nipsen

I was exaggerating a little bit. But with the way you and a couple others argued, you were writing off the probability of any problem because Obsidian people are awesome. That was the entire line of reasoning, and apparently still is. It's not how it works - like I talked a bit about in the other post, I've been talking to two different producers on large productions - who were close to the developer team, who didn't do off-site work. They argued and convinced the development team, together with lead designers and so on, to make changes to the game that they genuinely believed were needed for the games to sell. They based this off feedback from various different places - experts, reviews, userfeedback, etc. Design people and mechanical programmers signed off on the solutions. Those changes were solely the reason why the games tanked and were practically empty of players a few weeks after release. Which was very sad when the earlier betas actually worked. In one of the cases the producer was genuinely shocked that anyone had any kind of reasoning or explanation for why the changes were extremely bad ideas in the first place. After the disaster, they still kept looking for other causes to why the games didn't become huge sellers - such as marketing, presentation, packaging, etc. Blaming everyone from individual project members to the publisher and overall project design. And these were "the good guys", who were "on our side" - and genuinely committed to making the game as good as possible for the users. They still made extremely bad choices when having to translate "what I want as a gamer" between the very different contexts they were put in as project managers and salesmen on one hand, and designers and programmers on the other. Other than that - the idea that someone is wrong because "but I believe otherwise" - not a great argument either. Frankly, rude to write people off like that. If you disagree, no worries. But people are not necessarily paranoid, or setting up a huge conspiracy, because the scenario seems unlikely to you. So yes, I agree with sharp_one that the PoE project as a drm-free, crowd-funded gem that ended in an economically viable release, proving that independent developer-owned and planned release cycles are more than just possible, but also something to emulate by other developers - is probably over. Towards us as backers, there's no pressure other than to eventually deliver the goods in terms of a good game with loads of content. For designers and leads, the pressure would also be the deadline where the project runs out of money on a full house development effort. But other than that.. what pressure is there? And I'm sure that most of the people who back the game would have some sort of feeling about extended development time that flips between disappointment, and contentment that the project is not rushed. With a release looming, and a package waiting to be sold in good timing with the release - there'll be different types of pressure involved. Of course the game will still be made. I'm just not convinced by the few details we've been given that Paradox is just contracting the distribution of the physical release, rather than becoming a part of the pitch and sell of the project, along with the development of extra campaigns and content and so on. Because of the other obvious questions partnering with a publisher brings along with it. That Obsidian haven't actually gone into any detail about. And I think that is curious.

Desktop mode has "limited" scaling, the same scaling that Windows 7 employs. You can scale elements, but it causes fonts and graphics in most/all apps to turn blurry because they don't handle the scaling well. This is similar what happens/happened on retina MBP when it was released, it simply scaled everything by 2x and used higher resolution assets when available, eg. when apps had included them. I believe there's currently no way for x86 apps to detect what scaling Windows has been set to and load/scale assets accordingly, 8.1 should introduce this. For example, even though vector based, a 12px font won't magically be turned into a 24px font, it'll still be a 12px font scaled to twice the size unless an app supports scaling and intelligently detects this. It gets even more complicated when you start involving web browsers and their scaling behaviour. Windows 8.1 is scheduled to include "enhanced DPI scaling", but few details have been released. It' probably something very similar to what the current retina MBP employs, but based on information released so far it'll allow more user customization. ..it's not /that/ complicated. I mean, generally we're talking about making sure background elements and foreground elements aren't scaled asynchronously. So you don't get one hilariously ugly shader effect next to very pretty water and so on. And then that UI and text are rendered in separate layers from the rest of the graphics context. That's usually what kills older games, frankly, much more than simply rendering the entire thing in half-res compared to the screen you have. Because when you have complex composites with lots of drawing and different sized text, and so on, scaling up is always horrible. No matter if it's the method Apple uses for the MBP, or the semi-composite manager system they have in Windows -- when you start to scale elements that are supposed to be rendered in the same resolution as the screen, things are hard to look at and they break. Avoid that, and you can still play the game on a 4k screen, no problem. (I do wholeheartedly support the idea of having a 20 times as large render pass as the normal one as a piece of optional downloadable material, though :D)

That's not how it works. A company like Obsidian has little experience with publishing their own titles. They do have experience with publishers screwing them over, I guess. But they don't necessarily have people asking questions ahead of time, such as: "Will the release you put out also be drm-free? What are the compromises in terms of exposure you will have to overcome to keep the releases drm-free? Are you willing to do that, still take the job, and put this in writing in the contract?". Instead, what will be extremely likely to happen is this: Obsidian releases their initial builds drm-free. The update facility of those releases will be manual and cumbersome for obsidian. They will be left doing this as a way of appreciating their fans. While the drm-release will be supported and so on. DRM will once again be hailed as the greatest thing since toast. And Paradox will, even if pressured hard by Obsidian, simply claim that they would not have signed the contract if they were required to avoid drm activation completely. And, they will probably claim with some right, having no drm will limit the level of exposure of the title that they were contracted to achieve in the first place. That's just how the industry works, Lephys. So I want Obsidian to be completely open about the way the arrangement is done. And to explain why, for example, that the no drm-requirement isn't absolute. Does it have no benefits for them? Do they sincerely believe that no drm is not a marketable concept? We should also need to hear more details about the way the digital releases will be rolled out. I would very much like to see a couple of options for the digital release. And then have the disc-release simply be all the assets "pre-downloaded", along with the distribution facility and updates. If people want that. And keeping this drm-free and available to several platforms and distribution options would be a good thing for us as customers. It would mean that it's possible to install the game without any access through desura, steam or package wells, etc. But it would make it beneficial in some way to follow the official releases. Rewarding the customer with bling and convenience for buying the release. Etc. Aside from that, it's the q&a. Of course Obsidian owns the IP, and of course they own the development. But when a publisher says that "you will lose 10.000 sales if Boo isn't in the game somehow according to 'market research' on reddit". Then no matter how stupid that would be, the developer will have to respond to it somehow. Paradox might not want to say it outright - but if they can flag "dialogue" with the developer, they can "increase their expectations" of meeting requirements at launch. That's more or less mechanical in even the smallest business. And you can't actually mean, seriously, that because some of you seem to believe Obsidian people fart rainbows and run around all day petting lynxes in a magical zoo -- that they can magically pre-empt any of those potential issues by simply existing. Point is this. There's very little work they need to do to put all of this down. I dislike the assumption that seems to be made with the linux distribution discussion - that drm is a great tool if it's "needed". Basically, they could make a concerted effort to sell a multiplatform - actual multiplatform - release for all systems. Rather than rest on traditional publisher tropes to sell the game to stores. There is a risk associated with doing that that I don't think a publisher, however small, will be willing to take on their own initiative. So I'm missing some explanation from Obsidian on how to approach this. And I'm obviously typing this down in the first place because I think they may be the only development house in the world who might actually be willing to front this. And they have the opportunity as well. Just saying.

Mmm, I'll bet Jump to Conclusions is a first level spell that you can enchant into your keyboard. Material components: a thread and a post. ..Not sure what I'd call the entire.. "everything will be fine, and rainbows and unicorns exist!" line some of you seem to like. But "carefully considered and logically thought out based on observation and available facts" probably isn't it.

I suppose that with the "finalize your pledge" setup, they've been receiving a lot of disk-orders they didn't have earlier. Which would make anyone have certain expectations for possible boxed sales when the time comes. But you're right, they wouldn't need a publishing house to deal with those orders. At worst they could hire a small company to print the boxes and discs - for example to a non-standard size in non-standard material, which we would all appreciate, and so on. And which would very likely pay for itself as well as act as solid advertisement for the actual sales of the game, standard boxed or digital, once it turns up. It's also worrying that they mention things such that Paradox is good at making games visible around launch. They are, in a sense. But they keep using ways to do it with youtube partnerships that are very.. let's say.. standard nowadays. With contracting people to have certain mentions and so and so much gameplay shown per word, etc. Not bad or evil stuff - but you could end up with a format for this that isn't really suited for presenting a role-playing game like this. It could be done carefully and openly, and everyone would possibly be happy with that. But, you know, Obsidian people really have to be part of that process, so they don't end up with a mention of DLC coming soon! In every review. Or that they'd get run over by "oh, the market wants this!!!" speeches. I mean, my guess is that Paradox would be interested in first a cheap boxed copy release, and that they'd get that into lists that stores can order the games from. Which would be extremely easy with a name like Obsidian as the developer - much easier than with paradox' other partners. Then there'd be dlc distribution, and then collector's editions. And I can absolutely see that Obsidian would imagine that they might run into capacity problems that would make them lose initiative and possibly also sales for that if they had to deal with it themselves. It really makes sense to have a second company take care of that, and to take the initial hit on cost, in return for revenue on the actual sales. And it makes sense for the Kickstarter project, since Obsidian wouldn't want to transfer work-hours and money off that Kickstarter pool to cover distribution costs. What I don't see is why Obsidian wouldn't want to be pretty much.. completely open about the details of this arrangement. So that we as backers understand their reasoning. Specially with the idea of planned content turning up in dlc. Does the original backer reward involve a certain amount of exclusivity with the boxed copies, etc. And along with more specific to what Paradox is actually going to be doing, and what they will choose for drm in the coming releases. Will there be a difference in the first and possibly second wave? Is it still important for Obsidian to show that delivering a drm-free boxed or digital distribution can make money? Or will that part of the discussion be put dead once the publishing is handled over to a different company. Then there's the q&a process. I've been part of too many Sony betas to not understand that q&a can ruin a game completely. By well-meaning suggestions from beta-testers who have an ear to the publisher's concerns, this can be a surprisingly quick and steady process. So as a backer, I'd very much like to know for certain that Sawyer and Urquhart, and so on, won't be sitting with a check-list where the're going to be, I don't know.. encouraged to slim down skill interferences to avoid complexity of gameplay hitting new players too soon. Or having to drop dialogue trees due to an inference commonly made in the "white privileged youth" segment that would cause unfavourable questions regarding their assumed world-view. ..you know.. "Hey, let's cut the planned branching ending tree and just make a cheezy cutscene that wraps the game up in a way that assumes the choices that our typical player would make. No one under 13 will notice!". There are a lot of things here that can go wrong, even with the best of intentions. Individually they might not be huge issues. But put together it could be a disaster. So I really don't see why the dev-team wouldn't take the opportunity to expose the specifics of how this partnership would play out. No one will lose anything, and potentially gain a lot, from doing that.

Each pixel in the depth map indicates its depth from the camera, which is then used for per-pixel occlusion on the effects and objects in the scene. That was the recipe for Cola right there. :D Neat use of depth-maps. Did this idea come from a photo-editing perspective, or from a 3d-rendering perspective? I mean, it's the kind of thing you would use to create terrain in 3d-worlds and so on.. but..