Has Project Eternity been silently delayed?

[sarkthas]

I don't really know about the process in detail, but I always remember thinking the 2014 release date was early, even before/shortly after i backed the project. Especially when considering the care they take with the implementation of side quests(details, writing etc) I always expected this to take a lot of time.

[silvercross]

While I don't mind an later release... I would have concerns about funding if it passes the 6-9 month mark. Is the game actually being improved, or are we getting "feature creep"? There's also the issue of funding.

 

I'm not particularly familar with news on Double Fine's Broken Age (aka the Double Fine Adventure that pretty much launched this kickstarter thing) but from what I understand they had to run an indie bundle to fundraise for more money due to their promised features being more costly than what was anticipated. Admittantly, they were sort of the first one to have a larger scale project and bigger kickstarter projects are now more aware of failed pledges, shipping costs, and the like.

[Sensuki]

The 'delay' has been the length of the pre-production, of which the team has been under 15 staff members for most of the pre-production period. They recruited another concept artist and brought on some Area Designers for the prototyping phase and have slowly started to add more members to the team (recruiting a producer, more concept artists etc). There is no feature creep because all the team is doing now is making sure that they have all the features of the game in and working before they enter production.

 

Seems like they still have a few things to work out:

 

Whether secondary weapon sets can be displayed on the character model

Dynamic Cloth and Hair

Finalizing the area map rendering tools (they recently fixed the previous issues and are now looking at optimizing rendering time)

Whether they can find some more Environment artists (they're currently looking for a couple on their jobs page)

 

Stuff we haven't heard too much about yet

 

Stronghold - Josh posted a vine video the other day so he's obviously researching now

Crafting & Enchantment systems

Sound - I've read that the default Unity sound package isn't very good and requires plugins for improvement

voice over stuff

[Falkon Swiftblade]

One thing I don't understand the thought process on, is what makes a IE game an IE game versus take the good and improve upon the system? The example of being able to show equipment on the hero or not or cloth and hair should be very doable now. Like it could be in the game in less than a week, but because they're so caught up in making a one inch avatar that blends in with it's environment, it negates that type of inovation. For some reason I get the impression if they scaled the world environments and characters up by 20% and kept most of the other elements of the game that wouldn't feel like an IE game to them. I wish they would get with modern times and improve some of the IE conventions that made the games a little clunky with the technology we have available today. They might need to pre render some hair or cloth into an animation, but surely it should be very doable. The PS4 demo was doing some crazy intense physics, lighting and shadows, cloth and fluid simulation in real time, and textures, etc. on a $400 machine. We've probably all got a machine that cost at minimum 2-3 times that and should be able to handle it. I understand too that it takes time to get to that level and maybe 4-6 weeks might not be feasible, but I'd like it if they at least acknowledged it and said what's the intent or goals in that area.

 

All that stuff we haven't heard about is because it happens fairly late in the development process. With exception to some extent sound is ever going from preproduction to the time they ship it, although on PC they're less hindered by limitations of the platform like consoles are. Although I'm interested in all those areas as well. I'd also like to see one on animation for the game. There's been some really nice upgrades to animation tools in the past 6 months, and I think it should really speed up their pipeline.

[Lephys]

^ I'm fairly certain that people developing for the PS4 have access to more than 4 million dollars for an entire game (most of those games involving a LOT less narrative and mechanic complexity).

 

Also, the stuff we've seen recently looks FARRR improved over the IE games, so I truly don't comprehend what you're suggesting they're failing to improve.

[Sensuki]

They have one guy (Antonio) doing the technical problem solving. Hopefully they'll be able to get secondary weapon sets and cloaks/hair to show without clipping.

 

The closest zoom level is also pretty close up. I don't think we've actually been shown how far you can zoom in but it is possible this is the closest level of zoom in the game. Of which you can see quite a bit of character detail (if you click on the image).

 

Edited July 2, 2013 by Sensuki

[Cultist]

 

BioWare taught me the value of patience. I don't want to see another Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3 or Duke Nukem. I can wait a year longer if the game needs so.

Dragon Age. Devleopment 2003-2009. Quality = Garbage.

Diablo 3. Development 200?-2012. Quality = Garbage.

 

Not necessarily

No, but shorter developement always means worse game, while longer developement could give us a better game.

Edited July 2, 2013 by Cultist

[Falkon Swiftblade]

^ I'm fairly certain that people developing for the PS4 have access to more than 4 million dollars for an entire game (most of those games involving a LOT less narrative and mechanic complexity).

 

Also, the stuff we've seen recently looks FARRR improved over the IE games, so I truly don't comprehend what you're suggesting they're failing to improve.

 

Just to clarify I completely understand we've only been shown an example of work after like 1-2 months. My vision of the game might not be their vision for the game and that's OK. I was expressing my opinion. To me it looks the same visually with a new coat of paint. I just feel like they can still push it forward 20 yrs and still keep the overall feel to the game, and I questioned what makes those games specific to that style so they can innovate upon them.

 

I'm just stating the obvious, we're starting fresh on a game that has the benefit of technology on our side ~15 yrs after the original shipped and use a middleware engine that saves them from having to do a lot of work. Not to mention they've developed custom tools that have also evolved over time that they'll be using in this game and isn't like starting 100% from scratch. Stuff that would have taken several months to try out can now be tested in hours or days to see if it works. Actually just a week or two ago another big improvement was made for one of the primary 3d tools for character creation that would save them a solid 8 hours of work a day, and allow the character artists to create much higher quality models at no performance hit. I just have high hopes if the tools are there, and they have the freedom to do what ever they want, then they won't just copy what's already been done. Remember too originally they only asked for $1.1 million to make a game like this. I can't believe we funded 200k for a player house which only takes 1-5 days to create and only 100k for 2 new class, but no technology goals. The budget for animation is tiny and 4.3 million is a LOT more than 1.1. 

[Lephys]

Just to clarify I completely understand we've only been shown an example of work after like 1-2 months. My vision of the game might not be their vision for the game and that's OK. I was expressing my opinion. To me it looks the same visually with a new coat of paint.

If their 4-months-into-pre-production demo looks, to you, just like the fully-finished version of previous IE games but with a new coat of paint, I'd say that's a pretty good estimate for what the next year can do for it.

 

I'm just not seeing the point in comparing and contrasting what all isn't in the alpha demo of P:E as compared to the fully-completed version of any IE games.

 

Just for example, you already made mention of capes/cloaks as something you're essentially asking "why can't we put these in with good physics/aesthetics?" regarding. Yet, Josh has already said they're working with such things. Alas, the earliest in-game footage from the entire project probably isn't going to showcase things they haven't hammered out yet. So, using it as an reference for all the things you want in the game is going to lead to a very large waste of time, since oodles of the things you're even directly citing are simply not in the footage we've seen yet, but are planned for the game.

 

That's all I'm trying to point out.

[marelooke]

I wouldn't be surprised or upset if they pushed back the release date of Project Eternity.

 

In fact I hope they do if it helps the game be more coherent and polished.

 

For instance Larian Studios has decided to push pack their latest game Dragon Commander (twice I think) to incoporate all the suggestions and AI fixes that have taken longer than hoped for. Of course they tend to be perfectionists so I am not surprised. Also I believe they also pushed (or will have pushed) back D:OS especially with all the funds from the KS campaign to incorporate all the backer items (summon names/background, messages, etc.)

 

So in short, as long as the pushing back of release dates isn't like ... ahem.. Duke Nukem Forever.. ahem.. I am fine with it.

 

Hmm, I thought they specifically said they weren't going to delay D:OS to incorporate extras but rather add them later as patches. Not that I'd mind terribly if it got delayed anyway.

 

On that note: in last update I think Larian said they're already *way* over the amount of quests they'd planned for the Kickstarter, so while I won't be shocked if they don't make the release date (I mean, if they just keep adding quests without paying attention to the rest... ) I have some faith they will be able to actually make it when they have 4 months to do the KS extras, tweaking mechanics and fixing bugs.

[jethro]

On that note: in last update I think Larian said they're already *way* over the amount of quests they'd planned for the Kickstarter, so while I won't be shocked if they don't make the release date (I mean, if they just keep adding quests without paying attention to the rest... ) I have some faith they will be able to actually make it when they have 4 months to do the KS extras, tweaking mechanics and fixing bugs.

 

"way over the amount they'd planned". U'oh, that sounds like feature creep. Larian wasn't way over the initial KS amount, they can't just add a lot of stuff and expect to still have enough money to polish and test it.

 

I'm not sure how expensive it is to add more quests, but I've seen a lot of bug-fix lists for RPGs to know that there seems to be a lot of potential to introduce bugs into quests. And bug-fixing costs.

[Infinitron]

"way over the amount they'd planned". U'oh, that sounds like feature creep. Larian wasn't way over the initial KS amount, they can't just add a lot of stuff and expect to still have enough money to polish and test it.

 

 

Actually, that's incorrect, because Larian's game is mostly self-funded. They have their own money in addition to what they got from the Kickstarter. The Kickstarter funds are purely a bonus.

Edited July 23, 2013 by Infinitron

[Karkarov]

 

"way over the amount they'd planned". U'oh, that sounds like feature creep. Larian wasn't way over the initial KS amount, they can't just add a lot of stuff and expect to still have enough money to polish and test it.

 

 

Actually, that's incorrect, because Larian's game is mostly self-funded. They have their own money in addition to what they got from the Kickstarter. The Kickstarter funds are purely a bonus.

 

Yeah seriously, that game was mostly done before they even did the kickstarter.  They were just looking for some extra cash to fund a few little side things and help ease dev costs.  Even if the kickstarter had bombed the game still would have seen release.

[jethro]

Actually, that's incorrect, because Larian's game is mostly self-funded. They have their own money in addition to what they got from the Kickstarter. The Kickstarter funds are purely a bonus.

 

 

But they needed the KS money to prolong production time, otherwise they would have had to publish a much smaller game. At this point their assets/finanical maneuvering space must have been quite low.

You are still mostly right, for a different reason: There is a good chance that the KS money was to bridge the gap until money from Dragon Commander comes in. The only danger is that whatever of Dragon Commanders winnings is spent on Original Sin is lost for follow-up projects. Those two titles have to pull in enough money to fund development of the next one or two games. 

[Gyges]

We can only hope.

Edited July 23, 2013 by Gyges

[Monte Carlo]

Software development. Software development never changes.

 

Hey, as long as it's as good as I think it's going to be I don't mind if it's a November / Christmas 2014 release. There's gonna be slippage (see above).

[Ignatius]

With Josh reinventing the wheel, you have to expect this will take some time.

[Lephys]

With Josh reinventing the wheel, you have to expect this will take some time.

He doesn't reinvent the wheel. He just takes a wheel that's been all shot up and shouldn't technically be able to live from its injuries, and turns it into RoboWheel.

[lolaldanee]

well said Lephys