And no Lord of the Rings movies.

People hoped for additions for the Star Wars franchise and we all saw the result of that with those prequels. *shudder*

 

I rather see a franchise stay dead than spewed crap come for it just becuase fans are too stupid to appreciate what they already got.

How do you define "dead"? Really, what you are saying is that you want a game made to your peculiar predilections ... I think you'll find that an enormous percentage of a game budget is spent to make the target audience aware of the product, which is something that an established franchise needs spend a lot less on. The merit of the game depends on how it is made, not the age of the franchise.

http://baby-goat.livejournal.com/172127.html?mode=reply

Sometimes you scare me a bit.

Now THAT is stalking

http://baby-goat.livejournal.com/172127.html?mode=reply

Hahaha!

Wow. This thread is pretty dead. How go things behind the scenes, Obsidian?

Say no to thread necromancy.

Wow. This thread is pretty dead. How go things behind the scenes, Obsidian?

It's only as dead as the developers want it to be. So yeah; dead, rotten, forgotten.

VAPORWARE!

Wow. This thread is pretty dead. How go things behind the scenes, Obsidian?

Things are going pretty well, but please understand that we're still very early in development. The game is many months off and we're still doing a lot of prototyping/core technology development. The design staff is refining a lot of early work on the project right now. Chris Avellone is the Lead Creative Designer on the project and he has been helping develop our dialogue tool and banter system. We want something that feels "natural" in flow and delivery but still gives the player a great deal of control and good options to take relationships in different directions. Paul Boyle joined us a couple of months ago as our Lead System Designer. Paul previously worked at Maxis on Sims titles and on Spore. He's been working a lot with me on our core system designs. We have good arguments discussions on ideas and he has been building a top-down 2D prototype for our tactical combat systems which is giving us great data on interface and AI/pathing issues. It's also allowing us to do rapid iteration on the crunchy numerical aspects of the game. Finally, Mike Stout joined us from Insomniac as our Lead Level Designer. He worked on several Rachet & Clank titles and as the Lead Multiplayer Level Designer on Resistance: Fall of Man. Mike is working with the art team to develop our level pipeline and establish building metrics. He's also been doing research on different types of non-linear games to see how they handle various aspects of revealing areas, opening up quests, scaling difficulty, etc.

 

As for me, I'm re-learning Flash to implement several prototype interfaces. The last time I had anything to do with Flash was when I made this. Yay!

This is great news. I wish the PG team would be as chattily as the Aliens people around here. I'm also wondering if there will be seperate modes included. Like an Exploration mode a'la Kotor, a Cinematic Mode a'la Mass Effect/Indigo Prophecy and an isometric tactical combat mode. As long as the solutions don't end up clunky, I shall remain optimistic whatever you've in store.

 

As for the metrics work: Maybe Mike could drop in and talk a little in detail how he's going to do that. I once remember a few years back when I did some Leveldesign for Quake 3. There was some struggle especially at the beginning, when hallways or door heights always needed adjustment because the real-world proportions didn't work out there. With quite some practice though I got the "feeling" in QRadiant right and the ratio of the assets looked okay.

Now I don't know if you'll use your own proprietary Leveleditor to get quicker feedback, or create all the assets/props and layouts in Max/Maya, but at any rate, I always wanted to know the process from the professionals how to best approach this issue.

So how long till the first playable?

This is great news. I wish the PG team would be as chattily as the Aliens people around here. I'm also wondering if there will be seperate modes included. Like an Exploration mode a'la Kotor, a Cinematic Mode a'la Mass Effect/Indigo Prophecy and an isometric tactical combat mode. As long as the solutions don't end up clunky, I shall remain optimistic whatever you've in store.

 

As for the metrics work: Maybe Mike could drop in and talk a little in detail how he's going to do that. I once remember a few years back when I did some Leveldesign for Quake 3. There was some struggle especially at the beginning, when hallways or door heights always needed adjustment because the real-world proportions didn't work out there. With quite some practice though I got the "feeling" in QRadiant right and the ratio of the assets looked okay.

Now I don't know if you'll use your own proprietary Leveleditor to get quicker feedback, or create all the assets/props and layouts in Max/Maya, but at any rate, I always wanted to know the process from the professionals how to best approach this issue.

 

Well, obviously I can't say what the process is at obsidian, but I tend to favour small rounded units, designers tend to enjoy larger unit, and Max certainly deals with larger numbers better than smaller ones.

 

In the case of what I've personally worked upon I try and keep everything small, mesh files tend to be smaller as less numbers are involved, hencer smaller rounded units are favourable in my opinion.

 

But basically 1 world unit tends to be 1 metre in the real world, I suppose americans may actually use a 1 unit as 1 foot, as I imagine they'll build to imperial scales opposed to european metric, although from a programming point of view I'd imagine metric makes more sense.

But basically 1 world unit tends to be 1 metre in the real world, I suppose americans may actually use a 1 unit as 1 foot, as I imagine they'll build to imperial scales opposed to european metric, although from a programming point of view I'd imagine metric makes more sense.

That's pretty large actually. I remember in UnrealEd that 16 Units was an average man's height (~1,8m), but I could be wrong. Anyway, the units don't really concern me so much. More importantly, what's about camera angle, perspective stuff etc.? Certainly that must be defined before the Art pipeline gets locked down. Things like how tall the ceiling is gonna be? Will the PC be able to use First percpective view? In Kotor for example, you couldn't do that so the designer had only to worry about creating parts of the skyscrapers detailed, and in addition move them pretty far outside and do some tricks with skyboxes and background images to fake some depth. Obviously a choice to get that thing work with a mere 64Mb Ram on the Xbox.

Typically we use 1m = 1 game unit. I haven't worked on a project that used feet and inches because the scientific world uses metric, and the people who code games are usually educated people. Feet and inches are just goofy... So there you go.

But basically 1 world unit tends to be 1 metre in the real world, I suppose americans may actually use a 1 unit as 1 foot, as I imagine they'll build to imperial scales opposed to european metric, although from a programming point of view I'd imagine metric makes more sense.

That's pretty large actually. I remember in UnrealEd that 16 Units was an average man's height (~1,8m), but I could be wrong. Anyway, the units don't really concern me so much. More importantly, what's about camera angle, perspective stuff etc.? Certainly that must be defined before the Art pipeline gets locked down. Things like how tall the ceiling is gonna be? Will the PC be able to use First percpective view? In Kotor for example, you couldn't do that so the designer had only to worry about creating parts of the skyscrapers detailed, and in addition move them pretty far outside and do some tricks with skyboxes and background images to fake some depth. Obviously a choice to get that thing work with a mere 64Mb Ram on the Xbox.

 

Perhaps, but it stopped designers asking me questions about big to make everything LOL, I just said Scale everything to one and I'll do it in the engine, it's a pro - con type thing, by making everything a unit size of 1.0 we can scale to any scaling that seems best in regards of the game. Depends on the project.

 

The best camera classes usually have two properties in my humble experience, easy to expand, start from a basic starting point.

 

I personally prefer camera systems that are contained within a single class, other prefer a inherited system, both have the requied properties in my opinion. I may be wrong, this is just the approach I've taken, but to get started you tend to need 3 types of cameras, a static camera(great for quick prototyping of anything that doesn't need a moveable camera), a first person flying camera for situations when you have to move about, and a 3rd person camera that can focus on any object from it's position. You can pretty much extend any of them externally to build any kind of camera system.

 

G³, has a crazy camera developing it took about a month (the camera is linked closely in this respect with the player controls), it needs to do abnormal things in regards to how a camera usually is, the is no up for example, whichever direction is up is dependant upon where you are in the gameworld, it also has to be able to arc between equivilant positions on different faces of the gameworld. In standard games this is never an issue, so in developing the camera I feel we've been working on something very fresh, the only similar thing I have seen is in prey, which only shares some properties.

 

I'm not sure if that even answers your question, but it's all dependant, it's likely the KOTOR skyboxes was perhaps an afterthought, a if we do this and this we can do this cheaply and has effect x.

Typically we use 1m = 1 game unit. I haven't worked on a project that used feet and inches because the scientific world uses metric, and the people who code games are usually educated people. Feet and inches are just goofy... So there you go.

 

I didn't expect that... guess it's a fairly universal approch .

Typically we use 1m = 1 game unit. I haven't worked on a project that used feet and inches because the scientific world uses metric, and the people who code games are usually educated people. Feet and inches are just goofy... So there you go.

Heh that's fine. But I remember when I converted these goofy UnrealEd units into metrics, I always ended up to use ~1,5m for a standard door that's supposed to be ~1,9m. Certainly the camera did have something to do with it as well. Must be that it was attached on the belly. That of course is like 5 years ago when I did Levels for the original UT. Gah, whatever. In Maya, I can at least set everything into metrics, use my own grid and even change the Y-Z axis. What a luxury!

I'm not sure if that even answers your question, but it's all dependant, it's likely the KOTOR skyboxes was perhaps an afterthought, a if we do this and this we can do this cheaply and has effect x.

I'm aware of some basic camera types like standard point-cameras, cameras with aim and pitch axis ect. Or just attach it onto an invisible dummy object to get some shaky "hand camera" feel. Well....what was actually my question?

At any rate, preparing large outdoor maps or sophisticated indoor maps definitely needs some experience. I'm sure Mike has some clues for us wannabes!

We're developing a lot of our own technology for Aliens, but level geometry is being built in XSI.

We're developing a lot of our own technology for Aliens, but level geometry is being built in XSI.

That's good for better artistic control, but has the disadvantage that you just can't make a basic compile and try out the flow of the map quickly. That at least is very important for FPS games, but I see that RPGs have other priorities when it comes to Leveldesign.

We're developing a lot of our own technology for Aliens, but level geometry is being built in XSI.

That's good for better artistic control, but has the disadvantage that you just can't make a basic compile and try out the flow of the map quickly. That at least is very important for FPS games, but I see that RPGs have other priorities when it comes to Leveldesign.

 

I don't see how that is... The geometry is most likely integrated into a level edito of obsidian design.

 

LEGO time.

We're developing a lot of our own technology for Aliens, but level geometry is being built in XSI.

Are you considering the possibility of fan modification expansions?

Yes you're right. I totally misunderstood/read it. Time to get some sleep.