INTERFACE

Controls and Shortcuts

Q. Will there be a zoom option?
A. (T.C. 3/1) No.

Q. Can you assign a group of characters to a selection hotkey?
A. (S.C. 2/6) Yes you can, with ctrl-number. Activate the group with alt-number.

Q. Will there be a hotkey to highlight dropped items (ala D2, Dungeon Siege, IWD2)?
A. (S.M. 2/6) We hope to incorporate such a feature. However since it is not currently implemented I can't comment much more on it.

Q. Do you support right-clicking as a shortcut for buying/selling?
A. (T.C. 2/5) No, but I like that. On cool list.

User Interface

Q. Will there be an in-game map, and can notes be placed on it?
A1. (S.C. 2/13) [Yes, there is an in-game map.] Annotating [it] (with a little flag and comment) is supported and already implemented.

A2. (M.M. 3/4) the townmaps and worldmap interface are super buttery. You can zoom in and out, notes, player location, it unveils as you explore it.... super cool.

Q. How will magic spells be accessed?
A. (T.C. 2/8) Spells use a radial menu to be cast.

Q. Will there be auto-cast routines for defensive spells?
A. (S.M. 3/12) I believe the answer was, we think it is a really cool idea. However it is not on anybodies implementation list. I'm sure it will get lumped with the other "cool-shit" things. There is chance of it getting implemented, but not that high of a chance.

Q. Will items have a help screen associated with them that tells you what they do?
A. (T.C. 2/6) Identified magic items will display a description, and their abilities appear in your use item menu.

Q. How does the ToEE journal compare to other CRPGs with journals?
A. (S.M. 2/15) It is kind of Arcanum like. If I remember correctly there are the following pages in the journal...

Quests:
Quests list your quests and their current state and any detailed information about them.

Rumors:
Rumors list any rumors (true or false) that you've heard in your adventures.

Keys:
Keys is a list of keys you currently have (this means you don't have to manage them in your inventory or worry about losing them, etc).

Ego:
Ego is your ego page, it lists things like the most difficult creature killed, the most good creature killed, things like that.

Q. Will the journal keep track of which quests you've solved or botched?
A1. (T.C. 2/6) Yes. The journal tracks the quest states mentioned, accepted, completed and botched.

A2. (T.C. 3/27) We have [a solved/botched filter] already in place. And I know the book opens to the last page you looked at.

Q. Can you toggle the user interface on/off or resize it?
A1. (T.C. 2/5) Most of it. You always see your party portraits and associated health and condition bars.

A2. (S.M. 2/5) Wish we could show you screenies right now but there isn't much interface most of the time. Besides character portraits and a little utility bar (and initiative bar / d20 action monitor in turn based combat) you get fullscreen game. All other user interface is primarily fullscreen and toggleable (inventory/charedit/spell memorization, townmap/worldmap, logbook, etc).

A3. (T.C. 2/8) Certain windows (such as roll history window and parts of the dialog window) can be resized for convenience. Others (like inventory) are just there or not.

Q. Will there be a fixed dialog box, or will we have Arcanumish bubble-boxes?
A1. (T.C. 2/5) Fixed dialog box.

A2. (S.M. 2/5) As Tim said, dialog box is fixed, however they also float over their heads their bubbles. Also all conversation text is logged with your roll history incase you ever want to go back and review.

Q. Will the scrollback buffer be long enough to hold an entire combat session?
A. (S.M. 2/5) Currently it is paged in from disk/memory as needed and carries every roll you ever make from the moment your characters are dropped in the game. Depending on how much disk space this ends up taking up we may implement a different system. It is my hope to be able to store every roll, there are also worries that the scrollbar will become to fine grained to allow finding what you want when you have thousands of rolls. So its kind of still up in the air.

Q. Will you be able to assign spells and skills to quickslots? If so, how many quickslots are we going to have?
A. (T.C. 2/5) Yes. 10 per character.

Combat Interface

Q. Will we be able to tell how badly the enemy is hurt?
A. (S.M. 2/15) Currently you can hover over people and determine name, hp, and a few other tidbits of information. We think this will stay in but we're not 100% positive. I'd say yes for now.

Q. Will we be able to see our paths before we move in combat?
A1. (S.M. 2/13) We resolve the path before you move, and render it to the screen. So you can see where you are going, where you would incur an attack of opportunity and allow you to move elsewhere or plot points along your way to get the desired movement you want.

A2. (S.C. 2/26) We're still working it out, but currently when you hold down the mouse button, you see the path your character will take to get to the target. If you would incur any attacks of opportunity, they are displayed by a neat little icon, plus an arrow from the threatening monster. If you move the mouse before releasing the button, it's treated as an abort. I still have to color-code the path so you can tell if it's a five foot step, single move or double move.

Q. Will we be able to see what percentage chance we have to hit a target with melee and ranged attacks?
A. (T.C. 2/5) No, but this I like, and it should be easy.

Q. Will we be able to see if our ranged attack will have a distance penalty assigned to it?
A. (T.C. 2/5) Hmm, right now you can see penalties after the attack. Cool list.

Q. Will the game have a square combat grid visible?
A. (S.M. 2/3) We use a non gridded version of combat, which actually seems to work out really well. Personally I feel the grid made 3rd edition easier to play pen and paper, but with the computer able to calculate distances based upon radii and fractional measurements the lack of grid makes the game more fun.

Q. Can you tell us some of the combat data that will be represented in the interface?
A. (S.M. 2/3) We will indicate complicated paths, and attacks of opportunity as well as reach and spell ranges in the interface.

Q. Will there be highlighted ranges for Area of Effect spells?
A1. (H.N. 1/10) in short, yes. you'll toast your own PC's only if you want to

A2. (H.N. 1/10) spells that need targeting will be classified appropriately, e.g. cone of cold will use a cone (obviously), fireball uses a radius selection, hold person uses a single target selection mode, etc. and yes, spells that have variable range/areas by caster level, will be reflected properly by the targeting UI

A3. (T.C. - RPG Vault) You can actually see the area of effect of any spell in the game. When you throw a Fireball, for instance, you are given a circle that you can move around the screen, and any target within the circle gets highlighted. We are supporting spells that can have multiple targets, like Magic Missile, and even ones with variable size areas of effect, like Wall of Fire. These features make combat magic feel very strategic.

Game Appearance

Q. What is being done to facilitate the feeling that the environment is dynamic and interactive?
A1. (L.F. 2/11) Well, the big thing is the clipping that Bryan has done, along with real-time props. You can walk behind stuff. Spell effects clip against walls and such. [There are] environmental particle effects, like leaves falling, insects swarming trees in swamps...

A2. (S.C. 2/11) We've got 3d animated objects, placed particle systems, bunch of stuff

A3. (A.B. 2/11) there are also diff versions of the map art that correspond with the time of day so, things will look diff in nighttime light

A4. (C.M. 2/11) the characters are 3d and have dynamic lighting

A5. (T.C. 3/28) Our interactivity is limited to items you can pick up, including books, and some manipulatable things like doors and chests. If a barrel is not a container, you cannot manipulate it.

Q. Will there be any custom animations for certain feat attacks?
A. (S.M. 2/11) Yeah, technically there is support in for all of the skills/feats having their own animations, they all fallback to magic hands or an idle, its all up to the animators to decide what they have time to put in.

Q. If an enemy misses one of our PCs, will we see the PC dodge?
A. (H.N. 2/13) there are dodge animations, but I believe they aren't hooked in yet specifically for "missed" attacks. so, when and where they will be hooked in is still being decided (if that makes sense).

Q. Will there be idle animations for models?
A. (H.N. 2/7) yes, there are idle animations (both combat and non-combat) for all models - thank vustadumas! (Corey, our animator)

Q. Will there be animations of characters drawing their weapons?
A. (S.M. 3/19) Combat transition animations are something Mike has been bugging me about for years. It is something we'd really like to support, something that we think adds a lot, visually, to the game. Unfortunately it is currently on my "cool-shit" list. And its not too high up on that list.

Q. Will there be any trademark "Troika Gory Death Animations"? ("Riddled With Bullets!")
A1. (S.M. 2/6) All of our death animations are trademarked. You'll probably find them to be dramatic, ultra gory and riddled with bullets... hmmm that's so subjective.

A2. (H.N. 3/6) yes, there are gonna be great death anims. until we can show gameplay shots you'll have to take our word for it

Q. Will we see any blood and gore?
A. (H.N. 2/13) there are blood spurt effects in as of right now (which may change, of course), and the severity of the attack damage does control the amount of blood gibs. critical hits spray an ungodly amount of blood methinks

Q. Is the environment is 100% static?
A. (L.N. 2/11) We can have destroyable things if we want, but with 3d objects... if we want.

Q. Does the game map support elevations, or is everyone stuck on the ground?
A. (S.M. 2/6) We do not give high ground bonuses (if that is what you are asking). There are visual 'elevations' but because the map is a 2d image its pseudo elevated. We also have water with multiple levels of depth.

Q. Can we customize our character's appearance?
A1. (T.C. - Game Banshee - 2/3) In terms of appearance, we have armor, boots, gloves, helmets, weapons (in one or both hands), shields, robes, and cloaks. Our robes and cloaks are beautiful, by the way. We simulate the cloth, so when you move, the robes and cloaks billow out behind you. And while this is nice eye candy, you can also identify the faction of many enemies by the color of their cloaks. And these enemies often identify you in the same way.

A2. (T.C. 2/8) Avatars will use a layering system ("add meshing"), meaning that almost everything will show up on your character, and the game install size won't be so big.

Q. Will we get to adjust our characters skin/hair tone?
A1. (S.M. 2/11) No facial features, hair is interchangeable between a variety of styles and colors. I don't think skin tone is going to make it in. We originally wanted to but our texture system has limits.

A2. (S.M. 3/31) Currently our engine incurs severe penalties and does not have an easy API for manipulating colors or hues on a subset of colors of a texture on the fly. One idea was to have our texture artists redo a bunch of different skin tone textures with all the armors but I don't think this will be feasible within our estimated time frame. I think it is something that we want to add, but probably wont make it for our ship date. But you never know...

Q. If my character is equipped with full plate AND cloak, will the avatar display the cloak or just the plate?
A1. (T.C. 2/11) Yes, you can see both. It's good looking too.

A2. (S.M. 2/11) Steve Moret: If you are wearing a robe, I don't render cloaks. Otherwise everything gets rendered.

Option Screen

Q. Will ToEE support dual monitors?
A. (S.M. 3/12) Every Troika programmer, the ToEE lead designer, and three of the ToEE artists all have dual monitor systems. You should not have any problem with your dual monitor box and additionally you should be able to specify what device you want the game to run on.

Q. Will the game use full-screen anti-aliasing (FSAA)?
A. (M.M. 3/4) everything is Anti-aliased by default if your card supports it. Anti-aliasing is the best. FSAA helps BIG-TIME. All of our player sizes are accurate. When you are Halfling with a dagger you will look WAY better with FSAA.  ( We made the players as big as we could and still make large party and combat look manageable. Nothing sucks worse than scrolling around during combat.

Q. Can we turn off full-screen anti-aliasing in order to improve font readability?
A. (S.M. 3/12) We use relatively crisp fonts so, for me, I don't really think it will be an issue. But yes, you will be able to toggle FSAA.  (

Q. Will the game have an option to run in a window?
A. (S.M. 3/4) Our render has a windowed mode, however we currently don't support adjusting the mouse cursor in windowed mode. It will probably be an unsupported (undocumented) feature.

Q. Will it be possible to export/import characters?
A1. (S.M. 2/11) I originally wanted to have an export tool so you can load your characters into D&D 3ed E-Tools. We will probably have some kind of export tool, just incase you need to import your characters into something else...... hmmm...

A2. (T.C. 3/1) We are trying to get the XML schemas used by the WotC character tool that came in the Player's Handbook, so we can export to it.

A3. (S.M. 3/1) I will be responsible for the character exporter. I wanted to support E-Tool's XML format so that you could just use their style sheets, etc. to get the attractive look. But they have been unable to give me any information on the DTD they use or even an XML Schema. If anybody in the D&D community has a widely used XML schema or DTD we'd love to support it. Any pointers or suggestions are welcomed.

Q. Will there be an Ironman mode?
A1. (I.B. 2/6) Yes. Ironman mode will place limits on saving and may have limits on character creation.

A2. (T.C. 3/1) Our Iron Man mode can be thought of as playing the game like a PnP game. You take the first set of rolls for your stats (no rerolls), and there are no unlimited saves. You start a new game and it will save when you exit, so when you start back up you pick up where you left off. None of this "I save before opening the door" for Iron Man!

A3. (T.C. 3/29) In Iron Man mode, you cannot reroll your stats in the character creation phase, and you only get one save game, which you can only use when you quit the game. You play until you quit (in which case your game is saved) or until you die. And when you die, you are dead. Just like PnP.

Q. Will there be a difficulty select (other than Ironman)?
A1. (S.M. 2/6) This hasn't been decided yet. Playtesting will let us know how much harder or easier or variably easy/hard the game is (or can be).

A2. (T.C. 3/29) We are not exactly sure about difficulty settings yet. We do have Normal mode and Iron Man mode.

Q. Will there be a 'Heart of Fury' mode?
A. (T.C. 3/1) No.

Q. Will the game use EAX?
A. (T.C. 3/1) No.

Q. Can we turn animations off to speed up the game?
A. (T.C. 2/5) No. Maybe a cool list thingy (cool list getting big)

Q. Will there be an option to resize the dialog font?
A. (T.C. 2/5) No, but you can change resolution.

Q. Will the game default to running at the same refresh rate as the desktop?
A. (S.M. 2/5) You should be able to configure resolution, color depth, and refresh via the options screen, but I will recommend that we default to an existing refresh rate. No promises on this one.

Loading and Saving

Q. What in-game criteria affects map load times?
A. (T.C. 2/6) I am not sure that you mean. Map size and number of critters and items affect it, but map load time is so fast that I haven't noticed a problem.

Q. Can we save anywhere and at any time?
A1. (T.C. 2/5) Yes. This almost wasn't true, but a quick beating took care of that.

A2. (S.M. 2/5) Unless you are playing in iron man mode (in which case you can save/quit at anytime).

Q. Can we save the game even if we've cast persistent area effect spells or are in the process of casting spells?
A. (S.M. 2/5) It is our intent to allow you to save anywhere. Most interface is designed to shutdown on save/load so that state will not persist. However the targeting UI will save and load so if you are mid spell cast you should be able to resume. Issues may arise during testing that may change this however. No promises at this time but we hope to let you.

Q. Will there be only one quicksave slot, or will the game generate new quicksaves on each quicksave made?
A. (S.M. 2/5) One quicksave, 10000 save games.

Q. Will there be an autosave option for Ironman mode?
A. (S.M. 2/2) I think we will at least do per map change auto-save for Ironman. Depending on what our final load/save times are we will make them more frequent.

Hardware

Q. What are the minimum system requirements?
A. (T.C. - Game Banshee - 2/3) Our min spec is a 700 MHz processor, with 128 Meg of RAM and a 2nd generation 3D video card, running DirectX 8.1. We don't have a recommend spec yet, but the two biggest factors that improve performance are video cards with high fill rates and CPU's with lots of on-chip cache.

We keep a min spec machine running a current build of the game on a desk outside our conference room. The programmers regularly check to see how well the game is running on that machine, and the artists check their work as well. Our lead artist made many of the spell effects with variable fidelity, so they can run on lower end machines at low fidelity (read, fewer particles and emitters) and still look good.

Q. What are the QA's testing on?
A1. (S.M. 1/16) We currently have a machine that we play the builds on for estimation of what min spec will be "like". It is a Dell Dimension 4100 /w a GeForce2 GTS. I think it has a 700MHz P3 cpu in it. We play with the amount of memory in it (in order to see what will happen if we reduce it) but overall it plays reasonably well.

A2. (T.C. - Game Banshee - 2/3) We keep a min spec machine running a current build of the game on a desk outside our conference room. The programmers regularly check to see how well the game is running on that machine, and the artists check their work as well. Our lead artist made many of the spell effects with variable fidelity, so they can run on lower end machines at low fidelity (read, fewer particles and emitters) and still look good.

Q. What resolutions will the game run in?
A. (T.C. - Game Banshee - 2/3) By default, the game runs at 800x600, but resolution can go up to 1280x1024. We support 16 or 32 bit depth. We kept the main interface pretty dynamic to handle these changes in resolution.

Q. Can we tweak the game to run better on our machine?
A. (S.M. 1/16) We hope to allow you to tune color depth, texture resolution, particle fidelity, screen resolution, and a few other fancy features (that I can't talk about) to better suit any hardware you have.

Q. Is there anything we can do to improve the game performance?
A. (S.M. 1/16) If I were to guess what things would improve performance the most (keep in mind we haven't done a lot of optimization yet); get a video card with a high fill rate (we do lots of alpha blending with spell effects), and a fast CPU with lots of cache. I haven't looked at our memory footprint in a while but last I checked the game (again, unoptimized) we didn't use more than about 60megs of ram. I'm not sure if this includes texture memory or not.