Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Pre-Release Thread [ALPHA RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

Did you just objectify?

 

She probably never read him either. Why read when you can tweet about drowning people in their own vomit instead?

 

You are wonderful parody of feminists Roguey

 

Rothfuss isn't ugly at all. Roguey has lost it. Did you just get diagnosed with a serious illness, dear? What gives?

 

It honestly just makes sense with the reach, $/backer and efficiency of the start, tho of course it's not fun. But I think with the sleeve-tricks Adam mentioned we'll be fine tho, certainly picking up today (we're looking at about a 50K-ish day I'm thinking? And that's with Kickstarter breaking down and not mailing out our update)

I'll look into it.

Before the end of the Kickstarter drive you mean? Probably not.

 

I think almost a week between updates hurt the funding a bit. It can probably be easily made up later, but I think it exasperated the "lul".

 

Probably. So it goes.

Ok, so...no. But hopefully we can put out the final picture in high resolution post-Kickstarter.

 

Again, why did you decide against tying the level of fathoms also to twitter tweets or facebook likes, providing a proper incentive for backers to spread the word?
You are guaranteed to get new backers that way that have missed Torment's occasional gaming website articles.

 

Who says we decided against that?

 

So you are planning to save this for the last week utilizing the more active backer base then for a bigger impact instead of spreading the likes/tweets out over a longer, but calmer period of time like right now?
Not using it at all would seem a bit puzzling, because I doubt that the cost of a few more fathom levels (which complexity you can design anyway) would outweight the additional backer money inflow from people not reading gaming websites or checking new kickstarter projects by themselves regularly.

 

2D?

 

Oh you say that every day Brian, you tease.

 

I've been excited everyday

 

Yes. But he speaks true! Again!!

 

Ever since listening to the George Ziets video, I've been pondering a heathen thought, which I might share with you all because it's Friday and work's boring:

I don't give a rats arse about 2d, I'm almost preferring 3d at this juncture.

Now before you head over to Site Feedback to ask for my banning, I'll explain myself.

What I want is for Inxile to provide the best representation of the world and the story that they can, regardless of what's popular here or elsewhere, or what worked in the past or what's popular right now. If its a gamble, so be it, but if it conveys something, it will be worthwhile. I think the thing they are emphasising more than anything else (and is more exciting then anything else) is the reactivity and interactivity the game will provide. Just listening to the description of the bloom as a living and changing thing, and that your decisions and choices could affect things from the location, to its size, to its very make-up.

How do you do that in 2d? You can draw it once, sure, you can draw it 4 or 5 times, great, but don't we want a bloom that will have 30 or 40 configurations? If its a core part of the story that you'll revisit, don't you want all your changes to be shown? Do you want the possibility of the bloom you visit being nothing like anyone else's? I do, that shit would be awesome. But who's gonna be able to factor in 5 tides and howevermany meres and whatever other variations they have planned for us during the game? The work on that will be crazy, or more likely, it'll be limited.

However, if you do go with 3d, and things becoming polygons and objects, consider the bloom, say, made from fractals (which are seen frequently in nature, who knows where nature will be in 1 billion years) consider the walls and paths and buildings changing programmatically, possibly around you as you progress and make choices. Consider the colours reacting to events by algorithm, hitting hues and variations that no 2d artist could've imagined. But not only the bloom, the rest of the game, there's benefits to having the world rendered live instead of drawn years ago in a studio, and this game, unlike many others could benefit from that.

Anyhow, that's my thoughts for now, pick away.

 

Yes kazgar turn away from the GraphicWhoreDex, taste the light, feel it beat upon you and show you enlightenment.

 

With 2D, making late stage changes to areas is also much harder since you can't just have the area designer change it, you also need to call in a 2D artist to repaint it (maybe pulling them from another projects pre-production team?). Much more costly and time consuming, rather like how voice acting makes dialogue changes so much more rigid.

 

You can portrait the ever changing Bloom with a Prerendered background, it just wouldn't be as dynamic. Maybe there would be a load screen or a fade out before it changes to a new "form". I don't think it will change very frequently (in every 5 minutes).

 

"take a machete to his dick", eh? For a feminist with a socialconstructivist leaning, you sure have an odd way of going about it. Or, in other words; declarations like that is pretty much the reason we'll never be able to convince the moderates. They see shit like that and run, tail between their moderate legs. Which is why I can't help but think people that say shit like "take a machete to his dick" aren't really that interested in fighting for feminism or the breakdown of social constructs, because if they were, they'd be more concerned about winning the political battles. Instead, they seem more concerned about their own fucking anger and hatred - more about providing an equally idiotic counter-push to idiot chauvinism than about winning and actually getting somewhere.

 

Ever-changing and Prerendered are surely oppositional?

But lets try a very conservative estimate, lets assume the bloom is 5 areas (lets say a hub, and 4 building interiors, like a small village in other games) That's 5 pre rendered backgrounds .

Sure, it won't change every 5 minutes, but lets say you go back there two more times during the game (middle and end) and it does change. That's now 15 backgrounds.

But lets say, that what you go back to changes depending on whether your paragon or renegade! We want reactivity and interactivity, and your journey shapes the world, its been said multiple times. We're now up to 25 backgrounds.

That's a lot of work.

But hang on, Torments already said its got 5 tides, and they're different, so that's 55 backgrounds now. That's even more work.

That also doesn't factor in that the tides can interact, they're not exclusive choices, we're not bioware here. So if its like a 5 pointed star, with each tide taking a point, and being influenced by the ones either side, that's 155 backgrounds! Wow, hope the budget can factor that.

But what happens if you're one alignment at the middle, and a different at the end, would that mean the end backgrounds is different to if you stayed the same alignment all the way through? I think that would be nice, but I can't work out how many backgrounds that would be. At least double, if not more. And this is for a rather small area that's an example.

You could not have that many options, and have it simpler, but is it then ever-changing, is it that example that Zeits spoke about that got me interested? No, to me, its just another game hub.

The other side is to have no pre-rendered backgrounds, and have one represented world that can change in unexpected ways.

 

I don't think that the bloom will react to every little change in the tide or your alignment, whether it is done in 2D or 3D. Making different graphics for up to a hundred version would be a huge work. I also don't think we should take the dev's words literally, when they said that the world will react to our every action.

 

I'm aspirationally hoping the game can live up to the words of its creators then be held back by how past games we've all enjoyed do things. Being closer to the words seems easier in 3d then 2d if that's what they were after.

They said doors will open and doors will close based on what the bloom eats, or what happens (as the bloom sits within dimensions) that's a easier one to understand in game terms, I'd rather the doors not there at all then that terrible RPG standby of "THE DOOR IS LOCKED" or "THIS DOOR WILL NOT OPEN" type messages because we haven't done a specific thing. With hope, the door won't actually be there!

 

155 backgrounds? That's a tad optimistic, to understate it.

 

It's a example for one theoretical area (and I hope the bloom is bigger than that), if you were to offer good reactivity and go with pre-rendered backgrounds, i'm drawing out a example to explain why 3d may be better. I assume 2d will be a stretch goal, and it'll be reached, so Its probably in vain, but we're here to discuss, so discuss I do.