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

[Ramireza]

Awwww, looks like someone got to him.

Updated my playlist

 

[Cyberarmy]

A short movie! Not about the game but still...

https://www.facebook.com/numenerastrand?fref=nf

 

[Infinitron]

Cyberarmy Better to post about that here: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/numenera-monte-cooks-new-space-fantasy-rpg.75911/

 

[Cyberarmy]

Updated my journal. Mostly about conversations.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera/posts/1119445

Not sure if I remember how to handle such dialog tress after all that decline absorbation.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

TL;DR

: Production continues; added visual effects artists to the team; a look at conversation editing tools; Bard's Tale IV announced as inXile’s next RPG after Torment; Paizo publishes Adam’s Pathfinder story, “The Patch Man”

Hello,

Kevin here. I hope the new year has been treating you all well. 2015 should be a very exciting year for us! There’s still much to do and the team is cruising along on multiple fronts now.

Art-wise, we’re building three Scenes in parallel (by “Scene,” we mean area or level – the environment through which you navigate your PC), taking them to a point where all of the geometry and texturing is complete. Final rendering, lighting, visual effects, and paintover happens at a later stage. We’re leaving most Scenes in this rougher state, getting only an initial render into the game – the art work that remains isn’t very risky and delaying area finalization gives us greater flexibility to make changes if needed.

But in some cases we’re still doing some research and experimentation so we are taking the area closer to a final state. For example, Damien Evans recently finished the initial environment art for our first underwater area. We’ll be bringing this area further because we have more technical questions to answer and our findings could help us when we create the other underwater Scenes. Here is Daniel Kim’s concept for this Scene:


The Oasis’s Sunken Market is a lively destination for tourists and merchants
Visual Effects Artists Found
I’m pleased to announce that we’ve found not one, but two talented visual effects artists who have joined TTON. Visual effects is an aspect of game development where I feel even just a little extra firepower can go a long way in terms of improving game quality. So we’ve been keen on expanding our VFX team to enhance our presentation of the Ninth World.

To that end, Chris Felts joined us earlier this month. Chris is a 15-year game industry veteran who was referred to me by Jay Bakke (one of the visual effects artists on Mask of the Betrayer, currently at Bungie). The video game industry is a small world, and it turns out that Chris had also worked with inXile environment artist Jon Gwyn and art director Charlie Bloomer at Shiny Entertainment as well as designer/programmer Ben Moise and designer Jeremy Kopman at Seven Studios. Chris brings a wealth of VFX experience and skills, which frees up more of Charlie’s time to provide art direction and also allows more research into new VFX.

And joining us just last week is John Winocur, a rising star whom Charlie met earlier this year at a Gnomon event. John made a strong impression at that time, demonstrating a wide array of technical knowledge and inventiveness. He fairly recently completed his degree and we lured him into video games with Torment and the exciting visual effects challenges offered by our unusual blend of 2D prerendered environments with 3D models and VFX. You’ll see some of their work in the months to come.

Conversation Authoring
Beekers here.

A few visits ago I took a moment between a dense schedule of meetings to sit down with Adam Heine and learn how to use one of the key tools we've been using for a long time on this project: Obsidian's conversation editing tools. These are especially a blessing for people like me (with no programming skills). I can write and structure a dialogue in that tool, sync it up to our project and it’s immediately part of our Unity build. By running the game and the tool simultaneously, I can even make changes to a conversation in real-time, seeing my changes by just talking to the NPC again without having to restart the game.

For a dialogue-heavy game like Torment, a good conversation editor tool is one of the most important things we have. Figuring out our conversation standards and improving upon Obsidian's already great conversation editor was one of our first priorities in preproduction. I’d like to take you through some of the basics so you'll know what we're talking about when it comes up in the future.

The two most important concepts are nodes and links. Nodes contain the text you see in the game, and they form a structure by way of one node being linked to (usually multiple) child nodes.

So far, so simple. Here's an overview of a dialogue from the game by the hand of Colin McComb. This conversation is with the patchwork man Jont, and the parts we'll be showing are relatively light on spoilers:

At the start of the conversation, the player will see the non-player character's (NPC’s) talk node (red) and each of the player character's (PC’s) possible responses or follow-up questions (blue).

The writer can lock or unlock conversation nodes based on whether the PC meets certain requirements. This is done with Conditionals that can check for a variety of values such as whether the party is carrying a certain item, whether someone is in the party, whether the PC has spoken to this NPC before, etc. Using global flags, we can create conditionals for virtually any circumstance we want. For example a conditional might check if the PC has read a note that provided a piece of information that he can then confront an NPC with, or a conditional can check whether the PC was nice to the NPC's father way back in the beginning of the game, or (to give an example from this conversation a conditional Colin created here) tracks how much the PC knows about different aspects of the Bloom. It can also track the PC's motivations when we provide two responses with the same text, but with one a “(Lie)” and the other “(Truth).”

Because conversation reactivity is such a high priority in TTON, conditionals are one of the most important functions in the Obsidian conversation editor. They can check for an absolutely massive amount of pre-set scripts which can be found with a very simple search function; from checking for gender to attribute scores to skill scores to – of course – Tide values, added for Torment.

Nodes can also be grouped together within a bank node. Each node within a bank has a conditional, and then the bank node determines which nodes inside it will display. There are two basic types of bank nodes: one might play the first node within it whose conditional is true, while another might play ALL such nodes.

Additionally, we've created special bank node types just for Torment. One is called an addendum node. It plays all nodes inside it whose conditionals are true, but instead of playing them one node at a time (and requiring the player to click CONTINUE between each node), it displays all of the nodes appended together as if it were a single node's text. The result is that a node's text can be customized based on PC skills, items or global flags, without requiring us to duplicate nodes that have minor differences between them.

For example, Colin used an addendum bank node to give the player more information on Jont, depending upon the PC’s visual perception skill. If the PC has the requisite skill level, the lines from Node 23 will appear in addition to those from Node 1:

Another special bank node checks if the PC has already asked a question and, if so, it changes the question and response. We call these follow-up nodes. They mostly serve to liven up conversation and make it feel more organic, as well as signaling to the player which questions he has already asked in a more natural way.

In the example below, the player will see Node 42 the first time, and when he asks it he will see Node 45. On subsequent run-throughs, he will see 43 instead and be given the answer in 46. The longer description of 45 would seem a strange response to one who had already heard it, while 46 sounds more natural for someone repeating themselves. (Note that players can always look at the conversation log if they do wish to review exactly what was said before).

The conversation tool already had the functionality to accomplish follow-up questions without requiring special nodes for it, but by creating a special node we make it trivial for writers to use them everywhere. This helps us to create more consistent conversations much more quickly. Addendum and follow-up nodes are added features to Obsidian's tool from our talented programmer Paola Rizzo.

The last feature I want to talk about for now is skill checks — known as Tasks in the Numenera tabletop game, and Difficult Tasks (DTs) in Torment. DTs were explained in-depth in Update 27, and you'll recall that, unlike in some game systems, anyone can attempt a DT — having relevant skills (or items or other situational factors) increases the likelihood of success, but is not required to try. The difficulty can be mitigated (or exacerbated) by many factors, including: previous choices, equipment, fettles, party members' skill values, or investing Effort from the relevant stat pool.

The writer simply assigns the “Perform Task” script to the node, selects a difficulty (using an abstracted value to aid in balancing later), the attribute from which Effort can be spent, and any skills that will make the task easier. The tool then marks the subsequent nodes as success, failure, critical success, and critical failure:

The writer adds text for each node and defines their results: advancing to another quest state (including completing a quest), setting a global variable, giving the PC unique rewards for critical rolls, or even causing self-inflicted injuries for critical failures (as currently laid out this conversation has only cosmetic reactivity for critical rolls; this may change in later revisions, hence the designer note in the Critical Fail node). But failures and critical failures aren't always bad, sometimes they are just unexpected outcomes that change the way the situation plays out.

What's to stop the player from just spamming the Task until she succeeds? A writer defines a node's "Persistence" in its properties. Many nodes – including some tasks – are “once ever,” meaning they only show up once and are never again an option. Another possibility for Tasks is "none" persistence, which means they will always exist, so the player can try again if they failed. However, if you try a Task you’ve already failed, you have to pay a Retry Cost (in Effort). This gives the player decisions about when to spend their valuable Effort pool.

The Jont conversation is a fairly standard one for a relatively minor NPC that happens to cover a few of these core concepts, but conversations can range from very simple barks to very involved, complex trees with hundreds of nodes. If you’re interested, in a future update, we’ll say more about conversation design and our tools and processes. In the meantime, here's one more "overview" shot of a conversation my colleagues have written:

Thomas out.

A Tale to Tell: the Bard's Tale IV is coming
As you may remember from Torment's funding, inXile operates on a 1.5 team system, where one team is fully dedicated to our main ongoing project (Torment) and a smaller team is working both on continued support of existing titles (Wasteland 2) and prepping the very early pre-production of our next title. At PAX South last weekend, Brian Fargo announced our next venture beyond Torment: The Bard's Tale IV, a direct sequel to the classic trilogy from the 80s! See more details in coverage from IGN or Game Informer, among others.

Just as Torment's preproduction had no impact on Wasteland 2, this project has no influence on Torment's production because different people are involved. The Bard's Tale IV is in its very early stages, with some technical research being performed along with early design work on things like the storyline, combat system, dungeon design, etc. We won't be talking about BT4 in detail for a long time yet, but we are very interested to hear your thoughts, so please share them on our forums and/or follow us on Facebook.

It's looking to be another very strong year for video games on Kickstarter. Harebrained Schemes launched a Kickstarter for their next Shadowrun title, Shadowrun: Hong Kong and it has been going very strong, already raising $700K and well on its way to its impressive one million dollar stretch goal, which will add a free expansion for all backers. And this Kickstarter will be closely followed by another exciting one, as Paul Neurath and OtherSide Entertainment recently announced the crowdfunding campaign for the Ultima Underworld spiritual successor Underworld Ascendant. We’re looking forward to this campaign, which launches February 4th.

Adam Writes, Free Gift, and other news
One exciting bit of news for January isn't directly related to TTON: Paizo is publishing a Pathfinder story on their website, written by our own design lead Adam Heine. Titled "The Patch Man", the first three parts are available now, and you'll be able the read the final installment at that link next Wednesday. Enjoy the read!

Looking for a different kind of read? A two-page Torment: Tides of Numenera preview is available in the February issue of PC Gamer. Rock, Paper, Shotgun offers a good write-up about the Numenera pen and paper product and why it makes them excited for TTON. And last but not least, RPG Codex's Game of the Year Awards has Torment as their most anticipated title for 2015. Hurray! (Other sites listing TTON among their most anticipated include RPGWatch, Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Forbes).

In more general inXile news, it has been really gratifying for the whole team to see the positive reception of Wasteland 2, and it helped end 2014 on a very high note by hitting the #1 spot on the Steam sales charts and winning several Game of the Year awards, including PC World's 2014 Game of the Year, TotalBiscuit's Best Thing to come out of Crowdfunding and recently being a finalist in the 2015 SXSW Gaming Awards.

Finally, thanks to one of our fellow crowdfunded friends, we have a gift for all our backers: a free subscription for three digital issues of RETRO magazine, the Kickstarter funded magazine that revisits some of history's greatest games, while exploring the heritage of modern video games. To access this reward, log into your account on the Torment website, go to the Rewards tab, click on “includes X item(s)” link (under the description of your reward) and then select “3 Free Digital Issues of RETRO magazine.”. Please note it also requires registration on their website. Thanks for your time and hope you’ve been enjoying 2015,

Kevin Saunders
Project Lead

Those conversations really are impressive!

 

[Anthedon]

Dialogue trees, oh yeah.

 

[Abu Antar]

Dat dialog

 

[Diablo169]

Holy fuck that dialogue tree.

 

[SarcasticUndertones]

Visual Effects Artists Found

Umm.. does this mean that the makers of a video game didn't have a vfx artist?

 

[DollarSign]

Looks like a worthy successor to Torment indeed.

 

[Infinitron]

Visual Effects Artists Found

Umm.. does this mean that the makers of a video game didn't have a vfx artist?

Hmmmm.... http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/wasteland-2/credits

No.

 

[SarcasticUndertones]

Visual Effects Artists Found

Umm.. does this mean that the makers of a video game didn't have a vfx artist?

Hmmmm.... http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/wasteland-2/credits

No.

K.

Just ambiguously worded then.

 

[hiver]

They added two more.


Excellent bit of art that concept. But strangely ... i wish it was not an underwater location.
Didnt expect anything less for dialogue complexity.

 

[Athelas]

Someone zoom in and show what's written in that huge dialogue tree.

Oh wait, I forgot that only happens in a CSI episode.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Loved the update, game looks to be an overall improvement over WL2, both in terms of the development process and what they have shown so far from the content.

Crossing fingers that there is an out of planet area(s), like a space station, or one of the other planets or planetoids in the solar system.

 

[Ninjerk]

 

[Riel]

This is starting to look GOOOD :D

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

More and more this is the game I'm waiting for.

 

[DosBuster]

Ooo as a developer it'd be amazing to get my hands on their version of Unity.

 

[Bleed the Man]

This is a really cool update, showing how the conversation editor and the conversations themselves work. Good stuff.

Also...

And last but not least, RPG Codex's Game of the Year Awards has Torment as their most anticipated title for 2015. Hurray! (Other sites listing TTON among their most anticipated include RPGWatch,Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Forbes).

They know which one of this "magazines" is truly prestigious

 

[SarcasticUndertones]

And last but not least, RPG Codex's Game of the Year Awards has Torment as their most anticipated title for 2015. Hurray! (Other sites listing TTON among their most anticipated include RPGWatch,Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Forbes).

I can understand they'd want to shout this from the rooftops, but it's not really relevant to them.

It's the follow up to arguably the best RPG ever made, of course it's going to be hotly anticipated and it would be just as anticipated if it was carved from a shitpile by a bunch of chimps, so tbh (until the quality is proven) it's hardly a meaningful feather in their cap. It's just more dumb hype riding on coat-tails... plus the fact that the sites have to write about something, if it wasn't this game it would be something else, anything else just to put words on a page.

 

[Haba]

Mmmmmmmmmm... I want that conversation editor

 

[SarcasticUndertones]

Inxile read this, yeah?

If I can make a request (yes, I am that barefaced after all the criticism I've passed :/)

Because the game combat is turn based, CAN WE PLEASE NOT HAVE THE CAMERA CONSTANTLY MOVE TO FOCUS ON THE ACTIVE COMBATANT.

99% of players play with a full view of the battle, we don't constantly need the camera shifting about from one character to the next, BECAUSE THAT MEANS WE ARE CONSTANTLY PLAYING WITH THE CAMERA. We can see our characters we are looking at the screen, we don't need the game to constantly tell us where we should be looking.. It's such a simple thing but the games that do this, because of this 'feature' your combat is more of a constant pain in the arse than it has to be.

Please, please, please.. at least give us the option of a static combat camera... then maybe we can all say goodbye to combat motion sickness.

 

[Adam Heine]

Sure, why not?

(DISCLAIMER: This is no guarantee the feature will make it into the game, but it should guarantee someone more knowledgeable than me evaluates it for feasibility.)

 

[kain30]

this is asking too much but, Adam Heine can you share that document?