Project Eternity Update #36: Off to our elfhomes, but first...

[Monte Carlo]

Ha ha ha

 

Video killed the radio star... 4E pen and paper copied video games and now a video game copies elements of 4E.

 

As much as I hate 4E I suspect the mechanics inspired by it here (surges especially) might be quite cool in P:E. I'm a bit leery about the mixed damage system, seems a bit paper-scissors-stone (I don't want to have the RPG version of a golf bag of weapons... "Ah, an armoured troll, the Four Iron please").

 

Like everything else though, and yes, those of us who are part of the 1920 x 1200 Ubermensch need love too.

 

Happy Christmas

 

MC

[Hormalakh]

Oh and before I forget... Any update on the website/pledge fulfillment front? would be nice to get some information before the end of the year.

[Gorionsson]

I like the way familiars work. Very good.

Maybe I'll actually use them this time around. Rarely did in the old IE games.

Giving fighters more to do is also very important.

Not so sure about inventory, need some clarification on that one.

 

Excellent update overall.

[C2B]

Great Update!

 

Have a general question though. How is the design team now structured?

[Monte Carlo]

Top of Pack:

 

[Pidesco]

That image with the multiple resolutions is very handy but it's missing most 16:10 resolutions.

 

1440x900

1680x1050

1920x1200

 

All these should be on there. Also, no black bars, please.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Wonderful update! And "elves" here has nothing to do with Santa's elves. PE-elves kill Santa's elves and put them on skewers and slowly turn them over open fires! :D

 

Inventory and top of the pack sounds great.

A meaty, in-context UI is also great.

Your description of the core classes were right up my alley, especially the wizard and her/his familiars (for an old P-n-P'er like me that almost brought tears to me eyes) and his/her scroll searching sounds fantastic. Grimoires FTW, as those pesky kids say nowadays.

Your ideas on armour and weapons are really exciting, and contrary to some earlier poster, I do want the system so complex that you would need a calculator to dive deeper into it, but while on screen in the midst of battle it shoould above all be strategic: piercing, slashing and crushing at the right moment and to the right enemy.

 

Merry X-mas, obsid elves!

[Falkon Swiftblade]

That image with the multiple resolutions is very handy but it's missing most 16:10 resolutions.

 

1440x900

1680x1050

1920x1200

 

All these should be on there. Also, no black bars, please.

 

but they've specified several times they're sticking with a 16:9 ratio not 16:10

[Monte Carlo]

^ It's not like these resolutions are particularly exotic or unusual, is it?

[JonVanCaneghem]

I was wondering if the devs were also cosidering dividing a weapon into %slashing/%piercing styles too. For example, you can slash with a sword, but you could also pierce with one.

 

Maybe it could be interesting to try style hybrids and see how they play out too?

 

But, I am strange.

 

The question is: are you the REAL JVC? If you are, just wanted to salute you sir. Your M&M series was what started my love for dungeon crawling RPGs. Cheers.

 

Not the real one, but for some reason I found the name kind of funny/cool when I was a kid and it stuck as an internet handle. MM3 was my first PC game and definitely a brilliant work of gaming.

 

I like the idea of allowing multiple damage types for weapons. Something like a greatsword has an edge, but even with a dulled edge it can shatter bone due to its sheer weight. Axes are similar. Spears would be piercing but probably have some impact to them. Instead of making the player choose different types of attacks, you could just have the normal attack with each weapon do a varying portion of 1-2 types of damage.

 

Being able to thrust or slash with some weapons might be cool too. Makes a single weapon doubly useful. A lot will depend on how many weapon sets are allowed and whether there will be a penalty for swapping sets or if it will be instant.

[Pidesco]

That image with the multiple resolutions is very handy but it's missing most 16:10 resolutions.

 

1440x900

1680x1050

1920x1200

 

All these should be on there. Also, no black bars, please.

 

but they've specified several times they're sticking with a 16:9 ratio not 16:10

 

This isn't a case of one or the other. It should be perfectly feasible to allow for both, given that the highest res will be 1440p.

[Lord of Lost Socks]

but they've specified several times they're sticking with a 16:9 ratio not 16:10

 

Basically giving Europe, where 16:10 is normal, the finger? I doubt Obsidian would be that dickish. At least I hope they're not.

I prefer 16:10 because it saves me a lot of time scrolling.

Edited December 19, 2012 by Lord of Lost Socks

[Ineth]

To be honest, I hate the IWD1 UI. But I don't know what the IWD2 UI looks like, so I'll have to look into that later...

 

Regarding the art style, the BG2 user interface is arguably nicer, but regarding layout and usability I think IWD2 has the best UI of all the Infinity Engine games...

• Switchable weapons combos, instead of making simple tasks like switching between a Bow and a two-weapon combo a frustrating multi-step procedure like in all the other IE games.
  

• Verbose character sheets with info logically organized into multiple tabs and convenient listing of all the base and bonus values that add up to effecive values, rather than only having a tiny scrollable textbox with incomplete, inconsistent, and inconveniently organised statistics dumped into it like in all the other IE games.
  

• Nice big full-body portraits on the character sheet screens.
  

Edited December 19, 2012 by Ineth

[Falkon Swiftblade]

but they've specified several times they're sticking with a 16:9 ratio not 16:10

 

Basically giving Europe, where 16:10 is the norm, the finger? I doubt Obsidian would be that dickish. At least I hope they're not.

 

I dunno, I'm just saying what they've mentioned a few times now. I'm sure it'll probably still work at that ratio, it'll just be a little wonky.

Edited December 19, 2012 by Falkon Swiftblade

[Rostere]

UI Design - Tim and I have been talking about our user interfaces recently. We want to make sure that we improve the functionality of the original designs without completely losing the feeling of those interfaces. One thing we want to avoid is making the UI too "minimalist". We don't want it to feel bloated, of course, but we also recognize that the IE games had "solid" interfaces. They looked like they were made of materials -- wood, stone, and metal -- and had substance to them. When you look at the interfaces for the IE games, they help immerse you in each setting. We'd like to do the same for Project Eternity.

Sounds great

[Inertia]

JVC your solution of as i comprehend it (sorry if I'm misinterpreting your words.) limiting the "Perfect optimist build" that you decide based on whatever reasoning and how you play a class. To how you traditionally played a fighter or whatever would be a cool solution if they were making a game for just you and not at the very least 75 thousand people.

Edited December 19, 2012 by Inertia

[Merlkir]

I'm glad they realized what was so awesome about the IE games' UI. One of the many reasons I love Baldur's Gate II so much is the GUI, the mosaics in the menu and loading screens. Do something like that, please!

[Sedrefilos]

I just want to add, I hope you guys make the UI nice and readable, or add the ability to enlarge text size if possible, for people like myself who want to play on resolutions such as 1920x1080 but are using television setups from our chairs. It's always depressing to me when a game always makes its UI incredibly tiny, and would make a game like this unplayable. Maybe some kind of TV mode, if the text is too small to read from a setup like this?

 

Man my biggest problems in IE and the like games (yes bigger than level design and other mechanics) was the size of the text!! Damn, especially in NWN2 and TOEE it was too small making me skip dialogues, that were not voiced, many times. Please make bigger texts or at least let us scale their size.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

I just want to add, I hope you guys make the UI nice and readable, or add the ability to enlarge text size if possible, for people like myself who want to play on resolutions such as 1920x1080 but are using television setups from our chairs. It's always depressing to me when a game always makes its UI incredibly tiny, and would make a game like this unplayable. Maybe some kind of TV mode, if the text is too small to read from a setup like this?

 

Man my biggest problems in IE and the like games (yes bigger than level design and other mechanics) was the size of the text!! Damn, especially in NWN2 and TOEE it was too small making me skip dialogues, that were not voiced, many times. Please make bigger texts or at least let us scale their size.

 

thats super easy to fix too, just use % and if they use em's its speedy quick to implement.

[PrimeJunta]

Great update.

 

I'm confused about a detail regarding damage types. You say that slashing is highest base damage, piercing negates a certain amount of armor damage threshold, but crushing is best against armor. Right. So slash against unarmored opponents, crush against heavily armored ones. Makes sense.

 

My question is, when would piercing be the preferred damage type? Against medium armor? How would the maths work for this?

[Monte Carlo]

but they've specified several times they're sticking with a 16:9 ratio not 16:10

 

Basically giving Europe, where 16:10 is the norm, the finger? I doubt Obsidian would be that dickish. At least I hope they're not.

 

I dunno, I'm just saying what they've mentioned a few times now. I'm sure it'll probably still work at that ratio, it'll just be a little wonky.

 

Why should we have to put up with 'wonky' FFS?

 

Call me old-fashioned but I'd prefer 'optimal.' A large chunk of the backers for this project hail from outside the USA and would like to see their regional norms catered for when it comes to stuff like this.

[Monte Carlo]

Great update.

 

I'm confused about a detail regarding damage types. You say that slashing is highest base damage, piercing negates a certain amount of armor damage threshold, but crushing is best against armor. Right. So slash against unarmored opponents, crush against heavily armored ones. Makes sense.

 

My question is, when would piercing be the preferred damage type? Against medium armor? How would the maths work for this?

 

Excellent question.

 

I think the gist of it is that thrusting weapons like daggers and misericords are great at getting into gaps in armour and causing damage. In fact, some small stabbing weapons were designed specifically for this purpose.

 

However, for me too much realism can be a bad thing. 'Heroic logic' might be a better term: as my character gets more skilful and awesome his use of weapons and experience more than makes up for less optimal weapon types. Conan doesn't make carefully graded decisions using a spreadsheet, he picks up the nearest pointy object and kills ****.

 

Ditto your classic Aramis / Porthos musketeer, a swordsman so skilled that his use of a rapier and parrying dagger allows him to best opponents whether they are wearing mail, plate or fricking power armour.

Edited December 19, 2012 by Monte Carlo

[Cluas]

Great update....

 

I'm speechless actually

[Leucha]

Great update !

 

But I'm curious. Will there be any kind of items usuable during combat ? Like potions, parchments, etc. ?

 

Concerning debate around 16:9 and 16:10, I don't know why there would be black ligns in 16:10. Juste take the higher resolution image, and make it fill your whole screen as much as it can without deformation, that mean a 16:9 slide would just be a bit croped lateraly in 16:10, and you'd just have to scroll your cam a bit to see the whole slide.

 

Edited December 19, 2012 by Leucha

[fortuntek]

Great update.

 

I'm confused about a detail regarding damage types. You say that slashing is highest base damage, piercing negates a certain amount of armor damage threshold, but crushing is best against armor. Right. So slash against unarmored opponents, crush against heavily armored ones. Makes sense.

 

My question is, when would piercing be the preferred damage type? Against medium armor? How would the maths work for this?

 

Excellent question.

 

I think the gist of it is that thrusting weapons like daggers and misericords are great at getting into gaps in armour and causing damage. In fact, some small stabbing weapons were designed specifically for this purpose.

[snip]

 

I believe another way of saying what this means (correct me if I'm wrong) is that piercing weapons are not preferred against any particular type of armor, but might be a good "balanced" choice that is not the absolute best against either extreme, but remains a decent overall choice against any. A middle option, basically.

 

As pointed out above, excessive realism might not be the answer here... personally, I'm totally fine with this arrangement

Edited December 19, 2012 by fortuntek