Divinity: Original Sin Pre-Release Thread

[imweasel]

Yeah, I second (or 5th, whatever) Gaesun's idea. It's pretty good.

It's not going to take an hour. I also cleared out the 150 orcs surrounding the town for god knows what reason.

Let me guess. You did it for the XP, right?

 

[ForkTong]

Can we call the red troll Roguey?

 

[Smashing Axe]

Thiefy the Rogue.

 

[ForkTong]

So anyhoo, done deal.

If Watch gets tower and you get troll, they will attack each other. The outcome depends on the success of each party's fundraiser.

 

[Gord]

Can we call the red troll Roguey?

If at all, then only if he loses.

 

[Jack Dandy]

Foooork, respond to meee. Why wou't Larian publish new hi-res screenshots each update? I swear it can only help you the KS, and it doesn't sound like such a hard task either.

 

[ForkTong]

http://www.divinityoriginalsin.com/screenshots.php ? Oh wait they're not 1080p. That's what you mean right? Also those ones look pretty old... We'll talk about this. We did plan on creatures and such, but we also still need to be able to talk about something between now and November...

 

[catfood]

Can we call the red troll Roguey?

No.

 

[Jack Dandy]

Showing off some cool, unique looking areas in screenshots, or showing off unique combat scenarios will work for the best, anything that can "capture the eye" so to speak.

I'm sure you want to have material to show off until the release of the game, but these next 8 days may end up deciding just how much you HAVE to show! So I say, go all out with it.

Also, maybe some interesting monster descriptions- I'd love to hear more about that skeleton-in-a-mech, and I'm sure many other people will as well. I see you had lots of unique monster ideas, so why not show some of them off? Again, anything to get people interested.

EDIT: Also, make it so these screenshots are easily saveable. Can't share them if they're all cooped up in the site's grasp, right?

 

[Haba]

$1525 v.s. $1,662

Do your patriotic duty TODAY!

 

[evdk]

$1525 v.s. $1,662

Do your patriotic duty TODAY!

Clearly we need a Russian investor too.

Anyway, updahted my donation, the Watch must fall.

 

[imweasel]

You guys love WWII Wehrmacht soldiers, that's for sure.

 

[Roguey]

Proud of not playing games for hours at a time. Because that would make them a no-life loser.

Posts: 5,155.

Made over a period of three years. Roughly 4-5 posts per day.

Let me guess. You did it for the XP, right?

Content is made for exploring and they were there. There could have been interesting things to find. Spoiler alert, there weren't.

 

[SCO]

Does the game already have a iron(wo)man mode? Can't have a tb game without it!

 

[ERYFKRAD]

For a second I missed the y in Tyranny.

Damn, funny while it lasted.

 

[Gord]

You guys love WWII Wehrmacht soldiers, that's for sure.

Bonus points for spotting the irony in that pic...

 

[Arkeus]

Community Input

It's sometimes held against us, but we think very highly of our fans and our community. We end up calling NPCs after them (hi Arhu), we create encounters with them (hello Shrimpo). Not only that, we also take their feedback for granted and often find valuable ideas in their posts, that we implement.

Divinity: Original Sin will not be treated differently. We are for instance taking another look at the RPG system, taking your feedback into account. We are reading your forum posts, your comments on Kickstarter, your private messages and emails, and even if we don't always find the time to answer, we do pick out the things that we think are important or fun. Here are two examples.
Burning zombies

The following message was sent to Swen, and unfortunately, it will not be implemented as a surprise, it will just be implemented.

"Sorry for two PM's in one day, this idea I want hidden and made as a surprise if you like it enough to implement.
(...) fire can burn the skin off a zombie and they become a skeleton. When they became a skeleton, their traits and attack methods changed to that of a skeleton. Their HP remained where it was from the initial attack of the fire or previous attacks. The fire would simply burn off their skin over a few attack rounds (...)


Since so much detail has gone into this, that would be interesting to have implemented."


Thanks to this successful Kickstarter, we can give monsters more interesting behaviours, more specific attacks and powers (and weaknesses), so why not create this effect for the zombies? As it turns out, an unknown scribe had already reported on this in his "Source User's Guide To Adventuring". What a coincidence!

Excerpt from "A Source User's Guide To Adventuring"
"One of the more nasty encounters you can have with the undead, is to be attacked by zombies. Many make the mistake of underestimating these dim-witted corpses and very often they are regretting their hubris as their innards are being drawn from their shredded bellies.


Zombies are slow, yes, but they are highly resilient to most weapons you can carry, and -neither fearing nor feeling pain- they'll pursue their prey relentlessly. My advice would therefore be to play a little trick on them that makes these putrefying pests a lot easier to deal with.


The trick? Fire! If you are versed in the basics of Source wizardry, conjuring a searing fireball is easy as pie, so cast a barrage of flame and admire your handiwork as the flesh burns right off your assailant's bones. It won't be defeated just yet, but it will be a zombie no longer! You'll now be fighting a skeletal warrior, and you can imagine how much more effective your trusty war hammer, mace or mallet will have suddenly become!"


Visuals: Ambient, Bloom, Fog, Contrast

Last month, someone posted an animated image on the Larian.com forum, comparing our lighting and color settings to what he thought they could be, or should be.

Our art director, Koen Van Mierlo, dived in, and had the following to say:
"While working on the lighting and colors of the environments, I had to take into account the speed of the characters and the pace of combat. I had to make sure the visuals were not interfering with game play: I had to strike a good balance between clarity and nice looking visuals. We noticed that high contrast imagery was hard to read and was affecting game play too much; so we decided to go for less contrasted environments.


Combat and movement speed have since changed a lot, and this meant that certain decisions regarding game play and visual clarity were not necessarily valid anymore. So after reading the forum post of Xodetaetl, Swen asked me to reiterate on the lighting to see if it would be possible to increase the contrast. So that's what I did. I toned down the ambient settings, decreased the bloom, tweaked the fog distance settings and tampered with the contrast values."


Here are the results of his tampering.
Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Here are URLs to the full HD screenshots of the above:

• http://www.larian.com/kickstarter/Lighting_Cave_A_Before.jpg
• http://www.larian.com/kickstarter/Lighting_Cave_A_After.jpg
• http://www.larian.com/kickstarter/Lighting_Church_Before.jpg
• http://www.larian.com/kickstarter/Lighting_Church_After.jpg
• http://www.larian.com/kickstarter/Lighting_Cave_B_Before.jpg
• http://www.larian.com/kickstarter/Lighting_Cave_B_After.jpg

Kirill on Twitch TV

Don't forget! In exactly two hours, Kirill will perform a live concert especially for you. You don't need a ticket, you don't need to go anywhere, it's streaming live over this wonderful thing we call the internet.

You can follow the live stream on the following URL: http://www.twitch.tv/larianstudios
Or if you can't make it, we will post the video on our Youtube channel later: http://www.youtube.com/larianstudios

Bellegar En-Counter

Yesterday, we hit 3000 likes on our Larian Studios Facebook page. That means: 3 encounters with Bellegar in Divinity: Original Sin. Can we make that 4000?

And in closing

Not all fan input will make it to the game. Because sometimes... you really are... Sick Things... (But that's okay. So are we.)

 

[MicoSelva]

Spoiler

 

[Jashiin]

Those after shots look much better. Hope those youtube vids go up soon, I would love to see a nice pledge spike.. if those cannot increase the pledges now, nothing will.

 

[Arkeus]

Those after shots look much better. Hope those youtube vids go up soon, I would love to see a nice pledge spike.. if those cannot increase the pledges now, nothing will.

I don't know, looking at the screenshot in full res made it hard to see the characters in the 'after', i felt.

 

[ForkTong]

Those after shots look much better. Hope those youtube vids go up soon, I would love to see a nice pledge spike.. if those cannot increase the pledges now, nothing will.

We have 3 more tomorrow, 2 on Saturday, at least 2 on Monday...

 

[Monty]

Those after shots look much better. Hope those youtube vids go up soon, I would love to see a nice pledge spike.. if those cannot increase the pledges now, nothing will.

I don't know, looking at the screenshot in full res made it hard to see the characters in the 'after', i felt.

Yes, I think it's quite tough to please everyone on this and get the fine tuning right. For example I thought the 2nd 'before' image was better but in the 3rd image the 'after' image was much better.

Still looks good in general though.

 

[Xenich]

Those after shots look much better. Hope those youtube vids go up soon, I would love to see a nice pledge spike.. if those cannot increase the pledges now, nothing will.

I don't know, looking at the screenshot in full res made it hard to see the characters in the 'after', i felt.

I am kind of mixed on it as well. Some things within the image look better, they have cleaner edges, a crisp lighting feel, etc... but at the same time, it also feels as if it is "too bright" and distracts from the dark and grimy feeling of an area. I also noticed how the characters stand out less within the new images as well. Like I said, I have mixed feelings about it. I don't hate it or love either one. It is a tough evaluation for me. So I guess because it isn't an issue for me, and some people tend to really like the change, maybe that trend of people might help the campaign more. /shrug

 

[Xenich]

Those after shots look much better. Hope those youtube vids go up soon, I would love to see a nice pledge spike.. if those cannot increase the pledges now, nothing will.

I don't know, looking at the screenshot in full res made it hard to see the characters in the 'after', i felt.

Yes, I think it's quite tough to please everyone on this and get the fine tuning right. For example I thought the 2nd 'before' image was better but in the 3rd image the 'after' image was much better.

Still looks good in general though.

Yeah, some images look an improvement, others not so much. Either way, it is still good.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

So anyhoo, done deal.

If Watch gets tower and you get troll, they will attack each other. The outcome depends on the success of each party's fundraiser.

this is fantastic