Just as a heads-up to others since I didn't find it very intuitive; but if you go to that board and click the "Show Menu" link in the upper-right corner, that at least will give you a log of recent activity so you can see if additional cards have been added since your last visit.
For example if you consider that the card "improve character models" actually encompasses many different things to update and potential ways to go about it, it seems like others could get bundled in a similar way.
Custom spellbooks could be bundled with expanded spellbooks, I can't find the custom metamagic ones anymore so I assume those got merged.
It seems the UI refactoring also covers many issues like resizing at any resolution, health subtext, and custom window placement.
There are various VFX cards that seem unintelligible unless you're a programmer, like VFX drawn over, environmental mapping with transparency, progfx, and probably has some overlap with improved shaders too. So essentially "Improved modern VFX engine" seems like what many vfx/graphics cards try to say in bits and pieces lost in technical jargon.
"Expanded Spellbooks: Fix prestige class casting" Was one of the first cards on the Trello, and has to do with the way the engine adds fake "spellcasting levels" to casters with prestige classes (Palemaster), in order to make it more feasible for innate casters (Sorcerer and Bard)
This is a bug fix, or rather, a patch to change the way the default "vanilla" game handles existing content.
vs.
Custom Classes and Spellbooks is a different change to the game engine for custom content and module builders, to allow new non-"vanilla" content to the game in the form of custom spellbooks for existing classes that don't currently have spellbooks (Assassin, Shadowdancer, Blackguard), add the ability for people to design the function of those spellbooks and their "page" as a UI element (How many spell levels, spell level 0 yes/no), as well as add entirely new classes to the base game, selectable in character creation, with entirely new spellbooks as well.
---
"VFX drawn over problems stemming from render order" is an issue with the render engine, where a category of game objects are drawn after the fog, shadows, and the new Frame Buffer shaders (no blurry torch flames). This is an extra large problem for people using the VFX engine instead of their normal engines, to draw heads, tiles, placeables, backpacks, etc. This is a bug.
vs.
"Use of both transparency and environment mapping on the same model"
This is an issue brought up by many people who want to change the game's limitation of using the alpha channel in the model textures for either transparency or "shiny" reflections. This doesn't really have anything to do with the last card, so having them as separate graphics category cards isn't excessive. It's also a format limitation, and not a render order issue. A potential solution for this issue would be to introduce a new "specular" texture for each texture, for example. That kind of solution wouldn't help at all for the "game's not drawing fog last" kind of issues in the other card.
Which is essentially the "we want custom beams" card, which already lumps together a bunch of visual aspects of the game that are triggered by scripts but not editable.
Customizing these would allow someone to make more "skins" for the game, since it uses a texture swapping script (barkskin), or perhaps color code the "tab glow" by item category (more than just hostile red, ally green, and neutral blue), or perhaps make a red magic missile for people who like red stuff. While the ProgFX category listed in the card's description is pretty broad, they are all used for scripts (spells are scripts).
None of these cards have to do with being "modern", except for perhaps the incorporation of having multiple "maps" per texture, if that's a solution for transparency/reflection. These three cards also don't have much to do with a graphics card either, except for the fact that you can "see" their issues. I wouldn't say that these cards are similar enough to be merged, and certainly not considered/voted upon as a single card instead of individual issues.
I understand and appreciate that there are technical differences in the items at a certain granularity but from the perspective of a player I don't know if it helps that various cards are aimed at specific ppl that know exactly what the issues are about. Even among modders it's not universal that everyone knows exactly how everything works. It could also be possible to phrase something like better characters as individual separate cards like "use polygon tessellation for head models" or yadda yadda texture resampling, or individual finger bones.
Most folks might know they want better stuff and more options, they have a broad idea of what they want but don't care much how the sausage gets made. That's just my own personal opinion tho.
ShadowM
Member Posts: 573
Comments
Custom spellbooks could be bundled with expanded spellbooks, I can't find the custom metamagic ones anymore so I assume those got merged.
It seems the UI refactoring also covers many issues like resizing at any resolution, health subtext, and custom window placement.
There are various VFX cards that seem unintelligible unless you're a programmer, like VFX drawn over, environmental mapping with transparency, progfx, and probably has some overlap with improved shaders too. So essentially "Improved modern VFX engine" seems like what many vfx/graphics cards try to say in bits and pieces lost in technical jargon.
This is a bug fix, or rather, a patch to change the way the default "vanilla" game handles existing content.
vs.
Custom Classes and Spellbooks is a different change to the game engine for custom content and module builders, to allow new non-"vanilla" content to the game in the form of custom spellbooks for existing classes that don't currently have spellbooks (Assassin, Shadowdancer, Blackguard), add the ability for people to design the function of those spellbooks and their "page" as a UI element (How many spell levels, spell level 0 yes/no), as well as add entirely new classes to the base game, selectable in character creation, with entirely new spellbooks as well.
---
"VFX drawn over problems stemming from render order" is an issue with the render engine, where a category of game objects are drawn after the fog, shadows, and the new Frame Buffer shaders (no blurry torch flames). This is an extra large problem for people using the VFX engine instead of their normal engines, to draw heads, tiles, placeables, backpacks, etc. This is a bug.
vs.
"Use of both transparency and environment mapping on the same model"
This is an issue brought up by many people who want to change the game's limitation of using the alpha channel in the model textures for either transparency or "shiny" reflections. This doesn't really have anything to do with the last card, so having them as separate graphics category cards isn't excessive. It's also a format limitation, and not a render order issue. A potential solution for this issue would be to introduce a new "specular" texture for each texture, for example. That kind of solution wouldn't help at all for the "game's not drawing fog last" kind of issues in the other card.
vs
Softcode ProgFX functions
Which is essentially the "we want custom beams" card, which already lumps together a bunch of visual aspects of the game that are triggered by scripts but not editable.
Customizing these would allow someone to make more "skins" for the game, since it uses a texture swapping script (barkskin), or perhaps color code the "tab glow" by item category (more than just hostile red, ally green, and neutral blue), or perhaps make a red magic missile for people who like red stuff. While the ProgFX category listed in the card's description is pretty broad, they are all used for scripts (spells are scripts).
None of these cards have to do with being "modern", except for perhaps the incorporation of having multiple "maps" per texture, if that's a solution for transparency/reflection. These three cards also don't have much to do with a graphics card either, except for the fact that you can "see" their issues. I wouldn't say that these cards are similar enough to be merged, and certainly not considered/voted upon as a single card instead of individual issues.
Most folks might know they want better stuff and more options, they have a broad idea of what they want but don't care much how the sausage gets made. That's just my own personal opinion tho.