Obsidian Visit Tomorrow - Input Requested

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All, I'm confirmed to meet with Adam Brennecke tomorrow at the Obsidian offices. This was just confirmed about an hour ago.

I'm going to see if I can squeeze in a short interview with him while I'm there. So, if there are any questions you'd like me to ask him, feel free to let me know in this thread.

I'll do a final check of this thread at around 11AM PDT tomorrow, and will add any good questions that have been offerred to the list!

If I don't get any, I have several questions lined up already, so no worries. But I thought this might be another cool opportunity to make this more a community experience!

 

Some very good questions Tal. Thanks for the input!

 

For those who don't know, Adam Brennecke is a computer programmer at Obsidian Entertainment, where he worked on Fallout: New Vegas and is now the project director of Project Eternity.

Being a programmer, he can probably answer questions regarding technical aspects of PE better than some of the other team members.

I would ask him about:

• Modding capabilities. One of the kickstarter updates mentioned that they intend to make the game moddable, but from the way it's worded it's not clear whether that will be limited to modifying static data (such as numbers), or whether the whole game world (NPCs, quests...) will be driven by LUA scripts that can be modifed and extended by modders like it was with the Infinity Engine games.
  Of course they may not yet know what they'll manage to do within the confines of the Unity engine, but it would be interesting to hear how far they would like to go in this regard, and if there's any more info they can already share on this.

• Pathfinding, as Taluntain already mentioned. In the Infinity Engine games, technically the actual pathfinding algorithm (for individual characters) worked well enough, but as soon as the paths of different characters blocked each other even for a split second, it led to chaos as they were instantly reassigned to alternative, longer routes.
  It would be reassuring to hear that for PE they intend to have more dynamic pathfinding that properly takes simultaneous movement of multiple characters into account.

 

I'll be interested to know their thoughts on replay ability. Some games can be relayed multiple times with completely different outcomes, and others are pointless to replay once you know the storyline and surprises.

 

Hi all. I had a very enjoyable visit with Adam today. First he showed me around their office. It is a VERY nice setup. No one sits in a cubicle. It's all offices, many of which are shared by small teams. He mostly took me to the common areas (conference rooms, their kitchen/break area, a large multi-purpose room, the lounge where the final hours of the Kickstarter campaign were recorded) and the Project Eternity side of the office. The office is broken up based on different games that are being developed, so I didn't get to see, for example, the Southpark development area. I didn't get to meet too many people, as it was the lunch hour and a lot of folks were either at lunch or working remotely. Feargus was apparently at lunch.

After a short tour, Adam graciously consented to sit down and do an interview with me. I did include all of Tal's questions as he got them too me early enough to do so. The interview was very casual and really felt more like we were just hanging out and "rapping" about the game. Because of this I managed to get a lot more information than I was expecting. I even managed to get some sneak preview details about another one of the 8 companions that has not been discussed publicly before.

I recorded the interview which I will use to create a write up on the interview. With any luck, I'll be posting that later today. I said I would not share the recording, as technically I wasn't supposed to use a recording device in their office, so this will just be a personal keepsake.

I completely forgot to ask for a picture (the NDA I signed said no pictures, but I'm sure Adam would have posed for one). In fact, I nearly forgot to take my laptop case with me when I left, as I initially left it in Adam's office.

 

The interview is up now.

 

Darn, I thought I was also still on time when I wrote mine, but it seems I messed up with the timezone arithmetic...

Ah well, at least the pathfinding one was answered.

 

Sorry, I would have loved to have gotten more info about modding. I didn't think to ask about it. You posted your questions literally 11 minutes after I left my house (I left at 11:25 exactly). :/