[Ralf]

Hi!

Allright- I may not be able to answer your questions on a daily basis- but THIS is the place where you can ask them. The german half of the forum has it- so I think you should have too!
At this point in time I am not able to answer your Questions about
a) the story or content of the new game
b) possible features
c) patches for Gothic 3

Everything else is welcome. It may take a couple of days until you might receive an answer to your post- so please be patient, I have to do this in my breaks and spare time here at the studio.

Cheers!

[Rashnu]

Similar to the thread in German, Ralf [and Kai, who is a bit preoccupied with his honeymoon atm] has agreed to answer questions from fans regarding PB, their new project (as far as the publisher allows it - which isn't very far atm) and even personal matters in rare cases - if you are lucky.

Edit: You are also invited to put forward suggestions. This doesn't have to be a one-way communication. Piranha Bytes is famous for listening to its customers.

Please keep in mind not to ask for too specific features of their current project or you're running the risk of getting no answer at all.

Users who already asked in the German thread should refrain from repeating their queries again. Such things will be spotted [I can understand a word or two in German ]. Ralf is a busy man and we shouldn't keep him unduly from his prime task.

[Powaz]

Hi Ralf How was your short holiday?
Ok now my question.

1.Is your game based on something or everything is from your head??

[WernerTWC]

A question which comes to my mind,... i'm now playing g1 once again after a long time (with Freddy's texture patch, it gaves g1 a really great look, a new experience), with that patch it makes fun to walk (and i really mean "walk" -> Caps-Lock activated) once again the fields of g1.... Well, i could imagine that this could be covered with the usual "sorry, no features"-answer,... so i try to ask "around" a bit, ... have you (PBs) ever thought of the missing caps-lock-walking through the world in g3? Could you imagine that it's maybe will be discussed in the team,... damn,.. there were also "slow-swimming" with caps-lock,... those things are "only" pieces,... but imho some which could raise the gameing-experience a lot.

[Ralf]

Good morning!

Good questions- I´ll give it a go for sure!

I'll give it a go :

1. Will the story of your new game remind of G1? I think this is what all of the old fans would like. Of course I don't mean that you should copy the same story or characters from the game, I just want to have the same atmosphere and freedom like G1 and a small world like the Colony in G1.
2. Will the world be smaller or bigger than in G1?
3. Would the hero be able to ride horses? I think that would be something new and the people would like it.
4. Will it have an open-ending like in G3 or a single ending regardless of your guild like in G1? I'd like the latter...
5. What guilds are you planning for your new game?
I hope you're able to answer at least a part of my questions.

1 Since we can not use any references from our previous games we have to start from Scratch for the ongoing project. The references to G1 are for size and depth of the gameplay, used by Mike Hoge-our Lead Game Designer.
The Atmosphere might be similar- but it is too early to tell exactly, since I didn´t have time to set up the weather stages properly.

2 Looks like it is similar in Size- maybe a wee bit bigger.

3 No Horses on my plan. Sorry.

4 The ending hasn´t been decided yet.

5 Now- as you can imagine, there will be hirarchic organised groups- baut what exactly they represent I can not reveal at this time.

Hi Ralf How was your short holiday?
Ok now my question.

1.Is your game based on something or everything is from your head??

Thanks- nice. I was visiting a friend with the intention to help out with the arts-masters degree-diploma.
No direct reference points, except genre conventions. Everything else comes from Mike and our Story-guys.

A question which comes to my mind,... i'm now playing g1 once again after a long time (with Freddy's texture patch, it gaves g1 a really great look, a new experience), with that patch it makes fun to walk (and i really mean "walk" -> Caps-Lock activated) once again the fields of g1.... Well, i could imagine that this could be covered with the usual "sorry, no features"-answer,... so i try to ask "around" a bit, ... have you (PBs) ever thought of the missing caps-lock-walking through the world in g3? Could you imagine that it's maybe will be discussed in the team,... damn,.. there were also "slow-swimming" with caps-lock,... those things are "only" pieces,... but imho some which could raise the gameing-experience a lot.

Well- THAT is a good reminder!
Thanks for mentioning it, I will propose this feature again to our gamedesigners!

Cheers!

[Lazor]

Thanks Ralf for answering

Here are my questions:

1.Will we see an editor ????
2.Things like - sleeping=recharge health - or unlimited inventory were some points that made me love Gothic. Are they gonna be on the new game too?
3.The graphics would look like Gothic 3?? (well i don't think they can be better )

[Powaz]

What do you guys think of The Witcher??

My suggestion:
There should be a posibility to become drunk.I mean if you drink too much booze or beer your hero gets out of control and starts atacking other people...and the other morning he gets up and finds that he is robbed or somethig like that

[Azraael]

Good morning!
No Horses on my plan. Sorry.

Well- THAT is a good reminder!
Thanks for mentioning it, I will propose this feature again to our gamedesigners!

1. No horses? Great! :-)
I don't see why everyone thinks this would be so cool. Especially since Mike Hoge allready said the world will be roughly about the size of G1. Faster Movement than running would lead the Player to not notice the World. Remember G3's early getting of the teleport stones. In G3 horses would have been perfect since it would be a fast movement mechanism that still would lead to "the player seeing the world".
But in a world just as big as G1 it seems very unnecessary to have something faster than running.

2. Walk? Even GREATER!!!
G1 was the first and only game in which i really would take the chance of walking through the world. It just seemed not right to me to run through this world because it would have destroyed the perfect athmosphere of the game if i would do something unlogically as running all the time. I created athmosphere by walking and taking the journeys from one camp to another slow. That was so perfect... and very shocking when you suddenly had to run from wolves and other creatures even more deadly... oh.. and failed getting away.. -Dead- ^^

Since this shouldn't be just an answering post to post my view on things i should post a question:
There is one thing i would like to ask Kai, but because he won't be back soon I think i should ask something else... well... here... it comes.. *20 minutes pass by* err... yeah...:

Will you make the figures (err... the models? don't know if its quite the right word for it) so that there are little differents in height and stance of them ? Will there be a few who look old and some who look young ? The rest of them middleaged ? Will some be standing straight (the leaders mostly i think) and some who stand bended ?

I think you could some the question up in:
Will the figures be of different age and will this be really visible just by looking at them ? (Without hearing them talk.. if someone has a voice of an old man its clear that he shall present one, but will it be visible by his looks ? (grey hair, beeing small, standing bended and so on..) )
Will you use that what is called "nonverbal communication" to present the figures ? (people who are selfconfident and think they are strong have a wide stance (with their legs apart) while people who think of themselves as small will mostly have their legs shut together to be able to flee faster etc. ?)

I'd recommend this book:
"Ich sehe was, was du nicht sagst", Peter Collett. Good summary of nonverbal communication and how it is expressed what someone thinks or what his generell feeling in a situation is and how it can be seen through his body and things he does.

Cheers! ^^

[Nameless2]

Something that came to mind while playing a mod and working for some patches for Gothic 3:

- Did you at Piranha Bytes (or at home) ever play one of the fanmods for Gothic 1&2?
- If so, which ones and which ones were your favourites?
- Do you see things like these fanmods happen for Gothic 3 and/or the new project as well?

Cheers!

[logout]

Come with me if you want to live

Matrix. Lame one
Here's mine: "I don't think there's anyone who could tell how long anything is going to take. It could be months, it could be years, until we exactly know what we are dealing with." (fits so good right now regarding the new game from PB and a potential G4)

Did you at Piranha Bytes (or at home) ever play one of the fanmods for Gothic 1&2?

I like to add a question here. Did you try out the "Khorana Prolog"-mod? Because this one really rocks...

[Mister.42]

Just a few questions.

-Will there be a default difficulty(and possibly a pretty hard one), or will we have to choose one(easy,hard,medium)?
-Will there be immortal characters in your new game, or will they all be mortal, as in Gothic3?

[Danutz_plusplus]

-Will there be immortal characters in your new game, or will they all be mortal, as in Gothic3?

I hope there will be immortal characters in the game. It makes the gameworld more believable if there are certain things that cannot be killed. Especially if they want to make a sequel and use some of the characters from the first in the second. But they should motivate this(the fact that some NPCs can't be killed) in the storyline.

I've also got a question: Will there be many and diverse activities to do in the game, besides killing monsters? Activities like forging weapons, gathering herbs and brewing potions, hunting/skinning, etc.

[Powaz]

The game should be very hard...
Ralf do you like rock ,funk-rock etc...What are your favorite bands?

[wolfgm]

First I want to thank Ralf for time spending to read answer our questions! Then about horses: I played "OBLIVION" and "TWO WORLDS" and my impressions about horses are negative because they are in those games just like cosmetic-they are useless in combat!!!
My questions are:
When You (Piranha Byres) can give us first screen shots and some more informations about the plot in the new project?
Have You decided about name of project?
Do You used some old engine or planed new?

Many greeting from Serbia.

[miticfam]

hi wolfgm, i am from Serbia to!
about immortal characters: it's stupid to have immortal characters, i say that is better to have very strong but mortal character(s)

[Lazor]

Well in Gothic3 there weren't immortal character and that caused pretty bad consequences (that most people saw as "bugs"). I think the important npcs on the game should be VERY strong so that you can only kill them at the end of the game or i think it would be better if they were immortal and there was a "lock-unlock immortality" method depending on the main-story choices you make on the game

[miticfam]

i agree with you!
it is so stupid to have immortal characters, everything must have a way to be destroyed
it will be nice that you can kill specific person only with a specific artifact or something, that you can find only in very hard areas where you cant survive with small lvl
then those specific persons can tell the story in the right way, so there will be no "bugs"
btw sory for bad english
EDIT: PB please make an optimized game!!!
can someone make an review of ralfs answers in english, i tried the google language tool but with no result
thanks anyway

[Bartacus]

I don't have a question, rather a request: When you have a site for the game, please update it. I mean it's nice to see you answering our questions, but for the larger audience it's better to have a regulary updated site. I say this, because this wasn't always true for both the communities, but as you know, even more prudent for the English community. (no English notr site, even less updates for both gothic 2 and 3 then on their German counterparts)

Please do not see this as someone bashing, but rather as a suggestion. I know that KaiRo was the most important one behind the site, but perhaps he needs more people working with him on this.

one last remark: Offcourse you don't need to update a site with every little thing happening at PB, but a bit more then the very large highlights would be better too.

[Ralf]

Hi!

Maybe you noticed, but this morning I posted the Photos of our last research trip to this place:
http://www.inselhombroich.de/main.htm

Here is the galery:
http://worldofpiranha.de/?section=gallery&id=2
I am sorry that the comments are in German only- hopefully somebody here will post a translation.

Thanks Ralf for answering

Here are my questions:

1.Will we see an editor ????
2.Things like - sleeping=recharge health - or unlimited inventory were some points that made me love Gothic. Are they gonna be on the new game too?
3.The graphics would look like Gothic 3?? (well i don't think they can be better )

1. It´s too eraly to tell...
2. The game will have day/ night cycles. As for featurequestions I have to aks you to be patient with us a bit longer.
3. I think we might be able to improve quite a bit on those.

What do you guys think of The Witcher??
My suggestion:
There should be a posibility to become drunk.I mean if you drink too much booze or beer your hero gets out of control and starts atacking other people...and the other morning he gets up and finds that he is robbed or somethig like that

Nice Idea- I´ll send it to our Gamedesigner.

Since this shouldn't be just an answering post to post my view on things i should post a question:
There is one thing i would like to ask Kai, but because he won't be back soon I think i should ask something else... well... here... it comes.. *20 minutes pass by* err... yeah...:

Will you make the figures (err... the models? don't know if its quite the right word for it) so that there are little differents in height and stance of them ? Will there be a few who look old and some who look young ? The rest of them middleaged ? Will some be standing straight (the leaders mostly i think) and some who stand bended ?

I think you could some the question up in:
Will the figures be of different age and will this be really visible just by looking at them ? (Without hearing them talk.. if someone has a voice of an old man its clear that he shall present one, but will it be visible by his looks ? (grey hair, beeing small, standing bended and so on..) )
Will you use that what is called "nonverbal communication" to present the figures ? (people who are selfconfident and think they are strong have a wide stance (with their legs apart) while people who think of themselves as small will mostly have their legs shut together to be able to flee faster etc. ?)
I'd recommend this book:
"Ich sehe was, was du nicht sagst", Peter Collett. Good summary of nonverbal communication and how it is expressed what someone thinks or what his generell feeling in a situation is and how it can be seen through his body and things he does.

Cheers! ^^

Thanks for the book- I´ll check the title!
Noverbal communication might be a bitt too early, since we have to consider that some gestures mean something completely different in some parts of the world- but use the same gesture.

Grown up and Old are the stages we plan with. No Kids though.

Something that came to mind while playing a mod and working for some patches for Gothic 3:
- Did you at Piranha Bytes (or at home) ever play one of the fanmods for Gothic 1&2?
- If so, which ones and which ones were your favourites?
- Do you see things like these fanmods happen for Gothic 3 and/or the new project as well?

Cheers!

Yes we did . I have to ask the guys here wich onse they liked.
I certainly hope the fans will embrace the new game as they did with the previous ones.

Matrix. Lame one
Here's mine: "I don't think there's anyone who could tell how long anything is going to take. It could be months, it could be years, until we exactly know what we are dealing with." (fits so good right now regarding the new game from PB and a potential G4)

I like to add a question here. Did you try out the "Khorana Prolog"-mod? Because this one really rocks...

No- not Matrix : Terminator (and T2 also- just dirfferent characters- wich is fun)
I know I heared yours- but can not place it...

[logout]

No- not Matrix : Terminator (and T2 also- just dirfferent characters- wich is fun) I know I heared yours- but can not place it...

My fault. I know that quote from Terminator but I thought Matrix has a quite similar saying.
Mine's from George A Romeros "Day of the Dead".

Sorry for the OT talk...