to Unity3D developers themselves? I'm going to quote Spectre9000 from this Unity forum thread: "Memory is an issue that's rarely touched on with PC's due to PC's having vastly more memory than consoles and handheld devices, but it is still there and you have to decide how best to handle the situation. Even with Unity using a more optimized method for handling large textures, you're still going to have a memory issue you'll have to face if your game is large enough." And in his second post: "Out of memory is a Hardware problem (Assuming the algorithm isn't grossly inefficient, which I'm giving UT the benefit of the doubt it isn't. Even still it'd be a combination of both at best). Even the most efficient algorithms can't run if there's not enough actual memory. Sometimes you have to do some actual optimization on your stuff. A game engine and plugins/extensions aren't magical and still have limitations such as memory size." Now, I will point you to read this entire thread on the Unity3D forums. Of particular interest are these statements: "I've worked on a few ports... probably my least favourite work. You really do have to butcher them if the target spec is a lot less in terms of processing power (CPU/GPU), RAM, etc. Even if its a higher spec, it's not your job to add new stuff, maybe just add a few eye candy features. Time = Money." - callahan.44 "Porting is tricky at the best of times... Unity is the closest I've seen to "easy" cross-platform, and that comes loaded with ceveats... From the core game engine to the teams that do the ports (most times sub-contracted work - who wants to live the same nightmare twice?!? ) porting isn't easy. Almost every aspect of a game is geared toward the main target platform(s), from audio and graphics to game engine and compiliers. If you don't start with "we're going to deploy everywhere" then you really get down a rat hole fast." - galent "Consoles have a small amount of video ram compared to PCs and so there isn't much choice but to keep texture sizes to a minimum." - Unified That's about all there is to be said about porting. Like I said in my previous post, I don't care if a publisher comes along and wants a port, but they can pay for the porting after the PC release. The Kickstarter was advertised to make a great PC Game, not a medicore PC game due to the time and expense that must go into porting it to the likes of a PS3.

I'm all for extension or related specialization of what you've already chosen. But, traditional multiclassing has been done to death and always proves difficult for them to balance. Personally, I'd rather start a new game to try another path instead of trying to do everything with one play-through.

Yes! Precisely why I edited priestly magic out of my post. Monks with a mechanic central to a particular mental discipline sounds wonderful. Also, a love for simple weapons like staves, unarmed and clubs: a enigmatic nightmare armed with a chair leg or piece of driftwood. :D

I could so fall in love with a Friar Tuck themed monk: bad ass with two-handed blunt weapons, cloth armor, and a sprinkle of priestly, but combat oriented magic. Edit: Okay, scratch the priestly magic and move towards abilities gained by a focus or devotion to the discipline of their order. Self heals, party combat buffs and armor compensation.

I would love to see daytime, night time and weather effects. One of my favorite moments in Daggerfall was when I went into te city at night the first time and was creeped out by the restless spirit of King Lysandus.

For just a minute I thought you wrote, "Dragon Wars" (http://www.mobygames.com/game/dragon-wars) And, I was going to say that I don't remember anything of the sort. Dragon Age you say? Well, after my experience with Neverwinter Nights when I saw it years later and bought it without question... Three days later I tossed it in the trash. Then I went looking for information about what changed at Bioware; that was a less than happy moment for me. Edit: I know it's not the developers fault, thats just business. I'm just sad that we've come to a point where business and compelling, long-lived gameplay are at odds with each other. That is probably why I'll end up more $ into this kickstarter before it closes. Edit 2: It's not just studios I mourn for these days. I can remember great games coming from: Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Activision, Konami, and Capcom. In fact Archon was made by EA. There's no one to blame for the buy and trade market, development costs went up and consumerism took over. I'm just glad the Obsidian guys are willing to take on an old school project like this for the love of thier own craft.

No, I'm not talking about Sherlock Holmes and the butler did it. Mysterious signs, items, hints in conversations; all things I've been missing for a long time now. You find an unusual item, perhaps even in random loot, that has a purpose somewhere. No quest dialogue pops up or automatic quest markers to show you where you need to take it. You adventure across a strange carving in a tree that points to a hidden cavern somewhere without saying exactly where. A "rumor" you picked up at the local tavern leads to some ancient Pandora's Box somewhere on the other side of the world. But again, the most important thing is that your hand isn't held all the way through it. These days you run across something like this and a quest dialogue usually pops up with arrows showing you where to take it on your minimap; way to make me feel intelligent for figuring it out, or accomplished for doing so. Am I the only one who misses these little diversions? Even though then can sometimes drive you mad, especially when the developer puts one in that looks like a mystery but actually is useless junk.

Did I get missed? I know you're probably busy...

Note: I see that there is discussion of Unity3D, which is cross platform. However, it changes little of what I said. Many things need to be altered to work everywhere. From textures to dialogue, some game assets just won't work well everywhere in an intricate and complex CRPG. Add to that, the API's, or built-in feature code, is MUCH more limited on consoles, and you begin to understand why the process of porting is expensive and time consuming. If you go and peruse through Unity3D’s documentation, you’ll notice that there are features marked unavailable for certain platforms. Obsidian is a professional development group. They’re not going to use Unity as delivered out of the box. Just as professional auto mechanics use tools in thier shops that are too large, expensive or complicated for your own garage, Obsidian will augment Unity with in-house components. This is likely to be one of the major areas of incompatibility with consoles. For instance, that 2550 x 1440 game screenshot is not going to look like that on a PS3. There is hope for consoles though... If this game does well enough once released for PC to attract major attention, a publisher may come looking for a port. At that point they can pay Obsidian to port the game to a console, or at least a compatible approximation of it. Just don't give them IP rights Obsidian, that's killed more great ideas than patent trolling. Oh, and one more thing: http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/crowdfunding

I'm a programmer, among other things. While I'm not a game developer I do know something about what is involved. So, I'm going to try to explain as best I can why building for a port will not only cost more, but seriously hinder game depth. There is nothing wrong with consoles or console games. However, many PC gamers, myself included, are tired of playing RPGs and other genres we consider to be substandard compared to what was made in the past. This happens primarillay due to cross-platform development for consoles. So, what then is the biggest problem with the console? It's not the mouse and keyboard! In short, it's the hardware. Consoles are typically far behind even the most basic PC in terms of hardware. There is less RAM, less CPU, and far less GPU. Believe it or not, most of the hard-core PC gamers here paid more for their video card than the cost of all three major consoles combined. There are less audio channels, far less poly-per-second processing and bandwidth for the graphics pipeline between the CPU and GPU. But, we're not just talking about graphics and sound. RAM has a major impact on the depth of game play. The number of active NPCs, background quests, etc. are HEAVILY effected by available RAM. You know the "city" areas they're talking about? Huge RAM requirements there. In summary, there's just far less game you can fit into a console than a PC. Now let's talk development costs... Why is it so much more? Well, first we're talking about 3 vastly different hardware platforms. The cell processor uses an entirely different toolset than the PowerPC CPU in the XBox. The GPUs probably use entirely different APIs as well. So vast, huge, mosterous parts of the code must be written differently for each; this is costly in programmer man-hours. If you add a 3rd party cross platform engine, that adds limitations and costs that are non-trivial from the get go. Go read about how much time Bethesda spends modifying the gamebro engine, it's huge! But, we're not just talking about money here; time is a resource as well. All of these things use up time that would be better spent on content and depth. Now add the cut they have to pay the console vendors and publishers and we're talking tens of millions of dollars. So yes, whether you want to believe this or not. The fact is PC games must sacrifice a whole lot in order to make porting viable. That said, I didn't fund thier kickstarter to buy another cross-platform game. I want back those things that make computer gaming great, and your console port would cost me that. This isn't personal; I have nothing against consoles or their users, I just am not willing to sacrifice greatness for their sake.

I just upped my pledge for this silly thing, and why not? I'll pay more for one good game then I won't pay for the hundreds of bad ones out there. Luridis - Nightfall of The Obsidian Order.

Ships? I play with ships all the time... I like the Aabbadon, Harbinger and Myrmiddon. Oh, and there's the Xenon XL and Hyperion Vanguard.