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[PC] [MAC] Pillars of Eternity

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[PC] [MAC] Pillars of Eternity

Unread postby Steven Berg » 11 Oct 2012 20:54

Project Eternity by Obsidian Entertainment:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obs ... t-eternity

Obsidian Entertainment and our legendary game designers Chris Avellone, Tim Cain, and Josh Sawyer are excited to bring you a new role-playing game for the PC. Project Eternity (working title) pays homage to the great Infinity Engine games of years past: Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment.

Project Eternity aims to recapture the magic, imagination, depth, and nostalgia of classic RPG's that we enjoyed making - and playing. At Obsidian, we have the people responsible for many of those classic games and we want to bring those games back… and that’s why we’re here - we need your help to make it a reality!

Project Eternity will take the central hero, memorable companions and the epic exploration of Baldur’s Gate, add in the fun, intense combat and dungeon diving of Icewind Dale, and tie it all together with the emotional writing and mature thematic exploration of Planescape: Torment.

Combat uses a tactical real-time with pause system - positioning your party and coordinating attacks and abilities is one of the keys to success. The world map is dotted with unique locations and wilderness ripe for exploration and questing. You’ll create your own character and collect companions along the way – taking him or her not just through this story, but, with your continued support, through future adventures. You will engage in dialogues that are deep, and offer many choices to determine the fate of you and your party. …and you'll experience a story that explores mature themes and presents you with complex, difficult choices to shape how your story plays out.
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Unread postby icycalm » 12 Oct 2012 21:13

Good news, but, as I'll be explaining in detail in my Pool of Radiance review, it's hard for me to get too excited about fantasy-themed CRPGs that are not based on D&D. That's one of the main things that made the Infinity games good, and it's precisely the ingredient these (admittedly extremely talented) dudes forgot to include. Also lol, once more, at the "maturity" claims for Torment. Fucking troglodyte shut-ins.
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Unread postby icycalm » 12 Oct 2012 21:34

I mean look at this shit:

world.png


THIS is your epic fucking world? A GBA Fire Emblem has a bigger world than this!

And the same will doubtless be true of their mechanics. That's what happens when you are a cheapskate and try to reinvent the wheel because you don't want to license anything. The old Infinity games had settings and mechanics created by HUNDREDS (if not THOUSANDS, if you count the playtesters) of extremely talented individuals over DECADES -- and "Project Infinity" will have the usual throwaway system/setting of any other WRPG.

It can still be good of course. But probably not great, and even then the odds aren't looking good.
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Unread postby icycalm » 12 Oct 2012 22:14

2 minutes in to the video on the Kickstarter page, project director Josh Sawyer says:

Josh Sawyer wrote:I think the appeal in the Infinity Engine games was really the story, the setting, and also the tactical combat.


And you've shot TWO of those aspects in the foot by choosing not to license anything. So the only thing that has a reasonable chance of being great is the story, and if the setting sucks, how could the story not be affected? In Baldur's Gate the story itself even sucked, and it was the SETTING that raised it up; whilst Icewind Dale didn't even HAVE a story -- but was again rescued by the setting. And how about Torment, whose weirdo story was only POSSIBLE due to the wierdo Planescape setting (COPYRIGHT TSR, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, CALL US FOR LICENSING DETAILS).

Man... how much of a myopic loser do you have to be to spend half of your life working on these games, yet still fail to understand what made them great? TSR made them great, and the only thing Bioware's Infinity Engine did was make the TSR experience (or at least a terribly dumbed-down and butchered version of that experience) possible on personal computers.
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Unread postby dinopoke » 10 Apr 2013 08:39

Today's update is a big one, though not by volume of text. Today we're showing you our game in action. Specifically, we're showing what we've been doing for our exterior environments. The Infinity Engine games were known for their art, and we wanted to hit the high standard of visual quality established by games like the Icewind Dale series. We also wanted to introduce dynamic elements into the environment that were mostly absent from the classic games, like dynamic water, movement in foliage, and dynamic lighting of the scene.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUleDEFkUtE

Footage starts at 1:50.
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Unread postby icycalm » 11 Apr 2013 13:30

Impressive. That's at least one area that Obsidian may turn out to trounce inXile in. Can't wait for a whole new generation of games based on this tech -- but still have my reservations about the lack of a D&D licence.
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Unread postby prfirm » 29 May 2013 14:44

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63851- ... -progress/

Rob Nesler, Art Director wrote:
pe-hud-wip.1280.jpg

Above is a UI mockup that Kaz has put over the original Kickstarter image. What do you think?

I know what you are thinking. What the hell have the artists been doing?? The art in this game should be half done by now! Right?

That's what I want to know! Why isn't the game half-done already?

Well, as I've said before we're "professionals." We proceed in a highly-complex collaboration/iteration loop of blending design wants and dos, programming cans, think-they-cans and dos and artist wants, cans, can-but-don't-know-how-longs and dos. As you can see - and please don't get angry - this is all very technical. Know that: work is progressing.

Yeeeargh! Enough with your silly stupid words, Rob!! What the hell does that mean??

Uhh... not sure, but I'll tell you what I think it means:

You've read about Prototype 1 and then Prototype 2. Those were efforts to implement features that represent the functional and playable standard of our goal: an Infinity Engine style of game. Those efforts were focused collaborations of designing, programming and art-ing things, trying them out, addressing problems as they came up (visual, functional or otherwise failing to live up to our standard) and repeating. The art goals were held to an 80-90% complete (aka: unpolished). The remaining 10-20% of work will be left toward the end of the "next phase," as always there will be edits and modifications after initial implementation of art. The basic truth of this interactive artistic endeavor that we are involved in is that you can't know it's a worthwhile experience, until you make it, people play it, and then provide feedback. We adjust our work to that feedback - a feedback loop. Boom! Consider yourself educated.

The "next phase" is a Vertical Slice. This is a goal in which we focus on one part of the game within a shell of what is essentially the fully-featured game - relying on the things developed in the prototypes, as well as implementing a fully-functional UI, attempting to finalize all art and gameplay to a more polished standard, and accommodate design changes that are required to make the player experience more complete - as if this part were a finalized, short game in itself.


Environment Artists
Hector - Wilderness Areas
Our Lead Environment Artist has been developing a couple of our larger external landscapes. He's doing this on the basis of a designer's block-out: a crude-but-playable space. This includes the sculpting of terrain geometry in ZBrush, application of grass and dirt via mesh painting and masking in Maya, placement of objects such as structures, trees, and rocks, etc., lighting and rendering the scene, which generates our super-cool depth info. He imports all those results into the game, and then Design says: "Hey, something has come up and we need a temple in the village." So, Hector moves and massages the scene around to accommodate the change and steps through the process again. In the prototype, iteration of the village, a temple wasn't required. For the Vertical Slice, having a place where one can get quests and learn some spiritual-magicky stuff, is an important feature to include. So, we find a way to happily put it in.

Sean - Dungeon/Crypt and village interiors
Our other Environment Artist has been working on interiors of village structures and dungeons! He uses ZBrush less for his environments as a whole, and more as a means of creating smaller natural-looking rocky things and dungeon walls. Beyond that the techniques for implementing his work are the same. The feedback and iteration with design usually yields similar tweaks and modifications. Changes like: "Uhh...we can't have a door here, anymore. Can we make it a pile of collapsed rocks, instead?" Of course the answer is "Yes!"

The answer has to be "yes," because the game is worthless if the gameplay isn't worthwhile. It could be that an important critical path encounter needs to occur, maybe because the story evolved or it’s just too good an experience to allow an alternate route to exist. Ultimately, we trust our designers to wrestle with these issues and come to us with changes that matter. So if they come to us with a change, and the adjustment is reasonable and the time exists to make it, we will do it.


Animators
Mark - Principle Animation of All Things with Arms and Legs
Our Lead Animator has been handling much of the animation requirements for the playable races. This process is also an iterative one. Design has ideas about how they want playable characters to interact with the world and enemies, and Mark then creates a set of individual animations that then blend into each other as needed, in Unity. In addition, he has created essential animations for the Skuldr and the Ogre. Essential animations are typically basic locomotion (including: walk, run and at least one idle) attacks (melee and ranged, if applicable) getting hit and dying. There are others. He blocks them in (a term for making things functional fast), puts them in the game, then he refines them. As team members playtest the game, they provide feedback. Mark continues refining until everybody is happy or the game ships - whichever comes first. No, no, no, just kidding! Mark will work tirelessly through endless nights to make certain everybody is happy with the animation.

Antonio - Technical Problem Solving of Physical Things and Process Improvement
I told you all you needed to know about Antonio in my last update. I showed you the rigs and rigs in rigs. These things take a while to refine, as he makes them and then people (Dimitri and Mark) have to use them. As they use the tools, they discover issues and then Antonio has to fix the issues and the process repeats itself until there are fewer and fewer issues to fix. Lately he has been working on a means of batch processing all the animations that Mark creates and efficiently exports them into the game. Mark says it's "awesome." (This is making Dimitri mad. I'll tell you why in a bit.) In addition, he has been developing some cool experiments with cloth and hair. Hopefully, in some near-future update we can show you how great it looks.


Character Artists
Dimitri - Skaen and Visual Differences Between Playable Characters (Races, Males and Females)
Dimitri has been modeling and texturing the dirty, bloody and villainous Skaen Cultists. In-between that he has been re-exporting our characters, as new attachments, bones, weapon attachments, etc. are added to the skeletons. This is a manual process hell that eats at his soul and to see Mark enjoying the fruits of batch process heaven that Antonio has provided him, makes him think of terrible things. One of two things will happen: Dimitri will get over it, or Antonio will help him out soon. He has also been working with our graphics programmer in developing the masking system for how we can increase variety in our characters via color changes on various elements of each. We intend this ability to be passed on to the player, so that they can customize their party's colors.

James - Creatures And Colors
James has been focusing on modeling and texturing a ton of critters, including wurms! - not: worms, nor wyrms, or wirms, but WURMs! That is what we call our baby dragons! He's also been tasked with making certain, that via the tinting and masking that Dimitri worked on, we can generate an infinite variety of People and Monsters, and nobody will know better. Shhhhhh...Wink Wink!


Concept Artists
pe-lizardlikecreature-wip.1280.jpg

Polina's concept of lizard-creature-to-be-named-later.

Polina - Drawerings And More Drawerings
Polina has been all over the place since the presentation of the God-like Concept. She's done a bunch of interior concepts, some really cool malevolent spirit-like concepts, the lizard-like creature (below) and more! Polina takes concept development and collaboration very seriously. If I'm not paying attention, or give her a specific number, she will draw variants upon variants of thumbnails and roughs until...I think...forever. So we've restricted her to a certain number of thumbnails before a review. Otherwise we'll have to buy her a new tablet, and that is NOT in the budget!

Kaz - Drawerings And User Experience
As you've seen in recent updates Kaz has been tasked with coming up with cultural differences in in terms of skin color and style of clothing for the various cultural groups that we find in Project Eternity. With this and other concept-y things, he also has been tasked with developing and implementing the look of the UI and the presentation for "scripted events."

Note: Regarding the image with the menubar at the start of the update, as well as the image below. You will notice that they state: "Work In Progress." In fact, the images are screen caps of the source art file for the UI that is being developed for P.E. It represents stylistic choices meant to feel very Infinity Engine-ish. We're a little curious what you might think about it. Let us know.

pe-scriptedevent-wip.1280.jpg

Scripted event image by Kaz.

Me??? - What have I been doing?
I don't know. I just run around and say some stuff, point to something and say "eww," or "nice," or grab a bunch of people to say stuff like "Yay!" or "boo" at something, draw some stuff, and try to direct stuff, repeat. I am hopeful that these efforts keep people motivated, aware and engaged.

That's it. Update Over. Now talk amongst yourselves...or use ALL CAPS, if you are feeling particularly passionate.
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Unread postby prfirm » 27 Jun 2013 18:41

http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/111716- ... shots.html

While project director J.E. Sawyer noted that they're still very much WIP and were never meant to go online, it still would be a crime to not bring these Project Eternity screenshots from GameStar to our audience's attention.

Aside from the waterfall area we've learned to know since the end of the Kickstarter campaign we see examples of character models, cave and store interiors and a small section of the Prototype 2 town.

Update: It looks like the article doesn't work on the mobile version of GameStar's website. In case you've been getting an "Artikel nicht gefunden" error, try to open the link from a laptop or a desktop PC.


Screenshots: http://www.gamestar.de/index.cfm?pid=16 ... =96863&i=1

600x338 (1).jpg
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Unread postby icycalm » 20 Nov 2013 01:51

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=718784

Durante wrote:New Project Eternity information (new screenshots, map, tech info)

Here are the slides. Sorry for the picture quality, stupid heavily compressed jpgs in the PDF.

resw2cg0.png

I immediately recognized those :P

HD Solutions
• Half-res diffuse, spec, and normal
• DXT compression
• Unity's compressed asset bundles
• Streaming 512 x 512 tiles for fast loading


I hope there's a "I have unlimited data transfer, storage and memory space" option.

Solutions for Scope
• A lot of planning Standardized 3D blockouts before 2D.
• Careful about "truly" unique assets.
• Wilderness areas: the greatest.
• Outsourcing asset creation for levels.
• Smart material and rendering guidelines.


Makes sense. I enjoyed the wilderness areas in BG1 and missed them in 2.

Difficulty: Also more than just combat

Combat Options:
• Tactical difficulty (types of enemies)
• Game modes (Trial of Iron, Path of the Damned, Expert)
• Death vs. Maiming
• Area of Effect Highlighting
• Brief vs. Verbose system feedback
• Defense and Accuracy tooltips
• Auto-Pause criteria
• and more...

Non-Combat Options:
• Displaying unqualified conversation interactions
• Showing skill check thresholds
• Displaying earned reputation modifiers
• Quest objectives: explicit or implicit goals
• and more...


So sexy.

questshxdlc.png

First time we see the quest log?

map0hc2h.png

Same for the world map? (Update: confirmed placeholder!)

diaowi4t.png

Yay dialogue.

Some graphics:
combat4zfq6.png

chars1qde78.png

chars2jvd55.png

areasxdfhh.png


The wait for 2015 will be cruel.
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Unread postby shubn » 11 Dec 2013 23:33

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Unread postby ksevcov » 12 Nov 2014 06:23

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Unread postby recoil » 28 Mar 2015 01:51

Image
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Unread postby icycalm » 28 May 2015 00:04

http://culture.vg/reviews/in-depth/pill ... 15-pc.html

schwartzhund & vile zergling wrote:The new original setting is a disappointment. A lot of creatures get new Welsh or Celtic names but are otherwise the same as their D&D equivalents.


schwartzhund & vile zergling wrote:Every mystery in the setting is explained in detail before the end, and the world ends up feeling like a tiny, wretched sort of place. It's an interesting contrast to the big and wondrous settings of Planescape or Numenera, both of which Obsidian is intimately familiar with.


Note that I predicted all this in this very thread 2.5 years before release:

http://culture.vg/forum/topic?p=18343#p18343
http://culture.vg/forum/topic?p=18345#p18345

The review should have also mentioned the inexcusable lack of multiplayer, by the way, that's been in these games since BG1. This is by far the game's biggest problem for me, before even having played it.
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