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

[Diablo169]

Alvin isnt even working on Project Eternity so how clued up he is on rpgs doesnt really matter. He is working on the South Park game.

 

[suejak]

It's just disappointing that the people who work at these companies, even in prominent positions, can know so damn little.

Anyway, I'm glad that Adam is supposedly just a business lackey. He was playing with this phone through the whole D&D session, would take a loooooooong breaks where they had to skip his turn, and he literally only had an opinion when it was his character's move in combat. And then he'd just shoot arrows from point-blank range and shit. Whatever.

 

[suejak]

On the other hand, I got me some love for Bobby Null, the fat guy who knew perhaps more than Sawyer about D&D rules. Look him up on Google/Kickstarter and you'll see that he was apparently the one who thought of both the Adventurer's Hall and the Mega Dungeon.

 

[Osvir]

Somewhat related, the poster known as "Osvir" on the Obsidian forums needs to die. I'm the nicest friendly friend I know and that person is making me want to throw up with every post he writes. Nobody on the Codex manages that.

Why don't you tell Osvir ?

Haha! I'm a little late into this but... the only thing I can unfortunately respond to this is with "Hugs"

 

[IronicNeurotic]

Umm perhaps he would some some research on the company he works for? It's not a very large one, and he now has a lot of face time with the public to garner interest. Why wouldn't he make sure he understands what the origins of the company are? Shit, people like me who mostly don't care about how Obsidian started still know about the origins of Black Isle -> Obsidian by simple virtue of knowing who worked on what game.

We're not talking about the origins. Brennecke knows that. We're talking about the simple fucking reason for naming it *obsidian* or *black isle*. The name, not the company. Why would you ask that?

Something not even most people here know exactly I imagine.

 

[IronicNeurotic]

It's just disappointing that the people who work at these companies, even in prominent positions, can know so damn little.

Anyway, I'm glad that Adam is supposedly just a business lackey. He was playing with this phone through the whole D&D session, would take a loooooooong breaks where they had to skip his turn, and he literally only had an opinion when it was his character's move in combat. And then he'd just shoot arrows from point-blank range and shit. Whatever.

That's because he had to work at the same time. Guy was stomped with worked during pretty much all live-streams.

But yeah, he was probably the worst D&D player. Though if i remember correctly Anthony said he played before regulary as well. Or something like that (May be wrong there)

 

[suejak]

Umm perhaps he would some some research on the company he works for? It's not a very large one, and he now has a lot of face time with the public to garner interest. Why wouldn't he make sure he understands what the origins of the company are? Shit, people like me who mostly don't care about how Obsidian started still know about the origins of Black Isle -> Obsidian by simple virtue of knowing who worked on what game.

We're not talking about the origins. Brennecke knows that. We're talking about the simple fucking reason for naming it *obsidian* or *black isle*. The name, not the company. Why would you ask that?

Something not even most people here know exactly I imagine.

Does he? He seemed to think Feargus was the only one from Black Isle. Anyway, it's also a bad sign that he doesn't know why the studio is called what it is, in my opinion.

 

[Murk]

I would imagine the legacy of the name is also a part of the whole "origins". Anyway, this doesn't bother me too much, but I can see where suejak is coming from.

 

[Machocruz]

Donkey Kong was shit. Even worse than Mario.

More evidence that this place is an asylum of lunatic contrarians.

 

[Psquit]

So this is a thread about everything but Project Eternity, right?

yeah, lets talk about persona 4 arena.

 

[Nebuchadnezzar]

I just discovered J.E. Sawyers Blog. It has some pretty interesting entries in it. Maybe some information people haven't layed their eyes on yet.

http://twofoldsilence.diogenes-lamp.info/

 

[Osvir]

So this is a thread about everything but Project Eternity, right?

yeah, lets talk about persona 4 arena.

Depends, how could some features from Persona be interesting for P:E? There's going to be guns with a short burst and long reloading time.

Will you be able to shoot yourself in the head when you encounter romances?

 

[moraes]

So, can anybody tell the origins and motivations for the name of Obsidian or should we pretend that every codexer knows already? Too lazy for google.

 

[Roguey]

moraes Black Isle is a peninsula in Scotland. Obsidian is a black rock that can also be found in Scotland. Feargus Urquhart? Scottish of course.

I just discovered J.E. Sawyers Blog. It has some pretty interesting entries in it. Maybe some information people haven't layed their eyes on yet.

http://twofoldsilence.diogenes-lamp.info/

Hey awesome new entry he has there.

Before I was employed in the industry, I spent a lot of time developing my own tabletop systems and modifying the systems of others, so this has always been something I've enjoyed doing.

Grunker seethes, Josh continues to be fantastic.

 

[Harold]

He has a nice new update indeed. Embedding



I suggest his next update to be on how RTwP chess with cooldowns can be so much better than the classic version.
I also found this video on his channel, which is totally relevant to Project Eternity and pretty

 

[suejak]

Beer tastes so good, though.

 

[Osvir]

Hey! Just wanted to share this one have a great day!
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/62164-a-collection-of-forum-discussions/#entry1271378

 

[OSK]

I also found this video on his channel, which is totally relevant to Project Eternity and pretty

What the fuck. A teetotaler Wisconsinite? No wonder he left the state.

Makes me want to go back in time to when I was a little kid and we both lived in the same city so I could hunt him down, kick him in the shins and tell him to drink up.

 

[SwiftCrack]

lmao @ trying to twist off that bottle cap

 

[Arkeus]

Today's update is different from what we've done so far, and is to give you a look at what's going on at the studio. During the making of Project Eternity we want to give you an idea on how our games are made. Making games is not magic - game development just boils down to a lot of work from a lot of talented people. I would like to pull back the curtain, and give you the who (the talent) and the what (the work that they do) to make Project Eternity a reality.


The Stuff

RPGs are large and complex games that have a ton of stuff, and much more stuff compared to most games. Characters, companions, dialogues, areas, monsters, abilities, spells, items, weapons, armor, sound effects, visual effects, interface art, music, crafting recipes, animations, textures, crates and quests are the bits of stuff in Project Eternity... and the list goes on and on. At the time that we finally ship the game, we will have hundreds of thousands of bits of stuff in the game. Managing and creating this stuff is one of our major problem when creating RPGs. Our task is to make all of the stuff as efficiently as possible with a high level of quality.

Right now we are knee deep in pre-production. Pre-production is the period of time at the beginning of development where everything is planned and prototyped, production schedules are made, and pipelines are constructed. I'm not talking about oil pipelines here - I'm talking about asset pipelines. An asset pipeline can be described like an oil pipeline - First the asset is made by a content creator (like an artist), next the asset is processed by a tool so that the game understands what the heck it is, and finally the asset is placed into the game world in its final location. All of the different types of assets (stuff) require a custom pipeline. Pipeline creation is one of the many problems we are tackling right now in pre-production.


The Team

We have many different roles (sometimes called "hats") on the Project Eternity team. Most of the team fall into three categories: content creators (makers of stuff), programmers (making the stuff work), and production (making sure the stuff gets made). Our role percentage breakdown is a bit different than what we typically have on a project. If you look at my fantastic pie-charts below, you can see that we are content focused because we have larger design team, and since our team size is small we don’t have the need for a large production staff.

All of these roles are equally important and are all vital for making the game great:

Art

• Animation: Animation adds life and movement to the game. Every moving object in the game requires an animator to be involved.

• Effects Art: Spell effects, sword swings, fire, smoke, and blood are animated and designed by an effects artist.

• Environment Art: The environment artists make the world look beautiful. They do a pretty good job at it.

• Character Art: Character artists create the characters, companions, and monsters. They also model and texture all of the weapons and armor.

• Concept Art: Concept artists paint and illustrate environments and characters that fit within the art and design vision. Their art is used by the rest of the team for reference on style, mood, color, size and proportion. They also paint the 2D portraits and touch up the 2D pre-rendered environment scenes.

• User Interface Art: All of the buttons that you push, the interfaces that you interact with, and all of the mouse/item/weapon/spell icons in the game are designed and crafted by the UI artist.

Audio

• Audio Design: Audio design is responsible for any and all of the audio that comes out of your speakers. This includes the creation and production of all of the music and sound effects, and making the character voices sound great.

Design

• Area Design: All of the cities, towns, dungeons, and wilderness areas that you can explore are designed by area designers. They take the environments and characters made by the artists to construct a rich and believable world. They also fill the game with quests and combat encounters.

• Narrative Design: RPGs contain thousands of lines of branching dialogue and huge non-linear storylines. The world, story, companions, factions, lore, and themes are created by the narrative designers.

• System Design: Rules and systems specialists. They like numbers and spreadsheets. Combat, abilities, spells, non-combat skills, and items are designed by the systems designers.

Production

• Production: The producers organize the team. They make sure everything is running like a well-oiled machine. Producers have the responsibility for making sure the game is delivered on time, on budget, and is awesome when it's shipped.

Programming

• Engine Programming: The engine programmers deal with system, rendering, and physics code. Unity handles a lot of our engine-level programming for us, so we can focus our programming time and energy on gameplay.

• Game Programming: The game programmers implement the game design including the rules, combat, and abilities. They also code up gameplay systems like dialogues, quests, stores, and create artificial intelligence for monsters.

• Tools Programming: Pipelines and tools used by the team are made by the these programmers. Most of their code lives "outside" of the game code.

Quality Assurance

• Quality Assurance Testing: The QA tester reports in-game problems to the rest of the team. They make sure that all the stuff is working together and functioning properly.

We want to go into more detail on what each person does on the team in future updates. A two sentence description trivializes the responsibilities for each team member, so in the future we will dig deeper and take a closer look into the disciplines.

Next week Josh has an update with lore and other fun worldly things.

And here comes an update.

 

[Surf Solar]

Fuck I hoped there was a new screenshot hidden in that hyperlink about the level artists.

 

[HanoverF]

The gray-blue slice needs to be bigger

 

[Apexeon]

Today's update is different from what we've done so far, and is to give you a look at what's going on at the studio. During the making of Project Eternity we want to give you an idea on how our games are made. Making games is not magic - game development just boils down to a lot of work from a lot of talented people. I would like to pull back the curtain, and give you the who (the talent) and the what (the work that they do) to make Project Eternity a reality.


The Stuff

RPGs are large and complex games that have a ton of stuff, and much more stuff compared to most games. Characters, companions, dialogues, areas, monsters, abilities, spells, items, weapons, armor, sound effects, visual effects, interface art, music, crafting recipes, animations, textures, crates and quests are the bits of stuff in Project Eternity... and the list goes on and on. At the time that we finally ship the game, we will have hundreds of thousands of bits of stuff in the game. Managing and creating this stuff is one of our major problem when creating RPGs. Our task is to make all of the stuff as efficiently as possible with a high level of quality.

Right now we are knee deep in pre-production. Pre-production is the period of time at the beginning of development where everything is planned and prototyped, production schedules are made, and pipelines are constructed. I'm not talking about oil pipelines here - I'm talking about asset pipelines. An asset pipeline can be described like an oil pipeline - First the asset is made by a content creator (like an artist), next the asset is processed by a tool so that the game understands what the heck it is, and finally the asset is placed into the game world in its final location. All of the different types of assets (stuff) require a custom pipeline. Pipeline creation is one of the many problems we are tackling right now in pre-production.


The Team

We have many different roles (sometimes called "hats") on the Project Eternity team. Most of the team fall into three categories: content creators (makers of stuff), programmers (making the stuff work), and production (making sure the stuff gets made). Our role percentage breakdown is a bit different than what we typically have on a project. If you look at my fantastic pie-charts below, you can see that we are content focused because we have larger design team, and since our team size is small we don’t have the need for a large production staff.

All of these roles are equally important and are all vital for making the game great:

Art

• Animation: Animation adds life and movement to the game. Every moving object in the game requires an animator to be involved.

• Effects Art: Spell effects, sword swings, fire, smoke, and blood are animated and designed by an effects artist.

• Environment Art: The environment artists make the world look beautiful. They do a pretty good job at it.

• Character Art: Character artists create the characters, companions, and monsters. They also model and texture all of the weapons and armor.

• Concept Art: Concept artists paint and illustrate environments and characters that fit within the art and design vision. Their art is used by the rest of the team for reference on style, mood, color, size and proportion. They also paint the 2D portraits and touch up the 2D pre-rendered environment scenes.

• User Interface Art: All of the buttons that you push, the interfaces that you interact with, and all of the mouse/item/weapon/spell icons in the game are designed and crafted by the UI artist.

Audio

• Audio Design: Audio design is responsible for any and all of the audio that comes out of your speakers. This includes the creation and production of all of the music and sound effects, and making the character voices sound great.

Design

• Area Design: All of the cities, towns, dungeons, and wilderness areas that you can explore are designed by area designers. They take the environments and characters made by the artists to construct a rich and believable world. They also fill the game with quests and combat encounters.

• Narrative Design: RPGs contain thousands of lines of branching dialogue and huge non-linear storylines. The world, story, companions, factions, lore, and themes are created by the narrative designers.

• System Design: Rules and systems specialists. They like numbers and spreadsheets. Combat, abilities, spells, non-combat skills, and items are designed by the systems designers.

Production

• Production: The producers organize the team. They make sure everything is running like a well-oiled machine. Producers have the responsibility for making sure the game is delivered on time, on budget, and is awesome when it's shipped.

Programming

• Engine Programming: The engine programmers deal with system, rendering, and physics code. Unity handles a lot of our engine-level programming for us, so we can focus our programming time and energy on gameplay.

• Game Programming: The game programmers implement the game design including the rules, combat, and abilities. They also code up gameplay systems like dialogues, quests, stores, and create artificial intelligence for monsters.

• Tools Programming: Pipelines and tools used by the team are made by the these programmers. Most of their code lives "outside" of the game code.

Quality Assurance

• Quality Assurance Testing: The QA tester reports in-game problems to the rest of the team. They make sure that all the stuff is working together and functioning properly.

We want to go into more detail on what each person does on the team in future updates. A two sentence description trivializes the responsibilities for each team member, so in the future we will dig deeper and take a closer look into the disciplines.


Next week Josh has an update with lore and other fun worldly things.

And here comes an update.

Awesome now I know what I am up against.
A real indie is gunning out here in the jungle .
I am making 1-4 maps per day at the moment I hope the PE team of 20+ can keep up.

 

[Anthony Davis]

So, can anybody tell the origins and motivations for the name of Obsidian or should we pretend that every codexer knows already? Too lazy for google.

They had several names in the running, one of which was Obsidian. One of the owners, Chris Jones, was having some sort of yard or house work done when he unearthed a very large Obsidian rock. The other owners took that as a sign or a neat coincidence and decided on Obsidian.

The Obsidian rock still sits in Jone's office.

 

[Primordial Soup Nazi]

The gray-blue slice needs to be bigger

Pfft, no need for the troll at the end; QA genuinely needs to be a major priority. Trying to emulate the IE games is dandy, but trying to emulate how erroneous their scripts were is...not so good.

Its nice to see the purple slice is so girthy, though.

They had several names in the running, one of which was Obsidian. One of the owners, Chris Jones, was having some sort of yard or house work done when he unearthed a very large Obsidian rock. The other owners took that as a sign or a neat coincidence and decided on Obsidian.

The Obsidian rock still sits in Jone's office.

I had always figured it was meant to be sorta congruent with "Black Isle." Thanks for the trivia.