New Engine?

[AndreaColombo]

Additionally I would like to explore tighter shadowing (including point light shadows) and a slight AO around the feet to ground the characters in the scene, but that's work for down the road on future projects.

 

Chances that this makes it to the expansion?

 

It would be a pity if that was a PoE2-only feature.

[Bryy]

 

 

PS:

Having characters worth looking at would only attract newer audience

So would making console versions of the game.

 

I suspect you don't actually understand what Obsidian is trying to do here.

 

Okay, let's move it back a bit. Not going for consolization has nothing to do with not wanting "these type of players". Let's not imply Obsidian doesn't want it to have appeal past the target audience.

 

Unfortunately.

Obsidian is a business. More than that: Obsidian is in the business of people having fun, and many of their customers play consoles and are no doubt feeling left out by no console version. I have no doubt that PoE will be ported sometime down the line. PoE being PC-exclusive always had the underlying implication that it was to make a great base game without having to translate those mechanics to new platforms right away. These people are professionals, they are not going to have some jaded "PC Master Race/Consoles kill games" mentality of an average forum-user. 

Edited February 6, 2015 by Bryy

[Sedrefilos]

Heya

 

I just saw news of sequel being planed and I wondered is there a possibility of using new engine for upcoming game?

 

I admit that I really have a dislike for Unity, since it looks quite bad, example - twig like characters in Wasteland 2, has crappy animations and on top of that isnt even optimized properly given its not so stellar performance.

 

Since Unreal and Crysis engines are basically free now wouldn't that be better alternative? Having characters worth looking at would only attract newer audience and make game more immersive.

 

I am by no means a graphical whore, I played Icewind Dale 1/2, BG2, Planescape all back in the day when they were released, but quite frankly I would still prefer detailed well done sprites alike Nameless One rather then horrible looking textures of Unity.

 

Also if I recall correctly there was some talk about why Obsidian isn't using Onyx engine (which I love a lot!) due to Havok costing to much, but Crysis has physics engine integrated in it and there are free solutions such as Bullet Physics engine out there.

 

This game doesn't have to be a Star Citizen, but making it the most appealing game that it can be would certainly help

 

 

I believe the graphics are very good. The 2D backgrounds are remarkable, imo, and the 3D characters are very nice. Not the best, but not as ugly as Wasteland 2. I personally like them. They have good animation too. If you haven't checked them lately (because they've changed them since their first show), check a character creation video in youtube of version 392.

Edited February 6, 2015 by Sedrefilos

[IndiraLightfoot]

 

 

Unity doesn't have much to do with how the game looks because we are using custom lighting/material shaders for most things.

Cheers! 

-Adam

 

Popping in for a bit bold question: But since I don't know much about how shaders/lightning work, is this custom stuff, the reason why the character models of our party don't look really lit up in certain areas, and why they have that opaque look to them sometimes? In other posts, I have naively been hinting at how clear char models look in InXile's WL2 - also Unity, but now I realize you have made some custom lightning/shaders, and you also have that clever 2D/3D painted background trick to keep up.

 

 

No, it really doesn't have anything to do with that and that's a good question. We have an ambient term in our shaders that is added to characters. We use it to make the character fit into the scene better (which in our first batch of screenshots - this was one of the biggest complaints). It just needs to be adjusted by artists where the term is too strong. In other places, the directional and fill lights need to be tweaked to bring out the character silhouettes. 

 

But I agree with you. The characters do get washed out in certain places in the game, so I may globally scale down or adjust the ambient term before we ship. Additionally I would like to explore tighter shadowing (including point light shadows) and a slight AO around the feet to ground the characters in the scene, but that's work for down the road on future projects. Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to look into graphics improvements over the past several months.

 

Thx for your enlightening reply!

 

I for one am really hoping that you get in a solution you reckon is good enough into the PoE that ships and then make a more solid solution for it in a later patch or even expansion.

[Roby Atadero]

While Unreal and Cryengine have cheaper short term subscription plans, they come with added stipulations including a royalty rate for Unreal. Cryengine's cheap plan also only supports Windows as of right now. Unity seemed to have everything we needed all in one package (a good toolset, no need for external third party software for animation/audio/ui/etc, and support for Win/Mac/Linux).

 

That all being said, the work and time required to port the existing code base to one of those engines would be more trouble than it is worth. We've learned a lot about Unity and developing with it over the project so any new project going forward would have a lot less headaches to have to figure out in the technical department which usually end up slowing down development.

 

Any sequel would mean the existing engine would not only get a some new features but, a lot of existing systems would be improved to allow better workflow and for more/better content to exist since they don't have to be rebuilt from scratch.

 

As for the character art, like Adam said, there are a lot of models and pieces that needed to be generated for all of the item/armor pieces you can wear. Character creation and Inventory paper dolls were not added until around the middle of the project either so it was not known early on how detailed character art would need to be since the majority of the time is spent looking that them from a far away top down camera. 

 

It's safe to say any sequel would use Unity again.

[Sedrefilos]

Sometimes some people forget that this game was crowdfunded and though the budget might seem (and is) high (4 million $) it cannot be compared with the money a huge ass company can pour (Dungeon Siege 3 was funded by Square Enix if I'm not mistaken).

When I saw the first models I too was quite dissapointed to be honest, but I could live with that, having in mind how massive the content of the game is (if I had to sacrifice some graphics quality over more content, so be it).

Thankfully the team worked more on graphics so the newer models are just fine

[Starwars]

While Unreal and Cryengine have cheaper short term subscription plans, they come with added stipulations including a royalty rate for Unreal. Cryengine's cheap plan also only supports Windows as of right now. Unity seemed to have everything we needed all in one package (a good toolset, no need for external third party software for animation/audio/ui/etc, and support for Win/Mac/Linux).

 

That all being said, the work and time required to port the existing code base to one of those engines would be more trouble than it is worth. We've learned a lot about Unity and developing with it over the project so any new project going forward would have a lot less headaches to have to figure out in the technical department which usually end up slowing down development.

 

Any sequel would mean the existing engine would not only get a some new features but, a lot of existing systems would be improved to allow better workflow and for more/better content to exist since they don't have to be rebuilt from scratch.

 

As for the character art, like Adam said, there are a lot of models and pieces that needed to be generated for all of the item/armor pieces you can wear. Character creation and Inventory paper dolls were not added until around the middle of the project either so it was not known early on how detailed character art would need to be since the majority of the time is spent looking that them from a far away top down camera. 

 

It's safe to say any sequel would use Unity again.

 

For all those "tips and tricks" learning to work around certain limitations in the engine and so forth, do you keep documents detailing those things somewhere? Always wondered how that process works so the knowledge is not forgotten between projects.

[Aoha]

OK, cheers for explanation and clarification

[h3st]

For some of us it's more important whether the game will run at all than what it looks like. I don't care about computer games if they don't work on Linux. Unity works on Linux. I think the Unreal engine might too? Crysis seems like it isn't usable yet.

 

That said, I'm also not a fan of spending lots of money on hardware, so I'm willing to accept some potato graphics. But PoE already looks prettier than WL2, from what I've seen.

[Sedrefilos]

OK, cheers for explanation and clarification

You seek for thruth... and you found it

Edited February 6, 2015 by Sedrefilos

[Stun]

. These people are professionals, they are not going to have some jaded "PC Master Race/Consoles kill games" mentality of an average forum-user.

Right! Instead, they'll be a little more diplomatic when they tell it like it is:

Avellone is "tired of designing content and interactions that caters to consoles and console controllers."

 

"Those limitations affect RPG mechanics and content more than players may realize (especially for players who've never played a PC RPG and realize what's been lost over the years), and often doesn't add to the RPG experience,"

you have a long wait, Bryy, before you ever see an Eternity game on Xbox.

[Luckmann]

And still, we see oddly console-ish changes like party stealth. I wonder if there's such a thing as symptomatic consolization. People have become so into the aspect of dumbing things down for consoles that it comes naturally to restrict function rather than expand on it.

 

 

Press Y to enter Party Scout Mode

 

Edited February 6, 2015 by Luckmann

[Sensuki]

Party Stealth and Combat Only are side effects of the way they coded their game states. Stealth is a game state. Combat is another game state. The two are mutually exclusive.

[Luckmann]

Party Stealth and Combat Only are side effects of the way they coded their game states. Stealth is a game state. Combat is another game state. The two are mutually exclusive.

 

Wow, that's absolutely, 100% terrible on so many levels.

 

Seriously Obsidian, what the hell?

 

Playing a rogue in Baldur's Gate 2 (specifically an Assassin) it's harrowing to consider Party Stealth/Combat Unstealthing in PoE and it's adverse effects on tactical stealthing and deployment. The number of times I find myself and my rogues holding off joining combat just so we can set up an ambush or line up a backstab to initiate combat is beyond count by now, and not being able to do it in PoE is going to feel awkward as all hell.

 

I'm starting to understand why there's no rogue CNPC in the game - they're just keeping their fingers crossed as few as possible are going to play rogues or have rogues in their groups. Silly people, expecting rogues to behave roguelike.

[Sensuki]

They may be able to change how it works in a future installment.

 

Eder used to be a Rogue but now he's a Fighter.

Rogues took a huge (indirect) nerf in the last patch, I'd even go as far as to say they've plunged into mediocrity, at least at the lower levels of the game.

Edited February 6, 2015 by Sensuki

[Luckmann]

They may be able to change how it works in a future installment.

 

[.,,]

 

Rogues took a huge (indirect) nerf in the last patch, I'd even go as far as to say they've plunged into mediocrity, at least at the lower levels of the game.

 

Unless they're going to try for that backwards compatibility thing I've always wanted, that'll never ever fix PoE. At this rate, we should be happy if PoE2 doesn't pull a Dragon Age 2.

[Adam Brennecke]

 

Additionally I would like to explore tighter shadowing (including point light shadows) and a slight AO around the feet to ground the characters in the scene, but that's work for down the road on future projects.

 

Chances that this makes it to the expansion?

 

It would be a pity if that was a PoE2-only feature.

 

 

Major graphics enhancements are not expansion work unfortunately. 

[AndreaColombo]

Major graphics enhancements are not expansion work unfortunately. 

 

 

Further putting ranks in my delusional skill—if those things get done for PoE2, is there any chance you'd back-port them to PoE?

[Quetzalcoatl]

And still, we see oddly console-ish changes like party stealth. I wonder if there's such a thing as symptomatic consolization. People have become so into the aspect of dumbing things down for consoles that it comes naturally to restrict function rather than expand on it.

 

 

Press Y to enter Party Scout Mode

 

What consolization? From what I have seen, this game's stealth system is far more complex than that of the IE games. They could have simply had a dice roll determine whether you were invisible like in the old games, but instead they made a stealth system that takes into account how close you are to the enemy, how much you move and how many people are sneaking.

Edited February 6, 2015 by Quetzalcoatl

[Sensuki]

is there any chance you'd back-port them to PoE?

Pillars of Eternity: Enhanced Edition

[500MetricTonnes]

PS:

Having characters worth looking at would only attract newer audience

So would releasing the game on consoles.

 

I suspect you don't actually understand what Obsidian is trying to do here. .

 

Part of what you have to realize with recent games using Unity is that they all suffer from one thing, very small budgets.

Yep, but even if PoE had a $100 Million budget, I'd *still* prefer it to look like Baldurs Gate 2 instead of....Dragon Age Inquisition, or Witcher 2, Or Dungeon Siege 3 or whatever the graphics whores value in their RPGs these days.

 

2D graphics generally age far better than 3D graphics, as the main factors that affect image quality are resolution, colour depth, and the artist's skill. With 3D graphics, there are far more things that affect how the game looks, such as polygon count, texture resolution, lighting, shaders, etc. If you ask me, the graphics of BG/IWD/PS:T still hold up today, whereas the graphics of a game like NWN look horribly dated by comparison.

 

Also, I don't have a particularly high-end PC, and I can't really afford to get a new one. The fact that PoE doesn't have the graphics of something like The Witcher 3 is a good thing, if you ask me.

 

(Although my issue with the graphics of games like Dragon Age and The Witcher is mainly to do with the artistic style. The developers have all the graphical capability in the world, and they squander it on rendering a bunch of dirty wooden huts and shanties by a swamp)

Edited February 6, 2015 by 500MetricTonnes

[Namutree]

2D graphics generally age far better than 3D graphics, as the main factors that affect image quality are resolution, colour depth, and the artist's skill. With 3D graphics, there are far more things that affect how the game looks, such as polygon count, texture resolution, lighting, shaders, etc. If you ask me, the graphics of BG/IWD/PS:T still hold up today, whereas the graphics of a game like NWN look horribly dated by comparison.

 

 

Also, I don't have a particularly high-end PC, and I can't really afford to get a new one. The fact that PoE doesn't have the graphics of something like The Witcher 3 is a good thing, if you ask me.

 

(Although my issue with the graphics of games like Dragon Age and The Witcher is mainly to do with the artistic style. The developers have all the graphical capability in the world, and they squander it on rendering a bunch of dirty wooden huts and shanties by a swamp)

 

I agree. 2D ages much better than 3D. Really, it's strange that so many games are made in 3D when I would assume 2D would be less work and look better in the long run. Too bad Obsidian didn't go for 2D, but oh well...

[Adam Brennecke]

 

Major graphics enhancements are not expansion work unfortunately. 

 

 

Further putting ranks in my delusional skill—if those things get done for PoE2, is there any chance you'd back-port them to PoE?

 

 

I can't predict the future. Haha

[Adam Brennecke]

off topic... sorry! The party stealth stuff has nothing to do with anything you think it has to do with. We want to change it and our current plan is to get around to it for the patch/expansion. Any changes requires time to refactoring the system from the original design. We felt like it wasn't worth the time investment (time away from bug fixing) because it doesn't make how you play the stealth game that much different, and refactoring at this time would introduce many new bugs into the system. Does that make sense? Even if it takes a only a few days to do, that could mean 20-30+ bugs don't get fixed. 

 

-Adam

[Sensuki]

I think it was explained previously (by Josh?) that implementing it would be time consuming and was not a priority for release, which was perfectly understandable.

 

I know I'd prefer 20-30 bugs fixed by release and have individual stealth in a patch or expansion

 

For many of us this is a learning experience regarding what is/isn't possible at different stages of a project.

Edited February 6, 2015 by Sensuki