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Team Comments 4:
Dwarven Character Model Comments
Yesterday we released the first Darkfall screenshots ever, featuring the male
dwarven character model. I left the office a few minutes after we released the
screens, and when I came back to the office this morning, our community members
had left us a good chunk of both praise and criticism on our message boards.
Let me start by stating that your feedback is extremely valuable. Both the praise
and the criticism. It helps us improve on our work, and gear Darkfall more towards
what both we and you really want the game to look, play and feel like. This
is the very reason why we are trying to keep the development of Darkfall as
open as possible, so we can get that awesome feedback from you guys, and at
the same time keep you in the loop about what happens at Razorwax.
The male dwarf character model seen on the screenshots is a very early model.
He does look a little cartoonish, as many of you pointed out in your feedback.
This is mostly due to a texturing issue. Rest assured that we are going to fix
this once we enable the dressing system, which I will explain in a minute. We
don't want cartoonish graphics either.
Apart from the textures, the Dwarf does look a little bit off. It looks like
he has been cut & pasted into the world somehow. This is mostly due to the lack
of shadows in the client. Shadows will be added to the engine soon, and I think
that will fix it. But let me get back to the dressing system that we're working
on, which will make characters extremely customizable, detailed and lifelike.
When Darkfall is in beta,
all character models (on both players and NPCs) will be modeled naked, without
hair and facial hair, and without clothing, armor, weapons and other equipment.
Players will pick hairstyles, facial hair styles, colors for both, and skin
tone for their characters. In addition, players can adjust weight and height
(within racial limits) on their characters. EACH OF THESE ELEMENTS WILL HAVE
THEIR OWN TEXTURE.
Later on, players can dress and undress their characters as they want (much
like Barbie, yay!) with armor, weapons, clothing, etc. With all the different
gear we have in Darkfall, all the different colors on equipment (yes you can
dye both clothes and most types of armor), the combinations you can put together
is in the millions, so each character may look unique. EACH OF THESE ELEMENTS
WILL HAVE THEIR OWN TEXTURE.
Currently, our Barbie dressing and animation system is not yet enabled for the
Pre-Alpha, so what you see is a premade dwarf, made out of ONE SINGLE TEXTURE.
Needless to say, the resolution and quality is extremely poor compared to what
our character models will look like when we add the dressing system.
Ok, that said, I think our dwarf ingame model kicks ass. We got some work to
do, but the model is in my (biased) opinion one of the best dwarf models ever
seen in a game. He isn't just a small funny looking guy with a beard, he is
a tough mean looking little guy, full of muscle and attitude, because his race
spent the last 100.000 years making tunnels and mines inside mountains (if that
doesnt make you tough, nothing does).
So to some of your direct questions:
Asked by _kane_: First, landscape. I would like a bit less grass/trees and
more pure rock. maybe some rocks scattered around?
Yes. Rocks will dominate Dvergheim. As you all have probably noticed from our
screenshots, manual texture control and management on the ground is not added
to the worldbuilder yet. Right now the client has a small set of vegetation
textures, and it just puts these textures where it think they should be, based
on a simple Feet Above Sea Level formula. Manual texture management and control
will make Darkfall look ALOT better.
Asked by Airius Droc: Is the Backback going to work similar to UO?
Yes. I think the UO backpack was absolutely brilliant. The way you could organize
stuff, and the fact that you had to tidy up your backpack after some serious
looting was simply amazing. I have never liked the slot-based backpacks in games
like Diablo, EQ, AC, Morrowind, etc. Actually, keeping a nice and organized
backpack could give you an edge in UO. It could make you just that extra second
faster in some situations, so player-skill was involved. We definately want
that for Darkfall.
Asked by Smojukl: Oh btw i hate text like "PersonA hits you for 456 damage.
It's just so...ehm I don't know? "unreal"?
Well yea, but I bet you hate going "omg wtf happened now, I am dead!" even more.
The text helps you analyze what just happened, and why. You can turn it off
though, if it is bothering you too much, then check it later for analyzing why
you got owned ;)
Asked by Bandolaf: Will Dwarven weapons be the equivalent of Human ones,
in relation to size? One thing about both EQ and Camelot that got on my nerves
was that weapon size changed with character model size, so Dwarven weapons looked
like toothpicks. Dwarves are known for their incredible strength:size ratio,
and are also known for using weapons that seem too large for them.
Let me quote the current King of Dvergheim, Barin Greyfell: "I didnt ask
for a two-hand axe you idiot, I asked for a two-MAN axe!". Darkfall dwarves
wield the biggest weapons they can make, and weapons does NOT auto-size to toothpick
size when they wield them.
Asked by Dozier: I assume that the system commands that you show are just
for debugging right?" You select the heal spell"?
The current system commands are mainly for debugging, yes. We are still fine
tuning the text messages for various actions. That god awful text font will
be changed soon too :)
So again, thanks for all the feedback people. You are helping us make the best
damn MMORPG ever! :)
Claus Grovdal
Producer/Lead Designer
Razorwax AS
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