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[Loranc]

[–]Justhammer

So I just watched a video on Mecanim. Wow! The characters have the potential to look great! Now your animation and art teams have their work cut out for them!

 

Obsidian_Ent[S]

JESawyer: It's nice that Mecanim apparently makes certain things (like retargeting animations) much easier. Having to port animations across all of the different race/sex combinations is typically a pain. Mecanim handles retargeting pretty easily.

[Loranc]

[–]hideo__kuze

Nice. I like the idea of the worshiped deity affecting the spell list.

Is there a deity of death?

Necro magic for the win.

 

Obsidian_Ent[S]

JESawyer: There's a little bit about DEATH in today's update.

[Loranc]

delias_

I've seen a lot of designers say that they've enjoyed working within the confines of another world. However, in the case of giants like LucasArts and Hasbro/WoTC, there's an almost censorship-level restriction of where you can take a story.

While we already know from KOTOR 2 that this restriction can be fun from a writing perspective, from a world-building perspective, I imagine it will be an interesting task to create locations/lore/history that you can turn on its head based on characters' preconceptions (and to which the audience does not have any reference).

Since everything in P:E is essentially a new design, I imagine you guys would have to work in a way that you're having to continually outsmart yourselves (and your creations).

 

Obsidian_Ent[S]

Chris Avellone pontificates:

I feel creating a world (and slang and culture) often is just as time-consuming as researching someone else's franchise (for example, Star Wars required a lot of research into the expanded universe, not just to become familiar with it, but to understand what stories and elements had already been told). As such, we only had 5-6 comments on our story from LucasArts over the whole course of the project because we'd done our due diligence.

And we don't work on franchises because we don't have our own ideas, it's just the way things have shaken out. I feel we've had opportunities to examine those franchises in new ways that players appreciate (K2 and Mask of the Betrayer).

[Loranc]

]Aravilar

What are your plans concerning the loot system of the game? Personally, I loved the Baldur's Gate approach of items beeing set in one specific location of the game/ with certain characters. It motivates to explore every corner of the game and once you figured everything out gave you the experience of really knowing the world. Random loot should be very limited imho.

 

Obsidian_Ent[S]

JESawyer: We will rely more on placed loot than randomized loot. The IWD games had a huge amount of unique items and most of those were hand-placed (e.g. Pale Justice). I like writing the unique histories of those items, anyway.

There might be a tiny amount of randomization, but that will likely happen at that the individual gear level. E.g. 5 bandits are placed on a map. When the map loads, each will randomly be given a pair of shortswords, a longsword and shield, or a bigass mace.

[Loranc]

]anexanhume

Hi guys!

May seem like a silly question, but do you have any stretch goals in mind beyond 3.5M if it really takes off, or is that the final one?

Also, are you guys totally against the idea of a console port if PC is still the lead platform?

BTW, I started at $20 and worked my way up to $62, so good job on adding stuff people want.

 

Obsidian_EntS

Chris Avellone glances at Adam for a second, then continues:

We're almost constantly evaluating and designing new stretch goals. The pacing and amount of funding has demanded it.

We have no plans for a console port, we want to focus on the PC (and Mac and Linux). Not doing a console title has been freeing in a lot of respects for designing this game, and we don't want to limit that freedom.

[Loranc]

]anexanhume

Hi guys!

May seem like a silly question, but do you have any stretch goals in mind beyond 3.5M if it really takes off, or is that the final one?

Also, are you guys totally against the idea of a console port if PC is still the lead platform?

BTW, I started at $20 and worked my way up to $62, so good job on adding stuff people want.

 

Obsidian_Ent[S]

Chris Avellone smiles:

Thanks for upping the amounts, glad to see the work for the tiers is paying off. Most of the kudos are to Adam and Feargus, they're constantly examining the forums for new potential things people may want and finding a way to incorporate them.

[Loranc]

goldenhearted

This one piece of art from Project Eternity had me intrigued since it gives of a Lovecraftian vibe. So I might as well ask, will there be quests, story elements and the like that have Lovecraftian influences? Because the idea of exploring PE's world and running into some cosmic horror (or something similar) **** makes me excited.

 

Obsidian_Ent[S]

JESawyer: I don't think we're necessarily going FULL LOVECRAFT, but I do want the dark and scary places of Project Eternity to feel appropriately terror-inducing, even from an isometric perspective. Eír Glanfath's ruins are supposed to contain some scary stuff, so we don't want the player to yawn when they kick open the door and face Skeleton #242.

[Loranc]

ReverendBizarre

Can you share any (minor) details on the magic system for the game?

 

Obsidian_Ent[S]

JESawyer: We haven't developed the systems in detail, but wizard and priest magic may feel similar to their A/D&D counterparts, with the change that low-level powers will return after (sometimes during) battles without requiring the need to rest. Ciphers and chanters abilities will likely feel much different, both in flavor and in their mechanics.

[Loranc]

Nosferax

Right, sometimes in New Vegas the speech (or speak?) skill did feel like an instant win button.

 

Obsidian_Ent[S] Chris Avellone glances furitively around:

Yeah, there were two points where it broke convention because I felt it needed to - one was with Lanius, and the second was with Ulysses. If you kept spamming the Speech button and choosing the first option without really listening to what they were saying, you'd end up screwing yourself. The reason I don't feel good about that is because that wasn't the precedent set with other conversations, so I don't know if I'd do it again if I had the chance.

But in Project: Eternity, I definitely want to do this. People who don't care about dialogue shouldn't take Speech skills anyway - those that do should have fun exploring the conversation and seeing what they can take away from it.

[Loranc]

]Tnbred

Part of what really makes BG2 the best RPG so far is the kind of power you end up getting toward the end of the game. I used to play spell casters and really enjoyed time stop spells and other kind of level 9 Spells. Will we be able to reach such power for project Eternity ? Are we to expect seeing a Time Stop spell again ? Thank you for a great project and a great idea. You have my money !

 

Obsidian_Ent[S]

JESawyer: We'll have to see where Project Eternity winds up. We want to leave room to grow, after all.

I think making the player feel relative power growth is important, though, whether we're talking about getting Fireball in Pool of Radiance or Time Stop in BG2. I think that people enjoy hitting those late-game points where some really powerful options open up. As long as those options don't make late-game challenges irrelevant, it's nice to go back to earlier encounter styles and just wipe the floor with everyone that previously gave you grief.

[Lysen]

I think it wasn't posted:

 

[–]Feldoth

I'd like to know more about classes, multi-classing, and character customization in general. To that end, will there be multi-classing? If not, will you ensure variability in character design (within a class) in some other way?

My perspective here is that multi-classing allows for an almost limitless number of potential characters, but isn't the only way to achieve that end. Therefore what I really want to know is how committed you are to ensuring we have the ability to make large numbers of unique characters.

(breaking this up into multiple questions, so you can answer them individually)

 

[–]Obsidian_Ent[S]

Tim Cain: we are considering adding multi-classing, but we are focusing on getting the base classes implemented first. Between choices of race and culture (which will open background traits to pick), people can make a lot of character customizations that affect game play directly. Then as you level, you again have choices to make about what abilities to take.

[Loranc]

[–]delias_

I've seen a lot of designers say that they've enjoyed working within the confines of another world. However, in the case of giants like LucasArts and Hasbro/WoTC, there's an almost censorship-level restriction of where you can take a story.

While we already know from KOTOR 2 that this restriction can be fun from a writing perspective, from a world-building perspective, I imagine it will be an interesting task to create locations/lore/history that you can turn on its head based on characters' preconceptions (and to which the audience does not have any reference).

Since everything in P:E is essentially a new design, I imagine you guys would have to work in a way that you're having to continually outsmart yourselves (and your creations).

 

Obsidian_Ent[S] Chris Avellone adds:

One thing I'd say is while it may seem that some franchise holders are restrictive, if you go into the developer relationship aware of the "bookends" at the outset, it's not hard to craft an interesting powerful story - in fact, it makes it an interesting challenge, and one thing I've liked from working on multiple franchises is each one has challenged me to think about stories and characters in different ways, which only helps the craft.

[Loranc]

I probably missed a few things thanks for that.

[Loranc]

Aravilar

What are your plans concerning the loot system of the game? Personally, I loved the Baldur's Gate approach of items beeing set in one specific location of the game/ with certain characters. It motivates to explore every corner of the game and once you figured everything out gave you the experience of really knowing the world. Random loot should be very limited imho.

 

Obsidian_Ent[S]

Chris Avellone nods:

I loved making item lore for specific items in IWD1, 2, and Torment. They were like making little item short stories because you could hand-craft each one (and handcraft their powers to make the story stronger and vice versa).

[Loranc]

gyshall

Do you guys have any plans for a more "robust" Economy than what was in the old IE games? I've always found it somewhat immersion breaking/jarring to run to a town to dump all my loot off at some merchant, and his total gold never changes, or his stock/item availability never changes or reacts to world events.

 

Obsidian_Ent[S]

JESawyer: Personally, I think economy considerations are interesting, as are alternate currencies, waiting for restocks/being forced to seek out other vendors. We'll have to see how it ties into PE, but I definitely like exploring that stuff.

[Piccolo]

Any chance someone on Reddit could ask whether we'll be seeing any more artwork like the dwarf ranger before the Kickstarter comes to an end? Also, a name of the artist would be nice, as I haven't seen this mentioned yet.

 

There's a lot of discussion going on at the moment about various portrait artists... but I really don't think we've seen enough from whoever did that piece.

[SqueakyCat]

I didn't see this one posted. It was one part of a three part question:

 

Question:

 

Could we get clarification on the exp system you guys are thinking about? It implies you won’t give experience for kills how does this work with things like the mega dungeon? I like using non-combat skills to glean an advantage or get something extra out of a situation not to necessarily solve everything. I feel like if i know I’m going to get the same reward for not fighting if there is a situation where i can avoid combat i probably will and it’s not because combat isn't my preferred play style but because fighting in that instance would feel kind of pointless.

 

J. E. Sawyer:

 

We plan to grant XP for exploration-based quests and objectives, so if there's something like the mega-dungeon that's focused on moving from level to level toward a goal, we will award portions of XP for achieving those goals. Most players will likely use combat to get to that point, but that doesn't need to be the only solution.

 

 

Well, to me, that's disappointing. I was left with the impression in an earlier thread that there would be other ways to accumulate experience.

 

So, now I have to re-evaluate this whole thing one more time. It sure won't feel like an I.E. game with this feature (at least not to me). Oh well . . .

[Lysen]

Another interesting one about languages, and then I'll stop to avoid double-posting.

 

[–]Merlkir

How are the languages of PE's world being made? We've gotten quite a bit of lore in the 20th update and the names there were a bit of a mixed bag. Some sound vaguely Earthly (especially the elven ones remind me of Gaelic or something like that), others are quite alien.

Do you guys have a linguist on the team, or are the writers "just winging it"?

There's a discussion about the question here:

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61362-languages-in-pe-how-are-they-made/

 

[–]Obsidian_Ent[S]

JESawyer: I'm developing most of the language conventions. I start with a base language's grammar and vocabulary and tweak it, then (try) to keep records of those rules. Aedyran is English with a base of Old English. Vailian is based on Italian (except it's cased). Glanfathan is based on Irish but I've introduced different grammatical case rules. Generally, I try to avoid using real words directly, altering them slightly in the process of adapting them for the game. My goal is for the feeling to be present, but not the words directly.

[Rabain]

 

Well, to me, that's disappointing. I was left with the impression in an earlier thread that there would be other ways to accumulate experience.

 

So, now I have to re-evaluate this whole thing one more time. It sure won't feel like an I.E. game with this feature (at least not to me). Oh well . . .

 

I agree with you, though I'm hoping a lot of these things will be revised during development and testing. If something turns out to feel bad gameplay wise I'm sure they will consider alternatives.

[Loranc]

hoboninja

My roommate wanted me to ask you guys about internships I guess?

He interned at Thomson Reuters this past summer but really wants to try and get into the game development field.

He absolutely loves Obsidian, he has played every game you have ever made, and then like every game back from Black Isle/Interplay. He has a huge nerd boner for the Baldur's Gate series, and keeps bugging me to go and play them, I started the first one but haven't gotten around to playing it.

He saw that you have some internship positions available, what are the requirements for that kind of stuff?

Like would a Computer Science senior with a past internship and like a 3.5+ GPA qualify for that?

What type of stuff does an intern do there?

(I won't qualify for anything lol I have like a 2.5 GPA and no internship experience... :/ )

Edit: Answer this one instead,http://www.reddit.co..._sawyer/c6mu4wj

It's more general and applies to anyone instead of my kind of specific question.

 

Obsidian_Ent[S]

Chris puts hiring shirt on and takes off pants:

Applying to jobs@obsidian.net generally is the best way to go, the type of internship varies according to project. One piece of advice I can offer is for anyone looking to break into the industry, volunteering for a Kickstarter you like doing minor tasks is a great way to get experience and help out a cause you really believe in (I've been trying to play matchmaker with Eternity and Wasteland 2 and with other projects, with some success).

[Loranc]

LinkOnFire

What overhauls to the combat system of Icewind Dale/Baldur's Gate series are you thinking of including?

 

Obsidian_Ent[S]

JESawyer: We won't be using a strict round-based system, so the timing of actions will be much more flexible for us to tune. That will help a lot. Also, we don't necessarily need to base our number values or modifiers on dice or "addition/subtraction-friendly" math. I think this will help us tune damage values and modifiers much more. Finally, we'd like to ensure that a) non-casters have more things to do more often (e.g. fighters knocking dudes down, self-replenishing Stamina, etc.) and b) that casters have low-level abilities that come back without needing to rest -- basically, to mitigate the desire to rest-spam.

[C2B]

We plan to grant XP for exploration-based quests and objectives, so if there's something like the mega-dungeon that's focused on moving from level to level toward a goal, we will award portions of XP for achieving those goals. Most players will likely use combat to get to that point, but that doesn't need to be the only solution.

 

 

Well, to me, that's disappointing. I was left with the impression in an earlier thread that there would be other ways to accumulate experience.

 

So, now I have to re-evaluate this whole thing one more time. It sure won't feel like an I.E. game with this feature (at least not to me). Oh well . . .

 

What the you talking about. How are you reading out of that, that xp-gaining options are limited?

 

He says that NOWHERE. There's no definite anywhere in that sentence.

Edited October 15, 2012 by C2B

[Loranc]

perkel666

What are you thinking now ? You project will get funded in few hours. Also do you plan some party ?

 

Obsidian_Ent[S]

JESawyer: It's pretty exciting and yes, we will be having a little party tomorrow! I think we're going to stream it and I'm sure Feargus and Adam will do some embarrassing things!

[Loranc]

We plan to grant XP for exploration-based quests and objectives, so if there's something like the mega-dungeon that's focused on moving from level to level toward a goal, we will award portions of XP for achieving those goals. Most players will likely use combat to get to that point, but that doesn't need to be the only solution.

 

 

Well, to me, that's disappointing. I was left with the impression in an earlier thread that there would be other ways to accumulate experience.

 

So, now I have to re-evaluate this whole thing one more time. It sure won't feel like an I.E. game with this feature (at least not to me). Oh well . . .

 

What the you talking about. How are you reading out of that, that xp-gaining options are limited?

 

He says that NOWHERE.

 

Yeah not sure how they read that, he said you could do it by combat but you're not forced to, there's alternate ways to get exp without combat.

[Loranc]

TheAberration

You said that HP will be divided into Health and Stamina and that Stamina will regenerate on its own quickly. Does that mean it'll regenerate on its own even in combat?

 

Obsidian_Ent[S]

JESawyer: We'll have to see, but possibly. I like the idea of making a tactical retreat specifically to rest for a few seconds.