Screenshot... what ya'll think

[Delterius]

Its my new wallpaper.

[santanzchild]

Perfect resolution for my monitor too

Edited October 12, 2012 by santanzchild

[limaxophobiacq]

The waterfall and statues are amazing, and the bridge is quite nice. The grass and dirt is well, grass and dirt, so I guess there are limits to what you can do.

Edited October 12, 2012 by limaxophobiacq

[Malavinious]

This screenshot looks amazing, since the developers were nice enough to give us a 1920x1080 version it's now my wallpaper.

[santanzchild]

The waterfall and statues are amazing, and the bridge is quite nice. The grass and dirt is well, grass and dirt, so I guess there are limits to what you can do.

 

That's where your wrong its not grass and dirt its pixy dust and fairy crap!

[JWestfall]

Obsidian should institute a "Screenshot Thursday" tradition, where every Thursday they post up a new screenie of some part of their current development. They wouldn't all have to be as friggin' cool as this one, of course, but even just a snippet of them working with their tools, or a screen grab of the WIP from an artist's current render scene.

 

Come on Obsidian, how about it?

[rjshae]

Had a closer look. Besides the overall beauty, I love the level of surface clutter detail you get in this illustration. It looks much more plausibly realistic than many 3D rendered surfaces in games like Oblivion or Fallout 3.

[Adhin]

Yeah I like it, personally my favorite view angle is around 35 degree, 45 or higher of most IE games always just felt awkwardly off to me.. any some games going even higher, 70-80ish always just make me not want to play them. I don't see much of a reason to do a 45 for indoors vs the 30-ish for outdoor/grander scale areas personally. In either instance you'll end up having to have the close-wall mostly not-there anyway. That said due to the characters and some object/particl enviromental stuff being 3D based they could do custom angles for any number of places and just change the 3D camera angle with out having to re-do assets like if it was purely sprite based. Soo that's nifty.

 

Also I dunno why I didn't think about it before, but yeah rendering back in the day took for freaking EVER to get anywhere 24+ hours isn't really an exageration of how long it could take to render out stuff. Now and days, waay more detail, far better rendering methods and that image could of taken less then an hour. Just think about the freakin' time difference development wise in iteration for testing to fine-tuning stuff compared to back then. Crazyness.

 

-edit-

Oh, and I love the way it looks, especially the waterfall. Can't stress how nice it is to see a good particle effected waterfall then some sloppy wavy water texture like a lot of games do. Love the nearly painted feel to it.

Edited October 12, 2012 by Adhin

[nikolokolus]

Kudos to the artist that created that environment. Really makes me want to spend some time looking around.

[bronzepoem]

LOoking at the beautiful water, I want to have a swim:) Could my characters swim in PE~

[Ignatius]

It is perfect.

[comport9]

Looks great, my only concern is for animation. Often with they type of system you're proposing to use animations such as water and wind are left out, or at best are scripted without any enviromental interaction (Such as tossing a baddy into the water doesn't create ripple effects...)

 

Any insight into whether the environment will be more interactive?

[Shevek]

I am dieing to see it in animated.

[JWestfall]

Looks great, my only concern is for animation. Often with they type of system you're proposing to use animations such as water and wind are left out, or at best are scripted without any enviromental interaction (Such as tossing a baddy into the water doesn't create ripple effects...)

 

Any insight into whether the environment will be more interactive?

 

FWIW, a couple quotes:

 

From the Kickstarter comments (through the wonderful summary post by Ink Blot):

Question: I know you're using effects for things like water splashing on rocks, but can I assume the waterfall itself, and the river below will also have animated flowing water? How far will you take it? Animated grass from the wind? Swaying trees? Too early to say?

Feargus: We are going to try to get as much as we can animating - at some point it will start causing memory and performance issues, so we will work to have the stuff that should really, really animate moving first and then work our way down from there.

 

From a post by Sawyer earlier today in the Update #20 Announcement thread:

We're trying out various animation solutions for the waterfall, spray, and the pool/river. They will definitely be animated, but we want to leave our options open to support a wide range of hardware without making the area art files even larger.

Edited October 12, 2012 by JWestfall

[Ignatius]

Honestly, I doubt we'll see all that much animation. Which is to say, enough animation. Basically whatever the old IE games had. Environs were very static, but due to well placed animation, never felt too much so.

Edited October 12, 2012 by Ignatius

[Osvir]

Obsidian should institute a "Screenshot Thursday" tradition, where every Thursday they post up a new screenie of some part of their current development. They wouldn't all have to be as friggin' cool as this one, of course, but even just a snippet of them working with their tools, or a screen grab of the WIP from an artist's current render scene.

 

Come on Obsidian, how about it?

 

That almost sounds like a "monthly subscription" thing.

 

EDIT: Been thinking about this for a couple of days, with Kickstarter and all and monthly subscriptions for MMO's and such.

 

What is the difference between paying monthly for a game in development and for a game that you play?

 

The one in development is an investment for something you believe in, the other one is entertainment.

Edited October 12, 2012 by Osvir

[Shevek]

Honestly, I doubt we'll see all that much animation. Which is to say, enough animation. Basically whatever the old IE games had. Environs were very static, but due to well placed animation, never felt too much so.

 

I am hoping for it to be as good as ToEE or better as far as animation goes. ToEE had trees swaying in the breeze, leaves russling about, etc. I think a scene like one in that screenshot will be VERY difficult to animate though. I am eager to see what they do with that.

[Shadenuat]

Well the problem with this "screenshot", or rather concept-art, is...

Well, there is that one thing...

Err, you know, I think that when you look at it ...

Any critic would say th-...

 

you know what? **** it, even with all my poison carefully stored by years of decline and betrayal, I can't say anything bad about this thing. It's beautiful.

[Chunkyman]

I like the scenery, it's beautiful. But I really want to see some characters standing around in it.

[Calyps0]

Very nice screenshot. I especially like the carved out statues by the entrance. Almost gives me a feeling of Lord Of The Rings.

[Piccolo]

It looks amazing. Better than I was expecting.

 

And I actually really love the slightly less top-down angle than the IE games. I think the people who are unsure just need to get used to it.

[Gibbscape_Torment]

I hope that, despite it being 2D, there is still a lot of environmental animation. One thing i didn't like about the old IE games was that i often felt like i was walking through a painting, as opposed to an actual environment.

[Adhin]

Yeah I don't have to much of a worry with that, I get what you mean with them not being to animated half the time though. ToEE did a lot more animation though as it used 3D objects 'on' a 2D pre-rendered background, allowed for a lot more that way. That and considering its a marriage of 2D and 3D and... well its just not mid-90s anymore, that waterfall could easily be emitter based, particle stuff, instead of some 5 frame image file they put together for that one specific map. Which leads to animated stuff like that not being a non-stop 100% repeat loop which.. ultimately just adds to the whole effect in my opinion.

From the picture, looks like there currently using a very basic shader water for testing to see what they like. 99% of the cheapest computers you can buy right now can handle that stuff pretty easily so I'd imagine that's what majority of water will end up being. Sure smaller things like tiny wall fountains or basis will have something else but... Also I could be completely wrong but the tree and a few of the shrubs look like 3D objects to me. Which could easily translate into movement when you get close to them (shrubs) or gentle foilage sway due to the wind, that kinda stuff.

They just have a lot more options available to em now and days then compared to 1996-2000 when the infinity games where made, and hell Fallout was older then that heh. Can't wait to see some actual footage, and plenty more screen shots.

[infernofrost]

Greatness! This is (as a lot of us) exactly what I was hoping for. I do agree that the angle isn't as high as what were used to in the older games, so it causes a little hiccup in my brain, but I trust these guys and can't wait to see what's next!

[nikolokolus]

Temple of Elemental Evil had a really nice aesthetic. If PE can achieve something like the environmental animations in that game that's plenty good enough for me.