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Pathfinder Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition - now with turn-based combat

InD_ImaginE

Arcane
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Pathfinder: Wrath
I am sounding like a broken record here

But for those who play this on TB, does Owlcat works on the AI for TB? Or do they still just rush you like they are playing RtwP? My Druid save got bricked due to mod, I am wondering should I play this again with TB Mode or not (considering alpha 2 for WoR is coming).
 

NJClaw

OoOoOoOoOoh
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Pronouns: rusts/rusty
Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
When is alpha 2 supposed to come out? I remember it was supposed to be august, but nothing.
I think this is everything we know about the date:
The next phase of testing — Pre-Beta — will launch closer to September and we are excited for your feedback! Especially on the changes that were made based on your feedback and made it into Pre-beta.
 
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Anthedon

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
New patch 2.1.0i:

Update 2.1.0i – August 21, 2020

Dear Pathfinders,
We've prepared the first update for the Definitive Edition as fast as we could. It is an important one, as it contains fixes for a few critical issues that some of you have faced.

Please be aware of plot spoilers in the description below!

  • Now you can change the controller type in the game settings.
  • Now you can change the order of characters in your group (for the console version).
  • Fixed the issue due to which sometimes it was impossible to save the game.
  • The characters could sometimes be stuck in the throne room. Resolution: fixed.
  • Fixed the issue with the freezing of Octavia and Regongar’s scene in the tavern.
  • The romance dialogue with Tristian started each time the player’s character entered the main square in the Capital. Resolution: fixed.
  • The main character was hanging in the air during the dialogue with Kaessi in her house. Resolution: fixed.
  • In Jamandi’s mansion and some other areas, weapons sometimes were hanging in the air. Resolution: fixed.
  • When companions joined the main character, sometimes they were not linked (for the console version only). Resolution: fixed.
  • The kinetic knights started the game with 0 gold. Resolution: fixed.
  • The kineticist’s action panel was sometimes displayed incorrectly. Resolution: fixed.
  • When activating an ability in combat using a hotkey, the prediction panel showed the incorrect information. Resolution: fixed.
[*]The cursor was visible after you selected the gamepad as the controller. Resolution: fixed.

A friendly reminder: while we deeply admire the contribution that mod authors make to our game, we would like you to remember that running custom modifications can lead to unexpected bugs and crashes. Unfortunately, if you encounter any issues while playing with mods, our team will not be able to help you. If this happens, please report these issues to the mod's original creator. Also, remember that after each game update, there is a high probability of previously installed mods not functioning properly. If you wish to play with mods anyway, disabling auto-updates might prevent your save files from becoming corrupted.
MORE ABOUT THIS GAME

https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/640820/view/2740957557838458016
 

Sentinel

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Ommadawn
TheSentinel So you are relying on not-very-well tested visual indicators of a not-very-well tested turn based mode and expect the game not to lie to you. OK.

From RTwP perspective I can tell that all AoO are reasonably natural. Like, if 2 figures are in melee then AoO happen. There is no visible grid in RTwP, so it's just feelings.
????
Didn'd this have 4 different betas? What the fuck are you on about you fucking retard?
What does "AoO being reasonably natural" even mean? I'm asking for clarification on why a stunned bandit got a AoO on my character. I'll let the Stag Lord not causing AoO when shooting his bow slide since he can have some feat that gives him that.
 

Yosharian

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Grand Chien
I strongly recommend you hang tight starting any new playthroughs especially if you're starting on TB, god knows how many more patches the game will get before it's stable again
 

Sentinel

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Ommadawn
At this point I'm hoping they officially announce the end of support for P:K and let fans fix their mess with fanpatches.

assuming this game has fans dedicated enough to care
 
Unwanted

Sweeper

Unwanted
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Messages
2,394
It's fucking Arcanum all over again.
"No I don't want RTwP"
"TB is superior cause I'm a fucking braindead moron"
"GIVE ME TB WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH"
Cunts.
 

Dodo1610

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Germany
I strongly recommend you hang tight starting any new playthroughs especially if you're starting on TB, god knows how many more patches the game will get before it's stable again
Great, if I want to now have to download a old pirated version of the game because I have no way to play the working version on my Steam copy, becasue Owlcat decided to break their game two years after release again.

Remember when Owlcat told us that they improved their QA during the WOTR Kickstarter...
:stunned:
 

LannTheStupid

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Pathfinder: Wrath
Just don't use mods. It's that simple.

And pirated or GOG version is much better than Steam. I bought my Steam version just to support Russian comrades.
 
Joined
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The Present
Haplo Yeah, I always have Glitterdust memorized. Definitely one of the best Level 2 spells in any edition of D&D. While each have their place, I think I Hideous Laughter deserves a proper mention. Paralysis + Prone on a failed Will save is a death sentence to big bruisers. I hit Hulgulka with it after a Glitterdust. Things didn't go well for him.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Messages
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Hey cool: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/owlcatgames/pathfinder-kingmaker/posts/2930560

How we added turn-based combat to Pathfinder: Kingmaker

When I joined the Owlcat Games team early in 2019, it was basically the job of my dreams: making a single-player role-playing game for PC without having to leave Russia? Until recently this could only be a dream! There was just one little drawback – I've always preferred turn-based combat games to all other genres, and Pathfinder: Kingmaker was designed as a game where battles occur in real time with a tactical pause. Oh well, all your dreams can't come true, right?

Wrong. When the issue of porting the game to consoles came up, we realized pretty fast that something had to be done about combat. Micromanaging the party in combat, particularly important at high complexity levels, is extremely difficult when you have a gamepad instead of a mouse and a keyboard. Of course, we could try to improve the artificial intelligence of the player's characters and make it customizable, but this didn't seem a good solution: we'd play AI programming, not Pathfinder.

Then we were lucky to find out that there was a mod that turned our game into a turn-based one, developed by one of our fans – the amazing, talented, and very dedicated Hsinyu Chan. We looked at the mod and agreed it was brilliant: the game transformed right in front of our eyes, and only for the better (if you like to sit and think about every move, that is). This ultimately tipped the scales in favor of officially adding a turn-based mode to our game.

We got the mod author's permission to use her code and began to implement it into the game. But it was only the groundwork. Although the mod was amazing, the author didn't have access to the game source code, so she had been constrained in what she could do. And after all, the requirements for a fan mod and for the official game’s functionality differ a great deal.

Pathfinding
The first thing we wanted to fix was the complete unpredictability of the character movement trajectory. The thing is, during real-time combat, a character can't definitively predict their path, since the situation may change during movement, for example, a previously clear passage may be blocked. That's why, when finding the initial path, the character didn't take into account dynamic obstacles – primarily other characters. Then, if a character met an obstacle while moving along the path, they tried to bypass it on the left or on the right, using a separate algorithm. It wasn't very noticeable in the chaos of a real-time fight, but in turn-based combat, when only one fighter was moving, this behavior jumped out at you like a cat in a thunderstorm.

This is how it worked: even if the path was completely blocked by other characters, the one moving now approached the living barricade and then walked along it, up and down, until their turn was over. It looked like a bug, although it was in fact the programmed behavior. To make matters worse, this approach didn't let us predict and show the player the path the character would take. This was what we had to change.

Attempt 0:
The obvious solution would be to virtually walk the path without actually moving the character on the screen. This way we could get their entire trajectory and show it to the player. But it was a dead end: the resulting trajectory would still be insane. We could try to optimize it, straighten zigzags or something like that, but this direction also didn't seem promising. Oh well, back to the drawing board!

ac508f25f4f57c5dde4d9743533ce48e_original.png

A triangular navigation mesh

he main problem was that we did the pathfinding using a map divided into triangles (a so-called navmesh). This is a very effective and fast method, but unfortunately, when using it, it's very difficult to make any changes to the map, for example, to mark sections blocked by other characters. This requires regeneration of a section of the map or even all of the map. We couldn't afford this in real time. But in turn-based mode where only one character is moving? Why not?
Attempt 1:
We tried to cut out a hole around the standing characters that would be impassable for the current moving fighter. This idea had a few significant drawbacks. First of all, the hole was rather large, which in some cases could prevent coming closer to a target, although it looked possible. Second of all, a large character could walk up to a small one, stop and cut out a huge hole around them – and the small character might end up inside that hole, not being able to move at all. But the idea was completely killed off by the fact that the hole-cutting algorithm just didn't work: sometimes it cut out more than needed, making a chunk of the map impassable. We tried to update the version of the library we used for pathfinding, but it got even worse: for some reason the new version made all the carpets in Jamandi's mansion impassable. In light of all the other drawbacks, we decided to drop it and try the next option.

Attempt 2:
Navmesh triangles are bad for recording the characters' dynamic position. And what's good? A good old square mesh. It's very easy to determine which square or even squares the fighter occupies and forbid all the others to move through them. Also, if the squares are small enough, nothing but them will be blocked. So why not use the mesh from the start? Because it has much, much more squares than navmesh has triangles. This is why path finding through them is much slower – too slow for real-time combat, where all the characters want to move all the time. But in turn-based combat only one character is moving...

To implement this idea, we had to add a mesh created using navmesh data to every map in the game. We couldn't use 5-foot squares as in the tabletop game – this would require recreating all the maps, since no one had a 5-foot mesh in mind when creating them. So, as a result, a 5-foot wide door could take up parts of two real squares. This is why we made the squares a little smaller, 0.5m each, and tried to make the areas available for passage on each map match as much as possible for both pathfinding methods.

8fff4026976da6583295ab2b73c2cc50_original.png

Red cubes – impassable squares of the square navigation mesh

Doors were a separate challenge. When you open or close them, they change the impassable area position every frame of their animation. A special code makes sure these changes are reflected in the mesh.

On the whole, we were happy with what we achieved, although we had to work very hard and even fix a few bugs in third party code that we use, which didn't manifest during movement in RTwP. But the new pathfinding method gave us a chance to show the player exactly how their character would move to the selected target, and even warn them about possible Attacks of Opportunity along the way.

fa1a6926f4bab4eb61aef050ffdc0b75_original.png

Predicting movement trajectory. Green - Move Action, yellow - Standard Action, red - sections where the player will get an Attack of Opportunity.

Prediction panel
By adding a turn-based mode to the game, we not only wanted to make the game more enjoyable for those who prefer this style of combat, but also easier to understand in general. In this regard, Pathfinder is not the simplest system, especially compared to modern computer role-playing games, where a turn usually consists of two simple actions – movement and attack, where the attack can be replaced with additional movement.

There are at least three important types of actions in Pathfinder – Standard, Move, and Swift. And to make it even more confusing, Move can be used not only for movement, but also for other actions and even spells. In RTwP mode all these details are somewhat hidden from the player, although knowing your way around them is required to play at high difficulty levels. But in turn-based mode they are key, and players who aren't very familiar with the system might be surprised to find that this or that action is impossible depending on seemingly irrelevant circumstances.

e0c714e47e62f0fa3bebe7a998c61086_original.png

A prediction panel with action breakdown. Sometimes an action as a whole is not spent yet, but it’s already impossible to do certain things as part of it (for example, after a 5-foot step you can't spend Move or Standard to move, but you can use them for other purposes). In such cases we use icons to show options that are still available.
We decided to try and makes players' lives a little easier in this regard and came up with a Prediction panel. This is a new panel that appears at the bottom of the screen only in turn-based mode, which shows what will happen if you give an order to the current character. At first glance, this is a rather trivial interface element many other games have. But we had to work really hard to make it show something useful.

Of course, the key problem was the fact that the game was not initially designed for a turn-based mode. The actions the characters perform were split into parts non-transparently for the external code. For example, there are no separate "go" and "hit" actions – instead, there is a "hit" command that means a character will move to the target until they reach it and are able to strike a blow. Moreover, some actions can give rise to other actions. Two things were particularly painful in this regard: touch spells and the Kineticist class.

The bad thing about touch spells (where a character must touch the target to use a spell) is the fact that their implementation can be either incorrect or inconvenient. If we read the rules of Pathfinder, first the character casts a spell, "holds the charge," and then can walk around for a year if they please and do other things until they touch the target. This being said, in the same round that they cast a spell, the character can try to touch the target as a Free Action, but in the subsequent rounds they'll have to make a standard attack and spend a Standard Action. At first glance, everything is pretty simple, but there is a nuance: in all the other computer games the most commonly used touch spell – healing – works differently: you select a target, approach it, heal it. If we implemented touch spells the way they are described in the rulebook, that is, first the spell is cast without a target, then we have to select it, the absolute majority of players would not understand it.

f0fc4dda95c4dd586ff08cb7b6179d3c_original.png

aethal will cast an Inflict Light Wounds spell as a Standard Action, move to the target as a Move Action, and try to touch it as a Free Action. Pathfinder movement economics, ahem, at work!

As a result, in RTwP mode touch spells try to pretend they aren't different from all the others. The player chooses a spell, then a target, and something immediately starts to happen. Namely: the player starts to move towards the target, at a certain range they cast the spell, and then keep moving with a charge in their hand. If during this time the target disappeared (died, for example), we can select a new target, using the spells icon, appearing in the Action Bar (not the greatest solution, as it turns out, since no one ever notices it, and the players feel the spell was just wasted).

We couldn't completely change the way such spells work in turn-based mode, that's why we had to adapt and teach the Prediction Panel to consider all the peculiar features of this type of spell. However, we did introduce one change: in turn-based mode the character using a touch spell casts the spell first without moving, and only moves afterwards, if necessary.

The Kineticist class problem is both simpler and trickier. It's simpler to describe. The problem with Kineticists is that they are the only class that can do something for more than 1 round. The Gather Power skill, decreasing the cost of other skills of the kineticist, may take one, two, or three actions, and the entire use of a skill may take up to two complete rounds.

Again, here we had to deviate from the official rules of Pathfinder for the sake of familiarity for computer RPG players. Actually, Gather Power is not in any way connected to the used skill. First the player announces they are going to gather power, and only later, when this process is over (possibly during the next round), can they use whatever skill for which this power was gathered. Unfortunately, in an RTwP fight it would be totally inconvenient: the players would constantly forget that their Kineticist started gathering power. As a result, we've come up with a solution: the player specifies from the start what they are going to use the gathered power for. Moreover, the game calculates how many units of power is required, and the player just sets the maximum (that is, if you allow 3 units of power to be gathered, and only 1 is required for the skill, only 1 will be gathered, and one action, not three will be spent).

48fa952d0fddd07bba34d90b85f8c0d0_original.png

The Kineticist will gather power as a Move Action, and then cast Electric Blast as a Standard Action.

In turn-based combat we couldn't change this approach within a reasonable time frame. We don't love the current result, and we'll try to improve it in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. The player is still able to set the power gathering maximum, select the skill they want to use, and only after this will the gathering of power commence. That said, if power gathering takes more than 1 action (that is, the skill will have to be used during the next round), it will not be applied automatically, since the situation could have changed completely (for example, the target could have disappeared). This is a little counter-intuitive and inconvenient, but unfortunately we are working within the limitations of RTwP mode.

Smart cursor
Another important problem for us involved the variety of actions a character can perform in their round, apart from using skills and spells. Let's run through them quickly. A character can:

● Make a full attack, spending a Full-Round Action (Move+Standard)

● Make a standard attack

● Make a touch attack, if there is a "charged" touch spell in their hand

In addition, they can choose the movement method:

● A 5-foot step, when Attacks of Opportunity are ignored, but after which they can't move anymore

● Regular movement

Moreover, during testing we found out that very often players want to spend exactly a Move Action on movement, with no risk of tapping into Standard. This is why we divided regular movements into two types: "one-action" and "two-action."

We had to give the player an opportunity to freely combine these action options and movement options, considering availability (for example, the character might not have a Full Attack, or they have spent one action on movement in this round). This was a particularly tough problem on consoles: we couldn't just make a couple of switches that the player could use to adjust the character's actions, there just aren’t enough buttons on the gamepad.

57a5ff966b0b56e14672535bac31b8fc_original.png

Smart cursor will show, how many attacks the character is going to make

We solved this problem by making a "smart cursor." When the cursor hovers over a target, the game will choose the optimal method of action for the current state of the character (for example, a 5-foot step + Full Attack, if this is possible). What’s more, with a single button we can sort through other available combinations, if your tactics suddenly require an action that is not the most optimal at first glance (for example, provoking an Attack of Opportunity using regular movement instead of a 5-foot step).

Initiative tracker
A compact initiative tracker from the fan-made mod was quite good, but it had a few drawbacks. First of all, it could only show a fixed number of characters. If there were more participants in combat, there was no way to see those who didn't make the displayed set. Second of all, it didn't show the health of combat participants and the effects of spells currently acting on them. And finally, it just didn't work very well with our user interface style.

So we made a decision to rewrite it completely. In addition, so it would fit the screen layout when using a gamepad, we made two versions of it – vertical, in the left part of the screen (for gamepad), and horizontal, at the top (for the mouse and keyboard). Moreover, we added character portraits to the tracker for easier navigation, as well as health and status effects, and we also made the list scrollable to see all the combat participants. What’s more, when the cursor hovers over a character on the battlefield, they are highlighted in the tracker for convenience.

The tracker design for gamepad caused controversy, but after a few discussions we agreed on the current option, where the character whose turn it is right now is shown at the very bottom. We did it like this because all the important information and fight controls are located in the lower part of the screen. Besides, a large portrait of a character at the top looked a little heavy.

Mods
Unfortunately, adding an official turn-based mode to the game completely breaks the mod created by Hsinyu Chan – it won't work with this version of the game. The same is true for modifications that change battle elements – they are not guaranteed to work in turn-based combat, and the Prediction Panel might incorrectly register changes made by them.

A cowboy’s work is never done
In general, we are happy with the results of our work, but, of course, we'll keep improving the turn-based mode according to your feedback and our concerns. First of all, we'll address some counter-intuitive controls, as well as the internal structure of the Prediction Panel, which turned out very complex and error-prone.

We hope that you'll like the fruit of our labors. If you were reluctant to play our game because of the RTwP combat, now you have no more reasons to be. If you thought it was too complicated – try playing it in turn-based mode, fights will be much more understandable and manageable. Or just visit the Stolen Lands another time for new experience – I personally am finally going to play the second DLC.

Maxim Savenkov, Owlcat Games developer.
 

LannTheStupid

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Pathfinder: Wrath
That's what I want to play, you freaking morons!
Well, may be I will have to deal with the plot hole the size of Deadfire...

P.S.: and that fine mantlegen above was relying on Kingmaker's path prediction and, apparently, did not succeed. I wonder why...
 
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