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Hello everyone. My name is Rob Nesler, and I am the Art Director on Project Eternity. I've been told I'm a potty-mouth, but since this is a public and safe (PG-ish) space, I will do what I can to control my bad words in this: FIRST ART UPDATE. There will be many more, hopefully with some visual candy for you guys, if I f’n feel like it, or if Fearg’ f’n makes me. Right now, my intent is to bring you up to speed on what we’ve been doing for the last several weeks. It’s called: laying the groundwork; building the foundation, or doing the nitty-gritty. Often, when starting a project, the artists and I just want to start drawing sh-ssstuff. Especially with contracted 3D games, we have a basic idea of the world we’re making, an initial list of some of the things in it, the basic parameters for making assets, and so we just get started. With Project Eternity, we are starting the development of a rich storied RPG from scratch, zilch, nada. Oh, and we rendered that really cool image for you all at update #20, and so we felt we could take a step back--Waayyy back. We are stepping back some years in visual “perspective”: to a fixed isometric view--so, NO “perspective”--of an essentially two-dimensional world. The traversable environment is pre-rendered to a high degree of realism, but we’re using a modern 3D game engine: Unity, for 3D characters, creatures, effects and animated props to be rendered in real-time and to assemble it all together, seamlessly. With this decision we’ve opened up a whole kit and caboodle of possibilities in terms of visual fidelity, occlusion, lighting, effects, and physics. At the same time, we’ve created some immediate technical problems that needed to be solved, before we could all go out and start making sh...‘er...stuff. If you’ve been reading/watching Josh’s updates, you must understand that we are creating a brand new yet substantially familiar RPG experience essentially out of thin air, complete with a fully realized fantasy world, including new rules, new races, new places, new nations, new lore, new creatures, new story, new characters, a whole new combat system, with specific armor and weapon types, new this, new that, and a whole bunch of other new stuff--really we’re creating everything from nothing but what spews forth from Josh’s blazing fingers and angelic vocal cords. “How does that work?” you ask. Well, I’ll tell you: what happens is we all sit around a fire, in a far off and desolate wilderness, as he chants: what things were, and are, and what will be and sometimes why. We listen, we ask questions, and we discuss. We in turn, propose thoughts and ideas that are considered, further discussed, sometimes dismissed, but also sometimes gathered up and swirled into the glowing embers of this primordial glowing emergent world that is floating--NO!...LEAPING!!--out of the creative fuel, breath of air, and heat of our collaborative works. As well, we’ve decided to abandon the application we would normally use to create everything, for a supposedly-more-popular-more-capable app, and nobody really knows how to use it... ...BOOM! Yep, I just wrote and you just read THAT!... ...So, with our new software: Maya (the old software was Softimage) we’ve been making test worlds--we call them gray boxes. We’ve been making test characters--we call them gray characters. We’ve been giving them gray animation, we’ve been giving them gray (actually sometimes white, we’ll make some black ones too, we’re not racist) weapons, and we’ve been inserting them into our prototype worlds to prove to ourselves and you, that we know what we’re doing, and to lay the groundwork for expanding these vacant golems into player and non-player characters, that can interact with the world and other characters in a more meaningful and varied way--you know: picking up stuff, and hitting others with it, and taking their stuff and putting it on, or selling it--oh yes, and with color! Just kidding! Haven’t you been reading what I’m writing: this game is going to be DEEEEP! So what the hell have art people been doing?? Character Team: We have a very talented lead character artist, named Dimitri, and yep, he’s Russian, but he doesn’t speak it so well anymore--his mother is not happy about it, more on that later. In addition to a tremendous amount of early help getting basic traversable geometry, with a rendered scene that occludes 3D characters when they walk behind things (in essentially a 2D world--remember!) he’s been establishing the basis for weapon, armor and equipment attachment on our player characters, with Adam. As part of that he has to write documents. Booo!!! Documents Buh-LOWW! Our other Character Artist; James is from China, but says he's from Fresno. He is essentially Dimitri's slave and willingly does whatever he’s told to do, because he doesn’t have to write documents. I sometimes give James direction, but I’m pretty certain that Dimitri tells him to ignore me immediately after I’ve left their office. Remember Dimitri is Russian, so he’s a little controlling, very direct and has high expectations. This isn’t a problem, however, because a) it’s his job and b) it just so happens that James is pretty good and making characters. He made our first character Edair, who can be seen running around with a morning star flail the size of a medicine ball--not his fault. He seems to know Maya better than Dimitri, but let’s his boss learn the hard way--keeping his ear buds in, pumping up the volume, and modeling and texturing his cares away. He’s making gray weapons now. For some reason Dimitri speaks Russian expletives perfectly. Mark is our Lead Animator, and he knows his sh-tuff, but he made the Medicine ball. Needless to say, he will not be asked to make any more weapons. No no, it just so happens, that he was making it so he could test physics on weapons. So, it’s all good--we don’t care what things look like right now, we care about making things that matter, and making them right. Lately Mark has been testing cloth physics on our characters, as well as physics on weapons, and attachments. Prior to that he was building a basic set of traversal animations and getting them into the game. Crucial. Antonio is our Technical Animator. He makes rigs, writes scripts that make rigs, and rigs the rigs. It’s all very technical. You wouldn’t understand. He’s a professional. Polina is our concept artist, and is the only one really making pretty pictures, and you've seen a lot of her work, already. Kien is currently on loan to Project New York, aka. The Stick of Truth. Don't worry, they are paying for him. We use code names for our projects, because we’re professionals. Project Eternity (also a code name) is Project Trenton. BOOM! Yep, you got it! And nope! I’m not gonna tell you any more about that.Environment Artists:Sean is making a dungeon! He’s been working with our programmers to come up with the correct way to build a massive and awesome level so that we can do all we need to do, as big as we need to do it, and in as little time as we can do it in. Again, crucial. Minecraft is his best friend. Hector, our Lead Environment Artist is on a sabbatical. Yes! we get those here, again, because we’re professionals and only sometimes. Nobody knows why or how, but we're certain it's painful. And boy! is he in for a surprise when he gets back; he loves Softimage. People on sabbatical don't get images of their work posted. Okay, so that’s it. Oh, what about me? What the hell have I been doing all this time? That’s a really good question. Aside from running around and keeping everybody busy and doing meetings and stuff, and writing this update, I've been developing a style guide which involves a bunch of meetings and discussions, and I've been drawing a few things, which I will show, if I'm allowed, in the next art update. Rob Out! Update by Rob Nesler

One Week Left for PayPal The Project Eternity PayPal donation period will be ending next week on Monday, December 3rd at 6:00PM PST. After December 3rd current backers can add shipping and handling costs at our backer fulfillment site (coming soon). At the backer site, you will be able to select your add-ons and fill out your shipping address, so make sure you keep an eye out for the email that explains how to use the backer site. As a reminder we will let you know when the emails go out in a future update. After next week we will be accepting slacker backer donations via PayPal for $29 for a Digital Download Copy of Project Eternity for Windows, Mac, or Linux. Get in now for a discount this week if you haven't already! The higher tier rewards and physical items offered on the Kickstarter will not be available past December 3rd, 6:00PM PST. Current Developments The Project Eternity team is tackling a number of different things in pre-production including story and world building, creating the look of the Aumaua and Orlans, character customization, combat, and fancy rendering R&D. Here are a few bits on current developments: The narrative team is creating the world almanac which contains all the information about the people and history of Project Eternity. Right now they are fleshing out the pantheon of gods. Do you have any crazy or wacky ideas for gods? Share your ideas in this forum thread! The artists and programmers have been working on character customization. The system allows for individual pieces of armor to show up on your characters such as boots, gloves, and chest armor. When you swap armor, the character's torso model and texture are also swapped out. There are thousands of different armor, weapon, head, and hair customization models for each race (male and female too!), and we need to make sure that the system can organize and manage all of these character assets. Lastly, the picture is from an early test environment area using temporary art assets. The red shapes represent collision geometry that will block pathfinding and line-of-sight. The light blue/greenish color represents the walkmesh geometry which determines where characters can walk. We use this area to test tech features that we are building. For example, we are using the cemetery in the lower left to test out complex party pathfinding. If you look carefully, you can see two test characters in the picture. Next week we will have an art focused update by Rob Nelser, the lead artist on Project Eternity. Time to get back to work on character customization! Adam out. Update by Adam Brennecke

As promised in Update #30, it's time to meet the people making the game. In today's update, we interview Steve Weatherly, a programmer on Project Eternity. Q:Steve, can you tell us what you do on Project Eternity? A: I'm a gameplay programmer primarily responsible for making combat happen. What that means is that I look at what Josh and Tim design for the game, and tell them it can never be done. After that, they tell me it has to get done, so then I figure out a way to make it happen. I spend most of my day writing code, either for AI (to make the enemies act like they know what they're doing), or the underlying code that makes characters fight and take damage, etc. I'm also our chief Reddit ambassador, which I sort of fell into but it has been a lot of fun. Q:What are you currently working on today? A: Today I'm actually working on building our equipment system. When I'm done, designers will be able to take a weapon that an artist models and drag it onto a character. The character will then hold it in their hand, swing it, and cause damage to their enemies. My weapon of choice is currently the flail, which Unity made surprisingly easy to create. Q: What’s your typical work day like on Project Eternity? A: When I start my day in the morning the first thing I do is check email and make sure there aren't any outstanding issues or meetings I need to think about. I frequently also log into Reddit to see if I have any fan questions. After that I fire up Unity, update my build to see everyone else's work, then run the game to make sure it still works like it did when I left the night before. If there are any major issues I'll take care of them, otherwise I'll start working on whatever the next thing is that I need to build. I usually head off to the gym at lunch because my office is a dark cell and I need sunshine (or the fluorescent lights of the gym). Then more programming after lunch. Around 3:30pm I'm about ready to fall asleep, so each day all of the programmers gather up and walk across the street for coffee. That might seem like a waste of time to some, but it gives all of the programmers a chance to talk about what they are working and bounce ideas off of each other. Also coffee. Q: What feature are you most looking forward to programming? A: I got into the game industry wanting to be an AI programmer. So, while I enjoy the challenges of engineering other systems, AI is where my heart is. I can't wait until we have a full complement of spells so I can write some cool wizard AI and give people an epic wizard battle! Q: What's been one of the largest challenges so far? A: So far the biggest challenge has really just been getting familiar with Unity and building stuff so that when the design team starts making levels they will have a solid set of tools, easy to use and ready to go. Q: What other projects have you worked on at Obsidian? A: I've been at Obsidian almost 7 years, so there's been a lot. I started out as tools programmer on the Neverwinter Nights 2 toolset, followed by my first job as an AI programmer on the cancelled Aliens RPG project, after that I helped out with Alpha Protocol's AI system doing bug fixes. Then I moved to Dungeon Siege 3 where I was responsible for building the AI systems both for the game and our Onyx engine. I served a tour of duty on South Park integrating the Onyx combat system with the turn based design of that game. They hired Tim Cain to replace me on South Park and I moved over to the (now cancelled) North Carolina project. Between North Carolina and Project Eternity I worked on various prototypes we were doing to try and pitch games. Q: Where do you like eat for lunch? A: Being a California native I really love Mexican food. We tend to go to Wahoo's Fish Tacos a lot because we can walk there from the office and it's pretty good. Q: Who's your favorite programmer? A: Well, I would say Adam Brennecke, but he's a producer now and is dead to me. So it's going to have to be Tim Cain. I definitely envy his ability to design, code, and bake well. He's a triple threat and that's also earned him a spot on my list of most job threatening co-workers. Fortunately I know his weakness... Q: What's your favorite game? A: That's easy, my favorite game of all time is Baldur's Gate. It was the first RPG I played and the first time I felt like I was in another world that I could explore. I'd never experienced that before and it's what inspired me to want to make games for a living. Q: What do you like to do when you aren't programming? A: Drink... heavily. Preferably whiskey, but I'm also happy with vodka. Q: How many push-ups can you do? A: More than the average programmer, but significantly less than Chris Avellone. Q: What's your favorite Thanksgiving dinner dish? A: Cornbread stuffing! Thanks for reading. We want to have weekly updates on Tuesdays from now on, so be sure to drop by every Tuesday for the next Project Eternity update. If you have any additional questions for Steve - post them on this thread and he will be happy to answer some of them!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qto3oORvRf4&feature=youtu.be Today's update isn't about lore as much as it is about the focus and process of developing our central plot. I'm not going to spoil any details of the story, but I do want to share what we're working on. When we develop stories at Obsidian, we often ask ourselves (and each other), "What's the conflict and why do I care about it?" and, "What is my range of roles in resolving the conflict?" "RPG" means a lot of different things to different people. For us, it's important to let the player decide who he or she is in the story. That means when you set aside class, race, magic missiles, and all of the other goodies, the player needs to be able to define his or her own motivations, attitudes toward others, and ways of resolving problems in the story. Finding the right level of player freedom and clarity of purpose can be difficult. It's tricky to develop scenarios that can convincingly motivate characters of many races and classes, many backgrounds, and many moral and ethical stances. A conflict that is too "hands-off" or impersonal (e.g. a political conflict that doesn't directly involve the player) can make it difficult for players to connect to it. A conflict that is extremely personal may rub players the wrong way if it assumes too much about their character or if it feels like their choices don't have a large enough impact on the world around them. Because this is the first story your characters will shape in this world, we want to start with something small that grows into something larger. As we have hinted before, the story opens with the player's character witnessing a supernatural event that puts him or her in a difficult situation. The full ramifications of what you become a part of are not immediately apparent, but you quickly become aware that you have... new problems. Dealing with these problems makes you realize that resolving your situation is inexorably linked to the fates of many others. In some cases, these "others" are individuals. In others, they are much larger groups of people. You will get to interact with them all in various ways over the course of the story. If we do a good job in developing these groups and characters, the decisions you make in the course of resolving your problems will be interesting and difficult to make. That's what we're aiming for, but that doesn't necessarily tell you what we've been doing. On this project, the process started with a rough idea for a story and a theme that went along with it. The story itself wasn't that important; it was just an idea to get us moving. What followed were critiques of the story's premise, the unfolding of the plot, the player's motivation and involvement, and the scope of the conflicts the player faces from the beginning through the end. For the past few weeks, we've been exchanging various small ideas, big ideas, minor tweaks, radical overhauls, and brand new storylines. Through it all, we regularly return to the questions I posed up above: "What's the conflict and why do I care about it?" and, "What is my range of roles in resolving the conflict?" We can (and do) write about all sorts of character and location ideas, subplots and interesting takes on themes, but until we answer those questions in a way we believe will be compelling to your characters and all that they may be, we still have work to do. We like to develop fun ideas we come up with and every once in a while we delight at some clever character or situation we think of, but for us, it's more important for you to feel clever, for you to feel like you can take control of a situation -- by whatever means you see fit. Until we believe we have a few gems on our hands, we'll keep the Story Gnomes digging in the mines on your behalf. Thanks for reading. Update by Josh Sawyer PS: Chris says he will start playing Arcanum mid-January.

I have been thinking about the role of magic in the economy of the Project Eternity universe. Most fantasy settings ignore this aspect of the magical arts, treating them like other goods, ignoring their supernatural nature and ability to revolutionize and even completely ruin the market. Take for instance the foundries. Fire magic would allow to reduce the demand for combustible materials to fuel the blast furnaces, increasing the profit margin significantly, but diminishing the woodcutting industry. Water magic would help breweries. Air magic the milling industry, and so on and so forth. Question is, how would impact the social and political landscape? Mages would enjoy a massive influence, but their situation would be very unstable: a strategic resource, a wizard, would be too precious to just let get away, resulting in the mage having influence, but being stuck in an essentially golden cage. At the same time, reliance on mages as resources of industry would render the industries themselves vulnerable to sabotage, through, for example, assassinating mages in rival states and crippling their industrial output as they struggle to rebuild classic supply sources. This is a good source of potential conflict and intrigue for Project Eternity. Another is the inevitable rise in unemployment and unrest that would be a result of the industry switching to magical resources. I envision a sort of anti-magical luddite movement, maybe with separatist ambitions. Racial tensions can further add to the mix, especially in less cosmopolitan countires. As elves are traditionally depicted as masters of magic, areas where practicioners of magic have firmly established themselves as cornerstones of industry, leading to reductions in employment, would be easy to turn into cesspools of anti-elven sentiment by corrupt demagogues. It's only one step away from pogroms that way (similiar to how Jews were treated in some parts of Europe throughout its history). Magical resources also create a few more opportunities for interesting conflicts: - Renegade mages attempting to crash the iron/gold/silver/jewel market with magically created analogues (or even illussions, if a smaller market is concerned and only short term changes are required), - Speculation in magical/magically created goods in areas where little to no magic is present. - Political struggle for control over the wizard(s). - Attempts to index and control use of magic through law and special agencies, - etc. Thoughts?

Hey everyone! Back again this time with another interview with Feargus on the game- Really a must listen for everyon who contributed....He talks about what they're steps are going forward and give some insight into RPG making. HERE is a link to the story with transcript: http://www.puresophi...e-rpgs-forever/ Below is a direct youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2ZeTKc7Cyc&feature=g-all-a Follow us on twitter for more! @puresophistry

Today's update is different from what we've done so far, and is to give you a look at what's going on at the studio. During the making of Project Eternity we want to give you an idea on how our games are made. Making games is not magic - game development just boils down to a lot of work from a lot of talented people. I would like to pull back the curtain, and give you the who (the talent) and the what (the work that they do) to make Project Eternity a reality. The Stuff RPGs are large and complex games that have a ton of stuff, and much more stuff compared to most games. Characters, companions, dialogues, areas, monsters, abilities, spells, items, weapons, armor, sound effects, visual effects, interface art, music, crafting recipes, animations, textures, crates and quests are the bits of stuff in Project Eternity... and the list goes on and on. At the time that we finally ship the game, we will have hundreds of thousands of bits of stuff in the game. Managing and creating this stuff is one of our major problem when creating RPGs. Our task is to make all of the stuff as efficiently as possible with a high level of quality. Right now we are knee deep in pre-production. Pre-production is the period of time at the beginning of development where everything is planned and prototyped, production schedules are made, and pipelines are constructed. I'm not talking about oil pipelines here - I'm talking about asset pipelines. An asset pipeline can be described like an oil pipeline - First the asset is made by a content creator (like an artist), next the asset is processed by a tool so that the game understands what the heck it is, and finally the asset is placed into the game world in its final location. All of the different types of assets (stuff) require a custom pipeline. Pipeline creation is one of the many problems we are tackling right now in pre-production. The Team We have many different roles (sometimes called "hats") on the Project Eternity team. Most of the team fall into three categories: content creators (makers of stuff), programmers (making the stuff work), and production (making sure the stuff gets made). Our role percentage breakdown is a bit different than what we typically have on a project. If you look at my fantastic pie-charts below, you can see that we are content focused because we have larger design team, and since our team size is small we don’t have the need for a large production staff. All of these roles are equally important and are all vital for making the game great: Art Animation: Animation adds life and movement to the game. Every moving object in the game requires an animator to be involved. Effects Art: Spell effects, sword swings, fire, smoke, and blood are animated and designed by an effects artist. Environment Art: The environment artists make the world look beautiful. They do a pretty good job at it. Character Art: Character artists create the characters, companions, and monsters. They also model and texture all of the weapons and armor. Concept Art: Concept artists paint and illustrate environments and characters that fit within the art and design vision. Their art is used by the rest of the team for reference on style, mood, color, size and proportion. They also paint the 2D portraits and touch up the 2D pre-rendered environment scenes. User Interface Art: All of the buttons that you push, the interfaces that you interact with, and all of the mouse/item/weapon/spell icons in the game are designed and crafted by the UI artist. Audio Audio Design: Audio design is responsible for any and all of the audio that comes out of your speakers. This includes the creation and production of all of the music and sound effects, and making the character voices sound great. Design Area Design: All of the cities, towns, dungeons, and wilderness areas that you can explore are designed by area designers. They take the environments and characters made by the artists to construct a rich and believable world. They also fill the game with quests and combat encounters. Narrative Design: RPGs contain thousands of lines of branching dialogue and huge non-linear storylines. The world, story, companions, factions, lore, and themes are created by the narrative designers. System Design: Rules and systems specialists. They like numbers and spreadsheets. Combat, abilities, spells, non-combat skills, and items are designed by the systems designers. Production Production: The producers organize the team. They make sure everything is running like a well-oiled machine. Producers have the responsibility for making sure the game is delivered on time, on budget, and is awesome when it's shipped. Programming Engine Programming: The engine programmers deal with system, rendering, and physics code. Unity handles a lot of our engine-level programming for us, so we can focus our programming time and energy on gameplay. Game Programming: The game programmers implement the game design including the rules, combat, and abilities. They also code up gameplay systems like dialogues, quests, stores, and create artificial intelligence for monsters. Tools Programming: Pipelines and tools used by the team are made by the these programmers. Most of their code lives "outside" of the game code. Quality Assurance Quality Assurance Testing: The QA tester reports in-game problems to the rest of the team. They make sure that all the stuff is working together and functioning properly. We want to go into more detail on what each person does on the team in future updates. A two sentence description trivializes the responsibilities for each team member, so in the future we will dig deeper and take a closer look into the disciplines. Next week Josh has an update with lore and other fun worldly things. Update by Adam Brennecke

If you're me (which you're not, but you might be like me), one of the worst things in certain RPGs is how there are designated player houses/bases (think Oblivion or Skyrim, I guess). Now for something like a stronghold that is presumably somewhat customizable it makes sense that there is only one choice. But should there be a variety of designated houses to choose from, or should players be able to buy any residence in the game (within reason) for their character? And should we be able to invest in any shops, businesses, guilds, etc.? Should there be something more to do with money than buy the most ridiculous magic bling equipment?

Let's be serious; all the good RPG series (The Old Republic, Elder Scrolls, etc.) these days are being made into fancy, newfangled MMO's. It practically goes without saying that the MMORPG model is proven to offer the benefit of a greater social gaming experience with absolutely no costs with regard to narrative depth, mechanics, graphics, or any other measure of quality, so what's there to lose? Should Project Eternity be next?

Hello all, I was motivated to post this because of unfair lack of left handed adventures and NPCs in RPGs. As a member of the left handed community, I find it offensive and rude on the parts of game developers that leave out the option to be left handed. It limits the realism and variety in combat and takes out any chance we will ever have at handedness quest lines. Considering all of the other requests that I have seen on this forum, you should find my request no less absurd. If a man can make a request for obesity, there is no reason that the fat man can't also be left handed. Considering the fact that you would most likely not even have the choice to be fat in a medieval society, what with severely limited food supplies and all, I think it is all the more reasonable to include left handedness. Now I admit, this would be no small task for the game developers. I'm asking that a second set of animations get made for everything so that the 7-10% of left handed people can feel good about themselves and not ashamed of their disability. It takes a lot of bravery on my part to even bring this to your attention. I'm sure people will congratulate me heartily for it. If I had a dollar for every time people brought this lack of detail to my attention, I would still be a poor and dollarless man, but I think it should still receive some consideration. Personally, I can't wait to finally have handedness included in combat mechanics. Your thoughts? p.s. I'm as serious as an opera singing ostrich

Armor Design Design update from Josh Sawyer Let's talk about armor design. Taken on its own, armor design isn't of eminent importance. It's just one of many subsystems that make up Project Eternity. However, looking at it in detail can expose problems that can be found across our various subsystems: by making something work well in a new system and setting, we can often put it at odds with the nostalgia of the old games (and "realism"). Back in the days of 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, we had all sorts of quasi- or non-historical armor types like banded mail, ring mail, and studded leather. You wore the heaviest armor you could because it typically had the best Armor Class. If plate mail was available, there weren't many reasons to wear splint mail or (horror of horrors) chain.The default rules limited the viability of certain character concepts because most characters of a given class were funneled down a specific equipment path. 3E sort of solved this problem by implementing Maximum Dexterity Bonus, which meant that characters with high Dexterity scores would generally equip whatever armor gave them the maximum bonus to Armor Class without capping the Armor Class bonus they received from Dexterity. There were a few problems with this. First, while it did help make previously "bad" character concepts (e.g., the lightly armored fighter) more viable, generally there were one or two choices per character build. If you had a high dexterity, you were not going to wear heavy armor. If you had a low Dexterity, you might wear light armor, but only for the higher movement rate it allowed. Second, there was an equipment dead zone in medium armor -- the Maximum Dexterity Bonus caps and movement penalties of heavy armor without the nice Armor Class bonus. Also, if you were a ranger or barbarian, technically you could wear medium armor, but in practice you would never wear it because it disabled several class abilities. The third issue is a common one with armor design: the ability to wear heavy armor has value (classes receive it as a benefit and it costs feats to purchase in 3E), but it's presented as something with trade-offs. This in itself is not bad, but as previously mentioned, typically the decision of what type of armor to wear can more-or-less be made at the end of character creation. If your character wears a chain shirt at 1st level, there's a good chance he or she will be wearing a +5 version toward the end of the campaign. This is sort of nice because it means that you can have a consistently viable character concept, but there's not a ton of decision making about armor types after your adventuring career starts. Finally, there's a way of naming and progressing things in A/D&D. Once you get your "base" armors introduced (for our purposes, we will include plate armor and its 2nd Edition kin, field plate and full plate), upgrades are expressed as +1 versions. It becomes pretty easy to understand once the hierarchical relationship and spread of armor types are established. What does this mean for Project Eternity? It means designing a new armor system that rectifies deficiencies of older systems while maintaining a familiar feel is tricky. Additionally, the more dissimilar the armor relationships are to those found in A/D&D, the more they will be re-evaluated for verisimilitude (i.e. "realism"). We would like our armor system to accomplish the following goals: Make wearing different types of armor a real choice for the player based on both character build and circumstance. E.g. a swashbuckling lightly-armored fighter will tend to wear one of a variety of light armor types (maybe a gambeson or leather cuirass), but in a circumstance where protection is of utmost importance, the player may still choose to wear heavy armor with a loss in build optimization. Disassociate armor value from class type in favor of different build types. E.g. a wizard can wear heavy armor and be a different type of wizard instead of just "a wizard who is bad". Allow a character to maintain a character concept throughout the game without suffering extreme mechanical penalties. E.g. a character who starts the game in some form of light armor can complete the game in some form of light armor with appropriate gameplay trade-offs compared to wearing heavy armor. Introduce new or upgraded armor types throughout the game instead of using ++ versions (which in itself would pose problems unless we directly duplicated A/D&D's d20-based attack mechanics). Even with these three goals, there are a number of problems to solve. One of the biggest questions is how to break up and "advance" armor by type. In AD&D, you had something that looked like this: Padded Leather Studded Leather Hide Scale Chain Splint Plate (Tier 2) Field Plate (Tier 3) Full Plate (Tier 4) Players typically couldn't afford plate, field plate, or full plate at character creation, but everything else was often within reach. It's not uncommon to see a hierarchy of armor types like this in many fantasy games, despite some of the questionable elements (did studded leather exist? Is raw hide armor actually better than cuirbolli leather?). You can get plate/field plate/full plate later in the game, but otherwise, you're getting +x versions of the base types at higher "tiers" of character advancement. We could (as an example) structure some of Project Eternity's armor advancement like this. Tier 1 Doublet Hide Armor Scale Vest Tier 2 Gambeson (from Doublet) Leather Cuirass (from Hide Armor) Scale Armor (from Scale Vest) Mail Shirt Tier 3 Armored Jack (from Gambeson) Leather Armor (from Leather Cuirass) Lamellar Armor (from Scale Armor) Mail Armor (from Mail Shirt) Half-Plate This could probably accomplish our stated goals (we can assign them whatever stats we'd like, after all), but it does raise some questions for us: Should something like hide armor be supplanted/made obsolete by leather as an "improved version" or does that effectively kill the visual concept of the rough-hewn rawhide-wearing ranger or barbarian? If armor types like hide (or scale, or mail) should remain viable on their own, how should that "upgrade" be expressed to the player? Functional descriptors like "fine scale", "superior hide", etc.? Cultural or material descriptors like "Vailian doublet", "iron feather scale"? Olde tyme numerical descriptors like "scale armor +1", "half-plate +2"? Is it okay for an upgrade from a visual type of armor to maintain its relative position to other armor types even if "realistically" that upgraded armor is now probably superior in protection to other armor types? E.g. an armored jack or brigandine armor is probably more protective than even nice suit of leather armor... but mechanically, we're presenting it as an upgrade of a padded (doublet) armor type. These are the sort of things we have been discussing and I have been thinking about. And while it is just one subsystem in Project Eternity, we will likely face many similar considerations as we approach the design of weapons, classes, spells, and other aspects of gameplay. I'm sure a lot of you have opinions on what you'd like to see, so please let us know on our forums! Our next design update will be in two weeks and will focus on lore and story elements. Thanks for reading! Fulfillment System Fulfillment update from Darren Monahan We’ve received a number of questions via our Support e-mail address and social networks about fulfillment, and I wanted to talk a little bit about what we’re currently working on! First off, I wanted to announce that we’re developing a fulfillment site, which we’re hoping to have online in the next month or two (I was hoping to have it up sooner, but my first baby is coming into the world in the next few days, eeep!). Everyone who backed the project on Kickstarter and/or PayPal will be e-mailed details that will give you credit on that site. After logging in, you will be able to: Confirm the tier of choice that you wanted. A few of you donated on Kickstarter, and then topped up via PayPal, so you’ll be able to select the exact tier you wanted. Confirm any add-ons you wanted that weren’t easy to specify on Kickstarter or via PayPal. Upgrade your pledge to another tier, or add on for, ummm, add-ons. Update your e-mail address at any time. Update your shipping address at any time. (Shipping address only needed for physical goods – we don’t need that info for digital orders.) Indicate any specific details associated with your tier (T-shirt sizes, name in the credits, etc.) If you live outside of the USA, it will also verify that you’ve added enough shipping. We’ll keep you guys updated in future, ummm, updates, on how progress is coming along! Here’s an update to our FAQ on some of the questions we’ve been receiving recently: Q: I donated on PayPal and besides a receipt from PayPal I haven’t gotten confirmation from Obsidian directly. A: Not a problem. When the fulfillment site goes live, we’ll be merging the Kickstarter and PayPal data together into our own system, and from there we’ll be sending out project updates. For now, as long as you received a PayPal receipt, we’ll have you on file. Q: I need to change my e-mail address before you send out details on the Fulfillment site. What do I do? A: Send us an e-mail at support@obsidian.net with your old and new addresses (please e-mail from your old address if you can) and we’ll update our records before the fulfillment site e-mails go out. Q: How do I add shipping? I missed being able to during the Kickstarter phase! A: You can handle that in one of several ways: You can hang tight for now and wait until our fulfillment system is online, or, If you’d prefer to get it out of the way, you can visit our Shipping page and add it now (Amazon Payments and PayPal supported.) Q: When will I get my backer badge on the forums? A: That’ll come online with the fulfillment system. If you have any other questions, feel free to visit our forums or drop us a line at support@obsidian.net! For more news about Project Eternity and Obsidian, follow us on: Twitter, Facebook, and our YouTube channel

What We're Up To http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlfO8y-Ax3s Thanks to you, we're funded. Now the work begins. At this stage of the project, we are still in pre-production, so at Wednesday morning's team meeting we started talking about the passion-stirring topic of logistics. Before we start scripting quests and writing dialogues, we need to understand the full scope of what we're setting out to do. In some ways, the basics stay the same for us as they did a decade ago. But we have new problems to solve and we need to have them all worked out before we enter production. The key elements we have been focusing on are: The size and structure of the world - This game will be... large. And it will have two big cities, exploration areas, and a 15-level mega-dungeon. Ensuring that the world is planned properly requires examination of what has worked for us in the past and what hasn't. The original Baldur's Gate had a number of wilderness areas, but low density of content in many of those areas. Baldur's Gate II had much greater content density, but fewer wilderness/pure exploration areas. We'd like to make sure we have pure exploration areas while still maintaining good content density. Dynamic environment integration - Animated objects, interactive objects, ambient visual effects, water, dynamic lights and shadows -- all of these elements can be featured even within a "2D" world. Our goal is to strike a good balance between visual fidelity, performance (including memory on disk), and the amount of time environment artists have to spend setting up their areas. We prefer dynamic solutions that are relatively easy to author, as we want our environment artists to maximize their efficiency. Lore and story - What we've developed so far has been the result of a small number of impromptu discussions and high-level efforts. Last week, we (including George -- thanks!) had our first meeting to increase development of the setting and story. We discussed major themes we'd like to explore, the order in which we'd each like to develop aspects of the lore and characters, and what elements we each were having trouble wrapping our heads around. Our immediate focus is on the central conflict of the story and the various factions that have a stake in it. As the song goes, we've only just begun, but the team is excited and determined to make a game that lives up to your, and our, expectations. You've put a huge amount of trust in us, and we want to repay you with the best RPG we can. Next week, we'll be talking about system design and how we're approaching mechanics like class design, advancement, and the role of equipment. We're also working on fulfillment of some of the Kickstarter pledges and we'll have more info on that in the next few weeks. Finally, if you missed our D&D session from last week, we have it up on the for your enjoyment! Update by Josh Sawyer

http://www.sorcerers...ead.php?t=58248 Lovely little nuggest of information here about a character (possibly a companion?). Pretty cool!

As I read the thread about armor and weapon design, I wondered: "What will the women in PE be like?" I don't know if it has been discussed already. But I am fairly sick of the standartised perfectly proportionated women (ppw) in most games. It is simply unrealistic, especially if it involves breast-formed armor, total lack of armor or a fantasy-version of stilettos. That does not mean that I don't want good-looking women, as there are well-proportioned men in any fantasy universe as well. I only ask two things: 1.) An average distribution of the population in regards to beauty and body-size and yes, that should go for companions as well, especially the romanceable ones. Reducing every warrior women to her looks first and her skills second is kinda primitive - and i dont want to go into the average muscle mass (or the unrealistic lack thereof) of a standard ppw. 2.) A new definition of beauty in games, less fixated on the body proportions and more focused on character, all in all. Top models may be good-looking, but not the kind of women you want to spend your life with. Stop regarding minor fallacies in looks far more important than intelligence, character and the likes, dear co-gamers! The weather after this post could turn definitively ragey, with a chance of ****storm, so let me clarify: Yes, as a male I am attracted to ppw. But as an intelligent human I like women with "a special something", or character, or whatever you call it far more. And I certainly do not want all women in PE to be "ugly, but with character" or "fat, but with personality" or whatever crossed your mind while reading this. I just wished that the gaming community, developers and players aside, would expand their definition of beauty. And maybe in this game, which does not need to show screenshots of ppw anymore to find interest, it will finally be possible.

Well hello everyone! It’s the day after our Kickstarter here at Obsidian, and while a few of us are a little rough around the edges right now, we’re already busy working on Project Eternity! In this update, we’ll go through a number of frequently asked questions we’ve received in the last day or so. If you have any problems with anything, please always feel free to head over to our forums, or reach us on Facebook, Twitter, or via support@obsidian.net. So… onward! Kickstarter and PayPal Stats So as of about 1:30 PM PDT, here’s where we stand funding-wise: Kickstarter Backers: 73,986 Pledged: $3,986,929 PayPal Backers: 3,681 Pledged: $176,279 Totals Backers: 77,667 Pledged: $4,163,208 Stretch Goals So that means we hit the 4M stretch goal, right? Yes! How do PayPal backers affect the Mega Dungeon size? It counts toward the Mega Dungeon! We hit fifteen (15!!!!) levels! Will Facebook Likes still count to a larger dungeon? Yes, for now they do! Come like us quickly and maybe we can hit the 40,000 likes for one last dungeon level. But it’s for a limited time, so… like us! Please note: If you clicked Like on our Eternity home page, that doesn’t qualify – we need likes on Obsidian’s Facebook page! Kickstarter / Amazon Payments / PayPal OK, so now what happens? If you backed us on Kickstarter, Amazon will begin processing payments and will contact you. This process takes place over a period of 14 days. If you encounter any problems with this process, never fear about losing your pledge. We’ll work with you to work out any payment issues so you don’t lose out as long as you were a part of the crowdfunding phase. Once payments are taken care of, we’ll start collecting information from you guys, and we’ll do that a few times. More info on that below. If you backed us on PayPal, and everything went through OK, sit back and relax and we’ll be in touch soon! Speaking of PayPal, I noticed PayPal tiers are still up. Will I get the same rewards for the tiers if I donate now? Yes! For as long as we have the listed options available on http://eternity.obsidian.net, you’ll get the same rewards. This is for a very limited time though, so don’t delay if you’re going to get in on Project Eternity! Oh no, I don’t think I added shipping! How do I add international shipping? There’s two ways to handle international shipping. You can: Go to http://eternity.obsidian.net: Along the right side, choose the Donate button under the “Donate Your Own Amount” section. It’s at the bottom of the Tiers just before Addons. On PayPal in the Donation Amount field, enter the desired amount and click Update Total. Log in to PayPal using your email and password. On the “please review your donation” screen, click the Add special instructions for Obsidian link. Describe what your donation is for (international shipping, top up, etc.) Change any other relevant details and then click the Donate USD Now button. [*]Hang tight for now. Once we get all of the information from PayPal and Kickstarter and then get it organized, we’ll be reviewing each and every order to make sure we know how you want your funds allocated. We’ll handle that directly with you via e-mail (please make sure the e-mail you used on Kickstarter or PayPal is accessible to you! If you have any concerns about that, e-mail us at support@obsidian.net) I would actually like to upgrade to another tier – can/how do I do that? For a very limited time, you can use the process described above in “How do I add international shipping” and specify to us what you would like to do. You can do this even if you first contributed to Kickstarter. Just include the difference. (Disclaimer: This does not apply to tiers that were sold out.) Video Streams Where can I see Adam’s Icewind Dale II playthough? Unfortunately it’s not available. Where can I see the D&D game? Here it is! Where can I see the last few hours of the party stream? Swing by Twitch TV at http://www.twitch.tv...ian/b/335806140 When is Chris Avellone going to stream playing Arcanum? We’ll be in touch soon with details on that. It might be a Holiday Special stream. Rest assured he’s going to do it - you guys hit the $4M marker! What’s the next step? OK so now what? First, come sign up on our Forums if you haven’t already. That’s going to be the best place to connect with us throughout the development of the game. We’ll also be up on Facebook and Twitter too. Backer badges will start rolling out in the next few weeks. If you have any problems signing up on our forums (our anti-spam can be rather aggressive sometimes, we apologize!), e-mail us over at support@obsidian.net and we’ll get you all set up. A survey will be coming in the next few weeks to ask you how you want to allocate funds. For those of you who are getting physical goods, before we ship anything, we will notify you and reconfirm at that time to make sure we have the latest physical address on file. If you have any other questions, feel free to swing by the forums or e-mail us! Fulfillment Some of you have been wondering how we will be offering keys for the game. You will be able to select one of the choices below for each key. Steam: Steam currently supports Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. We will be offering you a SteamPlay key. This means with one key, you can play the game on any supported platform of your choice! The Steam version will also offer in-game achievements and we are going to look at adding Steam cloud support for an even better multi-platform experience. Please note that Steam uses DRM (digital rights management) however. DRM comes with this platform and is not something we can disable. If you want a DRM-free option, please see GOG.com below. GOG.com: We will be offering DRM-free options based on the platforms that GOG supports at the time of us shipping the game. Currently, this means you only have a Windows DRM-free option, but apparently some big news for Mac users is coming… tonight, and hopefully good news for Linux users too down the road. You may have noticed that there isn’t a DRM-free Linux version listed; that’s true today, but by the time we launch, we’ll have one available. Thanks again everyone, and we’ll be in touch! Update from Darren Monahan

The past month has been absolutely incredible. You have blown away our wildest expectations and we are so excited about starting the journey of creating this game for you. The Kickstarter site will be closing down here in the next few hours – 6 PM PDT to be exact. I would like to remind you that you can watch us at the studio for the final countdown beginning at 12 PM (Noon!) PDT. We will be streaming live on UStream and Twitch.tv. Final Fun and Silly Reward Tier - Obsidian Loot Bag Our final fun reward for you is what we are calling the Obsidian Loot Bag at a $350 tier with a limit of 30. The Loot Bag contains an AMD Processor donated by our incredible friends over at AMD (you rock Steve Bell!), a signed Obsidian game (not Project Eternity), and a random assortment of Obsidian loot such as pens, coasters, t-shirts, game patches, doodles, etc. The AMD Processor is an A10, does not have a heat sink attached, and will be shipped OEM style. The Loot Bag includes everything in the $250 tier level too. Since we are shipping computer parts, we can't ship outside the USA with this one. Here are links to the final complete Add-On List and Reward List: Add-On List Reward List Big Big City #2, What Now? We dreamed the impossible dream, and hit our stretch goal of the $3.5m mark with Big Big City #2. Because we have another big city in the game, and by popular demand we are adding two additional slots at the $5000 tier for two more taverns. As a recap of our stretch goals, here is what you have added to make Project Eternity bigger and better: 11 classes 6 races 8 companions A huge mega dungeon of at least 10 levels (and possibly 11 or 12 by the time this is done!) Player house A stronghold Two big cities And much more. This will definitely keep us busy over the next 18 months working to bring you Project Eternity. Early this morning, we took a poll on what you would like to see via Twitter, Facebook, and on our Kickstarter Comments page for remaining stretch goals. Our first reaction is that we want to make the game better instead of just bigger; however we are currently discussing it at the studio right now. Thank you again from everyone at Obsidian Entertainment. We will see you on the live stream for the final hours of this crazy adventure. The art team put this together to show you a behind the scenes look on how the amazing screenshot was constructed. Click here for a larger version. Update By Adam Brennecke

We’ve hit the $3M mark now on Project Eternity and it’s on to add another Big, Big City to the game! We have less than 50 hours to go before the Kickstarter ends! Before we announce some new stuff, some quick housekeeping is in order. If you are looking to add anything on to your pledge, check out our Project Eternity Add-On List page. This includes instructions on how to add on other options, as well as what our current offerings are. Also to reduce some confusion in finding what each tier contains (we’re no longer able to update some of our posts on the Kickstarter site), we have a comprehensive list of the Project Eternity Reward Tiers up as well over on our Tumblr site. Two last items, we’re hosting an AMA (Ask Me Anything) tomorrow on reddit. A number of Project Eternity staffers will be on hand at 10 AM PDT / 1 PM ET to answer your questions about the game! Then at 5 PM PDT / 8 ET, watch us on Ustream play some D&D in the studio! Project Eternity the Documentary The big news for the day is that we are adding a documentary covering the development of Project Eternity. After getting a lot of requests to do a documentary, like the Double Fine Adventure, we started looking into it a couple of weeks ago. We talked about it more last week and decided that we don’t have a visual history of one of our games, even after almost ten years as a company. We felt it was something we should just do and do it without it being a new stretch goal. So, we are happy to announce that we are going to include a stream, download, or physical copy of the documentary in all of our Kickstarter reward tiers. At the $20/$25 level you will be able to stream it, at the $35 level you will be able to download it, and at the $140 level (and physical tiers above) we will include a DVD / Blu-ray. We are not going to use the Kickstarter funding to do this however, since this is something we decided to do anyway. To us, it is a thank you to all of you for supporting us over the last month in making Project Eternity a reality and a historical record for everyone at Obsidian as well. Project Eternity Playing Cards Add-On As a fun new add-on for Sunday, we are now offering Project Eternity playing cards for $10. Designed by Scott Everts, one of our longtime technical artists who worked on Black Isle’s Infinity Engine games, and does a lot of work on board games, he designed this beautiful set which will feature characters and maybe critters (Kerfluffleupogus, Devourer of the Faithful anyone?) from Project Eternity. Check out the Project Eternity Add-On List on how to add-on items to your pledge. (Please note: Playing Cards only available to tiers including physical items. For digital tier folks, we’ll hopefully sell these as a future store offering.) New Wallpaper Last, but not least, we’ve received a lot of great feedback on the concept art for some of our first key characters. So here is a new wallpaper with each of the characters that we have released so far. Might we be releasing more art soon? Stay tuned… 1920x1080 | 1920x1200 Tomorrow, we will be updating everyone with a schedule for Tuesday and another fun add-on. Oh and we have some plans for a crazy new reward tier for Tuesday morning. Thanks everyone! Update by Feargus Urquhart Like us on Facebook! Next goal is 40,000 likes for another Mega Dungeon level. We're also on Twitter: @Obsidian. We announce ongoing PayPal figures there too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbyFqrEYSFw Tim's Q&A This week's Q&A is a little different. I spent some time reading the questions that people were asking in various Project Eternity forums, including our Kickstarter comments, our Project Eternity Facebook page, the RPG Codex forums, the reddit Project Eternity group, and our own Obsidian forums. I have picked five questions to answer, one from each of these forums, and I have answered them below. For each question, I have included the forum poster who asked it, along with his original question text. Let's start with Facebook. Facebook Ockert van der Westhuysen asks... Will back for psionics. Any hope? I think you might find our cipher class to your liking, since their method of using "magic" is quite different from wizards and clerics and is instead tied to mental abilities. They feel a lot more like psionic abilities from earlier D&D editions. You can read more about the cipher class in Josh's update #15, which you can read here: http://www.kickstart...ty/posts/321413 RPGCodex Wise Emperor asks Is there any confirmation that Eric Fenstermaker will be involved in PE? Obviously it would be cool if yes. Eric is currently working on another project at Obsidian, but there is a good chance he will move over to Project Eternity when that first project is completed. Until the Kickstarter campaign is over and we know the full scope of the game, the assignment of particular people to it will not be completed. Obsidian forums rjshae asks... Back in the BG series, experience growth was relatively slow and it felt like an accomplishment to reach a new level. Since then, D&D v3.5 rules came out and level up began to feel almost like a cheesy accomplishment that didn't require much effort. That has become the trend in modern games: leveling up after every few battles. I have to wonder how this will be handled in PE? It sounds like Obsidian wants to return to the style of the BG series, which would seems to entail a return to slower level progress. If they do allow a more rapid level up, I hope they tone down the power growth rate so that lower level monsters remain a challenge for longer periods. We are working hard to make Project Eternity revive the spirit of the older IE games, and this includes making leveling up an important accomplishment, one that makes your character feel substantially more powerful afterward. I agree that frequent level-ups make the event feel less special, so we plan to space out these events over the course of our storyline. The first few level-ups will occur relatively early in the game, but the pacing of the subsequent level-ups will be much slower. For people who enjoy level-ups, they are free to use our Adventurer's Hall to swap out new companions frequently, so they are always leveling up new characters to use in later parts of the story. For people who aren't sure what character classes they will want to have available in the end game, it's always nice to have the choice of having all of them. Kickstarter Stephen P asks... After seeing this screenshot my anticipation for the game has spiked considerably, but it left me with a few questions. I understand the 2d portrait background concept, but will there be any overlapping animation with the river to make it appear flowing, even if the actual image doesn't move? The same question for the flowers? trees? will wind be simulated somehow? We will certainly be adding animations to our backgrounds. The trees should sway, there will be birds or butterflies or insect clouds, depending on where you are, and the water in rivers and waterfalls will flow. We are using a rendering technique similar to the one we used in Temple of Elemental Evil, where the background is a pre-rendered 2D image and the characters and some props are 3D objects. This gives us the advantage of exquisitely detailed environments without the polygon cost, along with lots of animation without the memory cost that 2D sprites would entail. Reddit Mirokunite asks... Will there be low intelligence/charisma dialog? Yes, we will have these dialogs. They are a great deal of work, since it means writing two versions of every dialog in the game, but I am sure that our wonderful writers are up to it. I really want these dialogs too! I find it fun to replay the game with a low intelligence character, just to see how the NPC's react to my slow-witted attempts to help them. And there we have it! Five questions answered from five sites. Again, thanks for your support of Obsidian and Project Eternity. There are just a few days left before the Kickstarter campaign is over and we enter full production of this game, and we are all very excited about the prospect of working on a classic CRPG again! RPG Eats! Do you like to eat? Do you like RPGs? I am going to give out my favorite RPG themed recipes to all of our backers! The Project Eternity Cooking with Tim Recipe Book will contain 10 delicious recipes in PDF format. Enjoy the good eats while you play Project Eternity when it's released! Troll Portraits by Chris Avellone Chris Avellone has graciously volunteered to draw a custom troll portrait for you to help raise additional funding towards our last stretch goal target of $3.5m for Big City #2. Chris will number and sign the portrait, write a humorous message to you, and a print will be physically and digitally sent to you. This is a limited run of 30 at a $750 tier (includes all the goods in the $500 tier), so get in quickly. If you are above the $750 tier and would like a custom troll by Chris Avellone please contact Obsidian and we will work with you. Adam is currently live streaming all day long today at UStream. Join in on the fun and watch him play Icewind Dale II. We also hit 60,000 backers! Again, one more level to the dungeon is added! Update by Tim Cain

Everyone here at Obsidian is thrilled that the feedback to the first look at Project Eternity was so overwhelmingly positive. Thank you for all the encouragement - It really means a lot to our artists and the rest of the team. The outpouring of support and donations over the last day has been amazing. Thank you! Over the next five days we have a lot of fun things planned to wrap up the Kickstarter campaign. First, crowdfunding and Kickstarter has allowed us to open up our doors to you, literally. Today you can spend a few hours with me at the Obsidian Office, and you will get an inside look into a development studio. Check out what an atypical day is for me at the office (running the Kickstarter is pretty atypical for a game developer). I promise to wear pants! We plan on doing more of these live events at the office during production. Tomorrow I plan on playing Icewind Dale II by Interplay and Black Isle Studios. Icewind Dale II was the last Infinity Engine game to be released a decade ago in 2002. Before production starts on Project Eternity, I want to revisit some of the magic that Project Eternity aims to bring back. Join the stream and have some fun! Special Obsidian guest developers will join in on the fun, and you can heckle me while I try to make my way out of Targos and through the Dale to Kuldahar. How long will I play? 8 Hours? 12 Hours? 20 Hours? Longer? Watch and find out. Be sure to check out tomorrow's update with Tim Cain. He is going to answer more of your questions in a special video update. Here's the rest of the scheduled events for the next 5 days: Friday, October 12 11:00am PDT - Inside look at a not so typical day with Adam Brennecke - UStream. 3:00pm PDT - PC Gamer Live Chat with the Project Eternity Team - PC Gamer. Saturday, October 13 10:00am PDT - Adam plays Icewind Dale II all day - UStream. Monday, October 15 10:00am PDT - Reddit AMA with the Project Eternity Team - Reddit. 5:00pm PDT - Game night at Obsidian. Watch us play D&D at the studio! - UStream. Tuesday, October 16 12:00pm PDT - The final countdown starts at the Obsidian Office - UStream. 6:00pm PDT - The Project Eternity Kickstarter ends! Updates to the schedule will be sent via Twitter, Facebook, and posted to our forums. New Novella Audio Book Reward and Add-on We have a new digital add-on for everyone. For an add-on of $20 you will receive the digital Audio Book of the Project Eternity Novella by Chris Avellone narrated by a professional voice actor. If you already pledged at the $165 tier and above you will receive it for free! Two Stretch Goals Hit and The Endless Paths is Larger We've hit the $2.7M stretch goal, which means Paladins and Chanters are added to the game, and I'm happy to say we just hit the $2.8M stretch goal in record time! George Ziets will be joining the team! The team is very excited to have the opportunity to work with George again. One more level has been added to The Endless Paths because of your help. The depths grow deeper by the day, and we are getting very close to 20,000 likes and 60,000 backers. 2 more levels incoming! Our next Facebook goal is to hit 40,000 likes - if we can reach that milestone it means we will add one more level to the dungeon! How low can we go? And last but not least, I leave you with a new concept art piece of Forton the monk. Thanks, and see you on the live stream! Update by Adam Brennecke Like Obsidian On Facebook - Help grow the Mega Dungeon!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LtpG02bZDw The campaign is winding down folks, so it's time to bring out the proverbial big guns. In today's update, I'm going to be talking about a bunch of lore tidbits, a Campaign Almanac we'll be offering as an add-on, new BIG OL' stretch goals, and finally, a work-in-progress screenshot of an environment we're developing. As a quick reminder, we are getting close to 20,000 likes on Obsidian's Facebook page, which unlocks another level of the Mega Dungeon the Endless Paths – if you get the chance, please head on over there. That's a lot of stuff, so let's start with the... Lore After thinking about a variety of topics for today's lore update, I decided to describe some of the major (and a few minor) people, places, and things in the world of Project Eternity. I hope these elements help frame the landscape of the Dyrwood and Eír Glanfath. Though this corner of the world is not particularly large, the struggles of its residents will surround the heart of Project Eternity. Aedyr - People from the expansive Aedyr Empire and its former colonies, Dyrwood and Readceras. Aedyr literally translates as "Many Deer", but means "People of the Deer", referring to a 2,500 year-old tribe that became a kingdom 600 years ago. It merged with the elven kingdom of Kulklin in 2399 AI. Among the Aedyr, there is no significant cultural divide between humans and elves. Because of their close contact and integration in spite of physiological differences (such as longer elven lifespans), their culture and legal system have developed a variety of unique concepts such as the haemneg, or ceremonial marriage. Ethnic Aedyr (mostly humans and elves) have fair skin and a variety of hair and eye colors, with blue and green being common. Among other cultures, Aedyr clothing is known for being relatively simple in construction and often using large, colorful striped or checkered patterns for accents. Anni Iroccio - Year of Iroccio. This is the commonly-used calendar in and around the Dyrwood. It is only 150 years old and Vailian in origin, but has been adopted by the residents of Dyrwood and much of the surrounding area due to the hopeless inaccuracy of the Aedyre calendar. Though the Iroccian calendar replaced earlier Vailian calendars, the inventor, Iroccio, started from the same time as his predecessors. It is currently 2823 AI. biamhac - The most feared phenomenon of Eír Glanfath, biamhacs are "spirit winds" that rise up in cursed ruins, shearing souls away from the bodies of their owners. They appear suddenly and without warning, leaving victims little hope of escape. Strong-souled people are not harmed by biamhacs, but affected individuals are instantly reduced to a catatonic state. The discovery of numerous biamhacs in Eír Glanfath during its early exploration resulted in thousands of Aedyr deaths. Dyrwood - Strictly speaking, the forest northwest of the Bael River. Dyrwood, Free Palatinate of - The independent nation that was formerly a colony and later a large, remote duchy of the Aedyr Empire. Led by their duke, Admeth Hadret, the people successfully fought for their independence over an excessively burdensome campaign to colonize the dangerous ruins of Eír Glanfath. Despite the fact that they are no longer, properly speaking, a palatinate (nor a duchy), the people of Dyrwood continue to refer to their home as a "Free Palatinate" out of pride. Most residents of the Dyrwood are Aedyr humans, elves, and dwarves, but many are also culturally integrated orlans or children of Glanfathan elves. Despite having fought a war with the Aedyr Empire in the past, they are now trading partners and have maintained few grudges. Their one continued point of contention is exploration and colonization of Eír Glanfath, which Aedyr continues to push through official and unofficial means. Eír Glanfath - The name natives give to an indeterminately old elven kingdom that covered the entire forest southeast of the Bael River. Though they were not technologically advanced compared to contemporary civilizations, they had accomplished a number of architectural and astronomical feats that explorers and scholars are still trying to understand. Whatever the extent of Eír Glanfath's kingdom was, its ruins had been abandoned for centuries, possibly even millennia, before Vailians or Aedyr arrived in the area. The so-called "Glanfathan" elves in the forest seemed to have no cultural connection to the kingdom and were living in nomadic communities instead of the old structures. Eír Glanfath's ruins are not understood by anyone, and early misinterpretations over their significance resulted in two small-scale conflicts: The Broken Stone War and The War of Black Trees, the latter of which ended with a fire that consumed a vast section of the Dyrwood. Eothas - The Aedyran name for a god of light and redemption. While worship of Eothas is still popular in the Aedyr Empire and Readceras, the faith is outlawed in most cities of the Dyrwood due to events of the Saint's War that culminated at Godhammer Citadel. Though Eothas once communicated regularly with his faithful, he has not done so since the destruction of St. Waidwen at the Battle of Godhammer over 200 years ago. Hylspeak - An old dialect of Aedyran only spoken by rural communities and older elves in the Aedyre heartlands. It is grammatically almost identical to Aedyran, but contains a large number of archaic words that have either disappeared from contemporary use or taken new forms over time. Speakers of contemporary Aedyran can understand Hylspeak, but it can sometimes be confusing. Hylspeak is only commonly heard in folk songs and poems that have survived over the centuries. Some people associate the spontaneous speaking of Hylspeak with an awakened soul. As a result, superstitious folk are easily angered when they hear it spoken, believing it may cause their soul to remember a past life. Magran - The Aedyran name for a goddess of war and fire. Her priests commonly employ firearms and some helped construct the "Godhammer" bomb used to destroy St. Waidwen. Following the Saint's War, she became the most popular faith in Dyrwood. In Aedyr, her symbol is a flame, but in Dyrwood, it is a flaming bomb. Worship of Magran is extensively persecuted in Readceras. orlan - A race of people found mostly in northern, temperate climates but also as far south as the Dyrwood. Physically, they are notable for their small stature, two-toned skin, and exceptionally large, hair-covered ears. Due to their size, orlans have been victimized and marginalized by most of the cultures with whom they have come into contact. As a result, it is rare to find large communities of them and they have progressively retreated into heavily wooded environments over the last few centuries. Many orlan communities have also adopted brutal guerilla tactics including heavy use of traps and poison in the surrounding environment. As a result, even orlans raised in urban cultures often share their rural kin's nasty reputation. Readceras, The Penitential Regency of - The ecclesiastic nation that was formerly an Aedyre colony and later an independent theocratic dictatorship (the Divine Kingdom of Readceras). Two centuries ago, a popular religious movement took hold in the countryside, in part sparked by the collapse of the nation's vorlas (purple dye-producing plant) market, its resultant poverty, and general civil unrest. The leader of the movement was a farmer named Waidwen who claimed that the Aedyre god of light, Eothas, had appeared to him in the night and told him to punish the colonial governor for leading the people to ruin. Waidwen's success led to his apparent transformation into a living vessel for Eothas, after which he became the first and only "divine king" of the country. His rule produced a subsequent purge of heretics and followers of other faiths across the nation. Events related to this purge led to the Saint's War with Dyrwood, which informally ended in 2618 AI when Waidwen was apparently destroyed by a massive bomb north of Halgot Citadel (popularly renamed Godhammer Citadel). svef - Svef is the Aedyran name for a potent narcotic produced from the berries of small shrub that grows in the dry, distant mountains of Tal Kness. Svef produces hallucinations and, according to some, allows users to actually see their own soul. The narcotic was introduced to the Aedyr long ago, but it is used more frequently in the Dyrwood due to its heavy trafficking by Vailian merchants. Vailians - Most Vailians come from the Vailian Republics, a federation of independent city-states made up of former colonies from the Grand Empire of Vailia. They are a powerful mercantile force in the southern hemisphere, trading with more partners than any other nation or empire. Five cities are considered "grand" republics and have greater voting power in their electoral council: Spirento, Ancenze, Selona, Ozia, and Revua. The federation is widely known for its access to most major commodities in the world, including slaves, and for its habit of impressing (abducting) foreigners into service on their naval vessels. Ethnic Vailians (humans and a small number of dwarves) have dark brown skin and tightly spiraled, dark brown hair. They most commonly have brown or black eyes, but occasionally have green, hazel, or grey eyes. Vailians pride themselves on their well-made and intricately-decorated clothing, often made with rare materials and dyes to which they have easy access. That's a lotta lore! There's more lore where that came from, but to encapsulate all of the things going on in the world at this time, you'd probably need more space, like a book. Maybe a... Campaign Almanac Was that an awkward transition? A little. Is this actually an almanac? If you look at a "dictionary" to get "definitions", probably not, but that's what we're calling it. It's a PDF (and other formats) compendium of facts, figures, maps, lore and more about the world of Project Eternity. Looking to run a PnP campaign in the world of Project Eternity or just want even more detail on the world? This will be your first, of what we hope is many, "go-to" sources. And it will be a real (digital) thing that you can add to any pledge for $15. Also, if you've already pledged at the $50 tier or more, you get it for free! Big Ol' Stretch Goals You've asked for big stretch goals, and we're finally ready to give you some. These are mighty stretch goals, ones we're confident that a lot of people will enjoy but we know require serious funding to do well. $3.0 Million - Stronghold At $2.0 Million, your support funded a player house. Inspired by features like The Sink found in Fallout: New Vegas Old World Blues, the house is a convenient place to store gear, interact with companions, craft items (thanks to the $2.4 Million stretch goal), rest, and buy and sell from special merchants. Some of you wanted something that went beyond the standard player house, allowing you to take control of a full stronghold and its surrounding lands. Well-done strongholds provide players with the ability to make large scale changes, undertake special quests, customize the contents of the stronghold and the surrounding environment, and engage in light strategic gameplay between adventures. If we hit $3.0 Million, we will build a stronghold worthy of the title! $3.5 Million - Big City #2 Baldur's Gate and Athkatla are big cities. Spanning multiple large maps with a ton of interiors, characters and quests, big cities are a lot of fun. Like strongholds, they also take a lot of work to do well. We're going to have one big city in Project Eternity. Would you like two? If you take us on an exciting adventure to $3.5 Million, we will take you on an exciting adventure to another big city. Environment Screenshot Project Eternity's team of crazed environment artists have been working hard on developing our first environment for the game. Early on in the Kickstarter campaign, we told you that we wanted to make maps the Infinity Engine way. That is, we wanted to build 3D levels, render them out as 2D images, and then have our artists paint in beautiful details, highlights, and color-tweaks before they went into the game. Looking back at the levels some of us worked on for Icewind Dale, we were still thrilled with the quality that we could achieve with this approach. For Project Eternity, we're using 10 years of improvements in rendering technology and hardware to get the job done, but we still love what we can do the "old-fashioned" way. We hope you share our enthusiasm. 1920x1080 | 2560x1440 That's all for today's update! Thanks for reading. Update from Josh Sawyer

One of the coolest things I've ever gotten in a boxed copy of a game was by far ... The Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings Civilization Attributes fold-out (4-piece cardboard foldout) It would be cool to get something like this included in the Collector's Edition Box of Project Eternity it could include Race and Class information, Stats information, and Skill trees or something like that (just general race and class foldout of some sort) But yeah just a hint, paper doesn't last like cardboard does.

I have a good feeling about this... a very good feeling :D http://soundcloud.co...n-entertainment Yep, pretty much it. Just wanted to share this here, in case anyone has missed it like I did. Liked and following. EDIT: Yep what Canteousent says below, here it is (Update #14): http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60901-update-14-the-music-of-project-eternity/

I'm doing an email interview with Josh (I think, although others may answer my questions if they're more appropriate) for the Australian website Cybergamer (which has a European sister site). My interview will try to avoid any of the questions that interviews/articles have asked already and things that the devs have answered on the Kickstarter Q&A, the forums or their personal sites (Sawyer's Formspring etc). The planned interview will be split into three sections (Personal, Design, Mechanics). I will ask very specific design and mechanics questions to try and generate better / more informative answers. I think I have a bit of room for an extra design or mechanical question or two, so if there's anything you want to know that fits the bill of the interview then feel free to post your question here and if I like it I'll try and fit it in. I expect that I should get a reply tomorrow, if so the article should go up in 36 hours or so. General topics I've already got covered

Update #18: George Ziets, Paladins, Add-Ons, Rewards, and More! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oPKIzyGos8 Hey everyone, there's exactly one more week left in the Kickstarter, and we are going to be kicking it up with bigger and better updates every day! New Add-ons and Rewards We were looking at the $140 tier and thought it needed something more, so we decided to throw a Project Eternity Mouse Pad into the Collector's Edition. The mouse pad features the painting from Kiernan Yanner. You can also add-on additional mouse pads at any physical tier for $15. $140 Reward Tier and Above (excludes the digital only $165 tier) - Now includes a Project Eternity Mouse Pad. Project Eternity Mouse Pad Add-On - $15 each* Also we've been asked if we are going to have more physical rewards and add-ons, and we are listening. Today, we are announcing new t-shirt add-ons for you: Obsidian T-Shirt Add-On - $25 each* Project Eternity T-Shirt Add-On - $25 each* For more information on how to add-on rewards, please see Update #4. Sizes will be asked during the survey that will be sent to you after the end of the Kickstarter. *You must be at a physical goods reward tier to add on any additional physical add-ons. New Stretch Goals for $2.7m and $2.8m We are happy to announce two more classes for the 2.7m stretch goal. With your pledges we now have Barbarians and Ciphers as playable classes, and now we would like to add Paladins and Chanters to round out our class selection for Project Eternity, bringing the class total to 11. Paladins are extremely devoted, often fanatical, soldiers who have pledged themselves to a chosen cause, combining the zeal of a priest with the ascetic discipline of a monk. They have founded many elite fighting forces, from the original Darcozzi Paladini, a two thousand year-old order of palace guards, to the fledgling Fellows of St. Waidwen Martyr, zealous defenders of the Godhammer pilgrim trail. Often found at the vanguard of many conflicts, paladins are natural leaders and have the ability to quickly assist their allies with targeted commands. A paladin's commands can stave off impending death, overcome fatigue, or hasten the charge to close breached defenses. And though they are not always pledged to the service of a god or gods, paladins are so singularly focused on their chosen cause that their souls are continually creating a wellspring of spiritual energy from which they can blast groups of foes in their immediate vicinity. Despite their often stoic presence and explosive combat style, paladins work best alongside allies. When isolated, they can be vulnerable, especially against singular powerful foes. Chanters can be found in almost any culture, but are most often seen in communities with a strong oral tradition. They are repositories of folk knowledge and common wisdom, tellers of tall tales and hallowed legends. Though chanters have a bit of minor talent in traditional arts of combat and soul-based magic, their true power lies in their chants. Chanters construct chants from individual iconic phrases and rhyming couplets they have memorized from hundreds of stories and poems, creating a chain of magical effects that plays out over time. While chanters do use the power of their souls to work their magic, chants are exhortations to the unconscious memory of wayward souls and the diffused spiritual energy of the world. That is, ambient spirits respond to the evocation of ancient, common story elements and play their part in reconstructing the chanter's tales. While a chanter's magic may seem modest compared to that of a wizard or a priest, chanters are able to recite their chants while occupied with other activities, making them extremely versatile. It’s our pleasure to introduce our next stretch goal of George Ziets at $2.8m – with your help, we’ll be able to enlist the skills of George Ziets in shaping Project Eternity. For those not familiar with George’s work, he was the creative lead and core writer behind the acclaimed Mask of the Betrayer - the first expansion pack for Neverwinter Nights 2. George leant his talents to many of Obsidian’s other games including Fallout: New Vegas. George is gifted in designing lore, levels, and companions for role-playing games, and Baldur’s Gate 2 is one of his favorite titles. His impact can be felt in Mask of the Betrayer, and the character concepts, story, and his narrative decisions to take a disused section of the Forgotten Realms and use it as a backdrop to weave a fascinating story is testament to his design skills. We’ve given him the rundown of Project Eternity, and he’s eager to help shape the lore, design areas, and bring the characters in the world to life. More DUNGEON! Yesterday Project Eternity hit 55,000 backers! Everyone loves bigger dungeons, and The Endless Paths Mega Dungeon is now 5 levels deep. We will add another level at 57,500 backers and another level if we get to 20,000 Likes on Facebook. Don't miss the update on Thursday - Josh will be talking lore, and our first screenshot will be revealed. Everyone at the studio is really excited to show you what we've been working on. Lastly, if you haven't checked out the Wasteland 2 Store that opened yesterday - head on over here. You are still able to donate money towards Wasteland 2 to make it bigger and better! FACEBOOK: Like Obsidian on Facebook - We are about 6,000 more Likes away for another dungeon level! Update by Chris Avellone, Josh Sawyer, and Adam Brennecke

With only seven days left on the Project Eternity Kickstarter, we want to start the last week off with some pretty incredible things to announce. You might not know that Brian Fargo is the guy who gave many of us our start in the games industry – myself (Feargus), Josh Sawyer, Chris Avellone, Scott Everts, Brian Menze, Chris Jones, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan – and the list keeps on going from there. He also gave the guys who started a little company called Silicon & Synapse their first few projects – pretty crazy to think that little company is now Blizzard Entertainment. Personally, we are incredibly thankful to him and for the second wave of Kickstarter attention he brought with Wasteland 2. But, Brian hasn’t stopped being the great guy that he is, and so, he’s helping us out by letting us add Wasteland 2 as a reward at our higher tiers. So, what tiers will that be? A lot of you have asked for a digital tier after $110, so we are adding a $165 Digital Only Tier. That means Wasteland 2 will get added to this new $165 tier and all the tiers above. What we are also doing is adding the first expansion pack for the game to the $165 Tier (and above). The expansion will come out approximately six months after Project Eternity is released. That’s right, it’s not DLC, but a real honest to God RPG expansion pack. We don’t have the details on the Expansion yet, but you can bet it will be what you’d expect from an Infinity Engine game expansion. With all that Brian has done for us in the past and his incredibly generous offer, we also want to kick something in. To do that we are now supporting Brian's Kicking It Forward initiative. The Kickstarter community is pretty amazing and we want to help whomever we can be as successful as we have been. For those of you that missed the announcement over the weekend, we will be adding another level to the Mega Dungeon if we hit 20,000 Likes on Obsidian's Facebook page. We are getting close to halfway there! That’s a lot for today, and we have so much more coming up tomorrow. Maybe some new stretch goals, maybe some new add-ons, or heck maybe all of that! Stay tuned all of this week as we ramp up to the Project Eternity Kickstarter finish next Tuesday, October 16th with an all-day live video stream from Obsidian. We are trying to get Tim to do the cooking! Oh, and we also owe everyone an update that goes through everything you get at each of the tiers listed out with a bit more detail than we can squeeze in on the front page of our Kickstarter site. We will get that update out in the next few days, but to tide everyone over – we’ve attached the full concept for Aloth below. Have a great week everyone! Update by Feargus Urquhart