Update #62: Production 01 - State of the Project

[Sensuki]

Thanks for a production update guys. Further ahead than I thought you would be already

I like the conversation UI - I wonder though does it support NPC (speaker) portraits, as in when you speak to an NPC who has a portrait - where is their portrait placed ? Is it like the IE games where it goes next to their name?

 

I'm not 100% sure about the light blue color of player responses. The IE games had red, and it was very clear from the get-go and a very distinct color. Does the IE red not look very good on your UI background?

 

A sharper color might be a better idea, but it's a minor complaint overall.

 

Does the conversation UI take up say "half" the vertical screen like it does in the IE games? If not where is it placed?

[Adam Brennecke]

What does this mean in regards to the sate of the vertical slice? Do you be on to production before or after the VS is finished?

 

The vertical slice is finished and has been for some time. We are in production right now.

[Lephys]

I'm not 100% sure about the light blue color of player responses. The IE games had red, and it was very clear from the get-go and a very distinct color. Does the IE red not look very good on your UI background?

For what it's worth, red-on-black is a very bad idea. I realize the text may not be just-plain-red, and the background isn't exactly black, but... well, let's just say it's awfully close to a bad idea.

 

Of course, I can't, for the life of me, remember what color the background is for the dialogue options in BG. I played it not a week ago... And yes, for what it's worth, they were readable. I'm not saying it CAN'T be done. But, red is actually a very, surprisingly dark color. If you put all the colors on the color wheel side-by-side, then greyscale that image, red is awfully close to black in terms of value. It's a wee bit better on a glowing screen than in ink-on-paper format. But, still...

 

 

The vertical slice is finished and has been for some time. We are in production right now.

I am amongst those who were clueless to this fact. Last I heard was "we're finishing up our VS right now," which I took to mean "We're working on the VS, while currently being at the tail end of its overall project duration." I didn't realize it got do'd. So... SPLENDTASTIC! ^_____^

Edited August 21, 2013 by Lephys

[Sensuki]

For what it's worth, red-on-black is a very bad idea. I realize the text may not be just-plain-red, and the background isn't exactly black, but... well, let's just say it's awfully close to a bad idea.

 

Of course, I can't, for the life of me, remember what color the background is for the dialogue options in BG. I played it not a week ago...

Google is your friend if you can't remember.

 

BG2 did have red on black and IMO it looked very good.

 

 

Also also Red.

 

 

No big deal though I guess. It's not that it looks bad or anything.

Edited August 21, 2013 by Sensuki

[Stiffkittin]

Great update. Super-informative as ususal.

 

The conversation UI is absolutely gorgeous. Reminds me of how much I loved Icewind Dale's UI over all the Infinity Engine games and I'm profoundly happy you're revisiting it here.

 

I'd agree with a previous suggestion about formatting description text differently. I love reading it and miss it in recent crpgs but it should definitely stand apart more than just dialogue printed without quotation marks. Italics, brackets and/or different colored text and then just drop the speech marks maybe?

 

Also I would really like to see the portrait of the person you're actually talking to. Even if it's a generic one, It creates a connection with the conversation you don't get from the pixelated little person in-game and I find it helps me engage with the fiction of the conversation.

 

Thanks again and keep up the great work!

[Sensuki]

filler-gfx

Good point I guess. Although Icewind Dale 2 used repeat marble patterns in the convo UI, something that make the criss-cross pattern not stand out as a blatant copy/pasta would be good too, whether it be something as simple as swapping the grain of the wood on the tiles.

[Wombat]

The vertical slice is finished and has been for some time. We are in production right now.

I am amongst those who were clueless to this fact. Last I heard was "we're finishing up our VS right now," which I took to mean "We're working on the VS, while currently being at the tail end of its overall project duration." I didn't realize it got do'd. So... SPLENDTASTIC! ^_____^

Oh, but they explained what the vertical slice is in a past update…I admit I didn't know it had ended while back but, reading the title of this update was good enough indicator.  In any case, I've gotten an impression that it would be more beneficial to both ends (designers and backers) to let the designers concentrate on what they are working on till they come up with something to show off, probably except that some of us have really good ideas.

[curryinahurry]

Red text is usually always a bad choice as it is notoriously difficulty to compress in both jpeg and video.  Also, it could be an issue for people with color-blindness.  The red text in IE games was pretty awful.

[Sensuki]

Oh yeah, what about quests in those Defiance Bay areas that take you to areas that aren't created yet ? Do you have the first node ie. Quest giver implemented and then put a note somewhere to come back to it when the other areas are done?

[AW8]

Cadegund startled the Wicht!

[Cultist]

I hope journal is more organized than in BG2 and have distinctive separation for each quests instead of grouping by quests.

As for conversation UI - better separation of narrative and dialogue text would be nice but I'm assured Obsidian is aware about it already.

[milczyciel]

Soulless child that gets possessed and twisted into living nightmare...? That's... that's disturbing. And HELL I love that uncomfortable feeling it evokes. It makes me even more stunned, when I imagine miserable and creepy battle taunts (like those hybrids' screams back in System Shock 2) coming from those poor little bastards.

 

God damn, it's been a while since a game allowed me to kill an obvious underage, so even if there's going to be some non violent way for redeeming those... things(?) I still hope for a straightforward, callous solution. The exact one I'll never allow myself to pick up, without an immediate reload of the last quicksave afterwards   Yup, can't do.

Heck, if they'll end up as some kind of unusual and non violent NPCs (thou they definitely do not look like they will) I'll be still pleased, if only because of the unease.

 

Wow... you guys and gals are still able to surprise me.

Awesome.   

 

PS

Sorry, rest of the update was interesting sure, but that one part... Because of my imagination - that's a winner.

Edited August 21, 2013 by milczyciel

[Sensuki]

One way or another, fonts should scale with resolution to some degree; after all you'll be supporting resolutions from 720p to 1440p at least.

mstark will go mad if they don't, lol.

 

I don't know if this was ever confirmed, did Gus Amador join Obsidian as an Environment Artist for P:E or some other game?

Edited August 21, 2013 by Sensuki

[C2B]

Great Update!

[Adam Brennecke]

 

One way or another, fonts should scale with resolution to some degree; after all you'll be supporting resolutions from 720p to 1440p at least.

mstark will go mad if they don't, lol.

 

I don't know if this was ever confirmed, did Gus Amador join Obsidian as an Environment Artist for P:E or some other game?

 

 

Gus is not working on Project Eternity.

[Silent Winter]

Sounds great
Love the stronghold ideas and the Wicht creature looks and sounds creepy

 

Conversation UI looks great

 

I'd also like to know if we'll be able to see NPC portraits when talking to them (a la BG2 - I think BG1 didn't show them).  I don't expect a portrait for every NPC but if it's possible in the engine then we can add our own / make mods to add them.  (My BG2 override folder is full of stuff like this).

[C2B]

Short (unrelated to P:E) question though.

 

Is Matt Perez the brother of your storyboard artist John Perez? I know they worked together before.

[Ieo]

 

And I like the surrounding old-school wood texture. At first I thought I wanted stone, like the old BG series, but wood is actually "warmer" and more inviting than stone, in a way. Hard to describe.

Agreed. Although, I think I'd like to see more natural/grown type visuals and less synthetic-styled stuff. In general... not specifically in the dialogue UI. Think tree-trunk instead of carpentered table. Or, a combo could work, I suppose.

 

I dunno. I know it's silly, but sometimes, the excessive amount of tool-crafted look/feel kinda makes the UI feel a lot more like it's intruding in the screen. Like it doesn't really belong, but someone installed it by hand.

 

 

I think I get what you mean. The more detailed/chiseled/tooled the UI is, the more artificial or "metagamey" it might feel because it's so obviously designed, right? To me, that's like the extreme end of riveted metal or space age UIs, obviously man-made. There are ways to soften the UI to a more organic feel, but it has to fit the setting, and PE's setting looks to be pretty variable between urban/wilderness areas and everything. The UI design also has to be usable, though, with fairly obvious buttons and widgets. It can be an interesting balance. 

 

Like adding vines, moss, a weathered and aged look, etc., maybe even add stone to the wood mix. Well, all things being equal, between the old chiseled stone UI in BG/other IE games and this wood look, I quite like this one...

 

 

Great job! Sounds like you've been very busy!

 

As always, I have an "entitled gamer god what's wrong with him" edit of the UI bit :D

WARNING: extreme nitpicking.

 

 

Ignore the suggestion in yellow text if the scrollbar has an exact click-somewhere-on-the-scrolline-scroll in which case it wouldn't really serve a purpose.

 

I agree with the punctuation string between the number and dialogue text. A little bit "busy." 

 

Now, there's talk above about the old IE red text on black(ish) background. I tolerated it fine, but I didn't feel it was particularly readable. And text/background color is a big part of the usability/accesibility field. Red/green color-blindness is pretty common, and the ESPN example on the text design website I linked is an interesting example. That weird brown on black doesn't look nice at all. 

 

(As a side note, nothing in web/document design pisses me off more than light grey text on white background. I just want to reach through the screen and strangle the idiot hoity-toity designer who thought it was aesthetically pleasing and shine a laser into his/her eye.)

 

The text colors generally seem fine in Obsidian's example. I hope that the PC/NPC names are set off a bit more, though--perhaps each different speaker has a different color? Or something lighter/brighter than the brown chosen there.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

i like the new chat ui, but just as a request for the developers, can you allow the game to be modded so we can swap out portraits with animated Gifs for portraits? I want my portrait character to blink and I know how to animate it, but I don't know how to mod it in.

[Ansku]

Before reading any of the comments -- very nice update, I hadn't quite realized you were this far in the process Very much looking forward to the final product!

[Doppelschwert]

That was an overall awesome update, thank you!

 

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.

 

I see where this will lead when I get to play the game :D

[IndiraLightfoot]

Thanks for an exciting update!

 

Defiance Bay, here I come! My party has just burnt its outskirts, Rebellion Rift and Spite Meadows, to the ground!

 

Wichts rock, nuff said!

 

As for the convo UI, lovely nostalgia, already, others have covered my gripes with it, like:

-problematic font, with bad kernelling and I-displacement

-Superfluous ":" before the "-" in dialogue options

-Superflouus source in front of descriptive text

-Descriptive text needs to stand out more

-Lack of portrait of the other party involved in dialogue

-Perhaps a too heavy UI frame. It could be more organic and less square

 

And I also felt that the conversation comes across as a bit modern American for this kind of setting, but that's no biggie, perhaps.

[zebrotavr]

I want to throw in my two cents.

First, i never liked the ending dialogue option "Goodbye". Well, that's all? Just neutral bye after all the passionate love stories and/or promises to kill? Why not use more appropriate phrazing - i don't know - say "Ok, enough of this!" "I'm done here" or "Have to go, see you later" at least but not that refined goodbye!

 

Second, as the Stronghold is mentioned in this update, i recall a quest i wanted to propose a long way ago. I never met a RPG game which had a quest related to theft from your own home/stronghold/personal chest etc. I mean there are some game where you can be burgled in streets but never your staff in home! It would be a lot of fun (IMHO) to return one day to your stranghold and find all the loot you collected disappeared!

[Sensuki]

I had another question actually.

 

 

Is the color of the character name represented by their major clothing tint like it was in Baldur's Gate ?

 

 

In Icewind Dale, Dialogue with an NPC was always done in the NPC blue selection circle color

 

[Mico Selva]

This is a really good update. That dialogue UI certainly brings back some memories (I'll leave nitpicking to the resident nitpickers). Stronghold ideas sound great as does the wicht. It is really uplifting to know that the work is going so smoothly. 

 

My only issue is we still don't know the real title of the game. Are you waiting for the anniversary of the Kickstarter to reveal it, or what?