ObiKKa

Yeah I plaed a bit of that Freedom Force. I liked it too as it was very tactical and some battles are difficult and very tricky to win. But I wished that it had the original idea of the number-key pressing system of Dungeon Siege, where you can customize your small party of characters into a defense-oriented mindset, offense-oriented mindset, a mix of strong melee characters still fighting and one person healing them or spellcasting or a large range of other options and then key-bind each of these sets into one of the F1-F12 keys. That way you could change the ways your party was dealing with the opponents as the conditions change in real-time without having to pause. I was missing that kind of stuff in Freedom Force and I think it needed that kind of simple and ingenious idea. But the old D&D games made in the Infinity Engine and similar games like Obsidian and Inxile are building definitely don't need that control system at all as they're interesting in other ways and it's quite fun to be able to pause the time and customize how your big party would do during fights.

The quality of the party characters' own models are stunningly detailed. I also noticed that you've significantly changed the curvature of the striped tile patterns everywhere on the second screen to be more gently curved. Good lighting on both sides of the outside of the doorway where the party is at. Curiously, I just watched a bit of 'The Dome' TV program the other night and that purple glowing thing in the middle of the round room reminds me of that half of the weird purple or transparent dome sitting atop a nature clearing in a forest under the dome in the TV series.

Zed's idea on a different mix-&-match UI is pretty nice. And I was thinking exactly the same thing about why you wouldn't be considering putting up another bar with partial info/visuals onto either side (preferably right-side like those old Impressions Games' city-builders from the 90's) to make good use of the VERY vast length of many of our widescreen monitors! And it wouldn't be seen to intrude much into the game perspective space at all! ... Also... what if I would like to move a bar onto a 2nd monitor in a multi-monitor setup? Hmm... Anyway back onto the blog update, I have looked up Polina Hristova's blog and art work for various games. She is very talented at it, and I can see in not just your experience recording that she can be somewhat intimidating to other people with her very enthusiast work ethic!

Bring on the Spartacus-style battles and arenas (referring to the animats)!

Man! I can't wait to try either of the orlans and aumaua races. The godlike variation does seem interesting to me.

Looks nice. I think the lighting effects - both ambient, and that 'occlusion-based lighting' (is that right?) of that 'globe-like' lightball that came out of the entrance hole were the best parts of all that were shown in this showcase video. So thank you very much. I also liked the self-shadowing renders from the characters' own bodies. The way that these shadows seemed to move over the bumpy rocks on the water creek looked very accurate... I have a feeling that the way these lighting systems works in your own brand of the Unity engine is because you get to save the 'memory' of how lighting are supposed to shine on various textures/surfaces WHILE in the 3D building mode. Then these same surfaces will be 'lit up' in the final 2D render whenever ambient lighting and/or a smaller dimension of a lighting effect comes nearby? Am I correct? I am not a programmer, heh! Also will you be able to render at least two or more shadows (some of them soft, for instance) if multiple light-points are being shone onto a character or a prop on the ground (like those F.E.A.R. series and Unreal 3 engines are famously known for)? Will one of you in the team please really answer this question (either here, or in a future blog update in text format) - Will you be looking at and developing a way(s) to have magical effects of various colours, intensity and etc shine different colours and intensity of lights onto nearby surfaces? Man, that would surely make the accommodating environments and big battles look crazy-spectacular! The second starred line above probably answers this question below already... "OK, about the only thing that I saw in the video that I think should be remedied before game's release is the way the 2D planes within the little bush moves. I think the 'swinging' of the bush's own 2D planes is a bit too slow, and probably too much. Perhaps keep the swinging radius a bit shorter for the small bush, eh? Also the randomly-generated 'double mini-shake' of those animated 2D planes is a too unnaturally quick. Perhaps it's a bug, or an incomplete feature?"

I've checked both eternity.obsidian.net and that other link in your post. It appears that only the first aforementioned site address have got some donation buttons. So far it looks like you can only either support the team, or pay to get the digital game. The digital add-ons and pledges have probably ended, unfortunately for you... It seems like I'd have to pay to get the strategy guide (could be useful to look into the various character classes) and the subsequent expansion when they are released...