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

[Johannes]

It's really not that hard to make an AI kite you provided it has some room and not too many actors.

And if you totally remove the usefulness of kiting, how likely is the game to have other kinds of meaningful positional tactics left?

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Hormalakh your and Infinitron 's pleasingly symmetrical points about players kiting monsters and monsters kiting players are definitely valid. But with regard to the inability of AI to kite players, I think encounters designed with a balance of ranged and melee attackers, enemies placed so as to require movement, terrain that requires movement to get to dangerous enemies all allow movement to make a difference without the need to rely on AI kiting. I was thinking of AI making more of a difference in target selection - choosing mages or fragile, lightly armed targets over heavily armored ones etc.

As for the players kiting enemies, I don't really have a response to that other than to say "kiters gonna kite." And then feel an almost overpowering sense of shame for the terribleness of that joke immediately afterwards. But it seems like kiting either works with the AI or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then speed variation will be hard to abuse. If it does, than uniform speed won't be enough to stop it.

 

[Hormalakh]

It's really not that hard to make an AI kite you provided it has some room and not too many actors.

And if you totally remove the usefulness of kiting, how likely is the game to have other kinds of meaningful positional tactics left?

IF (player character selects enemy for melee attack) THEN (enemy runs away in opposite direction).

There's your line of code. But then you need to have more variables. What if the player realizes this and wishes to take advantage of this? Everytime a ranged enemy wants to attack, the player "taunts" him and the enemy runs away.

Maybe we add another conditional:

IF (player character selects enemy for melee attack) AND (player character is several feet away from enemy) THEN (enemy runs away in opposite direction).

Yeah, I think it's possible. It'd need to be tested like crazy though (several different scenarios and testing extreme limits - what do you do if kiting enemies are flanked on both sides? Do they break a loop of trying to run away from both enemies and just start shooting arrows?). It will also undoubtedly piss off a few players who can't catch ranged archers who kite them to hell.

 

[roshan]

I like this new mechanic, will make for a very interesting tradeoff to consider when building characters.

What is aggro???

 

[Hormalakh]

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63117-update-37-happy-2013/

Hello World and Happy 2013! Looks like we all survived (hopefully) the Mayan Apocalypse. That was a close one. Woooohooo!

Not sure if jab at Black Isle

 

[suejak]

I like this new mechanic, will make for a very interesting tradeoff to consider when building characters.

What is aggro???

In every party-based combat MMO that I'm aware of since Everquest, monsters have a hidden "aggro" rating toward each player, which determines who they focus their attacks on. The goal of meaty "tanks" (usually warriors) is to "draw aggro" so the monsters attack them (and not the less-meaty casters, rogues, clerics, etc). This means taunt abilities and things like that, designed to generate aggro.

 

[Hormalakh]

Oh, totally. I know. For all the important futurepeople reading the 307th page of this lame thread.

I wanted to thank oldmanpaco for his comment. I am currently reading the 307th page of this lame thread. That is all. Carry on.

 

[Hormalakh]

Another Formspring answer. Looks like constant today...

In a follow-up to a previous question you answered, how easy will it be to change out armor during combat in Project Eternity? Are you allowing it, disallowing it, or penalizing it in some way?

The party can't access anything in the "top of pack" during combat, so it's impossible to switch anything other than equipped weapon sets. Outside of combat, you can switch any equipped item with anything in the "top of pack" freely (including something you've just found). At a camp or certain other locations, you can move items freely between equipment, pack, and stash.

 

[PlanHex]

We already knew that, though.

 

[suejak]

What is "top of pack"? This is all sounding weirdly realistic.

 

[Infinitron]

What is "top of pack"? This is all sounding weirdly realistic.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/371907

Functionally, we're using Icewind Dale II as our starting point. We've been looking at inventory recently. Tim and I have designed a system that uses three types of gear storage: equipment, top of pack (this name may change!), and stash. Equipment is what your characters are currently using and have ready to use. This includes weapon sets that you can swap between during combat. "Top of pack" is a finite amount of gear that you can access outside of combat for a variety of purposes: replenishing consumables, checking out a shiny new sword you picked up a while back, etc. The top of pack cannot be accessed during combat, but is present as a strategic pool of items that you can access while exploring. The stash is where all of the "other stuff" goes: things you aren't using, items you want to sell, and various doo-dads you'll be looking at later.

When you find gear, you have the option of placing it wherever you'd like as long as there's room for it. You can use it immediately, put it in your top of pack, or just chuck it in the stash. Once an object is in the stash, you can access it at camps, your home, and similar locations. We've created this division of inventory space to add strategy to your gear loadout decisions instead of having a weight limit, while also allowing flexibility for backup equipment. Most importantly, it doesn't prevent you from doing what adventurers love to do most: loot everything they find that isn't bolted down.

Do keep up.

 

[Infinitron]

Hormalakh About dodging chance being affect by heaviness of armor

We would only implement additional penalties if we felt that the trade-off as-is were not compelling enough. The more values you link together, the more difficult it becomes to balance the trade-off.

He doesn't seem to be interested in addressing my idea about dodging.

 

[Kem0sabe]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/371907



Do keep up.

Never understood why people feel that complex inventory management is a staple of RPG´s. If your character can carry 20 swords in his/her backpack, how is that more realistic than carrying 40 swords... why have a limit on what you can carry?

I understand that having to go to town to sell your stuff is a motivation to travel back and forth between adventuring and civilization, which allows some more design options, but i would prefer to have unlimited space.

Just a thought.

 

[Infinitron]

Preferences are like opinions. Everybody's got one.

 

[Lancehead]

The equipment+pack+stash should keep all types of preferences reasonably happy, I think. If people can get past the stash magically following the party around only to take items in and not let out.

 

[Aeschylus]

There's been an update, largely devoid of any content. Except that we now have a more precise update schedule I guess (Tuesday evenings PST).

 

[Spectacle]

I would like to use this thread to say that I am fucking tired of RPGs (and games in general) where your primary source of money is by finding and selling equipment. Finding treasure would be much more satisfying. Chests of gold guarded by bandidts. Fist sized gems stolen from the eyes of a demonic statue. Golden regalia from the tomb of the sorcerer-king. Way cooler treasure than the +3 sword you sell because you already have a +4.

It would be even cooler if you have to actively search out treasure rather than primarily coming across it while completing other quests.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I would like to use this thread to say that I am fucking tired of RPGs (and games in general) where your primary source of money is by finding and selling equipment. Finding treasure would be much more satisfying. Chests of gold guarded by bandidts. Fist sized gems stolen from the eyes of a demonic statue. Golden regalia from the tomb of the sorcerer-king. Way cooler treasure than the +3 sword you sell because you already have a +4.

It would be even cooler if you have to actively search out treasure rather than primarily coming across it while completing other quests.

I agree. Also think that enemies should drop only the equipment they are actually using, and some of that equipment (or all of it) should have a chance to drop in an unusable/broken state due to the ass kicking you gave the previous owner.

Animals and other assorted non humanoid shit should not drop armors you can use.

 

[Infinitron]

Josh has already confirmed that enemies will drop the equipment they were using.

 

[Aeschylus]

I would like to use this thread to say that I am fucking tired of RPGs (and games in general) where your primary source of money is by finding and selling equipment. Finding treasure would be much more satisfying. Chests of gold guarded by bandidts. Fist sized gems stolen from the eyes of a demonic statue. Golden regalia from the tomb of the sorcerer-king. Way cooler treasure than the +3 sword you sell because you already have a +4.

Indeed.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Josh has already confirmed that enemies will drop the equipment they were using.

Nice to know.

Can´t wait to see this thing in motion, any word on an ETA for a gameplay video?

 

[Infinitron]

Nice to know.

Can´t wait to see this thing in motion, any word on an ETA for a gameplay video?

No, it's too early.

 

[Surf Solar]

Atleast some new eye-candy screenshot like the first one would be nice.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Modern GPUs cannot produce visuals in real time as good pre-rendered IE engine backgrounds looked. Full stop. Until they can, 3D is not inherently superior to 2D circa 1998.

They can, most IE games' 3d renders are laughably primitive by todays standards if you look at them from a pure technology stance. Todays GPU's could do all that shit in realtime, and with deferred renderers, ambient occlusion and global illumination tech that would make the 1990's game artist shit his pants with envy.

 

[Infinitron]

Modern GPUs cannot produce visuals in real time as good pre-rendered IE engine backgrounds looked. Full stop. Until they can, 3D is not inherently superior to 2D circa 1998.

They can, most IE games' 3d renders are laughably primitive by todays standards if you look at them from a pure technology stance. Todays GPU's could do all that shit in realtime, and with deferred renderers, ambient occlusion and global illumination tech that would make the 1990's game artist shit his pants with envy.

Modern console GPUs cannot produce visuals in real time as good pre-rendered IE engine backgrounds looked. Full stop. Until they can, 3D is not inherently superior to 2D circa 1998.

Fixed?

 

[Hormalakh]

Fixed?

No. It's not fixed. I don't believe Tuluse was talking about using old 3d tech to prerender. He's saying that using rendering technology (new or old) and pre-rendering graphics will always give you better visual quality and he's right.

It's a matter of rendering time and calculations that the computer has to do to display the image. As your image quality increases (usually this can be approximated using polygon count, but other effects can obviously increase the rendering time) you need more time to render the image to a high visual quality. If you use real-time rendering , as most 3d games currently do, your GPU is calculating the math to display the image in real-time. A pre-render has already done the image calculations ahead of time and has already given you the output as a 2d image.

Put another way: the quality of their images is so high (high polygons, and other image rendering technologies) that it takes several hours for each image to render completely. Add to that fact, that they go back and "fix" the images and you start to realize why a real-time 3d would not work for the environment. For the game to play where the environment is 3d that is dynamic (not a 2d image), you would need to render the same amount of polys (and other whizbangs) at a infinitesimally small amount of time. This is not possible. As your rendering technology increases on GPUs you can increase your poly counts for pre-renders and your poly counts for real-time. But you can never have the same quality for a real-time that you would have for a pre-render.

Does this make sense?

E: They are obviously not going to be using old rendering technology to render their images. They are using the newest technology that they can, and this will give them even faster renders. Josh has already said as much. Something along the lines of how rendering images takes them a lunch hour instead of 3 days.

E2: The other thing is that those old renders just took longer to do whereas now they take less time. But the old images didn't sacrifice polys because they had "unlimited time" to render. You have to sacrifice one of the two: polys or time. Those old renders took 3 or 4 days per image. If you've ever worked in the graphics industry, you'd know about the old saying among graphics artists whenever they were being called-out for not doing any work at the office. They'd always say "Oh, my images are rendering." It was such a huge computer processor hog that artists had basically nothing else to do until their images rendered out completely. So they could mess around while their computers did the work.