Pillars of Eternity Beta Discussion [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Rivmusique]

Made me think of the Arcanum theme then the rebuilt enclave tune from KotOR2.

Loved it. Other IE games (sans PS:T) seemed to have 'BE LOUD' as a common element, I prefer something like this.

 

[Jaesun]

 

[Seaking4]

Justin Bell posted this on twitter:



It's PoE's main theme played by the orchestra. Sounds great IMO, I liked this music in the beta and this is even better.

It'll do. Might grow on me if I hear it while playing the game which I think is a truer test of whether or not I like a piece in a game. I don't actually think main theme need to be particularly epic though.

 

[Grotesque]

I've made an old school solid UI mock-up for PoE after being inspired by the other mock-up shown here.

 

[Rostere]

I've made an old school solid UI mock-up for PoE after being inspired by the other mock-up shown here.

 

[Athelas]

I've made an old school solid UI mock-up for PoE after being inspired by the other mock-up shown here.

Uh, there are only 6 spots for spell/ability icons here. Some classes in this game will have faceless to 60+ spells at a time. How are you all going to fit them there?

 

[J_C]

Oh come on. Are you really going to get upset over the score at this stage?

Jesus guys.

I'm a huuuuuge music fag in games, so for me it is one of the most important part of any game.

I liked the main theme. It builds up. The issue I have with IWD and BG2 main tracks ithat it's so "in-your-face" from the beginning. It doesn't tell a story. They're shit tracks as main themes. Better for action sequences and combat states. Also I don't think people listened to the whole song. They probably gave up after 20 seconds.

The main theme has to be in-your-face, because it is not in the game. You only hear it in the main menu. When you start the game, it has to hit you, because you probably won't listen to the later parts. You load the game and play.

. Might grow on me if I hear it while playing the game

It is the main theme, you won't hear in while playing. It will have a hard time to grow on you.

And yes, the main themes of the IE games are very much overrated.

Yeah? And you smell.

 

[Starwars]

We don't know if the melody will also be in the game. Not in the menu music incarnation certainly but fitted into other tracks. The BG theme also played in various forms in game I think (at least pretty similar melodies)?
And I fucking hated the way the BG theme started blaring right from the start on the menu btw.

I like this one quite a bit, especially love the opening. I'm very happy that he decided to go for a more laid-back approach, to me that doesn't really mean that the music is any less memorable. What I think may be a mistake though is that (at least in the beta) have the character creation on a screen with separate music which means that people will hear even less of the main theme.

Also, while this one might be a bit more subtle than some of the IE stuff, it would waaaaaaaaaay over the top to have as "village music". Come on man...

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

And yes, the main themes of the IE games are very much overrated.

Spoiler

u faggot

 

[Got bored and left]

I liked the main theme. It builds up. The issue I have with IWD and BG2 main tracks ithat it's so "in-your-face" from the beginning. It doesn't tell a story. They're shit tracks as main themes. Better for action sequences and combat states. Also I don't think people listened to the whole song. They probably gave up after 20 seconds.

The main theme has to be in-your-face, because it is not in the game. You only hear it in the main menu. When you start the game, it has to hit you, because you probably won't listen to the later parts. You load the game and play.

And part of the reason you load up immediately is because it seems like the orchestra is trying to kill you Especially in BG II. I mean, I don't have anything against the BG themes - it's just that they, well... aren't all that interesting to me. They're kinda epic and bombastic, scream "ADVENTURE!" and that's pretty much it it for me. This theme, though... It draws me in, makes me wanna listen. And it pays off by the end, lovely piece, it just works for me. Obviously, we're talking about music here, so it's different strokes for different folks and all that. At any rate, I'm happy they're going with a more understated approach, it's much more to my personal liking.

And yeah, as Starwars said, chances are we'll hear variations of the theme (especially the opening bit) sprinkled throughout the soundtrack. At least I'm hoping for it, I like when soundtracks have an actual theme.

 

[Volrath]

And yes, the main themes of the IE games are very much overrated.

I want to punch you in the face right about now.

 

[Infinitron]

Seriously, all the lovely tracks in the Baldur's Gate series, and what people want to be nostalgic about is their oversimplified Basil Poledouris knock-off main themes?

To me, THIS is Baldur's Gate music:



That and the combat music ripped off from Lifeforce.

 

[Starwars]

That track is filled with nostalgia for me but holy fuck does it get old. A looping 1 min and 30 seconds is just not enough for all the exploring you do in that game with that track playing.

 

[Sensuki]

The BG1 Exploration / Mood music is way better than the combat music. I agree with Infinitron here.

 

[Starwars]

The best main theme from any Bioware game is the Jade Empire one. Now *that's* epic. So good.

 

[Sensuki]

A Wild Bobby Null appears, to talk about portraits

Been nice to see the devs so active on the forums recently

What class/race/gender combo do you feel is missing? I'll pass that on to the portrait artists.

Thanks!

-Adam

Aumaua Females (There's no portrait that matches the Aumaua Female appearance, the default one isn't very good either)
Aumaua Males - maybe one more
Wild Orlans - There is none for either sex
Female Dwarves - There's one, but it looks like a human and doesn't really match the in-game appearances
Male Dwarves - Don't like the single Dwarf portrait, would prefer one based off the model appearances
Female Orlans (any) - Default one wasn't done by Kaz or Lindsey
Male Orlans (any)
Red-haired and/or black-haired females - Don't like the default side on portrait, I'd prefer a Kaz/Lindsey one
Earth Godlike female - Don't like the default, would prefer a Kaz/Lindsey one
Maybe one more Moon Godlike Female / Death Godlike Female

There's some ideas anyway

I've been working with Kaz to organize a bunch of new portraits to get into the game before we launch, some may not make it in until the first patch. While we can't do every combo people can think up, at least not at launch, we are trying our best to get as much coverage as we can. We have a ton of WIP portraits that should really help out the overall selection when they are complete and implemented. As far as your stated ideas...

Aumaua Females - There is at least one more of these coming. It has a color variant too if memory serves.

Aumaua Males - Pretty sure we did another one, but I can't say for sure.

Wild Orlans - We have one for each coming and they both look pretty awesome.

Female Dwarves - We have one completed and two more variants scheduled.

Male Dwarves - There is a new dwarf that is pretty much finished... and he is awesome. I call him pompadwarf around the office. We have two variants scheduled.

Female Orlans - I already mentioned the wild orlan female and there is another orlan female that is pretty slick.

Male Orlans - Can't remember if we have another orlan in the schedule other than the wild orlan male I mentioned earlier.

Red-haired and/or black-haired females - There are several female portraits coming, including new red-haired and brunette humans.

Earth Godlike female - I don't think we have a new one scheduled, I'll check.

Maybe one more Moon Godlike Female / Death Godlike Female - While not currently on the ship schedule, these are portraits I'd like to do. I'll add them to our current (giant) list, but they would be lower priority. Maybe in the expansion.

Like I said, we have a ton of portraits scheduled, and some of the ones I mentioned may not get finished in time. I am pretty confident we will get the majority of the list wrapped up. What I can say is we will have quite a bit more in the game on launch day vs. what is currently in the Backer Beta.

Another thing that'd be nice is some faceless portraits. Neverwinter Nights had some vague silhouettes, some class-related symbols, weapons, helms - or characters in full faced helms or hoods/cowls that shadow a face, etc.

For people who just can't find something for their character, a sort of placeholder may be better than getting stuck with a portrait that looks completely different from their character.

Got you covered. We have what what I call, "Mysterious Hoodie" portraits being worked on. These are Male/Female portraits with a cowl that covers most of the face so they can work for many races, but still look really cool. These are currently being worked on and are close to being complete.

Bobby Hernandez, an amazing artist I worked with on South Park, has volunteered some of his free time on the weekend to do a few armored up portraits. These guys and gals will be fully helmeted so they can be used for any race. Trust me, we're working hard to try and get as many portraits into the game for your characters. Kaz looks at me with wide eyes with all my requests and I simply reply... MOAR PORTRAITS! Kaz and the art crew have been amazing on this project and their dedication will show in the final product.

 

[Infinitron]

I really wish they hadn't made those stylistically inconsistent ones. They're so jarring, and they might end up not being replaced.

 

[Sensuki]

The dev that rushed through the crit path to finish the full game was Jeff Husges

Another tidbit from our playthrough testing that lasted a full week (five 8 hour days), only 1 developer actually finished the game. That developer was Jeff Husges and he skipped most of the content in Defiance Bay (which he worked on), and I don't think he did much with stronghold or Od Nua, our mega-dungeon.

 

[Sensuki]

Adam Brennecke on visuals

Unity doesn't have much to do with how the game looks because we are using custom lighting/material shaders for most things. Game art production is a budget/time/cost/scope thing, and games can look significantly better when you have the resources for it. A heck of a lot of time was spent making that Katarina model for DS3. There were only four characters to choose from, so much more time could be spent on each one. We also had more resources for graphics engineering, a dedicated lighting artist, and more character artists on that project compared to POE, so generally things are going to look better.

How many different heads/bodies can you choose from in character creation in POE? Dimitri can only spend x amount of time on each thing, and he has a massive balancing act to perform when trying to polish all of the character art in the game. He actually did the model for Katarina, so given the time and resources, he can make things look pretty darn good. That's also why characters in Final Fantasy games look so good (despite the arguable art direction) - they have a limited cast of characters and they never change appearance throughout the game.

Cheers!

-Adam

On characters & ambient maps/lighting

No, it really doesn't have anything to do with that and that's a good question. We have an ambient term in our shaders that is added to characters. We use it to make the character fit into the scene better (which in our first batch of screenshots - this was one of the biggest complaints). It just needs to be adjusted by artists where the term is too strong. In other places, the directional and fill lights need to be tweaked to bring out the character silhouettes.

But I agree with you. The characters do get washed out in certain places in the game, so I may globally scale down or adjust the ambient term before we ship. Additionally I would like to explore tighter shadowing (including point light shadows) and a slight AO around the feet to ground the characters in the scene, but that's work for down the road on future projects. Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to look into graphics improvements over the past several months.

 

[Grunker]

did you just call shadows of amn main theme overrated Infinitron

i may have to redact your brostatus for the forseeable future homie

 

[Bleed the Man]

Bobby Hernandez, an amazing artist I worked with on South Park, has volunteered some of his free time on the weekend to do a few armored up portraits..

That's a pretty awesome thing from Bobby to do.

 

[Grotesque]

I've made an old school solid UI mock-up for PoE after being inspired by the other mock-up shown here.

Uh, there are only 6 spots for spell/ability icons here. Some classes in this game will have faceless to 60+ spells at a time. How are you all going to fit them there?

I thought the wizard will have the "busiest" spell/ability UO of all clases because of the grimoire/spells need to be shown so I chose this class to depict in the mockup.
I admit I forgot about the quick item slots. There are 6 quick item slots in the inventory interface but 2 "are greyed out" Why is that?

How many spells wizard will have available for each tier at maximum level? I thought wizard has just 4 slots for each tier from I to VIII.

"There are a wide array of Abilities in Pillars of Eternity, and no character will be able to choose them all."

How many abilities/talents (not spells) a character can have that show in the UI?

 

[Merlkir]

I quite like the main theme. Getting some Poledouris vibes, from around 1:30 on. Not the Anvil of Crom Poledouris, more like Theology/Civilization Poledouris.

As much as I love BG/2 music, it was SOOOOO bombastic. It worked, but it's super over the top.

 

[J_C]

I've made an old school solid UI mock-up for PoE after being inspired by the other mock-up shown here.

Uh, there are only 6 spots for spell/ability icons here. Some classes in this game will have faceless to 60+ spells at a time. How are you all going to fit them there?

I thought the wizard will have the "busiest" spell/ability UO of all clases because of the grimoire/spells need to be shown so I chose this class to depict in the mockup.
I admit I forgot about the quick item slots. There are 6 quick item slots in the inventory interface but 2 "are greyed out" Why is that?

How many spells wizard will have available for each tier at maximum level? I thought wizard has just 4 slots for each tier from I to VIII.

"There are a wide array of Abilities in Pillars of Eternity, and no character will be able to choose them all."

How many abilities/talents (not spells) a character can have that show in the UI?

I like the overall look of the UI, but there are too much wasted space there. I'd make the side and buttom bars slicker.

 

[Sensuki]

Roby Atadero on Unity

While Unreal and Cryengine have cheaper short term subscription plans, they come with added stipulations including a royalty rate for Unreal. Cryengine's cheap plan also only supports Windows as of right now. Unity seemed to have everything we needed all in one package (a good toolset, no need for external third party software for animation/audio/ui/etc, and support for Win/Mac/Linux).

That all being said, the work and time required to port the existing code base to one of those engines would be more trouble than it is worth. We've learned a lot about Unity and developing with it over the project so any new project going forward would have a lot less headaches to have to figure out in the technical department which usually end up slowing down development.

Any sequel would mean the existing engine would not only get a some new features but, a lot of existing systems would be improved to allow better workflow and for more/better content to exist since they don't have to be rebuilt from scratch.

As for the character art, like Adam said, there are a lot of models and pieces that needed to be generated for all of the item/armor pieces you can wear. Character creation and Inventory paper dolls were not added until around the middle of the project either so it was not known early on how detailed character art would need to be since the majority of the time is spent looking that them from a far away top down camera.

It's safe to say any sequel would use Unity again.