CaptainBinky

Mash did a nice summary of the key points, but I will add:
 
Lemmy and I came from the commercial industry. We certainly *could* have made a 3D first-person game had we wanted to. We chose not to. This was *not* to differentiate ourselves from DayZ since at the time DayZ did not exist (either stand-alone or the original mod). It was purely because we considered the project, taken to the point we wanted to, was in itself already a hugely ambitious project and therefore making it 2D would cut a huge chunk of the risk out of the equation (planning an ambitious project is easy - but you have to be damned sure you can deliver it). We would no longer have to worry about whether it would be technically possible to render the required number of zombies - DayZ, with its considerably larger development team and an established game engine under the bonnet, is undergoing engine changes on account of this very problem.
 
As I said in the Rezzed talk, zombie numbers are *essential* if we're going to make a faithful early-Romero / Max Brooks zombie apocalypse game. Everything else is secondary to that. So if we have to make the game 2D to *guarantee* this, then so be it. The fact that Lemmy is a huge fan of the original X-Com, and I love The Sims meant that we didn't personally mind this concession at all.

Mash did a nice summary of the key points, but I will add:
 
Lemmy and I came from the commercial industry. We certainly *could* have made a 3D first-person game had we wanted to. We chose not to. This was *not* to differentiate ourselves from DayZ since at the time DayZ did not exist (either stand-alone or the original mod). It was purely because we considered the project, taken to the point we wanted to, was in itself already a hugely ambitious project and therefore making it 2D would cut a huge chunk of the risk out of the equation (planning an ambitious project is easy - but you have to be damned sure you can deliver it). We would no longer have to worry about whether it would be technically possible to render the required number of zombies - DayZ, with its considerably larger development team and an established game engine under the bonnet, is undergoing engine changes on account of this very problem.
 
As I said in the Rezzed talk, zombie numbers are *essential* if we're going to make a faithful early-Romero / Max Brooks zombie apocalypse game. Everything else is secondary to that. So if we have to make the game 2D to *guarantee* this, then so be it. The fact that Lemmy is a huge fan of the original X-Com, and I love The Sims meant that we didn't personally mind this concession at all.

Mash did a nice summary of the key points, but I will add:
 
Lemmy and I came from the commercial industry. We certainly *could* have made a 3D first-person game had we wanted to. We chose not to. This was *not* to differentiate ourselves from DayZ since at the time DayZ did not exist (either stand-alone or the original mod). It was purely because we considered the project, taken to the point we wanted to, was in itself already a hugely ambitious project and therefore making it 2D would cut a huge chunk of the risk out of the equation (planning an ambitious project is easy - but you have to be damned sure you can deliver it). We would no longer have to worry about whether it would be technically possible to render the required number of zombies - DayZ, with its considerably larger development team and an established game engine under the bonnet, is undergoing engine changes on account of this very problem.
 
As I said in the Rezzed talk, zombie numbers are *essential* if we're going to make a faithful early-Romero / Max Brooks zombie apocalypse game. Everything else is secondary to that. So if we have to make the game 2D to *guarantee* this, then so be it. The fact that Lemmy is a huge fan of the original X-Com, and I love The Sims meant that we didn't personally mind this concession at all.

Just a quick note:
 
It is not possible to "open up" all the male customisation options for the female models and vice versa. The base male character and the base female character are slightly different proportions, so none of the male hair / clothing / etc would exactly fit on the female models... and vice versa.
 
This is why it is not possible to wear skirts as a male character in the game right now - if it were as simple as just "allowing it", then we would have allowed it the second we switched to the 3D models. As it is, all the clothing will have to be duplicated and modified to enable women to wear male clothes etc.

Just a quick note:
 
It is not possible to "open up" all the male customisation options for the female models and vice versa. The base male character and the base female character are slightly different proportions, so none of the male hair / clothing / etc would exactly fit on the female models... and vice versa.
 
This is why it is not possible to wear skirts as a male character in the game right now - if it were as simple as just "allowing it", then we would have allowed it the second we switched to the 3D models. As it is, all the clothing will have to be duplicated and modified to enable women to wear male clothes etc.

Would deffo love a bigger character preview. The mockups I did back when we first did that screen had a double-sized character but there were technical restrictions at the time - now we have the 3D models in realtime though, we might be able to find the time *cough* Romain *cough* to integrate them into that screen
 
As for idle poses... I deffo support more idle poses although, if it were up to me, rather than having a bunch of idle poses which you pick between I would spend the time doing context-sensitive idle poses. So an "out of breath" idle, an "injured" idle, etc. Stuff like that.

Would deffo love a bigger character preview. The mockups I did back when we first did that screen had a double-sized character but there were technical restrictions at the time - now we have the 3D models in realtime though, we might be able to find the time *cough* Romain *cough* to integrate them into that screen
 
As for idle poses... I deffo support more idle poses although, if it were up to me, rather than having a bunch of idle poses which you pick between I would spend the time doing context-sensitive idle poses. So an "out of breath" idle, an "injured" idle, etc. Stuff like that.

Would deffo love a bigger character preview. The mockups I did back when we first did that screen had a double-sized character but there were technical restrictions at the time - now we have the 3D models in realtime though, we might be able to find the time *cough* Romain *cough* to integrate them into that screen
 
As for idle poses... I deffo support more idle poses although, if it were up to me, rather than having a bunch of idle poses which you pick between I would spend the time doing context-sensitive idle poses. So an "out of breath" idle, an "injured" idle, etc. Stuff like that.

That's not just true for deism/theism/atheism, it's true for pretty much any claim anybody can make. There's no such thing as 100% certainty for anything (except possibly pure mathematics) - with any claim, natural or supernatural, you can only deal with probabilities. X is more likely than Y. Z is so overwhelmingly more likely that we can treat it as fact. But any such truth claims have an often unspoken caveat of, "with our current understanding". There is truth to Newtonian physics but as Einstein showed, it's not the full story and while the laws remain accurate on human and cosmic scales, they fall down at the atomic scale. But that doesn't stop the laws being true/accurate for planets, solar systems, and basketballs.
 
Even extremely out-spoken atheists (or anti-theists) and Darwinians such as Richard Dawkins, if you actually read or listen to what they claim, do not speak of certainties. Dawkins, for example, speaks of evolution as true in the same sense as the theory of gravity is true. There is overwhelming evidence to support it that we may treat both as true facts... but that doesn't mean future knowledge couldn't change the way we look at things in the same way that Quantum theory and Relativity changed the way we looked at Newtonian laws.
  
Aaaah Pascal's Wager A philosophy which would work perfectly were there no such thing as multiple religions. In other words, since you're dealing with a whole array of beliefs which are all contradictory, belief in religion A does not protect you if it turns out religion B is the true one.

That's not just true for deism/theism/atheism, it's true for pretty much any claim anybody can make. There's no such thing as 100% certainty for anything (except possibly pure mathematics) - with any claim, natural or supernatural, you can only deal with probabilities. X is more likely than Y. Z is so overwhelmingly more likely that we can treat it as fact. But any such truth claims have an often unspoken caveat of, "with our current understanding". There is truth to Newtonian physics but as Einstein showed, it's not the full story and while the laws remain accurate on human and cosmic scales, they fall down at the atomic scale. But that doesn't stop the laws being true/accurate for planets, solar systems, and basketballs.
 
Even extremely out-spoken atheists (or anti-theists) and Darwinians such as Richard Dawkins, if you actually read or listen to what they claim, do not speak of certainties. Dawkins, for example, speaks of evolution as true in the same sense as the theory of gravity is true. There is overwhelming evidence to support it that we may treat both as true facts... but that doesn't mean future knowledge couldn't change the way we look at things in the same way that Quantum theory and Relativity changed the way we looked at Newtonian laws.
  
Aaaah Pascal's Wager A philosophy which would work perfectly were there no such thing as multiple religions. In other words, since you're dealing with a whole array of beliefs which are all contradictory, belief in religion A does not protect you if it turns out religion B is the true one.

Totally agree on some sort of "save preset" option on the character screen. And also, as TT says, we'd rather like to have a more in-depth character creation process with multiple-choice Q&A etc

There's a biiiiiiiiiig distinction between deism and theism. The former, even hard-line staunch atheists cannot reasonably claim is untrue since it's unlikely we'd ever be able to prove things one way or the other. It is, after all, a theory discussing what happened before the existence of space and time and a creator who leaves no mark on the cosmos. Theism, however, deals with a combination of history and the nature of physical laws - an entity which interacts with the universe should leave a trace, like moving your hand through water produces ripples. If no ripples are produced, no interaction has taken place. But given that we're dealing with an omnipotent eternal entity by nature unlike everything we've seen in the Universe, who's to say what is, or isn't possible? Nobody can, on either side of the argument.
 
All skeptics do, is say that there is no rational reason to believe something on bad or no evidence. They don't claim that such things are impossible (or at least they shouldn't if they're being honest).
 
On that note, we should bear in mind another distinction - the use of the term "theory" in science, and in common language. I can posit a theory that invisible unicorns exist - but that's a very different usage of the word theory as the "theory" of gravity. In science, theories have predictive power and can be tested.

There's a biiiiiiiiiig distinction between deism and theism. The former, even hard-line staunch atheists cannot reasonably claim is untrue since it's unlikely we'd ever be able to prove things one way or the other. It is, after all, a theory discussing what happened before the existence of space and time and a creator who leaves no mark on the cosmos. Theism, however, deals with a combination of history and the nature of physical laws - an entity which interacts with the universe should leave a trace, like moving your hand through water produces ripples. If no ripples are produced, no interaction has taken place. But given that we're dealing with an omnipotent eternal entity by nature unlike everything we've seen in the Universe, who's to say what is, or isn't possible? Nobody can, on either side of the argument.
 
All skeptics do, is say that there is no rational reason to believe something on bad or no evidence. They don't claim that such things are impossible (or at least they shouldn't if they're being honest).
 
On that note, we should bear in mind another distinction - the use of the term "theory" in science, and in common language. I can posit a theory that invisible unicorns exist - but that's a very different usage of the word theory as the "theory" of gravity. In science, theories have predictive power and can be tested.

There's a biiiiiiiiiig distinction between deism and theism. The former, even hard-line staunch atheists cannot reasonably claim is untrue since it's unlikely we'd ever be able to prove things one way or the other. It is, after all, a theory discussing what happened before the existence of space and time and a creator who leaves no mark on the cosmos. Theism, however, deals with a combination of history and the nature of physical laws - an entity which interacts with the universe should leave a trace, like moving your hand through water produces ripples. If no ripples are produced, no interaction has taken place. But given that we're dealing with an omnipotent eternal entity by nature unlike everything we've seen in the Universe, who's to say what is, or isn't possible? Nobody can, on either side of the argument.
 
All skeptics do, is say that there is no rational reason to believe something on bad or no evidence. They don't claim that such things are impossible (or at least they shouldn't if they're being honest).
 
On that note, we should bear in mind another distinction - the use of the term "theory" in science, and in common language. I can posit a theory that invisible unicorns exist - but that's a very different usage of the word theory as the "theory" of gravity. In science, theories have predictive power and can be tested.

Totally agree on some sort of "save preset" option on the character screen. And also, as TT says, we'd rather like to have a more in-depth character creation process with multiple-choice Q&A etc

There's a biiiiiiiiiig distinction between deism and theism. The former, even hard-line staunch atheists cannot reasonably claim is untrue since it's unlikely we'd ever be able to prove things one way or the other. It is, after all, a theory discussing what happened before the existence of space and time and a creator who leaves no mark on the cosmos. Theism, however, deals with a combination of history and the nature of physical laws - an entity which interacts with the universe should leave a trace, like moving your hand through water produces ripples. If no ripples are produced, no interaction has taken place. But given that we're dealing with an omnipotent eternal entity by nature unlike everything we've seen in the Universe, who's to say what is, or isn't possible? Nobody can, on either side of the argument.
 
All skeptics do, is say that there is no rational reason to believe something on bad or no evidence. They don't claim that such things are impossible (or at least they shouldn't if they're being honest).
 
On that note, we should bear in mind another distinction - the use of the term "theory" in science, and in common language. I can posit a theory that invisible unicorns exist - but that's a very different usage of the word theory as the "theory" of gravity. In science, theories have predictive power and can be tested.

Er, no. Definitely not
 
(Also, past tense - he's dead)

I've not watched it yet, but I have a hard time believing it could possibly live up to Carl Sagan standards. I also, in general (and no offense meant to our American friends) tend to dislike US documentaries (and for that matter, UK documentaries which aren't either fully or in part made by the BBC) since they tend to work along the lines of, "here is a fact. Now let's restate that fact 50 times in order to fill up this hour time-slot".
 
I am reminded of this utterly dreadful US documentary about Quantum Mechanics (I forget the name) which spent faaaar too long showing footage of multiple basketballs bouncing around while the narrator banged on ad nauseum about "the very big... and the very small" /shudder
 
If you want to watch a really good lecture about the Universe and all that entails, I recommend very highly Lawrence Krauss' "A Universe from Nothing" (and the book of the same name)
 

 
<3 Lawrence Krauss

By all means abuse the system. It'll work wonders until we start making you ill from having a whole load of rotting corpses in your safe house

By all means abuse the system. It'll work wonders until we start making you ill from having a whole load of rotting corpses in your safe house

Not right now, but yes - one of the reasons for actually being able to move corpses is that so we can implement this. Making you ill before the ability to move bodies would be beyond cruel

Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's World Championship 2010: Reverse of Arcadia
(don't worry guys, I have these 'y's covered )

By all means abuse the system. It'll work wonders until we start making you ill from having a whole load of rotting corpses in your safe house

By all means abuse the system. It'll work wonders until we start making you ill from having a whole load of rotting corpses in your safe house

Not right now, but yes - one of the reasons for actually being able to move corpses is that so we can implement this. Making you ill before the ability to move bodies would be beyond cruel