Orc Paper dolls "Again"
Twistedfang
Member Posts: 2
I was making a half orc character when i realized the inventory doll is not the same as the in game doll, which buged me majorly, so, like many others before me, i googled it and found many Discussions from the past on this very topic. All of them seemed to be left in the dark at the end of them. So, i made a account just to ask the same thing,
Is there any way.. we can get the inventory dolls for half orcs working for the in-game ones for these of us that "Enjoy" the old half orc look.. please?
Is there any way.. we can get the inventory dolls for half orcs working for the in-game ones for these of us that "Enjoy" the old half orc look.. please?
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Cause to some people, the fact that it don't look orc enough, it bugs them majorly.
But hey, I agree. I would really love a really long beard. I would love to change haircut, maybe shave on the sides? Or bald? I would also like to make the rings visible on my character. Oh, don't forget the necklace!
All that would be cool, but I wouldn't want to see someone do that labor job when more important features could be implemented, such as new patches, eventually a new game.
My point being that I find it almost impossible to believe that it was all drawn by hand, without any kind of 3d modeling. To me it seems not a major effort, but an insane one.
And even if that was the case, there's no reason why nowadays new models can't be created in 3d first.
But yeah, I agree that Beamdog most likely won't work in this direction, anyway.
However, that doesn't mean it would be easy to create more of them now.
They must have set up a work pipeline with all the necessary tools configured just right to output sprites in the way the game engine expects them, and spent a lot of time teaching their artists to work with that pipeline.
This initial effort was worth it for them, seeing as they had hundreds of creature types to create sprites for.
But it would hardly be worth it for Beamdog to re-create this pipeline and train new artists to work with it, just to change the sprites of one creature type.
For non-playable creatures, a subset will suffice, and often quite a small subset. For example, for an animal or monster which uses no artificial weapons and casts no spells, you don't need any of the casting frames, nor combat frames for small swords, large swords, blunt weapons, bows, etc., etc., which are a large proportion of a full animation set, so animals are very much easier to make - maybe even less than a hundred frames, instead of thousands.
That being said @Twistedfang it is possible to restore the original look of the Half-Orc sprite and paperdoll. All you have to do is to extract the sprite and paperdoll files with DLTCEP from the original BGII:SoA and place them into your EE override folder. The detailed process and further instructions can be found here. @lunar even provided an archive with *all* paperdoll files already extracted there, which could be used as-is. Although I'm not sure if you'd still need to find the sprites or if they're already included within that .rar file.
The sprites were created (in the late 90s) from 3D models. Those models were then lost.
The reason this is significant is that Beamdog lacks not only the models but also the rigging for those models and their animation sequences. Which means creating new models, creating new rigging, creating new animations, and making sure those animations line up with the weapons and helmets that are in the game (weapons and helmets animate separately from their owners). If you don't get those things exactly perfect, the animation ends up looking like an ugly mess. And all of that to create a new animation for an existing character race with four different class types, each with four different levels of armor.
2 genders
x4 class types
x4 armor levels
------------
32 separate creatures, all needing animations for the various weapon attacks and orientations, with appropriate consideration for helmet placement as well. Just for the half-orc.
And once that's done, you can be sure that people will start requesting animations for half-elves. And female dwarves and gnomes. And at that point it's reasonable to assume that people will want new animations for humans and elves as well, since the new animations are likely smoother and more closely resemble their respective paper dolls. And once the player races are done...you can see where this is going.
There's a reason the neothelid is the only new animation in SoD. It's expensive, and time-consuming.
To be fair, this discussion would have been more productive in Bioware's planning phase of BGII: SoA. Maybe then Baldur's Gate II wouldn't been known as the game with the 6th worst character customization system.
( 04:34 #6: Baldur's Gate II: Shadow of Amn )
And, just to avoid confusion, paperdoll is the inventory icon that you dress up with armors and weapons/shields. Avatar is the walking/fighting image in the main game. Funnily enough, bg1 and ee paperdolls perfectly resemble the avatar in looks, but original bg2 paperdolls are a bit weird and different than the in-game look. They have more detail but look impractical and goofy a bit. I love them for their weirdness, awkvard look and the nostalgia.