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

[Jotra]

 

 

I'm just saying, look out for 16~17" Laptops with a 3840x2160 screen being introduced into the higher end market segments at CES in but 3 weeks and more and more monitors like this 4K one @ 32" being brought to market and getting affordable (even in the lower price segments) and replacing the standard resolutions of today soon: http://www.engadget....zo-lcd-monitor/

 

I'll eat my shoe if 4k monitors have even 1% market penetration by the time PE is out. Looking at Steam stats about 15% of users still have ancient resolutions like 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 1024 and 2/3rds have resolution of 1680x1050 or lower, with just over 1% using any resolution above 1920x1200.

[cyberarmy]

Rogue

• Sneak Attack - This damage bonus applies whenever the rogue "flanks" an enemy or when the rogue is hidden from an enemy. Flanking means that the rogue is within a short distance of the target and on the "opposite" side of that enemy from an adjacent ally.
  

 

I hope there'll be some sort of flanking bonus for other classes as well.

I'm not actually terribly fond of the rogue = main damage dealer mindset prevalent in rpg's of today, but I can understand the reasoning.

 

 

Rogues are hardly main damage dealers nowadays, its generally two handed weapon/dual wield using warriors, especially in late levels whlie casters rule mid levels and they are easier to use than rogues. Most of rogues damage lost when they are against undead/mechanic enemies and in large battles. I end upusing rogues for mainly their utility nowadays.

 

I would like to see some rogue love in damage/playability wise, like a real fencer/musketeer type with lots'o dirty tricks.

[D3xter]

I'll eat my shoe if 4k monitors have even 1% market penetration by the time PE is out. Looking at Steam stats about 15% of users still have ancient resolutions like 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 1024 and 2/3rds have resolution of 1680x1050 or lower, with just over 1% using any resolution above 1920x1200.

Steam Stats don't mean much if there's the weight of entire industries behind it (which seems very likely right now, after more than 10 years of barely any progress on that front they seem to be finally ready to move on - and people still got these "ancient resolutions" because that's what Netbooks or small Notebooks you can buy are still running today, which is also about to change), notice how for instance the amount of DX11 capable cards nearly doubled the last year on those "Steam Stats" because they basically don't sell older models anymore. That is very likely to happen with monitors within the next 3-5 years. That's why I find it hilarious when people make plans to "buy 2560x1440 in 2015".

Just look at HDTV adoption trends, between 2005-2007 barely anyone had one, with Blu-Ray only becoming a market throughout 2007 and in 2012 it tops off 75% of the TVs in the US. 4K will be a "thing" across the board with TVs (now even with Samsung and LG on board, putting their plans for OLED displays on the backburner because of low yields: http://www.hdtvtest....01212182469.htm ), movies, the upcoming consoles for select titles and PCs in the two-three upcoming years starting with 2013. And all I'm saying is that provided Obsidian manages to deliver a good game it will run into the same kind of problems all older Infinity Engine games run into nowadays and early in development would always be the best way to address something like that if at all possible.

 

But they've already said no, so that's that. xD I'm sure 10-12 years from now when someone might try making an "Enhanced Edition" of it for displays running at 7680×4320, provided it's worth it, these kind of threads would be a great laugh.

Edited December 20, 2012 by D3xter

[Theobeau]

Thanks for the detailed update;

a unique take on inventory / wgt restrictions that managed to put together a limited inventory without restricting a player's wish to smash every barrel or crate and rip apart every satchel or Hessian sack in order to make sure that they get every damned copper piece of stuff out there in Eternity-world

 

I also like the potential with the 4 main classes; combining active and passive abilities + skills + feats means a lot of potential for customising and trying out different builds. However as a player who sometimes doesn't want to have to plan out his character's advancement tree to the nth degree, I hope that the "default" options don't produce too nerfed PCs.

 

I hope the OBS team enjoy their well deserved elfhome time (though aren't there devs who are more dwarf or even Aumaua -home people?)

[LadyCrimson]

But they've already said no, so that's that. xD I'm sure 10-12 years from now when someone might try making an "Enhanced Edition" of it for displays running at 7680×4320, provided it's worth it, these kind of threads would be a great laugh.

Not to be rude, but people who believe that gaming companies should design their video games based on what-if considerations for 10-12 years in the future give me a great laugh.

[sesobebo]

If, for some wacky reason, we continue to inflate resolutions while keeping monitor sizes the same, I do not believe the player would benefit much from rendering out 4x as many pixels as our high-res target.

 

true, no one's gonna suffer for having to have doubled pixels on 300 ppi display, but calling this progress whacky is just unimaginative...

 

LCDs are finally! - after 10 years of devolving to stagnation - catching up to CRTs.

 

 

 

p.s.

i'd say 1920x1080 resolutions are so popular for the same reason communist party is so popular in china - there's hardly anything else to choose from*.

 

*in the sub $400 range**

**talking about the monitor prices here

[D3xter]

But they've already said no, so that's that. xD I'm sure 10-12 years from now when someone might try making an "Enhanced Edition" of it for displays running at 7680×4320, provided it's worth it, these kind of threads would be a great laugh.

Not to be rude, but people who believe that gaming companies should design their video games based on what-if considerations for 10-12 years in the future give me a great laugh.

It would be great if they could manage the considerations around the time of release or shortly after. xD

 

Most 3D games scale up infinitely at that and are only constrained by low-resolution textures and low-poly assets, but for instance System Shock 2 made in 1999 still played fine a year or so ago when I did a playthrough @ 1920x1200 since they render real-time, plays even better with some of the High Resolution Texture Mods and it's gotten a new Patch just like two months ago: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/26/hooray-system-shock-2-thief-2-get-usability-patches/.

 

"2D" pre-rendered games are a special consideration, since they will age proportionally to the display technology and Icewind Dale for instance, made a year later is rather painful to play nowadays without Mods due to that reason. If they're ever to be "updated" and made playable afterwards it's only possible from the production side.

Edited December 20, 2012 by D3xter

[martix]

UI - Please think ahead.

1. Allow it to be customizeable.

2. Hotkeys for everything.

3. Make sure it works in more aspect ratios - god knows what people will be using later. I don't think anyone making IE anyone thought about when 16:9 would be big, or even just that they will still be played when it got big.

 

Technologically, please look at making it multi-threaded. By the time of release I don't think there will be anything with less than 4 (logical) cores, let alone 1(broadwell will probably be mainstream at that time).

Edited December 20, 2012 by martix

[Wench]

I decided to make a few simple html pages to demonstrate somewhat how the games scaling will work (from what I understand). Things aren't ideal of course as there has only been one screenshot released and its only at a fixed resolution. Would be really nice if we had one showing more around the edges (like a 2560x1440 image at the low DPI) so these sort of demonstration work nicer. *sighs*

 

Anyway, this first page simple selects the image for your window size. Best viewed fullscreen (press F11).

 

This second page scales the image by half and designed to demonstrate how different resolutions will affect how much game world is seen. Best viewed in a window so you can resize it and see what happens.

 

The selection criteria that I'm using for the scale is quite simple and as follows:

1) If the window is less than 2560px wide or less than 1440px tall then use the standard low DPI image

2) If the window is at least 2560px wide and 1440px tall then use the high DPI image

3) If the window is at least 5120px wide and 2880px tall, then use the high DPI image but at double scale. Not sure if the game will do this last one, but it seems reasonable.

 

I also have a couple more pages that do things slightly differently. They include some extra steps for 1080p and 2160p which use a 75% and 133% scaled high DPI image respectively. As far as I know this wont be the way things are done but I made some example pages because some people seem to be suggesting the idea.

 

Alternative for viewing fullscreen

Half sized alternative for viewing windowed and resizing

[rjshae]

But they've already said no, so that's that. xD I'm sure 10-12 years from now when someone might try making an "Enhanced Edition" of it for displays running at 7680×4320, provided it's worth it, these kind of threads would be a great laugh.

Not to be rude, but people who believe that gaming companies should design their video games based on what-if considerations for 10-12 years in the future give me a great laugh.

Even when we reach that display size, I don't expect the angular scale of the game to need to change. Assuming they use FoW, then the action is going to be taking place within that radius, and you'll want that sphere to occupy your viewing area. Likewise, you'll want to play with the characters at a certain angular size and, assuming the use of anti-aliasing, your eyes likely wouldn't notice that much of a difference if they introduced an even finer resolution. The one place where it may make a significant difference is in the clarify of the text, but they can address that with the choice of smooth font rendering.

Edited December 20, 2012 by rjshae

[dal]

For our higher resolution, we are likely going to render out to a ~2560x1440 screen size, as we did with our environment during the Kickstarter campaign.

 

We will likely downsample these to run at 1920x1080.

No 16:10?.. Please, please do somthing for 1920x1200.

[dal]

Yes, the big manufacturers are moving forward with 4K displays. It will be many years before people hurl their current displays in the trash to buy replacement 4K displays.

I hope people will continue to play Project Eternity many years after they hurl their current displays in the trash.

[Sabotin]

Come on, this resolution discussion seems so nitpicky. Isn't it only a question of UI scaling?

 

On to mechanics:

From the descriptions of the skill thingies it seems like positioning will be fairly important, with people blocking each other etc. I kinda like that the rogue ability is something you set up, not just trigger. It's probably the same thing gameplay wise, but it "feels" more tactical . Though on the other hand perhaps it's just a "buff".

In general it smells like reinvention of some DA:O systems? Those so called "implements", am I correct to assume that these are sorta like the staffs in the aforementioned game? You know, small ranged damage so mages are not just idling between spells? And these are usable by all/more classes, but when in a wizard's hands it does a small AoE cause of the skill? The slashing/piercing/blunt seems reasonable. Except one thing - so the best way to assassinate a heavily armored general is to sneak behind him and ... hit him on the head with a giant hammer ? Though I guess it's possible that rogues will get some extra armor piercing (threshold ignoring or whatchamacallit) from somewhere, making blunts unneeded and piercing optimal for heavy and slashing for medium/light armored.

 

Anyway, good update, I really like having small tastes of systems.

[rjshae]

It might be fun to have the Wizard character be able to refine their 'Blast' ability as their level increases. Perhaps learn to give it different elemental aspects (fire, shock, acid, shards, ice, sonic, spirit), bounce it around obstacles, add a stun or telekinetic effect, lingering effects, and so forth.

[Monte Carlo]

All these numbers are, like, burning my eyes.

[Archmage Silver]

Great update, it's good to know that higher end resolutions will be taken into consideration along with different aspect ratios.

[J.E. Sawyer]

To clarify, here is a picture:

 

 

The inset map is half the resolution of the larger map (though I cropped some edges to avoid some overlap). The inset map = "low"-res environments. The bigger map = original (2560x1440 = one screen) environments.

 

If you use the low-res environments and UI, any resolution above the base (1280x720) will reveal more of the environment. If you use the high-res environment, you will never be "zoomed in" more than what you would normally see at the base resolution of 1280x720, but you have 4x as many pixels. Please look at the 1280x720 and 2560x1440 sections on each map. They are the same location, exactly. Resolutions below 2560x1440 (to 1920x1080) will use the same backgrounds, downsampled, with a UI that is built to start at 1920x1080. Why all of the special attention to 1920x1080? Because a huge number of people run at it. If you use the high-res environments and run above 2560x1440, you will start to see more of the environment.

 

In both cases, you can run (theoretically) any aspect ratio as long as the resolution is above the base: 1280x720 for low-res assets and 1920x1080 for high-res assets.

[Monte Carlo]

Can we talk about spells or something instead? Or maybe weapons? Huh? Please.

[Hormalakh]

I think the biggest issue isn't the map size itself but the UI. As the dimensions got larger, a lot of times, the text got too small to read. That's a more important issue in my mind than how much of the map you can see.

 

This is where I think a modular UI would be helpful that follows the PPI upscaling that mstark was talking about. I don't mind smaller (1" instead of 2") party members, but I want to be able to see my mouse and spell options even at 5120X3200.

Edited December 20, 2012 by Hormalakh

[J.E. Sawyer]

The slashing/piercing/blunt seems reasonable. Except one thing - so the best way to assassinate a heavily armored general is to sneak behind him and ... hit him on the head with a giant hammer ?

It depends on how much damage you can do with a single strike. "Heavily armored" is not a type, but an amount of DT relative to the damage you do. Rogues' Sneak Attack damage will likely be added to their total prior to calculating reduction from DT, which would allow them to lean more heavily on slashing and piercing weapons. Also, the amount of DT that piercing weapons negate increases proportionally with other damage bonuses. As a result, as the DT range of enemies gets higher and higher, the "band" of applicability for each weapon type gets wider.

 

But yes, if you are facing an opponent in a stand-up fight and it has incredibly high DT, your best hope is to equip mauls, war hammers, and maces and wear them down over time. At a higher level, when your characters' bonuses and gear are upgraded, you may find that an opponent that previously suggested crushing weapons is now most vulnerable to your piercing or even slashing weapons.

[rjshae]

Might I ask, what about multi-mode weapons like the halberd? Will that be slotted into one of the three types, or will it gain the most beneficial mode (among slashing, piercing, and crushing). Thank you.

[J.E. Sawyer]

It might be fun to have the Wizard character be able to refine their 'Blast' ability as their level increases. Perhaps learn to give it different elemental aspects (fire, shock, acid, shards, ice, sonic, spirit), bounce it around obstacles, add a stun or telekinetic effect, lingering effects, and so forth.

We intend to have Talents that allow you do that, if you choose. Some players may want to specialize in specific types of spells or make their general spellcasting abilities better, but other players can effectively upgrade their wizards' base implement and Blast capabilities.

 

E: To be clear, players who want to use their Talents to specialize in unorthodox things (e.g. a wizard who jabs people with a pike all day long) are free to do so as well.

[J.E. Sawyer]

Might I ask, what about multi-mode weapons like the halberd? Will that be slotted into one of the three types, or will it gain the most beneficial mode (among slashing, piercing, and crushing). Thank you.

I'm still thinking about the best way to handle weapons that traditionally have mixed roles in combat (e.g. polearms, military/war hammers).

[Sacred_Path]

Have you decided yet how many 'favored skills' every class will have? Will there be situations in the game where a maxed out skill + class bonus will be required?

[Hormalakh]

Any thoughts on whether there will be any class-restricted abilities or whether some classes will have more passive/active abilities, or will all abilities be equally available to all classes?