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So... I love her! Is there *any* chance that she can still be fleshed out to a full companion in a DLC? I would happily pay. My love for Aloth as a character was the primary reason I dropped +$200 on the kickstarter!

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!

A game I am not playing right now is Civ - Beyond Earth. I own Civ 5, and have just sat through a couple of video reviews on Youtube. The reason I am making the post is not just to give a space to discuss it, but because I think Firaxis have been making two key mistakes in recent years. Although no doubt you'll all have your own reactions. 1. Combat 'balance' The combat system is still trying far too to be balanced. I've given this quite a bit of thought and believe that you cannot have combat with a consistent rule base, and make every faction equally capable, yet different. war in the real world rewards certain behaviours; you can't just ignore that. But in Civ everyone gets an equal 'shout', because multiplayer. Which is just foolish. 2. Passion I didn't get the impression with either Civ 5 or this game that it had been made with passion. There were no little curlicues of design excitement scattered around. You DO see this in - for example - Alpha Centauri's voiceovers. I don't know what causes this, but suggest that it's probably game project management being _too_ professional. "No, Anil, you can't add in a cool widget, because that's not what the agreed design spec is, and I need to come in on budget and on time." But the pint for me is that a civ game eats _hundreds_ of hours of my life. I don't want a carefully prepackaged boring suare brown box. I want something that's known a little love and excitement.

- Too much content, do people really care about so many classes and so many plotline replays, which frankly, only the tiniest portion of people would ever consume? - You focused on the quantity of the content, not quality. - By focusing on the quantity instead of quality, you tricked people into this illusion of false dichotomy, that they will enjoy more content even if it is poorly realized, and in the process rendering yourselves as hardcore old-school developers who care about deep gameplay mechanics and story. - Why not 6 classes instead of 11 ?? Do you really think that gameplay archetypes can be achieved if you shove as many character labels and "unique" spells as possible, instead of just dispersing various pertinent talents and abilities, properly implemented, across 6 classes? - Ask yourselves; what is more enjoyable for the vast majority of people: creating highly polished reactive classes which visually emphasize how you lead and develop them in the gameworld, or shoving as much stuff as possible so you can say that the game has a lot of stuff ? You actually are trying to put so much stuff in it that if you remove half of it, people would still think it's an epic RPG(of course, if it actually had production values) - You completely failed at game development, this is not an interactive novel! It's a video game, put some production values in it like you did with Dungeon Siege 3. It's frankly embarrassing how you let your standards fall to the ground by entertaining this ludicrous notion you got from people when they tell you that they don't care about animations and graphics. Don't trust them when they tell you this! They're confused because they're conflating categories and misinterpreting the nature of the product. But when they actually start playing the game and everything feels like total crap because of those two foundational components(which most people can't pinpoint anyway) severely lacking, they will cluelessly let everyone know how much they have encouraged you to make it exactly like that! Over 4 million dollars was more than adequate to make an enjoyable, epic, isometric, pseudo 3D RPG with high production values. Just stop listening to the incoherent nostalgia people; focus, polish, and streamline!

Hi! This is related to the Development Process and it is more of a question about Beta Testing than a suggestion (although I think it looks like a wise thing to do). This came across my feed somehow, between 2:00-2:30: http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2013/08/21/exploring-the-world-of-dragon-age-inquisition.aspx The question to Obsidian is, does Obsidian plan on doing something similar for Project Eternity with their play/beta/early-access testers? I think personally that it looks healthy for both the developers for the sake of development (getting a better game) and, of course, the players can directly communicate in-game matters with the developers more in-depth about what's going on around them. Not fishing for a beta-access (Though I might buy an Early-Access copy if it ever appears on Steam at whatever stage it is in, Alpha or Beta doesn't matter~ in whatever way I can help ^^), but I just think that getting raw data from the Player decision in-game might help out Obsidian a lot in terms of physical development Members: Thoughts? Obsidian: Possible answer?

One thing i like about the still on-going Numenera kickstarter is how backers are given a finite number of votes on their main site in the community section, some 15 in each category, where we are given the opportunity to submit, discuss and vote on ideas that the developer can consider. It is very open and direct, and really gives both developers and backers a direct line to new perspectives and ideas. I at least feel it is more orderly than forum topics where interesting ideas are often forgotten in the deluge of other posts, allowing backers to focus their thoughts and opinions on specific topics and developers to more easily collect info from us. Could need a down-vote function though. Do mods or devs have something similarly streamlined lined up for the future or is it still far off?