Divinity: Original Sin Pre-Release Thread

[Jashiin]

Goodmorning ForkTong , remember: add the Ohm videos to your kickstarter page.

 

[Arkeus]

Goodmorning ForkTong , remember: add the Ohm videos to your kickstarter page.

 

[evdk]

Goodmorning ForkTong , remember: add the Ohm videos to your kickstarter page.

 

[Marquess Cornwallis]

If there's someone here who failed to take up a $65 Dragon Commander slot and wants one, I'll be dropping mine (Swen and ForkTong finally managed to brainwash me into going up to the $135 tier). It's not guaranteed to work even during the quieter hours at this stage of the campaign, but we can arrange a specific time via PM and hope for the best.

EDIT: Transaction finished successfully with the grim one

 

[Nithrakis]

If there's someone here who failed to take up a $65 Dragon Commander slot and wants one, I'll be dropping mine (Swen and ForkTong finally managed to brainwash me into going up to the $135 tier). It's not guaranteed to work even during the quieter hours at this stage of the campaign, but we can arrange a specific time via PM and hope for the best.

I did the same a little while ago. The open $65 slot didn't last long.

 

[Nithrakis]

I did mispronounce some shit, but we only did one take cause it had to go fast. I'd like to thank my mom etc.

Dat opening Ultima style music.

 

[Jaesun]

Larian Studios ‏@larianstudios2m
The PR stars at @evolve_pr made an overview of all our youtube coverage - more still coming! http://www.evolve-pr.com/2013/04/22/divinity-original-sin-invades-youtube/ …

 

[Arkeus]

Current day, with 4 hours left, is now the 3rd best day of the kickstarter. It needs another 8K to become the 2nd best. Go Go!


Edit: more thorough Reddit report from SA:

• There were worries about the 50+ Henchmen that would apparently all get a unique quest and choice storyline? We read that wrong. There are Henchmen, and then there are Companions. Henchmen are just slightly more interesting Diablo 2 Hirelings, but the $800,000 goal is to add a handful of Companions. Companions will basically be full party members, but the large number of Henchmen won't be.

• There will indeed be a limited number of henchmen with actual stories. The henchmen created by the Kickstarter community will also get stories, but in a more systemic way.

• If we make that stretch goal, expect to see a number of very fleshed out characters with their own backgrounds, story and branching arcs - hell, even locations. Quality definitely trumps quantity here. We'd most certainly opt for a limited number of these companions so we can make their stories really worth your while. There would still be others too, but those would then be your regular henchman.

• If we don't make the henchmen stretchgoal, for instance, we're already thinking about how we could make them matter more, how we can make sure the players actually "care" about them, and for them.
  That solution, without the stretchgoal, would be different from what we would do WITH the stretchgoal, and less nifty... But still
  

• Whether there will be romantic relationships with companions will depend on the $800.000 stretch goal. Nothing is set in stone though - all of this companion/henchman stuff is very much work in progress - like so many other things!

• The editor is very flexible. They mad Pacman with it, and a tower defense game is certainly possible.

• Q: How did the Kickstarter campaign live up to your expectations?
  A: It went over them. The nightmare scenario was that people wouldn't understand why we were on Kickstarter and there exists many notebooks that contain draft after draft after draft of how to pitch it. Luckily it went well. I also never expected so much community feedback, I thought the gaming world had become a more cynical place but then I figured out that was because of all my dealings with the industry side. I decided for myself I'm not going to walk in that trap again. There's too many people in the games industry that don't belong there because they don't care about a) games, b) the people playing games.

• Q: What is the hardest part of Game Design?
  A: Explaining to people that you need to try stuff out in order to know what your next step is going to be. It's still an iterative process but everybody expects you can do it all in your head.

• If a Backer already gets Beta access with their tier, but wants Alpha access, then can just add on an additional $30.

• Alpha and beta are "expensive" because they introduce extra work for us. The overhead does validate the price. And on KS, you also have to price your add-ons correctly so that higher tier pledgers don't feel ripped off. Also, KS is about believing and investing in a game, and we need to reward people accordingly. I can understand you don't value alpha or beta access as high as we do, but there is actually a reason for it.

• What follows is my guess. Alpha: this summer. Beta and preorder: September/October.

• Character customization will include: Visuals, gender, icon, personality, voice, start skills, start stats.

• Cosmetic customisation is limited to face, hair, icon, skin color, primary and secondary color, gender, portrait & voice. You always play a human character.

• Q: Will we get some kind of backstory for our characters (for example, born in aleroth, son of a merchant)?
  A: That's not in, unfortunately. I'd very much have liked to do that, but it'll be for another time.

• We have two important parameters going in the background in this regard: affinity and affection.
  Affinity determines how well you work together as a team, as professionals: you're both noble most of the time for instance; or you both enjoy extortion. There are tons of different options here.
  
  Affection determines how well you relate to one another on a personal level. Often times cooperative dialogs will be discussions about the morality of decisions and situations. Do you relate? Do feel the same about important questions in life?
  
  These two combined will in turn determine what way the two protagonists are going to evolve in relationship-wise. Will they end up hating one another (yet respecting each other professionally for instance); will they end up as friends; as lovers; as soul mates - or anything in between?
  
  The outcomes will be varied and many!

• To calculate your level of affinity between the two protagonists, we basically count the number of times you either agree or disagree with one another in situations that have nothing to do with personal feelings or convictions: these pertain to affection.
  
  In the beginning of the game for instance, you can find a shell on the beach, which asks you to throw it back into the sea. You can kindly do so or be a bit more pragmatic and take the shell to sell it to a vendor. Whether you agree or not, a matter such as this influences your affinity toward one another. Call the choice generous versus greedy, say, but bottom line affinity points will be awarded (or not).
  
  If you've discovered one of the village wives is having an affair though, and the players debate whether what she has done is a heinous deed yes or no, this influences the affection toward one another, because of course if they are in a relationship it's better to know they'll both be loyal to one another or both keep their options open. If not, tension will be reflected in the subtraction of affection points for both players.
  
  We realise though, there's often a grey zone here and it may well turn out we'll award or subtract both affinity and affection points in specific cases.

• Funny comments about dexterity or strength in the game, like this, Trophies/kill stats/monster manual stuff, and (custom text) map markers are all in.

• Q: Even if the $1M goal isn't reached on your KS drive, is there any chance you'll still include the needed programming in the engine for the weather, lunar, etc. stuff; so that player-made content can make use of it?
  A: You actually have all the mechanics in there already (it rains, you can modify the lighting etc...), our goal is more about scripting it (which is a lot of work if you want to do it proper).

• Actually, we remade Aleroth as a try-out, the opening part of DD. I should do an update on that - at some point we even toyed with the idea of doing Divinity HD.
  You know what, we'll tease a bit with it tomorrow. We've good stuff about that, including some concepts that show how old was turned into new. Thx for reminding us
  

• The early schedule for the fan day will be August 9th, in Ghent, Belgium.

• We'll create a couple of personalities you can choose from. Like Kein said, these can follow you slavishly in every decision or disagree with everything. But we'll also create a few more nuanced ones to simulate that you're playing with an individual rather than an AI partner. Just how this will work has yet to be determined though. Traits and talents will also influence you AI partner of choice. There might be an option for a randomly-selected personality, so you don't know what the game will throw at you, you'll have to figure it out.

• Attacks of opportunity will not use AP, there will be some TBD mechanism for making use of unspent AP at the end of a turn, and there will be benefits for entering combat in stealth or flanking an enemy.

• Q: Since our characters are source hunters. Can we befriend magical elemental if we show affinity enough in a certain element like fire and make enemies also.
  A: No, but I really like that idea. Stored in the little notebook.

• We get that question a lot, but no, we don't have any plans for DLC's. Maybe an add-on, though I think we'll be focussing on our next game once we recover from development.

• There's no one big city. Rather, there's several villages, each with their own flavour & specific set of problems.

• Q: Just gonna throw the Dragon Age 1 'combat tactics' system out there, which sounds like what you're planning to allow in the editor. It allowed sufficiently deep customisation of AI (in my opinion), all within the game interface. You could 'pre-program' AI characters to cast spell x if character y is attacked by creature type z, for instance. Definitely something I encourage you to look at, whether you implement it or not
  
  
  A:That's in there, so you could use that if you want.

 

[Cursed Beaver]

At some point in the Demo videos, 3 guards are fighting 2 orcs.

In the 2 videos I saw, the player accidentally killed one of the guards with a fireball. But the other guards didn't seem to mind at all.

That was weird, considering negative reactions to killing are the most basic behaviors, even in simplistic RPG's. He didn't seem to mind about the guards corpse either, would have been cool to see them trying to get some help or something.

 

[Tigranes]

I don't really care too much about companions, but grabbed a $65 Dragon Commander slot that opened up, then an extra $20 DOS copy for a friend.

 

[Zeriel]

At some point in the Demo videos, 3 guards are fighting 2 orcs.

In the 2 videos I saw, the player accidentally killed one of the guards with a fireball. But the other guards didn't seem to mind at all.

That was weird, considering negative reactions to killing are the most basic behaviors, even in simplistic RPG's. He didn't seem to mind about the guards corpse either, would have been cool to see them trying to get some help or something.

Pre-alpha, my brotheren.

 

[Cursed Beaver]

At some point in the Demo videos, 3 guards are fighting 2 orcs.

In the 2 videos I saw, the player accidentally killed one of the guards with a fireball. But the other guards didn't seem to mind at all.

That was weird, considering negative reactions to killing are the most basic behaviors, even in simplistic RPG's. He didn't seem to mind about the guards corpse either, would have been cool to see them trying to get some help or something.

Pre-alpha, my brotheren.

Are we sure?

 

[Zeriel]

At some point in the Demo videos, 3 guards are fighting 2 orcs.

In the 2 videos I saw, the player accidentally killed one of the guards with a fireball. But the other guards didn't seem to mind at all.

That was weird, considering negative reactions to killing are the most basic behaviors, even in simplistic RPG's. He didn't seem to mind about the guards corpse either, would have been cool to see them trying to get some help or something.

Pre-alpha, my brotheren.

Are we sure?

Yes? They've only said that multiple times per video. You also had guards talking while being dead, stub interface elements everywhere, spells that crash the game because they aren't implemented, et cetera. The game is in a very early state. If anything, it's remarkable that this early it looks so functional and the gameplay is so emergent, says something to the type of game they're trying to make.

 

[Cursed Beaver]

At some point in the Demo videos, 3 guards are fighting 2 orcs.

In the 2 videos I saw, the player accidentally killed one of the guards with a fireball. But the other guards didn't seem to mind at all.

That was weird, considering negative reactions to killing are the most basic behaviors, even in simplistic RPG's. He didn't seem to mind about the guards corpse either, would have been cool to see them trying to get some help or something.

Pre-alpha, my brotheren.

Are we sure?

Yes? They've only said that multiple times per video. You also had guards talking while being dead, stub interface elements everywhere, spells that crash the game because they aren't implemented, et cetera. The game is in a very early state. If anything, it's remarkable that this early it looks so functional and the gameplay is so emergent, says something to the type of game they're trying to make.

Yes I know that. What I meant is : are we sure that the guards didn't react adequately to their companion's death (by your hands) because it's pre-alpha?

 

[FeelTheRads]

There's still hope for 1 million. Sweet!

 

[Zeriel]

At some point in the Demo videos, 3 guards are fighting 2 orcs.

In the 2 videos I saw, the player accidentally killed one of the guards with a fireball. But the other guards didn't seem to mind at all.

That was weird, considering negative reactions to killing are the most basic behaviors, even in simplistic RPG's. He didn't seem to mind about the guards corpse either, would have been cool to see them trying to get some help or something.

Pre-alpha, my brotheren.

Are we sure?

Yes? They've only said that multiple times per video. You also had guards talking while being dead, stub interface elements everywhere, spells that crash the game because they aren't implemented, et cetera. The game is in a very early state. If anything, it's remarkable that this early it looks so functional and the gameplay is so emergent, says something to the type of game they're trying to make.

Yes I know that. What I meant is : are we sure that the guards didn't react adequately to their companion's death (by your hands) because it's pre-alpha?

In one of the videos they shut a door before killing a fellow alone in a room, so it seems pretty clear to me that the intention is that people will react to murders (and theft) occuring around them. Indeed, in one scenario there was actually an example of the reactions glitching out, where some pissed off guards caused them to flee, then when they returned to town, the guards attacking the players actually made the "friendly" townsfolk turn on the guards to protect the players.

 

[Stabwound]

Holy shit, does ForkTong do voice acting? That was awesome.

 

[Stabwound]

What quest compass? As far as I know there isn't even a quest log, let alone a compass.

 

[Zeriel]

There is a quest log that they are in the process of implementing, but it is similar to the "record this dialogue" option in Vogel's Avernum games, or the way Might and Magic 7 did things to really dial back the ol' game design knob to past decades. Essentially it just reminds you of what dialogues/things you've run into told you (i.e "Some fellow named Jake was murdered, I suppose I could investigate that", not "Jake was murdered and his killer is at X, Y, Z on map B"). There are no pointers or compass.

 

[Arkeus]

Yes I know that. What I meant is : are we sure that the guards didn't react adequately to their companion's death (by your hands) because it's pre-alpha?

Actually, we were told that when we engage an enemy with allies and friendly fire occurs, they don't turn on us. Death by friendly fire, OTOH, should have consequences, as that's WAAAAAY too exploitable.

Forktong, you hear this? Also, this is now morning. Remember to add Ohm's preview to the front page links!

 

[Darth Roxor]

Was I the only one getting this vibe from the weresheep vid?

 

[ForkTong]

At some point in the Demo videos, 3 guards are fighting 2 orcs.

In the 2 videos I saw, the player accidentally killed one of the guards with a fireball. But the other guards didn't seem to mind at all.

That was weird, considering negative reactions to killing are the most basic behaviors, even in simplistic RPG's. He didn't seem to mind about the guards corpse either, would have been cool to see them trying to get some help or something.

In combat, hitting or killing allies happens, and they accept that.

If that would cause alignment changes, you'd be in big trouble.

 

[Arkeus]

In combat, hitting or killing allies happens, and they accept that.

If that would cause alignment changes, you'd be in big trouble.

Couldn't it cause an alignement change if you, say, killed 10 allies and one enemy during the fight? especially if that enemy was lower level than yourself?

 

[Smashing Axe]

ForkTong, are you and the team by any chance fans of this movie?

 

[J_C]

At some point in the Demo videos, 3 guards are fighting 2 orcs.

In the 2 videos I saw, the player accidentally killed one of the guards with a fireball. But the other guards didn't seem to mind at all.

That was weird, considering negative reactions to killing are the most basic behaviors, even in simplistic RPG's. He didn't seem to mind about the guards corpse either, would have been cool to see them trying to get some help or something.

Pre-alpha, my brotheren.

Are we sure?

Yes? They've only said that multiple times per video. You also had guards talking while being dead, stub interface elements everywhere, spells that crash the game because they aren't implemented, et cetera. The game is in a very early state. If anything, it's remarkable that this early it looks so functional and the gameplay is so emergent, says something to the type of game they're trying to make.

Yes I know that. What I meant is : are we sure that the guards didn't react adequately to their companion's death (by your hands) because it's pre-alpha?

Maybe they just used their brains and saw that it was an accident. It should be like this in other RPGs. I hate when in a battle against the bad guys, I accidentely hit an allied NPC, and everyone turns agains me.