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Just a small gripe, but I noticed with bugs like Lawn Mites, if you interrupt their attack animation where they jump into the air, they just reset to be back on the ground in front of you. It's a little jarring, and if you added a new behaviour where they get knocked back a bit instead, they could do a forward launching attack again, which would make them a bit more difficult/interesting to fight. Just my thoughts; I would love to hear what other people think, too.

Cloaks have no physics or animation and just floats behind my characters. It's really ugly and awkward. I have the newest version of the game 1.0.3 530, including the hotfix. Specs: Processor: intel i5 2500k 4.5 ghz Ram: 16gb Graphic card: zodiac Nvidia gtx 970 with newest driver 350.12 OS: Windows 7 64-bit Here are some images of how the bug looks like looks like: Btw, it's a great game, enjoying it a lot, except for this bug

I've noticed that there is an animation error with war bows. It happened to me equipping Saint Omaku's Mercy to Maia, as show in the pictures. After a combat end an arrow stays suspended in air.

As you can see on image below, the small shields have a clipping issue on a female characters. This is, for example, a Pallegina with Outworn Buckler (Paladin only). You may notice that shield looking bad even without armor (second picture). So, please, change position for small shields just like for medium shields (third picture) for female characters.

When humanoids wield an arquebus, their left hand isn't really touching it. The issue is very similar to the one occurring with a pollaxe (link). SCREENSHOT: link SAVED GAME: link REPRO STEPS: Load the attached saved game. Observe that Grieving Mother is equipped with an arquebus. Enter the door in front of the party. Skip through the dialog until combat ensues and everyone enters their combat stance. Zoom in and observe that Grieving Mother's left hand isn't really touching the arquebus; rather, her whole arm is above it.

Hi, i have a only a question i saw new videos with pillars gameplay, but i noticed that the trees and grass are static. I dont see anywhere a answer. The developers will put animations in some trees and grass or will stay static? Thanks

For some time now, I've been a little bit bothered by the positioning of the head on female1 elves, humans, and aumauauaua. It strikes me as a little too far forward, with the neck angled a little oddly - but at the same time, I've felt like this isn't quite on target. What I've finally realized is that the issue doesn't lie in the neck or head at all, but in the knees and the arch of the back. See, if you look at them in profile, females of these three races are currently animated so that their knees are always slightly couched2. That's sort of fine, and is actually consistent with having the head a bit forward3. The hips, feet and legs are all consistent with this - but as you move up the animation to the torso, you'll notice that the back has a very, very prominent arch, and the chest is puffed out. This is neutral posture in many dance and athletic disciplines, and is how people can wear heels without falling over4, but it's tremendously inconsistent with the couched knees, forward head, and practical footwear that taller PoE females have. Basically, the posture of the current models is ... Neck (couched) / Upper torso (neutral) / Legs (couched) ... which looks bad, structurally. Personally, I'd much prefer to see Neutral/Neutral/Neutral, posture, as is the case on the Orlan and Dwarven models (see FN2). But if the point of the couched posture is a "combat ready" look5 and there's a real desire to keep it, there need to be adjustments to the upper torso adjusted to straighten the spine, pull in the chest, and tilt the collarbone so that it's consistent with the position of the neck. The only other approach would be to give the female models high heels, but if that happens I WILL COME FOR YOU6. tl;dr Skeletons are spoooooky 1 It could be a problem for males too, but I never play male characters, and I'm too lazy to check. It probably is. 2 This isn't objectively problematic but it's ... a little weird, honestly. Orlan and dwarves are comparatively centered, with their knees straight but unlocked and their hips placed firmly on top of their feet - reflecting what I've been taught is good posture. The animators have done an A+ job of making those little bodies look real and structurally sound. 3 If you stand up and couch your knees, you'll notice that your hips tend to move back a bit, your shoulders advance to compensate, your chest hollows, and the angle of your neck and collarbone change. This puts your head forward. 4The hips are also pushed back as a result. This is the point of heels, for anyone who doesn't know - they adjust the wearer's center of gravity so that they stick out their chest and butt slightly more than usual to compensate. 5I sure hope not, because you've got neutral stances on the one side, and fighting stances on the other, and there's very little real in-between. A good neutral stance shifts effortlessly into a fighting stance while being perfectly natural. 6No I won't.

I was worried when so much time passed before Obsidian showed off any of the game, and now it seems that my anxieties were justified--perhaps if they had been more open with the early development of the game, the main problems that I see in the Backer Beta could have been avoided or resolved. But with less than five months of development planned, it seems very unlikely Obsidian will be able to implement any substantial changes. In the course of my 3 hours with the backer beta, I compiled a fairly big list of bugs, general feedback and suggestions. But by the end of my first ride through the game, I realized that what I saw as the biggest problems with the game would be the most difficult to fix (because so much work has been done already), and also potentially the most detrimental to the overall enjoyment of the game. As you can see from the tags I chose, I am speaking of the visual and audio elements of the game. Specifically: VISUALS The visuals in the "wilderness" (or exterior areas of the first map) are very much lacking in contrast. Maybe I should try "color blind" mode to see if things improve (the game crashed on me before I could try it), but the "normal" visuals should be the "best," right? Well, maybe there was a reason color-blind mode was selected by default. The lack of contrast produces two problems: 1. Terrain is homogeneous. If I can't tell what a tree looks like because it's leaves are the same color as the grass underneath it, and it casts no shadow, there's no point in the tree being there at all. 2. Units/creatures are indiscernible. With the unit selection circles of NPCs/creatures hidden underneath grass, they may as well not exist. Without much contrast between themselves and the terrain, the NPCs/creatures are more difficult to spot than they should be. Superimposing the selection circles on top of the terrain would help some; maybe a small outline or "glow" around the NPCs/creatures would also help them stand out more. As would idle animations. And then there's a visual contrast that is in the game, but that works to its detriment: specifically the environmental animation. The animated water and doodads (like the waterwheel) look absolutely fantastic, but their presence contrasts far too much with the absensce of animation for the rest of the terrain. Contrasted with motionless NPCs, static grass, and unbending trees, the rest of the world looks incredibly lifeless by comparison. If the water is going to move, so should the grass; so should the trees; so should the animals inhabiting the world. MUSIC Maybe this is going to be a controversial opinion. I've seen a couple of people praising the music. Me? I find it to be incredibly bland. The field music is perfectly servicable for what it is--BGM. But the problem is that the title them (the music that plays at the menu) ALSO sounds like background music. The title theme should be the BEST, most memorable track of music in the game. Remember BG2, how each party member had his or her own theme music? Remember how dynamic and memorable those tunes were? Remember the title theme that played every time you launched the game? We all remember that, even years--or decades--after we played the game. BG2's title them was filled with a sense of wonder and grandeur--it was bold and dynamic and promised adventure and excitement. In other words, the title theme immediately set the tone for the adventure that would follow. Compared to the title theme in Pillars of Eternity, which sounds like the same sort of generic background music you'd hear in an Elder Scrolls game while traversing a swamp. There's no dynamism. No grandeur. No promise of bold adventures or sinister plots or romance or tragedy or anything. It's like standing in a medieval elevator. .... And of course, the biggest problem of all is that these aren't really aspects of the game that can readily be salvaged so late in development. It's possible they could crank out a few more tracks of music, and maybe create a decent title theme--but at this point I think we can safely declare it extremely unlikely that Obsidian has the time or resources to re-draw the maps with animated terrain. And I think that's really kind of depressing, because--the countless bugs aside--every other aspect of the game (that I've seen so far) seems to be EXACTLY what a successor to the Infinity Engine legacy should be: lots of roleplaying options, interesting quest design, and extremely well-written dialog. With so much of the game being so good, it's a shame that the most immediately noticeable aspects of the game--the visuals and music--are so lacking.

My list of bugs: Character gets stuck in a "falling" animation after battle if knocked unconscious, upon loading a game I get white boxes and green circles in the boxes above the portraits, I can't finish the ogre quest because the head (and blood) always disappears from my inventory (after loading), Ogre never has the club, missing equipment (after loading/ sometimes on stratup), quest disappearing after loading but coming back after quitting the game and restarting, attack animations are buggy; ranged weapons are used as melee weapons, character sounds missing, weapon sounds missing (guns), sometimes attack animations are looped over and over again after battle, loot dropped but not appearing in inventory, random crashes when loading etc. Some of these are already in the known issues but just dropping down the bugs I have encountered. However, really digging the feel of the game, the spell effects, the sounds/music, guns are so cool and the art in general is great. So much potential, can't wait for the release! Attachements: DxDiag and error.log (after a crash I got a message that encouraged me to send the error.log to the devs!), screenshot DxDiag.txt error.txt

Update by Rose Gomez, Associate Producer Hello backers! After a successful week at GDC everyone is back in the office energized and inspired. This week we'll be taking a look at what the life of an animator is like on Pillars of Eternity, from what an average day looks like to how an animation goes from concept to being in the game. In our next update, look forward to an update all about the audio design on Pillars of Eternity, featuring Justin Bell, our Audio Director. As a reminder, the survey deadline has passed. If you still need to fill out your surveys, we encourage you to do so by going to the backer portal and completing your order. We will attempt to accommodate as many late surveys as we can, but we can't promise that the content will make it in to Pillars of Eternity. Late survey entries may have to go into a future Eternity product instead. The animators gathering reference for a wild Xaurip attack. Average Day Each day, our animators gather together in the lead animator's office to give an update on what they're working on. Any road blocks or challenges that an animator is running into can be brought up and the entire animation team can help to figure out a way around it. Everyone on the team tends to work very closely together. It's very rare for an animator to be working alone for the entire day. Most animators will collaborate and look for critique and feedback as they work so that they can make sure their animations look as good as possible. Once everyone has been brought up to date with what the team is doing, the animators head back to their offices and begin to work. Many of our animators like to take reference of themselves acting out certain attacks, and it's not unusual to walk by an animators office and see them growling, snarling, and stalking around while they try to work something out. You can usually recognize an animator's office by the mountains of toy swords, shields, staffs, and guns they have lying around for any impromptu reference sessions that may come up. Once they've figured out how they want the animation to feel and look, they can sit down and really start animating. Animators acting out Xaurip animations. The amount of time spent animating is smaller than one might think when compared to the time spent in iterations, adjustments, and actually successfully implementing the animations into the engine. When an animator feels like they have something ready for the game, the animations go into the game engine and off to the lead for review. Challenges For Pillars of Eternity, there have been a variety of challenges our animators have come across. To begin with, this is the first project at Obsidian to use the Unity engine. It's always a challenge to learn a new engine for a project and to adjust to a new set of tools. While animating is animating regardless of the project, the availability of different tools can really make a difference to an animator's process. Since Pillars of Eternity is designed from an isometric view, the animators need to stay aware of the locked camera at all times when animating. Characters are also relatively smaller on the screen than they would be in another type of game. This means that animators need to focus on stronger poses and broader movements than they would use on a game with a first person or third person camera. The motions of the animations have to have a strong silhouette from as many angles as possible so that they can be read clearly at a distance. From Concept to Completion A lot of work has to go into a creature or NPC before the animating even begins. Using the Druid Cat Form as an example, the pipeline begins with taking a look at the design documents to see what the designers have come up with as to how the creature should look and feel. What kind of attacks should he have? What mood should his walk and run animations portray? Once those things are decided, it moves onto the concept stage. When it comes to creatures, it's usually Polina who will take a crack at fleshing out what they are going to look like. You may remember the Cat Druid Form concept from a few updates ago, shown here again: Druid Cat Form Concept. Once the concept is finished, that's when animation team comes in. The animator will consult with the designer and the concept artist in order to break down what specific animations need to be made for every creature. An animation list gets written up and saved while the creature is sent off to the character team to get modeled and skinned. The character artist will block out and hook up the model in the engine so that we can take a look and see if any new systems need to be implemented for this creature. Maybe we want him to have a special ability that hasn't been designed yet, like a transformation between one form to another. That's when a programmer would step in to help design a way to make those special systems work. With the systems in place, the animators can finally begin to animate! Animating for a video game is a bit different than animating for a feature. Each action a character is going to use has to be broken into a separate animation so that the game engine can call on them when different criteria are met. Even simple things like a character's run and walk need to be planned out and separated into small individual animations. A typical full animation set can take up to a month (and for more difficult creatures, sometimes even two months) to implement. During the animation process, animators will work very closely with design to make sure that every creature looks and moves just like they envisioned. Once all of the animations for the creature are blocked in, the animator can bring them into the engine and start seeing how they fit together in the actual game. There is a lot of back and forth between the animation package and the engine at this point in order to fine tune each animation. If the lead is happy with how an animation looks then the animator is done and can move on to the next creature on the list. In-engine creature animations. GameCrate We have a bunch of new interviews and articles out on Newegg's new gaming site, GameCrate! GameCrate visited our offices in February for a behind the scenes tour of the studio and got to take a firsthand look at Pillars of Eternity. Take a look at their article, The Factory Level: Obsidian Entertainment to see what they experienced. Check out what Josh had to say about the game in his interview here then take a look at an interview with Feargus here about the business side of Pillars of Eternity. If you're in a hurry and want to get down to the quick details, check out their article 10 Pillars of Eternity Details We Picked Up During Our Tour of Obsidian Entertainment. You can also check out their twitter account, @GameCrate, for updated news and articles about gaming. Kickin' It Forward We love tabletop games at Obsidian, and what better way to bring your campaigns to life than with some awesome modular cavern sets? The guys over at Dwarven Forge are releasing a brand new set of modular cavern tiles crafted from their new unbreakable Dwarvenite material. They've got some really cool stretch goals to add even cooler pieces, including a Lava Cavern Add-On Pack. Check out their Kickstarter campaign here! ARMing the MassesHey, guys. Brandon here. Here at Obsidian, we know that DRM can be a touchy subject so we got together with our friends at Paradox to think of a better solution, because you know, rights need to be managed. What came out of those discussions is... the Pillars of Eternity A.R.M. Pillars of Eternity A.R.M. (Analog Rights Management) Much like the code wheels of old, players will be greeted with a large, glowing question rune on the title screen. In addition to the question rune, ten smaller runes will also be displayed. Players will then have to use the Pillars of Eternity A.R.M. code wheel to decode the question rune and select the properly revealed rune. It's fast and (somewhat) easy. Be careful, though, because two incorrect selections in a row and your copy of Pillars of Eternity will become locked down for 72 hours while our customer service department investigates possible fraud. . . . . . . April Fools'! As we said from the very beginning, Pillars of Eternity is, and always will be, DRM, and ARM, free. That's it for now. Head over to our forums and let us know what you think of the update.

Just watched the latest gameplay footage from the Trailer and im shocked nobody seem to notice this: Attack Spells direct targeting an npc look like they go through characters without any noticeable "impact" animation, it looks like the "projectile" just vanishes inside or even under the target. End. Horrible. Really horrible... Please fix that. In the moment the "projectile" hits the target there needs to be an impact animation. BG2 at least had it. Same concern about physical hits, not every taken hit needs to have a shaking impact reaction on the character, but sometimes there should be, like in BG2, at the very least i would wish you add some "bloodspill" when a character gets hit by a physical attack like...something happened. Thanks for reading, suggesting or planning.

I feel that fighters are very often mishandled - classically the most monotonous and boring class, specially in d&d games, where they're very often just part of some dual or multiclass character or dipped into for some bonus or other. Conversely other games try to fix this by giving them abilities that are practically magic - various agro and pulling mechanics, random invulnerabilities, special super attacks etc. Now PE seems to be taking a more grounded approach (or that's the feeling I've gotten up until now), so I guess that won't be happening here. I think one problem with fighters is that they are covering a very wide selection of archetypes, compared to other classes. A wizard is usually the old bookworm guy with the beard and pointy hat, a paladin the goody two-shoes religious zealot, the rogue the shady thief/assassin. But fighters, they can be mercenaries, weapon masters, samurai, knights, duelists, gladiators, generals and peons, pirates, archers,... So a fighter needs to be able to evolve into any of these which I think can result in either a lack of options or lack of direction for the class. This would be some of the traits I would attribute to fighters, also in the interest of keeping the flavor different from other warrior classes: discipline, learning, fulfilled potential, constancy, reliability, focus. A fighter is supposed to be good at fighting. The best in fact. Not the strongest or most resilient/determined/flexible, just simply best at what it does. When I say reliable I don't mean mediocre or boring, I mean that its risks are measured and mostly successful. Its strength would lie in the mastery of a weapon. Now considering the class abilities tidbits we've got before the holidays the thought might have occurred already, but I think having various modes/fighting styles would be a good idea. Something akin to lightsaber forms from KOTOR2 - bonuses and penalties to various stats. At the lowest levels the way a player starts building the character would be determined by gear more than abilities, with them gradually becoming available through the lower levels. Certain modes could exclude others or provide small synergy bonuses, as an incentive for a player to specialize - providing a clearer focus for the class and reducing the power potential (i.e. you can't be the best in every situation). As fluff, this could provide other benefits. It would represent something you learn through drill or a rigid technique that is passed down as a certain way of fighting. It could also offer some visual candy in the form of changed animations, gradually, completely or perhaps just for a specific weapon. The standard +1 to attack passive ability type has gotten a bit boring in my opinion. While you can't really change the function much, I'd like to see a bit more flavor injected. For example learning weapon specialization would instead of adding a static +2 to damage with the chosen weapon make the fighter use the upper half of its damage spectrum more often. The fighter is not hitting any stronger with the selected weapon, just utilizing it better. When using a shield he/she could use it in such a way as to deflect the attackers' weapons to the side, leaving them more open to counterattack. Using armor so that it gets hit more often - less damaging attacks, more glancing blows. So on in this vein. Some active abilities are definitely needed, we want to enjoy the gameplay, not just character building. I would really like these to stay somewhere in the realm of possibility. I think some kind of combat maneuvers would fit. Sort of what like the rogue got, but less movement and more combat oriented. There was something written about a charge ability, that sounds good. There could be some abilities that focus on attacking certain body parts, unbalancing or disarming the opponent, or even using them for cover. Thoughts?

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!

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.

So I have been playing Baldur's Gate "Enhanced" over the last few days. The idea behind it was to update the game to the latest version of the infinity engine. Now, I haven't played this game in a very long time, but this is what is striking me now. It seems like pace and movement is really slow. Maybe its the limited animations of the characters, or maybe its just how i perceive movement over the ground. Either way, it seems like a huge hassle to move across one of the maps and there is nothing really entertaining to look at while you do it. Its almost like driving a car if you will. Notice how when you are in a small car close to the ground, more similar to over the shoulder and first person movement, it feels like you are going faster even though you aren't? Just like in a massive SUV or Hummer it makes you feel like you are moving slower even though you are going the same speed? Anyway. That all is to say, I find myself getting a little bored and a little sleepy playing even the Enhanced Version of Baldur's gate just because of movement. How will Project Eternity address modern animation and over land travel to make it "feel" like a more modern game and still have a play style and camera position of a classic? And what do you all think? Am I too caught up on this movement thing? How do you all deal with it? Anyone else experiencing these feelings while replaying some of the older infinity games?

Alundra has, in my opinion, one of the best running mechanics (it is just so difficult to master though!). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AisGdMqiqi4 At around 0:30. Running could be way more dynamic, out of combat, you are running from that boulder chasing you, or just running due to low health (with mortality mode on) or just running because running. Like "Drifting" in a car racing game, rounding those corners like a boss. Dynamic running animations. What say you? Good? Or as ominous as the music in the Alundra video? Not talking about a skill based running, but if you are running you'd "slide" towards the end of the location you've pressed. I'd like 2 different ones, Running (for out of combat) and Charging (for in combat). Mostly because in that way you can do more with it depending on situation.

So I was just thinking about this, what abilities are there that can serve the same purpose without having an animation for it? In Update 15 Tim Cain says that "grapple" won't be in the game because it is unnecessary resources. Is there a middle-ground here? I wouldn't, personally, mind if there is a grapple ability (for the Monk) in the game. Even if it is without animation. I draw most of my thoughts from League of Legends regarding this, where you press a button when you're close enough to an enemy and there's a "clanky" sound and then "Stun" (if you are within range of your opponent). Could grapple be an ability without animation? Sample Example 1: I move my monk up close to the target enemy, use the "Grapple" ability and both my enemy and my monk are now "Stunned" or "Static". My own imagination fills in the blanks where the animation is lacking. Perhaps there could be a SoT (Stamina over Time) loss to both my Monk and the opponent (Dependent on Strength). The one with the highest Strength throws saving throws to be able to leave the grapple, for instance, the opponent has a higher Strength and thus can leave the grapple whenever he/she feels like it. The AI could react to distance, and amount of characters in an invisible AoE ring around it. So if I send a character to aid my Monk in this power struggle the AI could react and leave it, but if I stay away the AI continues to power struggle, because he/she is stronger than my Monk. [EDIT]: Sample Example 2: My Wizard being able to throw an AoE Dome Spell, I could trap 3-4 enemies in this Dome with my Fighter, so that the enemies don't go away and focus something else, or perhaps trap them together with an angry Barbarian. Or better yet, trap them whilst I take out something else. This wouldn't need to be animated either but simple cause any enemy hit by this spell to not be able to leave the affected AoE area. Perhaps a glimmer of light around the selected area.[/EDIT] Are there any other abilities that could be difficult or time consuming to animate that could follow a similar type of simplicity? Ultima 1 (which I recently finished) is a very very simplified example (with hardly any abilities at all, I didn't buy any spells or try them I just wanted to finish the game as fast as possible so I could have it under my belt, i.e. I followed a walkthrough about 1/2 of the game). Are there any tl;dr folk left in the forums by the way? TL;DR: AI thoughts, but really wondering if some animations for some abilities could be simplified. E.g., do you want to see an ability in P:E but you think it would be too resource heavy? Perhaps it could be simplified? How vivid does spell shields need to be?

Casting Spells. Throwing spells. Not summoning spells (unless, a Summoner of course...). My point is should the Wizard lunge a fireball? Should he wave his arm horizontally as he shoot out an energy flux of magic missiles? Should the Wizard "dance" as he's pulling the forces of the mysterious unknown? Avatar: The Last Airbender, springs lots of thoughts. I'm personally standing on the "if resources allow" side. But damn.. it would be so freaking badass cool... http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=oCXHi0kFucc#t=78s EDIT: Not that^ flashy, look at the movements of the characters. Reduce it reasonably to a fantasy setting like Baldur's Gate. I think the animation in Baldur's Gate is some singing hand magic jazz hands, in Dragon Age: Origins (and World of Warcraft), Skyrim too, the Wizard lifts one arm or something and that's that.

In D&D 4e, there is a status called "bloodied" where you or your enemies have less than 50% of your hitpoints. It is interesting because it gives you an idea of how much health your enemies have, as well as causing different bonuses or maluses to enemies attacking bloodied creatures. From an animation perspective, it helps you know who's more likely to die too. Wondering if this is something OEI might do from an animation perspective or mechanical one too.

(When I was playing Fallout 2 I remember thinking: "cool, I'm going to get a car sometime. Will I see it move?" I knew the answer would be negative, but I enjoyed wondering. In BG1 I was very glad whenever I saw any animation, as small as it was, but watching a video of a flying Wyvern only to find out it had go around the lake to attack my party. PS:T had some few but awesome animations. IWD had a few animations at the ending, and the fact nothing in Nature moved because all was frozen served as an acceptable excuse. In BG2 there were some improvements, but most of it was static too. Then IWD2 showed a lot more things moving and more big size puzzles, and I wondered if the Infinite Engined could be tweaked so we could get more from it. But then there was Lionheart and nothing more.) I'm very glad this game will be isometric and use pre-rendered art, and I am aware it's not easy to blend 3D animated elements and physics into static "paintings", but come on, almost 10 years have passed... I believe the stillness of pre-rendered graphics was a technical limitation and not an aesthetic option. Pre-rendered isometric games are great because they have a closer relationship with old book and board games but, other than that, I think designers and programmers should be completely free to develop a more interactive experience. I find this very important for the immersion factor. Black Isle games have always had a great atmosphere, the lighting and weather was fantastic and I hope Obsidian's attitude won't be "going back to the RPGs we loved" but "pushing the RPGs we loved to the possibilities of 2012 technology". There's a lot to learn about this on games like Commandos 1, 2 & 3, Robin Hood: the Legend of Sherwood (impressive physical engine!) and Desperados.

Please make it possible to easily add or modify animations. This is often very hard to do - yet animations can enhance the games feel immensely - so please don't hardcode anything! Ideally we should be able to add or mod animation without the hassle of going trough 3 different converters, scripts, tools whatever. Maybe just a blender plugin? I'm not asking for a mod tools, just no restricted, hardcoded mess. I hope one of your devs sees this!

Hi all, First of all, sorry for my bad English. I'm big fan of your games for a long long time. And I'm playing cRPG since I can remember. You are company I like the most in this industry since your name is next to all my favorite games. Your games are great and sometimes full of bugs but you can't make good and complex cRPG without few of them. My second favorite company, CD Projekt RED also make lot of them and yet they don't stop fixing what they can. Anyway, I'm programmer. But for some reasons I ended up as webdeveloper. Mostly I work with SQL, PHP, Javascript, HTML, CSS and stuff. Nothing fancy. Some time ago I decided to learn something new. I did some work in C++, Java etc but I decide to learn something different, something new. So I ended up learning semi-new technology - Node.js (started 2010 if I remember). In short, it's V8 Javascript engine that work on server side. It's also event based (like Javascript) and I wanted to do something cool with it. Since I learn about it I decide to get to know it better and make some project with it. So I started playing around and I decide to make small RPG game. What I wanted to create is game that: ~ load fast ~ not require installation of a client ~ or any other "plugin" (like Quake Live that is advert as Quake in browser but you still need download few hundreds megabytes of "browser plugin") ~ not require extra plugins like Java, Flash or Silverlight So I created proof of concept. I dig some 2d sprites and created sprite animation test. I put it here: http://nodegame.dariuszp.pl/ (look using Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox only right now) Since I started with Node.js, after 12 hours of learning and work I made proof of concept, small online "game" in browser that right now work only under Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox but with socket.io library it will work under new versions of Internet Explorer as soon as I convert some part of code to be compatible with it. http://alphang.dariuszp.pl/ All you can do is to sign in (just open URL and type your name, accept only letters and "_" ), move around and talk with other people that joined (hit enter, type, hit enter again to confirm, pain in the a** because I didn't include chat history). Right now I'm working on proper game (or engine to be more precise) when I have some free time and I want to make it open source so I will post source on github at some point under LGPLv3 license. But I did hit a wall with something. I'm a programmer. I have no talent for graphic. Sprite I used to animate players I dig from http://vxresource.wordpress.com/ . I tried to ask around about graphic and animated sprites but it's hard to find anyone that do something like that. So I came here to ask few questions. QUESTIONS ~ how much graphic designers (or 2d animators) take for this kind of graphic ? I'm talking about sprites with animations and static elements. As example for that alphang project I used this sprite: This one have 8 characters. Each have 4 animations, 3 frames per animation. I'm thinking that for my project I will need around 50 frames, 5 frames per animation. And those will be ~ move north ~ move south ~ move east ~ move west ~ attack north ~ attack south ~ attack east ~ attack west ~ die ~ wave Style more realistic but size like here, so 32px width and 48px height. Fire format - PNG, optimal for this kind of job and for websites as whole. ~ where I can find people that do this kind of thing ? So I could order stuff like that. I need to but it since I want to include it and distribute with the engine for free and if someone use it, I don't want them to have problems with copyrights or something. That's why I don't want to use something I dig on the internet. On that websites they say you only need to post author of the graphic you use but you can never be sure. ~ are there any sites with already made resources that are under proper categories and stuff ? Something like stock photos but with 2d resources for games. I'm talking about places when you can but this kind of graphic and do whatever you want with it, adding it to engine and giving away for free included (so full license except reselling of course) Any graphic designer, animator or someone like that who could point me somewhere ? So I could see how much money I will need to spend to create my project ? We are talking about around 20 human characters + 10 animals and around 100 static elements (walls, chairs, ground, env inside and outside). It's not much but it's just to create engine and working demo that contain few maps etc.