Game News Project Eternity Kickstarter Update #49: Prototype Demo

[Kosmonaut]

[...]Chris Keenan is Wasteland 2's lead designer. The other names, besides Fargo and Findley, I don't recognize.

I agree with you. However both games were made by inXile, and Torment is currently developed by them too, as a studio. What I mean is that all of those games are associated with the inXile brand, regarless of the individuals working on them.

Besides, we still don't know how many of those Hunted developers are working in some core aspects of Torment (programmers, modelers, animators, sound folk, etc.), so maybe there's more people involved on both? Bear in mind that I'm speculating about some Wasteland 2 detractors and that's my theory of why they are skeptical about the game.

Personally, I pledged to W2 and T:ToN and I gravitate from mild reservations to some incline expectations about both games. So you don't need to whiteknight and defend Fargo's studio from me.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

2012 was a pretty retarded year, eh?

 

[Achilles]

Beautiful, just as I imagined it from the screenshots.

 

[Infinitron]

Wasteland 2 developers Josh Jertberg, lead animator, Koy vanOteghem, senior environment artist and Phillip Dickenson, artist, also worked on Hunted.

Oh, and so did Troika co-founder Jason D. Anderson who wrote the initial pitch for Wasteland 2.

 

[Kosmonaut]

I'm so gonna get that game on Steam.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I'm so gonna get that game on Steam.

Hunted? If so... That would be a mistake.

 

[sea]

Looks fantastic. Seriously, if this is what you can do with isometric games these days then I don't want to go back to 3D, period.

One thing that blows my mind is how they handle stuff like shadows, and get that 3D look with dynamic lighting. I guess you can use normal maps to do that (they are 2D after all) but getting all the UVs etc. worked out to make it look 3D must be an interesting challenge. I wonder if they are going to use any parallax scrolling too.

Dynamic cloud shadows, dynamic weather (snow/rain) and the weak plant art are definitely valid criticisms, but I'm sure will be improved over time. Look closely and you will notice that they are actually different sprites that are put "behind" some of the others - pay attention to the bushes, you'll notice there are completely flat unmoving bits and then the "edges" move around them.

I would also suggest very subtle phong/rim lighting around the characters to make them stand out more for gameplay reasons, especially in combat or for quest-critical NPCs.

 

[Indranys]

Looks great.
They need to show the Darklands stuff more in the next updates.
And of course, I can't wait to see the RTwP combat minigame demo too.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Looks fantastic. Seriously, if this is what you can do with isometric games these days then I don't want to go back to 3D, period.

But how will you get be immurshuns?

 

[Jaesun]

Yes. The Combat video will be very interesting to see.

 

[Rake]

Looks fantastic. Seriously, if this is what you can do with isometric games these days then I don't want to go back to 3D, period.

But how will you get be immurshuns?

He will have DA:I for that

 

[kaizoku]

Yes there is but it will not be fair on my part to enter in a dispute with an oldfag.
Because your lack of mental capacity which comes to being an old(fag) is clearly proven by the fact you believe there's nothing wrong visually with Wasteland 2.
I propose instead of cleverly using codex jargon to show off, invest all this mental effort in sorting out how to buy yourself a new fucking monitor.

That sure cleared all doubts.

 

[sea]

But how will you get be immurshuns?

Immersion is a product of suspension of disbelief, which broadly is the extent to which a game is able to substitute its laws of reality above the player's own. Good mechanics, narrative and a well-realized world will always produce better immersion than good, hyper-detailed 3D visuals.

He will have DA:I for that

I sure will need a lot of immersion to be able to pretend that game doesn't exist.

 

[CrazyLoon]

Looks great. Nothing to complain about.

 

[Rake]

But how will you get be immurshuns?

Immersion is a product of suspension of disbelief, which broadly is the extent to which a game is able to substitute its laws of reality above the player's own. Good mechanics, narrative and a well-realized world will always produce better immersion than good, hyper-detailed 3D visuals.

He will have DA:I for that

I sure will need a lot of immersion to be able to pretend that game doesn't exist.

Yes, for all this talk about immersion, l have never been more immersed in a game as i was in Planescape.
In fact is easier for me to be immersed in an isometric game with 2000 grafics than AAA first person games.

 

[godsend1989]

To be honest characters need more polish, they bend in the environment right now but in the video description character are not mentioned so is work in progress, i will love to see some full plate knight or something.

 

[Grotesque]

"* The baked-in 2D lighting will not shift with time of day. This is an acceptable trade-off in our opinion because the shadows can be very high quality and it puts no burden on the system. We really do want this game to look great and run well on a large spectrum of systems, so we want to be careful about processor-intensive lighting operations.

* Dynamic objects (like the characters) can cast dynamic shadows. We are already exploring how we want additional dynamic lights in the scene to a) light the objects and b) affect their shadows.

* There are some known character animation glitches we weren't able to work out before we finalized the demo. Our idle is very subtle right now; it will be more pronounced and include fidget animations in the future. The walk animation is also new and hasn't been tweaked much. Finally, there is some odd blurring/artifacting that appears in the compressed videos of the characters, which is why the walk cycle seems to have a blur/stutter in it. That doesn't appear in game.

* The scene where the characters enter the scene and the sabre guy walks across the creek is our current default zoom level. We currently control zoom on the mouse wheel. It can get closer than what's in the demo and as far out as the "wide" shots, so you have a lot of flexibility there.

* We are still experimenting with the tree, grass, and bush animations. Our goal is for them to look natural but add life. If they are distracting/odd or too still, that doesn't work."

Josh Sawyer's comments regarding some of the feedback

 

[Gerrard]

Which one of you is this Delsanar retard in the comments?

 

[Volrath]

That Delsanar dude has been trolling for well over an hour now. A for effort.

 

[tuluse]

Delsanar is really something else

I don't base the niche market off of being my cup of tea, I gave an opinion that differs from my point. My point is focused on empirical evidence and metrics that said niche market is not contributing towards game advancement.

 

[Infinitron]

Obvious troll is obvious.

Just vote down all of his comments if you're going to bother reading them. Eventually Youtube will mark them as spam.

 

[toro]

This video plus what we know about the design and mechanics plus this:

make PE my most anticipated game despite being RT.

Will you be able to toss a dwarf across?

Why across?

 

[toro]

Delsanar is really something else

I don't base the niche market off of being my cup of tea, I gave an opinion that differs from my point. My point is focused on empirical evidence and metrics that said niche market is not contributing towards game advancement.

Work hypothesis: Perhaps Delsanar is Herve?

 

[Gerrard]

Look at his comment history, I'm pretty sure he's just an idiot.

 

[ceics]

Next-gen RPG! Take that, PS4!