Update #62: Production 01 - State of the Project

[rjshae]

A little searching appears to show that the UI style is romanesque (or gothic without the islamic influences such as the pointed arch), with iron nails for reinforcement.

[mstark]

May I suggest using tabular lining numerals for dialog options rather than old style ones? Old style numerals work well in paragraph text, where numbers have to sit within a paragraph, as they blend nicely with a proportional font. [Tabular] lining numerals are more appropriate for list use.

 

I'd like to see:

 

1. "I have a question about the area."

2. "I want to order food and drink."

3. "Let's see what rooms you have."

4. "Goodbye."

 

rather than (issue most noticeable on number 3 and 4):

 

1. "I have a question about the area."

2. "I want to order food and drink."

3. "Let's see what rooms you have."

4. "Goodbye."

 

 

Also, seeing as the dialog options are a simple list, a '1."..." ' or ' 1.— ... ' system should suffice, '1:— "..." ' is overkill, seeing as an em-dash and quotation marks both signify a line of speech, either can be used, but not both at the same time (BG2 used just the em-dash, it's less disruptive than the mass of quotation marks).

Edited August 22, 2013 by mstark

[Archmage Silver]

Baldurscape Dale, Episode 1: Souls of Eternity

I'd say it's more like Plane of Eternity: Baldur's Dale.

Edited August 22, 2013 by Archmage Silver

[J. Trudel]

Just one small thing, it would be awesome to see another option than goodbye to break the dialog. Maybe something like :

 

4. ''I was just passing by, I'll let you know if I need anything, for now I'll just hang around.''

 

Osmaer - ''No problems traveller, I'll be there if you need me. Have a good day !''

 

I always thought conversations were closing in a strange way in most cRPG. 

[mstark]

If you decide to use quotation marks, I'd love to see “ ” instead of "".

Edited August 22, 2013 by mstark

[J.E. Sawyer]

Re: text colors

 

One thing to consider is if one is color blind, the text should still be at least readable. Not being color blind myself, I don't know what dark green on dark brown background would look like, if it would have enough contrast or not.

 

At any rate, this isn't to say one shouldn't have colors in text ... just that the contrast between text and background would hopefully be enough that it's still readable even if one can't see the intended color. Just a thought.

 

Tim and I both have forms of color-blindness (though his is worse than mine).  We don't have any difficulty reading the text.

[mstark]

(Sorry, I didn't mean to *like* the fact that you both have partial color-blindness, just the fact that it means the game will be color-blindness friendly by default!)

[rjshae]

By Brandon Adler, Producer

...

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.

 

These all sound great. I was wondering though about the "sending companions on missions" activity. Are these separate adventures that we, as the players, will be able to play using just the companions? Or do these missions get completed based upon some internal formula? Thanks.

[Lephys]

Well, I sincerely hope that american basketball players don't tend to run without shoes with 5 inches nails on their feet)))

 

"Flippers" referred to "claw-like nails" not toes itself. Generally claws are used to catch and hold prey. I certainly would like to see how this wicht-thing is going to catch and hold prey. Otherwise claws on its feet is a pointless attribute which only hinder to run (unless it flies).

 

I have nothing against the probability of "alter their musculature". 

Cats (felids) have the ability to protract their claws from a retracted, at-rest position.

But again not this size.

 

*shrug*. I guess I just don't see it as such a physics dilemma. It's a concept art. What was there was childish human (toes and nails), and now it's been warped, just like the rest of the figure. I can easily assume that any amount of disfigured-toenail-ground-dragging that goes on doesn't prevent the creature from running. I think you mentioned velociraptors, somewhat jokingly (or someone did, or I'm crazy)? They had VERY large foot claws, if I'm not mistaken, and yet they didn't trip all the time and/or weren't otherwise incapable of running. So, yeah, I would assume that any unwanted/non-beneficial growth of the toe nails/claws on the Wicht would simply snap off (or be torn off or something equally gruesome) as it runs and drags/scrapes them along the ground and various obstacles. OR, its foot/toe musculature has been warped in such a way as to account for the ridiculously pronounced nails/claws, much like a raptor or other natural creature that has crazy-long nails/claws and can still run.

 

I don't really know, but I see plenty of possibilities that don't seem any less possible than "those things get in the way and it can't run." Maybe the concept artists/creature designers can provide us with an explanation of the exact lore behind the Wichts behaviors and abilities? I know it's a bit particular, but it would still be pretty interesting to know.

 

 

Regarding the conversation UI, I second Hormalakh's suggestion. I'm a fan of the "one person gets the left margin, one person gets the right margin" system of dialogue. Of course, when you get to the point at which multiple people are talking in the same, er, poly-logue? It kinda falls back into just an alternating indication of a change in speaker, rather than each side specifically representing a single speaker for the duration of the conversation.

 

Still, it's nice.

Edited August 22, 2013 by Lephys

[sostherope]

I like suggestions already made regarding including portraits in the dialogue interface of the NPCs you are talking to, and making the descriptive text better defined.

 

I think it would also be a nice option to have different themes to choose from of the UI, so for example, you could pick the wood theme like it is now, or an ancient leather book style theme, or a classic stone theme, or a modern theme (which would be more vibrant, and perhaps look more sleek and less old fashioned)

 

And about exiting dialogues, maybe instead of making up ways to say 'goodbye', or just saying 'goodbye' (which seems a bit clunky), there could always be an option for [End conversation] available (with the words included in brackets as I showed).

[Osvir]

Regarding the conversation UI, I second Hormalakh's suggestion. I'm a fan of the "one person gets the left margin, one person gets the right margin" system of dialogue. Of course, when you get to the point at which multiple people are talking in the same, er, poly-logue? It kinda falls back into just an alternating indication of a change in speaker, rather than each side specifically representing a single speaker for the duration of the conversation.

 

Reading this gave me an idea~

<-Portrait on left side courtesy of BelmonteOliveira (some random DeviantArt artist I found by the use of google. Proper sourcing ftw! )

 

Ofc, I could've cut it better and stuff like that, I only intended to use it as an example/concept. There could be some sort of "highlight" in the dialogue as well. If, let's say Edair, butts into this conversation, his portrait could get bigger for a second or "light up" in some way to indicate that "Here I am! Now I am talking!". Same thing could go with the Left-Hand Side (The Target) you are talking with.

 

If you face a Group of Rival Adventurers or you face a group of enemies, they could pop up several portraits on the Left-Hand side as well (of course).

 

Heck! If you've had a Rogue infiltrate the Enemy party (Stronghold missions, maybe?), they could appear on the Left-Hand side too, and when battle ensues (if it ensues), the Rogue could be a 7th Temporary Party Member (Uncontrollable).

 

Just a few ways^ you could use a thing like this.

[cdx]

Great update!

 

Just wanted to add something about the dialogue window which I didn't see mentioned. Imho, its width in the screenshot is just perfect relative to the text size (fitting about 15-20 words per row) and I think it should stay similar to that, irrelevant of screen size / resolution / dpi.

 

When trying to fit more text in you can get something like this, which is very unreadable (and it only gets worse with solid blocks of text):

 

 

(Sabotin showed this image for a different reason but it is very illustrative for what I mean)

 

Ideally the dialogue window would be able to expand / contract not only vertically but horizontally as well. This way people who want to fit all the possible text can expand it to the maximum while those who care for readability would be able to keep the amount of content per row the same as it is in the inn image.

 

As for the way the dialogue window re-sizes (or any other other window)... I may be alone here but dragging the edge of a UI window immediately brings the feeling I am on the desktop, resizing a folder window.  Also, imagining how the image of the bottom plank just slides out from underneath the vertical border... ugh. It screams "Tiled Image, Image Crop, Practical UI" in your face. Not very immersive. A button that expands it instead would be a lot better. Or at least do not show the changes in the UI while it is being dragged. Just the original and final version. Also, fixed increments! This makes it feel like the "wood frame" has been replaced with another one, rather than "adjusting the UI" (a solid sound when doing this would make it even better).

 

A nice little extra: a button somewhere on the wooden frame that switches between the last two versions the window was when you pressed it. (Memorise size/pos, switch to the previously memorised size/pos.) This way you can pick and adjust two favourites and easily switch between them when needed (say, the one on the screenshot and just a bit wider, much higher version; or the one on the screenshot and a same-height, much wider version; or between a high narrow size and a low wide size, etc.). Handy!

[Hiro Protagonist II]

 

 

Reading this gave me an idea~

<-Portrait on left side courtesy of BelmonteOliveira (some random DeviantArt artist I found by the use of google. Proper sourcing ftw! )

 

Just a few ways^ you could use a thing like this.

 

 

I like the idea of seeing a person's face in the dialogue screen. Baldurs Gate 2 had it to some degree. Having both you and the person you're talking to adds a personal touch to it.

[Lephys]

I like the idea of seeing a person's face in the dialogue screen. Baldurs Gate 2 had it to some degree. Having both you and the person you're talking to adds a personal touch to it.

Indeed. And, regarding Osvir's idea, I rather like the way many JRPGs handled the "who's currently speaking" emphasis, with both portrait emphasis and/or slideshow-type animation (i.e. single-image changes to show the mood of the person currently speaking). Not that it needs to be anime-style reflections of moods and such, but, it's quite nice when the portraits actually give you an idea of the reactions of a character. A good example of the effect of the lack of this is when a character has a smiling face, yet becomes quite angry with you in dialogue. You're reading angry words from a happy-go-lucky smiling kind-hearted person. It's pretty great when they at least appear to be angry while speaking the angry words (again mainly in reaction to things... not necessarily a new portrait every single time they start a new sentence).

 

Of course, this takes a LOT more resources to produce all those portrait versions. But, IF it could be done, it'd be pretty great.

[Hormalakh]

 

Regarding the conversation UI, I second Hormalakh's suggestion. I'm a fan of the "one person gets the left margin, one person gets the right margin" system of dialogue. Of course, when you get to the point at which multiple people are talking in the same, er, poly-logue? It kinda falls back into just an alternating indication of a change in speaker, rather than each side specifically representing a single speaker for the duration of the conversation.

 

 

Reading this gave me an idea~

<-Portrait on left side courtesy of BelmonteOliveira (some random DeviantArt artist I found by the use of google. Proper sourcing ftw! )

Ofc, I could've cut it better and stuff like that, I only intended to use it as an example/concept. There could be some sort of "highlight" in the dialogue as well. If, let's say Edair, butts into this conversation, his portrait could get bigger for a second or "light up" in some way to indicate that "Here I am! Now I am talking!". Same thing could go with the Left-Hand Side (The Target) you are talking with.

If you face a Group of Rival Adventurers or you face a group of enemies, they could pop up several portraits on the Left-Hand side as well (of course).

Heck! If you've had a Rogue infiltrate the Enemy party (Stronghold missions, maybe?), they could appear on the Left-Hand side too, and when battle ensues (if it ensues), the Rogue could be a 7th Temporary Party Member (Uncontrollable).

Just a few ways^ you could use a thing like this.

This was exactly my idea! Then you can also have several portraits on the right side too and you can then choose who says/acts the next dialogue option and for those selections that require a dice roll or a attribute check you can have tht particular character make that attribute.dice roll check.

[Zeckul]

Havoc will be wreaked! Souls will be harvested! I must correct this suggestion, though. It's not the resolution it has to scale with, but the DPI density. A 13" and a 24" screen can have the same 1080p resolution, and a font size "optimized for 1080p" would look terribly small on one of them. PC screens nowadays range from DPI densities of 90dpi-275dpi, and the font sizes available to choose from should read comfortably across that entire range, regardless of the screen size/resolution.

I agree, the problem is the only thing the game knows about your monitor is its resolution (actually it doesn't even know that, it just assumes the highest resolution reported by the graphics card driver is the native one). At best, it can make an educated guess about the DPI (i.e. larger resolutions correlate with higher DPI). On Windows Vista and up, I suppose a game could retrieve the DPI scaling setting to get an idea of user expectations, but most people don't even know these settings exist.

 

EDIT: well apparently Unity3d has a DPI property. Not sure if that works on Windows, is that a tablet/phone thing only? I just don't see how that could be implemented on Windows.

Edited August 23, 2013 by Zeckul

[Lephys]

This was exactly my idea! Then you can also have several portraits on the right side too and you can then choose who says/acts the next dialogue option and for those selections that require a dice roll or a attribute check you can have tht particular character make that attribute.dice roll check.

Sorry. Didn't realize the full extent of your suggestion. *thumbs up*

[Osvir]

 

-Snip- 

 

 

This was exactly my idea! Then you can also have several portraits on the right side too and you can then choose who says/acts the next dialogue option and for those selections that require a dice roll or a attribute check you can have tht particular character make that attribute.dice roll check.

 

This takes me back to memory lane (Character Expressions) albeit dice rolls and attributes checks sounds like a great addition into the conversation.

 

Imagine talking to 3 goons, two of them is dumb but the 3rd one is actually quite intellectual. For whatever reason, one of the dumb ones are the "Big Brother" leader, and you are trying to persuade them that you are part of their Bandit gang (so that you can sneak in for whatever reason).

 

Let's just take the only significant choice:

3: - "I think you should let us pass"

 

Bandit Brother Nr 1 (Leader):

"Huh? Okay, well you seem alright..."

 

[insert Attribute Check/Dice Roll] - In code, I don't want some sort of Final Fantasy X-2 "Mission Complete!" Wheel of Fortune to start spinning on the screen *shudders*

 

And in this example the dice roll fails~

 

Bandit Brother Nr 3 (The smart one):

"Now wait a minute bro. These guys smell funny, they not walk like us and not talk like us. Some fishy business...."

 

And now you have to convince the smarter one and he becomes the "Highlight" in conversation on the other side.

Edited August 23, 2013 by Osvir

[Hormalakh]

OK i finally stopped being lazy and did a mock up. Here it is.

 

So in this mock-up, I've pre-selected the party members that I want to be part of the conversation. When the convo starts, their portraits show up. Then I can select between the two party members when making dialogue choices and the computer would take each party member's attributes into account when makign dialogue choices. So for example, I was not successful with Sagani in getting Vertical Slice video updates from Osrnaer, so now I've selected Forton the monk and will flex my strength attribute (or whatever attribute) to threaten him because I know I'd be more successful threatening Osrnaer with a naked monk than with a dwarf ranger. So the next option I'd pick would be Forton threatening him.

 

What do you guys think?

 

Thanks Osvir for the image! It was inspiring.

Edited August 23, 2013 by Hormalakh

[Osvir]

@Hormalakh:

I think it looks great, but I personally don't like the "mid-screen" Dialogue Lines coming in by Sagani. By my preferences I kind of like having all the text on the left side, unless the conversation box took some pro-your-suggestion-art direction. It is a concept but it looks a little bit "off-put".

But it is at the same time a nice addition to kind of separate the two, e.g. everyone talking on the left side has text on the left side, everyone talking on the right side has text on the right side. I just think that it could work just as well by having all text on the left side and simply doing a Color-Border (like you did around Forton) to point out who's talking (not to mention putting a "Forton:" or "Sagani:" in front of the text when he/she speaks).

Your idea makes it super clear who's talking, but it "kind of" removes the standard "Novel" experience.

-------------------------------You open the door-----
-You are greeted by the Innkeeper--------------
-"Osmaer is my name!"--------------------------------
-----------------------You notice a silvertooth-------
-------------------"Got some news?"------------------
-"Sure! Can't tell tho"---------------------------------
-------------------------------------"Please?"-------------

Etc. etc.

In comparison to:

-You open the door-----------------------------------
-You are greeted by the Innkeeper--------------
-"Osmaer is my name!"--------------------------------
-You notice a silvertooth-----------------------------
-"Got some news?"------------------------------------
-"Sure! Can't tell tho"---------------------------------
-"Please?"-------------------------------------------------

Neither of the two are pretty writing, they are simply there to convey an image of what I am talking about.

[Wombat]

I want it to look more like a script for a play. The current look is perfect.

Honestly speaking, this didn't occur to my mind.  I was quite happy with the PST-ish dialogue presented at the top of this thread.  Indeed, if it's more like a play script, then, it would feel more natural:  If there are no other problems are involved, I'd like to see it, too.  Guess even such basic thing has a room for improvement.

[LadyCrimson]

Tim and I both have forms of color-blindness (though his is worse than mine).  We don't have any difficulty reading the text.

Didn't know that. Good to know, thanks for sharing.

 

My uncle is pretty color blind and he occasionally has problems with text in print stuff (as well as matching his socks...), so it's a thought that crosses my mind sometimes.

[Lephys]

I think it looks great, but I personally don't like the "mid-screen" Dialogue Lines coming in by Sagani. By my preferences I kind of like having all the text on the left side, unless the conversation box took some pro-your-suggestion-art direction. It is a concept but it looks a little bit "off-put".

I sadly cannot actually view the mock-up (its source is blocked here at work). But, if your complaint, Osvir, is simply that it's sloppily staggered, it might not be so bad if the text attributed to speakers on the right side were still all aligned along the left edge, but simply indented out further?

 

As in:

 

=================================================================================

Osmaer  | "Blargity blargity blargle bla-blarg!"                                                                    |

             |                                                                                                                |

             |                "Buh-LARG?! Blarg-BLARGUM blargy blargle! Blar-GULLL!                       | Squeeble

             |                 Blargle bleeg blugle bliggity blurgy blagh."                                          |

             |                                                                                                                |

Osmaer  | "Blargle-blar-BLARGY-blargum..."                                                                     |

             |                                                                                                                |

             | "BLUMMITY-BLUG!"                                                                                    |

             |                                                                                                                |

             |                "Blarrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... -____-"                                                              | Squeeble

=================================================================================

 

Meh? I mean, maybe it's not enough. But, I think as long as the "right text" were simply aligned to a different margin, it would fix most of that problem.

 

Maybe the descriptive text could be centered, with margin indentions on both sides?

 

*le shrug*

Edited August 23, 2013 by Lephys

[Osvir]

Watch it where it isn't blocked Lephys it's not sloppily staggered, it's just... I don't know, it doesn't look like it entirely fits in, which is why I think for it to shine the most it would require some sort of art upgrade to accommodate Hormalakh's suggestion. Something that indicates left side is meant for left-side party and right side is meant for right-side party in the dialogue.

My example is sloppily staggered though.
 

-----------------------------------You open the door-

-You are greeted by the Innkeeper--------------
-"Osmaer is my name!"--------------------------------
-----------------------------You notice a silvertooth-

------------------------------------"Got some news?"-

-"Sure! Can't tell tho"---------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------"Please?"-

 

 

In comparison to:

-You open the door-----------------------------------
-You are greeted by the Innkeeper--------------
-"Osmaer is my name!"--------------------------------
-You notice a silvertooth-----------------------------
-"Got some news?"------------------------------------
-"Sure! Can't tell tho"---------------------------------
-"Please?"-------------------------------------------------

 

There, that should do it more justice.

Edited August 23, 2013 by Osvir

[Hormalakh]

not too concerned about the staggering but im more interested in the multi-party dialogue.