Duke

The irony... It's obvious that you have some knowledge that none of the rest of us have, and that you refuse to share, which means that everything anybody else says is automatically deemed ridiculous. You've pretty much dumped all over anything anyone else has said in this thread yet offered absolutely no actual criticism. As somebody who's just read through this thread for the first time, I'm afraid you're just making yourself look like a bit of a jerk. You might want to do something about that.

This just popped into my head upon reading your comment... How's about if spending money was actually required to complete some quests or progress the story? I remember playing GTA: San Andreas when I was younger and there was one point where in order for the story to progress further, you had to buy an airstrip which cost $50 000. At that point in the game this was a significant amount of money and it's quite possible that you hadn't earned that much yet, so you had to actually go out and do some extra work to save up. It certainly gave you an appreciation of the value of money in the game.

Or maybe I was hoping that someone had direct experience about this topic, if they played a game where what I asked was proven or disproven. It would certainly be more conclusive than a bunch of confusing posts on random forums on the Internet, which is what a preliminary Google search gave me before posting. Just a thought. All I can say from my own experience was that Skyrim, on release, was a Steamworks game with all the features that have been mentioned whilst also being able to run without Steam.

If you're friends with people there, wouldn't that be a much better way to contact them rather than making a forum thread which there's every chance nobody on the team will read?

People seem to be under the false impression that this would somehow require more work to implement. It's already the case for a lot of Steam games (particularly older, pre-steam ones). Basically, you buy the game on Steam and it downloads and installs the game files. Launching the game from Steam just launches the game's exe. If you want to, you can also just run the exe from outside of Steam and the game runs just the same. It's not an extra feature, it's just the way it works unless you go to the effort of forcing the user to run with Steam. Somebody mentioned Skyrim already - on release it worked in exactly this way until they patched it to require Steam (once they realised that people were launching it without Steam). There actually is no rational argument against this. If you're not going to buy the game on Steam then why do you care? If you are going to buy the game on Steam and run it through Steam then what does it matter if it also works without Steam? For the record, I probably won't buy it on Steam because I prefer to support GOG when I can. What bearing does that have on this argument? Oh that's right, none.

The problem with this is that unless it's done REALLY well, it will look cheap and awkward. Motion capture can produce stunning results for faces (watch some videos of L.A Noire if you haven't played it) but it's just so far outside the scope of this project.

In fairness, you did just call me ignorant and closed-minded. I don't know what sort of response you were expecting. You are right though - I am quite wedded to my preference. Just as you are to yours. It is a preference after all - you have to prefer one or the other. I looked at some videos on youtube - it looks good for what it is (which, for the record, I love) but the highy stylised faces in Anime really lend themselves to this sort of thing quite well and so far the only visual examples anybody in this thread have provided have been in that style. I just can't see it working with the sort of visual style we've seen so far from Project Eternity.

Alright, you favor the interactive book approach. To say that the portrait approach can't have nuance is ignorant or perhaps simply close minded. The downside to expression portraits is that for every nuanced expression you have to make a new portrait, and each new expression needs to "read". Feel free to open my mind with an example. . .

Absolutely this. If my evil deeds are done in secret and witnessed by nobody, nobody should know about it. If I'm generally a charming, helpful guy, I should have a reputation as being such, even if I'm coming back in the evening and strangling you in your sleep. Maybe there could be some who do know about my evil deeds though... the gods? Somebody who can read minds? It would mean I have a generally good reputation but there would still be some recognition/reaction by some to the fact that I've done evil. If you accidentally do something 'bad' your reputation should suffer but you should have the opportunity to fix it somehow. Perhaps you could perform community service around the town (help the farmer pick his crops, donate food to the orphanage etc)... And perhaps being of a certain race/culture could automatically give you a bad reputation with another race, which you then have to work to make good?

Look, I would never in a million years play with a limited pause function, but all he's suggesting is that it be an option.

Yes the end effect is the same - it's awkward and stinks of bad/lazy writing. I refer you again to the passage from Ultima 7 I posted earlier - a much more elegant solution.

This taken from Ultima 7: The Black Gate... A sad sweet smile comes to the wizard's face, "She was quite a comely lass at one time, with a mind forever searching." His expression darkens, "But then Mondain forced all of the good sense from her. She became a power unto herself, in time. I do not think she quite rivaled her former mentor, Mondain, but she was a force to be reckoned with, nevertheless. And that thou didst, with the Quicksword, Enilno. That act will most likely have tales sung about it for the next eon." Under his breath he adds, "Even if Iolo's the only one who sings it." With a look of indignation Iolo says, "Pardon me, sir. But I'll have thee know that ballads of the Avatar still grace all of the finest drinking establishments of Britannia." "And what a dubious distinction that is." The corners of the mage's mouth come up in a delicate smile. An angry retort dies on Iolo's lips as the elderly mage lifts his hands in a gesture of peace. "Please, forgive the offense I have given. Thou shouldst know that I have seen, almost first hand, the Avatar's bravery in the face of adversity. I have nothing but the highest regard for the Destroyer of the Age of Darkness and Harbinger of the Age of Enlightenment." Now imagine that same dialogue but with all the descriptive text removed and instead we get *Happy Face* *Sad Face* *Angry Face*.... All the beautiful nuance of that conversation is gone. All the dialogue in Ultima 7 (and 6 and 5) is written in this way and it reveals so much more about each character than simplistic changes in their portrait or awkward 3D facial animations. Because let's face it, until we get to the level of something like L.A. Noire's ultra-realistic facial animation (where you're basically watching a real-life actor performing), 3D models cannot convey emotion beyond anything more than a simplistic level.

Except then you end up with what happened in Oblivion - every single bandit you met was fully decked out in Daedric armour and wielded some sort of angry demonic soul-stealing mace. And STILL soon became little more than a minor annoyance.

If the game is playable with mouse only, then it already supports touch. . . Any game that is played purely by pointing and clicking can be easily played on a touch screen. I have a touchscreen laptop and I can play the old IE games purely by touch if I want to, without any modifications to the original games. I choose not to because keyboard shortcuts are much more efficient. But I could if I wanted to. As for a mobile port, I don't know why this keeps coming up. It's been made pretty clear this is a PC game.

With larger games, GOG tend to update the installer *and* have patches available. So when you download the installer, you get the latest version but you don't have to redownload the whole thing. With smaller games they tend to not bother with patches and just update the installer.