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Gumbercules

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Everything posted by Gumbercules

  1. Gumbercules
    Exactly. I've explained what the problem with that is the in the original post. Where? If you mean the "Dungeon Simulator 2014" thing, I'm not talking about simulating increased patrols or any kind of real change to the dungeon. They'll already be designing n combat encounters per dungeon. I'm suggesting they design n+1 encounters instead, where the +1 is an encounter designed around the rest area. Are you suggesting that the predefined rest locations (except for inn's) should always spawn a random encounter? Wouldn't that mean that even the spots you are forced to go to just to rest are worthless because you will never get a uninterrupted rest and thus not recover Health or abilities? No, not always. A random percentage of the time, and you would always regain health and abilities regardless of whether or not you were ambushed. To prevent metagaming, the RNG result for the ambush could be stored independently so that the same result triggers even if you reload (but with some sort of way to opt out for those who find that type of thing frustrating?).
  2. Gumbercules
    I'm not sure I like either of your proposed solutions. I think it would be enough to have the limited rest areas already in place, plus a chance of being ambushed while resting if resting in a dangerous area. Since there's only a limited number of rest areas, they can design each ambush to be interesting and to make sense for that dungeon. I'm not sure if we need anything more punishing than that.
  3. Gumbercules
    I could live with that. Are you exploring a vertical option as well?
  4. Gumbercules
    1. I don't see why allowing swordsmen and other warriors to have superhuman abilities would be a chump move. Beowulf ripped a monster's arm off and slew a dragon with the help of only a single other warrior, Heracles had super strength and wrestled a giant lion monster, and warriors in wuxia stories had all kinds of supernatural abilities (remember the flying in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?). There's at least as much basis for powerful warriors as there is for powerful mages. 2. This could lead to a reduction of strategy, if all party combinations are equally valid, but the tactical considerations of making sure that everyone is in the right place and doing the right thing still remains. You'll still have to consider how character X fits into the party, it'll just happen during the battles. Plus I seriously doubt that Obsidian will be able to balance the game so thoroughly that all options are completely equal. They just won't be starting from a place of "Wizards rule, fighters drool!" 3. That's terrible game design. Seriously, what's the point of offering a class you don't expect people to play? If there are eleven classes to choose from, I expect to have an equally valid chance of having fun playing any of them, with personal tastes being the main differentiator rather than a conscious decision on the designers' parts to make some classes better than others.
  5. Gumbercules
    Ok, that sounds good. Once you have the particulars of the system nailed down, a more in-depth look at the differences between Talents and Abilities would make for a great update.
  6. Gumbercules
    Can't rogues turn invisible? I thought it was great how instead of tip-toeing around it and pretending that they're just really good at sneaking but you have to abstract it as invisibility due to practical limitations like most RPGs, you just came out and said, "Yeah, they can use magic to turn invisible." Does this mean you're backing away from the "everybody gets soul magic!" concept? I thought it made it much easier to justify parity between what are traditionally magical and non-magical classes. Otherwise, you have to either do a lot of *wink, wink*, like with rogue stealth, or risk making some classes weaker and blander than others.
  7. Gumbercules
    There aren't any non-magic classes in Project Eternity. All classes use some form of soul magic to do what would normally be considered superhuman things. I don't think it's necessary for classes to have different power curves in order to still play and feel different. I'm fine with all classes having some degree of spell-like abilities as long as those abilities aren't just re-skinned versions of the same thing. If you look at what Obsidian have revealed so far, you can see that they're aiming for classes that have distinct strengths/weaknesses and roles while still sharing roughly the same power level.
  8. Gumbercules
    I like the dungeon concept, although I agree with those suggesting you should experiment with some other effects for magical lighting. What culture is the dungeon supposed to represent? It seems somewhat old, but not really strange enough to be ancient Glanfathan. Will the vertical slice be at Rezzed, or is it coming up too soon for that?
  9. Gumbercules
    Actually, some websites do change the pic to pornography if you try to deeplink off their website. That or goatse. @Monte Carlo, deeplinking is when you post a pic from an outside website without first downloading and rehosting it. It means that you're still using up the website's bandwidth without actually directing views to their site. Websites tend to change the original pic into either a polite request, in this case, or more amusingly into something that will embarrass the offender. If you want people to see whatever it was that you were trying to post, upload it to a dedicated image sharing site like imgur.com and link from there.
  10. Gumbercules
    I usually post images by uploading to imgur.com, then copying what it says under "BBCode (message boards & forums)."
  11. Gumbercules
    My final suggestion for the UI is to allow for a choice between at least three options. I doubt that there is any one solution that will satisfy everybody, since this is a matter of personal preference as much as objective fact. So focus on three main "archetypes" of UI, and try to make each the best UI of that type that you can: The bottom UI that was originally shown. It needs to be refined and improved, but it was a valid starting point. Either a side-oriented or L-shaped UI, to take advantage of widescreen monitors and avoid exacerbating the letterbox look. A minimalist UI. Maybe that's too much work, but UIs are pretty important and it might not be much more work than trying to find a single solution that pleases everyone.
  12. Gumbercules
    The sword-weilding is available to both classes, but there are other things that are available to the fighter that aren't available to the wizard, like the ability to keep multiple enemies tied up in engagement or increased effectiveness of armor. From what I understand, fighters should be gaining unique abilities at the same rate that wizards gain spells, even if many of the abilities are passive bonuses compared to the wizards' active spells. There's still the matter of whether all classes will be balanced to be roughly equally useful and fun (fingers crossed!) but at the very least it seems they'll all have unique stuff no one else can do.
  13. Gumbercules
    But... the UI Wench was directly referencing as "problematic" was one that only took up part of the edge, rather than all of it. Either way, the parts of the edge that ARE covered by the UI are covered by the UI, regardless of whether or not it's ALL the edge, or only part of it. That's why I expressed confusion as to what would be an appropriate UI from Wench's point of view, since you'd typically say "well, allow it to have some gaps," just as you did. But... the one referenced already HAD gaps. That leaves "doesn't touch the edge at all" and "there is no UI." See, there's the confusion. Both Wench (at least I think?) and I are arguing that in this case, the gaps actually make things worse, whereas you seem to think we prefer the gaps. The gaps give the feeling that there is crap blocking the view, whereas a full-edge UI, although it may display a slightly smaller viewable area, gives an unobstructed view of what it does show. It's the difference between a large TV or monitor that has post-its stuck to the screen versus a slightly smaller TV that has a larger frame. I'd probably prefer the latter, especially since in this case we can't rotate the camera, making gaps fairly useless.
  14. Gumbercules
    No, there's a distinct difference, at least for 2D isometric games, between a UI that covers an entire edge of the screen and one that allows for gaps. With the entire edge UI, the viewable/playable area is understood to begin past the inner edge of the UI (so the top edge for a bottom UI, or the right edge for a left UI). With the gap UI, the viewable area begins past the outer edge of the UI (bottom of the bottom UI, etc) since you can see it through the gaps in the UI. Basically, with the entire edge UI, the viewable area is smaller but unobstructed. With gaps and a more minimalist UI, the area may be larger, but there's crap getting in the way because the border isn't as uniform or well defined.
  15. Gumbercules
    Many of the proposed mock-ups (other than Sensuki's) use more screen real-estate than the original. RIght, but they allow for easier visibility of spells, abilities, and status effects without everything feeling cramped or tiny. I actually have no problem with everything being in one place as long as you can easily see everything that needs to be seen and easily choose from a buttload of spells.
  16. Gumbercules
    Given that this is a game that expects some degree of pausing, and also given that many people select characters by clicking their in-game models, I think screen real-estate and visibility concerns slightly trump mouse efficiency concerns. However, the best option is probably to either allow full customization or at least a few presets.
  17. Gumbercules
    Something like this? I think that's a good idea. Though the level of detail would probably need to be dialed down, somewhere between the runes and illuminated manuscript illustrations, due to icon size. Readability and ID'ing effects at a glance are the primary concerns, followed by aesthetics. Yeah, that's what I had in mind. Since PE is meant to have a slightly more modern setting than the IE games, it makes sense to upgrade the sophistication of the icons as well. And illuminated manuscripts were around for long enough that they would even be appropriate for old spells and grimoires discovered through exploration. But like you said, they need to make sure that readability and contrast are high.
  18. Gumbercules
    What if they made the spell/ability icons look like illuminated manuscript illustrations? That way, they can keep the color and variety but still fit into the game world.
  19. Gumbercules
    Sensuki's edit looks better, but I think the portraits are a problem in both it and the original. I think they should probably be separated and moved to either the left or the right side of the screen.
  20. Gumbercules
    Thanks for the update! The UI looks pretty good. It'll probably look great aesthetically once you add original, unified assets rather than the cobbled-together assortment of assets from IE games and other sources currently in place. There are most likely still improvements to be made in terms of usability and space efficiency, but I'm not good at identifying that type of thing so I'll leave it to others to do. That lizard-man illustration is really well done, but I'll admit I sighed when I saw that it was a lizard-man, and a tribal lizard-man at that. There's a stale fantasy cliche if ever there was one. That said, I don't mind their inclusion in the game, and I understand that it's probably a good idea to get a handle on all the fantasy mainstays early on before moving on to weirder, more original creatures. Still, all of the creatures shown so far have been pretty conventional: zombie-like creatures and a tentacle beast, bat-monster, ogre, banshee-like undead, lizard-man, and this update also mentioned dragons. If possible, in a future update please show some concept art of one of the weirdest creatures you've come up with so far. If spoilers are a problem, maybe leave out the name of the creature and any background info, and use a discarded design that still shows the general gist of the creature.
  21. Gumbercules
    I'm only familiar with the OC and MotB, but I pretty much agree with your points. One additional thing the OC has in its favor is the trial. The trial! I love those kinds of elaborate non-combat questlines. They're a great opportunity to showcase C&C and reactivity, and help an RPG be more than just a dungeon crawl. I hope Project Eternity has plenty of detailed non-combat gameplay. The one big problem with the NWN2 trial was the railroading. If you lose the trial, you have to fight in a trial by combat. If you win...you still have to fight in a trial by combat. Lame.
  22. Gumbercules
    Seriously, what are you seeing that I'm missing? Both styles have the same amount of attention paid to lighting and detail. The only difference is that the brush strokes are more obvious in the PE painting, which lends it more texture and makes it appear to be more detailed without actually requiring more effort. I'm not entirely clear on whether the Shadowrun Returns people are including each minor variant when they give the "nearly 200 player portraits" number. Some of the changes seem to literally be color swaps or the addition of a single accessory, so I can't imagine that type of thing taking long even at high res. Hopefully the PE artists will have plenty of time for lots of portraits once the project moves into production and less concept art is required.
  23. Gumbercules
    +1. Say what you will about the rest of Shadowrun Returns, they really seem to have nailed the character creation + portrait-matching process. Here's the link to the post where they talk about this, by the way. They're a different art style, sure, but they don't appear to be any less detailed than that orlan painting.
  24. Gumbercules
    Sounds really cool. So are the chants meant to be assembled before combat, or can you create new ones on the fly in the middle of combat?
  25. Gumbercules
    I didn't vote in the poll because it's too simplistic. My answer is that it depends on whether those are themes that the writers want to devote the proper amount of energy, tact, and insight into exploring. I don't want them to merely include rampant bigotry out of some misguided desire to appear "accurate" or "authentic" (lol, it's a made-up world, they get to define what's authentic and what isn't). To take the A Song of Ice and Fire example, George R. R. Martin depicts a deeply misogynistic and patriarchal society, sure, but he doesn't just include it as an afterthought and then focus on bros fighting orcs or something. Roughly half of the POV characters are women, and he takes the time to explore how they struggle and adapt in such a society, since it's obviously a theme that interests him. On the other hand, he's less interested in exploring race relations, so he doesnt't bother to establish a fundamentally racist or apartheid setting. From what we've seen so far, Obsidian don't seem too interested in exploring sexism in Project Eternity, and racism will focus more on stuff like the mistreatment of Orlans rather than human-on-human persecution. I approve of this approach. If they don't have much to say on these topics at the moment, it's better to establish a setting where players of any race, sex, gender, or orientation can feel comfortable. And if a writer at Obsidian does end up wanting to explore these topics, they can always introduce an additional culture or faction.
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