Priority order for Remaking Assets?
Dark_Ansem
Member Posts: 992
So, according to @FreshLemonBun, and I quote:
What we know is being done:
- tilesets, and they look gorgeous - I'll keep crossing my fingers for revolutionary ones in future campaigns;
- player models (how in-depth, I don't know. I'll still keep hoping for customisable eye colour and better heads);
- GUI: critical. This is already on the list, yes? Even if we've seen little of it
What comes next:
I blame Beamdog for the pathfinding improvements in Baldur's Gate. Now I'm spoiled.
FreshLemonBun said:They answered this in the last stream when someone asked if they would overhaul the graphics by the summer they nervously laughed and caught their breath and then explained it would take much longer than that and they weren't sure what they would update and what they would leave as is.
we'd start second guessing every statement, such as the one here about facelifting everything, I suppose that it would be good to have a priority list of what needs to be done and what is of secondary importance.FreshLemonBun said:To be fair they did not say they would redo everything and confirm it, much of that is due to individuals filling in the blanks or not considering everything they have said. I try to pay attention and stick to what people actually say, consider the context, and consider their position as creators, and I find that I'm very rarely disappointed or surprised.
What we know is being done:
- tilesets, and they look gorgeous - I'll keep crossing my fingers for revolutionary ones in future campaigns;
- player models (how in-depth, I don't know. I'll still keep hoping for customisable eye colour and better heads);
- GUI: critical. This is already on the list, yes? Even if we've seen little of it
What comes next:
- Creatures: primary, including all creature variations (but if possible keeping true to D&D lore). Creatures like the Beholder (which looked quite good in HotU anyway) and the Premium Module Exclusives (especially the infinite dungeons special monsters) would work quite splendidly for a showcase;
- Animations: critical, but extremely long, and ideally more documentation should be shared to allow us do our own animations and ACPs (again, even improved animations for premium module creatures would be great). And let's not even talk about boned hands...;
- Placeables: linked to the tilesets I assume. It would feel very strange to have low-poly placeables in the new hall of justice tilesets;
- Skyboxes/ceilings: least importance, even if I personally love them;
- Visual Effects: critical for me, personally, but otherwise I'd say of secondary importance because the VFXs have aged quite well. If they get redone, however, I personally hope that we keep (as EXTRA) the VFX for Harm, Time Stop, Implosion, Hammer of the Gods, Flamestrike, Word of Faith and the summoning circles for creatures - my personal favourites (perhaps share how to make/modify them more easily?);
- Audio (BGM): depending on IF/WHEN the Audio system improvement happens (mentioned here) this will either be critical or of secondary importance. It will also depend on how sophisticated such changes will be: proper palette and/or loop points?;
- Audio (SFX): I'd say of least importance. Only audio nutjobs like me will probably notice a difference and, again, highly dependent on audio system reform and performance improvements;
- Scripts: adding new functions, unhardcoding some and allowing one-lines in place of workarounds? Critical;
- Lighting: alas, tied to improved performance of the engine. But I'd definitely love to finally be able to have more dynamic lights and stop relying on baked module lighting. Skyrim was especially good in that;
- Equipment (weapons): eh, I don't know. I mean, I'd personally like it, but I'm concerned at how the 3 part structure works for custom content, secondary;
- Equipment (armor & headgear): again, same issue about multi-part equipment and lack of variety (no hoods), sometimes equipment doesn't blend in with each other, primary;
- Equipment (capes): clipping, anyone? What about animations? critical;
- Equipment (icon-only stuff): remaking the icons? I liked some of them quite a lot. Least importance;
I blame Beamdog for the pathfinding improvements in Baldur's Gate. Now I'm spoiled.
Post edited by Dark_Ansem on
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Comments
Player characters and things that attach to them are the worst for wear as there's lots of low detail textures there (weapons don't even look to be textured at times).
Trent: Ah "Will you ever make documentation for new file types you released like the dot mdl file and how do you use them for beginners?"
Trent: So dot mdl files are actually not new they're dot model files, they are the neverwinter format, the only difference it we've uh.... we've cooked up... some previously blank data fields we've actually pushed data into, which we are now using for uh tangent space bias data and so on. Um...
Phil: Changed.
Trent: Yeah we don't have a ton of documentation on it because we don't have a really good workflow... toolflow yet. It's --
Phil: We're currently in the middle of resolving that actually.
Trent: Yeah, we know how, we know we can make HD level content, and we're trying to figure out the best process to get there and once we've got the process figured out then we'll nail down exactly what the formats are, and how to best work with them.
Phil: But wait what's going on with this player character, he looks different.
Trent: He does. Omigerd.
Phil: He's got all this detail and, --
Trent: He's a detailed character.
Phil: ..-ss crazy.
Phil: So again, is this us, it this finished? Are we done here?
Trent: This uh, this is kinda the first stages of sorting the tool pipeline, is actually trying to make content and getting it final and see is it working.
Phil: So earlier we talked about hey that toolchain and that mdl stuff is kinda a pain. This is us working through that pain and figuring out how we're u going to optimize it and make it modern and ---able-
Trent: Sometimes you gotta hand edit stuff.
Trent: The other thing is that this is with the area default lighting that was set previously...-
Phil: Yeah.
Trent: ... which this room was always a lil hot. And with the hot lighting and the new spec normal stuff it's hawt. Obviously this would benefit greatly from a lighting pass.
Phil: So we're pretty happy with this as an experiment, but we've got a lot of work to do to make the game look great. This is just testing out various graphical features, and uh yea yeah we're pretty happy with this.
Phil: "Will we see some of the new modules and tilesets rolling out before summer?"
Phil: UhhhhhhmmmMMMmmm... I don't really want to say yay or nay...
Trent: Summer is uh... so does.... i-it depends if you think of seasons like you do in Canada where there's summer and winter, and there's a tiny little fall and a tiny little spring between the two of them. Ummm summer's probably a little early, I would say...
Phil: I think eh-
Trent: We're gonna be moving on it as fast as we can but at this point we're still kind of figuring out exactly how long things are going to take, so..-
Phil: I think you're still gonna see... content before then, but maybe not the scope of what you're thinking.
Trent: Yeah we're gonna be rolling some stuff, it will be a big question.
Phil: There will be a constant drip feed of updates and content. Um, if there will be a fully completed module is the question.
Trent: So here's a question.
Trent: "Are you planning to reskin slash retexture all of the vanilla tilesets?"
Trent: We're still thinking about this. So we're not a hundred per cent committed to rolling down this road. We've got to figure out the cost and the timelines because right now we're working on the tools, we're figuring out what the toolpath is. We're interested in it, we want to do it but if it's going to cost an obscene bucket of money to do it ... it's just gonna be beyond our means. What we do want to do is move the entire game visually forward so that's something we're gonna push.
Phil: Question "The tileset and the model of the human will be available on the workshop to try them out?"
Phil: Yeah I think we're eh gonna start rolling more content out on the workshop for you guys to test out.
Trent: Yeah, ..--
Phil: So, a while ago we pushed out the Aribeth model.
Trent: Yep.
Phil: Um... if you look for new spikes you can find her in there. So yeah we're gonna be eh... pushing content out into the workshop, to just experiment with things.
Trent: Yep.
Phil: In addition to visual upgrades we might throw out little tiny modules here and there, that're just testing a specific feature or something. So um yeah you'll see stuff in the workshop from us.
Trent: Yup.
Trent: So here's a question.
Trent: "Are you planning to reskin slash retexture all of the vanilla tilesets?"
Trent: We're still thinking about this. So we're not a hundred per cent committed to rolling down this road. We've got to figure out the cost and the timelines because right now we're working on the tools, we're figuring out what the toolpath is. We're interested in it, we want to do it but if it's going to cost an obscene bucket of money to do it ... it's just gonna be beyond our means. What we do want to do is move the entire game visually forward so that's something we're gonna push.
What YOU said, on the other hand, was "graphics". Which basically means EVERYTHING. I was already aware of the tilesets issue.
So perhaps you should be more careful and more precise about what you say and what you write.