Tags: Obsidian Entertainment; Project Eternity
This week's Project Eternity Kickstarter update is yet another one of those "update before the updates". It reports that Project Eternity is reaching the end of its "Prototype phase". Over the next two weeks a prototype demo will be assembled that will demonstrate, among other things, an animated version of the background from last year's screenshot. Here's the full explanation from the update:
We’re coming to the end of the Prototype phase. While you might think of a prototype as something you would consider before making a game, in our case, we use the term to mean a demonstration of the game that, when successful, demonstrates the game’s vision (AKA “pillars”) and concept. For Eternity, one of our biggest pillars is to recreate the Infinity Engine experience. To that end, we need to have a number of key things in place to make sure our prototype is a success. Things like:
- Character movement and combat. We want to make sure we have a party of up to six characters, each of whom can be moved independently and/or as a group, which does then imply rudimentary support for formations as well as NPC and basic creature AI. Basic AI meaning to ‘see’ the characters, face them, and then move to them and start attacking. This also means we need character models that have enough animations to demonstrate this convincingly, as well as at least one monster. For our prototype demo, we have one known only as “Chompy” for now. More on him (or her?!) in future updates!
- Basic RPG mechanics. We need to prove that we’re making an RPG here obviously! We need basics like loot management; for instance, inventory and opening containers like chests. We need basic conversations and quest giving, including receiving a quest, tracking its progress, and then providing a reward for it being completed.
- Environments. We want to have a working outdoor area as well as a tileset-based interior that the player can move between and throughout. This makes us prove out area transitions too (I can hear it now, “YOU MUST GATHER YOUR PARTY BEFORE VENTURING FORTH...”)
For our outdoor area (see screenshot above), we’re bringing life to it by not only building out the rest of the level, but getting our technological solutions in place. We have a working waterfall now, with moving water, replete with foam around the rocks(!) and more.
Besides a non-animated preview of the animated scene(?!), the update also has a new piece of concept art of an interior location:
![[IMG]](http://media.obsidian.net/eternity/media/updates/0046/pe-interior-concept-wip.jpg)
Project Eternity's next phase of development will be the "Vertical Slice" phase, during which the development team will be expanded and a more fully-fledged demo (akin to what we saw in the recently released Wasteland 2 gameplay video, I assume) will be created. Apparently, two longtime Obsidian designers have come on board the project already.
