Happy Holidays From InXile Entertainment!
Update #21 · Dec. 20, 2012 · 3 comments
The holidays are a time of friends, family, and eating yourself into a food coma. It is also a time where friends and family give thoughtful gifts to those that they love. We here at inXile are feeling the holiday spirit, and we can’t think of anyone we love more than the 63,000 of you that backed Wasteland 2. So that settles it; inXile wants to give all of our backers a great gift this holiday season. Since we are all out of fruitcake and snickerdoodles, we decided the best gift we could give you all was a FREE copy of The Bard’s Tale. You read that right; all of you backers who log into the Ranger Center web portal between now and the end of the year will be able to get a code that will let you download your very own copy of The Bard’s Tale from our friends at Steam.

“What is The Bard’s Tale?” you ask. Good question. Let me tell you. The Bard’s Tale was inXile’s first game (published 2004), and it is a reimagining of the original Bard’s Tale series created by Brian Fargo and Interplay in the mid 1980s. Our remake is a much lighter action RPG than the original, and it is considered by many to be one of the funniest games ever made. The Bard, who is voiced by The Princess Bride’s Cary Elwes, is a sarcastic, reluctant hero who has little interest in saving the world unless there is enough profit in it. We try to turn all the classic RPG clichés upside down in this hilarious tribute to the genre we all love. But don’t just listen to me; here is what some of the critics think:

“The Bard’s Tale is easily the funniest game I’ve ever played, and I’ve played all the funny games out there.” –IGN

“The Bard's Tale earns a full five GiN Gems for their treasure chest, a score that even the sarcastic Bard should not have a problem with.” 5/5 Stars and RPG of the Year – gameindustry.com

To download your free copy from Steam, first log into your account at Ranger Center:

Once there, enter your login information or sign up if you were naughty and haven't done so yet. Under the Account tab, you’ll see “A FREE GIFT - The Bard’s Tale” near the bottom. Click “Get Your Free Download Code”. For more instructions on activating a product on steam, click here.

In other news, we wanted to tell all of our backers about the initial success of our crowd-sourcing experiment that we have set up with the Unity Asset Store. We have had hundreds of requests from fans who want to help us make the game. We obviously don’t have the budget to hire everyone, but we did want to find some clever ways to let people help. Secondly, we are a small team, and the Wasteland is a very big place. The more props we get from the fans, the more time our guys get to spend working on key game-play elements. Well, our good friends at Unity decided to help us accomplish both of these goals by letting us set up a special Wasteland 2 asset submission process. We welcome artists and modelers from around the world to join us and submit their amazing work to be considered for inclusion into the game. All you have to do to participate is find the Wasteland 2: Artist’s Starter Kit in the Unity Asset Store, then visit our site for concept art and more instructions. All assets chosen for inclusion in the game remain the property of the creator and they are free to sell it in the Asset Store. In addition to us buying the asset from the creator, we are providing an “As seen in Wasteland 2” badge that they can display on their item in the store.

The great guys at Penny Arcade spoke with Brian about this plan. Check it out here:

So far, the response to this program has been fantastic. We have dozens of submissions already from the first batch. Below are a couple of examples of our concept art, and the assets that were created by fans.





This crowd-sourcing experiment is in its very early stages, but so far we are very impressed with the artwork being delivered.

Thanks again to all of you, our wonderful backers… and have a great holiday!

inXile entertainment

While I typically don't pay much attention to these kind of updates, for some reason I skimmed the e-mail for this one and was pleasantly surprised.

My copy of The Bard's Tale may be tied to Steam, but I can't complain about the game not costing me a cent. Apparently it also includes the original Bard's Tale games 1-3 as well. That's a very nice thing they did there. :)

That's me as well. If I had to buy it from Steam, if I wanted it, I'd probably be bitching about it, but free it's perfectly fine and well appreciated.

That's nice of them, but I have no interest in a steam copy. Happiness to those who use steam though. :)

New screenshot. Looks great!

http://cf.shacknews.com/images/20121221/wasteland2_24292.jpg

Thanks. I agree, it looks good. I'm waiting for all the Unity games to come out to see what can be done with it.

Most of that is placeholder textures I would wager. But it's good to see that Wasteland 2's 'wasteland' won't be all desert and mountains like Fallout. I believe in Wasteland's universe the nuclear war in some areas caused the radiation in the soil to make plants grow ridiculously quickly, so the ruins of towns are overgrown by nature.

THIS is what you guys are clamoring for to wash the taste of the oh-so-apocryphal \fallout 3/New Vegas out? Men of War 1992 edition?

Quite awesome :)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/posts/384518

The Update Before The Update
Update #22 · Jan. 12, 2013 ·
The team at inXile is filled with nervous energy to show off what we've been working on. As we're now in full production, we've been making some great strides with the game’s systems. There is still quite a ways to go, but we're near the point where we can show you all a bit of what you pledged to make a reality.

Within a month, you can expect a new update which will show a few minutes of actual gameplay. The video will follow a slice of the Agricultural Center, which was designed by Mr. Chris Avellone. You'll see a team of four Rangers running around in the world, some early working HUD elements, a few combat encounters, a taste of dialog, and the ranger team using some of their skills. We’ve been working on each of these systems separately and this is the first time we've put them all together to get a small sample of the gameplay experience. It's beginning to look like a real game!

Keep in mind that this is an early build and is intended as a progress report, not as a demonstration of final gameplay. As always, we want to hear your feedback! It has been a cornerstone of our development up to this point and we beg that you keep it coming as it will only result in a better game for everyone. We follow all channels available to us so let us know with a comment below or on Facebook, Twitter, our blog, forums, or by simply shouting very loudly.

We hope you'll see the potential.

If you'd like to get periodic details of the development process, you can also follow me on Twitter @RangerKeenan. Thanks and we look forward to hearing your responses!

Chris Keenan - Producer

From Facebook

"Wasteland 2
3 hours ago
We reviewed the first playable for Wasteland 2 yesterday... it's exciting to see it coming together and feeling like a game. We look forward to showing it to you very soon in our game play video. Good stuff."

Judging by the comments maybe a few more weeks before a video is released

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2025525/brian-fargo-talks-wasteland-2-and-the-future-of-pc-gaming.html

Brian Fargo talks Wasteland 2 and the future of PC gaming

John Gaudiosi
Jan 17, 2013 4:20 PMprint

Brian Fargo speak at GDC China 2011
Brian Fargo has been developing PC games for almost thirty years, and he's still going strong. As founder of Interplay Fargo launched game franchises like Wasteland, Fallout and Bard’s Tale; these days, as CEO of inXile Entertainment, Fargo is still developing games for PC. He recently ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the production of Wasteland 2, raising almost $3 million in the process.

Fargo recently took a break from his work to talk about the process and explain what role fans are playing in creating this much-anticipated sequel.

Game On: What were your goals heading into Wasteland 2?

Fargo: Our goals are pretty simple: we want to deliver the most important role-playing game that’s ever been made before. We have a lot of pressure on us and we love the pressure, but we want to deliver something special.

How are advances in technology impacting the new Wasteland game?

There are some radically different shifts in the way games are being made now versus even, say ten years ago, and one part of it is tools. We can do a lot more in a shorter period of time because of the tools that are available, but also the way that we are communicating with the fans of the game is a big part of how our game is being developed. That’s not necessarily a technology, but it’s a paradigm shift for how we solicit input from people and integrate that.

How has working with Obsidian Entertainment been with this game?

Early on, most of the Obsidian guys worked with me back in the old Interplay days at Black Isle Studios. We’ve been circling around ways to work with each other for many years, but there really wasn’t an opportunity with the way publishers and developers typically work. But with crowd-sourced funding we can do anything we want. We pick up the phone and make it happen.

So we have a mutual respect, and Obsidian is the primary on this one. There’s some technology and information sharing going on about what they’ve learned in building products and vice versa, but primarily we've been working with Chris Avellone, who was a big Wasteland fan as a kid. He was one of the co-creators of Fallout and so he wanted to be involved [with Wasteland 2.]


The original Wasteland game running on a DOS emulator.
We wanted him involved, so we found a way to to solicit his input and get him to create some of the maps for the game.

What role will fans who funded Wasteland 2 play as the game is developed?

Having the fans involved is the most different and important part of the whole project. We have a lot of pressure to deliver more than ever before, and it’s important that we make a great game; not just for ourselves, but also for the next round of people who want to do big Kickstarter projects. People are watching and keeping an eye on us, on Tim Schafer and on others. Even though I have more personal pressure than ever before, I feel confident because we’re vetting everything with the fans along the way.

We’re soliciting feedback from the backers, or the fans, on the priority of things, and I think if you listen to them you really get great information. We took it even one step further, which is we have a lot of people that are always wanting to be involved with the game and sending us writing samples, art samples, whatever. We formalized that process. We don’t have a huge staff, so we asked our fans to submit things to the Unity Store and we’ll go through it. This allows people that want to break into the business a chance to get their assets in the game.

The first couple of rounds of submissions that have come in have been fantastic stuff. It’s been great for us, and the creators can resell their work on [the Unity Store] and make money from it. We buy it from them.

What’s the time frame and storyline for Wasteland 2?

The sequel to Wasteland takes place 15 years after the first game ended. The basic premise is that the world was, for the most part, destroyed by nuclear bombs. One part of society has regressed, while other parts have - through technology and exponential growth - become even more advanced than society was before the apocalypse.


The first public screenshot of Wasteland 2, which is currently in development.
So there are these conflicting pockets, but within that there’s a group of Army engineers that took refuge in a prison to escape the devastation. They survive, set up the Desert Rangers and tackle the job of bringing law and order back to this uncivilized world. That’s where you, as the players, take control of a group of Rangers going out there and dealing with the host of issues. It’s sort of a “Cops” on steroids in a strange, post-apocalyptic world.

How customizable will the Desert Rangers be in this game?

We’re really hanging our hat on the customizable nature of the rangers, so that starts with character creation right off the bat. Some role-playing games have gone a different way where you play a specific character and then you get to hear his dialect and how he speaks or reacts; this is a little bit different. While designing the game we don’t really know whether you’re creating a group of Russian women or what. The game is completely customizable in terms of your skills and your attributes and even the look of it. You can import portraits that you want to have represent your groups, and we even let you choose the pack of cigarettes you like to smoke.

What do you think about turn-based gameplay?

For deep role-playing games I think it’s a given that you need to do [turn-based combat] because combat’s the thing you do the most, and already these types of games require a lot of reading and a lot of thinking. I think the combat system should follow suit: turn-based combat has you worrying about things like distance, height, ammunition, inventory, skill systems, etc. You’re always using your brain, and I think that’s critical for a good role-playing game.

What are your thoughts on PC gaming today?

For years, PC gaming has been declared dead and going away. And strangely enough, here we are and it appears to be stronger than ever, especially from a creative perspective. I look at crowd-funding, I look at the slate of titles that are coming out in the next year to two and they are more innovative and creative than I have seen in a long time. That’s going to make you feel pretty good about the PC. It's really an open system, much more so than [home consoles] where it seems like we always see the same [kinds of games.]

You can’t compete with the crowd, so as the PC continues to remain open I think we’re going to continue to see more and more innovation there than anywhere else.

"We’re really hanging our hat on the customizable nature of the rangers, so that starts with character creation right off the bat. Some role-playing games have gone a different way where you play a specific character and then you get to hear his dialect and how he speaks or reacts; this is a little bit different. While designing the game we don’t really know whether you’re creating a group of Russian women or what. The game is completely customizable in terms of your skills and your attributes and even the look of it. You can import portraits that you want to have represent your groups, and we even let you choose the pack of cigarettes you like to smoke. "

That sounds great. I really enjoy reading Fargo's comments on the game. He seems to be in tune with what players hope for. I'm not a hardcore RPG gamer myself, but even in my limited scope everything sounds great.

Got 2 of my 3D models accepted for WL2: :D
http://oi49.tinypic.com/2lazonr.jpg

Not sure how they are gonna make it consistent with all other peoples' models. Since almost everyone has a different style of textures.

Congrats!

I think there's going to be a video update this week with new footage of the game.

edit - new footage confirmed on twitter: https://twitter.com/rangerkeenan/status/298904386573316096

Without Further Ado...
Update #23 · Feb. 09, 2013 · 225 comments


We are very proud to provide the first gameplay video of Wasteland 2, which will allow our backers to see how far we've come and how everything is coming together. The usual way of doing things in this industry would see us create a demo specifically for displaying to the press or at game shows, but we're very glad to have been allowed the freedom to create a demo video from an actually playable area, which ensures there's no wasted code. This is a straight video capture of Development Director Chris Keenan playing the game. The only element that is not running in code is the sound effects, as it was faster to do in post, but as you will hear, there is nothing being done audio wise that isn't easily replicated in engine. In fact, we plan to have many more sound effects in the final game than what is heard here.

Wasteland 2 - Early Gameplay Footage

This represents not just the strong synergy of the inXile team but the effects of your continued input via the forums. The game has continued to improve thanks to this communication, and Wasteland 2 will be better for it. The benefits have ranged from changes to the combat mechanics to finalizing the name of our attribute system.

It also represents the success of working with Unity and the asset creation experiment we did to increase the variety and density of the world look. We were pleasantly surprised at the talent that submitted art content, and we look forward to continuing to work with them.

I’d also like to thank the military personnel who joined our Yammer group to help us develop the slang and communicate more real world experiences for us to draw on. We love to learn little things like how much they hate it when movies say “Over and out!”… There is no “out” after “over” dammit!

This first level you will see is one of the first areas you will encounter in the game. The agricultural center was also a part of Wasteland 1. It was an area that Chris Avellone had some affinity for and he did the design for the level. Also thanks goes out to Nathan Long, who provided this area’s clever writing. We had a chance to show Chris the level last week, and when we commented that it was coming together he said “not coming together … it has COME together.”

Our objective was to show off some of the HUD and how both the combat and skill systems work. There are many elements not represented here but to name a few:
Minimal particle effects
Minimal sound
Mini-map not working
Inventory, logbook and other character screens not shown
Not all skills (in and out of combat) being represented
No world map movement
It needs more messaging in the UI
And not a comprehensive list of all the combat variables

Sorry if we're over communicating, but it's just a reminder: we're just past the halfway mark, so don't expect to see everything that you can expect from the final game just quite yet.

You will get to listen to the latest track from Mark Morgan (at the bottom of this update) that sets the haunting and often desolate tone of the Wasteland. And you will hear our first pass at the radio broadcasting which plays a vital role in communication, reactivity and mood setting. There will be a host of cults who are broadcasting their propaganda while other calls will be the locals who seek the help of our rangers. We have many interesting ideas on how to use the radio in novel ways.

Our vision for this game remains intact and you will see a number of examples that illustrate this. The customization can be seen in the examples of bringing in your own portraits and by the ability to set the user interface in a style that works for you.

You wanted a party and turn based RPG with tactical combat, and we are delivering that. The demo helps to show off action points, use of cover, enemy view cones, distance/height/enemy size/enemy speed affecting the chance to hit, ammo configurations, attributes changing the characters strengths and role, simultaneous party firing and more. And we are not done adding elements to make sure you are fully engaged in an interesting combat system. There is still plenty of time for you to comment on the combat system and to help us hone it in. Our goal is to build a very deep combat system, with the potential to dive in and fine-tune your damage-output and tactics, while not absolutely requiring that level of micro-management from all players.

If you played Wasteland 1, you will enjoy the many callbacks to the original, but at the same time there is no need of that knowledge. While certainly not a comedy you will get a healthy dose of the humor that gave Wasteland its charm.

Once again we thank you all for backing our vision…