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Didn't see it posted, and thought people here might be interested, the Codex has an interview with George Ziets.

Hey folks! Had the chance to talk to Chris Avellone on everything Obsidian! Here's the link and the transcript to the Project Eternity stuff. “I LOVE working on Kickstarter Projects, first of all, you get to share a lot of stuff with the fanbase (design documents, how you build levels) some of that stuff when working with a normally publisher model is allowed, with Kickstarter you know take player feedback iterate on it and make them part of the process. The other thing is, it gives you 30 days to see if your idea is something that the public wants to buy in the first place. I think that’s a much better funding model rather than building the game for two years and then trying to market it at the end. It lets you know if you’re idea is good right out of the gate”

Update by Adam Brennecke, Executive Producer and Lead Programmer Last month we finished our prototype 1 build. In Update #47, Josh outlined our goals for the first prototype, which focused on establishing "that IE feel". Not only did we hit that mark with the look of our characters and environments, but we also hit our target with movement, combat, and gameplay systems. Core basics that you all expect from Project Eternity such as party movement, melee and ranged combat attacks, containers (with loot!), doors, using special class abilities and spell casting, area transitions, inventory and equipment are all in the game and functioning. We also established working character and environment pipelines - the art team is now able to create beautiful rendered areas, and we can model armor sets for all of our uniquely proportioned races. Additionally, we've established that we can efficiently concept, model and animate creatures for our soon to be growing bestiary. The creature we built for the first prototype is the Skuldr. Skuldr have poor vision, but they use a form of echolocation to perceive the spirit world. This allows them to “see” souls, making it difficult to use stealth to avoid them. After the prototype 1 audit meeting, Josh and I came up with a plan for what we would like to see the team tackle in prototype 2. Josh has previously mentioned a few of the goals for prototype 2 which include fog of war, character voice sets, crafting, stores, AI patrols, and the melee engagement system. Besides the expanded feature implementation, we are going to put our pipelines to the test on another set of new environments and creatures before moving into production. The plan for prototype 2 is to create a small village with a handful of buildings to enter, including a shop and inn. To the east of the village is a medium sized wilderness area with access to a small cave dungeon interior. The prototype also includes a large dungeon (I won't spoil the contents of the dungeon, because some of the ideas in the prototype will eventually make their way into the shipped game). All of these areas are connected by a complex multi-stage quest with several objectives (some optional) and with many different ways of completing it. The team has been working on a second prototype for the past two weeks now. Here's a sample on what each department has been working on. Art Dynamic Cloth - We are doing further research into character dynamism, and are creating capes for our characters to equip. Dungeon - Our goal for the dungeon is to make an interior area that lives up to the IE games. The dungeon has a variety of rooms that are unique and organic. New Monster - One of the new monsters we are creating for prototype 2 is an Ogre. He has already gone through the concept and modeling stage and now is off to be animated. Design Complete Bestiary - The bestiary list has been worked over a few times by the area and narrative designers. We are now pretty close to having a complete creature list! Class Abilities for the Monk and Ranger - The Monk's "wounds" resource is in, and next up is the mechanics for the Ranger's animal companion. The class progression for the Monk and Ranger has been designed out to level 12. Programming Town Guard A.I. - How do guards protect the village when you start casting fireballs in the town square? They beat you down... or at least try to. The guards will hook into the reputation and faction mechanics, which tells guards when they turn hostile towards the party. Fancy Material Shaders - We now have fancy materials for creating shiny armor and translucent ghost skin. Another set of shaders are "Tint maps" materials that enable the customization of skin and clothing colors just like in the IE games. In the future we will go into details into the design and implementation of the systems and features. Is there a particular feature that you would like to know more about? Tell us what you would like to see us talk about in future updates on our forums. We will be taking an update break next week so the team can focus on prototype 2 work. Thanks for reading and see you in two weeks!

Update by Josh Sawyer, Project Director Thanks to everyone who contributed feedback to our visual demo last week. While we are still working out some aspects of our environment art, we appreciate both the kind words and the suggestions for improvement that we received. Due to all of the coverage we received, we noticed a lot of new folks asking about the game as well as past backers who may have missed a lot of the updates that have happened since the Kickstarter campaign ended. We thought it would be a good idea to restate what Project Eternity is all about and update our FAQ. While much of this has been covered in previous updates, we have also included a few new tidbits of information in the details. What is Project Eternity? Project Eternity is a party-based fantasy roleplaying game inspired by the Infinity Engine games (Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Icewind Dale 1 & 2, and Planescape: Torment) set in an original world created by Obsidian Entertainment. The camera has a fixed axonometric (high angle) perspective (with zoom!). The environments are 2D backgrounds combined with 3D characters and visual effects. Project Eternity's team is focusing on three core ideas that will capture the Infinity Engine experiences players loved so much: Unique, beautiful, dynamic environments that encourage and reward exploration. A story that is both personal and far-reaching, with believable characters and factions that create compelling dilemmas for players. Fun and challenging tactical combat that can escalate in difficulty through the use of optional game modes. What does "party-based" mean in Project Eternity? At the start of the game, the player can create and customize his or her character, choosing from six races and several ethnicities, eleven classes, and a number of cultural backgrounds. Over the course of the game, the player can expand his or her party up to six total characters. The additional characters include eight companions designed and written by Obsidian as well as any new characters players would like to build at the Adventurer's Hall. What is the combat like? Project Eternity's combat will feel very similar to the combat in the Infinity Engine games, which used a "real-time with pause" system. In such a system, events between combatants occur simultaneously, but the player can pause the game at any time. The player selects and commands one or more of his or her party members to issue orders, ranging from continuous activities, like making standard attacks, to the activation of limited-use tactical abilities, such as spells. Like the Infinity Engine games, Project Eternity will support auto-pause features that allow players to establish conditions under which the game will automatically pause (e.g., if a party member becomes unconscious). It will also feature a slow combat toggle that can be used with or in lieu of the pause feature. In slow combat, players can manage the flow of combat without needing to halt the game entirely. What are the different races we can play? Players can select from six main races found in this part of the world: humans, elves, dwarves, orlans, aumaua, and godlike. Orlans, aumaua, and godlike are unique to the world of Project Eternity, though godlike have similarities to "planetouched" races in other settings. Orlans are small humanoids physically notable for their two-tone skin, extensive body hair, and extremely long ears. Aumaua are large, semiaquatic humanoids with a diverse array of skin patterns, elongated heads, and semi-webbed hands and feet. Godlike are not a separate race, but a phenomenon found among all races. They are individuals whom many people believe were transformed by the gods before birth. Godlike have distinctive appearances that invariably make them stand out from other people, with different cultures and individuals holding wildly different biases toward or against them. All of the races have different ethnicities from which the player can choose. For elves, Wood and Pale, for dwarves, Mountain and Boreal, for orlans, Hearth and Wild, and for aumaua, Island and Coastal. Humans have three ethnicities: Meadow, Ocean, and Savannah. Godlike can be found among any race and their appearance always sets them apart from their parents. This is an Aumaua male and female hi-poly head model. The facial colors and texture will be coming later. What about the classes? Characters may be one of eleven classes: barbarian, chanter, cipher, druid, fighter, monk, paladin, priest, ranger, rogue, or wizard. The "core four" classes (fighter, priest, rogue, wizard) are most similar to their traditional tabletop analogues. The non-core classes, barbarians, druids, monks, paladins, and rangers, are somewhat similar to their counterparts but differ more significantly. The two completely new classes are the chanter and the cipher, which are unique to the world of Project Eternity. Traditional classes vary in how high- or low-maintenance they are based on their traditional counterparts. E.g. fighters are generally lower maintenance than wizards. However, the advancement system allows players to bend those roles, making higher-maintenance, active-use fighters or more passive wizards (for example). Class balance is important to us, but we also want playing each class to feel distinctive and complementary to other classes. What will the art style be like? Our art style is fairly realistic and uses a somewhat subdued, natural color palette, especially in outdoor environments. Character proportions are also fairly realistic. Equipment designs and proportions are based on their earthly historical counterparts, with an overall emphasis on function in their form. However, because this is a fantasy game, many environments will also be fantastic, with unearthly architecture, unusual materials, brilliant colors, and beautiful embellishments when appropriate. How about the setting and story? Project Eternity is set in a world created by Obsidian Entertainment, where mortal souls are bound to an eternal, and often mystifying, cycle of life and reincarnation believed to be watched over by the gods. Though cultures and individuals have different beliefs about the nature and purpose of this cycle, it is only recently that mortals have made significant advancements in understanding its fundamental mechanics through the science of animancy. The story takes place in a small nation in the world's southern hemisphere called the Dyrwood (DEER-wood). The Dyrwood is a heavily forested, coastal region where colonial powers from across the ocean have settled and formed an uneasy relationship with the local residents, tribes of orlans and elves who are protective of the ancient ruins of Eír Glanfath on the forest's interior. Eír Glanfath was an ancient melting pot of races that built elaborate, often massive, structures out of a living shell-like substance called adra. Though the fate of the ancient Glanfathans is unknown, their dangerous and complex ruins show evidence they possessed extensive knowledge of how souls work. For this reason, all of the surrounding colonial powers aggressively fight for the chance to explore and plunder Glanfathan structures, often bringing the local tribes into conflict with their relatively new neighbors -- and the neighbors into conflict with each other. The central character in the story is a newcomer to the Dyrwood, a man or woman who is caught up in a bizarre supernatural phenomenon. This event puts them in a difficult position, where they must explore the new world to solve a series of problems that have been thrust upon them. What engine does Project Eternity use? Project Eternity uses the Unity engine in addition to proprietary features developed at Obsidian. What platforms will Project Eternity be available on? We will be releasing Project Eternity for Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs. It will be available through Steam and GOG.com. Will Project Eternity use any form of DRM (digital rights management)? The GOG version is DRM-free. The Steam version works like any other Steam game and does not have any added DRM. There is no online requirement to play the game nor any additional DRM imposed by us. What languages will you be supporting? In addition to English, Project Eternity will be released in French, German, Spanish, Polish, and Russian. What resolutions are you supporting? Project Eternity will support resolutions from 1280x720 and up. Our environments are rendered out at a high resolution and support a wide range of scalability. What other cool stuff will be in the game? Thanks to our backers, players will have access to both a player house as well as a full stronghold in the game. Also, players will have the chance to explore all fifteen levels of the backer-funded mega-dungeon, the Endless Paths of Od Nua. Players who want a more extreme challenge can enable up to three optional game modes: Expert Mode (turns off "helper" features), Path of the Damned (dramatically increases the difficulty and complexity of encounters), and Trial of Iron (only one save game, party death = game over, save game deleted). That's all for this week. Thanks for reading! Season 1: Cowardly Cops, Meddling Merchants, and Shrouded Hills. And trash bins. Article by Chris Avellone, Creative Director We’re doing something different with the Arcanum playthroughs with this update – instead of filming a large portion at once and then releasing that one session over several weeks in small 10 min chunks, we’re going to release smaller updates that allow us to respond more quickly to your feedback on the playthrough and then iterate on the next playthrough. In this episode, Avellone explores the small town of Shrouded Hills, deals with cowardly constables, explores trash bins, and finds out more about the cryptic ring from the Zephyr’s zeppelin crash. Virgil guest stars.

Update by Josh Sawyer, Project Director Welcome. Today's update is a big one, though not by volume of text. Today we’re showing you our game in action. Specifically, we're showing what we've been doing for our exterior environments. The Infinity Engine games were known for their art, and we wanted to hit the high standard of visual quality established by games like the Icewind Dale series. We also wanted to introduce dynamic elements into the environment that were mostly absent from the classic games, like dynamic water, movement in foliage, and dynamic lighting of the scene. In a 2D game, this required our programmers and artists to come up with some creative solutions. What they came up with surprised us initially and it continues to amaze us. While we are still working on refining some of the dynamic elements, we're very happy with the progress we've been able to make and hope you feel the same way. Special thanks to Hector Espinoza, our lead environment artist, and Michael Edwards, our rendering programmer, who did a lot of amazing work to bring this environment to life. Thanks for reading, thanks for your feedback, and we'll see you next week.

Project Eternity the Documentary Update Article by Adam Brennecke, Executive Producer and Lead Programmer In Update #23 Feargus announced that Obsidian would fund a documentary of the making of Project Eternity without using a dime from the Kickstarter funding. Here's a behind-the-scenes of the behind-the-scenes and some other tidbits about the documentary. We've been working with the documentary team, Tony Jacobsen and Michael Mitchell from Creative Lane Media, for some time. Tony and Mike are very professional guys with years of experience making films, and have experience working with the games industry. They will be with following us with their fancy cameras for the entire production of Project Eternity. Our documentary will be a full movie and released in its entirety when the game is complete. We are targeting a 45 minute film that covers the entire process of the making of Project Eternity from the early days of the Kickstarter, into preproduction, all the way through production to finishing it up and going gold. There will be footage from our team meetings, informal discussions, scrums, and major milestone events. The room pictured above is an office at that we transformed into a small film studio. It will be used to shoot one-on-one sit down style interviews. Documentary FAQ When can I get the Documentary? The documentary will be released when Project Eternity is finished. We will have more details when we get closer to the Project Eternity beta. How do I get it? If you already backed at the $20/$25 tier level (and Slacker Backers via PayPal thus far) and above you will be able to stream it. At the $35 tier level and above you will be able to download it, and at the $140 tier level (and physical tiers above) we will include a DVD / Blu-ray. You can still get access to the documentary stream if you donate to the project today via the Slacker Backer pledge at the Eternity website. Tony and Mike from Creative Lanes Media Season 0: Season of the Wolf (Ghosts), Parts 4, 5, 6 Article by Darren Monahan, HTML monkey The truth behind Season 0's naming reveals itself in... ghosts. Note that this recording was done at the same time as last season, so any fixes or interface errors will not be fixed again until, uh, the real Season 1. (Ed: Yes, that means Chris is probably not using the world map enough quite yet. ) We'll be recording a new batch soon and I'm passing along feedback from YouTube comments and our forums. PART 4 PART 5 PART 6 Next week's update we will have a movie showcasing some of the progress we've made on prototype 1! Stay tuned!

Update by Josh Sawyer, Project Director We've got a lot of things in progress on Project Eternity right now. As Darren wrote in the last update, we're winding down our first prototype. We just did an audit of the work that remains from the first prototype and where we will be going with the next prototype. Our first prototype allowed us to prove a lot of the basics of movement, character design, stealth, combat controls, inventory, resting, quests, scripted skill interactions, dialogue, status effects, and the ability and spell systems. There's still a lot of work to do on all of those elements, but by the end of the prototype, it really did have "that IE feel". How I organized and moved my characters, how I used them differently in combat, how I explored areas very much captured the feeling of the Infinity Engine games in gorgeous high-res environments. So where do we go from here? First, we're going to try another approach to building interior environments to make sure we can capture as much of the organic feeling of the classic levels as we can. Second, we're going to continue to build up the dynamic elements of environment to make them feel more alive. We already have dynamic water, but we have more work to do on with elements like trees, grass, ambient visual effects, and our day/night cycle. We'll be showing you the results of those experiments in two weeks. Third, we're going to continue to develop more advanced gameplay features like fog of war, character voice sets, crafting, stores, AI patrols, and the melee engagement system. In case you're wondering about the story, we've been working on both a lot lately as well. We really want Project Eternity to strike the right balance of elements: to introduce you to this new setting, to make you feel personally invested in your choices, to engage you with the personalities and factions involved in the conflict, and to give you all of the freedom you've come to expect from an Obsidian RPG. It's a long process, but we're feeling very positive and excited about where we're going, which is always a good thing. Thanks for reading and, as always, thanks for your continued support. I'll be back in two weeks to show you our exterior environment running with all the bells and whistles in place! Planescape: Torment Retrospective Article by Darren Monahan, the Named One Back before Obsidian was a company, many of us worked at Black Isle Studios, the RPG arm of Interplay Entertainment. One of the games a number of us helped create was Planescape: Torment, an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons based RPG set in the Planescape campaign setting. As many of you already know, the guys at InXile recently launched the Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter. They’re getting a lot of the “old band back together” to work on this thematic successor. One cool thing they’re generously offering to all Project Eternity backers (whether or not you back Torment) is a Planescape: Torment Retrospective featuring developer diaries and blogs from many of the original developers, including quite a few former and current Obsidian devs. They’ve got nine days left, so if you haven’t checked it out yet, we encourage you to do so quickly! Please join me in thanking Brian, Kevin, and everyone at InXile! Kickin’ it Forward: Dwarven Forge’s Game Tiles Article by Darren Monahan, level 1 rogue/level 1 swashbuckler So, several of us on the Project Eternity and South Park teams are playing a D&D 3.5E campaign at lunch a few days each week. While they’re short sessions, this is no small production - we’re using a bunch of miniatures and tilesets for the campaign, many of which our DM (and Eternity designer), Bobby Null, has acquired over the years from Dwarven Forge. He came into work Monday incredibly geeked up because the folks at Dwarven Forge launched a new Kickstarter, which we got right into and backed. If you’re in to playing D&D and really want to get immersed, they make some incredible tilesets. Here’s a few samples from our game! (Note, these aren’t the exact tiles they kickstarted, but rather just some cool examples of their prior work.) Go check it out here! Thanks, and we'll see you next week!

Update by Darren Monahan, dinosaur fan Yep, you've seen this before - but not animating! In this week’s update, we’re back with me for one more! We’ll cover what the team’s up to currently. To start, every one of Obsidian’s games goes through a series of phases. Those phases, chronologically, are: Prototype, Vertical Slice, Production, and Finalization. At the end of each phase, the team and owners do an analysis of the progress; we verify that we’ve hit key goals, and (hopefully) officially move the project into the next phase. Prototype! So where are we at on Project Eternity? We’re coming to the end of the Prototype phase. While you might think of a prototype as something you would consider before making a game, in our case, we use the term to mean a demonstration of the game that, when successful, demonstrates the game’s vision (AKA “pillars”) and concept. For Eternity, one of our biggest pillars is to recreate the Infinity Engine experience. To that end, we need to have a number of key things in place to make sure our prototype is a success. Things like: Character movement and combat. We want to make sure we have a party of up to six characters, each of whom can be moved independently and/or as a group, which does then imply rudimentary support for formations as well as NPC and basic creature AI. Basic AI meaning to ‘see’ the characters, face them, and then move to them and start attacking. This also means we need character models that have enough animations to demonstrate this convincingly, as well as at least one monster. For our prototype demo, we have one known only as “Chompy” for now. More on him (or her?!) in future updates! Basic RPG mechanics. We need to prove that we’re making an RPG here obviously! We need basics like loot management; for instance, inventory and opening containers like chests. We need basic conversations and quest giving, including receiving a quest, tracking its progress, and then providing a reward for it being completed. Environments. We want to have a working outdoor area as well as a tileset-based interior that the player can move between and throughout. This makes us prove out area transitions too (I can hear it now, “YOU MUST GATHER YOUR PARTY BEFORE VENTURING FORTH...”) For our outdoor area (see screenshot above), we’re bringing life to it by not only building out the rest of the level, but getting our technological solutions in place. We have a working waterfall now, with moving water, replete with foam around the rocks(!) and more. Eeeert (sound of a record scratching…)! Wait, tilesets, Darren? What? Believe it or not, a lot of the areas in IE games were actually assembled through tile pieces (granted, outside the game in 3D art packages), and then were beautified by hand to give them a more organic look and feel. This tradition carries on with Eternity. Work in Progress Concept of an Interior Our next phase of the project is called the Vertical Slice. At Obsidian, this is the phase right before Production. In Vertical Slice, we try to do two things: Get Ready for Production. During Vertical Slice and definitely up into Production is when the team size grows. Early on, we’re getting all of our tools and processes designed, programmed, and with luck, polished up for our designers and artists to hit the ground running. Unity has been a dream for our developers so far, and it’s been easy for us to bring over our latest tools from other games for things like text and conversation management. Produce a Final “Slice” of Gameplay. We also try to develop a ‘final slice’ of gameplay. It’s generally a short, maybe 5-15 minute demo that demonstrates all of the core pillars of the game, as well as taken to what we’re aiming for at a final quality level in terms of visuals, audio, and presentation. During our Prototype we try to make stuff look great, but it’s secondary to form and feel. So, how are we doing? Well, we are absolutely trucking along. We’ve recently added several new concept artists to the team, two longtime Obsidian designers have also come on board (more on them later!), and we are hiring for other positions too. The team all has their heads down pushing forward for our prototype review. Fear... of the Dark Periodically throughout the rest of the project, we’ll have a number of weeks where we’ll ‘be dark’ (or rather more succinctly, "won't have an update" ) due to a variety of reasons, and next week is one of those instances. Don’t worry though, we will most certainly be working on the game, but we want to always make sure we’ve got cool stuff lined up for you, and our Prototype final is something we all want to keep focused on. When we’re back the following week (3/26), we’ll start a series of fresh new updates from Josh, Rob and the Art team, Adam, me, and more Let’s Play Arcanum with Chris Avellone. You might meet a few new team members, and maybe even hear from George again soon too. Happy St. Paddy’s Day! -Darren and the PE Team In case you're not sure who those folks are above: - Josh Sawyer: Project director and lead designer - Rob Nesler: Art director - Adam Brennecke: Exec producer and lead programmer - Me (Darren Monahan): Operations dude and co-founder - Chris Avellone: Obsidian's creative director - George Zeits: Narrative writer/designer

Update by Darren Monahan, Operations Guy Fulfillment In this week’s update, we go over a lot of different little things going on here at Obsidian. Here’s a quick teaser: I’ll be covering a brief update on fulfillment; we have another three videos of Mr. Avellone’s Let’s Play series in Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, we’ve got some really great news for fans of Planescape: Torment (along with some sexy fan artwork to share!) and lastly, a project we backed recently that we think is pretty cool that you might too. OK, so on to fulfillment! Let’s do this FAQ style. Q: So, what’s happening with the backer portal? A: I’m personally busy putting together a whole new Project Eternity website, which includes our backer portal, RSS feeds (popular request!), as well as including information and artwork about the universe of Eternity. What we know about classes, races, the gods, and more, and this site will continue to evolve as more and more is designed and released. It is a big job though for just little ol’ me, so it’s still going to be a few weeks as I work everything out, but we’ll keep you in the know. Oh, and backer badges come with this system as well. The backer portal will also be a great resource for those of you in the upper tiers who are submitting item, character, or location designs. Speaking of which...! Q: When will I be able to start submitting my item, character, or location designs? A: The guys have been talking quite a bit about this recently and have already started designing out the forms. Our current plan is to have those of you with those tiers be able to input them directly in our backer portal, and you can revise them at any time up to a certain point down the road (which we’ll let you all know – this point is when we would send out your text for translation, and it becomes expensive from this point to make edits.) But until then, start thinking about the concept for the thing you’d like to add! Adam will have an update on that in the coming weeks with more detail. We’d like to make sure there’s enough backstory and content available for you to draw connections from, and our new website will be the place for that. Let's Play Arcanum: Season 0 , Chris’s playthrough of Arcanum continues, taking your comments to heart with higher resolution, less chair creaking, profanity, Virgil sass, and wolves, wolves, wolves! Part I Part II Part III InXile Announces Torment: Tides of Numenera! If you missed Monday’s announcement by the good folks at InXile, Brian Fargo and crew announced their new Kickstarter project opening tomorrow called Torment: Tides of Numenera. That name may sound oddly familiar, yes! They are making a spiritual successor to the beloved Planescape: Torment. We seriously couldn’t control ourselves here guys, and had to make sure all of you knew about it too as fans of the genre! We encourage you to check out their website and check in tomorrow to see their new video. ...and that’s not all in Torment news. Incredible artist John Crowcroft sent us some beautiful fanart canvases that we had to share with all of you. Egads! OK, so I’m not entirely sure how "egads" fits into this update exactly other than to fill the "E" slot in this update title’s FATE acronym, but I digress. One last quick item we wanted to tell you about was a project we "Kicked it Forward" on that we think looks fun and interesting for those of you who like table top dice games. It’s called Dungeon Roll – A Dicey Dungeon Delve. Check it out! Until next week, -Darren, seeker of Kerfluffleupogus.

Update by Josh Sawyer, Project Director and Lead Designer Last week, our art director, Rob, showed you our godlike concepts and dazzled you with an in-depth technical breakdown of how we're doing animation rigging on the project. This week, we'll be talking about a different technical subject, but one that's more connected to gameplay: engagement -- specifically, melee engagement. Melee engagement is a solution to two common problems in the Infinity Engine games: melee characters' inability to control an area and ranged characters' ability to "kite" melee characters. In the Infinity Engine games, melee characters could be quite powerful in toe-to-toe combat, but many opponents found ways to foil those characters with little difficulty. Fast characters could easily rush around a slower melee character with impunity and ranged characters could backpedal perpetually out of reach. If you're familiar with D&D 3E/3.5/4E/Pathfinder's attack of opportunity mechanics, Project Eternity's melee engagement fills a similar role by making melee combatants "sticky". Coming near a melee combatant means being drawn into Engagement with him or her, a state that can be risky to get out of. Here's how it works: when two opposed combatants come near each other and one of them a) has a melee weapon equipped b) is not moving and c) is not currently at his or her maximum limit of engagement targets (the standard is 1), the other character will be Engaged. When an opponent is Engaged by an attacker, moving any significant distance away from the attacker will provoke a Disengagement Attack. A Disengagement Attack has an inherent Accuracy bonus, does significantly more damage than a standard attack, and will call a hit reaction animation while momentarily stopping the character's movement. When it's initiated, a Disengagement Attack automatically breaks Engagement on the target, but if the target is also the attacker's current melee target, the attacker will typically be able to re-establish Engagement before the target can move farther away. In this manner, melee combatants, especially ones that have high Accuracy and damage per hit, have a solid mechanic for keeping enemies close to them -- or making the cost of escape extremely expensive. Of course, there are other ways to end Engagement. If the attacker switches to a non-melee weapon or performs a non-melee-based action, Engagement immediately ends. If the attacker moves away from their Engagement targets, is paralyzed, knocked down, or otherwise prevented from maintaining a threat, Engagement will also immediately end. If the attacker has a limited number of Engagement targets (as most do) and switches his or her attack focus to a different character, Engagement immediately ends. We believe that Engagement can give AI a clear "decision point" where they can evaluate the threat of their new status and choose the appropriate course of action. For player-controlled characters, it makes melee enemies more potent threats and presents players with tactical challenges to solve. We want Engagement to be a mechanic that players and enemies can mess with using a variety of class Abilities and general Talents, so we will be experimenting with a variety of elements to that end: Fighters' Defender mode allows them to engage two additional targets and increases the range at which they engage targets. This gives fighters much greater capability to control the area around them. The limited-use Escape ability lets rogues break Engagement without provoking a Disengagement Attack. It is generally best used when the rogue's enemy is preoccupied with another target. Barbarians can use Wild Rush to temporarily ignore the movement stop and hit reactions from Engagement and Disengagement Attacks, respectively -- though they can still suffer massive damage while powering through. The wizards' Grimoire Slam allows them to attack an enemy in melee with their magically-charged grimoires, unleashing a concussive wave of energy on contact. If it hits, the attack knocks the target back, usually far enough to break Engagement in the process. Additionally, creatures may have their own special abilities related to Engagement and Disengagement Attacks. We hope that the system itself is easy to understand but allows for increasingly complex tactical considerations over the course of the game. That's all for this week! Let us know what you think of the mechanic on our forums. Your feedback, as always, is appreciated. In our next update, in addition to our usual weekly content, we'll also be continuing our thrilling coverage of Chris Avellone's playthrough of Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.

Rob Nesler, Project Eternity's Art Director Hello everybody it's me again, Rob Nesler, Art Director on Project Eternity. I had intended on presenting our Art Style document to the world by this update, but it still needs work. So, you have to wait a bit longer for it. So that’s sad. However, with the last art update, I glossed over our Technical Animator Antonio's work 'cause it was 3 o'clock in the morning and I couldn't think about how to describe intelligently what Antonio does for us. Some of you professed extensive knowledge of rigging and skinning, as well as profound disappointment in my patronizing tone, and demanded to be better informed of this horribly complex facet of game development. So...okay! Before that we have some eye candy. A Godlike concept by Polina (click to see full size image): And noooooo...you can’t have a larger version. Google "estoc" if you want a sense of the weapon she's holding. The godlike are the children of humanoids (most often humans) who have been "blessed" (or cursed, depending on personal or social view) with the physical manifestation of a divine spark granted by the gods. Godlike manifest their divine heritage in a variety of ways: wings, horns, strange birthmarks, talons, odd eyes - but they always manifest it somehow. BTW, in case you missed it, this is a playable "race". Below are some further examples of the possible deviations/conditions they inherit: Okay back to technical animating. If you recall, in the last update, I wrote this little nugget: Some of you wanted more... so... here’s more. His primary responsibility is rigging and weighting characters for skinned forward kinematic and inverse kinematic animation. Daily, he also uses his expert technical knowledge of animation techniques and the underlying idiosyncrasies of 3D animation software to assist our animation team as a problem solver, a mentor, and a scripter to improve animator workflow and overcome deficiencies in the applications we use. So that sounded intelligent; vague and awkward, but intelligent. So, specifically ROB, what does Antonio do that will make Project Trenton/Eternity awesome? Generally, technical animators program scripts using languages like MEL or Python to extend or enhance the functionality of existing off-the-shelf apps like Maya, Max, or Softimage. These scripts are often programs running within the larger app, but sometimes they are utilities that exist outside the application to assist in conversion or batching operations. These often can be purchased, but sometimes they themselves don’t have all the features our animators want so... NO! Specifically ROB! What the hell does he do??? Okay, okay, for Project Trenton/Eternity Antonio has written, a few, and re-written a couple times the following, and it's all called DNA (Design New Actor). Firstly, there is the Export Rig, and this is not so unique to 3D character animation. This is a highly optimized skeleton that represents only the bones that the actual actor mesh is weighted to. For a humanoid character these bones would be named: Pelvis, Femur_Rt and Femur_Lt., etc. Vertices of the visible textured geometry, that the player sees, are all attached to these bones with various amounts of strength, so the character will appear to bend and flex more naturally. Sometimes these bones will have physics applied to them, like pony tails. This is less a rig and more of: simply the skeleton that the other rigs interact with, but these are the only bones that go into the game, and we call it the "export rig". Antonio builds this skeletal hierarchy to fit the expected proportions of the character, and character modelers build character meshes to match visible body parts to the locations of bones, so that -- for example -- the bendy part between the upper_arm_rt and lower_arm_rt ends up being where a humanoid creature, as designed, would expect an elbow to be. Then there is this nifty rig that was discussed a little bit, a couple updates ago — fricken’ Adam (PE's Executive Producer) always stealing my thunder! I think we call it the “stretch rig”. As he mentioned, it allows Dimitri, our dutiful Character Lead, to scale, even non-proportionally (with volume adjustments) meshes with the export rig already weighted. This way we can make a human character mesh, rig him to a human-proportioned skeleton, animate him, then take that same character and deform him to a new size and proportion, export him and use the same animations that were created for the human on this newly scaled/deformed mesh. This is a very useful asset multiplier, which allows us to leverage costly armor set and animation development across the spectrum of our races. ...And last, but most certainly not least, we rely on Antonio for creating rigs that provide controllers that allow the animators the maximum amount of flexibility when creating animations. These 'control rigs' are specialized for each character/creature type, after they've been stretched. They provide controls for jumping, crouching, twisting, grabbing, etc. They provide inverse kinematic and forward kinematic transformations, physics blending, following, squeezing, etc.-- whatever is required, actually. These controllers and extra bones are for animator manipulation only; they do not get exported. That's why when I said, "he rigs the rigs" I wasn't actually joking. These are rigs of rigs. These are the animator’s most essential bread and butter. Using these tools is how they actually create character animation. And that's it. The update is over. I know, not so fun, but this is serious stuff. We’ll show some animated examples sometime in the not-too-distant future. Rob Out!

Chris Avellone Got to tear into Arcanum today in the first of our Let’s Play videos – for all the supporters that were willing to pitch in to see the gameplay footage, . I wanted thank everyone that were willing to up their donation to make it happen, and I also wanted to thank RPG Codex for sending me a copy of Arcanum in the first place from GOG.com. Currently I’m playing it without any fan patches, I want to play the release version. Part of me wants to contrast and compare if I do a second modded version (probably doing a tech-focused run). If that ends up being problematic, I’ll add the mods and then do a rush playthrough to get back to the point I was at so you guys don’t have to sit through the second playthrough. Well, unless you want. Feel free to post suggestions for how you’d like me to play it on our forums or in YouTube's comments for the video – for right now, I’m just playing it as I would normally, which makes it a lot more relaxed. Hopefully, my in-game reactions and critiques should be enough if you’re interested on my RPG takes on any elements in the title. If you have any questions about how I felt about certain elements (aside from Virgil’s sass), feel free to drop me a tweet at @ChrisAvellone and I’ll do what I can! Many thanks to Adam Brennecke, our Executive Producer, Carter Thomas, our production intern, and Justin Bell and Austin Shannon, our audio duo, for getting me all set up and good to you, and to all of you backers for making this happen in the first place. This is a rare opportunity for me, and one that I certainly appreciate – thanks.

D&D: Dwarves and Doors Adam Brennecke We are another month into preproduction and have been making awesome progress on all fronts. This update covers dwarves and doors, two of the many accomplishments in the month of January, and gets into the finer details of development on Project Eternity. The Creation of the Dwarf One of the goals in preproduction was to figure out how we could make character modeling pipeline be as efficient as possible. The problem is fairly complex: All of the six playable races, human, elf, dwarf, aumaua, orlan, and the god-like can wear armor, boots, gloves, helmets (...well, some have trouble wearing helmets, but we will talk about that some other day...) and have other options that the player can customize like facial hair, hair style and skin color. We also have tons of armor variations and types of armor, like plate, brigandine, leather, and mail. (Josh loves his armor). Ideally, our artist would only need to model one armor piece - let's say plate body armor - and have it fit all six of our playable races even if the races are all of different proportions and body structure. At the end of the day the same model for plate armor could fit a slender four-foot-tall orlan and a burly seven-foot-tall aumaua. The goal for January was to build a system to allow us to do this very thing. During January, we've developed a new system to allow our human bipedal skeleton to be shaped and morphed into the other playable races and have armor be shaped and morphed along with the skeleton. The character modelers have fine control over the proportions of the races, and only need to model armor pieces once and not six times over. In preproduction we look at developing systems like this. It may cost us time up front, but will save us hundreds of hours down the road in production. The dwarf ended up being our first test case, and now we have dwarves as playable races working in game. Pictured at the front of this update is a high-poly dwarf head that Dimitri Berman (lead character artist) modeled in ZBrush. The high-poly head is used for making normal maps which aid in lighting the character models. A simplified mesh is created from the high-poly head is used in game. Open, Close, Lock On the other end of the pre-production spectrum, the programming team has been writing the building blocks for the area design toolbox. One of the essential things that all areas need are doors. From past experience we know that doors always present difficult problems with pathfinding and are a big pain in the arse. Getting a potentially risky, yet required, feature out of the way now seemed like a pragmatic goal, so Steve Weatherly (game programmer) and Sean Dunny (environment artist) set off on a quest to get doors working in the game. We first tackled this problem creating a list of all the features that doors need to have. It's easy with doors since we all know how doors work: Doors have a few states, like open and close. Doors can be locked, and be unlocked with a key (or skill). Doors can be used, meaning the player can click on a door and the selected character will be commanded to go and "use" the door. Doors can animate to match the open/close state. Doors block character pathing when closed, and don't block pathing when opened. We even listed out minor details such as doors can change the mouse cursor to a different state when hovered over, and doors should always open away from the character using the door. Tasks were made from this list, and the work began. Steve was able to get a working prototype of a door ready to test quickly. At this stage we could see how the door looked and felt in game, and if there are any unexpected problems that came out of the prototype. One issue that came up was door placement. We found that it was not easy to place a door in the exact space to fit a dungeon doorframe. Steve and Michael Edwards (senior technology programmer) coded a system for doorframe "snap points" that makes the door pop to the exact place that we want it to go. Designers can now place doors efficiently. Hooray! We love being able to share our progress with you all, and we hope you enjoy reading these production updates. If you have any questions about development, please post them in our Project Eternity forum. Thank you!

Orlan First Look Josh Sawyer Click for full size image As some of the keen-eyed among you noted from last week's update, there was an unfamiliar portrait in our work-in-progress tileset screenshot. We read the debates and viewed the Blade Runner-esque enhanced images that followed with interest. Good work, sleuths, the character pictured is, in fact, an orlan. This orlan is engaged in some important work in one of the Dyrwood's busiest cities. Here's the full-sized portrait for your continued speculation! Ziets on Pantheon Design George Ziets Hello all. This week, I will be writing the update, and we’ll be starting to talk a bit about world development. For a designer, this is the fun part, and it’s a surprisingly rare opportunity. On all my previous Obsidian projects, the team has worked with an established IP (intellectual property) like the Forgotten Realms or Fallout. We’ve always had a wealth of existing lore to draw upon – cities, towns, characters, history, gods, etc. Sometimes we’ve worked in an area of the world that hadn’t been seen in a CRPG before (as in NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer), which gave us the opportunity to extrapolate beyond what was already established... but otherwise, we were working with established material and trying to be true to existing lore. In contrast, Project Eternity is an entirely new setting that we’re creating from scratch. And at the start of development (around the end of the Kickstarter campaign), we didn’t have much more than what KS supporters have already seen: a map, a few high-level ideas about races, nations, and technology level, and the idea that souls play a major role in this world. So where do we go from there? Building a Pantheon One of our first steps was to think about gods. Deities can be a good starting point when developing a world. They reflect the views and beliefs of the world’s inhabitants, and they can inspire ideas for characters, organizations, and conflicts. You’ve already heard a few of our gods mentioned in passing: Magran, goddess of fire and war; Berath, god of cycles, doors, and death; Eothas, god of light and redemption. Josh invented these gods when he was first developing the world, and they play important roles in the region where the game will be set. But we’ll need a lot more gods to fill out the pantheon. Here are a few of the elements we consider for each new deity: What is the god's name, and what are his/her "aliases" (e.g., "The Twinned God" for Berath). What is the god's portfolio? That is, what aspects of life or the world do they represent (e.g., mortality, greed, summer, commerce)? What allies and foes do they have amongst the other gods? What are their symbols? How do they manifest in the mortal world? We list this information for each deity, as well as providing a detailed description. Players won’t necessarily get to see all this stuff, but it’s useful background for the art and design teams, so that the world feels like a consistent, coherent whole. One other thing to bear in mind: for the most part, our deities aren’t good or evil. They’re somewhere in between – closer to the multi-dimensional gods of the ancient world. Every deity has his or her own agenda, which isn’t bound by notions of alignment. Sometimes they can be helpful and benevolent. Other times – not so much. Woedica – "The Exiled Queen" All the preceding info is important, but I wouldn’t want to leave you without revealing an actual example... A lot of my design ideas start with a visual image. That applies to characters, locations, even narrative. I’m not sure where most of them come from, but examining them more closely will usually lead me to develop stories to explain who they are and where they came from. One of the first images that sprang to mind was an old woman – a dethroned queen – wandering along an empty road in tattered finery. Despite whatever horrors she had suffered, she maintained a certain stubborn dignity, and she carried a heavy book of law. I felt like this goddess could cover a range of portfolios, and I liked the idea that the deity who was the "rightful ruler" of the gods (in her mind, at least), had lost her throne. That may have some interesting implications for the way in which mortals view the world. So what was her story? According to her followers, she had once claimed rulership over all the other gods. But if that was true, she was cast down in the far distant past. Among the other gods, she has no real allies, believing that all the gods owe her fealty. She claims the portfolios of law, rightful rulership, memory, and vengeance. And she manifests in the world as the Strangler, a leathery-skinned old woman, always clad in tattered finery, who appears on an empty road or abandoned alleyway to murder those who break a solemn oath. Her Aedyran name is Woedica, which evokes the “Old English” feel of the Aedyran language. (Maintaining a distinct sense of national/ethnic language and culture is important to us – more about that in a later update.) There’s a lot more to tell about the Exiled Queen and the other gods (some of which aren’t even “human”). But that should give you a taste of our creative process. We’ll have plenty more to say about world-building in future updates.

Hail, elves. It's been a while since we've had a mechanics update, so I'd like to cover a variety of topics today: the basics of our "non-core" classes, our cooldown system (or lack thereof), an update on how attacks are resolved, and another update on the evolution of our armor system. I'd also like to show you a dungeon tileset test render and some sweet shakycam of some of the combat basics running in engine. Non-Core Classes We've previously discussed the design of our "core four" classes: fighter, priest, rogue, and wizard. The non-core classes are the other seven: barbarian, paladin, ranger, druid, monk, chanter, and cipher. Like the core four classes, the non-core classes all start the game with two active or modal abilities and one passive ability. When it comes to the balance of active/modal and passive options, the classes generally reflect their D&D counterparts, with spellcasters having more active use abilities and weapon-based classes being oriented toward more passive or modal abilities. Even so, it will be possible to push a spellcaster toward more passive talents and to optionally buy more active/modal abilities for traditionally low-maintenance characters. While all classes will have many more abilities as they advance, here are some basic elements for each of the seven classes. Barbarians can use Wild Sprint a limited number of times per day, allowing them to rapidly rush across the battlefield to a distant target while ignoring hazards along the way. Paladins have limited healing capabilities, but their Revive command allows them to instantly snap an unconscious ally awake with a large Stamina boost. Rangers' animal companions are so closely bonded to their masters that they share Stamina and Health pools, which can be both a blessing and a curse. Druids can Shapeshift into animal forms, gaining natural -- and some supernatural -- abilities associated with those creatures. Monks absorb a portion of incoming damage and convert it into a Wounds resource they can use to power their soul-based abilities (such as Stunning Blows) through any weapons they use, including unarmed strikes. Chanters begin the game with a number of phrases they can arrange to form songs with different effects. Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr is a phrase that causes allies' weapons to emit magical flames. Cipher powers often gain intensity as they maintain focus. Their basic Mind Jab starts as a minor irritant but can build to inflict devastating damage. Cooldowns Early on, some folks asked about cooldowns and both Tim and I agreed that we weren't opposed to using them in some form if it made sense for our mechanics. To be more explicit about it, the only way in which we are currently using anything cooldown-like is for per-encounter and per-rest abilities. Per-encounter abilities can be used a number of times in an encounter and are then disabled until combat ends. Per-rest abilities can be used a number of times after resting before you must rest to recover them. We've previously discussed grimoire-switching for wizards possibly invoking a cooldown. It's more likely that grimoire-switching will be limited through the inventory system and not by a cooldown. We also have modal abilities that can be turned on and off at will, with some abilities being exclusive to others, meaning you can only have one active at a time. Attack Resolution I've talked about this a bunch on the forums, but not in an update. All attacks in Project Eternity compare the attacker's Accuracy value to one of four defenses: Deflection (direct melee and ranged attacks), Fortitude (body system attacks like poison and disease), Reflexes (area of effect damage attacks), and Willpower (mental attacks). A number between 1 and 100 is generated to determine the attack rules. If the Accuracy and target defense are the same value, these are how the results break down: 01-05 = Miss 06-50 = Graze 51-95 = Hit 96-100 = Critical Hit A Hit is the standard damage and duration effects, a Graze is 50% minimum damage or duration, a Critical Hit is 150% maximum damage or duration, and a Miss has no effect. In a balanced Attack and defense scenario, the majority of attacks wind up being Hits or Grazes. If the Accuracy and defense values are out of balance, the windows for each result shift accordingly, while always allowing for the possibility of a Graze or a Hit at the extreme ends of the spectrum. Damage Type vs. Armor Type We've previously talked about how different weapon damage types (Slash, Crush, and Pierce) fare against Damage Threshold (DT) in the game. We implemented that system and found that while it worked well on paper and scaled well, it was unintuitive when put into the game. It was not possible for players to make informed decisions about what weapons to use against a given armor type because doing so required making relative damage vs. DT calculations for all weapon types, i.e. having a spreadsheet open for comparison at all times. In light of this, we are going to try a more explicit damage type vs. armor type model where armor, regardless of its DT, has a familiar weight classification: Light, Medium, and Heavy. Damage types are either good or bad against a given weight classification. When a damage type is "bad" against an armor type, it does half damage before DT is applied, making it very inefficient. Within the "good" types of damage, there's still an efficiency curve against DT for meticulous players to figure out, but it has less impact than avoiding "bad" damage types in the first place. Energy-based attacks (like most spells) oppose a different characteristic of the armor, its substance type (Natural, Armor, or Spirit) and like damage types, have good and bad opposition characteristics. Weapon bonus damage that is energy-based is applied to the target separately, but at a fractional DT value matching the bonus damage. E.g. if a sword has a fire effect that does +15% the sword's damage, it is opposed by 15% of the target's Damage Threshold. Tileset Trials and Tribulations Environment artist Sean Dunny has been experimenting with building tilesets for our dungeons. "Tilesets?!" you may be saying (or thinking). It may be a surprise, but many Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment levels started from a tileset or modular unit base. We use these tilesets to generate basic renders for testing layout, navigation, and combat. Once we like the basic layout, we refine it by adding additional "meta" (special) tiles, modifying the tiles individually in the layout, adding lights, and of course having an artist do a 2D touchup pass. That's all for this week. Thanks for reading! Update by Josh Sawyer

Chris Avellone is playing Arcanum to raise funds for the $4.0 million dollar stretch goal you helped us reach for Project Eternity. It's installed and he’s ready to start playing – we here at Obsidian wanted to know how you’d like it played! Let's Play Document/Blog 10 minute Let's Play Youtube video bites Streamed on Twitch Format doesn’t matter to me, just enjoy it. The poll will close on Wednesday (1/23/13) at 6:00PM Pacific Time. Thanks for you feedback!

I know this game takes place in a universe with firearms. It sounds like the firearms will be difficult to use, but effective against magic-users. As neat as it sounds, will we still have good old fashioned archery with bows and arrows, crossbows and bolts, etc? If we do, how will it be handled? I'm not trying to be rude, but archery tends to not to be very good in most RPG's. I know it was terrible on the Aurora Engine, which is what the Neverwinter Nights games were made with. I know most people tend not to like archery because it tends to not be as accessible as melee, so I imagine game designers don't put much effort into archery for the next game since most players didn't go for it for the last one, which in turn drives away more potential archers, and it's just a downward spiral. 1) I was wondering if the folks at Project Eternity were planning to try to make archery more appealing to players? 2) I was also wondering about ammunition. Most games like NWN and WOW made you have arrows on you at all times. If you run out of arrows, you cannot fire with the bow. This makes it realistic, but it can be a little stressful since arrows often miss and you can't retrieve them. You always have to buy them instead of being able to make them, so every time you fire an arrow you see is little pieces of gold or silver flying away from the target. You can overstock to decrease the chance of running out, but then they take up tons of space in your pack and it's just stressful. I know I often use melee weapons just to avoid stressing about running out of arrows, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. 3) On the other hand, Dragon Age gives us unlimited ammunition with regular arrows; just limited amo for enchanted arrows like fire or ice arrows. I know it isn't realistic to have a quiver of unlimited arrows, but it also relieves the stress of running out of arrows or space in the pack by over-stocking. I was wondering if anyone would be interested in something like that? 4) If not, maybe a retrieval method? I know most games let us find random arrows in random places, but we only tend to find a handful at a time (6 here, 14 there), which runs out very fast. If we don't have unlimited arrows like in DA, I was wondering if we could retrieve most arrows we loose. For example, we shoot at a bandit and manage to fire 6 arrows into him by the time he goes down. When we loot his corpse, we find those 6 arrows + whatever randomly generated loot he already had. 5) Also, if memory serves, in NWN2 we could craft and enchant most weapons... but not as well with bows or arrows. While we could craft or enchant incredible armor, weapons, magical items, etc. if memory serves, we were limited with what we could do with our bows, and we couldn't craft or enchant arrows at all, which just increased our dependency on merchants or random luck. So basically, my questions and/or suggestions are this: -Will archery be about as strong as melee attacks in P:E so it won't be seen as weaker? -Will loosed arrows do a similar amount of damage as the swings of swords of a similar tier? -Will we have unlimited ammunition like in DA games or limited like in NWN games? -If we have limited ammunition, could we be able to retrieve (some of) the arrows we loose? -Could we be able to craft our own arrows so we don't have to worry about buying them all? -Could we be able to craft and/or enchant bows and arrows just as well as melee weapons? -Could we be able to buy cheap, regular arrows and enchant them ourselves so we don't have to pay for expensive enchanted arrows or wait to filch them off enemy bodies? So, discussion time. Do you like archery? Are you looking forward to playing it in P:E? Are there any ways archery has been handled in past games that you like? Do you have any suggestions for archery in P:E? Do you like how archery has been handled in most games and think I need to give this a rest? What are some of your preferences in all of this? I'm just asking because I love archery and I would like to see it handled well in this game.

In today's update we ask the Lead Animator on Project Eternity, Mark Bremerkamp a few questions about being a game developer. Mark hails from Detroit, Michigan, and he has been with Obsidian for eight years. He is a man of few words - everyone give a warm hello to Mark. Q: Hello, Mr. Bremerkamp! What is your job on the Project Eternity team? A: Lead Animator Q: What are you working on this week? A: Initial attacks for the light spear (1h thrust) and the pike (2h thrust) Q: What is your typical work day like on Project Eternity? A: First drink coffee then check my e-mail and look to see if there are any meetings that I need to prepare for. Then I usually look over the work from the day before. I like to always go back with a fresh set of eyes to see what worked and then I'll make some notes/changes. After all that I get to animating the fixes or I'll move onto a new animation. Q: What are you most looking forward to on Project Eternity? What are you looking forward to animating? A: That’s an easy one...Creatures. It's always fun to animate strange and creepy critters. Q: What other games have you worked on? A: Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Alpha Protocol, Fallout New Vegas, and New Vegas DLCs. Q: What do you like to eat for lunch? A: Well I usually brown bag because I head over to the gym at lunch. When I do go to a restaurant my first choice is Yard House at the Irvine Spectrum. Q: OK. So, what is your favorite beer? A: On a special occasion I like to drink Gulden Drook. Q: What do you like to do when you aren't animating? A: When I'm not animating I love to spend time with my wife and two children. Q: Do you have a favorite animator or artist? A: Chuck Jones is an animator that I really looked up to when I was younger. Richard Williams and the "Nine Old Men" are also high on my list. Some contemporary animators that I really enjoy are Carlos Baena (Pixar) http://www.carlosbaena.com/ Victor Navone http://blog.navone.org/ and Keith Lango http://keithlango.blogspot.com/ Q: And where do you draw your inspiration from? A: Movies, music, games and other animators are all part of it. But really life in general. All the world's a stage... Q: Are you excited that the NHL is coming back? A: Yes. It about damn time. Go Red Wings! Q: What's your favorite game? A: OK well...that's a really big question because like many different games for different reasons. Old school games are really near and dear to my heart. When I say old school I'm talking about Intellivison Games like the Treasure of Tarmin. As for the newer games.... God of War, Batman, and Uncharted Series. I'm also playing a lot of games with my kids. A recent game that my 4 year old son and I both enjoy is LEGO Star Wars Battle Orders. Q: Anything else you would like to share? A: Nope. Thanks Mark! Next week Josh is planning to have another game mechanics update for you. Steve, Tim, and Josh have been working on attack mechanics over the last week and are currently planning abilities for classes. I don't know what Josh has planned to write about, but I'm sure it will be interesting! Until next time.

Hello World and Happy 2013! Looks like we all survived (hopefully) the Mayan Apocalypse. That was a close one. Woooohooo! We hope you enjoyed your holiday and wish everyone the best for 2013. The team has returned from our cozy elfhomes, and we are re-energized and excited to get back to work on Project Eternity. Without further ado, we had promised backer details in this update, so let's start off with those. Thanks to all of your extremely generous donations, our final backer numbers for our crowdfunding phase are: $3,986,929 from 73,986 Kickstarter backers and $324,650 from roughly 5,698 unique PayPal backers (not including the almost 500 slacker backers who have contributed since the crowdfunding phase ended!) For the phase, we earned about $4,311,600 before any fees from Kickstarter and the payment services. (This does include some losses from failed charges, returns, etc.) We are continuing to work on fulfillment and are slowly getting in contact with our backers about specifics. The last of the $350 tier loot bags are being sent out this week, and Chris Avellone is starting to draw Troll Avatars for the $750 tier backers. As we continue forward in pre-production, we will have more information for the higher tier design and art related rewards and how backers will be able to participate in designing your items, NPCs, adventuring parties, etc. The backer site is coming together and the plan is to have it up and running by the end of the month. Thank you for your patience and for those of you who will be designing goodies for the game, we’ll be in touch once we’re ready with your templates to fill out. For the PayPal backers out there, we should have updates coming to you via e-mail shortly as well. In the meantime, updates will come out on Tuesday evenings Pacific Time, so make sure and check eternity.obsidian.net weekly for the latest news and updates. Obsidian's Facebook and @Obsidian on Twitter are good places for the latest on Project Eternity news as well. Before we left for our homes, the office had a treat exchange at the office. Obsidian The team signed Obsidian games for the Loot Bag $350 tier backers. The plague struck and some of us are sick at home with colds. Even developers get sick: We’ll be continuing with our weekly updates from the art, design, programming, and production crew. If you have things you’d like to see or learn more about, swing on by the Project Eternity forums and let us know! Update by Adam Brennecke

You all probably remember this PE wallpaper? I sort of liked it, but it was still missing Sagani, so I figured I'd add her to it. The result wasn't half bad, so I'm going to share it with you... think of it as an early present. Happy Holidays! 1920x1200 - Click: 1920x1080 - Click:

I mentioned in the P.E. Kickstarter threads that my husband is an artist and crafter RL, at what you'd call a 'Master' level. I think I should back that boast up... This is a custom made 5-Bottle winechest with an infinity celtic knot on the top. I wanted to show off his amazing work to y'all... BTW - these are hand-made to order and Yes, you can buy one if you're interested by PMing me... Also if anyone at Obsidian wants to buy one with a company logo engraved, you're welcome to PM me too. :D

Hello, friends. The elves have been hard at work on Project Eternity, and we would like to show you our fine goods. This is a long update, but we wanted to give you more information than usual since it's the end of the year and we will be in our elfhomes for the next few weeks. First, I'd like to talk about what we've been doing with the engine and second, I'd like to talk about some of the design work we've been doing. Resolution and Scaling - We want to run the game at various resolutions and scale properly. We've been talking about our target resolutions and looking at the best way to implement scaling. If you've played any of the Infinity Engine games lately, you may have noticed that running at high resolutions can make the game look like an RTS. Though it's nice to be able to scale up and see more of the environment, at a certain point dungeons start looking like ant farms. That's what happens when you take a game designed for 640x480 and run it at more than double the resolution. It is now the year 2012, so we're looking at supporting a range of resolutions that runs from modest laptops to Macs with crazy Retina displays. To do this, we're going to render the game out at a target high resolution and a target low resolution. Currently, we're looking at a base resolution of 1280x720. A large number of laptops run at this resolution or its slightly bigger brother, 1366x768. It's not quite twice the resolution of the original games (640x480) due to the 16:9 aspect ratio, but pretty close. We believe that this base resolution will scale well up to 1920x1080, which would be roughly equivalent to going from 640x480 to 1024x768. In the old IE games, this gave you a slightly larger view of the world, but didn't get too crazy. For our higher resolution, we are likely going to render out to a ~2560x1440 screen size, as we did with our environment during the Kickstarter campaign. We will likely downsample these to run at 1920x1080. With resolutions above "mere" Retina displays, we will zoom out, which should allow the backgrounds to scale into outer space (close enough, anyway). Movement and Combat Feel - We've been working on implementing all of the basics of party selection, movement, and combat. This includes working on personal space, ally and enemy pathing, friendly "bumping" during movement, ranges of melee attacks, attack timing and delays, target selection, and response time. A lot of work goes into making these elements feel good and feel "IE-ish" (while excluding the IE-ish things we didn't like). We’ve also been building block-in weapon meshes and putting them in the game to see how they look in terms of scale. This has gone well, but we're still working on proportions. Some thin weapons, like stilettos, rapiers, and estocs, can be very difficult to discern, especially at lower resolutions. Their thicker cousins, daggers, swords, and greatswords, need to be "beefed up" a small amount to help distinguish them. Even though we need to make a few slight adjustments, our overall approach of making weapons with realistic... ish proportions is working well and feels similar to the characters and weapons found in Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. Along with implementing the visuals of the weapons, we're experimenting with weapon statistics and mechanics. Weapons are currently classified as slashing, piercing, or crushing, which is a pretty common division of types. We're not currently using damage types vs. armor types in Project Eternity, but the damage types all have properties that suggest a certain type of usage. Slashing weapons do the most damage when compared to their counterparts from other categories. E.g., if you compare a greatsword to an estoc to a maul, the greatsword does the most damage. When targets have little to no armor, slashing weapons are the ideal choice. Piercing weapons negate a fixed amount of Damage Threshold, which is the primary way in which armor reduces damage. Though they don't do as much damage as slashing or crushing weapons, their ability to ignore even moderately heavy armor means that it is superior to other weapons in those circumstances. While armor can negate a large amount of damage, there's always a small amount that gets through. Crushing weapons do much more through armor, which makes them the best choice when dealing with very heavily armored targets. So far, this works well on paper, scales well, and seems to hold up in the game, but it is very "mathy" and not necessarily intuitive because you can't always guess a target's Damage Threshold simply by looking at them (as opposed to armor types, which are usually visually apparent). We will continue to experiment with this to see how it feels in the long run. Our goals are to provide tactical challenges to the player and give them to feedback and tools to adapt and overcome when they're in a difficult spot. UI Design - Tim and I have been talking about our user interfaces recently. We want to make sure that we improve the functionality of the original designs without completely losing the feeling of those interfaces. One thing we want to avoid is making the UI too "minimalist". We don't want it to feel bloated, of course, but we also recognize that the IE games had "solid" interfaces. They looked like they were made of materials -- wood, stone, and metal -- and had substance to them. When you look at the interfaces for the IE games, they help immerse you in each setting. We'd like to do the same for Project Eternity. Functionally, we're using Icewind Dale II as our starting point. We've been looking at inventory recently. Tim and I have designed a system that uses three types of gear storage: equipment, top of pack (this name may change!), and stash. Equipment is what your characters are currently using and have ready to use. This includes weapon sets that you can swap between during combat. "Top of pack" is a finite amount of gear that you can access outside of combat for a variety of purposes: replenishing consumables, checking out a shiny new sword you picked up a while back, etc. The top of pack cannot be accessed during combat, but is present as a strategic pool of items that you can access while exploring. The stash is where all of the "other stuff" goes: things you aren't using, items you want to sell, and various doo-dads you'll be looking at later. When you find gear, you have the option of placing it wherever you'd like as long as there's room for it. You can use it immediately, put it in your top of pack, or just chuck it in the stash. Once an object is in the stash, you can access it at camps, your home, and similar locations. We've created this division of inventory space to add strategy to your gear loadout decisions instead of having a weight limit, while also allowing flexibility for backup equipment. Most importantly, it doesn't prevent you from doing what adventurers love to do most: loot everything they find that isn't bolted down. Core Four Class Design and Advancement - We want our classes to feel familiar but flexible, so we've designed our "core four" (fighter, priest, rogue, wizard) to reflect traditional D&D roles and allow you to build outside of them. In our current design, each of the classes starts with two active use or modal abilities and one passive bonus. Fighter Defender (Mode) - In the Defender mode, fighters' melee attack rates decrease while their melee defenses increase. This is a particularly useful mode to enter when a fighter is blocking a route of attack to protect other party members. Surge - This active ability allows fighters to rapidly regenerate Stamina for a short period of time. Melee Accuracy - Fighters have inherent skill with melee weapons that is reflected by a small accuracy bonus. Priest 1st Level Priest Spells - Priests gain access to all 1st level priest spells. Priests can cast a fixed number of 1st level spells before they must rest to recover their uses. They can cast any combination of different spells up to the per-rest limit. As priests gain levels, their 1st level spells will eventually become per-encounter resources. Recovery - The Recovery ability regenerates a modest amount of Stamina for allies (including the priest, if in range) in a Medium-sized area at Short range. Sacred Circle - All allies standing within a Small area around the priest gain Accuracy bonus. This bonus does not include the priest unless there are no conscious allies in range, in which case it applies to the priest. Rogue Escape - The rogue may hop a short distance away and all hostiles lose him or her as a direct target for 3 seconds. After the 3 seconds are up, enemies can target the rogue normally. Reversal - Reversal prepares the rogue for the next melee attack against him or her. When it hits, the rogue takes reduced damage and instantly rolls to the opposite side of the target and executes a powerful melee attack. This will even allow rogues to move past enemies that are fully blocking a path. Sneak Attack - This damage bonus applies whenever the rogue "flanks" an enemy or when the rogue is hidden from an enemy. Flanking means that the rogue is within a short distance of the target and on the "opposite" side of that enemy from an adjacent ally. Wizard 1st Level Wizard Spells - Wizards can access all 1st level wizard spells immediately. Unlike other wizard spell levels, the wizard does not need to find scrolls or grimoires to use any 1st level spells. Wizards can cast a fixed number of 1st level spells before they must rest to recover their uses. They can cast any combination of different spells up to the per-rest limit. As wizards gain levels, their 1st level spells will eventually become per-encounter resources. Blast - When wizards use any implement (i.e. a wand, rod, or scepter), they generate a Blast on the target. The Blast does a modest amount of damage to all enemies in a Small area around the target (excluding the target). Familiar - All wizards can summon and dismiss familiars. Familiars are mobile "totems" for the wizard, providing defensive bonuses to allies near them and inflicting defensive penalties to enemies near them. Players can also access the master's spell list through the familiar, though casting a spell through the familiar still requires the master to physically cast it; it's simply targeted from the familiar. Familiars are weak and fragile. If a familiar is killed, the wizard takes damage and is unable to summon his or her familiar until he or she rests again. As players advance their characters, they have the ability to choose class-specific abilities and more class-neutral talents (more like perks or feats) to customize their character capabilities. If you want to keep your fighters very low maintenance, there are a large number of passive fighter abilities and combat-oriented talents that you can buy. If you'd like to make a fighter that's much more "active-use" (more like a 4E fighter), you can choose to buy more modal and active abilities. Similarly, while all wizards gain additional spells, you can use talents to boost a wizard's damage with implement weapons and Blasts, making them more useful when you're not having them chain-cast a series of limited-use spells. The same also applies to skills, which are used for a variety of non-combat purposes. All classes start out with bonuses in the skills that their classes most commonly use, but players can choose to reinforce or play against that top. If you want to make a paladin who delights in picking locks, you can do that and get a lot of utility out of the skill -- though the character will never be quite as good as a rogue who specializes in it. We hope that these approaches use the strengths of a "role-ready" class system while allowing players a large amount of helpful flexibility in how they develop characters over a (hopefully) long and fruitful adventuring career. That's all for this week, and this year! We'll be back in January with more details on what we're up to and where we're going in the months to come. Thanks for reading! Update from Josh Sawyer

The economy of a game is, in my opinion, one of the least discussed and thought, but in many ways perhaps the most important element of maintaining the fludiity and enjoyment of early, mid, and late gameplay. This is for a number of reasons, but it really boils down to the fact the economy of any RPG is dependent on two factors: 1. The player and his current state in the game 2. The world and how dynamic or static it is I'm no economist, and I do not have a formal education in economics, so I base my ideas and concepts on my experience of playing many games and RPGS, MMOs, etc. with good / bad economies and my understanding of how economics should work to maintain the most important factor: An enjoyable game. First, let's make something clear. Gameplay in an RPG is exponential, so the economy must be respectively exponential to ensure a fun experience. Many games fail to realize that not only item stats need to be exponential, but the opportunities, costs, and circumstance of an economy must be equally exponential to keep the game's economy exciting and interesting for those who get involved within it. Second, the economy must remain in a good balance between fluidity and static "constants". This means that the economy should be flexible and dependent on what players (or even NPCs) do, but needs to have a baseline - think a floor and a ceiling, but with plenty of room for excitement along the way. In the long run, the game's overall economic pulse will be going up, but should keep some proportional floor and ceiling to ensure things remain enjoyable. Lastly, the player should actually have an influence on the economy. It is so depressing when the majority of games ignore the player's input. If he spends two straight days selling gold on the national exchange, the price is going to go down. If he buys every last turtle beak for his strength potions, the prices will go up. In retrospect, NPC agents should have similar influences to make the game exciting. A lot of fun "Space-esque" freelancer games (Evochron Mercenary to name one) that were popular in the late 90s and recently have gained hype focus on the idea of utilizing and manipulating an economy in your favor. I'm not asking for insane dynamics, just a fair balance between exciting economic events (floods raising prices, etc) that will make the player feel like they are in a real, more dynamic, and enjoyable universe that is actually effected by their actions more distinctly. To recap - Make an economy that is dynamic, fluid, and ever-changing within a proportional ceiling. Let the player figure out, if he really wants beets, that buying them in a desert will cost more (or sell better) than in the farmlands. Let the economy be unique to every play experience and let the player get as much or as little involved as they want. Most of all, the economy needs to grow with the player. Money should have real value, and I should be constantly deciding if an item is worth selling, keeping, or even looting, beyond the simple fact that money becomes an irrelevant element in many late-game experiences. I'd like to hear other people's input and thoughts on how the economy should operate at this fundamental level. There are more in-depth and concrete ways of approaching this, but I'm trying to stay mostly theoretical with respect to how the game should operate its currency and process of handling funds in a very complex, but rewarding way. If the player feels they are really engaged with the economy there is a lot to be gained in playability. Skyrim sucks in a way because it's got a low ceiling, and no dynamic economy. Sorry this is a bit of a brain-fart and thus poorly structured and organized, but there are a few truths within it worth reading.

Today we have a meet the developer update with Dimitri Berman, Lead Character Artist on Project Eternity. We are planning for a design update next week, and then we will be going on hiatus for two weeks due to the holiday break! Q: Hi Dimitri! What do you do on the Project Eternity team? A: Hi everyone! I make sure all characters and creatures meet our set quality bar as they enter the game, this includes creation of high poly and low poly models, textures and materials, and occasional skinning and rigging. I work closely with animators, programmers, and designers to make sure our stuff looks and behaves as best it can, and also prototype new systems if we find something particularly cool we can do that the players will enjoy seeing. Occasionally I will jump over and help out the environment guys if they need help with complex set pieces. Q: What are you currently working on today? A: Today we're doing a couple of things. Firstly, we're getting our first weapons into the game, properly equipped by characters. And oh boy, there are going to be a lot of weapons, you can thank Josh for that! And then I am working with Antonio, our character TD to prototype the character rigs for other playable races. Different races in Eternity will be different scales and this poses various challenges to making their equipment and animations. Q: What's your typical work day like on Project Eternity? A: Usually when I get in I make a cup of coffee. And then another. Then I usually Facebook until it is lunch-time. After lunch I take to Twitter like a madman, Pinterest and Instagram my fingers off, and then after more Facebook it is time to go home! In all seriousness, I usually check my work email, and get to work on our current goal. Right now we are not creating content, we are figuring out our pipeline for building every single thing in the game, so when the time comes to creating art (during Production), we can focus on the art itself and not fighting technology to make it all work. RPG's are really complex especially when it comes to characters and there are a lot of things we always keep track of, so players in the end can have a wonderful, bug-free experience. Q: What are you most looking forward to on Project Eternity? A: It's exciting that it is a brand new IP, which allows us to put creativity into characters and art that we would normally not be able to do due to IP constraints. Eternity is also going to be a really big world, with lots of stuff in it - it is going to be rewarding in creating so much art for our fans. Q: What other projects have you worked on at Obsidian? A: I have worked on Neverwinter Nights 2, its expansions, Dungeon Siege 3, and sadly a couple of cancelled projects. Aliens 4EVER. Q: Where do you like to eat for lunch? A: Southern California has cuisine from everywhere, so I like to mix it up, be it Thai, sushi, or In-n-Out. But I think I eat more Mexican food than any other. It all started with me living in New Mexico for 10 years and then moving to San Diego. Q: What do you like to do when you aren't making art? A: What? Q: Who's your favorite artist? A: I would say HR Giger and Zdzislaw Beksinski are two of my all-time faves. Q: And your favorite Ninja Turtle? A: Leonardo, hands down. He is the true ninja. Q: What about Rafael? A: I find his equipment lacking. Q: What's your favorite game? A: Oh god, I don't know where to begin. There are tons of good games, I don't know if I have a favorite. I've always been a PC guy, and I grew up on first person shooters (Dooms, Quakes, ROTT's), RTS games, and of course old fashioned RPG's. I would play Eye of the Beholder non-stop, drawing out my own map by hand because minimaps weren't invented back then. But with games like Shadow of the Colossus, Dark Souls, and Journey, there are jewels in the modern console world that I really, really enjoy. Q: And finally what's the best brand of Vodka? A: Vodka is vodka, can't go wrong. I've heard about these two being good, but I've yet to try them - пять озер or зеленая марка (Five Lakes, supposedly Siberian, and Green Mark) . Honestly lately I've been drinking Absinthe. Thanks Dimitri! If you have any questions for Dimitri post them in this thread!

Hi, I know I will probably be ignored, mostly because this is my second/third post here, but I would like to ask you some help: I am an journalist-in-learning (a university in Poland, a field of study called "Journalism and social communication") and I created a blog in which I will write in english about games and anything gamish in nature. I would ask for help in two ways: 1) Just come in time to time and give me some constructive feedback on what and how I wrote. Also, comment on my english, it's not my main language, as you can see. 2) Give me some ideas on future articles. Because after writing a sort selection of indie games, and a review of Baldur's Gate: Enchanted Edition I will be out of them... :/ Any help will be very much appreciated. The address of the blog is http://gamingbyyeti.blogspot.com/ Pretty please, I will give you a cookie for help (or some leftover steam keys the next time I will have some :< )