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AndreaColombo

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Everything posted by AndreaColombo

  1. 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?
  2. AndreaColombo
    Does that work on DX10+ games as well?
  3. 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 ).
  4. 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.
  5. 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)?
  6. 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!
  7. 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
  8. 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
  9. 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.
  10. 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?
  11. 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?
  12. AndreaColombo
    I am very well acquained with it
  13. 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.)
  14. 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!
  15. AndreaColombo
    About the update—I generally like it, although I am also very happy that Josh would consider melee opportunities for rangers. I like the ranger concept presented here, but having the additional option to make a stronger melee ranger build can only be good. Area art is very pretty and very reminiscent of the IE style with a more modern look—and that portrait is freaking AMAZING! About what to put in the next update—I'm very curious about both priests/chanters and wizards/druids. If the latter comes packed with spell previews, then that's what I'm rooting for. Otherwise, either one of them suits me fine (but really, the update on fighters would be totally cool, too). Question for the devs—Since my mind is already made up about increasing my pledge, I would like the extra money to also count against the additional stretch goals for more companions and wilderness areas in case you decided to go for them. Hence, I have not finalized my pledge on the backer portal yet. Are you going to need every pledge to be finalized before the time you estimate you'll be making a decision on extra stretch goals, or is it fine to wait?
  16. AndreaColombo
    Well, Josh did say that it is still early in the development of the game's mechanics, and the actual effects of INT on AoE and spell duration are still up for internal discussion. As a matter of fact, he implied two solutions are being debated: One is to let high-INT mages dynamically alter their spells' AoE from a minimum given by each spell's standard range, to a maximum given by standard range + bonus range from INT; the other is to have the bonus range from INT apply all the time but not hit your allies. The latter appears to be loathed by the majority of the users who cared to post about it (including me), and I am sure the devs will take this into account in their internal discussions. As a side note, it would be overly kewl (and logically sense-making, if you ask me) to let high-INT mages dynamically alter their spells' duration as well (as suggested by ProjectBG2Respawn). If I'm casting a Cloudkill-like spell to take out a pack of low-level monsters, I certainly do not need it to last for hours, forcing me to stand idly until it's gone or worse to waste a Zone of Sweet Air-like spell to advance in my path. Standard duration would be more than fine. So, yeah—Josh, dynamic adjustments to AoE and spell duration for high-INT mages are totally cool and should be part of PoE's game mechanics
  17. AndreaColombo
    Brilliant! My only concern would be if the mousewheel was destined to zooming in and out, although I guess you could always assign zoom (or AoE size) to a different key in the game's options.
  18. AndreaColombo
    Josh, not sure you saw my post a couple pages ago—I look forward to your feedback on the matter, so here's some shameless self-quoting for the sake of convenience I thought I'd chime in on this to ask something to Josh: Is the increase in AoE deriving from INT permanent, or more like a range within which the character may choose a value each time they cast an AoE spell or use an AoE ability? To clarify: If it is permanent, it is a lot less flexible and might become suboptimal past certain levels and/or in certain circumstances. E.g. I may cast a fireball that hurts my party because of its huge AoE derived from my high INT score. Maybe in certain circumstances I need a smaller fireball to take out fewer enemies that are concentrated in a limited area. If, on the other hand, INT makes it possible to increase the AoE arbitrarily within a given range, it would gain a lot of flexibility and go a long way toward marking high-INT casters as true masters of their discipline. E.g. Vanilla fireball has an AoE of, say, 30. My high INT score enables me to choose whether to cast it like that, or at 35, or at 40. (again, just an example to clarify what I mean).
  19. AndreaColombo
    I thought I'd chime in on this to ask something to Josh: Is the increase in AoE deriving from INT permanent, or more like a range within which the character may choose a value each time they cast an AoE spell or use an AoE ability? To clarify: If it is permanent, it is a lot less flexible and might become suboptimal past certain levels and/or in certain circumstances. E.g. I may cast a fireball that hurts my party because of its huge AoE derived from my high INT score. Maybe in certain circumstances I need a smaller fireball to take out fewer enemies that are concentrated in a limited area. If, on the other hand, INT makes it possible to increase the AoE arbitrarily within a given range, it would gain a lot of flexibility and go a long way toward marking high-INT casters as true masters of their discipline. E.g. Vanilla fireball has an AoE of, say, 30. My high INT score enables me to choose whether to cast it like that, or at 35, or at 40. (again, just an example to clarify what I mean).
  20. AndreaColombo
    That would be a second at best, the first one being John Titor ;-)
  21. AndreaColombo
    Absolutely agreed. You may write to Obsidian's support and they would update your (finalized) pledge for you.
  22. AndreaColombo
    Whether more companions and wilderness areas are non-essential is moot, however. For some people they are quite essential. I wouldn't mind the release date being delayed if that meant a bigger game with more joinable NPCs.
  23. AndreaColombo
    If your expectations are "PS:T level", I take it Planescape: Torment is among your favorite games ... which makes it rather surprising for me that you would not be interested in Torment: Tides of Numenera (as the fact that you refer to it as "Tides of whatever" seems to suggest). Chris Avellone has already been doing work for it, by the way, providing feedback and creative advice on all concept and plot documents; other than that, he will only be writing one joinable NPC for that game. Chances are he can probably spare the time to write a few more for Pillars of Eternity, if they're portraying them as an option for more stretch goals (provided that writing NPCs for Pillars of Eternity is exclusively Chris's job, that is).
  24. AndreaColombo
    +1. Also, for how long will we be able to upgrade our pledges?
  25. AndreaColombo
    Hello. I would only like to chime in to ask the developers to please, please, please not use italics inappropriately—and using them for descriptive text counts as (highly) inappropriate. I understand and appreciate people's desire to separate descriptive/action text from spoken lines, but italics are not the way. As explained in this book (among others; this is the first example that came to my mind), italics are a punctuation mark that serves the purpose to emphasize text; but if everything is emphasized within a given text, nothing is. It ensues that the (ab)use of italics for descriptive/action text is gratuitously ungrammatical, and it makes the text itself harder to read. It's like the loudness war of written text (well, not really: Written text never experienced anything similar to the loudness war, but the results are the same—something that is harder for our brain to process). In light of the above, I reinstate my request to look into alternatives to italics if you want to separate descriptive/action text from spoken lines.
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