I'm still not convinced Age of Decadence is a real thing. That will ever actually come out.
And it's inability to come out is what's killing ZRPG
I learned about Age of Decadence in my junior or senior year of high school. For reference I graduated from college about a year and a half ago. Isn't the ZRPG also like 2 or 3 years old at this point? It feels like ages since I've heard anything.
Ha, read the neogaf thread. Good ole' neogaf, reaffirming my lack of faith in the internet. What little I've seen looks interesting, and what they've done in past means I'm not even a little bit concerned.
Today we have a meet the developer update with Dimitri Berman, Lead Character Artist on Project Eternity. We are planning for a design update next week, and then we will be going on hiatus for two weeks due to the holiday break!
Q: Hi Dimitri! What do you do on the Project Eternity team?
A: Hi everyone! I make sure all characters and creatures meet our set quality bar as they enter the game, this includes creation of high poly and low poly models, textures and materials, and occasional skinning and rigging. I work closely with animators, programmers, and designers to make sure our stuff looks and behaves as best it can, and also prototype new systems if we find something particularly cool we can do that the players will enjoy seeing. Occasionally I will jump over and help out the environment guys if they need help with complex set pieces.
Q: What are you currently working on today?
A: Today we're doing a couple of things. Firstly, we're getting our first weapons into the game, properly equipped by characters. And oh boy, there are going to be a lot of weapons, you can thank Josh for that! And then I am working with Antonio, our character TD to prototype the character rigs for other playable races. Different races in Eternity will be different scales and this poses various challenges to making their equipment and animations.
Q: What's your typical work day like on Project Eternity?
A: Usually when I get in I make a cup of coffee. And then another. Then I usually Facebook until it is lunch-time. After lunch I take to Twitter like a madman, Pinterest and Instagram my fingers off, and then after more Facebook it is time to go home! In all seriousness, I usually check my work email, and get to work on our current goal. Right now we are not creating content, we are figuring out our pipeline for building every single thing in the game, so when the time comes to creating art (during Production), we can focus on the art itself and not fighting technology to make it all work. RPG's are really complex especially when it comes to characters and there are a lot of things we always keep track of, so players in the end can have a wonderful, bug-free experience.
Q: What are you most looking forward to on Project Eternity?
A: It's exciting that it is a brand new IP, which allows us to put creativity into characters and art that we would normally not be able to do due to IP constraints. Eternity is also going to be a really big world, with lots of stuff in it - it is going to be rewarding in creating so much art for our fans.
Q: What other projects have you worked on at Obsidian?
A: I have worked on Neverwinter Nights 2, its expansions, Dungeon Siege 3, and sadly a couple of cancelled projects. Aliens 4EVER.
Q: Where do you like to eat for lunch?
A: Southern California has cuisine from everywhere, so I like to mix it up, be it Thai, sushi, or In-n-Out. But I think I eat more Mexican food than any other. It all started with me living in New Mexico for 10 years and then moving to San Diego.
Q: What do you like to do when you aren't making art?
A: What?
Q: Who's your favorite artist?
A: I would say HR Giger and Zdzislaw Beksinski are two of my all-time faves.
Q: And your favorite Ninja Turtle?
A: Leonardo, hands down. He is the true ninja.
Q: What about Rafael?
A: I find his equipment lacking.
Q: What's your favorite game?
A: Oh god, I don't know where to begin. There are tons of good games, I don't know if I have a favorite. I've always been a PC guy, and I grew up on first person shooters (Dooms, Quakes, ROTT's), RTS games, and of course old fashioned RPG's. I would play Eye of the Beholder non-stop, drawing out my own map by hand because minimaps weren't invented back then. But with games like Shadow of the Colossus, Dark Souls, and Journey, there are jewels in the modern console world that I really, really enjoy.
Q: And finally what's the best brand of Vodka?
A: Vodka is vodka, can't go wrong. I've heard about these two being good, but I've yet to try them - пять озер or зеленая марка (Five Lakes, supposedly Siberian, and Green Mark) . Honestly lately I've been drinking Absinthe.
This man knows his shit. I just hope that he only uses D&D for inspiration on the non-mechanical front. D&D is the very opposite of balanced.
Grey Paladin on
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible." - T.E. Lawrence
Somehow that's less awesome than the previous video. Hearing everything I believe in when it comes to game design echoed by a professional was a spiritual experience for me.
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible." - T.E. Lawrence
- Race, Culture, Class and Gender can influence the story later on, but there won't be seperate origins
- languages play a big role in the world of eternity.
- before they settled on "project eternity" for the project name it was shortly called "project broadsword"
I dunno, maybe it's the person stealthily creeping up behind Avellone, or the fact that two glasses red wine while one glass has white wine even though Avellone is only holding a single bottle of wine, which suggests that Chris has magical Jesus wine transmutation powers.
I dunno, maybe it's the person stealthily creeping up behind Avellone, or the fact that two glasses red wine while one glass has white wine even though Avellone is only holding a single bottle of wine, which suggests that Chris has magical Jesus wine transmutation powers.
Well, so, how is that pic odd? Avellon is magical, everyone wants a piece of him... perfectly normal
I dunno, maybe it's the person stealthily creeping up behind Avellone, or the fact that two glasses red wine while one glass has white wine even though Avellone is only holding a single bottle of wine, which suggests that Chris has magical Jesus wine transmutation powers.
If Double Fine paved the dusty road between game players and game developers, it was Obsidian that turned it into a two-way street.
Double Fine proved that crowdfunding game development is viable, but it was Obsidian that made its fans feel like they were part of the team. Through constant updates, fan forums, and a constant back and forth feedback loop, the team's "Project Eternity" feels like a crowd-developed game.
More importantly, Obsidian represents a developer quickly adapting and thriving in what is a rapidly changing game development world. The studio had been struggling with bad deals and draining triple-A work, but thanks to crowdfunding, it may have reinvented itself while playing to its core strengths.
If the studio is able to sustain with Project Eternity, and even have a follow-up developed in a similar way, it will have proven that a decently-sized studio can survive and thrive by independently making the games it wants to make, for fans that want to play them.
Wait, what's this about them almost making an Ultima game?
EA was shipping the IP around (2006) and ended up contacting Obsidian, Obsidian devs got excited (I think Josh Sawyer was involved too), were already replaying Ultima for reference, but then EA broke the whole thing off.
Edit: @Tycho The story was confirmed by Anthony Davis (Ex-Obsidian Dev) too.
Obsidian's history is like one big depressing read of what if's.
Wait, what's this about them almost making an Ultima game?
Read it and despair. (Desslock, if you don't know, is like the ur-journalist of RPGs, so when he says that, he's not just making shit up.)
Wow.
I'm not sure how I feel about that. On one hand, I think they certainly understand the power of narrative. But themes of truth, love, and courage are not what I think of when I think "Obsidian".
Obsidian's history is like one big depressing read of what if's.
Wait, what's this about them almost making an Ultima game?
Read it and despair. (Desslock, if you don't know, is like the ur-journalist of RPGs, so when he says that, he's not just making shit up.)
Wow.
I'm not sure how I feel about that. On one hand, I think they certainly understand the power of narrative. But themes of truth, love, and courage are not what I think of when I think "Obsidian".
Well, they certainly have been able to adapt quite well in the past. It's not like Torment, Fallout, especially Alpha Protocol and even MOTB contain the same themes.
Love may be a problem, but George Ziets got that covered.
Obsidian's history is like one big depressing read of what if's.
Wait, what's this about them almost making an Ultima game?
Read it and despair. (Desslock, if you don't know, is like the ur-journalist of RPGs, so when he says that, he's not just making shit up.)
Wow.
I'm not sure how I feel about that. On one hand, I think they certainly understand the power of narrative. But themes of truth, love, and courage are not what I think of when I think "Obsidian".
Well, they certainly have been able to adapt quite well in the past. It's not like Torment, Fallout, especially Alpha Protocol and even MOTB contain the same themes.
Love may be a problem, but George Ziets got that covered.
The running theme in Obsidian's games is amorality; the good guys are bad, the bad guys are good, those you trust the most will betray you, and the betrayer will earn your trust.
NWN2 deviated from that a bit, in that they attempted to stick with / were hindered by the alignment system, but they still tried it with Ammon Jerro.
I guess they'd have started a new trilogy, so it wouldn't absolutely have had to put the player as the Avatar, but it certainly would have been interesting if they had.
The running theme in Obsidian's games is amorality; the good guys are bad, the bad guys are good, those you trust the most will betray you, and the betrayer will earn your trust.
Yeah, that's certainly a problem. But that is more an Avellone thing and I think they would have been able to adjust it. Well, we never know.
Actually, F:NV's Dead Money was where Avellone himself maybe went away from that the most. Of course, that was more of a short story and there was some of it in the backstory.
Dimitri Bermann (Lead Charachter Artist) answers Forum Questions
Hello everyone! I'll try and answer your questions as best I can.
Falkon - we will have dynamic physics and cloth objects, we are prototyping this right now. Expect capes, tails, and similar objects to behave realistically. Making a creature left-handed is not an issue on the art end, but it's up to design team whether they want that to be a significant factor for gameplay. Concept creation is fairly collaborative process and usually we try to make our asset as close to the concept as we can, although exceptions and revisions are made all the time. Even after something is in-game it will tend to be revised before the game ships, multiple times.
Frisk - High poly models would be Zbrush high-detail assets (10+ million polygons) that are used to generate normal maps for our low-poly (read: in-game) assets.
rjshae - It will be quite similar to NWN2. On character creation you will be able to pick from a number of races, male or female, various head types, hair styles, your skin will be tintable, and there will be a few other options. As far as how emotive the characters are, I don't think we have a final decision on it yet. The characters in this game are actually a lot smaller than they are in NWN2, so in a sense it would be wasted work to add any kind of facial animation and/or further customization options. Sadly, you'd simply never see them. We are going to focus our efforts on what players can appreciate as they adventure.
Gumbercules - we haven't decided yet, but unlikely. I agree with you, however, in Eternity characters will be fairly small and it's unlikely you would see body shape differences beyond what we are going to do with the races themselves. As to the 2nd question... yes, it is a huge tech issue to have different races start with different body bases and shapes, especially for RPG's. That said, we think it's cool, and we're going to try to do it.
Solviulnir - damn, I agree! We'll see what we can sneak in. I think the overall look for Eternity has been dictated by past Inifnity-engine games (fairly realistic), but we are certainly not limited by them.
StraneCat - Luis Royo is my 3rd and Yosh*tako Amano is definitely an inspiration. Great artists all around.
Archmage - Zbrush, Softimage XSI, Maya, Photoshop. Hardware, we all run PC's here, as fast and with as much RAM as we can get.
Hormalakh - the hardest part about game dev is changing technology. Usually the characters you see in games are assembled out of many pieces, many layers, and many pipelines. Whole teams can work on a single next-gen character to get him into the game. If all we did was make art, it'd be a much easier job
Matt Festa (Designer at Obsidian) updated his Linkedin profile to include an unnanounced project. At this point quite a few people are involved in it so it's getting probable this has moved past a pitch into a production phase.
So, Obsidian should have something to work on when SP comes out next year aside from eternity.
Posts
I learned about Age of Decadence in my junior or senior year of high school. For reference I graduated from college about a year and a half ago. Isn't the ZRPG also like 2 or 3 years old at this point? It feels like ages since I've heard anything.
http://xaxor.com/drawings/illustrations-by-mitch-loidolt.html
Then I was, "Oh, Mario. Oh. Oh. OH! oh... Poor tanooki...
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
Ha, read the neogaf thread. Good ole' neogaf, reaffirming my lack of faith in the internet. What little I've seen looks interesting, and what they've done in past means I'm not even a little bit concerned.
A-freakin'-men.
That was a great video.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I found an odd picture of Chris Avellone.
Come on. Don't tell me you wouldn't a piece.
Nobody's THAT straight.
http://www.gamers.de/artikel/2019/4/project-eternity/interview-mit-josh-sawyer.html
Points:
- Race, Culture, Class and Gender can influence the story later on, but there won't be seperate origins
- languages play a big role in the world of eternity.
- before they settled on "project eternity" for the project name it was shortly called "project broadsword"
Well, so, how is that pic odd? Avellon is magical, everyone wants a piece of him... perfectly normal
I thought we knew that already.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/183402/The_top_10_game_developers_of_2012.php#.UMthvmfXuuI
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
http://kotaku.com/5967965/obsidian-almost-made-baldurs-gate-3
Yeah, Aliens, World of Darkness, Ultima
Obsidian's history is like one big depressing read of what if's.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
EA was shipping the IP around (2006) and ended up contacting Obsidian, Obsidian devs got excited (I think Josh Sawyer was involved too), were already replaying Ultima for reference, but then EA broke the whole thing off.
Edit: @Tycho The story was confirmed by Anthony Davis (Ex-Obsidian Dev) too.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
No, I think it's a separate thing.
I'm not sure how I feel about that. On one hand, I think they certainly understand the power of narrative. But themes of truth, love, and courage are not what I think of when I think "Obsidian".
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
No, seperate. It may have become something similiar to Black Hound, but this is a thing at Obsidian. Black Hound was at Interplay.
So, they basically lost BGIII twice.
Well, they certainly have been able to adapt quite well in the past. It's not like Torment, Fallout, especially Alpha Protocol and even MOTB contain the same themes.
Love may be a problem, but George Ziets got that covered.
NWN2 deviated from that a bit, in that they attempted to stick with / were hindered by the alignment system, but they still tried it with Ammon Jerro.
I guess they'd have started a new trilogy, so it wouldn't absolutely have had to put the player as the Avatar, but it certainly would have been interesting if they had.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Yeah, that's certainly a problem. But that is more an Avellone thing and I think they would have been able to adjust it. Well, we never know.
Actually, F:NV's Dead Money was where Avellone himself maybe went away from that the most. Of course, that was more of a short story and there was some of it in the backstory.
So, Obsidian should have something to work on when SP comes out next year aside from eternity.
http://kotaku.com/5968952/the-knights-of-new-vegas-how-obsidian-survived-countless-catastrophes-and-made-some-of-the-coolest-role+playing-games-ever