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Solviulnir the Soulbinder

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Everything posted by Solviulnir the Soulbinder

  1. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    Didn't expect this one :D Concepts done by mrs Polina are excellent. I like how she blends different architectural styles together, the Twin Elms linework is beautiful. One minor detail - you could add a bit more more colour variation in the grassy areas, maybe some decaying fallen trees, moss and flowers. Yeah, I know it's prealpha hehe. Also: burnt bark
  2. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    I sure wouldn't like to see any kind of key villain(s) character descryption/artwork. Other than that - what Hugo Rune said.
  3. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    The problem with do-it-to-improve-it (aside from feeling even more grindy than conventional levelling; hello casting "detect life" every 30 seconds in Oblivion to grind Illusion) is how easily it pigeonholes you. You took an aggressive approach early in the game? Well, you never get to use stealth now because your Hitting Things With Sticks is level 10 and your Sneaking By Things With Sticks is level 1, and by now all the NPCs have Detecting Hidden People With Sticks level 8. You avoided most combat with stealth and diplomacy early on? Hope you never wanted to win a fight in the mid-to-late-game. Tamerlane, I see your point. And I agree with you OTOH, it's up to developers to design majority of the encounters throughout the game in such a way that they can be 'resolved' by means of both brute force (warrior heavy playstyle) and stealth/diplomacy (rogue/mage heavy playstyle). That way the problem which you mentioned would never occur, the player would never be forced to switch his [kill'em all] playstyle into [drop'em silently 'fore the know what's commin'] or [talk'em down] playstyles and vice-versa mid-game It was just a suggestion. It's most certainly not a perfect mechanic but it has some merits. It is flexible and caters for exp distribution according to the preferred playstyle, provided however that the majority of the quests can be completed in more than just a single manner. Also, in my previous post I stated that "this kind of mechanic needs certain safeguards to prevent exploits like: press "sneak" button and leave the game running for 3h to max your character abilities." I think we both agree on that.
  4. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    Why bother with levels at all? Wouldn't it be more natural to just gain new skills and abilities through performing actions specific for a character, like: Rogue - the more he/she is *actively* sneaking/disarming/setting traps the faster he she receives 'expertise' and new abilities, Warrior - the more he/she is engaged in combat/delivers blows/avoids being hit, etc... Mage - the more he/she casts/learns spells/effectively concocts potions etc... Of course this kind of mechanic needs certain safeguards to prevent exploits like: press "sneak" button and leave the game running for 3h to max your character abilities. Or, for those who vehemently defend the use of experience points and levels, this kind of mechanic could be blended with a traditional level-up style.
  5. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    This, 1000 times this. At least with a 3D camera, terrans can't hide missile turrets underneath their floating buildings anymore, those jerks. It's not the limitation of the isometric view, sir. It's the limitation of the engine that Blizzard coded for his game... Commandos 2 was an isometric game (quite good looking at that), but the player could rotate the map in 90 degree increments clearing out any obstructions of view. A true isometric view has it's drawbacks like the lack of perspective distortion and parallaxing (but they can be implemented by approximation). But none of these is essential in a game where you first and foremost need a clear, comprehensible view of the sorroundings and the ability to judge distance quickly (i.e. strategy games). I'm not saying that it's the only way to do RTS - Close Combat did exceptionally well with it's top down view (!) I'm not saying that going isometric the *only* way to make any kind of game. What I'm saying is that it is definitely more suitable than any other perspective for *certain* kinds of games. What was cool back in the day was that people experimented with stuff, were open minded, tried to build on previous experiences. Now it's just: FPS/TPP or gtfo, isometric is evil... Well, it's bad for some purposes and good for other.
  6. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    Pillars of Adra Hmm, sounds a bit too simple imho. It is possible though, that adra itself is somehow infused with souls or soul energy... If this is the case then I want my warhammer made of adra
  7. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    Kinda makes you wonder, what do 'pillars' stand for. Souls?
  8. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    Because of how we have to flip tiles of the 2D image, it's difficult for us to position the elements in a way that feels fully natural. We recognize that elements like the theatre or individual buildings look strange when viewed from a high camera, but it's one of the trade-offs we've accepted for having a lot of upgrades within the stronghold. Hmm, does this apply only to the buildings which change their appearance during the game or is it true for all buildings in every city? BTW, are these (stronghold) the only buildings that change their appearance throughout our adventure? Thanks for the update!
  9. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    Aren't the backers referred to as the Pillars of Eternity? :>
  10. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    Is it possible you're seeing the specific aesthetics of those rocks as "this is just what random stone jutting from the ground is supposed to look like," when it's really that those particular rocks are supposed to look exactly like that (with the little layers/ripples in them and such)? They're pillars of adra and aren't supposed to look like ordinary rock. Roger that Mr. Sawyer, but why does it look so low poly and has such weird texture mapping? The trees are looking gorgeous btw. I know, I'm weird like that.
  11. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    I see your point Lephys and I as well think that those are just prealpha visuals which can be modified to some degree sooner or later along the way. I'm not saying that the game will be broken for me if the rocks stay like that. I mean, these are just rocks hehe. I was simply asking to what extent Zbrush or other sculpting tools will see use for the environment graphics as they are perfect for organic modelling. Rocks just happened to be the first thing that I frowned upon when I first saw the screenshot, hence the example.
  12. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    Dolph... errrm, WorstUsernameEver linked the screenshot I was referring to Sorry for being blunt but these rocks are ugly as hell. Since you have the advantage of using only prerendered backgrounds I think that there's no reason not to use only high density meshes with displacement maps and all that "jazz" - e.g. there's huge difference in quality between said rocks and trees. But, maybe it's just me :D
  13. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    Just wanted to say thank you for making the effort and being in touch with the community. It's always nice. One quick question - since you happen to work with Zbrush and/or Mudbox, are you planning to utilize those packages for sculpting rock formations and/or other terrain features? (I'm referring to those last environment screenshots that you guys posted lately - rock monuments looked weird). AFAIR Zbrush/Mud is perfect for this kind of tasks.
  14. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    Couple more well designed suits of armour:
  15. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    While we're at it. Will there be any incentive for the Ciphers to target any specific kind/type of enemies. I'm thinking about maybe characters whose souls or minds are more hmm susceptible to be breached with the Whip ability. Weak minded or those of little faith(?). There could be a variety of benefits, like for example considerably higher chance to inflict psi damage/ailment or significantly faster rate of Focus accumulation as compared to Mind Whip attacking someone with a "strong" soul, like a Priest or a Paladin... I'm not really sure how to identify strong/weak souls though :D BTW. Very nice location artwork - I take it that it's from before it was enchanced with _the_awesome_hand_drawn_detail_overlay_layer? Cheers
  16. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    I found the monument of Duke Otto I. of Bavaria pretty badass. Photo by fred089 @ panoramio
  17. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    right this moment, somewhere in the forest northwest of Bael River... This is shaping up really nice.
  18. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    Maybe something like a blend between fake "ray-traced" outline shadows (IWD) and a simple gradient spot shadows would something interesting to experiment with. You could have a simple spot shadow in the ambient light environment (mimicking Fallout 1&2 in a way) and just crank up the intensity of the "ray-traced" silhouette shadow layer on top when a character is close to a strong point/directional light source. I think that you also could play with the geometry of the shadowbox (as they probably could be projected on a simple geometry rectangular plane), that way maybe it would be possible to stretch/contract the shadows e.g. when the party moves near a fireplace or something.... Also - while we touched on this subject - maybe you could come up with some animated shadow sneaky-like puzzles for our thieves/assassins Or just do things your way, the game will be cool anyhow.
  19. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    So, just to clarify - why wouldn't Bossidian go oldschool with the P:E UI and just make it like it was in BG/IWD? I for one wouldn't mind having an option to switch between a classic Balduresque UI and that (ugly) modern floating stuff a'la NVN... If an option is not an option i'd just love to have an oldschool hybrid horizontal/vertical bars. With big-ass vertically arranged portraits. But then again, who cares what i'd want.
  20. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    Dude, check out Polina's blog to see what she can do with just a pencil and a piece of paper. A good artist doesn't need all that Wacom stuff to make awesome drawings. I mean Cintiqs and Intuoses sure make it easier but still... :D
  21. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    Hmm, both vertical and horizontal UIs take the same exact amount of screen space if they contain the same amount of controls/information. They basically take a more stripe-like (horizontal) or squareish (vertical) shape... Therfore the only difference is the *shape* (not size) of the area left for actual game environment. In fact one of the advantages of vertically-heavy UIs is that you get a more uniform, symmetrical field of view of the gameplay area on panoramic screens (even when you take into consideration the ~40 degree slant camera angle). Athough human eye tends to favour panoramic view over the 4:3 aspect ratio I still think that P:E should stay true to the original IE games and have a balanced hybrid UI (i.e. vertical margins for large enough character portraits and inventory/journal/character sheet/game settings interface and a thin horizontal stripe for console window, quick inventory, formation options etc.) Yes - BGs' interfaces were designed for older type 4:3 CRT screens not the modern 16:9/10 panoramics, but they are perfect in terms of ergonomics on both aspect ratios. I've just finished playing BG1 on my panoramic screen and the UI felt very natural.
  22. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    Very nice update! Nice to finally see the (pretty) face behind all that awesome concept art done for P:E. That human anatomy reference figure rocks, I'm jealous... those are sooo dang expensive. One question, maybe it's too early to ask but have you already decided who will do the character portraits? Will it be just one artist? Will it be you?
  23. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    Hey, that was a very nice song!
  24. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    Do you map any kind of texture on the dungeon mesh? Or did Polina just literally paint every detail over a basic, shaded 3d model? If the latter is true, then chapeau bas to to the artist. Looks awesome. Conveys the IE feel very well. Makes me want to explore that place. With ambient SFX, music and animations this should be pure win. Approved!
  25. Solviulnir the Soulbinder
    That looks like fun. - daggerweed - A yellowish plant which usually grows in clumps covering large grassy areas. Usually it can be found growing in tall grass where it's hard to spot from a distance. Step on it and you will know why it's called that way. It will not actively attack you of course, it's blade-shaped leaves are mainly means of passive (but effective) defence. Each spring hundreds of cattle throughout Palatinate fall as a result of infections caused by stepping on daggerweed. It's that part of the year when its razor sharp leaves become rigid like Kus-namay steel and can pierce even through horseshoes. Eastern tribes are known to use them as arrowheads or even (partially wrapped in cloth) as kitchen knives.
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