Jajo

I'll see if I can get a better cap. Nah, no need. I was late to comment anyway and beta is just around the corner. We'll have plenty of ammunition for criticism then.

The male model is rotated slightly, so the front curve is more visible. The female model has a distinctly pinched waist, making it look more feminine. It doesn't look like you're really driving your point home; more to the contrary.

Yes! I didn't know it even existed before watching this and I instantly thought it was a great feature.

The ogre wan't ready. Adam took two for the team

Just to be clear: is Your company by any chance named "Curry in a Hurry"?

Selfish? Donated? Meybe if I would do this via Kickstarter then yes - but I've pledged my money via obsidian.net site and I've done this in exchange for very specific stuff: 1 Digital Download of Pillars of Eternity 35.00 35.00 1 Early Access Beta Key 25.00 25.00 In this case I don't see a reason why not to feel myself cheated if I'm unable to use my Early Access Beta Key or I'm forced to buy Windows for another 100$ to use it. After all from the very begining it was said, that PoE will run on Windows, Mac and Linux and it's using Unity Engine witch is multiplatform. I didn't expected to have delays for other platforms. If I would, I wouldn't make my pledge (not donation). I do belive it will be resolved in such a way that both me and obsidian are happy. I'm bummed out about the beta for linux delay too (I'm not going to be able to play it till then), but how are you cheated? You will get to participate in beta and have early access to the game months before its release. Is this not all that You've pledged for? Nowhere was it said, that beta will become available for all OS' at the same time - this was Your assumption. One could argue, that it was a reasonable assumption, but on the other hand, it is has not been unreasonable to assume, that beta would first be prepared for the OS, that (whether we like it or not) the majority of players use. In my experience, this is not at all uncommon.

Hooray for addons!

Thanks for the suggestion - will try that out. Nevertheless, I do hope this gets fixed.

Just a note about beta access (since this thread is definitely read by the authorities): There is an option to purchase beta access for $25 on the pledge management site, but one has to also purchase an additional backing tier before having an option to do so. Since I do not intend to buy a third copy of the game, but would still very much like to participate in the beta testing, I'm putting forward a request for this to be fixed. As I recall, it has already been said months ago, that inability to purchase addons bound to existing pledges will be fixed.

Yesterday I went and checked, if I could purchase backer beta access on the Eternity's backer site. The good news is, that beta access can be bought for $25, but the very bad is, that one still has to purchase a separate backing tier before having an option to do so. I thought you've said that this is going to get fixed and you've said that months ago. My suggestion would be to fix this before the launch of beta.

Wut? How does one vivisect a blight? Are lightsabers involved? Is KOTOR3 confirmed?

I've never liked that. I liked it better in IE games, where targeting an AoE was something of a judgement call - it made casting such spells more interesting and tense. If targeting circles are in, I hope they can be turned off. If they can't be turned off, then I hope that having precise targeting is also calculated into the power balance of spells. Of the two, though, I'd much prefer the first option, since the second would mean watering down spells.

I agree; more subtle AoEs for non evocation/conjuration-like spells would, beside being literally easier on the eye, also feel more appropriate. And being distinguishable is certainly the first step to being memorable. One graphics design problem with volumetric 3D effects on characters though (one that I wouldn't envy being a solver of), is that it's hard to make them look like at least something, since so may view points are possible. In isometric view this at least maps down to periodical 2D problem, but I still wouldn't envy someone who would need to come up with distinguishable and characteristic effects that also look good. I tend to avert the eye when it comes to fireball, though, because it's arguably THE iconic spell, so if artists go over the top somewhere, it may as well be there. Yet, if I weren't so lenient, I'd immediately have issues with it - it does not look like a ball of fire, but rather as an explosion, as you've pointed out. As such it would have dealt majority of its damage as bludgeoning and/or sonic damage and the fire after effect would be there only to keep the corpses warm. For something that deals fire damage an artist should think more in line of napalm bombs.

The (after)glow on the characters is a good idea, if not for any other reason than to at least explicitly show which characters have been affected. I don't think these two very very similar spell effects are really a representative sample of what's in the works. Judging by the initial gameplay teaser (below) the effects will vary and I do find them more memorable and much easier to recognize than NWN2's. NWN2's spell effects are unfortunately a really good example of forgettable and visually obstructing effects, but to me it doesn't seem that the prevailing problem is flashiness. Majority of effects produced some flashy circle pattern on the ground which in turn could not result in anything but blending glows everywhere. In contrast to this, so far the spell effects look quite distinguishable, but I have yet to see some maniacal mass buffing (which Sawyer is luckily against anyway). Retrospectively though, for me the most memorable thing about spell casting from IE games has always been the spell school dependent chanting, waving and casting effects, and not the spell effects themselves. They seem to have the chanting spot on, but I do miss the casting effects.

Vapourware confirmed.

Did dynamic cloth and hair end up making it in? I second this question. There may be another forum like in it for You, mr. Adler, so think carefully about the answer.

Haven't seen the NPC project for Icewind Dale 2 at the gibberlings3 mod site? Yes, now even the Dalelands have been overrun by promancers. Soon we shall conquer all! edit: Oh yes, welcome too. So, Belhifet has won after all...

I thought being a big fan of Icewind Dale (most of all) makes one anti-romance by default.

hi welcome It sure does look like the genre is on a comeback Let's hope it will be successful enough to fuel the future. Kickstarters may be easy to miss, even the record breaking ones, like PoE's. Since you've missed this one, you may have also missed the one that broke eternity's crowdfunding record a couple of weeks later. It was a kickstarter for another IE game's spiritual successor. Meanwhile, if you think, that you are not looking forward to this game enough, you have 76 more or less excellent updates to digest in the Announcement and News section.

Although wikis are not the first source I check when looking for information about a game, official wikis always are the immediate second, so perhaps one could deem this arrangement sufficient. I still think it would be good to also have them on the games official site.

The Media section on the official Eternity's web site is woefully outdated. For instance, there is no Engwithan ruins, Dyrford, godlike portraits, druid forms nor undead stages, if I take examples only from the last couple of updates. Is there a particular reason, why concept art and screen shots from updates do not make it there?

I don't know much about the lore and the story so I have no idea of what the 'vision' of Dyrford is supposed to be, nor would I dare to even presume. I'm not implying, that you are presumptuous - I know that you know a whole lot more about this game than I do, but deriving the whole vision of the settlement from a still image of environment looks really ballsy to me. Of course this music wouldn't fit the bill, if there was a town fair going on (banal example, I know), but I don't see how a half ruined settlement could not offer a stage that would fit this piece.

Truthfully, nothings final till the game ships! It's sort of like going to a job interview... You always think of the right thing you could've said during the car ride home I can say that I've moved on to writing other music for the time being. But if past experience is any indication, the more I live with this music, the more I'll want to tweak it. In the update you talked about timbre and color. The majority of the track is dominated by scarse cold sounding upper midrange strings, which IMO is probably the most lifeless sounding area of library samples. They were all used in the IE games soundtracks, but for the quieter and more atmospheric parts of the IE games, the composers used something more colorful (usually warmer) in the foreground of pieces to make them more memorable. Usually a non-string instrument, sometimes a tuned down violin (or a cello), a contrabass, percussion. The track sounds fine when something else happens - such as the LOTR sounding orchestral bits and I think I heard a couple of clarinet bits. The lone instrument bit needs to be stronger in some way. The two primary things I look for in music is atmosphere and emotion. I don't think this track quite gets there on atmosphere. The piece has emotion, but some of the instrumentation doesn't. But then again this might just be the other influences that I don't perceive coming into play. Both pieces (this and from the gameplay trailer) to me, don't sound very IE-like. But that's okay if you're shooting for something different instead. I disagree about the lone instrument and strings. This piece has background music written all over it and works quite well as such, in my opinion. The pauses, that very obviously cut the phrases from one another feel uncomfortable when listening to the music alone, but in a context of other more prominent sound effects coming from the town it should work well. What I've tried is this: I listened to the piece on its own and then listened to it several times while typing and focusing on another task - like I would have been while playing a game. The music performed as any background music I'd call good (not excellent) did - was unobtrusive (pauses weren't jarring anymore), conveyed the mood and had some likeable memorable phrases, that stuck with me. Looking at how this composition is made, transferring more prominent phrases to a lone instrument would emphasize the pauses and would have felt more intrusive and perhaps even out of place (in my opinion), while strings can manage to peek out of background and blend back in more seamlessly. Perhaps horn could also achieve that? Talking about atmosphere and emotion is unfortunately as subjective as it can get. I can't really explain this in any way, when I say, that to me the piece conveyed the atmosphere and emotion right from the very first seconds and managed to stay on the same track in both cases. I find the comparison with firelink from Dark Souls here quite appropriate. I do agree, that it does not quite sound like the most memorable IE pieces - the most memorable pieces there all did have a lone prominent lone instrument carrying the main theme (Kuldahar and East Haven are the ones that I still listen to). But even there, not all of the pieces did and I'd still call them good or excellent. I haven't even thought about, that people wanted the music to imitate the IE games music. My expectations and hopes were (only), that: - Music fits the environment and writing. - Music is actually good and does not make me turn it off. - Music has one or two memorable pieces that will get stuck in my head and will make me replay the game for the music alone in a few years, like IWD and D2 keep on doing. Mr. Bell, I can't wait to hear all of it, to see how You've managed to blend in a common theme.

Thank you for writing such an insightful update; one of the most insightful ones to date. Once again it has proven to have been worth it to back this project, just for the updates alone.

This is why LARPing beats motion capture :D Question: How many animation segments per creature are made (on average) for a creature that takes about a month to animate? How much for a creature that takes two?