Update #62: Production 01 - State of the Project

[BAdler]

By Brandon Adler, Producer

 

 

Hey, everyone. As you know, over the past six weeks we have been working on our first production milestone - the cleverly titled Production 01 milestone. Our first target has been Defiance Bay (our first BIG city) and the team has been busting their collective butts to get as much fantasy roleplaying goodness as possible into the city.

 

In George Ziets' own words, "Defiance Bay is the capital and largest city in the Dyrwood, gateway to the riches of Glanfath, teeming with adventurers and explorers from all over the region. Defiance Bay is a city of the common people, where the most prominent and respected citizens are self-made men. It stands at the forefront of experimentation in soul magic and exemplifies the age of discovery."

 

A ton has been accomplished in a pretty short amount of time and we would like to share some of it with you.

 

New Hires

 

April Giron

April is our new Art Intern. She has been doing an amazing job in creating the interiors that populate Defiance Bay.

 

Holly Prado

Holly is an Environment Artist that joined us about a week ago. She has already made a large contribution in filling out the existing areas with new props.

 

Matt Perez

Matt is a new Design Intern. Along with creating NPCs, quests, and blockouts, he also does maintenance work on areas (hooking up transitions, loot passes, encounters, etc.).

 

Ryan Torres

Like Matt, Ryan is one of our new Design Interns. He also creates dialogues, quests, and blockouts.

 

Brian Macintosh

Brian is Project Eternity's Programming Intern. While he has been implementing many features, he most closely works with the Concept Artists to get our UI to Alpha.

 

Areas

 

Art

The Environment Artists have wasted no time in constructing an expansive Defiance Bay. For this first milestone our target was to get three of Defiance Bay's districts to Alpha level quality. It was a little ambitious, but the team did really well. The city feels full of life and character. I am pretty impressed with the speed that the team is able to get all of this together.

 

Design

While the Environment Art team is busy filling out the visuals, the Area Design team is meticulously planning and executing quests, NPC dialogs, and other goodies throughout the city. They were able to get three of the city's districts completely blocked out in under a week. Considering the size of the city, it is a pretty good accomplishment.

 

Two of those districts are now at an Alpha level and even at an early stage, are a lot of fun to play. In addition to that, our two new Design Interns - Matt and Ryan - have been filling in the areas with smaller quests and NPCs. It is really starting to make the city feel alive.

 

Characters

 

Creatures

The Concept Artists, Animators, and Character Artists have been burning through our creatures. We are taking a different approach in Project Eternity than we have on other projects. Instead of taking a creature from concept to a final, polished product, we have been taking creatures to a blockout stage before moving to the next.

 

This allows us to get creatures into the game much more quickly. It also lets us be more flexible with how we spend our polish time. Overall, we think it will lead to a better experience.

 

Even with this short amount of time, we have been able to get about eight different creatures into the game. 

 

Since it would be pretty mean of me to talk about the creatures without showing one, here is a small taste of one of my "favorites" - the wicht.

 

 

I think Josh's description says it best: "Wichts are the bodies of children that were born without souls, grew to adolescence, and were then possessed by a malevolent lost soul or soul fragment that has been artificially inserted through animancy. This process arrests their physical development and transforms their outward appearance, leaving no doubt as to what they are."

 

Items

In addition to the creatures, our Character Artists have been filling out the remaining armor sets that are left. We have all of our basic armors in place for all of our races. This is a pretty significant feat this early in the project. Now that we are done with the base item and armor sets, we can focus on making magic and unique variants.

 

Features

 

Journal

We now have a fully functional quest journal in place that allows players to see their quest progress. The UI is currently being implemented, but it is looking great.

 

Conversations

While we have been getting more and more Alpha UI into the game, I was particularly happy with how the conversation UI came out. Take a look for yourself, though. Even though this is still a work in progress, I think everyone did a great job. Let us know what you think of the conversation UI in our forums.

 

 

Stronghold

Tim went on a tear and got most of the backend systems for the player stronghold in place. There are a ton of really fun things you can do with your stronghold like sending companions on missions, buying rare loot off of merchants, building upgrades, and even purchasing hirelings to defend your keep from attack. Watching Tim's stronghold get robbed blind because he has low security and high prestige never gets old.

 

World Map

Eternity now has a fully functional world map. When the party enters a qualifying transition, the world map appears. Players can then select to travel to a location by selecting that icon on the map.

 

Fog of War

One focus for this milestone was to get our Fog of War system in place. Beyond a few tweaks, Adam is pretty close to slaying that beast. It's a really robust system he created that takes some inspiration from rogue-like games. Using Adam's tool, designers can quickly create a fog map, edit it, and set locations that should only be revealed at specific times.

 

AI

Steve, our AI Programmer, has been putting work into spellcasting AI this milestone and it is coming out nicely. Enemies are more crafty than they were now that they are casting spells intelligently. There's going to be even more AI work - roles for our enemy AIs, for example - put into our next milestone.

 

10k Backer

We had our first $10,000 backer, Timothy, come for a visit. We all had a blast and it was great to meet one of our fans and show him the game. We even have a picture of Timothy preparing for Josh Sawyer's inevitable betrayal.

 

 

Josh Sawyer on Game Design

Lastly, I will leave you with a video that Josh put together about the importance of real-world knowledge in game design. Take a look.

 

 

Well, that's it for now. See you guys again in a couple of weeks. 

[LordCrash]

Nice update! Thx, Obsidian.

 

One question: how's the documentary going?

[BAdler]

Nice update! Thx, Obsidian.

 

One question: how's the documentary going?

Going well. The crew stops by every few weeks to capture more footage. I think it is going to be a cool insight into how the game is being developed.

[Tsuga C]

The video in particular reinforces my high hopes for P:E as it speaks so directly to the topic of verisimilitude--can't have it if the workings of the world don't make sense. Thanks, J. Sawyer!

[JFSOCC]

Could you show us something from Defiance Bay?

[Elerond]

Excellent and informative update, so thanks for it.

 

Conversation UI has right vibe in its look, meaning that it looks IEish and text is easy to read and answer options have enough room and are easy to figure out.

There is quite much free space, but in my opinion it makes UI look more balanced and not too thickly fitted. Color palette is quite dark, but in my eye it works even better than more colorful palettes that are popular these days

[Osvir]

IC: 1:- "I have questions about the area"

 

PS: Great update! Sounds like a great team is assembling. Looking forward to seeing everything in action :D

Edited August 20, 2013 by Osvir

[LordCrash]

The conversation UI looks great (very well performed IE feeling) but I would suggest a differentiation between speech and descprition. Either a slighty other colour or italic letters or something....or just without the name before because the description in the first line looks like a dialogue line without being one.....

[Nonek]

Excellent update, one question however, will the characters responses in the dialogue UI be so stiff? The innkeeper description gives a definite sense of character, but the responses are somewhat formulaic. If these are just placeholder responses then never mind, I apologise for raising the issue, or is it I wonder a design choice so that responses appear as neutral as possible, and thus don't compromise the player characters own imaginings of personality? Be interested to find out.

[BAdler]

Could you show us something from Defiance Bay?

We aren't ready to reveal those areas just yet.

[JFSOCC]

now I'm twice as curious

 

Fine, I'll wait.

[J.E. Sawyer]

Excellent update, one question however, will the characters responses in the dialogue UI be so stiff? The innkeeper description gives a definite sense of character, but the responses are somewhat formulaic. If these are just placeholder responses then never mind, I apologise for raising the issue, or is it I wonder a design choice so that responses appear as neutral as possible, and thus don't compromise the player characters own imaginings of personality? Be interested to find out.

 

It's the opening node of the dialogue so the choices are straightforward.  Players will have more personality-laden replies when they make sense in the context and will go somewhere interesting.

[Nonek]

Ah thank you.

[Coaxmetal]

Love the UI look. Tormenty

[Jokei]

Go on, show us something, world map, Defiance Bay plox.

[kenup]

Brian Macintosh

I guess Obsidian finally got a Mac.

[WDeranged]

 

 

 

I think Josh's description says it best: "Wichts are the bodies of children that were born without souls, grew to adolescence, and were then possessed by a malevolent lost soul or soul fragment that has been artificially inserted through animancy. This process arrests their physical development and transforms their outward appearance, leaving no doubt as to what they are."

 

This is exactly the kind of unnerving stuff that I get off on    

[Zeckul]

The font is ugly. The kerning is all over the place and there are glaring misalignments like the dot on the "i". We'll be staring at reams of text for dozens of hours, please pay special attention that it's pleasing to the eye. From a pure legibility perspective I would be in favor of a sans serif font, but I can understand that for artistic consistency a serif font might look less out of place.

 

Fonts were one of my pet-peeves with the Infinity Engine; it was even worse in Neverwinter Nights 2 as font sizes didn't scale with resolution. NWN2 is damn near illegible at 1920x1080. I hope these issues are addressed in Project Eternity.

Edited August 21, 2013 by Zeckul

[ogrezilla]

 

Excellent update, one question however, will the characters responses in the dialogue UI be so stiff? The innkeeper description gives a definite sense of character, but the responses are somewhat formulaic. If these are just placeholder responses then never mind, I apologise for raising the issue, or is it I wonder a design choice so that responses appear as neutral as possible, and thus don't compromise the player characters own imaginings of personality? Be interested to find out.

 

It's the opening node of the dialogue so the choices are straightforward.  Players will have more personality-laden replies when they make sense in the context and will go somewhere interesting.

 

Will all of the dialogue tree text be pure quotations or might we see a bit of the flavor dialogue from Planescape Torment?  I absolutely loved the descriptions in that game.  

[falkynn]

Kerning on the text in the conversation UI is abysmal. This has bothered me about all the infinity engine games—I'm a designer with a font fetish. Any other imperfections have been erased by time and nostalgia, but that one niggling flaw has never stopped bothering me. 

[J.E. Sawyer]

NGUI only uses bitmap fonts, so we'll have to adjust the kerning and other errors by hand, but we're aware of it.

[StrangeCat]

WOW sounds like a lot is moving forward.   But would about the animation for your characters and creatures I would think that that

would be a milestone to just get one of those right.

[Tauron]

"It stands at the forefront of experimentation in soul magic and exemplifies the age of discovery."

So while there is obviously focus on soul magic, does it means that there is another way also? Magic is magic, whatever that is, but constantly underlining soul magic, just made me curious if there is another form? Does this imply that there might be another sort of magic in the world?

Edited August 21, 2013 by Tauron

[Lephys]

 

Brian Macintosh

I guess Obsidian finally got a Mac.

 

I was going to ask how well the team was getting along while only having 1 Mac to share between the lot of them. . You beat me to the punch(line).

 

Avatar appropriateness: BOLSTERED!

 

I just want to say thanks to all the new teamlings (that's clearly an official industry word, u_u), for jumping aboard and helping create this splendid, splendid game! And, as always, thanks to the non-new teaminites for keeping up the fantasticful work (and for hiring the new teamlings, so that they can offer their collective ring powers toward the summoning of Captain Plan-ject: Eternity)!

 

Also:

 

Stronghold

Tim went on a tear and got most of the backend systems for the player stronghold in place. There are a ton of really fun things you can do with your stronghold like sending companions on missions, buying rare loot off of merchants, building upgrades, and even purchasing hirelings to defend your keep from attack. Watching Tim's stronghold get robbed blind because he has low security and high prestige never gets old.

8D!

 

I mean, I'm pretty excited about every single bold-headered segment of the update, but I didn't want to quote the whole thing. So, I made myself pick just one thing to which to respond with an enormous excited face.

 

I want desperately to watch the video, but cannot access youtube from work. -___-

 

I metaphorically offer a fresh, ice-cold water bottle of support that the team can grab from my outstretched hand as they run past on their collective marathon to project completion. Go go go! ^_^

[camjackson]

I like the look of the dialog UI, but please be mindful of vocab for the setting. To me, the word 'holler' is a distinctly modern American word (Aussie here), and would totally break the fantasy immersion.

 

Obviously it's a fantasy world, so the language can be whatever you say it is, but medieval fantasy worlds almost always use English (or at least European) accents and vocabs, and to me that's what feels right. The use of American accents in Guild Wars 2 has always bugged me, it just doesn't feel fantasy enough.