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AndreaColombo

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Everything posted by AndreaColombo

  1. AndreaColombo
    It was my understanding they were going for 2560x1440 native resolution for background art (as opposed to 4K)?
  2. AndreaColombo
    Amazing stuff, guys. Amazing stuff.
  3. AndreaColombo
    BRANDON, Y U RUINING THE MEME?!?
  4. AndreaColombo
    What if I told you ... there was never any Update #79?
  5. AndreaColombo
    I'm all right with Obsidian taking as much time as they need to make Pillars of Eternity really shine rather than fall short of its otherwise amazing premises. I have been longing for a game like this ever since I beat BGII for the first time, so I don't mind waiting longer if that means getting a better game—and if that means going Steam Early Access, that suits me fine. First priority: Pillars of Eternity is developed to its full potential. Second priority: Play the game.
  6. AndreaColombo
    This is brilliant. Your take on bards/chanters is brilliant. The priest's spells are brilliant. And last but not least, spell animations with real-time lighting effects on pre-rendered backgrounds are brilliant.
  7. AndreaColombo
    Simply amazing. Every new update makes me all the happier to have backed this game.
  8. AndreaColombo
    I know this update is more about music and composing than it is about the technical aspects of sound, but recently I've had a few questions on my mind and I figured I'd ask. Is the game's sound engine based on OpenAL? Will it support real-time, hardware-accelerated (and/or software-emulated) effects such as occlusion, refraction, diffraction, echo, reverb, etc.? Will there be positional audio? Hope the devs may shed some light on the dark of these matters
  9. AndreaColombo
    Windows 7 and 8 are the safest bet, although I wouldn't be surprised if it ran just as well on Vista and perhaps XP.
  10. AndreaColombo
    Hi Frenetic Pony, I am well aware of the fact that backdrops (as well as the GUI) in Pillars of Eternity are going to be pre-rendered 2D images, from which it ensues that you could not apply any real-time anti-aliasing to them. In fact, what I would like to have anti-aliasing for is those elements that would be real-time 3D-rendered: character models, monster models, spell effects (those with straight lines that could be aliased and/or with grid-shaped patterns and transparency textures anyway, if there are going to be any) and possibly water (if it is rendered in real time, as this video would seem to suggest). Because only a few elements in the game would be actual geometry rendered in real time, the game is most likely going to be "light" enough to allow the use of super-sampling anti-aliasing without worrying too much about the resulting performance hit. For, as stated, it is impossible to force super-sampling anti-aliasing via the graphics card's drivers on >DX9 games, I am requesting that the devs consider adding it as an option to Pillars of Eternity. Having it as an option alongside MSAA would also be fine, but MSAA might still be forced via the drivers, whereas SSAA couldn't—and SSAA offers much, much superior picture quality. This is something I have also been wondering. Screenshots currently available—which I realize are not final—occasionally show jagged lines here and there (for example, see the pink crystals in this one). I, too, hope the final renders will go for the same anti-aliasing you are suggesting, thus achieving hollywood-grade smooth lines across all areas.
  11. AndreaColombo
    Whoa, that is great news! Guess I'll consider a Radeon card for my new rig, when the time comes The difference between MSAA and SSAA is probably a lot more evident "live" than on screenshots, but I can see it especially on the grid-shaped metal ... things that hold lights LOL no idea what they are called in English XD The grass and palms on the left are also a dead giveaway. If you ran into a fence, the difference would probably be even more dramatic.
  12. AndreaColombo
    Great update! I'm listening to the track now for the second time, and I must say I'm really enjoying it. In terms of "epic" factor, I concur that a background track such as this one should not, in fact, be particularly epic. If it was, it would be imposing and distracting, which is not what it was designed for. An epic theme—think the already mentioned Shadows of Amn main theme—suits the game's menu but definitely doesn't work as background for exploration. As for inspiration, I would humbly point to Planescape: Torment as the IE game with possibly the best soundtrack of all in terms of atmosphere and overall emotion. Tracks like these are, in my opinion, absolute masterpieces: (Deionarra's theme) (Annah's theme) Last but not least—Justin, I too would like to give you props for the dynamic range in the Dyrwood track! Dare I hope you will cover dynamic range, bit depth, sampling frequency, encoding, and other nerdish technical stuff in a future update?
  13. AndreaColombo
    Does that work on DX10+ games as well?
  14. AndreaColombo
    Hi samm, my purpose was not to put the blame on modern graphics cards so much as highlighting an issue: that forcing anti-aliasing from the graphics card's drivers does not appear to be a viable option because it fails more often than not—from which it ensues my request that Pillars of Eternity support anti-aliasing natively via its options menu. As for SSAA, I seem to recall a time—before all the fancy transparency anti-aliasing and proprietary techniques—when it was possible to select it in the graphics card's drivers as an alternative to MSAA. This seems to be no longer the case according to what I read in this page and the following page of the article I linked. Not a big deal if, as you say, forcing AA (and especially so SSAA) on > DX9 games is impossible (I thought it was merely unlikely to be successful). While I do agree that we want sharp graphics and smooth polygons, wouldn't AA in Pillars of Eternity only apply to character/monster models and spell effects (those with straight lines susceptible of being jagged, anyway)? For backdrops are going to be pre-rendered 2D, anti-aliasing would have already been applied in the (pre-)rendering phase. I would still like the possibility to set SSAA alongside MSAA+transparency. Yeah, I was referring to those. While I am not particularly keen on them myself, other gamers may like them and/or want to use them—if they're taking the time to implement AA, might as well throw in support for FXAA, TXAA, and MLAA (unless it was a lot of additional work; in that case, time would be better spent on other tasks. Just give us SSAA and MSAA+transparency, please ).
  15. AndreaColombo
    So I was reading this interesting article on anti-alisting, and it turns out that forcing anti-aliasing from the graphics card's drivers is surprisingly unreliable. From the same article, I seem to understand that modern graphics cards do not offer the option to directly set Super Sampling Anti-aliasing (SSAA, the best anti-aliasing method in terms of picture quality) from the drivers; SSAA is only an option if the game itself supports it via its options menu. Which bears the question, will Pillars of Eternity natively support Super Sampling Anti-aliasing (enabling the selection of 2X or 4X SSAA in its options menu)? Even though SSAA is quite exacting on system resources (and more specifically on video memory), again Pillars of Eternity won't be an extremely demanding game in and of itself—allowing for SSAA would be a nice treat for those who will play it on beefier rigs. Likewise, native support for MSAA (and perhaps even for those fancy AMD/nVidia proprietary anti-aliasing methods which are really only viable if the game is specifically programmed to support them) would be a nice-to-have feature, because a) it would ensure effectiveness of the selected anti-aliasing option, as opposed to forcing it via graphics card's drivers as illustrated in the article; b) it would be a nice compromise for gamers who want AA but whose rig cannot handle the memory-hungry super sampling.
  16. AndreaColombo
    Out of pure curiosity—hopefully someone from the art department can answer this—to what standard(s) are your monitors calibrated at work? I suppose white point will be D65 (or 6500K), but what about gamma and gamut? Tangentially, are Pillars of Eternity's art assets natively sRGB or are you going for the winder Adobe RGB (which would be unusual for a game, but also helluva kewl)?
  17. AndreaColombo
    Thanks, Adam! I have re-watched the trailer and noticed those effects which I had missed the first few times. The more I learn about this game, the happier I am to have backed it Keep up the great work!
  18. AndreaColombo
    I was wondering—will Pillars of Eternity have volumetric effects for stuff like smoke, fog, fire, lighting, weather, etc.? I know they tend to be quite exacting on the hardware, but with pre-rendered backdrops and (relatively) low-poly 3D models the game would probably more than make up for that. Besides, I guess they could be made optional via the graphics menu? It would be pretty darn kewl
  19. AndreaColombo
    I am very much looking forward to this! Justin made a great early post on audio design back in November 2012, and it would be great to expand on some of the points he made: balance between ambient sound effects and music; dynamic range; the possibility to employ CD-quality (16 bit, 44.1 kHz) music, VOs and SFX; the possibility to use OGG Vorbis or even FLAC as the default codec. Particulary, Justin mentioned: It would be nice to know whether the slider bar turned out a viable option
  20. AndreaColombo
    IIRC, Josh Sawyer once mentioned in an update (or in an interview—can't remember) that even though they're trying to support older machines as much as possible, and PoE won't certainly rank among the most graphics-intensive games out there, there will be eye-candy to enable via graphic options for users with higher-end machines.
  21. AndreaColombo
    I apologize for necro-posting but I didn't want to start a new thread about the same thing; recently I have been wondering about exactly this. It would be nice to have an official word on multi-core support from the devs (is it going to be supported? If yes, up to how many cores? I seem to recall that most games only take advantage of up to 2 cores nowadays, despite quad-core CPUs being quite widespread). Tangentially, will hyper-threading (as offered, for example, by Intel i7 CPUs) be supported?
  22. AndreaColombo
    I know this is kind of off topic, but what about copy-editing? Is there going to be any on PoE's game text, to complement the beauty of the font?
  23. AndreaColombo
    I am very well acquained with it
  24. AndreaColombo
    Awesome update! I really like the direction you are taking with both companions and lore—this game is looking better by the update One thing I have been wondering—not sure whether it has already been addressed, or you are planning a future update about it—is your take on A.I. development. IE games were amazing but A.I. was definitely not among their strengths; in fact, most of them had pretty basic, rather dumb A.I.. You have made it clear that A.I. will not scale with difficulty in PoE ( ), but how will it work? Will it be smart, challenging, even cunning? Will it avoid IE-like behaviors like standing idly if you cast an invisibility spell? Will it make enemies sip potions, activate magical items, take advantage of class abilities, and use a wide array of spells rather than relying always on the same few ones (as in the I.E. games)? (It would also be nice if enemy casters not only made use of all spells, but used them with different strategies. In I.E. games enemy mages pretty much cast the same spells in the same order all the time.)
  25. AndreaColombo
    I support the change to the lower part of the model—cats should look like ... well, cats Is this still the case? I, too, am curious about this and I hope Josh may answer. I love wilderness areas and I voted in favor of new stretch goals. I don't excessively mind that Obsidian chose not to pursue them as I trust them with their choices, but I sure hope Pillars of Eternity is going to have more wilderness areas than BGII! As a side note, I love those interior designs. They are super-detailed, very reminiscent of the IE games, and with all eye-candy of modern 3D engines. Portraits are also amazing—all portraits shown so far for the game got me drooling!
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