1027 réponses à ce sujet

[vania z]

hoorayforicecream wrote...

They didn't have to make unique meshes for each one; they made a handful of new models for each slot, then retextured them. If memory serves (it *has* been 9 years), NWN had a scaling system that was absolute. You could make things bigger or smaller, but they never changed their proportions. That's not what people are asking for though; you can't just take an elf and make him 1.5 times bigger in each direction and call it a human, not unless every companion uses the same rig. But then again, it was also 9 years ago. You needed maybe 30-50 people on a team back then to push out a AAA game, and you had results that looked like this:



Nowadays you're looking at 2-4x that for a AAA title, because the amount of detail has increased several times in the intervening years. What used to be cost-effective 9 years ago is no longer so today.

You can set different scales for different axes. You can describe torso with "ellipses" with different parameters for different height, so you can fit any armor mesh very closely to any torso mesh. There are a lot of ways to make it autoscaling. 
http://nwn.wikia.com...:Playable_races as you can see, humans are wider than elves, so they must have had different scaling constants for different dimensions.

[Serpieri Nei]

In Exile wrote...

Serpieri Nei wrote...
Two Worlds II

You mean the game without NPCs, with only a human only character? Yes, that's entirely comparable to a party based game. 

You think every MMO is making the money Blizzard is. 

It doesn't have anything to do with profit. It has to do with your raw break-even point.

If most MMOs make 0 profit, but have an operating budget of 90 million, that makes it different than an SP game with an operating budget of 40 million.

Oh wait, you have a slight point there - DA2 is selling badly.

You know what else is selling badly? Bottled urine. I find it weird how there's no market for that. Isn't it great to make statements that are totally unrelated to a discussion?

You mean the game where you can be a dwarf, human, half orc, elf, and dark elf.

Clearly, you haven't played it.

Is this part where your going to show us the operatiting budgets for all the mmo's on the market?

Isn't it great to make bland statements?

Modifié par Serpieri Nei, 30 août 2011 - 05:15 .

[ipgd]

vania z wrote...

Number of polys is not exactly the issue. 

Then what?

A leather armor texture slapped onto a detailed torso mesh would be a bit more jarring than textures swapping off NWN-level box chests.

If it were as simple as using an algorithm, they would be using one. Nobody wants to spend weeks or months tweaking armor by hand. But there are currently no algorithms that can adequately handle models with the level of detail DA uses; what worked for a 9 year old game isn't necessarily going to keep up with the times.

[In Exile]

Serpieri Nei wrote...

You mean the game where you can be a dwarf, human, half orc, elf, and dark elf.

Clearly, you haven't played it.

The game you into a human only character that you can lightly customize. I played it until you escaped from the dugeons, and gave up because of... well, the everything. 

I don't know what race selection you're talking about. 

Edit:

Apparently it has MP. I have no idea how the sliders work, or how good that is. If it reflects the quality of the SP, that's not a good argument. 

Modifié par In Exile, 30 août 2011 - 05:15 .

[In Exile]

Filament wrote...
Where do you get that I'm not taking anyone seriously? What, I have to agree with everything you say for me to be taking you seriously?

No, not me. I don't care about tatoos. But someone obviously cares, if they bring it up. The response of 'well, I don't care' isn't really having a discussion. 

I'm explaining how I don't value the same things you value, so those "prohobitive" issues are only prohibitive from your perspective, not in a universal sense. Just like I find the notion of my mage charging into battle in "full plate" with her boobs hanging out to be prohibitive, from my perspective.

Why do you think iconic armour = boobs hanging out? How are those two even related? How is that related to anything?

[vania z]

ipgd wrote...

vania z wrote...

Number of polys is not exactly the issue. 

Then what?

A leather armor texture slapped onto a detailed torso mesh would be a bit more jarring than textures swapping off NWN-level box chests.

If it were as simple as using an algorithm, they would be using one. Nobody wants to spend weeks or months tweaking armor by hand. But there are currently no algorithms that can adequately handle models with the level of detail DA uses; what worked for a 9 year old game isn't necessarily going to keep up with the times.

If you have not noticed, the detail is on the armor. Body mesh is pretty simple, muscules are painted on it, instead of being real polys. What is difficult, is to fit armor mesh very closely on meshes with diffrent body features. But that also can be solved.
http://unigine.com/d...g/2009/09/28/70
as you can see here, dragon features are made using heightmap+tesselation. You can use this technique to add geometry detail to reskined leather armor, for example. There is a lot of use to it, actually(but it seems bioware are not very technologically advanced, POM had existed for years and we have not seen it in BW games. But in DA2 they used tessellation on small scale - tiled floor for example).

[tmp7704]

ipgd wrote...

If it were as simple as using an algorithm, they would be using one. Nobody wants to spend weeks or months tweaking armor by hand. But there are currently no algorithms that can adequately handle models with the level of detail DA uses; what worked for a 9 year old game isn't necessarily going to keep up with the times.

In all fariness this can and gets done also with modern games which have armour as complicated as DA -- Aion comes to mind, as a recent example.

From what i can figure out DA simply doesn't include scaling of individual skeleton bones (or even uniform scaling of the whole thing) as a choice they've made. Just like they've decided to go with mostly static and pre-baked lighting rather than one dynamically calculated, etc. Those were fair choices to make, but it doesn't mean the alternatives are implausible.

edit: what i mean here is producing one armour per gender (per appearance) and then using scaling to generate variants for each species. Side-effect is ability to scale the bodies of individuals of the species as well. Another way to cut down the amount of work involved.

Modifié par tmp7704, 30 août 2011 - 05:36 .

[Yrkoon]

Elhanan wrote...

The Blight hurt the Thedasian economy so much that only nobility have a ready change of clothing. No?

I like the idea being offered here, but also am wondering that one of the better moments in DAO was in the quest Captured! when the Warden could be rescued by the party in disguise. Will the art team lose this function in storytelling? Thanks!

The answer to this question will be:  No, they won't lose that function.  However,  Isabela and Aveline will look physically identical to each other from the neck down if they're both forced to wear Chantry Robes to decieve the Gate Guards and rescue Hawke...

This is because of the low budget and/or unrealistic time constraints* put upon them.

Or so we're being told. 


*Feel free to replace with the word "LAZY"

Modifié par Yrkoon, 30 août 2011 - 05:30 .

[vania z]

tmp7704 wrote...

From what i can figure out DA simply doesn't include scaling of individual skeleton bones (or even uniform scaling of the whole thing) as a choice they've made. Just like they've decided to go with mostly static and pre-baked lighting rather than one dynamically calculated, etc. Those were fair choices to make, but it doesn't mean the alternatives are implausible.

Sadly, both DA:O and DA2 have worse lighting than NWN has:(

[willholt]

All I see is in this thread is a lot of going round in circles and never shall the two sides agree.

Essentially it's a tug of war between those who think iconic looks are worth gimping half the fun of companion customisation... and those who think iconic looks are an OK idea, but not if I lose half the fun in companion customisation.

Unfortunately for those who like full companion customisation (and seeing the results of said customisation) the iconics have won.

This thread is actually a pretty shrewd move by the devs. Aside from the obvious goodwill that comes from keeping fans updated on probable future decisions (appreciated on all sides I'm sure), it also serves to give them a good idea how fans will generally react to the proposed 'compromise'

Judging by the general reactions from different camps the devs should be pretty pleased overall.

Those who like the iconic look obviously like this move.

A large number of those who complained about lack of customisation are OK with this move... This group's reaction varies from 'I really like this idea' ... to ... 'I would prefer what we had in Origins, but I can live with it;

Some, like me, are dismayed by the proposed direction... and while we might protest and argue against it, I think we have to accept that this is the way DA3 is going to be.

In short... the Iconics have the numbers, and since the Devs (especially ML) sound pretty keen on the proposed 'compromise', I can't really see it NOT happening.

Only thing left is to vote with your wallet... and since the numbers favour those who like/accept the idea, even that is a pretty useless gesture (other than to save you the money... lol)

[ladyofpayne]

I love idea to do for companions fixed armor.

[In Exile]

Filament wrote...
Yes it is, considering it reaffirms that it's not a complaint universally agreed upon.

The whole thread reaffirms that.

Aside from that being the case with Morrigan and Isabela, it's merely an illustration of the point that I want their armor to match visually with the protection it affords. Merrill's clothes don't have her boobs hanging out but it's much the same issue.

Merril's a forest person who isn't going into battle, and lives in a ghetto. She only fights because her homeless (and then rich) friend asks her to. 

The real issues are Fenris and Carver, and to a certain extent Isabella, in that she could be wearing leather armour in a sexy way. 

The thing with armour in an RPG is that it doesn't make sense. When you combine it with HP, you quite literall have people getting hit repeatedly tens of times without even flitching. That, to me, is so ridiculous and illogical that the whole idea of armour offering protection doesn't even make sense. 

[Nerevar-as]

NWN2 also had body slider, could set height and girth, and different races. What I don´t know if it´s that hard to do again with the heavy (excessive IMHO) weight BW is giving cinematics, or they just don´t want to make the effort. I can´t help thinking that beside an EA money grab DA2 was also a field test of how many cut corners players would tolerate.

Modifié par Nerevar-as, 30 août 2011 - 05:32 .

[erynnar]

Shadow of Light Dragon wrote...

Mike Laidlaw wrote...

Followers will continue to have iconic appearances.

Followers will have more than one appearance.

I am not surprised that iconic gets preference, but it is not a game issue that bothers me overmuch. If there will indeed be more than one (and more than two), that sounds good to me.

Guild Wars has a similar system with multiple outfits for companions you can earn throughout the game. I think the major complaint there has always been that the NPC armour often looks way more awesome than the PC armour, so maybe something Bioware can keep in mind.

The player should be given control over the follower's appearance once more than one appearance becomes available.

Also sounds sweet. Can't say no to player-controlled customisation!

Followers will have their equipment slots restored and armor you equip in those slots will have the expected statistical impact on the follower, including enchantments, bonuses and base armor stats, along with requirements to wear the armor applying. As per above, adding armor pieces to these slots will not impact the follower's appearance directly, only their statistics.

This is a system the Ultima series used through most of its games. It sounds like you're adopting something similiar to what U7: The Black Gate used: the companions can be armed however you like in their paperdoll interface, but in the main adventuring interface they will retain their unique style (besides weapons and shields, I assume).

I can live with this and I'm happy with it, though I have to admit I will miss the realism of inventory matching appearance, and more complete customisation control for the PC. Not enough games grant that and a lot of gamers want it because you can have so much fun with it.

Followers who have no armor equipped by the player will be automatically equipped with a "basic" suit of armor[...]

The crowd who wants nekkidness will be disappointed. XD Although only until someone makes a good mod, I'm sure.

Highly approve of the auto-levelling basic armour idea though.


All in all, sounds like a reasonable outcome. Thanks for discussing this with us.

What Shadow said. And yes, thanks very much for posting this.

Edited to say, I am torn admittedly. I love, say Varric's look, but they did get boring after awhile. And while I prefer DAO's cutomization. I do like Varric looking like the snazzy rogue he is. Isabela needs to ditch the washed up on the beach with no money look and have some sexy female pirate togs that actually offer protection. On one hand happier about the diretion, but will miss DAO's customization.

Modifié par erynnar, 30 août 2011 - 05:36 .

[In Exile]

willholt wrote...

All I see is in this thread is a lot of going round in circles and never shall the two sides agree.

Essentially it's a tug of war between those who think iconic looks are worth gimping half the fun of companion customisation... and those who think iconic looks are an OK idea, but not if I lose half the fun in companion customisation.

Can we not poison the well here?

I think this system gives us the fun of both: we get multiple outfits (yay visual customization!) and full statistical customization (yay gameplay benefits!).

I can appreciate that you don't like the form of visual customization offered. But acting as if your view is the only universally accepted view on what it means to have companion customization is silly, and needless victimization on top of tha

Unfortunately for those who like full companion customisation (and seeing the results of said customisation) the iconics have won.

This thread is actually a pretty shrewd move by the devs. Aside from the obvious goodwill that comes from keeping fans updated on probable future decisions (appreciated on all sides I'm sure), it also serves to give them a good idea how fans will generally react to the proposed 'compromise'

Judging by the general reactions from different camps the devs should be pretty pleased overall.

Those who like the iconic look obviously like this move.

A large number of those who complained about lack of customisation are OK with this move... This group's reaction varies from 'I really like this idea' ... to ... 'I would prefer what we had in Origins, but I can live with it;

Some, like me, are dismayed by the proposed direction... and while we might protest and argue against it, I think we have to accept that this is the way DA3 is going to be.

In short... the Iconics have the numbers, and since the Devs (especially ML) sound pretty keen on the proposed 'compromise', I can't really see it NOT happening.

Only thing left is to vote with your wallet... and since the numbers favour those who like/accept the idea, even that is a pretty useless gesture (other than to save you the money... lol)

What is it about the internet that just brings out the victim in people?

[alex90c]

I think this thread is perfect evidence that Bioware trying to take the best of both games is going to be much harder than it sounds; they're going to ****** off people on both sides with the compromises they make.

[In Exile]

tmp7704 wrote...
From what i can figure out DA simply doesn't include scaling of individual skeleton bones (or even uniform scaling of the whole thing) as a choice they've made. 

I think that's more the issue with the really, really old engine that goes back on principles from the Aurora. Bioware just needs a new engine, build from the ground up.

Just like they've decided to go with mostly static and pre-baked lighting rather than one dynamically calculated, etc. Those were fair choices to make, but it doesn't mean the alternatives are implausible.

I think that's more ****ty engine issues. 

edit: what i mean here is using the scaling to produce one armour per gender and then using scaling to generate variants for each species. Side-effect is ability to scale the bodies of individuals of the species as well. Another way to cut down the amount of work involved.

Sure. But the engine has to be able to do that. 

But if that were true, I'd be happy for the toggle, as programmers cry tears of blood at the sound. 

[In Exile]

Nerevar-as wrote...

NWN2 also had body slider, could set height and girth, and different races. What I don´t know if it´s that hard to do again with the heavy (excessive IMHO) weight BW is giving cinematics, or they just don´t want to make the effort. I can´t help thinking that beside an EA money grab DA2 was also a field test of how many cut corners players would tolerate.

It's probably cinematics. It's not even about clipping with heigh & fat - it's about the camera angles. Just look at those vids that replace Hawke with Varric or the Arishok. 

[In Exile]

alex90c wrote...

I think this thread is perfect evidence that Bioware trying to take the best of both games is going to be much harder than it sounds; they're going to ****** off people on both sides with the compromises they make.

Really? To me it sounds like only one group is unhappy: the group that wants it to be just like in DA:O again. And it's obvious Bioware wrote off that group ever since they made DA2.

[willholt]

In Exile wrote...

willholt wrote...

All I see is in this thread is a lot of going round in circles and never shall the two sides agree.

Essentially it's a tug of war between those who think iconic looks are worth gimping half the fun of companion customisation... and those who think iconic looks are an OK idea, but not if I lose half the fun in companion customisation.

Can we not poison the well here?

I think this system gives us the fun of both: we get multiple outfits (yay visual customization!) and full statistical customization (yay gameplay benefits!).

I can appreciate that you don't like the form of visual customization offered. But acting as if your view is the only universally accepted view on what it means to have companion customization is silly, and needless victimization on top of tha

Unfortunately for those who like full companion customisation (and seeing the results of said customisation) the iconics have won.

This thread is actually a pretty shrewd move by the devs. Aside from the obvious goodwill that comes from keeping fans updated on probable future decisions (appreciated on all sides I'm sure), it also serves to give them a good idea how fans will generally react to the proposed 'compromise'

Judging by the general reactions from different camps the devs should be pretty pleased overall.

Those who like the iconic look obviously like this move.

A large number of those who complained about lack of customisation are OK with this move... This group's reaction varies from 'I really like this idea' ... to ... 'I would prefer what we had in Origins, but I can live with it;

Some, like me, are dismayed by the proposed direction... and while we might protest and argue against it, I think we have to accept that this is the way DA3 is going to be.

In short... the Iconics have the numbers, and since the Devs (especially ML) sound pretty keen on the proposed 'compromise', I can't really see it NOT happening.

Only thing left is to vote with your wallet... and since the numbers favour those who like/accept the idea, even that is a pretty useless gesture (other than to save you the money... lol)

What is it about the internet that just brings out the victim in people?

I've noticed throughout this thread all you've done is act like a rabid dog and attack people when you don't like what they say.

Grow up!

[vania z]

In Exile wrote...


I think that's more the issue with the really, really old engine that goes back on principles from the Aurora. Bioware just needs a new engine, build from the ground up.

Aurora had real lighting, their new engine for DA/DA2 does not have it. Aurora was OpenGL, da/da2 is DirectX. I think it is new engine, but not actually a good one. 

[ipgd]

vania z wrote...

If you have not noticed, the detail is on the armor. Body mesh is pretty simple, muscules are painted on it, instead of being real polys.

But it's not done this way. Armor models actually have real polys describing the shapes, unlike older games like NWN. I think the early attempts at DA2 nude mods are pretty illustrative of the problem with this (NSFW):

1, 2

They could go back to textured-on armor, but... it'd look like ****.

What is difficult, is to fit armor mesh very closely on meshes with diffrent body features. But that also can be solved.
http://unigine.com/d...g/2009/09/28/70
as you can see here, dragon features are made using heightmap+tesselation. You can use this technique to add geometry detail to reskined leather armor, for example. There is a lot of use to it, actually(but it seems bioware are not very technologically advanced, POM had existed for years and we have not seen it in BW games. But in DA2 they used tessellation on small scale - tiled floor for example).

Which would require them rewriting their engine to support it, which would require extra time and money. Or licensing somebody else's engine, which would mean no chance of a toolset ever again (PLS BIOWARE TOOLSET PLS ;

[John Epler]

In Exile wrote...

Nerevar-as wrote...

NWN2 also had body slider, could set height and girth, and different races. What I don´t know if it´s that hard to do again with the heavy (excessive IMHO) weight BW is giving cinematics, or they just don´t want to make the effort. I can´t help thinking that beside an EA money grab DA2 was also a field test of how many cut corners players would tolerate.

It's probably cinematics. It's not even about clipping with heigh & fat - it's about the camera angles. Just look at those vids that replace Hawke with Varric or the Arishok. 

Not true. The functionality already exists to adjust cameras for the height of models - however, in DA2, the height of the Hawke's isn't different enough to always have that turned on, so if you replace Hawke with a completely differently sized model the camera isn't going to adjust accordingly. If we'd done a game with variable heights and weights, the functionality would have likely been made correspondingly more robust, but there wasn't a pressing need for it in DA2 as compared to the other things the programmers needed to handle.