Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

First this is RTwP
And, it is designed with intention to port to tablets.

Aim your next KSer at the tablet guys obsidian.

I didn't back PE, But this has made me wary of all future Obsidian KSers. Let us see how far fargo falls.

 

Can I also request "Obsidian Apologist" tags when the inevitable tablet port is announced?

Saying that it may be a business necessity to boost sales and keep them afloat would be more honest than just blatantly refusing to acknowledge that this is indeed happening.

 

Yeah, this should be a thing. And J_C needs like 5 of these.

Doing that thing that people usually regret later.

 

That is a solid reason because I hated it. IWD2 was the best in this regard.

 

The key to understand Roguey.

 

I AM ANGRY

ANGRY ABOUT BUTTONS

 

Original Sin wasn't in Unity

Making a castrated version for tablets later with UI /controls for touchscreen is acceptable I guess.

But like Rake elaborated, thier focus on optimizing controls for tablet from the get go doesn't bode well...

 

Actually no it isn't. Moving the mouse thousands of pixels does not fucking matter at all - it is the actual physical mouse movement on the mousepad in inches (or whatever measurement). Refer to my earlier post. The average PC user (probably including yourself) uses a high dpi mouse of 800-5600dpi because those are the standard dpi ranges today. Most mice come with a default of ~ 1600-1800 these days I think and you have to actually change them yourself upon use. Some newer mice remember your default DPI and save it to memory, others (such as the Logitech MX518) you always have to change to your preference if it is different from default.

The average PC user has a small mousepad. So a high DPI user with a small mousepad will not move their mouse very far at all to get from the bottom of the screen to the left (or right side). A movement of probably a few inches tops.

The average PC (and Mac user) uses Mouse Acceleration because it is turned on by default. You can't even turn it off on OSX without downloading a mod/app. Mouse accel moves the mouse slower on smaller movements (making very small movements more difficult) and faster on faster movements. So that makes it even less of a problem moving across the screen (I personally think mouse accel is absolute garbage and always disable it, but ymmv).

That is not uneconomical that is normal and there are games (FPS, RTS, MOBA etc etc etc) that require waaaaaaay more mouse movement than a 'laid back' RPG like an Infinity Engine style game will ever have, so saying anything about uneconomical mouse movement and using actual pixels as a reason is a poor example.

Josh Sawyer uses a Microsft Intellimouse Explorer v1.1a which has a DPI of ~440. I am not sure whether he uses mouse acceleration, but that is a slow mouse compared to most people (I also use 400 dpi) and people with 400 dpi mice are now probably in the 1%.

I use no mouse accel and 400 dpi, so movements on my mousepad would be large - but I am a low sensitivity gamer anyway and moving my mouse 10-15cm or more between objects on the screen is absolutely no problem for me.

I would have preferred a BG2 style round the screen UI because it makes better use of space, but they obviously prefer the bar across the bottom, which I don't mind, but it doesn't give you much room for big portraits - which IMO sucks balls.

Exactly the same as the IE games. Right click and hold allows you to rotate the party transformation - very handy for navigating through corridors and such. Left click and hold for marquee select pls.

I know Josh likes marquee select, so that functionality will almost definitely be the same.

If the design is different for that I am going to be mad.

 

That' why bros have mouses with multiple DPI settings, so you can play any game and also do fine edits on photoshop without any trouble.

Not sure what scares me the most, how slow his mouse is or the fact that you know this.

 

When asked if someone could play the game on a tablet, Josh answered it shouldn't be too hard because most features were one-button. This is NOT optimizing their controls for tablet from the get go, but answering a pointed question about Tablets with "it will play like a IE game".

 

It's not that scary - this is a picture Zed made.



There is the mouse in plainsight. It's an old mouse from the early 2000s, all mice back then had 400 dpi but the Microsoft optical sensor I think is a bit faster than the others, the belief over at ESReality is that it is actually ~440 dpi.

Has same mouse at home but cbf finding screencap from a Kickstarter video.

My conclusion = J.E. Sawyer uses a slow mouse and doesn't like to move it very far - thus prefers smaller mouse movements and things closer together in the UI. It's incorrect to say that it's uneconomical because it's less of an issue to no issue for the majority of the market.

 

Project Eternity: By Sawyer, for Sawyer?

 

Minimizing mouse travel time is a reasonable interface decision. It makes sense to put commonly used control options close together. Sure, in a game like Project Eternity it's not a huge deal, especially because many players will use hotkeys, but of all the things to complain about... besides, I'm sure you'll have nice and large portraits in the character screen if you want to look at them.

I'm not sure I love using one button for most/every thing. It can often lead to superfluous interface elements that could be removed through the use of context menus. But, that doesn't mean you can't save a lot of real estate through smart nesting (i.e Fallout's skilldex) and other little tricks. Personally I feel Baldur's Gate's menus are pretty weak at times, with their oversized and sometimes poorly spaced and positioned buttons, the lack of space for displaying hundreds of spells, etc. In that respect I'd say NWN2's UI is actually possibly my favorite for an RPG of that style.

 

Why?

1. Inventory is grid-based and shows a ton of items at once compared to list-based inventories
2. It actually has portraits off to the side if you want them
3. Useful right-click context menus for most functions, including in combat
4. Huge number of quick slots available
5. Quick spell menu is awesome to have
6. Can fully reposition most/all UI elements

Really the only complaint with the UI I have is the small icons, but you trade that for functionality.

 

You actually praising Sawyer there since that's the manner many Codexers claim to want games be made, by not caring for 'target audiences'.

 

OTHER 'target audiences' besides Glorious Codexia, bro.

 

I prefer Solid UI's like the Infinity Engine games, Warcraft 2 & 3, Starcraft, Diablo etc. NWN2 UI lacked any character whatsoever.

NWN2 was by and large opaque and minimalistic, the abundance of windows and boxes made the screen look like a nightmare at times and I wasn't a fan of the right click radial menus at all. The Character sheet and Inventory were serviceable but there's waaay more games that do the ARPG/MMO style Window Character/Inventory box better than NWN2 does.

Of Minimal UI's Titan Quest is probably my favourite.

 

Still a praise, though. And I have read the more idealist stance that excludes even the Codex.

 

I would very much like that. But only if dumbfuck tags are given to every tard who makes up something bullshit based on nothing.

 

No update tomorrow either guys