Adam at Work

[Adam Brennecke]

Hey Everyone,

 

I'm working all day today (yup it's Sunday, and I have no life). Feel free to ask some questions about Pillars of Eternity, or being a programmer/producer at Obsidian, and I'll do my best to answer them. Some things I can't answer - sorry in advance!

 

Today, I'm working on a few odds and ends - bug fixing and miscellaneous features. Right now I'm looking into an occasional bug that causes party members to get stuck-in-place permanently after they get knocked down. That's no fun, so I'm going to fix it.

 

Anyone get a chance to play South Park: The Stick of Truth yet? I'm looking forward to doing a complete play through hopefully soon.

 

-Adam

[Hiro Protagonist II]

With three different versions of PoE (Windows, Linux and Mac), how do you allocate resources to do all three versions? Do you do say do a part of the game with the Windows version and then do the Mac and Linux versions straight after. Do you have three people or teams working on different versions of just one team working on a version at a time. Also, I'm guessing the same people are doing the three different versions? What are some of the challenges to do 3 different versions of the same game for you.

[BBMorti]

How many different solutions would you say there are on average for each Quest?

 

"Today, I'm working on a few odds and ends - bug fixing and miscellaneous features. Right now I'm looking into an occasional bug that causes party members to get stuck-in-place permanently after they get knocked down. That's no fun, so I'm going to fix it." That does indeed sound annoying, and were I in your shoes I would also want to fix this, which makes me feel there is a connection between you and me. We think alike you and me not wanting to have our characters stuck and all *brofist*

Edited March 9, 2014 by BBMorti

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

In your opinion, what is the coolest class in Pillars or Eternity?

 

How many people do you have to fend off in order to get to the coffee maker in the morning?

 

How does the Paladin's smite-ish ability "Flames of Devotion" work?

[Elerond]

Can you tell what milestone/s you are currently working in PoE and how your roadmap for PoE currently looks, at least in very general level?

[Living One]

I know the initial idea was to have a companion per class(hence the now scrapped additional stretch goals to cover the last ones) but that's not happening anymore(they're eight currently,right?).Could you tell us wich classes aren't covered,so we can create a character while avoiding class redundancy with the other party members?Or at least do you guys plan to reveal it pre-release?Or is it subject to the 'no-spoiler' policy?

[Adam Brennecke]

With three different versions of PoE (Windows, Linux and Mac), how do you allocate resources to do all three versions? Do you do say do a part of the game with the Windows version and then do the Mac and Linux versions straight after. Do you have three people or teams working on different versions of just one team working on a version at a time. Also, I'm guessing the same people are doing the three different versions? What are some of the challenges to do 3 different versions of the same game for you.

 

On larger projects, you might have teams dedicated to each platform. Our team is small, so you are correct that the same people work on the three different versions (although we will have dedicated testers for each platform). We are very lucky, because Unity supports the three platforms out of the box. There are minor things that we need to do to get it all to work out, but all three are developed concurrently.

 

Most of the challenges arise when things don't work the same - it takes programmer time to figure out the issue on the individual platform, and more time to program a solution.

[Greensleeve]

Quick, let's flood Adam with questions so he doesn't get to do any bug fixing! Wait a minute...

 

Anyway, question for Adam: how many weapon types (roughly) will there be in the game with actually useful magical equivalents? The IE games became sort of boring to play through as fight-y types because there wasn't that much choice in weapon types if you wanted to play with some efficiency and optimality and I'd hope that PE overcomes this. Given New Vegas, I have high hopes. 

 

Edit: Also, not had the chance to play The Stick of Truth, being busy with my final term in college and all (pesky dissertation). But I am strongly considering getting it when I can. 

Edited March 9, 2014 by Greensleeve

[Adam Brennecke]

How many different solutions would you say there are on average for each Quest?

 

"Today, I'm working on a few odds and ends - bug fixing and miscellaneous features. Right now I'm looking into an occasional bug that causes party members to get stuck-in-place permanently after they get knocked down. That's no fun, so I'm going to fix it." That does indeed sound annoying, and were I an your shoes I would also want to fix this, which makes me feel there is a connection between you and me. We think alike you and me not wanting to have our characters stuck and all *brofist*

 

Many? Definitely more than one and greater than two. There are multi-part quests with a subset of objectives that can be solved in multiple ways.

[coffeetable]

What's your approach to designing the software architecture for games like PE?

 

Subquestion: what were the most significant learning experiences that lead to your current approach?

Edited March 9, 2014 by coffeetable

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Also, more on the programming side of things. What is your favourite programming language and which ones do you dislike? Why? What was the learning curve like with using Unity with the programmers at Obsidian? What have been some of the fun features you've done with Unity? What are some of the interesting things (bugs) that's happened with PoE that's been funny but totally unintentional. 

[WorstUsernameEver]

What was the most challenging thing to implement so far?

 

I suppose this is a design question, but: what do you think is the biggest thing PoE has over the original Infinity Engine games?

 

Do you already have a decent idea of the things modders will be able to edit *for sure* in the finale title?

 

Your expectations for the True Detective finale?

[Hiro Protagonist II]

When do you start getting voice actors in, or have you already done so? How is the music going as well?

[Adam Brennecke]

In your opinion, what is the coolest class in Pillars or Eternity?

 

How many people do you have to fend off in order to get to the coffee maker in the morning?

 

How does the Paladin's smite-ish ability "Flames of Devotion" work?

 

The Cipher. Chanter might be the next one in line, but I haven't put too much time in playing one yet.

 

The coffee maker isn't typically crowded. Most of the hardcore coffee drinkers have their own supply and brew machines in their own offices. I try to only drink two cups a day.

 

See Thoros of Myr.

[Adam Brennecke]

Can you tell what milestone/s you are currently working in PoE and how your roadmap for PoE currently looks, at least in very general level?

 

We are still in production, and hope to be at Alpha soon.

[Adam Brennecke]

I know the initial idea was to have a companion per class(hence the now scrapped additional stretch goals to cover the last ones) but that's not happening anymore(they're eight currently,right?).Could you tell us wich classes aren't covered,so we can create a character while avoiding class redundancy with the other party members?Or at least do you guys plan to reveal it pre-release?Or is it subject to the 'no-spoiler' policy?

 

Yup, you are right that there are 8 companions. I'm not sure if we are going to release the class makeup before shipping because of the spoiler thing. You can always hire the missing pieces at the adventurer's hall if you need the full suite of classes.

[Adam Brennecke]

Quick, let's flood Adam with questions so he doesn't get to do any bug fixing! Wait a minute...

 

Anyway, question for Adam: how many weapon types (roughly) will there be in the game with actually useful magical equivalents? The IE games became sort of boring to play through as fight-y types because there wasn't that much choice in weapon types if you wanted to play with some efficiency and optimality and I'd hope that PE overcomes this. Given New Vegas, I have high hopes. 

 

Edit: Also, not had the chance to play The Stick of Truth, being busy with my final term in college and all (pesky dissertation). But I am strongly considering getting it when I can. 

 

I'm not exactly sure what you are asking? We have a ton of weapon types. Josh did the weapons in New Vegas, so it's in good hands.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

 

We are still in production, and hope to be at Alpha soon.

 

 

You probably can't say and I was going to ask if you could do a current play through of the game now, or at least the main quest. I'm guessing this kind of answers my question.

[Greensleeve]

 

Quick, let's flood Adam with questions so he doesn't get to do any bug fixing! Wait a minute...

 

Anyway, question for Adam: how many weapon types (roughly) will there be in the game with actually useful magical equivalents? The IE games became sort of boring to play through as fight-y types because there wasn't that much choice in weapon types if you wanted to play with some efficiency and optimality and I'd hope that PE overcomes this. Given New Vegas, I have high hopes. 

 

Edit: Also, not had the chance to play The Stick of Truth, being busy with my final term in college and all (pesky dissertation). But I am strongly considering getting it when I can. 

 

I'm not exactly sure what you are asking? We have a ton of weapon types. Josh did the weapons in New Vegas, so it's in good hands.

 

 

I'm asking whether there will be a diversity of powerful magic weapons in the game and not just a diversity of weapon types. BG2 had pretty good weapon type diversity, but if one looked at whether there were useful magical versions of these weapons for the second half of the game one ended up getting to choose between two-handed sword, halberd, flail, and warhammer. And that was more or less it. Sure there were other +3 weapons, but they were nowhere as good as the other types, nor were they nearly as interesting.

 

Given that you say Josh is handling this I feel pretty good about things, given that New Vegas really went out of its way to ensure that you had great guns of each and every type. What I was hoping to get from you here was maybe something more concrete than hopes based on prior products.

[Adam Brennecke]

What's your approach to designing the software architecture for games like PE?

 

Subquestion: what were the most significant learning experiences that lead to your current approach?

 

I don't know how to answer without writing too much.

 

The architecture is defined by the engine, Unity. Play to it's strengths and don't try to do things it can't do. Never try to force a square peg into a round hole.

[Living One]

random question:any beholder-like monster?

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Any potential future updates from MCA?

[Adam Brennecke]

Also, more on the programming side of things. What is your favourite programming language and which ones do you dislike? Why? What was the learning curve like with using Unity with the programmers at Obsidian? What have been some of the fun features you've done with Unity? What are some of the interesting things (bugs) that's happened with PoE that's been funny but totally unintentional. 

 

I like C#/C++, and don't have a strong dislike. Steve and myself already had experience using C#, so the transition was smooth. Tim is a very smart guy, and got up to speed very quickly. Any programmer should be versatile to be able to pick up a language and be productive with it in a short amount of time.

 

Onyx uses a component system that is similar to Unity's, so the transition to Unity's way of doing things was pretty easy to get a handle on.

 

As for features, I think every feature is fun to implement. Unity makes programming fun (or more fun!). 

 

Scaling issues are always funny. When we were hammering out the weapon scale system, sometimes NPCs would have really, really small weapons (palm of your hand sized), and sometimes they would have 10m long weapons. I always laugh at stuff like that.

[sesobebo]

another Adam works late thread! yay!

 

have You come around to program the encounter AI yet? how advanced do You intend to make it? will it differ from creature to creature and/or culture to culture? will PC group vs NPC group encounters feature any special tactics?

 

edit question: will AI take game difficulty into account?

Edited March 10, 2014 by sesobebo

[Nonek]

Bit of a lore question if you don't mind Mr Brennecke: With the Dyrwood having no laws against Animancy are there a number of charlatans trying to make a quick coin on the back of the real Animancer's research? How would such a crime be treated in a setting where the immortal soul is perhaps regarded as more important than the flesh? Are there laws governing such matters or is this the domain of the Clergy?

 

Addendum: Playing the Stick of Truth currently, bravo Sir, please pass on my congratulations and thanks for such an enjoyable and rib tickling experience.