3 réponses à ce sujet

[Inprea]

I'm pretty sure the armor design has been set by now so this won't be changing anything but it seems like it'd be fun to talk about. Now if you will please take a moment and think about games where you could customize your own armor to whatever extent and what you actually chose. If you played Skyrim on the PC try to think of armor modifications you downloaded and what ones you found the most enjoyable to look at.

 

For me I tend to sacrifice practicality to make the armor visually pleasing. Often I write this off as it's a fantasy setting and the actual protection comes from the magic rather then the metal. I can't say I'm a fan of the battle bikini, I tried that in Skyrim when I downloaded a lingerie mod, I do like a little leg to be visible as well as the characters face and maybe some nice abdominal muscles.

 

Realistic looking armor also tends to become a bit duel to me after looking at it for so long and after spending at times 2 hours on a characters face I sure don't want to cover it up. Plus what people call realistic I question at times often wondering if someone could really march for five hours or so in heavy plate. That and if you really wanted to go realistic I don't believe you could pick up armor meant for someone standing 1.9 meters tall and put it on someone 1.75 meters tall and have it function properly.

[Matt Rhodes]

This is one of my favorite things to talk about, and this thread has inspired me to try to write a more comprehensive post about it soon. There are so many things to consider when you design armor for a videogame. Can animators get it to move well? How well does your engine handle drapery and reflective surfaces? What are all of the combat designers requirements? How many characters will be able to wear it? How far are you willing to go to create a distinct visual identity while still fulfilling genre expectations? And sooooo many more.

But, the biggest question of all, more important than bad-ass-ratio or realism, the question that begins to emerge after ingesting countless books and documentaries about armor:

What is the economic history of the armor?

Who commissioned it? For what purposes (combat, intimidation, propaganda...)? How much was spent? How well has it been cared for? If its for a soldier, how much was that soldier worth? An elite guard worth hundreds of thousands? Or a peasant recruit worth very little? The list can go on as long as you have the stamena for it. Its all about story telling/world building. The more the armor (or frankly anything you're designing) says about the world and the characters the better.
I feel like I scratched the surface, but want to do this subject more justice. I'll write up something more thorough as soon as I can.

[Allan Schumacher]

Since you like arguing technicalities.

 

From a system point of view, they are three modules(might be even extra). These modules are warrior,mage and rogue and based on these three modules is where dragon age makes the divide. Elements of the system are divided to interact with class items. This is what a speculatory dragon age system would look like.

 

*** Snip ***

 

This is dragon age one, where the armor and weapons are not limited by class module.

 

*** Snip ***

 

This is dragon age 2 where class and armor are dependant on class module. There is no cross cutting interactions between the items used.

 

In dragon age 3 it will be one piece of armor that will be adapted over different styles(for lack of a better term). They have basically created an adaptive armor system. This allows a companion to wear armor according to how it was designed for the companion. However, at this point we are not sure if other classes can wear other armor from other classes. If it does that then we would have the first scenario rather than the second scenario.

 

It's probably not even as complex as you made it out to be.  I ended up dabbling in some Python last week to help QA determine how they can focus their efforts in the short term by collating a list of all the art models for weapons and armors in game.  Weapons just used one model, but armors used a category called override, of which there was one for each permutation and combination of the Inquistor race and gender, and one for each companion character.  The system simply checks at runtime to see which asset the armor is being equipped on, and to show the appropriate model.

[Allan Schumacher]

Is this sort of confirming, in a roundabout way, that we can equip any armour piece on any companion?

 

A while back there were some suggestions that characters like Vivienne would be stuck choosing from pre-determined outfits...

 

More confirmation that a system is in place that allows us to do it.  There are presumably still some restrictions on some items (as some of the overrides for particular companions are 'null' instead of a reference to a particular 3D model.