Torment: Tides of Numenera - Turns out there is room for 2!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Torment: Tides of Numenera - Turns out there is room for 2!

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

We'd like to have gotten Chris involved too but sadly there's only one of him to go around. It really is a practical matter more than the preferences of either inXile or MCA.

Drifter posted:

What I don't really understand - I accept my credibility loss here, I suppose - is the use of one tabletop rule set over another as it translates into a game. I totally understand the rule sets in honest to god P&P, because you have to do all that poo poo by hand, but it's all automated and behind the scenes in a video game, right?

Is it just the story setting, or the rights to use specific nomenclature?

I agree that this is an interesting question, and something we've been digging into with Numenera deeply, before and after settling on it. The setting is in many ways the primary draw, because it is perfectly suited to the theme of legacy this will run throughout Torment.

The system...is not perfect for a cRPG in every way. If anyone's familiar with it, you'll probably know the focus of the system of simplicity as to enable quick resolution and GM agency. That is perfect for a p&p, but not so much for a cRPG. Luckily, we're jumping on board of Numenera really early, and will work with Monte closely, and we'll look to adapt the basic ideas of the rule system into something that is more well-suited for a cRPG. We're not licensing and working within tight restrictions, we're licensing and working closely with the creators.

Drifter posted:

inExile basically got a pre-order free pass from me for W2, for various reasons, but they haven't actually done anything noteworthy to earn another.

Yip. Very understandable. Skepticism is warranted. Honestly, we'd like to delay the Kickstarter to after Wasteland 2 is out and settled and we know what kind of reception it's got, we'd like to do that, but from our perspective it's not all that feasible. We've got writers, Kevin Saunders, concept artists, people working at inXile know who don't work on Wasteland 2 (at least, not much) and whose work can't be paid out of WL2's budget because all of WL2's budget goes to WL2 (naturally). We're not big enough to self-fund the pre-production of this game, but we don't want to fire all these people and then just hope they're still there when we roll into the new production. Not to mention we'd then create another pre-production period after Wasteland 2 where our programmers would have nothing to do. Starting pre-production now and rolling over when WL2 is out, patched and modkitted up creates the most natural workflow, and will prevent unnecessary delays and firings.

That's our perspective, which I hope you can understand. Of course, developer-end perspective is not the same as consumer-end, and you have every reason to be skeptical. As long as you get why we're doing it, I guess.

PS: Oh also, hi guys. My name's Thomas Beekers, line producer at inXile. Hi!

Brother None fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Feb 25, 2013

# ¿ Feb 25, 2013 17:57

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 15:13

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Great Rumbler posted:

That's the kind of thing I'd like to see Torment 2 explore. Rather than giving the option right at the very end to be good or evil [as some games made by developers who I will not mention tend to do], the game takes what you've done and shows you the impact that you've had. Did you save the child from drowning? He grew up to become a doctor who helped save hundreds of people. Did you shoot that bandit that tried to surrender? He had a wife and two kids who starved waiting for him to come home. Obviously, that's incredibly ambitious, but I think a Torment sequel has to be incredibly ambitious.

This is actually not too far of from what we're looking to do, though y'know, I want to be wary of promising too much since things like scope aren't set yet. But we'll talk a lot more about this in the coming time, I think the core team has some pretty cool ideas in this direction though.

Kevin Saunders (project director) talked a bit about this stuff here. These tides (not a judgement of good and evil) are checked throughout the game, your decisions changing the environment and the tides you are tied to. There will definitely be no color selection minigame or anything at the end.

Drifter posted:

What's a line producer accountable for? I've not heard that title before (I don't really pay attention to titles).

I don't think it's a common title in video gaming, it comes from the film industry where the line producer is the guy "on the line" on day-to-day grind. Think of it as an assistant producer, I basically do anything that needs doing, with a focus on Kickstarter and community-end stuff.

Drifter posted:

Would you guys consider a "Live the Dream" type thing where backers of Wasteland 2 get some X dollar/percent off whatever pledge tier they back for Torment? They believed in us before anyone in their right minds would have.

Huh. That's actually a pretty good idea. I'm going to look into it, though to be honest I don't think Kickstarter infrastructure allows for it.

Drifter posted:

Haha, I suppose if the beta slice we get of Wasteland 2 is really good I'd experience less cognitive dissonance in putting my support behind the Torment game.

I gotta be honest and say I'm not even sure we can delay the Kickstarter that far. I can't say much definite on that though.

Drifter posted:

I like to support things, and people, but gently caress, pre-ordering anything is a fuckin' dangerous way to use money these days. Everything is marketing, even from honest people, and you never know who's honest until after the fact.

Agreed. I've worked as a game reviewer the past few years (for GameBanshee) before joining inXile, so I got some games free, but I still bought most games I played. But preordered? I haven't preordered a game in ages. I think...Far Cry 2 was the last one? And boy did I regret that. Not that the game doesn't have its strengths, but it was not worth preordering, for me.

But I dunno. I kind of treat Kickstarter a little different, and have backed a bunch of project myself. But I certainly can't blame anyone who is in "wait and see" mode now, and wants to see some products before backing more. It all depends on trust, for Kickstarter, way more than typical "marketing". We just have to hope our team and pitch can convince you guys to get interested in backing it. But we understand it's less than ideal.

Drifter posted:

I guess a thing that could help me feel better would be small script samples, to see how the game world can be interacted with and the quality of dialog and response.

Yip. We'll definitely focus on ideas and writing when offering our pitch.

Brother None fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Feb 25, 2013

# ¿ Feb 25, 2013 19:11

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

CottonWolf posted:

Brother None, I assume that you're planning to get this underway reasonably soon you'll be reusing the W2 engine? If that's the case, does that mean that you're intending to go turn based with this too? Or is the plan real time with pause, like Planescape?

We're using Unity again, yes. And adapt a lot of the Obsidian tools and other things we made for the engine. That said, it's a different game and it has different goals. We'll look to do things different graphically (hopefully do 2D, but that depends on funding). As for combat, well, this is gonna sound a little odd, but we basically have a list of goals for a combat system, when it comes to character customization and choice, density of encounters (combat will be rare but interesting), etc., and we've been designing different possible systems of it, RTwP and TB and possibly a third. We probably won't pick one prior to the Kickstarter, since we have a nice long preorder period to decide, so we can instead take our time to ask our backers what they prefer and move on from there, post-funding.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2013 19:40

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Great Rumbler posted:

Torment 2 does need a very strong, very focused pitch, I agree. It can't just be "Hey, we're doing a sequel to Torment 2, it's going to be an RPG and have cool characters, please give us money." It's going to need details and those details need to be interesting and compelling. It also needs to focus on the people involved, what they bring to the table and how they plan on making this a worthy to successor to what most people consider one of the greatest RPGs and greatest videogame stories ever. Wasteland 2 didn't really have that kind of pressure, I think, but it's definitely going to be there with Torment 2.

Make us care! Make us want this so bad that we're willing to throw our money at you nearly two years in advance! Make us feel like this one's going to be a real winner! Wow us, in other words.

That's the plan! We've got way more run-up time to this than Wasteland 2 or Eternity had, and plan to use it. Expect a more informative, detailed pitch.

Fintilgin posted:

I definitely don't think a Torment kickstarter will triple the goal like W2, but hopefully that difference can be made up with profit off of W2.

Yip. It doesn't need to be the hit WL2 was. I mean, it wouldn't hurt if it was, but we'll be fine if it's not, we've got a good system set up of risk management and building out or reducing design scope as needed by the budget.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2013 21:35

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Pyradox posted:

Yeah, I'm in for over $100 for Wasteland 2 but I'd be very hesitant to pledge a similar amount without seeing a return on my first investment. As much as I like what you guys are doing that's a bit of a tall order.

I don't blame you. Heck, can't even pretend to blame you! $100 is a significant sum (let alone over). All I can ask is you keep an open mind and an eye on our progress and see if we can't grab your attention at some point. Honestly, I feel the ideas our core team has and the pitch we're going to present are pretty drat strong, and I'd hope our current working on WL2 isn't held too much against this pitch. Not that I don't understand hesitancy or skepticism, I do, just sayin', give us a fair chance.

Alkanos posted:

drat, so it's pretty much a done deal that the Kickstarter will be long before WL2's release?

There really is no way for us not to.

Alkanos posted:

I know you guys have more experience with this (I'm nowhere close to launching if I even do), but I think you're gonna get burned by going ahead long before WL2's done. I understand the reasons you posted, it makes perfect sense that you need to keep your folks working. But I really hope you've got plans for what happens if you barely make goal or don't even make it. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic, but I think too many fans already have a nice chunk of change invested into kickstarter projects and will be hesitant about going back in with a company that hasn't even released their already cleared kickstarter.

One ray of hops is that even if you barely make the goal, you'll still have the profits from WL2's release (which should be a decent chunk of change). So you won't be completely limited by what you can get from kickstarter.

I personally have a huge problem with Kickstarters that ask for significantly less than they need, and have seen several projects that made me hesitant simply because of their unrealistically low goals. When starting a Kickstarter, you need to take your minimum goal and the possibility that you end up with "only" your minimum seriously. We do. If we hit minimum, we'll be fine, the entire game can be budgeted at minimum. It won't even be budgeted ahead for the "WL2 windfall" because there haven't been a lot of these KS-based releases yet so we can't even reliably guesstimate sales numbers. We'll budget it as is and Kevin Saunders is setting up a p good system to build it out where opportunities present themselves (such as WL2's sales numbers). I might personally be out of a job if we only hit the very minimum (I'm not in WL2's budget), but the core writing and design team will be there, and that's what counts.

Anyway, that slight tangent aside, do realize that regardless of anything, right now the main body of inXile is working on Wasteland 2, and that game is fully budgeted, and we are not touching or messing with that budget in the slightest, so if this pitch fails nothing changes there. No matter what happens with Torment, WL2 is moving forward, and for most of this year that's the main thing for most employees. So the company can handle it if Torment falls through, it just means we can't keep our writing and artist team together and that creates a bad transition period between WL2 and the next project and a likely loss of talent. It's still a risk to take, especially in throwing our name and goodwill we've built up out there, but it's a risk we do need to take to enable us to set up a really good production flow to allow us to make good games. It's looking ahead, what happens after WL2. Not fun for consumers, perhaps, but pretty important for developers to always keep in mind.

Brother None fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Feb 26, 2013

# ¿ Feb 26, 2013 06:55

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

FRINGE posted:

"Torment" is the thematic root of the games. This one is set in Numenera.

This is correct. inXile knew they wanted to do a Torment game, one headed by PS:T's "second designer" (see here) Colin McComb, and they landed on Numenera as the setting after some deliberation, including checking with Hasbro/WotC for licensing Planescape. That's the process as it happened. We didn't set out to make a Numenera game and decided to slap Torment on it.

It's certainly a "weird" concept, and I don't think it's all that common in video gaming, but it's not a reboot or a sequel, it is setting up for what we can only hope will be a long line of thematic successors, set in different places and exploring different questions.

There's quite a few people involved on this that were involved in either Planescape: Torment or Planescape, a few revealed, a few yet to come.

Brother None fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Feb 27, 2013

# ¿ Feb 27, 2013 00:39

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

CottonWolf posted:

Weird that they have limited numbers of tiers which don't have any physical rewards though. I guess digital scarcity for marketing purposes is a thing now.

It does look weird but it's actually related to the pen and paper Numenera books, which come from another company (Monte's) and which we can't offer in limitless supply. The limits are just so we can plan this with Monte ahead of time, and if they run out we can indeed still follow up with different, similar tiers on Kickstarter.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2013 19:02

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Pyradox posted:

But how would they be able to convince us? A short story or writing sample? It'll be tough to encapsulate the way it feels to get invested in a character after 10 hours of play in just a sample conversation. It also won't necessarily show off what kind of options you'd get during the dialogue. I mean that is an ideal thing to have, but we'd need some kind of context for it to actually be convincing.

We got a few approaches set up for this. I think the most important thing first is convincing people of the strength of your overall vision. Overall vision does not necessarily equate good specific writing, but that's step one: show that this is a story worth telling, a completely unique, fascinating one with sweet narrative twists, and with gameplay elements embedded and entwined with that narrative. You gotta sell the overall before you sell the specifics.

After that, yeah, samples, short stories, there's different approaches you can take. The difficulty with writing samples is that in isolation it often looks worse. Like, if I'm engrossed in a game then writing is just one part of it, and it's the overall experience and context that makes it shine. I've been reading some PS:T documentation and it's just like, well, viewed in isolation it's not quite as impressive. That doesn't detract from PS:T, it just shows how important the whole package is and how hard it is to showcase something in isolation.

That's just my own private musings on that tho. Not looking for excuses, just noting the challenges that I've personally seen.

Brother None fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Mar 1, 2013

# ¿ Mar 1, 2013 04:33

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

CrookedB posted:

From what I have heard and read elsewhere, the launch of the Torment 2 Kickstarter is scheduled for this Friday. (Brother None might want to correct me on that.)

It's Wednesday. As mentioned here: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/04/out-of-exile-torment-officially-going-to-kickstarter.

Lord British is kicking off his Kickstarter on Friday. Shadowrun guys are showing a live demo of their game on Friday. Busy week!

Brother None fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Mar 4, 2013

# ¿ Mar 4, 2013 14:33

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

CrookedB posted:

This Wednesday already? Oh my oh my. I wonder if the decision to start it so early has been influenced by Lord British's countdown.

Nope. We had this date targeted for some time now.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2013 17:38

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Thanks guys. It's been nerve-wracking as hell, hardly slept a wink, but it's going well so far. Shoot me any Qs you might have.

And yes, the story does hook into Planescape: Torment's in several ways. Too close? It's always a balance to strike, but in my personal opinion I really like the way Colin found some clever hooks (including your relation to your followers) while not making it a carbon copy.

Mordaedil posted:

Sounds cool, but I wonder if that means we're locked in character generation to a specific gender again.

We'd like to offer gender choices but if we do we'd also like to ensure the world properly reacts to it, as appropriate to each individual/faction, plus there's localization costs. Just making it a cosmetic choice doesn't really cut it for us. We'll talk more about this in a future update though.

Fintilgin posted:

Is this going up faster then W2 did?

Yes. It might be going faster than PE did. Which is mind-boggling. It'll probably top out more steeply than WL2 or PE did tho', so I still don't expect it to end quite that high, but who knows.

Tunahead posted:

For fucks sake, Fargo. Like 5 of the earliest updates for Wasteland 2 Kickstarter were already basically "Brian Fargo's publisher opinion status: Still hate 'em! " and now like a quarter of the new Kickstarter's introduction video is a segment about how publishers are babies and tells nothing about the kickstarter project itself.

I'll still donate hundreds, probably. It's just that after that video, that's not a decision that makes me feel like a smart person.

Heh. We thought a callback to the publisher sketch and the red boots DLC would be funny, but the rest of the video and the entire KS body are just straight talk, facts about the game and team.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 17:15

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Zilkin posted:

Brother None how does it feel seeing the numbers rise so fast?

Crazy.

Zilkin posted:

Also since you are probably going to hit that 900k in just few hours when will see some stretch goals?

Yip. We didn't expect anything like this but we did a lot of prep work for stretch goals just in case, and should be ready with updates when we hit 900K.

Gravel Gravy posted:

Question though on the Physical/Digital tiers. If I were to pledge $125 + everything (that is checked) up to the $90/$110 level? Sorry, confused how this all works.

Easiest is to check the graphical representations of each tier see exactly what they contain, digital and physical. It depends on what tier you pick.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 17:46

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Megazver posted:

Tell Brian that we get it, but he should probably ease up on the RARGH PUBLISHERS stuff at this point.

Well, we wanted to do a callback, but it's not the focal point of the pitch. The focus is mostly on "this is what we want to do".

# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 17:53

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Honestly I personally thought and think some skepticism was warranted, and since we started talking about this Kickstarter with the core team at the end of last year we recognized the difficulties, challenges and reasons to be skeptical. I think it helps that we didn't avoid them, we simply openly talked about them, and offered a more detailed, fleshed-out pitch. Worked out pretty well for us so far!

# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 19:50

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Twee as gently caress posted:

Pretty big mistake not to already have a list of the first, say, 5 stretch goals in hand when they started the kickstarter. They'll probably end up losing thousands (if not tens of thousands) worth of pledges.

We have a list of way more stretch goals than that. But knowing what your stretch goals are and communicating them are pretty different things, especially since people do expect indepth updates and graphical representations were possible. We're working on 'em, but we're not exactly panicking or anything. Rushing for this stuff would be a mistake. We thought we'd have a day to get the graphics ready, turns out we were wrong. Frankly...big whoop?

Rinkles posted:

It's also possible their earlier pricing estimates on some of the physical rewards were off.

Way off. The profit margin on the physical tiers of DFA and WL2 were awful, and I wouldn't expect to see their like again from a professional company unless they're insanely generous or really desperate. Project Eternity's tiers were based on our experience with WL2, and our tiers now are based on both experiences, we're very fortunate to have a friendly company like Obsidian working in the same realm like that.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2013 00:10

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Rinkles posted:

Off topic, but BN get a custom title already. I think you guys can afford it.

I dunno man. I kind of like this title. It speaks to my inner child.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2013 00:15

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Understood, Twee, but we're not going to rush out anything now. We've got our planned stretch goals and everyone's working triple to get them out there.

SurrealityCheck posted:

Not sure I'm so keen on the body swapping mechanic implied in the description, or am I misreading?

It's not exactly body swapping, you have your own body that you will always return to. But there are segments that you will play controlling other castoffs. The purpose of these is to throw you into very different situations with unexpected challenges and narrative elements. It'll allow us to do pretty wild things with the narrative structure.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2013 00:23

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Expect word on stretch goals today or tomorrow early. We already passed our first one! Woops. Still got lots to go for, though.

Rinkles posted:

Don't want to commit. I understand. It's hard to forget some things.

It just...seems a little silly to pay for it? Maybe I will at some point tho.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2013 01:00

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

chiefnewo posted:

Hey Brother None, the link in the FAQ to the Addons tumblr page is wrong, it points to the Rewards tumblr page.

Cheers.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2013 02:12

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Rinkles posted:

Over 1.4 million now. Brother None, might have to redo those stretch goal graphics to shift the target values.

we're not changing our target values. If a stretch goal has already been hit, we'll announce it as already hit. It'd be dickish to push them up. We've already hit one, and are pretty close to the next.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2013 03:59

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

SurrealityCheck posted:

If you can't think of higher stretch goals, just add one giraffe NPC per 100,000. That's the kind of incentive I'm looking for here.

At $5 million, we will get MCA's freaky thumb fixed.

Nah but seriously, we got a lineup of great writers, additional content and enhancements (like 2D) lined up. The very core of this project was based on modular design so we were flexible both for Kickstarter and for when WL2's profits start rolling in, that'll hopefully pay off here.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2013 04:16

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Update 2 is up

Appreciative bonus, stretch goals, housekeeping.

$1.2 million was the "gender choice at character creation". We passed it! So there you go!

Brother None fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Mar 7, 2013

# ¿ Mar 7, 2013 05:52

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

primitive posted:

I've noticed you saying this a couple of places... what does it actually mean in terms of being able to scale the content out as you gather funds?

The reason I ask is because the body swap mechanic seems to be a really easy (lazy?) way to put a bunch of 2-3 hour self-contained sidequests in the game. And while it allows you to do a bunch of interesting things without being leashed to the core plot, I think there's a danger in building out the core plot in a similar modular way.

To clarify, I think a plot that you have to design to scale from 8 to 24 modules long (depending on the funds you get coming in) is necessarily more linear than a web like PS:T. And I think the mechanic might start getting old at body swap #19.

You spend most of the game in "your own" body, the meres are a narrative expansion tool that will be used carefully where appropriate.

At this stage design is always modular. You have your core locations, story and companions that you know you have to do to make a game, and those are funded at one million. From there one out you built out locations, companion and story in a pre-defined priority list. It's not based on self-contained modules, though that is part of it, it is based on precisely defined possibilities and priorities.

Brought To You By posted:

Does inXile entertainment plan to sell physical copies of TToN upon its release?

Yip.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2013 19:59

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

PayPal store is now live

# ¿ Mar 7, 2013 20:17

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Mark Morgan has a signature style you can kind of recognize across all of his projects, but I think he's given it a nice new twist.

fermun posted:

By the time Torment is funded, it will have been nearly 6 months since Project Eternity was funded. It's possible his role in Project Eternity won't be as large by that time and he will then have some time to do Torment.

It shouldn't be a huge issue. Torment has a very long pre-production time so while he's certainly not available fulltime now, he can roll into the team more later, just like Monte is doing.

CottonWolf posted:

Unless I'm misreading we do get them all?

All novellas are in digitally from 95 up, yes

# ¿ Mar 8, 2013 03:09

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Brought To You By posted:

Great! Are there any estimations for shelf price so I can start setting aside the necessary funds?

Probably starting out at around the same level as the Kickstarter did, though pricing is subject to change (we run a constant early-adopter method of slowly bumping up prices to our release-point price, but this mostly affects digital, not so much physical).

# ¿ Mar 8, 2013 03:42

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

The Crotch posted:

... and with that, we're half-way to PE's total. Good luck on the next two million, Brother None.

Haha. Thanks. This is beyond nuts.

I expect it to start slowing down significantly any minute now! Uh...right?

# ¿ Mar 8, 2013 05:45

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

We plan to dig into Numenera more, yes.

Accordion Man posted:

Yeah, having Chris Avellone join would probably be the stretch goal everyone would want if its possible.

Chris is currently writing for Project Eternity, writing novellas for PE and WL2, and working on the publisher pitches for Obsidian. If we add Torment to his workload, he might die. I don't want that on my conscience!!

# ¿ Mar 8, 2013 06:10

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Great Rumbler posted:

So, am I reading this right that the Castoff's Labyrinth will be something like the Endless Paths from Project: Eternity, in that it will expand as more Kickstarter funding comes in?

Yip. We're hoping to do some very interesting things with it.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2013 06:26

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Drifter posted:

Brother None, I know you guys can't be adding too many cooks in the kitchen before poo poo starts to just break down and become inefficient, so by doubling and possibly tripling your game content how much longer development time do you foresee this taking? Are you guys hiring other artists and stuff as well to faster add assets to the game?

I'm not entirely sure what I'm asking, but for starters, I guess, how dramatically different does the production of the game become and does anything become better visually as well?

Visuals aren't a big focus (not to say they don't get better, they do, but they're not a big priority). Our priority lies with adding companions/factions/NPCs/locations and deepening out reactivity. A lot of that can be nailed down very well in pre-production, and our longer pre-production period means it shouldn't be much of a problem for the production phase.

Visuals we will get to down the line, and by then we might be talking about things that take more time. I leave those considerations to industry vets like Kevin and Brian. If they start suspecting goals can push back the release date, that will be mentioned in the stretch goals.

GetWellGamers posted:

As long as we're interrogating Brother None, I'd love to hear the emotional timeline of the first day, how long it took to go from "Here we go..." to "Hey, that's a nice initial response" to "Wow, look at it go!" to "Jesus, it's just not stopping" to "Holy gently caress, it hasn't slowed down!" to "..."

I can't imagine what it must be like to essentially say "Hey, we've got an idea" and get a million dollars in six hours.

A lot of worked so hard on it, because it was a pretty small team actually working on getting internal and external communication channels up, fleshing out design and at the same time working on the Kickstarter. Most of inXile has focused purely on WL2. But us from the Torment team we pulling 10-12 hour workdays during the weekend before the Kickstarter (and probably before) until now, so it's been very stressful. Careful mails on Monday and Tuesday about "so what do you think?" "I'm optimistic we'll make the minimum, maybe go as high as 1.5 million or something by the end?"

Then it was just...

"What?"

"Huh?!"

"HOLY CRAP!"

The internal company mails were a lot of fun, haha.

Zilkin posted:

One concrete suggestion to BN would be KS update telling us something about that Crystal Dimension that was part of the 1.5 million stretch goal, maybe I missed it but I don't think anything has been said about it.

We'll do more talking on locations but don't plan to focus on the Crystal Dimension. We've got specific locations and story elements in mind to talk about and would like to stick to our limits, mostly because Brian & co are extremely weary of launching any spoilers into the world.

awesomepanda posted:

BrotherNone, how has the fund raising success of games like project eternity, waste land 2, and shadowrun affected publisher's role w/ companies like In-xile. Is there more interest now in their projects and products, along with a more equitable relationship? Or has the status quo remained unchange and remain so for the near/distant future.

Differs per company. We don't work with publishers anymore. We work with distributors, sure, which could be publishing houses doing distribution, but we don't work with them as publishers. That's us though, we're a small company and can pull this off. Double Fine and Obsidian still work with publishers and at their size they have little choice (their studios are too big to fund through Kickstarter alone). That said, if Obsidian goes to a publisher to negotiate an Eternity follow-up (if they so choose), you can imagine Obsidian is negotiating from a better position.

I don't really know how much publisher reach-out there has been or what it's been like though. That's not really my area, and I obviously can't talk for Double Fine or Obsidian's experience. That story Feargus told sounds pretty typical for em, tho.

Brother None fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Mar 10, 2013

# ¿ Mar 10, 2013 15:34

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Twee as gently caress posted:

Yes it's been announced already, they said that it would also use Unity as a base for Torment, and I see no reasons why they wouldn't bring some of the mechanics from W2 for that project as well

Basically. Whatever makes sense. Like, the combat system will be different but may take some of WL2's on board. The dialog system will be totally different in presentation but will utilize some of the same principles beneath the hood.

It will be visually inspired by PS:T, yes, we'll look to do a painterly style regardless of if we do 3D or 2D. Right now, we're planning to do 3D.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2013 17:35

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Zilkin posted:

The difference between 2D and 3D isometric basically just the ability to pan the camera right?

The production process is significantly different. 3D is rendered by the game as you play. 2D - in the style of Infinity Engine or Project Eternity - is rendered by us from high-quality 3D models, made into an "image" based on our camera angle, then "hand-painted" over, then implemented into the game engine with 3D models and effects overlaid with the usage of the 2D image overlaid by an ingame effects map. 2D in the style of Project Eternity is more expensive to than 3D, even full-rotation 3D like Wasteland 2.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2013 18:42

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

NihilCredo posted:

Isn't it possible that Numenera, with its even more wild and crazy vistas which I presume will limit the reuse of art assets, would be much better served by the hand-painting process than Wasteland 2, which consists of fairly reliable post-apocalyptic American objects?

Better served? Yes. I personally think 2D would work better than 3D. But it is not cheaper. I can't speak for Obsidian, but that's just the facts as I know em, 2D in this style is more expensive than 3D.

NihilCredo posted:

Surely that sort of one-off-maybe-two-off-at-best items are cheaper to paint over a basic 3D draft than to fully model in 3D?

Not really, since with each significant change (and some you listed are pretty significant) you'd have to make a new 3D model for each anyway, to create the image over which you paint 2D. 2D may help in variance for minor touches, sure, but a different model is still a different model.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2013 20:16

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Great Rumbler posted:

Wasteland 2 and Torment being successes would give him a real shot at returning to, if not a top-tier publisher, at least a self-funded outfit that's able to make what it wants on its own terms.

Self-funded yeah. Top-tier, well, I don't wanna talk for the boss-man but I think he's done with the stressful business of publishing games, and just wants to make the game he wants to make.

Great Rumbler posted:

What it all boils down to is this: it's in Fargo's best interests to do everything within his power to ensure that Wasteland 2 and Torment meet and exceed the expectations of [most] of his fans.

Of course!

Adraeus posted:

I'd also bet that publishers have been beating at Fargo's door since he founded inXile. He's a MVP. Publishers really don't care what you say about them as long as they stand to gain from a relationship with you.

None of this is really accurate, I'm afraid.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2013 22:37

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Accordion Man posted:

I got a question. Will there be limited voice-acting like P:T or it will all just be text? Because P:T did a really good job of using voice-acting sparingly, only using it to enhance important scenes and for party interaction which really helped the overall quality of the writing.

It did work well for PS:T, and we'll look to do something similar (depends on budgets and possibilities, of course).

LogicNinja: Full voice-acting is right out, but partial does offer some neat possibilities.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2013 23:02

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

CottonWolf posted:

If we're including paypal totals, the latest stretch goal has been met. Now for the long slog to 3 million.

We do include PayPal, and 2.5million has been passed. And Colin has apologized for the Big Book of Elves

# ¿ Mar 12, 2013 18:30

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Rob Thomas and Veronica Mars have beaten our record. Good on 'em, that's a pretty awesome Kickstarter!

On topic of Torment tho, update 6 is up, talking Meres, the Castoff's Labyrinth as a continuous stretch goal, and adding Brian Mitsoda to the team.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2013 20:13

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Twee as gently caress posted:

The same guy who is giving $100,000 is also giving $10,000 to veronica mars

Steven Dengler basically just spends his days running around angel investing in stuff he loves. I believe he's put quite a lot of money into Double Fine over the years, and now directly into inXile. What can I say, he's a bro.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2013 23:32

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Torment: Beards of Numenera.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2013 18:04

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 15:13

Brother None: Feb 25, 2013; On the line for InXile

Great Rumbler posted:

That image was drawn by Chang Yuan, but it's not from Torment [as far as I can tell, it's not a new piece of art anyway].

Yeah, that's just an older piece of his. It's not for Torment.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2013 00:21

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Torment: Tides of Numenera - Turns out there is room for 2!

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