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

[Hormalakh]

Menze is the best artist they have at Obsidian. I hope he gets in on it somehow. Perhaps to make some portraits or something. His forte seems to be characters and objects, so.

http://brenze.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=0

Wow. Yeah, he's good. Why isn't he concepting the game? I'd much rather have him doing it.

 

[Jasede]

They probably wanted to give young talent some airtime.
Yeah, I don't like the concept art either. But it's just concept art. It's not really required to be pretty; just give the 3D artists a good idea of the character / setting and how to model him / it. Doesn't mean I don't prefer good concept art.

Fallout 3 had great concept art at times, and we all know what that game is like.
Fallout 1 had concept art that ranged from terrible to amazing.

 

[PlanHex]

Menze is the best artist they have at Obsidian. I hope he gets in on it somehow. Perhaps to make some portraits or something. His forte seems to be characters and objects, so.

http://brenze.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=0

Wow. Yeah, he's good. Why isn't he concepting the game? I'd much rather have him doing it.

What're the space guys from?
Alien RPG?

 

[Hormalakh]

Looks like it. He's even got an android girl in there.

 

[PlanHex]

Now that you mention it, he comments on the android chick pic and says it's not from there:

~75407 Feb 27, 2010
It's this concept from the Aliens RPG ? Too bad, it had great potential.
~Brenze Feb 27, 2010
nope. can't say any more than that

edit: also, the elf chick from the kickstarter pitch is on the second page. must be a pretty old pic...

 

[Lyric Suite]

They probably wanted to give young talent some airtime.

wy

 

[Jaesun]

Rob Nesler ‏@NeslerRob
Now I am looking at resumes and portfolios of concept artists. Know anybody?

 

[evdk]

Rob Nesler ‏@NeslerRob
Now I am looking at resumes and portfolios of concept artists. Know anybody?

Pimp Prosper. He could do it.

 

[Jasede]

They probably wanted to give young talent some airtime.

wy

I used talent as in the cliche phrase "young talent", not because I consider her (it must be a girl; only women would draw like that) talented. I find the concept art pretty dreadful.

 

[Crispy]

Jesus H. Christ it's a basketball on a stick.

Glad I didn't contribute to this trainwreck.

 

[Excidium]

It's a placeholder model for testing physics, dumbass.

You should be glad you didn't contribute because it's a BG clone with a horribly gamey system.

 

[Murk]

Decline, decline everywhere.

 

[Crispy]

It's a placeholder model for testing physics, dumbass.

Physics of what? How well they could fit Lebron James' best slam dunk into the storyline?

MODS WILL FIX IT

 

[Roguey]

You should be glad you didn't contribute because it's a BG clone with a horribly gamey system.

Gamey systems are awesome though, considering this is a game.

 

[Hormalakh]

They probably wanted to give young talent some airtime.
Yeah, I don't like the concept art either. But it's just concept art. It's not really required to be pretty; just give the 3D artists a good idea of the character / setting and how to model him / it. Doesn't mean I don't prefer good concept art.

Fallout 3 had great concept art at times, and we all know what that game is like.
Fallout 1 had concept art that ranged from terrible to amazing.

I'd rather a good concept artist draw so that the 3D models that are based off the concept art look good the first time around.

Now I am looking at resumes and portfolios of concept artists. Know anybody?

Guess she got fired from her duties?

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Very pleased they are actually making 3D characters and models. I was worried for a while that they were going the paperdoll sprite route.

 

[Rake]

Rob Nesler‏@NeslerRob
I work on another project at Obsidian-can't disclose the name yet, but I just bought some blueprints from http://www.blueprints.com

Another project? o_O

 

[agentorange]

They probably wanted to give young talent some airtime.
Yeah, I don't like the concept art either. But it's just concept art. It's not really required to be pretty; just give the 3D artists a good idea of the character / setting and how to model him / it. Doesn't mean I don't prefer good concept art.

Fallout 3 had great concept art at times, and we all know what that game is like.
Fallout 1 had concept art that ranged from terrible to amazing.

I'd rather a good concept artist draw so that the 3D models that are based off the concept art look good the first time around.

It really doesn't matter, if the 3D artist is shit.

I mean you can go from this

To this goofball

 

[Hormalakh]

Hopefully it's not another next-gen game that will get shelved in 2-3 months.

 

[Infinitron]

Rob Nesler posts on the Obsidian forums: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/62906-update-34-first-art-update/page__st__120#entry1287650

Falkon Swiftblade, on 05 December 2012 - 07:13 PM, said:

Rob Nesler, on 05 December 2012 - 09:16 AM, said:

That was a sample of a larger map section. The viewscreen would be a much smaller window panning around that image. We are expecting to render maps that are up to 20k pixels wide, if the loading performance permits it.
I don't know about lefties, but I would like to develop different rigs for male and female characters.

Just out of curiosity, how does this compare to other Obsidian games like the Fallout series, ToEE, etc.

Those games had backgrounds that were rendered for VGA displays (640x480) at the low end of screen support we are quadrupling those numbers and targeting a 6x9 aspect ratio, at the high-end we might be approaching 10 times the pixel count. IWD maps were around: 3840x2880 pixels

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/62906-update-34-first-art-update/page__st__120#entry1287641

FrostPaw, on 05 December 2012 - 02:19 PM, said:

Thanks for the update, was a great read!

I'm curious though, is the game intended to be viewed at a fixed perspective as with infinity engine games or will the camera orbit?

I'm looking at that tower model and noticing all the doors are accessible from "this side" of the model. I was just wondering if that's because this is the only side that will be visible or if this was the more interesting side to show.

There will be no perspective. All cameras are orthographic. The cameras and the world are aligned and essentially fixed at a specific distance, wich ww will iterate on, but will be pretty close to the experience that one would have had in Icewind Dale rather than Torment. The world image is static and pre-rendered. The camera will not rotate around to see the back-side of a building.

 

[Roguey]

Rob Nesler‏@NeslerRob
I work on another project at Obsidian-can't disclose the name yet, but I just bought some blueprints from http://www.blueprints.com

Another project? o_O

Obsidian can't survive on one console/multi-platform project alone, they need two going at the same time. South Park's nearly finished.

 

[Kirtai]

Those games had backgrounds that were rendered for VGA displays (640x480) at the low end of screen support we are quadrupling those numbers and targeting a 6x9 aspect ratio, at the high-end we might be approaching 10 times the pixel count. IWD maps were around: 3840x2880 pixels

I hope they don't forget those of us with 16:10 monitors (assuming he meant 16:9 rather than 6:9)

 

[Infinitron]

Those games had backgrounds that were rendered for VGA displays (640x480) at the low end of screen support we are quadrupling those numbers and targeting a 6x9 aspect ratio, at the high-end we might be approaching 10 times the pixel count. IWD maps were around: 3840x2880 pixels

I hope they don't forget those of us with 16:10 monitors (assuming he meant 16:9 rather than 6:9)

Not really sure how it matters as far as map size goes. It's not like you're going to see the entire thing on one screen anyway. Expected resolution is more important since maps are generally designed with a fixed idea of what the player can see at any given time in mind.

 

[Kirtai]

I hope they don't forget those of us with 16:10 monitors (assuming he meant 16:9 rather than 6:9)

Not really sure how it matters as far as map size goes. It's not like you're going to see the entire thing on one screen anyway. Expected resolution is more important since maps are generally designed with a fixed idea of what the player can see at any given time in mind.

It's just that some games handle it really badly, with unnecessary letterboxing being the least of them. e.g. I've heard that Diablo 3 handles 16:10 by rendering a fullheight 16:9 display with the sides spilling offscreen, so you have parts of the display that you can't see but the game considers visible and you can be attacked from. (can't confirm this personally but I've seen it mentioned multiple times)

 

[Infinitron]

I hope they don't forget those of us with 16:10 monitors (assuming he meant 16:9 rather than 6:9)

Not really sure how it matters as far as map size goes. It's not like you're going to see the entire thing on one screen anyway. Expected resolution is more important since maps are generally designed with a fixed idea of what the player can see at any given time in mind.

It's just that some games handle it really badly, with unnecessary letterboxing being the least of them. e.g. I've heard that Diablo 3 handles 16:10 by rendering a fullheight 16:9 display with the sides spilling offscreen, so you have parts of the display that you can't see but the game considers visible and you can be attacked from. (can't confirm this personally but I've seen it mentioned multiple times)

Sure thing. But that has nothing to do with the size of the full maps, it's about the viewport. I'm sure they'll support multiple aspect-ratio viewport sizes. This shouldn't be a problem in a 2D game.