Silent Winter

Or rename it to "Small suggestions, easily implemented ideas, quickfire thoughts for the expansion/PoE2"

Start work on PoE2 / expansion?

That would work if there's no chance of your characters walking behind anything (houses, trees etc) - if there is, you'd need the z-depth occlusion map at least)

Great update, glad to hear things are progressing well. Twin Elms looks gorgeous Will have to wait to watch video (Youtube via proxy is hit'n'miss from here) Question about armour - looks great as a full set - do boots always come with it or do we have 'boots of speed/grounding/etc' type things to swap out?

Random thought: Having enemy attack-damage/HP bloat as a way of level-scaling does indeed burst the 'I've gained in power' bubble, but defeating a lich instead of a skeleton actually 'strokes' that bubble, so if scaling is to be in, I'd prefer the encounter-scaling 'different enemy makeup' style (and no, I don't mean enemies wearing rouge )

I prefer it this way too^ (As mentioned, it's just an abstraction of the process of weighing the coins etc). Also glad we're dealing in CP now instead of GP - having a gold coin as the lowest form of currency seemed a bit much. A pint of beer? That'll be 2 gold coins please.

^I see it as 2 different types though. A 'raffle' gives it to a random entrant (who may or may not even care that much, a lot of people enter raffles because they're there. Let's assume they do care - they may or may not have any talent). The 2nd example was a 'pay through service' type - you win the competition by putting in skill and effort - you give the result (either in whole or under license) to the developers and in return you get to see it 'in-game'. With a large enough community, you get at least some worthwhile efforts. 2nd type seems more of a win-win -> everyone gets a 'chance' but only those who put in enough effort and have something worth contributing can succeed. (For everyone else, there's Mastercard )

There's also composition and lighting - I can throw boulders and trees at a scene in Bryce, but that won't make it an interesting/beautiful area, even with nice models. Depending on your software, natural lighting might be more 'set the sun position and auto' but there can also be a lot to consider re:shadows, reflection (if I have a lovley reflective lake, I'll need to set it up so my characters get reflected in real-time (dunno if that's something they'll do in PoE) etc. I agree re: basic scene though. ^this, agreed

TBH it never actually bothered me in any of the IE games. Sure, Athkatla was done better, but even BG was ok. I didn't stop to think about it while playing the game - just assumed there was a certain level of abstraction going on. The visible NPCs represent the rest. There would come a point that hundreds of NPCs in a small area would get annoying rather than immersive. Ambient sounds does it for me.

In principle: Depends on how they'd do it (No to 200% hp and 200% damage, but yes to adding a fampyr to the dargul horde or whatever) In PoE practice: As Prima Junta said - difficult to know how much it's needed. There's already a level-cap (if an expansion increases that TOTSC style then the late-game encounters may also need scaling up in that style). I'm likely to wander off and do optional content whenever the mood strikes me or if it's a good idea to 'check something out' rp-wise too (ultimately I want to do as much optional content as possible in a single playthrough but it's possible I'll miss something - either way I'll be reaching the level cap I think). If I'm underlevelled for the first optional encounters but beat them and end up a little overlevelled for the next crit-path encounters, will it be a 'cakewalk' or simply 'not quite as tough' to beat? If it's going to be merely 'not quite as tough' , then I'm fine without the need for level-scaling. If it's going to be a 'cakewalk' , then I'd prefer some scaling.

which most of us aren't, I imagine Still, given a tutorial, I can usually find the equivalent in whatever software I'm using (if it's possible).

PoE 2D side-scrolling platformer: jump on skuldr heads to kill them, collect all the ardra pieces, 1up soul (life) if you pick up the animancy cube on each level. You play as an Orlan plumber and your mission is to save Cadegund who's been kidnapped and is being held in a castle ... but another castle from the one that's at the end of each level. Or...y'know, they could make PoE2 instead...

^that's exactly it - more shadow around feet = non-floaty. Unfortunate shadow angle, not around feet, especially with light background = more floaty. It may well be the same tech at work, just the angle and lack of AO with the 'floor' makes it look too light round the feet. I need to look for it to see it though - not sure I'd notice in-game, I guess it depends how it looks in proper res and animated.

Personally, I like the idea of using concept art of the main areas. A different angle 3D-scene render + paintover would be great too (a la IWD) but probably take too much time/money. BG2 style was ok, but you got the same few screens a lot. That's ok if the load time is short though. The hints on it were actually useful. If those same hints could be made to show up in the dialogue-log bar after loading (or just pause the load screen to read them) that'd be handy too. The animated scene idea: is probably my favourite, but again, animations cost time+money. I guess it depends on the style they went for. Simple animations of 2D paintings might take too much.

We also need to know more about the process. If it's 'take the blue pill' , then it could be done in total secret without even any of the household staff knowing about it. Lord Reggie wouldn't let on (there so has to be a character named Lord Reginald now, even if it's just a mod npc) because if he's the first to crack immortality, he'll have a huge advantage over rival lords. Much harder to make a correlation when we don't know or even suspect that it was even done in the first place. If it's 'large machine with flashing lights and wooshy sounds' , then people are going to know what lord did something weird and eventually (given hundreds of cases of undead like in most rpgs and Gromnir's point) they're going to make a connection. Meh, doesn't overly bother me but it would be better to have a solid explanation if there are loads of undead in one area.

As per the night/day example screenshot, with the guard standing beside the turret/building corner, it seems like it's still a matter of their feet not quite "connecting" with the plane of the ground. Even though the character is, overall, matching the 2D background, he still looks like he's hovering mere inches (in-game-world inches) off the ground. He's really, really close, but he's not quite standing on it. It's probably an issue with the shadow. The shade appears faded near where the man's legs touch the ground, whereas in a real world view that's where the shadow should be the most sharp edged and deepest. Agree, it's the shadow. In the SRR screenie, you can see the shadows are under the characters (and seem to be merely ellipses that fade out) and extend beyond their feet towards the camera. Shadow under figures makes it seem more like they're standing on the ground. As you noted, the screenies from this update have the shadow too faint and not visible at the near edge of the foot so we get a slight floaty feel. Not sure if I'd notice it while playing or not.

I feel the same - but sometimes the available portrait is just right anyway I mostly make a new portrait for each new PC in BG - I enjoy that as part of the character creation process, albeit one that takes place pre-game in other software. Nor me - but there are alternatives As Darth_Gandalf said, there are quite a few portrait packs, some of which have the right style. If you get a few together, you can weed out the ones you don't like and still end up with a lot to choose from. I've used some to flesh out the non-joinable NPCs who didn't have a portrait (also needs near-infinity or DLTCEP or similar) Or take up 3D-art as a hobby, no drawing skills required My override folder for BG grew to ridiculous size with all the added portraits (among other mods but I think the bmp were the biggest files)

^agreed on all points - but isn't 3dsmax a bit expensive? You could use the same models in Blender though - would just take a bit of tweaking and practice. I've got a Bryce 7 license for outdoor stuff, not sure if it does normal maps though. Also got other rendering programs good for indoor scenes, but again, never looked into rendering a normal map Will have to look into it further once the game's out (and probably after a playthrough or 2 and I'm in the mood for messing)

Great update - really loved getting some of the technical details

I'll take a look at the available PC portraits first. In BG there wasn't enough choice that wasn't already taken by an NPC - in IWD there was more choice (since there were no NPC companions) and I used those for my party. But I'll probably just make my own (*points to current avatar as example*) at least for subsequent playthroughs.

sure, yes - and any analogy will break if stretched to its limits. The analogy was merely to establish that (some) people do stupid things even if they know the end result will be bad. How stupid and how bad are now up for debate IF it were widely known that the animancy immortality treatment always led to undeath, THEN more people would think twice. (There's also the question of whether reincarnation of the soul would be attractive. Some people may see the loss of their memories as the loss of their self and prefer to keep going as long as possible in this life. Do we know (in PoE) if reincarnation is always Human->Human / Elf->Elf? Or even Sentient-being->Sentient being? Some may not like the idea of becoming a frog, skuldr or whatever, seeing it as the ultimate death of their current self anyway. I guess it depends how people view it. Take a chance that this time the animancer's got it right.) Your analogy with the hockey player leaping into the stands also breaks - we're not talking about famous people in an age that tracks their every statistic (and whose feeding habits are then witnessed by a large crowd in an arena). The local lord will be famous in his sphere of influence, but the general populace won't be privy to his dealings with animancers. By the time he goes all Dargul/Gul on them, he may well have fled the mansion and be unrecognisable. So I think it comes down to whether or not people would know or strongly suspect the link, and whether or not the animancers were up-front about what they were doing ("immortality? no, no, I'm not one of *those* animancers, I'm just going to give your soul a surgicial scrub that will clear up your gout, yes sir")

^ it doesn't need all 5 of those passes - some are just beautification (specular pass, ambient occlusion pass, final paintover) but it does need the z-depth pass, so yeah - it needs to be built in 3D (or maybe you could go through the image pixel-by-pixel and set the z-depth manually? don't know of a program that would do that though. Is it possible to paint a distance-occlusion map? There was something simliar in IE, about characters walking behind scenery, but it wasn't handled the same way) In the IE games, you needed a 'walk-path' layer (again, could be painted) - I think there's a 3D info walk-mesh done in Unity for PoE. That being said - creating (a basic) 3D scene isn't all that hard (given enough practice with the software) - it's the making it look good with the right textures/settings, optimizing it for polys and texture resolution (to save on render times) and then rendering out all those layers in very large resolutions that's the trick.

I don't think 'drinking coffee' = 'animancy' was his point The 'bath-salts' / drugs analogy was better. People doing things, even knowing the potential hazards, aren't always logical. And there's no indication that people will know the hazards (I wouldn't have heard of the bath-salts thing without internet - in medieval times, if it didn't happen in the next town over, it may as well not have happened (except as some fanciful story embellished by travelling bards or whatever) (unless you're the king with a network of spies or something). How informed are the nobles about the workings of animancers in PoE? Even so, I still agree that there should be more than just 'immortal-wishing-nobles' to bolster the undead ranks (e.g. the aforementioned village-plague 'cure'.) If "undead abound in heritage hill", then perhaps something like that happened there.

^would be a better way of learning about the history and lore of the land (more immersive). would also be a better way of getting the info you need to deal with a quest (not just 'talk to Harry' but 'talk to Harry, Steve and Fred' (any, all or none of whom may be pointed out to you by the quest-giver)) (I realise there have been quests of this nature before - just emphasising)

Sometimes I steal from a favourite book: Aldric (fighter-mage) Sometimes I use a word that has resonance with the character as a kind of nickname: Scythe (Assassin) Fang (Werewolf) And sometimes I'll just try to make one up: Carn (Sorceror) (then again, Carn is also an English form of Cairn) Arron (Druid) Kilya (Sorceress) (She was evil and it sounded like 'Kill ya' ) For BG I usually didn't bother with full names (as it would get annoying for everyone to always use your full name in dialogue, but in e.g. NWN2, where you could designate First and Last names, I'd start from a random generator and then modify to a name I like (for last name, first name always done from scratch).