I really can't wait for this game.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/posts/412225

New Updated (too long to post)

I... kinda want to give them more money...

Good to see that the dialogue system from the demo wasn't set in stone at that point. That was my one major gripe, but they seem to be going in a much better direction. :)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/posts/420739?ref=email&show_token=792895577b0aceb4

inXile announces the launch of their Kickstarter campaign for Torment: Tides of Numenera
Update #26 · Mar. 07, 2013 · 3 comments


On Monday we released the news that we would be launching another Kickstarter campaign for Torment: Tides of Numenera today. If your reaction to the news was, “Hell yes, that is awesome news!” you can stop reading this update and head right to the Torment Kickstarter page to check out a lot more detail on the product. There is a ton of information about the team and the project, so please give it a read. We are crazy excited about the opportunity to work on Torment, and the Torment Kickstarter page should be enough to get all of you excited too.

If your reaction to the news about Torment was more like, “inXile, you greedy bastards, why would you launch a Kickstarter before Wasteland 2 is even done!”, then keep reading; we are addressing that point in this update…

To those outside the industry, it might seem odd to launch another Kickstarter before Wasteland 2 is done. We understand that it raises some questions, and we want our Wasteland 2 backers to understand the decision and to have access to all the information that has led us down this path. The goal of this update is not to convince you to back Torment; the goal of this update is to answer one simple question. Why now?

One of the keys to success for a small game company is being able to create continuity within the development team. It takes a long time to get a team put together, and it takes an even longer time for a team to settle in to new working relationships, a new engine, new systems, and a new asset creation pipeline. A team’s knowledge and experience grows a lot during a development cycle, and all of that knowledge gained is lost if we let the team break up when a project ships. To address that issue we have developed a very simple strategy that has already worked for us on dozens of titles in the last 25 years. Here is a quick explanation of our development team-structure philosophy:

inXile, with all of our internal employees and outside contractors, consists of enough people to be considered about the size of a team and a half. This is by design. We always want a small and efficient team (the “half team”) to design both our product and our product development plan. This is called pre-production. It is the most important time in a project’s life cycle. This is the time when we want to make sure we slow down and get it right. During this phase we don't need all the engineers and 3D Artists on the project, it is mostly concept art, design and dialog writing. When this process is completed and we are ready to roll into full production we want to have a large team of people ready to make the game. If the planning was done well during the pre-production phase we can be very efficient during production and leave ourselves with plenty of time to iterate and make amazing games. If there is no pre-production done, and the full team is trying to create the design and development plan as they go, months, if not years, are wasted. Having a full team try to start a project when the pre-production has not been completed is like stacking up a giant pile of money and lighting it on fire. This same philosophy served us quite well at Interplay in creating some of the best RPGs of all time.

The “half team” in our team and a half model consists of writers and artists as well as designers and a producer. They are the ones that define the game design, write the dialog, define the combat, the UI, the missions, and even parts of the level design. We spent about 6 months working on this pre-production for Wasteland 2 and we would like to spend even longer doing it on Torment. For inXile, this “half team” that did the pre-production for Wasteland is done, their work on Wasteland 2 is completely finished. We want to get this group into pre-production on Torment to keep them working together on a project we are all passionate about.

Currently, Wasteland 2 is in full production with a team of 15+ people cranking away on it. This is the full team that consists of engineers, scripters, character modelers, environment artists, and animators. This team is implementing the plan created during the Wasteland 2 pre-production cycle. When this full team rolls off of Wasteland 2 at the end of the year, they will need something else to do. Having a complete pre-production plan at that time allows us to roll the entire team onto a finely honed game design. Team continuity is maintained, and efficient production can begin. In a traditional publisher model, now is the time in the project life cycle where we would start to try and sign the next big contract. The best tool we have to get that done is to go back to our new publisher, you, and explain that now is the best time to start the next project.

Our “half team” is ready to start the pre-production for Torment now. They need about 8 months to get this pre-production work done. In an amazing coincidence, in about 8 months I will have a full team that is ready to take that pre-production plan and create a game. The alternative, starting pre-production on Torment after Wasteland 2 is done, increases the cost of Torment production greatly and requires us to reduce our headcount during the process.

Staggering projects like we are doing with Wasteland 2 and Torment is the best tool a single-team company like inXile has to be successful. It has the triple value of making us more efficient, giving us a better game design and making sure we keep our design and art talent working with us.

To make everything as clear as we can regarding the Torment Kickstarter and what it means for Wasteland 2, I will attempt to answer some other questions you might have:

• We do want to be abundantly clear that no Wasteland money is to be spent developing Torment. No Torment money is being spent on Wasteland 2. That said, lots of tools, plug-ins and pipeline processes that have taken man months to create will be shared between the projects if we can keep team continuity.

• The pre-production of Torment is not going to hinder the development of Wasteland in any way. As explained above, they are different teams during the pre-production.

We hope this update helps to explain the logic of why we are launching this Kickstarter now. Based on our experience we know that now is the time to get Torment rolling. We also hope that we can count on your support for Torment, and if not your support, at least your understanding. This system has always served us well so we think it makes sense to try and re-create it with you.

New concept art. Looks amazing!

http://sphotos-c.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/166780_501157736600161_125248940_n.jpg

My god he looks fugly!!!...


Anyway yes the artwork is awesome on that and other pieces ive seen :). Do you know if they have wallpapers (other than the initial two of the rangers and scorpion one from early one). ?.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/posts/435142

M.A.D.ness
Update #27 · Mar. 23, 2013 · 16 comments


Let us just start by saying that development of Wasteland 2 has been going really well. We may go quiet at times but please don't mistake our silence for a lack of progress. At this point in the process, the most important thing for the game is focusing on adding all of the content to get it to a fully playable state. Once we’re there, we can iterate and polish each area and feature for the best play experience. Production of the game is the top priority of the Wasteland 2 team right now, and it's all hands on deck on that one!

We recently showed you a first look at Wasteland 2's gameplay, a good glimpse of how the game is shaping up since you helped us make this game a reality almost a full year ago now. We're currently looking to hit a huge internal milestone at the end of April: having all level geometry blocked in and all encounters and interactions scripted. They are currently in various states of completion, but we are tracking well to have them all in a playable state. Meanwhile, we have multiple artists creating portraits, characters and environment models. We are really starting to fill out the world, with a lot of extra credit for that going to...
W.A.S.T.E - Unity Crowdsourced Experiment

A few months ago we launched our Unity Crowdsourced Experiment with the help of Unity and their Asset Store. We had already been using the unity asset store to provide us with additional content that we then modify for our game, but by offering more exact outlines for people to work from, we have been able to take it all a step further. With this experiment, we offer modelers an art guide and a list of assets we're looking for, but don’t overly go into specifics as we like people to be creative and vary things up based on their own style, as long as it fits the style guide. This gives us a rich variety of assets to work with, while the artists retain ownership of their assets. They can put their asset in the Unity Asset Store to make money from other developers and get a credit in the Wasteland 2 credits (if selected).

As with any new process, this one came with its own challenges and hiccups, but we are learning quickly. Submissions go through the Unity Asset Store and then to our artists, and it took some time to get this process in sync. When new batches go up, we’ll reach out through Facebook as well as our official forums, where you can also find our artists to ask any questions you might have.

Now, our senior environment artist Koy vanOteghem will talk a bit about this project...

Hello Backers,

Been cranking away on WL2 for a while now, and so happy to be getting to the point where we are able to have level reviews discussing where we are at on each scene from both a scripting and art perspective. Of course, the W.A.S.T.E. (Wasteland2 Asset Store Threedee Experiment) has been more than great, for many reasons beyond the opportunity to purchase some pretty sweet work from truly dedicated fans and artists. It really has been an unusual and unexpectedly exciting means of connecting with the community. My thanks go out to all of those who have suffered through the sometimes painfully slow start-up process.

As I am sure participants of the experiment know, Batch 4 has yet to be announced. While I cannot go into details, it is due for release soon, as part of a larger plan that I know excites us and should be great for the participants as well. More to come on that in the very near future, for now my lips are sealed. We are sad that it’s delayed our requests for what should be a fun batch of assets, with a few new request types for some of the more experienced environment artists. (Giddy with anticipation.)

So you’ve all seen the video by now, I assume, and I hope that a few of you have had the pleasure to see a few of your W.A.S.T.E. submissions working their way into our scenes. It was always my goal and hope that these assets would slip right in, under the radar, striking the right look without complicated changes on our end. Use of atmospherics (like lighting, fog, post-processes, FX, etc.) always have great ability to unify a scene, but certainly there needs to be a base level of quality and style present for these techniques to be effective. And I think to a great extent this is due to the tone and style that our resident concept artist, Phill Dickenson, has crafted. His pieces have so greatly influenced much of the work that we’ve received when it comes to proportions and the tone that’s struck; a high percentage of deliverables have been employed with little to no extra effort on our part. He has been a great partner in developing this look, so much thanks to him for all of that.

Keep up the fantastic work participants. I eagerly await the launch of Batch 4, and the onslaught of new submissions.

Koy vanOteghem
T-Shirts

Our backer shirts are almost ready! As soon as we get them, we’ll send out requests to have eligible backers select their shirt. We plan to ship them as soon as we get them, and eligible backers will receive their shirts before the game ships.
Novella

Michael Stackpole has submitted the first pass of his novella. It will be given some extra polish and then be released in two parts, eligible backers receiving the first one in the near future, with the second following a bit later for backers whose pledge tier included both parts.
Torment: Tides of Numenera

We launched a Kickstarter for our next game project, Torment: Tides of Numenera about two weeks ago. It was a huge success, reaching its target funding level in six hours and breaking Ouya's record as the fastest Kickstarter to reach $1M (our record has since been tackled by Veronica Mars, but what can you do?). Torment's success guarantees a good production rollover process for inXile, but changes nothing for Wasteland 2's development plan as the Torment pre-production team works separately from the Wasteland 2 production team. Torment has really caught people's attention and imagination. We love the feedback we're getting and are very excited about it, so please check it out if you haven’t done so already.

Once we clear our Alpha milestone, you can expect to see some more screenshots and details on the different areas of Wasteland 2. We will start to showcase some of the cults and their many motivations and cultures.
The M.A.D. Monks

In southern Arizona there are a group of monks that are part of an offshoot of the Servants of the Mushroom Cloud cult from Wasteland 1. These monks worship radiation itself, which they refer to as the Great Glow, as well as their hidden guardian whom the refer to only as Titan. It is the Monks belief that the only way to ascend to the afterlife is to absorb enough radiation into their bodies that they become one with the Great Glow, or better yet, to be destroyed in a nuclear event while protecting the order. This leads their warriors, or M.A.D. Monks as the locals refer to them, to the practice of strapping radiation filled dirty bombs to their chests and self-detonating at the first sign of conflict. The M.A.D. in M.A.D. Monk refers to Mutually Assured Destruction, and if you get too close to them you will find out why.

Have a great weekend everyone!

inXile entertainment

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

In the Wasteland, it's all "Self-Defense"
Update #28 · Apr 23, 2013 · 57 comments


You’ve heard plenty about Torment over the last month (pretty amazing, huh?!?!) and now it’s time to bring back the good ol’ Wasteland 2 update! The main reason you haven’t heard from us for a while is because our development team is knee-deep in production to get to our end of April milestone. When we exit pre-production, we have paper design for most everything, it’s just a matter of spending the hours, days, and weeks to build, code, and craft the levels and systems you will ultimately play. It tends to be extremely time intensive, but it is one of the most exciting times of the project as you really get a sense of the game as a whole. A few key production milestones that we’ve hit:
All 14 major areas have been blocked out with the base level geometry. And yes, this is revealing we will have 14 major areas.
We have maps loading (from scene to scene) so we’ve stitched together all areas to form a cohesive flow.
95% of all conversation encounters are placed and working. That means you can talk to just about everyone and go through their various states of reactivity based on how you deal with the conversation.
Our core AI system is built and fully functional. These tools allow the designers to build, modify and tune many of the AI behaviors we need for the game (outside of special cases).
Our inventory system is fully functional. **We will detail this further in an update within the next month**

Before I continue with this update, I’d love for everyone reading this to check out this link, showing the success of fan involvement with this game. From the first day we were discussing this Kickstarter, we knew we wanted to be directly in touch with our community but I’m not sure we had any idea how much it could change our fundamental process of making games. All of these (and more) fan-created contributions will make it into Wasteland 2. More on the W.A.S.T.E program later…

First, we’d like to talk a bit more on our weapons system and the thought process that led us to the implementation we have now.
What sort of weapons are at my disposal?

Hello everyone my name is Devin Morrow and I am a combat designer here at inXile Entertainment. I have been asked by the powers that be (read: Chris Keenan, our production director) to introduce myself as well as provide to you, our generous fans and backers, a little insight into our current weapons design progress and philosophy.

This is my first time, so please be gentle.

In the original Wasteland and many other RPG’s, there is a clear weapon progression. As you worked your way through the game, weapons like the handgun became less effective in favor of the larger weapons. While this makes some sense it does limit the ability of a player to choose their favorite weapon type for thematic or role playing purposes. It’s hard to play the part of a wasteland gunslinger when you had to ditch your trusty M1911A1 pistol for an AK-97 because the damage just wasn’t cutting it anymore. In Wasteland 2, we want to give back a little more control to the player over how their characters are built and how they progress. This is something we have heard the community echo many times in conversation and on the forums, so it’s nice to know we are on the right track.

With that in mind, Wasteland 2’s weapons are divided into a number of classes, each with their own progression. We’ve created a system where if you invest into pistols, you can use them from start to finish and be effective throughout. The same thing goes for sniper rifles, sub machine guns, blunt weapons, bladed weapons, brawling weapons, anti-tank, demolitions, energy weapons, and rifles (list subject to change™). We even took this a step further and allowed more specific, thematic progression within the classes. For instance, we have a range of revolvers from starting equipment up to end-game death dealers that are all part of the handgun class/skill. The same is true for semi-automatic pistols if they are more to your taste. Do you like bolt-action or semi-automatic sniper rifles? One-handed or two-handed melee weapons? How about rockets or grenade launchers? Not to worry, we have something for all of you!

That’s not to say that each of these weapons will be as effective as the others in every combat situation. A core design tenet that spans all systems we’re creating has been one of “the trade-off”. We applied this to the weapons system by creating a defined role for each class. Most of these roles you will pick up on quickly. SMGs aren’t as accurate as rifles, don’t shoot as far, and don’t hit as hard or penetrate armor as easily. They do however put out a respectable amount of lead, have the advantage of using pistol rounds which are in greater supply, and require less Action Points to move with. A fast character can be devastating with a SMG, quickly closing in and unloading on an enemy where the accuracy penalty is drastically reduced. On a lightly armored enemy, the damage per action point will be much higher with a SMG versus a rifle (of the same approximate level). Anti-Tank weapons fire and reload slowly, will reduce your character’s speed in combat and are expensive to use, but will do massive damage to a large area. Just make sure you don’t have rangers standing behind your rocket-propelled grenade or the back blast might take them out too.

To keep things fun and allow a little flexibility to the system, we have incorporated weapons within each category that blur the lines between different roles. The perfect example of this is the D18 (totally not the Glock 18) automatic pistol. While not as effective at being a SMG as an SMG, it does allow the player heavily invested in handgun skills a little more flexibility in roles. Some other examples are the shotgun shell firing revolver and the .55 caliber WW2 anti-tank rifle.

Before I go I want to thank the community at Ranger Center. The “Weapons you would like to see in Wasteland 2” thread is one of the largest threads in our forums. You have been a great resource of creativity. I also think you’ll all be pretty happy with the weapon lists we have compiled. We have done our best to incorporate as many of the serious, real world fire arms as we could while still leaving room for some of the crazier suggestions as well (I’m looking at you, welded-together double SMGs). I will hopefully be back soon with an update on our weapon and ammo crafting/upgrade/mod systems and other assorted goodies. Until then please keep the flood of ideas and feedback coming, I assure you we are listening.
W.A.S.T.E. Batch 4

The fourth batch of our Wasteland2 Asset Store Threedee Experiment (W.A.S.T.E.) is now out. After discovering the impressive quality level of assets we received for the previous batches, our art team decided to up the challenge a bit for our contributors. With this latest batch, we’re looking for even more variety and creativity, as many of these props are frequently used and the more varied the set we have to work from, the better the game world will look. We’re also requesting “tile set” meshes for the first time. If you’re interested in contributing, please see the Unity page for more information as well as the gallery of art assets we are looking for.

While our contributors are working on batch 4, we are processing approved contributions from batch 3, as well as reviewing a fresh set of contributions from that batch. While W.A.S.T.E. has not been without its hiccups and delays, we’ve been working to smooth the process, and it’s still exciting to see the high-quality work of your submissions.
DRM-Free Release

We have been getting a lot of questions regarding our plans for DRM-free releases moving forward. To clarify, we are offering the game on as many digital distributors as is viable. Currently we are confirmed on Steam, Origin, and GOG. The Steam and Origin versions will work just like any other games on those services and will not have any additional DRM. The GOG version will be DRM free. We will look at more digital retailers – including other DRM-free ones (such as Desura) – as we get closer to release. As well, we won’t require you to be online to play the game.

We are not currently actively planning any DLC or expansion, since we’re fully focused on delivering our promises with Wasteland 2. It’s not out of the question, but we have made a commitment to 65,000+ people to deliver a fully-complete, bad-ass successor to Wasteland and that’s all we’re concerned with right now. Once the game is released and we can take a deep breath, we’ll evaluate the next best steps for the game and our fans.

Chris Keenan
Production Director

Nice round-up of interview quotes from Fargo.

http://www.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=63527

New interview with WL2's production director Chris Keenan:
http://gamingbolt.com/wasteland-2-interview-with-inxile-entertainment-evolutionary-changes-player-choice-the-next-generation-and-much-more

Nothing in the way of new information, but it's an interesting read. Mostly just fan-service to assure they are only making a game for the fans.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/posts/495853
Update 29: How many squeezins can I fit in my bag?



In this update, you’ll find a relatively quick video detailing some features of our inventory screen. Our top design goal with inventory is to make sure it is functional and easy to navigate. We considered the positives and negatives of things like grid vs. list backpacks, weight-based or “tetris” style along with navigation details to see which elements will work best with our design. Being that Wasteland 2 is a party-based game, you will essentially have between 4 and 7 inventories to access at any one point. This could become tedious if the design doesn't promote easy management and trading. To reduce this nasty element, we added things like double-click to equip/use, column-based sorting for major characteristics, hot keys for trading, and our smart-loot favorites system.

Check out the video below (in 1080p for best viewing) and let us know what you think! We want to hear your thoughts on improvements to functionality that could be made before release. Please feel free to do so as a reply to this update, on our Facebook page, and our forums and blog. The more vocal you are, the better chance you have of being heard!

Before you get to the video, here are a few things on our task lists that aren't shown in the video. These weren't fully implemented yet but will be prior to release.
Key bindings for menus and commonly used items. You’ll have the ability to designate hot keys for quick navigation of things like trading items to a specific party member or entering into various menus.
Mouse-overs for all relevant icons and backpack items to give detailed stats. Each of the icon details on the item pictures and inventory slots will have mouse-overs that show all of the granular stats you've come to expect from hardcore RPG's.

Please be gentle. I was sick when I was recording the video earlier this week...

Damonta – The Airplane Village

Here is a new screen shot from a work-in-progress area in Arizona we have not talked about yet. This night shot is from the town of Damonta, which was built from the ruins of the real airplane graveyard that is located south-east of Tucson, Arizona. When we saw images of the real location we were inspired to create a level of the game set in a makeshift village built from the remains of over five thousand airplanes. We will have more shots and a level overview from Damonta in the next update…
Production Update

In our previous updates we mentioned our end-of-April milestone: “having all level geometry blocked in and all encounters and interactions scripted”. We’re happy to say we've pretty much hit that milestone. "Pretty much?” you ask? We hit what would satisfy the letter of that milestone. While we had all encounters blocked in, there were still issues that needed to be cleaned up and sorted before a full playthrough was really possible. For that reason, we set an end of May milestone to clean up the block-in pass for a true beginning-to-end playthrough from a conversation and mission perspective. This means Wasteland 2 is in a fully playable, “alpha-ish” state. The beta is still months away, and we’re tracking well towards it.

Our first priority was to block in all maps, and now we get to move onto the phase of propping them out to make them more presentable. We will be iterating and polishing the levels from a gameplay standpoint while the art team is making everything look amazing. As the art gets better, we will have many more screenshots to show off to all of you!
Our Community Manager

We would like to introduce one of our newest employees: Thomas Beekers, also known as Brother None (a Fallout reference so obscure most people miss it entirely). If you've sent in a question to us through Kickstarter or our backer centers in the past few months, more likely than not it was Thomas answering. Thomas has actually been helping us out since before the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter, when Brian Fargo reached out to No Mutants Allowed to get some extra feel from the hardcore RPG communities. After the past year of valuable feedback and help in Wasteland community interaction, it only made sense to bring him on board full-time.

Thomas has been around hardcore RPG communities like NMA and RPGCodex since the late 90's. He has also worked as a game reviewer and editor for RPG website GameBanshee for the past six years while also finishing up his BA in History and MA in Russian Studies. His activity in the gaming community makes him ideally suited to help us on community interaction, as well as providing feedback in our earliest alpha tests for Wasteland 2. Thomas is also going to help reaching out and finalizing the in-game backer content in the coming months.

Until next time…Have a great week everyone!

Chris Keenan, Development Director, inXile entertainmen

In short, new inventory video from Inxile and I mostly love the interface however the card on the upper right hand feels overused in zombie games like Dead State and Zafehouse Diaries.

Inventory Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHN7QTcuqI4

Also a new smallish screenshot:
http://i.imgur.com/bItgqPz.jpg

I actually watched the 17 min gameplay video they released in Feb again for the 5th time and noticed they used one of my submitted 3D models for the crowdsourcing experiment which I have not noticed before. /woot. Now I have 3 models approved by them, a shack, a science lab table and a bookshelf also another pending one. :D 5th Batch of assets probably coming soon.

Do you mean the picture of the items?

I can't wait to see what the Broken Toaster is used for.