So as of about 1:30 PM PDT, here’s where we stand funding-wise:
Kickstarter
Backers: 73,986
Pledged: $3,986,929
PayPal
Backers: 3,681
Pledged: $176,279
Totals
Backers: 77,667
Pledged: $4,163,208
Source: Email from Obsidian
Well, that is just great! We should expect a good product from them, they have a lot of fans to please. And now, unlike playing with publisher's money, they are playing with people's money and that should give them the incentive to do better then usual.
On Kickstarter :
"How do PayPal backers affect the Mega Dungeon size?
It counts toward the Mega Dungeon! We hit fifteen (15!!!!) levels!"
Yep, just saw it. Cool then.
And:
Quote:
Will Facebook Likes still count to a larger dungeon?
Yes, for now they do! Come like us quickly and maybe we can hit the 40,000 likes for one last dungeon level. But it’s for a limited time, so… like us! Please note: If you clicked Like on our Eternity home page, that doesn’t qualify – we need likes on Obsidian’s Facebook page!
Thanks to you, we're funded. Now the work begins. At this stage of the project, we are still in pre-production, so at Wednesday morning's team meeting we started talking about the passion-stirring topic of logistics. Before we start scripting quests and writing dialogues, we need to understand the full scope of what we're setting out to do. In some ways, the basics stay the same for us as they did a decade ago. But we have new problems to solve and we need to have them all worked out before we enter production.
The key elements we have been focusing on are:
The size and structure of the world - This game will be... large. And it will have two big cities, exploration areas, and a 15-level mega-dungeon. Ensuring that the world is planned properly requires examination of what has worked for us in the past and what hasn't. The original Baldur's Gate had a number of wilderness areas, but low density of content in many of those areas. Baldur's Gate II had much greater content density, but fewer wilderness/pure exploration areas. We'd like to make sure we have pure exploration areas while still maintaining good content density.
Dynamic environment integration - Animated objects, interactive objects, ambient visual effects, water, dynamic lights and shadows -- all of these elements can be featured even within a "2D" world. Our goal is to strike a good balance between visual fidelity, performance (including memory on disk), and the amount of time environment artists have to spend setting up their areas. We prefer dynamic solutions that are relatively easy to author, as we want our environment artists to maximize their efficiency.
Lore and story - What we've developed so far has been the result of a small number of impromptu discussions and high-level efforts. Last week, we (including George -- thanks!) had our first meeting to increase development of the setting and story. We discussed major themes we'd like to explore, the order in which we'd each like to develop aspects of the lore and characters, and what elements we each were having trouble wrapping our heads around. Our immediate focus is on the central conflict of the story and the various factions that have a stake in it.
As the song goes, we've only just begun, but the team is excited and determined to make a game that lives up to your, and our, expectations. You've put a huge amount of trust in us, and we want to repay you with the best RPG we can.
Project Eternity Update #29: Fulfillment and the Pros and Cons of Nostalgia and Realism
Update #29 · Oct. 30, 2012 · 64 comments
Armor Design
Design update from Josh Sawyer
Let's talk about armor design. Taken on its own, armor design isn't of eminent importance. It's just one of many subsystems that make up Project Eternity. However, looking at it in detail can expose problems that can be found across our various subsystems: by making something work well in a new system and setting, we can often put it at odds with the nostalgia of the old games (and "realism").
Back in the days of 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, we had all sorts of quasi- or non-historical armor types like banded mail, ring mail, and studded leather. You wore the heaviest armor you could because it typically had the best Armor Class. If plate mail was available, there weren't many reasons to wear splint mail or (horror of horrors) chain.The default rules limited the viability of certain character concepts because most characters of a given class were funneled down a specific equipment path.
3E sort of solved this problem by implementing Maximum Dexterity Bonus, which meant that characters with high Dexterity scores would generally equip whatever armor gave them the maximum bonus to Armor Class without capping the Armor Class bonus they received from Dexterity. There were a few problems with this.
First, while it did help make previously "bad" character concepts (e.g., the lightly armored fighter) more viable, generally there were one or two choices per character build. If you had a high dexterity, you were not going to wear heavy armor. If you had a low Dexterity, you might wear light armor, but only for the higher movement rate it allowed.
Second, there was an equipment dead zone in medium armor -- the Maximum Dexterity Bonus caps and movement penalties of heavy armor without the nice Armor Class bonus. Also, if you were a ranger or barbarian, technically you could wear medium armor, but in practice you would never wear it because it disabled several class abilities.
The third issue is a common one with armor design: the ability to wear heavy armor has value (classes receive it as a benefit and it costs feats to purchase in 3E), but it's presented as something with trade-offs. This in itself is not bad, but as previously mentioned, typically the decision of what type of armor to wear can more-or-less be made at the end of character creation. If your character wears a chain shirt at 1st level, there's a good chance he or she will be wearing a +5 version toward the end of the campaign. This is sort of nice because it means that you can have a consistently viable character concept, but there's not a ton of decision making about armor types after your adventuring career starts.
Finally, there's a way of naming and progressing things in A/D&D. Once you get your "base" armors introduced (for our purposes, we will include plate armor and its 2nd Edition kin, field plate and full plate), upgrades are expressed as +1 versions. It becomes pretty easy to understand once the hierarchical relationship and spread of armor types are established.
What does this mean for Project Eternity? It means designing a new armor system that rectifies deficiencies of older systems while maintaining a familiar feel is tricky. Additionally, the more dissimilar the armor relationships are to those found in A/D&D, the more they will be re-evaluated for verisimilitude (i.e. "realism").
We would like our armor system to accomplish the following goals:
Make wearing different types of armor a real choice for the player based on both character build and circumstance. E.g. a swashbuckling lightly-armored fighter will tend to wear one of a variety of light armor types (maybe a gambeson or leather cuirass), but in a circumstance where protection is of utmost importance, the player may still choose to wear heavy armor with a loss in build optimization.
Disassociate armor value from class type in favor of different build types. E.g. a wizard can wear heavy armor and be a different type of wizard instead of just "a wizard who is bad".
Allow a character to maintain a character concept throughout the game without suffering extreme mechanical penalties. E.g. a character who starts the game in some form of light armor can complete the game in some form of light armor with appropriate gameplay trade-offs compared to wearing heavy armor.
Introduce new or upgraded armor types throughout the game instead of using ++ versions (which in itself would pose problems unless we directly duplicated A/D&D's d20-based attack mechanics).
Even with these three goals, there are a number of problems to solve. One of the biggest questions is how to break up and "advance" armor by type. In AD&D, you had something that looked like this:
Padded
Leather
Studded Leather
Hide
Scale
Chain
Splint
Plate (Tier 2)
Field Plate (Tier 3)
Full Plate (Tier 4)
Players typically couldn't afford plate, field plate, or full plate at character creation, but everything else was often within reach. It's not uncommon to see a hierarchy of armor types like this in many fantasy games, despite some of the questionable elements (did studded leather exist? Is raw hide armor actually better than cuirbolli leather?). You can get plate/field plate/full plate later in the game, but otherwise, you're getting +x versions of the base types at higher "tiers" of character advancement.
We could (as an example) structure some of Project Eternity's armor advancement like this.
Tier 3
Armored Jack (from Gambeson)
Leather Armor (from Leather Cuirass)
Lamellar Armor (from Scale Armor)
Mail Armor (from Mail Shirt)
Half-Plate
This could probably accomplish our stated goals (we can assign them whatever stats we'd like, after all), but it does raise some questions for us:
Should something like hide armor be supplanted/made obsolete by leather as an "improved version" or does that effectively kill the visual concept of the rough-hewn rawhide-wearing ranger or barbarian?
If armor types like hide (or scale, or mail) should remain viable on their own, how should that "upgrade" be expressed to the player? Functional descriptors like "fine scale", "superior hide", etc.? Cultural or material descriptors like "Vailian doublet", "iron feather scale"? Olde tyme numerical descriptors like "scale armor +1", "half-plate +2"?
Is it okay for an upgrade from a visual type of armor to maintain its relative position to other armor types even if "realistically" that upgraded armor is now probably superior in protection to other armor types? E.g. an armored jack or brigandine armor is probably more protective than even nice suit of leather armor... but mechanically, we're presenting it as an upgrade of a padded (doublet) armor type.
These are the sort of things we have been discussing and I have been thinking about. And while it is just one subsystem in Project Eternity, we will likely face many similar considerations as we approach the design of weapons, classes, spells, and other aspects of gameplay. I'm sure a lot of you have opinions on what you'd like to see, so please let us know on our forums!
Our next design update will be in two weeks and will focus on lore and story elements. Thanks for reading!
Fulfillment System
Fulfillment update from Darren Monahan
We’ve received a number of questions via our Support e-mail address and social networks about fulfillment, and I wanted to talk a little bit about what we’re currently working on!
First off, I wanted to announce that we’re developing a fulfillment site, which we’re hoping to have online in the next month or two (I was hoping to have it up sooner, but my first baby is coming into the world in the next few days, eeep!). Everyone who backed the project on Kickstarter and/or PayPal will be e-mailed details that will give you credit on that site. After logging in, you will be able to:
Confirm the tier of choice that you wanted. A few of you donated on Kickstarter, and then topped up via PayPal, so you’ll be able to select the exact tier you wanted.
Confirm any add-ons you wanted that weren’t easy to specify on Kickstarter or via PayPal.
Upgrade your pledge to another tier, or add on for, ummm, add-ons.
Update your e-mail address at any time.
Update your shipping address at any time. (Shipping address only needed for physical goods – we don’t need that info for digital orders.)
Indicate any specific details associated with your tier (T-shirt sizes, name in the credits, etc.)
If you live outside of the USA, it will also verify that you’ve added enough shipping.
We’ll keep you guys updated in future, ummm, updates, on how progress is coming along!
Here’s an update to our FAQ on some of the questions we’ve been receiving recently:
Q: I donated on PayPal and besides a receipt from PayPal I haven’t gotten confirmation from Obsidian directly.
A: Not a problem. When the fulfillment site goes live, we’ll be merging the Kickstarter and PayPal data together into our own system, and from there we’ll be sending out project updates. For now, as long as you received a PayPal receipt, we’ll have you on file.
Q: I need to change my e-mail address before you send out details on the Fulfillment site. What do I do?
A: Send us an e-mail at support@obsidian.net with your old and new addresses (please e-mail from your old address if you can) and we’ll update our records before the fulfillment site e-mails go out.
Q: How do I add shipping? I missed being able to during the Kickstarter phase!
A: You can handle that in one of several ways:
You can hang tight for now and wait until our fulfillment system is online, or,
If you’d prefer to get it out of the way, you can visit our Shipping page and add it now (Amazon Payments and PayPal supported.)
Q: When will I get my backer badge on the forums?
A: That’ll come online with the fulfillment system.
Am I the only one that hope they DON'T base their system on the DND stuff? I think they could do so much better if they come up with their own. The DND system is good, but only for PnP.
I'll prolly get scolded for saying that, too .
couleur wrote:
Everything I don't understand is a mental disorder.
couleur wrote:
If the illegals are drowning its their fault for attempting to cross the river in the first place. Especially the children. /s
russ80 wrote:
Who cares about gameplay. It's one of the few next-gen looking titles out there so BRING IT ON.
Am I the only one that hope they DON'T base their system on the DND stuff? I think they could do so much better if they come up with their own. The DND system is good, but only for PnP.
I'll prolly get scolded for saying that, too .
After reading the newest update it sounds like they want to make a better/different system than D&D. Or at least when it concerns combat.
Am I the only one that hope they DON'T base their system on the DND stuff? I think they could do so much better if they come up with their own. The DND system is good, but only for turn-based.
I hope they will meet our expectations and not screw up/rush the game as they often do.
It absolutely will be buggy, and half finished, it's Obsidian's biggest trademark, after all.. Still looking forward to it, though will wait 2-3 years for fan patches / mods before playing this
I hope they will meet our expectations and not screw up/rush the game as they often do.
It absolutely will be buggy, and half finished, it's Obsidian's biggest trademark, after all.. Still looking forward to it, though will wait 2-3 years for fan patches / mods before playing this
Everyone says that, but when a good RPG comes out there's no resistance, you will play it and you will love it even with the bugs
I've finished it 4-5 times. The last one with the fan mod. Didn't notice too many changes from the mod. Never really had a lot of problems with the game, nothing gamebreaking anyway.
I loved Bloodlines, even without the patches, hell, I loved it even when I had to use a frickin' console command to actually finish the game. The atmosphere, dialogue and most of the content were simply as good as they get.
Also, as far as I'm concerned, this whole "Obsidian makes buggy games" debacle is blown way out of proportion. I've finished all of their games, usually just a few days after the launch and while they often seem (and are) a bit rough on the edges, I've never encountered a single, truly gamebreaking bug. And only KOTOR2 really seemed like a game that had something cut out of it. Didn't stop it from being a great title, though.
So, sure, they may not be masters of the code, but their games are completely playable (and enjoyable) out of the box, without any fan support. And they ARE masters of story and writing, which more than makes up for any bugs and technical roughness.
People are playing Vampire and argue about it, many years after it's released so it last in time and that makes it a good game.
If Obsidian let down it's fan base that pay for P.E., they will go down asap..
Am I the only one that hope they DON'T base their system on the DND stuff? I think they could do so much better if they come up with their own. The DND system is good, but only for PnP.
I'll prolly get scolded for saying that, too .
i totally agree with you. d&d is good/great for fast play at a table, but it lacks heavily in the 'role' part of role playing games. a deeper system is a must when you have a ghz cpu rolling the dice and doing the math for you in milliseconds.
Everyone says that, but when a good RPG comes out there's no resistance, you will play it and you will love it even with the bugs
Vampire Bloodlines style ...
Did everyone really like that game though, without the fan patches? I still think it's a really overrated game, and yes i know most don't agree.
I would say the reason why people worked (and still do) on the fan patches is actually because they did have a deep love for the game since the beginning, before any fan patches.
Don't really know where to post this, so here it is I guess:
It's a Matt Chat episode and it has Josh as guest. He talks about what he thinks of Fallout 3, his work on New Vegas, Alpha Protocol, Dungeon Siege III and what it takes to get a good in the industry: MAKE MODS.
He talks about high-level systemic design, using chess as an illustration. There's a video too:
What the hell is he mumbling about there. All that chess and game design have potentially in common is turns. Pieces evaluation has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Evaluations are only used as a reference in chess play anyway. Any given moment any piece can become more and less valuable depending the situation it is in.
Today's update isn't about lore as much as it is about the focus and process of
developing our central plot. I'm not going to spoil any details of the story, but I do want to share what we're working on.
When we develop stories at Obsidian, we often ask ourselves (and each other), "What's the conflict and why do I care about it?" and, "What is my range of roles in resolving the conflict?" "RPG" means a lot of different things to different people. For us, it's important to let the player decide who he or she is in the story. That means when you set aside class, race, magic missiles, and all of the other goodies, the player needs to be able to define his or her own motivations, attitudes toward others, and ways of resolving problems in the story.
Finding the right level of player freedom and clarity of purpose can be difficult. It's tricky to develop scenarios that can convincingly motivate characters of many races and classes, many backgrounds, and many moral and ethical stances. A conflict that is too "hands-off" or impersonal (e.g. a political conflict that doesn't directly involve the player) can make it difficult for players to connect to it. A conflict that is extremely personal may rub players the wrong way if it assumes too much about their character or if it feels like their choices don't have a large enough impact on the world around them.
Because this is the first story your characters will shape in this world, we want to start with something small that grows into something larger. As we have hinted before, the story opens with the player's character witnessing a supernatural event that puts him or her in a difficult situation. The full ramifications of what you become a part of are not immediately apparent, but you quickly become aware that you have... new problems. Dealing with these problems makes you realize that resolving your situation is inexorably linked to the fates of many others. In some cases, these "others" are individuals. In others, they are much larger groups of people. You will get to interact with them all in various ways over the course of the story. If we do a good job in developing these groups and characters, the decisions you make in the course of resolving your problems will be interesting and difficult to make.
That's what we're aiming for, but that doesn't necessarily tell you what we've been doing. On this project, the process started with a rough idea for a story and a theme that went along with it. The story itself wasn't that important; it was just an idea to get us moving. What followed were critiques of the story's premise, the unfolding of the plot, the player's motivation and involvement, and the scope of the conflicts the player faces from the beginning through the end. For the past few weeks, we've been exchanging various small ideas, big ideas, minor tweaks, radical overhauls, and brand new storylines. Through it all, we regularly return to the questions I posed up above: "What's the conflict and why do I care about it?" and, "What is my range of roles in resolving the conflict?" We can (and do) write about all sorts of character and location ideas, subplots and interesting takes on themes, but until we answer those questions in a way we believe will be compelling to your characters and all that they may be, we still have work to do.
We like to develop fun ideas we come up with and every once in a while we delight at some clever character or situation we think of, but for us, it's more important for you to feel clever, for you to feel like you can take control of a situation -- by whatever means you see fit. Until we believe we have a few gems on our hands, we'll keep the Story Gnomes digging in the mines on your behalf.
So, when do they are planning to move in production?
It's supposed that they deliver in mid /2014.
The time passes quickly and they have a tight schedule from the beginning...
I would be expecting 6 months of so of pre-production. I also suspect that April 2014 is somewhat optimistic, and I would be unsurprised if it slipped to Xmas 2014 or even into 2015.
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I still think it's a really overrated game, and yes i know most don't agree.
