Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Pre-Release Thread [ALPHA RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[TedNugent]

Untethered Slots are for equippable items that don't need to be held or carried—for example, a stone that floats around the wearer's head or a prehensile tail that grafts to her body. Most characters will have at least one Untethered Slot, but some (particularly those who train in the Concentration Skill) will be capable of handling two or even three such items.

Quick Slots are for cyphers and other items that you want easy access to. Outside of a Crisis, these slots are just for convenience, and you can swap things in and out of them without penalty. During a Crisis, you can use items in your Quick Slots quickly, but moving something from your pack into a Quick Slot will cost extra time. Additionally, some special items or abilities may give you another Quick Slot to use.

Weapon Slots in Torment will use the concept of weapon sets. You can designate up to four weapon sets and can switch between them easily. You can, of course, change what's in each weapon set at any time, but doing so during a Crisis will take valuable time.

Slot-based

Your pack will be limited by encumbrance only—not by the number of items.

Sounds gewd.

Loot should always be interesting and usable.

Entirely agree. Packhorsing ruined ME1.

But the good stuff isn't just sitting there waiting for you to use it. An explorer wouldn't find a gravity-nullifying suspensor belt just lying around in an old machine. Rather he'd grab an electromagnetic thingamabob that, when hooked to another doohicky, somehow nullifies gravity. Then he'd attach that to a piece of metal or leather—something that can serve as a belt—and voila: suspensor belt. The way we handle that in Tormentis to make scavenging a Difficult Task (specifically, an Intellect-based task for which certain Lore skills apply).

Positively sick concept.

After reading the feedback for WL2 and seeing the Pillars of Eternity screens I'm equally thrilled to hear they licensed the engine. Hopefully their close interrelationship with Obs pays dividends on the tech support front? I played Planescape: Torment for the first time in my life a few months ago at good old 640x480 on my widescreen monitor and I found it to be enchantingly beautiful. Prerendered graphics are a dream for this project. I'm sincerely hoping that their art team is up to the challenge. Torment had some of the finest art design I've seen in any videogame, and game art is one of the biggest reasons I play games.

 

[Zed]

I'm hoping Torment Numenera will have pre-rendered (preferably hand-drawn) paperdoll figures, hand-drawn portraits and a good textbox-centric UI.
I keep having these hindsight annoyances with WL2 and a recent one is how inartistic it is beside the obviously outsourced 2D portraits.

 

[hiver]

What? 2D portraits of characters in the game are good. best looking part of the art content.
- ?

or you mean to say the rest then looks a bit more meh?

 

[Nihiliste]

Yeah he's agreeing the portraits are the good part

 

[hiver]

I even took out several, thought to add them to avatars here.

 

[Zed]

What? 2D portraits of characters in the game are good. best looking part of the art content.
- ?

or you mean to say the rest then looks a bit more meh?

I meant the portraits were the exception. The 3D models and environment lacks any sort of 'feel' or strong artistic direction. Unless cheap 3D dressed up in Unity filters is considered an art direction.

 

[hiver]

I agree.

 

[Infinitron]

CMcC was in a podcast: http://gamerstavern.org/?p=207

How do game designers create the amazing worlds we all play in? How can you use their tricks to add more to your own game? Or do you want to become a professional yourself and publish your own game world? Colin McComb and Darrell Hardy join us to discuss one of the challenges of modern game design, Worldbuilding.

 

[Zed]

Love and Sex in the Ninth World

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/126065/Love-and-Sex-in-the-Ninth-World?affiliate_id=38475

Will there be any 'romancing' in ToN? :D

 

[Hormalakh]

why do i have the feeling that this game will unlikely be finished? every update so far has been about things they plan on doing, not things they have done.

 

[Dokkalfar]

why do i have the feeling that this game will unlikely be finished? every update so far has been about things they plan on doing, not things they have done.

They haven't been "doing" anything, cause all the programmers/artists/modellers are still working on Wasteland 2, so everything up to this point has been pre-production, ie on paper. We likely won't start seeing anything substantial until WL2 is out, and even then they need to make those modding tools.

I think it's a good thing, a PST-style game needs a long pre-production, lots of passes over the dialogue and story.

 

[Zed]

They've done enough pre-production already. Any meaningful iterations will come once they start putting things into practice.
I agree about the game feeling very far away. Blame WL2

 

[Infinitron]

Wasteland 2 suffered from not having enough pre-production IMO. I say give it as long as it takes. The original PS:T had that, and it showed.

 

[Roguey]

OTOH spinning their wheels for two years doesn't sound particularly ideal.

 

[Ravel myluv]

I'm a bit worried about money concerning T:TON....

There's only so much they can do with pre-production: what are they going to do if Wasteland 2 doesn't come up until, say, june or september? They said they needed 6 monts of pre-production, they'll probably get close to a year, or even beyond that.

Those people need to get paid, but they won't make any progress on the game.

 

[Brother None]

so everything up to this point has been pre-production, ie on paper.

This is not the case. We have a working prototype up, to help us test out and get a feel for the art pipeline and density of content. We've also been prototyping dialog with Obsidian's tools for some time now. The game is very much still in pre-production phase but the idea a lot of people seem to have that pre-production happens "only on paper" or is a time when you're static and things don't progress is quite simply incorrect.

And for what it's worth, while I don't have a lot of industry experience my impressions agree with the take that this longer pre-production period is a positive. Money really isn't a concern at this stage.

 

[Dokkalfar]

so everything up to this point has been pre-production, ie on paper.

This is not the case. We have a working prototype up, to help us test out and get a feel for the art pipeline and density of content. We've also been prototyping dialog with Obsidian's tools for some time now. The game is very much still in pre-production phase but the idea a lot of people seem to have that pre-production happens "only on paper" or is a time when you're static and things don't progress is quite simply incorrect.

And for what it's worth, while I don't have a lot of industry experience my impressions agree with the take that this longer pre-production period is a positive. Money really isn't a concern at this stage.

Thanks for the info.

If WL2 sells like hotcakes, do you know if Inxile plan to add some expensive "fluff" to the game, ie some prerendered cutscenes, more extensive professional voice work, on the same level as PST?

 

[Hormalakh]

Brother None... money is ALWAYS a concern...i get the feeling that inXile thinks $4.5 mil is a lot of money when it comes to game development and are vastly over-estimating their time/money budgets. also, it would be nice to actually see something in an update whether its a concept sketch, art, lore tidbit, etc.

WL2 is seriously getting on my nerves.

 

[Athelas]

How is it getting on your nerves?

 

[Hormalakh]

How is it getting on your nerves?

I agree about the game feeling very far away. Blame WL2

 

[Infinitron]

Brother None... money is ALWAYS a concern...i get the feeling that inXile thinks $4.5 mil is a lot of money when it comes to game development and are vastly over-estimating their time/money budgets.

inXile isn't Double Fine. They're obviously very good at working on the cheap - possibly even too good.

Besides, WL2 is already making them money and will make more when it's released. What Brother None said is simply true - money is not a concern.

 

[Hormalakh]

we shall see. the only dev that i've noticed actually "concern" themselves with a budget and a timeline was Obsidian when it came to PoE and they're barely cutting it with their production cycle (as evidenced by thinking about another fundraiser for more characters/outdoors locations) and at least, they even hinted at a later release date when they first finished the kickstarter.

everyone else has so far been "unconcerned" about their money/time, and unsurprisingly have either gone way over their deadlines or their budgets or have made games that weren't up to par to what they detailed. WL2 is an example of inXile going over the deadline 3 mere months before it was due. and the progress so far has many .

whenever anybody says "we aren't concerned about money" I become concerned with my money.

 

[tuluse]

Thinking about asking for more money to increase the scope of the game is proof that they barely have enough money for the current scope.



I'm not even sure what barely enough means. Either you have enough or you don't. An extra 500k in their pockets when the game is released doesn't help make the game better.

 

[Hormalakh]

Also WL2 "making them money" is really sort of false idealism. They are in reality borrowing money from the profits of their game to finish it. It is costing them profits and net capital from the game as well as their reputation because people are paying for an incomplete experience. early access isn't a long-term business strategy. They either start making money from T:TON and WL2 and building the rest of their games from that capital (like Blizzard, Bioware, etc) or people will start looking at other indie devs to make their games on time and within budget.

 

[Lhynn]

No one gives a shit about time once the game has been released unless its on duke nuken schedule. As long as its good everything is forgiven.

But FFS get.it.right.