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

[Deleted member 7219]

I don't think Bioware "had" to be bought out. As far as I can tell, it was the Biodocs' intention to make some really good/successful games that would raise the company's net worth, sell out and then go big. Like a start-up company making an exit.

Feargus may have had similar designs, but they never panned out.

As Athelas said, Feargus is only one of multiple owners and I can't see MCA leaving game development and retiring to a tropical island somewhere, sleeping in a bed made out of cash.

 

[Duraframe300]

I'm guessing it's a bit more complicated than 'save up all the monies'.

Do you think that they tried to save up enough to self-fund and that they failed? Cause after years and for a company of this size, is it really that impossible? Or maybe the owners/shareholders take all the usd to themselves? I don't know about the company enough, that's why I'm asking.

No.

Prior to the 2012 layoffs the owners didn't take pay for several months to keep everyone employed (till the cancellation happened)

Its really not that much. And there are more important things to keep the money left for. Like surviving when they have fewer projects.

 

[Infinitron]

I don't think Bioware "had" to be bought out. As far as I can tell, it was the Biodocs' intention to make some really good/successful games that would raise the company's net worth, sell out and then go big. Like a start-up company making an exit.

Feargus may have had similar designs, but they never panned out.

As Athelas said, Feargus is only one of multiple owners and I can't see MCA leaving game development and retiring to a tropical island somewhere, sleeping in a bed made out of cash.

Who said anything about leaving development? You get a position at the publisher, same as the Biodocs did.

 

[Athelas]

I don't think Bioware "had" to be bought out. As far as I can tell, it was the Biodocs' intention to make some really good/successful games that would raise the company's net worth, sell out and then go big. Like a start-up company making an exit.

Feargus may have had similar designs, but they never panned out.

As Athelas said, Feargus is only one of multiple owners and I can't see MCA leaving game development and retiring to a tropical island somewhere, sleeping in a bed made out of cash.

Greed is in there:

 

[Deleted member 7219]

I don't think Bioware "had" to be bought out. As far as I can tell, it was the Biodocs' intention to make some really good/successful games that would raise the company's net worth, sell out and then go big. Like a start-up company making an exit.

Feargus may have had similar designs, but they never panned out.

As Athelas said, Feargus is only one of multiple owners and I can't see MCA leaving game development and retiring to a tropical island somewhere, sleeping in a bed made out of cash.

Who said anything about leaving development? You get a position at the publisher, same as the Biodocs did.

Biodocs have now left the industry and in the years before that, they seemed to be involved less and less in the promotion of their games. The last time I can even remember the Docs talking about a BioWare game was Jade Empire.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

1) Yeah, I've painted 2D bitmap navmeshes in other games, or made them by hand for 3D scenes out of polygons. It's not that hard, just dull and timeconsuming.
2) They render a depth pass for this. (basically, a value of a pixel in the image is the depth on the Z axis it has in the scene. Imagine it like if you took a sculpture and measured the height of every tiny point of it, then coloured a correspoinding pixel in the depth map with the appropriate shade of gray)
3) Diffuse and spec maps, which are also passes in the render. (Josh talks about this in the dev conference video.)

1) I may be wrong, but as far as I know, painting navmeshes in Unity isn't possible unfortunately. There are alternatives to Unity's navmesh system, but they cautiously never show how their system works on uneven terrain. I remember even someone from PoE's staff complained about Unity's navmesh being shit.
2) So they build a kind of height map, if I understand you correctly? Maybe, but a custom tool needs to be used for that, no? That's what "not easy" means.
3) A custom tool for that too, no?

 

[Merlkir]

1) Yeah, I've painted 2D bitmap navmeshes in other games, or made them by hand for 3D scenes out of polygons. It's not that hard, just dull and timeconsuming.
2) They render a depth pass for this. (basically, a value of a pixel in the image is the depth on the Z axis it has in the scene. Imagine it like if you took a sculpture and measured the height of every tiny point of it, then coloured a correspoinding pixel in the depth map with the appropriate shade of gray)
3) Diffuse and spec maps, which are also passes in the render. (Josh talks about this in the dev conference video.)

1) I may be wrong, but as far as I know, painting navmeshes in Unity isn't possible unfortunately. There are alternatives to Unity's navmesh system, but they cautiously never show how their system works on uneven terrain. I remember even someone from PoE's staff complained about Unity's navmesh being shit.
2) So they build a kind of height map, if I understand you correctly? Maybe, but a custom tool needs to be used for that, no? That's what "not easy" means.
3) A custom tool for that too, no?

1) They might've made their own system, it should be a matter of simply painting a 0/1 alpha map of where characters can and cannot go, you don't even need gradients or anything, just two colour bitmap.
2) 3) All of these passes are afaik possible to do with most professional 3D rendering software.

 

[Liston]

New interview with Josh, he mention that the expansion will be in the stile of the Tales of the Sword Coast. Nothing else is new or interesting.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I remember. He actually says the wilderness maps were quite fast to make. The outsourcing was due to them not having the time, not because it's difficult. Josh mentions they have a 3D blockout tool for level design - that could be handy for modders.

I envy people who have not yet began to equalize "difficult" with "time-consuming"

the expansion will be in the stile of the Tales of the Sword Coast

This news broke a couple of weeks ago. The loot comments were very interesting though, thanks!

I also loved the way that the interviewer tried to cut Josh while he was trying to talk about the expansion, only to waste half a minute for meaningless blabber that ended with asking for "kind of a sneek peek" about the panel which was about to start soon anyway.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

1) They might've made their own system

So yet again we're talking about a custom tool, which modders would have to make. That's why they use the word "hard".

2) 3) All of these passes are afaik possible to do with most professional 3D rendering software.

I used all kinds of 3d software (blender, maya, zbrush) at an amateur level and I wouldn't know where to start, so it's not something easy either. At least not without a proper explanations from Obsidian.

 

[Merlkir]

1) They might've made their own system

So yet again we're talking about a custom tool, which modders would have to make. That's why they use the word "hard".

2) 3) All of these passes are afaik possible to do with most professional 3D rendering software.

I used all kinds of 3d software at an amateur level and I wouldn't know where to start, so it's not something easy either.

You misunderstand - if the system is in place, you don't need to have a tool. If it indeed worked like what I described, you could paint the thing in MS Paint and simply feed it to the game with the scene you made.
It's not easy, but again - once you have a scene modeled, the various passes are generated automatically during the rendering process. That's why I said there are modders with pro-like skills in 3D, who'd be the people to do this type of modding.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

You misunderstand - if the system is in place, you don't need to have a tool. If it indeed worked like what I described, you could paint the thing in MS Paint and simply feed it to the game with the scene you made.

A scene is not modular like that, a scene has to be compiled by Unity on your pc and therefore you must have that tool integrated into your copy of Unity for it to produce a scene using that bmp file. The tool in question in this case would be a custom unity extension.

Also we haven't even begun talking about containers, NPCs and their AI, loot, etc, which also present their obstacles, considering that we can't reimport poe's assets into Unity, at least not all. Also, now that I'm thinking about it, static containers (blue objects with a blue frame) on the map also have to be included in the scene and we don't know how it's done either.

 

[Merlkir]

True. I wonder if the difficulty with releasing their tools to do this stuff would be difficult license-wise, because of Unity? (as they're Unity-extensions/plugins)

Anyway, I see that as "tricky", but something that could ultimately be figured out. Not necessarily too difficult for modders to handle in terms of knowledge or skill.

 

[Sensuki]

wildstrike proc has been increased from 10% to 30%. greater wildstrike from 10% to 15%. #pillarsofeternity #druids #getswole

 

[tuluse]

One thing that puzzles me a bit that constantly comes up in interviews and panels is the supposed difficulty with modding scenes. Have they ever elaborated what they mean by that?

I mean...it's not like it's some esoteric magic. You model the scene in 3D and do renders in a few different passes, then let the engine chew on it. Add a navmesh and you're golden. Right? It's harder than using a block engine like NWN had, sure, but there are some very capable modders out there, with professional skills in 3D/2D.

There is a reason we don't have tons of custom maps in IE mods and it's not because of the engine.

 

[Sensuki]

New portrait:

 

[Roguey]

Do you think that they tried to save up enough to self-fund and that they failed?

RIP Virginia.

It's okay, it was an action RPG most people here probably wouldn't have liked.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

RIP Virginia.

It's okay, it was an action RPG most people here probably wouldn't have liked.

What is known?

People in here like Dark Souls games which are action rpgs. It's not like there's a problem with the genre.

 

[Roguey]

What is known?

People in here like Dark Souls games which are action rpgs. It's not like there's a problem with the genre.

It wouldn't have been like Dark Souls. It was a small, digital-only title using Onyx.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Yeah, it was a light ARPG with some very quirky writing. Space Truckers driving starships with cupholders type of thing. Pretty funny and light hearted. o7

 

[Sensuki]

shapeshifts have better armor (with no recovery penalty) and the base damage is better than all weapons (but dual-wielded)

 

[prodigydancer]

I don't even actually hold it against them, from their point of view, it's good business. I respect good business.

Stifling the entire VG industry by killing off every indie developer company that isn't immediately financially successful is good business? I say it's pure shortsightedness and lack of business sense.

 

[Anthony Davis]

I don't even actually hold it against them, from their point of view, it's good business. I respect good business.

Stifling the entire VG industry by killing off every indie developer company that isn't immediately financially successful is good business? I say it's pure shortsightedness and lack of business sense.

its good business in the sense they are trying to get the best deal possible for themselves.

I do agree that from a long game point of view, it is terrible.

 

[CyberWhale]

Yeah, it was a light ARPG with some very quirky writing. Space Truckers driving starships with cupholders type of thing. Pretty funny and light hearted. o7

Have you guys considered bringing it to the Kickstarter at some point in the future? Obsidian should probably do more than one KS project in a particular time period - waiting for a single title for almost 3 years would be a lot easier if every year and a half you get something new to play.

 

[Abu Antar]

Yeah, it was a light ARPG with some very quirky writing. Space Truckers driving starships with cupholders type of thing. Pretty funny and light hearted. o7

Have you guys considered bringing it to the Kickstarter at some point in the future? Obsidian should probably do more than one KS project in a particular time period - waiting for a single title for almost 3 years would be a lot easier if every year and a half you get something new to play.

Shut up.

Their next Kickstarter game will be led by Chris Avellone and it will be turn-based, God damn you!