Update #51: Prototype 2 Update

[Lord Lierdan Firkraag]

I loved the town artwork, actually i'm in tears:) This looks so good, a very solid artistic style!

 

Ogre looks fantastic too. Hope to see it animated too.

 

As for the Skuldr, it is a bit too demonic for the concept. And yes, as said before, it is too pinky. It can have a darker skin and more natural anatomy. This way, it seems like it just came out of the depths of hell.

[Forlorn Hope]

Looks really good. Particularly the Ogre. I wish I'd be a multi-millionaire. I'd upgrade to the 200, 000 dollar -tier.

 

I would like to know more about the companions, eg. their class and race (unannounced ones, maybe 3 left?).

[Malekith]

Skuldr looks great. Remember, P:E is high fantasy setting. In the consept art we had a tentacled cthulhu-like monster and zompies. Demonic looks are fine.Chances are there are demons in P:E world also.

To me Skuldr looks bat-like, cave dwelling monster, and is similar with monster's found in Witcher.

 

Backers asked and Sawyer said that a big beastiary will exist in P:E. There is no chance that all monsters will be natural predators or mutaded humans. Many will be clearly supernatural.

Edited April 24, 2013 by Malekith

[Ineth]

I hope the Town Guard A.I. does not give us psychic guards that know we have done bad even if we killed the last known witness.

Yeah....I've never liked the "psychic guard" concept either.

[...]

Yap, thats one thing i didn't liked either.

[...] getting all guards aggro eventhough nobody did witness my crime breaks the immersion for me.

 

 

I disagree.

You have to keep in mind that cRPG systems tend to be abstractions of the world the game is set in, not simulations.

 

In reality, a town would have hundreds/thousands of inhabitants.

Whatever you do in the streets, someone would probably witness it (hiding around a corner, peeking out of a window etc.).

If you attack someone in a house, someone would probably witness it as well (people in other parts of the house hearing your footsteps and then listening or peeking through cracks in the wall/floor, neighbors hearing screams or spell effects, etc.).

 

In actual game implementations, those hundreds/thousands of inhabitants standing/sitting/lying/walking/running/sneaking around and observing/acting freely, tend to be "represented" by a few handful of town NPCs standing around at fixed locations.

 

It doesn't make sense to implement guard/reputation systems based on the assumption that those few static town NPCs actually simulate the town life in its entirety - because they don't.

Those systems should instead be implemented to match the consequences that would *actually* happen in the real town, even if the player won't see everything that leads to those consequences on screen.

 

TL;DR: Just because you've killed all NPCs in a particular room of a house doesn't mean there weren't any witnesses.

[Ineth]

• Dynamic Cloth - We are doing further research into character dynamism, and are creating capes for our characters to equip.

 

What about dynamic hair?

[redneckdevil]

great job so far. These things make me realize yal have alot on ur plates not to mention the 2 cities as well lol.

Great job

[rjshae]

Very nice! It sounds like you are making excellent progress. Thank you for the update.

 

I'd be interested in hearing what you have planned in terms of scheduling behavior with the AI. Will it be mostly static? Do you plan to introduce time-of-day activites, or do you have something more intricate in mind? If you could talk about the non-combat AI once you reach that stage of development, I'd appreciate it. Thank you.

[OldRPG'sAreGood]

Great update once more, the monsters look great! And Skuldr's ability to "see souls" got me wondering, will it be possible to somehow hide ones soul "trace" from others? With a magical trinket or something of the sort?

[jivex5k]

Great update....I'm happy to see cloth physics mentioned.....

But what about beard rendering? Please....just let us know about beard rendering!

[rjshae]

Village

And village art makes me feel a bit frustrating. I apologize in advance for my premature conclusions, but somehow, in RPG it is common to call the settlement of 5 houses and 7 NPC "the village". That is something that always upsets me. You feel lonely in such worlds. Of course, this can be explained by attacks of aggressive (and often hungry for human flesh) beings, wich create population decline in the region. But all the same, if this village contains of 5 NPC, how does it survives? Yes, probably before player`s arrival there were a lot of people, and just yesterday the trolls ate most of them. But not in all villages across the world at once! It's just not logical. However, on the other hand, on your concept, houses look as if they were built for several families each. And with this approach, I agree. Live among the monsters and guard against them is better in groups. I hope in the world of "Project Eternity" villages of 5 houses and 7 of the NPC will not exist. Even if it is 20 NPC in the same 5 houses - it will look much more vividly! Let them be silent, will be identical and will walk on the streets without reason. Perhaps there can be 2-3 "visitors" NPC. I.e., each time you visit the village this NPCs will not be the same ones, or just be away from the village for a time you came. It will create the feeling of the flow of visitors passing through the village, same as the player does himself. In my opinion, this will give more "life" to the villages.

 

Just because you only see a few buildings doesn't mean the village isn't surrounded by farms and farm houses. A game could easily model this by having a few farmers visit the village pub at night for a drink and talk about the day's travails. During the day, the village may get visits for supplies. &c.

[Keyrock]

The Skuldr looks cool.  Can I have one as a pet?

 

I'm curious where the line will be between monster and beast.  More to the point, what type of beasts will rangers and druids be able to calm, befriend, and call upon, assuming rangers and druids will be able to do such things? 

[Sandro G Meier]

Awesome for both update and the orge art!

And Skuldr...I'd like to call it batman...

[Nonek]

The Skuldr looks very nice, reminds me of the Fleder from the first Witcher. The name seems fine to me, got an old Norse vibe to it but made me think first of Skulker and then Skallagrim the father of Egil from the sagas.

 

Just as a point of reference, we've seen the use of Gaelic names for places and people, and now are told that the old English/Norse languages are being referenced, does this indicate a clash of cultures at some point? Or have the two arisen in unison and merged beyond the telling apart?

[Monte Carlo]

Skuldr's gonna Skuld. It needs dreads and a small shoulder-mounted laser gun.

 

[J.E. Sawyer]

Awesome news guys, glad to hear everything is running along smoothly (y)

 

I would like to know more about the structure of class level advancement. I recall asking in an interview with Josh I did last year whether the advancement system would be homogeneous like 4E or staggered like 2E/3E/3.5E etc, it would be cool to see an example of that.

 

Some other stuff I'm interested in would be the quest/experience system, whether the armor system was changed again or not and combat animations, whether there will be frontswing/backswing animations, if they are cancellable by microing and how ranged weapon animations are being handled (aim, fire, reload etc)

 

The advancement system is not as homogeneous as 4E, but classes do gain a class-specific ability (passive, modal, or active-use) every level.

 

We're implementing the quest system right now.  We're going to use a visual flowchart for our quest implementation which should help with seeing the potential complications of branching or skipping objectives.  The armor system hasn't changed since the last revision a while back.  The system currently uses a single DT for a suit of armor with additional modifiers applied for things it is better or worse at.  E.g. ordinary mail has 12 DT but it is 40% worse against crushing attacks.  We're still implementing some aspects of the reloading system.  Aim and fire are part of the same animation.  Reloading is separate and moving interrupts it.  Reloading a bow is relatively fast.  Reloading a crossbow or arbalest is more time-consuming, and reloading a firearm is the most time-consuming (though not as long as it would be in real life).  Most attack animations will probably not have early cancels, but we will probably have them for longer events like casting spells or special attacks.

 

 

Skuldr sounds like it's Eld Aedyran instead.

 

 

It is.

[Sensuki]

Cheers for answering my questions Josh

 

The armor system hasn't changed since the last revision a while back.  The system currently uses a single DT for a suit of armor with additional modifiers applied for things it is better or worse at.  E.g. ordinary mail has 12 DT but it is 40% worse against crushing attacks.

Are you still adhering to the weight classifications (Light, Medium, Heavy)?

[J.E. Sawyer]

 

Just as a point of reference, we've seen the use of Gaelic names for places and people, and now are told that the old English/Norse languages are being referenced, does this indicate a clash of cultures at some point? Or have the two arisen in unison and merged beyond the telling apart?

 

It's less a clash of cultures and more of the intermingling of them.  Places settled by Aedyrans in the Dyrwood tend to have Eld Aedyran or regular Aedyran (i.e. plain English) names.  The common names for some creatures are Glanfathan but others are Eld Aedyran or (rarely) Vailian.  The cultures borrow terms from each other, too.  The title of duc (ducs bels and ducs panits) is used in the Vailian Republics for the sovereign ruler of a city-state, but the Dyrwoodans borrowed it when they rebelled against the Aedyran Empire.  Admeth Hadret was originally an erl palatine (palatine/palatinate also being borrowed from the Vailians), but he styled himself as a duc of the "free palatinate" during the rebellion.

[J.E. Sawyer]

 

Are you still adhering to the weight classifications (Light, Medium, Heavy)?

 

 

They are organized like that conceptually, but currently those classifications don't have any direct correlation to specific game effects.

[Sensuki]

Oh good. I think that was one of the things that was confusing a few people resulting in many people creating their own version of the spreadsheet to try and 'fix' your problem with the original system so that it would be kept .

 

Actually having individual 'weaknesses' vs a damage type on the armor itself makes a lot more sense. I suppose that's kind of what 2E did with eg. Chainmail AC4 +2 vs crushing etc

Edited April 24, 2013 by Sensuki

[J.E. Sawyer]

With weaknesses and strengths against different damage types, it's also a lot easier to communicate that through the UI.  Additionally, once you've learned the strengths and weaknesses of a given armor or creature type, it stays consistent.  If you see someone in crummy Oromi steel mail (the worst steel in the Dyrwood), it has a lower base DT, but it still has -40% DT against crushing attacks.  When you go up against guys in March or Ymyran steel mail much later, it still has -40% DT against crushing even though the base DT is significantly higher.

[Sensuki]

So it seems that tiers of armor at least will have a cultural/material prefix kind of like say swords in the modern world I guess: High Carbon Steel, Damascus Steel, Toledo steel ?

 

Is that the case across different types of equipment as well?

Edited April 24, 2013 by Sensuki

[Gumbercules]

Nice update. The skuldr looks great as an in-game model. Is the concept art by new artists we haven't seen before?

 

For archery, have you considered adding super-fast archery techniques as possible advancements for archery-based characters? The tradeoff could be shorter range and reduced damage in exchange for a massively improved reloading time. This is what I mean:

 

[Infinitron]

 

 

Are you still adhering to the weight classifications (Light, Medium, Heavy)?

 

 

They are organized like that conceptually, but currently those classifications don't have any direct correlation to specific game effects.

 

 

Not even for speed? I thought armor was supposed to affect characters' speed (except for movement)

[Sensuki]

I think he was talking specifically about the relationship of damage and armor, rather than their overall properties.

 

That may also imply that the attack speed is a custom value in the armor file and not related to it's classification, the same way the strengths and weaknesses vs damage types are stored.

Edited April 24, 2013 by Sensuki

[Adam Brennecke]

Nice update. The skuldr looks great as an in-game model. Is the concept art by new artists we haven't seen before?

 

For archery, have you considered adding super-fast archery techniques as possible advancements for archery-based characters? The tradeoff could be shorter range and reduced damage in exchange for a massively improved reloading time. This is what I mean:

 

Village is by Rob Nesler and the Ogre is by Polina. The Skuldr was modeled and textured by James Chea.