KickStarter Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Background Character]

Maybe they'll add more base classes later, maybe.

 

[Iznaliu]

Maybe they'll add more base classes later, maybe.

I highly doubt that; I don't think the game will be much of a success, which will provide little motivation for them to do it.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/owlcatgames/pathfinder-kingmaker/posts/2066397

Owlcat Tabletop Adventures
Posted by Berserkerkitten


Dear Pathfinders,

For today's update, let's take a small break from the Pathfinder computer game. As you know, we play a lot of pen-and-paper Pathfinder here at Owlcat Games. And today, we want to share some stories from our tabletop adventures - stories that excite us and inspire us so much, they may well turn up in the videogame. As anybody who ever played a tabletop RPG knows, the urge to tell everyone about your character is sometimes irresistible!

Beware: this update contains some spoilers!

All Owlcats are playing through the whole Kingmaker adventure path, from start to finish. This adds up to five simultaneous campaigns; every week the five groups gather around their tables, bring out the dice and their character sheets. Of course this will occasionally result in some weird looks from other people in the office. Hey, don't judge - we're working here!

As it usually happens with tabletop campaigns, every GM adds something of their own to the campaign. Take Oleg's Trading Post, for example. It's the first "home base" that the players visit during the campaign - a place to rest, resupply and maybe sell loot. In two of our campaigns, the Trading Post was attacked by bandits - and in one case, they were successful. This one event drastically changed the whole flow of the campaign. Usually players explore the Stolen Lands almost at their leisure, preparing for the final confrontation with the bandit lord. But in this case, the exploration turned into a mad scramble, as hungry and homeless adventurers struggled to conquer the bandits' fort before winter came and they all froze to death! They were successful... but with a twist.

Imagine: a fortified bandit camp sits on a hill, surrounded by a sturdy stockade and defended by archers. The first head-on attack is not successful - many defenders are killed, but ultimately the adventurers have to fall back. They hide in the woods to rest and recuperate; and the next day Ulrick, a devout paladin of Shelyn, leads another charge - only to be greeted by a surly bandit: "Hey, stop your blabbering! The boss ordered to let you in peacefully." As the party enters the fort, the Stag Lord, the bandits' leader, makes his surprising suggestion. Most of his bandits, and his lieutenants, are dead. The party is still hurting from their first attack against the camp. Another fight would cost both sides dearly. What if they chose to bury the hatchet - what if they joined forces to survive the winter instead of fighting?

The swordlords of Restov offer a reward for the Stag Lord's head - but they do not know what he looks like. The party could bring his distinctive helm to Restov, get the reward and leave with the swordlords none the wiser, and the Stag Lord would become their loyal ally. The swordlords are untrustworthy, scheming politicians, the new kingdom in the Stolen Lands should feel no loyalty to them... or so the Stag Lord claims. As the players are considering the idea, Ulrick objects loudly and vehemently. A paladin would never stoop so low as to attempt this vile deception! Things get out of hand and end in a duel. Ulrick against the Stag Lord. Whoever wins, gets their way - either the party allies with the bandit, or they take him away in shackles.

Having two more experience levels under his belt than the poor paladin, the bandit leader wipes out Ulrick in front of his gawking party, whose alignment changes for siding with the bandits! On the other hand, Ulrick's player is now switching to playing the Stag Lord, gaining a couple of levels, and having the time of his life screwing up the party's plans. The Stag Lord is not going to play nice with his new allies.

His metabolic processes are now history. This is an ex-paladin!

It's unexpected moments like this that make tabletop games really awesome. Unfortunately, this sort of reactivity is basically impossible in a CRPG... although this story did prompt us to think a lot about the Stag Lord encounter in the videogame. Will he be an actual companion? Probably not, but you'd at least talk to him and decide the bandit's fate.

In this case, a violent attack unexpectedly turned into a peaceful (well... sort of) resolution. But usually, things go the other way. A story from a different party:

In the Stolen Lands, one can encounter tribes of kobolds and mites - warring with each other. Both races are generally evil and not very keen on diplomacy, but one party was particularly bent on resolving their conflict peacefully. After making friends with the kobolds by strategically gifting some spare loot, they found out that a sacred kobold statuette has been stolen by the mites. They managed to find the mites' underground lair, entered and started talking to the mites' chief. A few ranks in Linguistics and Diplomacy can go a long way! The mites did indeed have the statuette, but they demanded an unacceptable price for it: kobold genocide.

Imagine: the party stands in a damp underground passage, weak light coming from the cave entrance directly above them. A jumble of roots covers the dirt walls, and right in front of them the whole mite tribe is gathered, with the chief brandishing the stolen statuette. Killing all kobolds to get it is out of the question - and the adventurers decide to just snatch the McGuffin and run away. There's no rogue in the party, so the task goes to Kyros the cleric. His player rolls the dice and - Boom! Natural 20! He deftly snatches the statuette and everyone scrambles up. Climbing the roots that line the walls is an easy check, but a check nonetheless. As everyone gets out, Kyros rolls a natural 1. He steps on his own robes, flails wildly and drops the statuette back down, where the mites are waiting. They were so close, but now the party has no choice but to fight!

In a tabletop game, random die rolls suddenly causing fun and exciting turns is quite common. This is harder to achieve in a videogame - there are plenty of rolls, but computers are still pretty bad at creative interpretation. But we do have the Book Event interface specifically to allow for such shenanigans. The CRPG will have the kobold and the mite tribes, and the quest to return the statuette. As for this specific situation, well - this part is not done yet, but as we get to it, we'll surely remember the story of Kyros the Clumsy!



Hail to the Kings!

Owlcats

 

[sstacks]

Infinitron I just received an invitation from Owlcat Games to Alpha Test Pathfinder Kingmaker on Dec 26th (which I accepted of course, lol). I'm allowed to share / stream etc as long as I make sure folks know it's an alpha test build.

So... more to come.

 

[Background Character]

Finalllyyyyyyy

 

[Infinitron]

Infinitron I just received an invitation from Owlcat Games to Alpha Test Pathfinder Kingmaker on Dec 26th (which I accepted of course, lol). I'm allowed to share / stream etc as long as I make sure folks know it's an alpha test build.

So... more to come.

You're probably not the only one. So I guess videos of the Pathfinder alpha will be widely available soon. Don't understand why that wasn't the case from the start tbh.

BTW there are some people on the Codex who have the alpha but haven't told us how it is.

 

[Wayward Son]

Infinitron I just received an invitation from Owlcat Games to Alpha Test Pathfinder Kingmaker on Dec 26th (which I accepted of course, lol). I'm allowed to share / stream etc as long as I make sure folks know it's an alpha test build.

So... more to come.

Did you make sure it was alright? Wouldn't want a C&D.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Infinitron I just received an invitation from Owlcat Games to Alpha Test Pathfinder Kingmaker on Dec 26th (which I accepted of course, lol). I'm allowed to share / stream etc as long as I make sure folks know it's an alpha test build.

So... more to come.

You're probably not the only one. So I guess videos of the Pathfinder alpha will be widely available soon. Don't understand why that wasn't the case from the start tbh.

BTW there are some people on the Codex who have the alpha but haven't told us how it is.

I bet that drives you up the wall.

 

[fantadomat]

Is it worth my blood money?

 

[sstacks]

Infinitron I just received an invitation from Owlcat Games to Alpha Test Pathfinder Kingmaker on Dec 26th (which I accepted of course, lol). I'm allowed to share / stream etc as long as I make sure folks know it's an alpha test build.

So... more to come.

Did you make sure it was alright? Wouldn't want a C&D.

Yes, I double checked before sharing here and it says streaming / sharing is fine but make sure it's obvious it's an alpha build.

So, game on!

 

[sstacks]

Infinitron I just received an invitation from Owlcat Games to Alpha Test Pathfinder Kingmaker on Dec 26th (which I accepted of course, lol). I'm allowed to share / stream etc as long as I make sure folks know it's an alpha test build.

So... more to come.

You're probably not the only one. So I guess videos of the Pathfinder alpha will be widely available soon. Don't understand why that wasn't the case from the start tbh.

BTW there are some people on the Codex who have the alpha but haven't told us how it is.

I always try to help the Codex when I can, so look for opportunities to do so.

 

[Infinitron]

Russian interview: http://forums.goha.ru/showthread_0_0_t1218486

Spoiler

You can remember that in the early autumn of this year our portal conducted a survey "Interview with the developers of which domestic RPG would you like to read?". With a margin in the vote won the project Pathfinder: Kingmaker , the developers of which successfully completed the campaign at Kickstarter last year, and are now working hard to adapt the role-playing game Pathfinder to the screens of our monitors.

Representatives of Owlcat Games readily responded to the offer to interview and passed on our questions to Alexander Mishulin, the chief designer of the game, behind which such legendary projects as Allods, Cursed Lands, Demiurge, Silent Storm, Heroes of Might & Magic 5, and not only. Not every day will have the opportunity to communicate with the veteran of the gaming industry! The interview surpassed all our expectations, and it turned out just smart - we strongly recommend reading it to all fans of the RPG genre, and the "waiting" Pathfinder: Kingmaker and features.

***

Hello, Alexander! My name is Leonid, and I represent the game portal GoHa.ru. I'm a big fan of "Demiurge" and Silent Storm. It's no secret that your projects actually acquainted the world with high-quality Russian games, and it's a great honor for me to interview with, so I'm not afraid of this word - the legendary person in Russian and world game. Let's get to the interview!

1. What is the reason for such an unusual choice of setting? Why did you choose Pathfinder? Are you on Paizo or are they on you?

We have played table games for many years, tried different systems, studied different worlds - and kept coming back to D & D. In addition, we have always loved big and epic campaigns. When Pathfinder appeared, it attracted our attention: on the one hand - a familiar system, on the other hand - a new interesting world, which is not an ordinary Western European fantasy, but a set of countries with a different culture and atmosphere, each of which you want to visit. And now add to this Adventure Paths - long and filled with epic events of the campaign. It was almost the maximum that we wanted from the game worlds. And when we had the opportunity to make an RPG, we had no doubt in which universe we would like to do it. Realizing what exactly we want from the game, and making the first sketches, we met with Paizo and told about our ideas.

2. In what did you notice the main differences from working with your own IP? Do the licensees have severe restrictions? It means dedication to the existing lor, heroes, rules, etc.

We already had quite a lot of experience working with the franchise after the creation of Heroes of Might and Magic V, so we had no special surprises. It is very comfortable for us to work with Paizo. They are very attentive and responsive partners, ready to answer any question and comment on every aspect of the game. Our goals coincide - we want to make the most quality game, which will not only be an excellent computer RPG, but also be able to most closely transfer the experience of the board game to Pathfinder. Therefore, we treat the setting, characters and rules with the utmost care and accuracy that our partners see and appreciate.



3. How thoroughly do you follow the rules of the desktop Pathfinder? Should we expect the simplification of some aspects and the mechanics in favor of adapting to cRPG?

I'll start from afar. The game has a level of difficulty settings and one of them is called Core Rules - it is made especially for those players who want to play by the rules, as close to the desktop. In this mode, we try to implement the rules of the board game in as much detail and authentically as possible in an isometric game with a tactical battle in real time. Obviously, some rules are modified when transferred to a computer and in this situation we try to keep their spirit and relevance. In any case, all changes of this kind are consistent with Paizo so that we do not lose the special atmosphere and feel of Pathfinder. Take, for example, skills: in our game there are fewer than in the desktop, but some skills are combined into one, more useful and attractive. In this book Pathfinder Unchained already presented a reduced system of skills, and we just slightly "completed" to this system, which made our version as accessible and familiar to desktop players as possible. At simpler levels of complexity, a number of mechanics will be simplified - especially those that lead to unexpected and rapid death of characters (critical hits and the like).

4. Your page in Kickstarter tells a lot about the player's influence on the world and his own kingdom. Can you briefly tell our readers about this aspect of the game? Especially interested in the words about "diplomacy and politics." What role will they play?

We chose Adventure Path Kingmaker, also because it attracted us to give the player the feeling of being the ruler of the lands. In this campaign, players build their own kingdom and solve its problems. The player will appoint advisers and with their help to solve the emerging difficulties on their lands, he can gradually expand the kingdom through the surrounding territories and through the development of settlements within the kingdom. On the other hand, we want the kingdom to be perceived as another additional companion, which reacts to the player's decisions and changes in his character. A kind but chaotic ruler walking through the streets of his city will hear the cheers of the townspeople, while in a neutral chaotic kingdom the player will feel like on Tortuga, where the holiday, fights and knifing are side by side. A law-abiding ruler in the streets everywhere will have a guard and cleanliness, but in the case of his law-abiding-evil character, the residents on the streets will be few. At the same time, they will fear their ruler, as they are afraid of any powerful tyrant. Add to this the fact that representatives of other countries will come to the kingdom and offer friendship and cooperation that can become both mutually beneficial and extremely dangerous.

5. A question that is probably of interest to "old men". What impact does the project have on "Allods" and "Damned Lands"?

To begin with, let's remember that Allods: Seal of Mystery was one of the first Russian isometric role-playing games: it was released the same year as Baldur's Gate. "The Damned Lands" was already completely a three-dimensional game, which was released in one year with Baldur's Gate 2. We already then tried to make such games - deep and unusual, with an interesting story and memorable characters. And after a long journey we managed to return to this genre and, having gained experience on each of our projects, realize our old dream. Each project, on which the members of our team worked, has some influence. Many solutions have already been tested and tested: some have given us the experience that it is not worth doing, others have been much more successful and find their place in the current project.

6. Let's continue the theme of "classics". Your Silent Storm is one of the richest game tactics and provided just an insanely wide arsenal of action in combat. How interesting and difficult will be fighting in your game in terms of tactics?

Thank you. It's very nice to see that both "Allods" and Silent Storm are still remembered and loved. I hope this project awaits the same fate!
In Pathfinder: Kingmaker, the player will be able to choose the difficulty of the fights that suits him best. For those who like heavy battles, it will be possible to choose the appropriate level of difficulty (for example, Core Rules or higher) and after that fully manifest their tactical genius. In Pathfinder a very rich system of rules - with a lot of opportunities, classes, spells. We try to make enemies worthy of this set, and battles - the most memorable. Quite recently, as part of the testing, part of the team tried to defeat the party from the undead opponents at the maximum level of difficulty. Somewhere for 20 attempts a pair of our designers succeeded - only thanks to the competent use of all abilities and even potions!



7. Are there any "non-combat" solutions for quests and game situations? Will it be possible to convince or intimidate enemies and other NPCs?

Yes, of course, you can try and persuade, and intimidate, and deceive. Not always and not everywhere, of course: with a brainless bloodthirsty undead, it is unlikely to work out, but there are many places in which the gift of eloquence can greatly help. In some cases, you will have to test a certain skill; in others, special opportunities in the dialog will only open if your character has a certain character, and somewhere you can just find a workaround and not get involved in a conflict. Moreover, the game has special situations, when you need to use different skills to solve the problem - for example, to get across a stormy river and find a way to the relic of kobolds.

8. Will there be "avoidable" battles that can be prevented by actions, side quests, or dialogues?

The answer to this question almost completely repeats the answer to the question above. Yes, there are such places in the game, and there are a lot of them.

9. Are the quests of satellites expected in the game? Will they be for each of the companions?

Yes, we give our partners special attention. We want them to turn out to be interesting and bright, with memorable characters and actions. Each of them has its own reasons why they joined the player's team, and have their own tasks that they would like to solve. It is in their quests that the character and history of the companions are revealed most clearly.

10. Have you played a desktop session on the Pathfinder system to better experience the game?

As I said above, we played tabletop role-playing games, including Pathfinder, and, of course, we played in Kingmaker. At the beginning of development, all the members of the team had to play in this Adventure Path, we had 4 sessions at a time, and we took a lot out of them. Each master led his band a little differently and each had very different events. Some of them we liked so much that we will transfer them to a computer version. We are still playing and are already nearing the end of the campaign. In addition to Kingmaker, in our spare time we play a few more AP: Rise of Runelords, Iron Gods, Ironfang Invasion. We like the system and the adventures for it, and we get great pleasure from every new trip through Holarion.

11. Alexander, what is your favorite class or multi-class in Pathfinder, and why?

I often find myself at the table as a Game Master, and on the other side of the table I am quite rare. Almost always when I join the party, I choose a hero with those or other divine spells. Often I play clerics, most recently for Oracle, which took the prestige class Hellknight Signifier. In these characters, I like the fact that they have a bright enough rod - their faith, and some small deviations from it, which distinguish my hero from an ordinary follower.



12. What is the main thing, in your opinion, the difference between Pathfinder and its progenitor, DnD of version 3.5?

Perhaps now it is more correct to answer the question, what they are all the same like. Pathfinder as a role-playing system has already gone far from D & D 3.5. It is possible to enumerate specific mechanical differences, but this is not so important as how many additions were introduced into this system-new classes, a system of archetypes, each new book that reveals the details of a particular region or a whole plan of existence

13. How do you think, Alexander, is there an aspect in your game that the RPG genre has lacked in recent years?

The genre of isometric RPGs has existed for a very long time and has largely been settled. It changes evolutionarily: from game to game small changes, conveniences, improvements are made, allowing to make projects deeper and more interesting. For us, one of such elements is Camping. Camp setting is a big and interesting part of the game at the table, when someone goes hunting and can come with prey - or come running, escaping from the monster. We transferred this mechanics to the computer version. You can go in search of food and choose who will prepare the dinner, the characters communicate with each other and discuss the latest events, you can appoint a guard or everyone to go to bed and hope for the best ...

There are many smaller items that we have also improved. So, for example, we try to make a pause as tactical as possible, giving the player as much structured information as possible on the current combat situation: who is hitting whom, where are the areas of attack of opportunity, what effects affect each member of the group. We also supplement the trophy collection system: at the exit of each location, the player will be offered a list of all the items he saw in this location. You can choose what to pick and carry.

14. Question as a developer who successfully completed the Kickstarter campaign: how did you survive the shift from classic developer-publisher to crowdfunding? Do I understand correctly that now you have a hybrid model?

Kraudfanding was a very unusual and interesting experience. I would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to all those who supported us on Kickstarter: without you we could not make our game so big and rich with interesting opportunities! At first it was very scary to present my project, my idea for the players' trial and wait for what verdict they would endure. But when you see and feel the support and interest in the game that you want to do, it inspires.

Preparing for crowdfinding also affects some stages of the project, for example, for a successful campaign, you need to have a much clearer understanding of the game than is usual at this stage of development. This greatly helps in the future work on the project.

Yes, our model can be called to some extent hybrid. We had resources for the game, but we wanted to make it much bigger and richer, give the player the opportunity to be such a ruler that he wants and show how the kingdom changes from his decisions. Also, thanks to active support, we were able to add a system of archetypes and an additional class to the game, which gives players more choices when creating and developing characters, and of course we were able to add a goblin companion to the game! We are very pleased that our backers gave us the opportunity to make the game so rich.



15. Tell me honestly, to communicate with Chris Avellon - how is it? This is a living legend in the RPG-building! Did you communicate live? How can you briefly describe his contribution to the project?

We are very pleased that we were able to interest Chris with our project and work together. The creation of a story and dialogues that will be of interest to RPG fans around the world is a very difficult task. And Chris as a person who participated in the creation of several cult games, as no one knows what exactly the project needs to please the players. He helped us a lot when detailing the main plot of the game, he works on two companions and devotes much time to completing the texts of the dialogues. Our screenwriters are constantly in touch with him. Also, Chris actively assisted us in the process of campaigning at Kickstarter.

We met several times personally, discussed the details of the development and just talked. It's very pleasant to talk with him: Chris has a lot of ideas on how to make the project better, not only on the basis of previous experience, but also because of his vast knowledge and love of RPG, which can be discussed endlessly.

16. What can you say about the duration of the game and the replayability? This is an important factor when buying RPG. Will it be interesting to pass Kingmaker in the second and subsequent times?

We expect that the player will need somewhere 40 hours to go through the game, following the main story, and somewhere 80 hours to fully explore the whole world. The hero makes a lot of decisions in the game, they affect both the subsequent development of events, and the version of the final. In addition, the group consists of a character-player and 5 companions, and all partners - 12. For fans of the "static" group, there is at least a two-fold supply of partners. And if you add the ability to act out different characters and see different reactions to it, a sea of different settings and several different difficulty levels, you will get a very interesting second, and maybe the third passage of the game

. 17. Attention, a difficult question! Your favorite RPG of the last 5 years?

I'm afraid to answer this question. Over the past 5 years, there have been many excellent RPGs, and by selecting and calling only one of them, I risk incurring the anger of the fans of another. Of all the released for five years (and these were successful years for fans of RPG) I really liked Divinity: Original Sin, Witcher 3, Persona 5, and Torment: Tides of Numenera. Persona 5 was the last RPG I went through, and the memories of her are now the most vivid. But still - perhaps it will be considered retrograde or old age - the impressions from all these games will fade in comparison with how much I was delayed by both games of the Baldur's Gate series, even if they were released more than five years ago.

18. Alexander, you and your team had a fairly large gap in development, let's call it so, "clean" cRPG - did you want to return to their creation during this period?

Let me tell you a little story. In my childhood the computer was a rarity, there were not enough of them, and they were not in home use. My father worked in a research institute where they only began to appear, and occasionally I could come to his work and "study a computer", which, naturally, meant playing games. There were not many of them, but among them was the one who sent me to the magical and enigmatic world of Forgotten Realms - Eye of the Beholder 2: The Legend of Darkmoon. I did not understand exactly what was happening in the game, for example, why -5 is better than +5, but the game grabbed me. From friends, I learned that there are people in Moscow who play such games live at the table. So began my acquaintance with AD & D. Already in this company I got acquainted with other games in the genre, I learned not only to play, but also to drive adventures and realized that I like it. This was the starting point for learning how to make computer games. And at about the same time came out Baldur's Gate and showed how rich and interesting RPG can be. These are the games I wanted to do. Therefore, the answer to the question - I wanted to do such games throughout my career, but this opportunity was introduced only now.



19. I'm sure this story is close to many of our users

We'll raise such an important RPG theme as a combat system. For Pathfinder: Kingmaker, did you choose to fight in real time with a pause to match the spirit of classics like Baldur's Gate 2 and other games on the Infinity Engine? Did you have a step-by-step version in the discussion? I know for sure that among the regulars of our section there are many "turn-based" lovers.

This is probably one of the most frequently asked questions. We have long discussed what kind of combat system to do in our game - step by step or in real time with a tactical pause. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. The decisive aspect for us was that step-by-step battles, being slower and more intense, attract more attention to us, and we would like players to give it not only to battle, but also history, characters and exploration of the world. This by no means means that the battles will be simple or in the combat system there will be no depth, tactics lovers will find something to break their heads on. But this means that small fights will pass quickly and simply, and attention will be drawn to landmark confrontations.

20. Let's return once again for a second to the "classics". For fans of projects like "Damned Lands" and the 2nd "Allods" - will your new project use ideas and concepts that the fans loved in these RPGs?

This question is similar to question # 5, and if to go into details, many aspects of "Allods" and "Damned Lands" are not very suitable for the current project because the role systems underlying these games are very different. The stories that are told in all of them are also very different, and the choices and reactions to the consequences in Kingmaker are much richer.

21. Studying your Kickstarter immediately strikes such a feature as a cycle of day and night. How much will it be worked out? At night, all NPCs conditionally sleep, and in the daytime they trade / communicate, or something more complex? Will there be events or quests that can only be found at night?

Day and night will affect your adventure. So, for example, the game has a certain subspecies of trolls - stone, which are vulnerable to sunlight, and under its influence gradually turn into stone. One of these trolls is a strong opponent, and if you enter the dungeon, where he finds in the day, you can lure him to the site where the sunlight breaks through, thereby greatly facilitating his own fight. This is just one example of how the change of day and night affects.

22. What do you think is more suitable for the game - when "from the opponents" a certain object falls or when "what do you see, then falls"?

On such a general question can be given only a fairly general answer: different games are different systems. If we talk about Kingmaker, then, in our opinion, this game is more suitable system, when from the enemy you can pick up everything that was on it is dressed. This also means that the wolf will not drop a halberd - from him, unless you can remove the skin.



23. On another important aspect of the role-playing game - the study of the world. How are you going to make it interesting for the player? What will be the motivation to explore the locations?

Each player has a motivation to explore the world. Some are eager to learn all the stories and for them there will be many small plots and tasks that you can face. Other players are eager to find powerful artifacts, someone is interested in the history of long-forgotten kingdoms, and someone wants to find a worthy opponent. And for all these reasons it will make sense to explore Stolen Lands, and not only bypassing the locations along and across, but also traveling all over the area in search of new, unexplored mysterious places.

24. The final question! What percentage of your game will be fighting and non-combat component (dialogues, peace research, management of the kingdom)? Will the fans of the boevki solve all problems exclusively by brute force?

It's hard to write a percentage of the time between the components of the game that has not yet come out, but we represent this ratio approximately evenly: 30% for dialogues, battles and exploration of the world, and another 10% for the kingdom.

The bulk of events will have a solution with the help of brute force, if, of course, this is applicable in a specific situation (it is difficult to fight with a branch thrown across the river). We try to give players a wide variety of opportunities for wagering the character, including those who want to try to solve problems from a position of strength.

***

That's all! A huge thank you personally to Alexander Mishulin and all the representatives of the Owlcat Games team!

The release of the game is scheduled for 2018.

 

[Jimmious]

at the exit of each location, the player will be offered a list of all the items he saw in this location. You can choose what to pick and carry.

 

[Lexxx20]

Hey there, guys. I'm the interviewer in the above mentioned piece Ask me any questions of you have trouble with Google Translate.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I honestly don't know if I'll be getting this game or not.

 

[Wayward Son]

I honestly don't know if I'll be getting this game or not.

Have I not enamoured you to Pathfinder enough yet?

 

[sstacks]

Got some more info on the Alpha invite... evidently it starts on the 26th but will continue for some time. So hopefully that will allow me time to research and respond to questions, etc.

 

[Background Character]

I'm gonna make that fighter-rogue-wizard/sorcerer multiclass work somehow this time I swear you guys

 

[Jenkem]

Russian interview: http://forums.goha.ru/showthread_0_0_t1218486

that's in English, mate

 

[Catacombs]

Is it worth my blood money?

I am curious, too.

 

[Irxy]

Representatives of Owlcat Games readily responded to the offer to interview and passed on our questions to Alexander Mishulin, the chief designer of the game, behind which such legendary projects as Allods, Cursed Lands, Demiurge, Silent Storm, Heroes of Might & Magic 5, and not only.

Allods = Rage of Mages
Cursed Lands = Evil Islands
Demiurge = Etherlords
Good old days when Russia made some relatively decent games...

 

[Catacombs]

Is it worth my blood money?

I am curious, too.

OK, Pretty. You said yes. Do you mind sharing your experience?

 

[ArchAngel]

Representatives of Owlcat Games readily responded to the offer to interview and passed on our questions to Alexander Mishulin, the chief designer of the game, behind which such legendary projects as Allods, Cursed Lands, Demiurge, Silent Storm, Heroes of Might & Magic 5, and not only.

Allods = Rage of Mages
Cursed Lands = Evil Islands
Demiurge = Etherlords
Good old days when Russia made some relatively decent games..rpgs

They are still making decent non rpg games, check out best FPS out there - Escape from Tarkov.

 

[Infinitron]

Techno-geekery: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/owlcatgames/pathfinder-kingmaker/posts/2077236

Apparently what sstacks has been given access to is the "Stage 2 Alpha Test".

Blood, fog, lighting and shadows - Adding love and detail to the Stolen Lands
Posted by Berserkerkitten


Dear Pathfinders,

It's time for another peek behind the curtains. Today's update is all about lighting, shaders, floral dispersion and all those fun details and effects, which add a bit more life to our game world. Before we get all technical and start revealing our tricks, though, we have two announcements. First of all: the stage 2 alpha test is nearly here!

Our next big alpha build is almost ready and will be distributed as an update through Steam to all alpha testers today. What does this mean for you? If you're one of our alpha testers, you'll be getting more content, more gameplay features, more companions and more Pathfinder: Kingmaker to play. If you aren't part of the alpha, you'll be happy to hear that we're well on schedule, development is steadily progressing and there should be streams and videos of the new build popping up for your viewing pleasure in the near future. Keep your eyes peeled!

Second, we have a draft of the community achievement baron bonus portrait for you! Whew, that was a mouthful. As you might recall, we had several polls on our forums where we asked you to vote on your favorite race, class and appearance options, which were to be depicted in one new in-game character portrait. You have voted for a female half-elf sorcerer of the undead bloodline, with a touch of vampire, wraith and mummy in her appearance. Based on that description, our artist came up with something - and the result sure is creepy! Behold:

Eh, what the heck. *swipes right*

Spoiler

Now, let's talk more about graphics in Kingmaker. We've already told you about our water rendering techniques. Today we'll review a few other graphics features of our project.

Strange as it may sound, graphics development starts with market research. At an early development stage, we researched the stats of video cards on the market and chose our target hardware in order to let as many players as possible experience all graphical content we produce. Then we selected rendering technologies that would be perfect for this hardware. A lighting system is the basis of game rendering, unless the game is match3 with abstract graphics. The lighting system determines the graphics pipeline architecture of a frame, so we'll start with that.

Forward rendering

There are 2 basic approaches to real-time lighting calculations:

• Forward rendering
• Deferred shading

And of course, there are a lot of variations and combinations of these.

Forward rendering is the most widely-used (and probably the first) technique for calculating lighting in real time in games. A model consisting of vertices is fed to the vertex shader, where its vertices are transformed to screen space, and all this data is passed down the video card pipeline to the pixel shader, where lighting happens. This is called forward rendering with per-pixel lighting.

Of course, lighting can be calculated in the vertex shader as well, then it will be forward rendering with vertex lighting. Vertex lighting is less GPU intensive, because there are much fewer vertices than there are pixels, but its visual quality is also lower.

Usually shaders that perform calculations only work with one light source. But objects may be lit by multiple sources at the same time. This means the object must be rendered as many times as there are sources that light it. This is the most significant flaw of forward rendering.

Deferred shading - as the name tells us, it calculates lighting not during geometry rendering, but defers it to the end of the frame. In this case lighting works as a post-process, which allows us not to render the same object multiple times. All geometry is rendered to a special G-buffer that contains the information required to calculate lighting. Then lighting is calculated for all the light sources, using the prepared G-buffer. This means lighting calculations are decoupled from the scene complexity.

This approach might seem much more effective than forward rendering, but it has its pitfalls:

• To create a G-buffer, a video card must support the Multiple Render Target (MRT) technology. Of course, the newer video cards do support it, but until recently it has been a significant limitation.
• G-buffer usually takes 4 render textures. If we take Full HD as average resolution, it would give us 1920*1080*4*32 bits, which equals 256MB. This much memory must pass through the video card's bus 30 times per second if we want 30 FPS, which gives us about 8GB/s. But in fact this volume is even higher, because data can be written to G-buffer multiple times (overdraw), it can also be read during writing (blending, depth/stencil test) and so on. So, this number can go as high as 15-20GB/s. And if we increase the resolution to 4k, the load becomes substantial even for top video cards. And this is just the G-buffer, but in fact lots of other data must pass through the same bus (textures, geometry, intermediate post-process textures and so on). This puts a very heavy load on a video card, especially on average ones.
• Deferred shading doesn’t work with translucent objects, such as glass. That's why we have to use good old forward rendering to draw such objects. This leads to a large number of shader combinations.
• Deferred shading does not support multisampling. Hence there are problems with anti-aliasing.

Having weighed all pros and cons we opted for forward rendering, but with some modifications. We will talk about those later.

Light indexed deferred shading

The most important light sources, such as the sun or torches that cast a shadow are rendered using classic forward rendering. The other, not very important accent light sources are rendered using Light indexed deferred shading.

Light indexed deferred shading is a method of feeding more information about light sources to the shader to decrease the number of objects * lights combinations. All light sources are rendered to a special texture, every pixel of which contains a light source index in the general array. This is an example of how this texture looks in our debugger. Colored pixels are the light source index. White color means no light hits the pixel.

The texture has 4 channels, that is why we can tie up to 4 light sources to each pixel. The index texture is fed to the main object rendering shader along with the light source data array. After obtaining the light source index from the texture we can get all the information required to calculate lighting from the common light source array.

Of course, we can simply feed 4 light sources to the shader, as Unity does in the vertex lighting mode, but it will be 4 light sources per object. And with the Light indexed deferred shading it's 4 light sources per pixel. This is a significant difference that allows us to create more detailed lighting. There is one serious limitation though - there can't be more than 4 light sources per pixel, otherwise the lighting will flicker.

Decals

Decals are some of the most 'inconvenient' things in graphics. They don't fit into any of the described pipelines and always have significant limitations. There are 3 main ways to render decals:

• Geometry decals are decals, for which a copy of the geometry they are projected on is created. If such decals are created in real time, there is a high chance that the decal geometry will have holes, missing triangles around the edges and similar artifacts, if it happens to be on the border between geometry objects. Or even worse, the decal won’t be generated at all within reasonable time, due to complex geometry. We use such decals in our project only during development, when we can safely pre-calculate them and bake together with static geometry.
• Projector - this approach is used for the forward rendering pipeline. The name tells us how such decals work. They project texture onto objects. It means every object, onto which a decal is projected, needs to be rendered again. If a decal is projected on 10 objects, this will add 10 draw calls to the total number of the frame. So, the number of combinations increases to objects * lights * projectors. This is a highly unproductive method of rendering decals. And although it is available out of the box in Unity, we don't use it in our project.
• Screen space decals - this approach is used for the deferred shading pipeline. Having a G-buffer, we can draw decals into it before rendering lighting, and calculate lighting after that. This is the most effective method, but unfortunately it also has its flaws. First, a rather heavy shader for calculating a decal projection on the screen. Second, the heavy shader makes us keep the space that decals take on the screen to a minimum, which is not trivial. Third, a projection to screen space leads to visual artifacts, related to mip-mapping (here is a good article about this problem: https://bartwronski.com/2015/03/12/fixing-screen-space-deferred-decals/).

In our project we use our own modification of screen space decals, which we called screen space pre-pass decals. We have mentioned that before rendering the main image we create the depth texture. This texture is enough to project decals to the screen just as it happens with the regular screen space approach. But since we don't have a normal G-buffer, we render decals to a separate texture. When we render the main image, our renderer uses this texture and blends it with the main albedo texture of an object.

Fog of war

The fog of war (FOW) is part of the game mechanics, and we wanted the visual part of this technology to be very subtle. The player shouldn't feel any difficulties because of it. To make the FOW as detailed and responsive as possible, we decided to move all calculations from CPU to GPU. This allowed us to fine-tune almost pixel perfect shadows and keep maximum performance.

For the FOW we use a technology resembling shadow volumes, but in 2D. We create 2D objects that are called FogOfWarBlocker. They look like sets of segments (edges) connected to each other. In a special shader each of the edges is stretched in the direction opposite from the character, forming a shadow volume.

We've developed special tools to create FogOfWarBlockers in Unity3D. Our level designers adjust the 2D geometry of a FogOfWarBlocker directly in the scene. This is what a blocker for one of the houses in a goblin village looks like:

The FOW system looks for intersections of a character's visibility radius with FogOfWarBlockers and makes a list of blockers to be displayed. In the beginning of each frame, before the depth texture is rendered, we draw all the shadow volumes from all the characters to a separate texture, the Fog Of War Shadow Map.

Then we can use this texture for rendering the scene. The Fog Of War Shadow Map is projected onto the whole game location, that's why it doesn’t depend on the camera position.

The FOW is projected onto objects in 2 ways. For opaque geometry we use depth textures and project the FOW to screen space after rendering all the opaque geometry. This is like a post-process. For transparent geometry and water, we can't use the depth texture, which is why we use the FOW right during the rendering of each of these objects. This somewhat increases the number of shader variants, but allows for higher productivity because the bulk of operations is done as a post-process. As a result, we get something like this:

By the way, since a shadow map is projected onto the whole location we can easily use it to render the local map. The FOW remains dynamic even in this mode:

Foliage interaction

When creating game locations, we wanted to make them pleasant to look at and to move around in. We wanted subtle nuances, making the picture feel alive. We created interactive grass and bushes that sway when characters are close.

When characters walk around the location, they leave behind invisible particles. We literally use a system of particles to create a trail behind the character. If we make it visible, it will look something like this:

We don't render this trail in the game, of course, but we use it to render the foliage interaction texture (FIT). Each pixel of the FIT is a 2D vector in the direction, where foliage needs to be animated.

As with the FOW, we project the FIT onto the whole location. The foliage animation itself happens in the vertex shader of foliage objects. Each object projects a FIT on the vertices and animates them in its shader.

Fluid simulation

We've told you in the water update that we are working on a fluid simulation technology that will allow us to render blood in water. We continue working on this technology to use it not only for water, but for fog, too. Both fog and blood are simulated using the same resources, that's why both simulations are working in parallel and cost as one productivity-wise. We are still experimenting, but we've had some success.

Particle-snapping

Here's another unusual little thing that we do with the particles. We have a mechanism that we call Particle-snapping. It allows to tie a system of particles to a character's bones. Each particle is glued to a corresponding bone and follows it during animation. We already have a lot of ready effects that use this technology, including Mirror Image.

For this effect we used more than just Particle-snapping. Our FX-artist Victor Demishev invented a way to create a visual copy of a character using particles. Before rendering this effect, we make a grab pass to get a copy of the screen. Then we shift the world space position of particles relative to the character, and draw a previously copied texture with a back shift of UV coordinates in the screen space in the effect's pixel shader.

Work on Pathfinder: Kingmaker is in full swing. We keep improving our tools and rendering technologies. We've developed our own lighting system, about a hundred custom tools, compiled over 150,000 shader variants and drunk several hundred gallons of coffee. We've got many complicated and interesting things ahead, which we hope will make players happy when Pathfinder: Kingmaker is released.

Hail to the kings!
Owlcats

 

[fantadomat]

Nice evil elf undead,would love to have her as a girlfriend.
Also there is a nigger,as long as he is not annoying diversity hire i don't mind it.