Characters and Environments

[Gera Gundorov]

Thought I would start a thread pertaining to the art assets of this
project.

[Gera Gundorov]

I'm curious about the scale of this project for demo purposes. How
many characters would there be in total (main and NPC's). Is it a
small, delapidated village with a dozen huts, or a thriving merchant
outpost by the walls of a stronghold? Any rough estimates?

G

[dantef...@gmail.com]

Maybe we should try to find paintings from the time and region, and
pictures of the area. That might guide us maybe on what we should
decide to do.
Off-hand, I know that this pertains to a whole region and people in
France. There is a kingdom, as well as outer towns. The kingdom is
completely tied up with the war, so if we
put the setting there, it will be a bit chaotic as everyone is war
oriented.

Also, some back-story. The Pope originally sent his legate to meet
with the King of the region. They had a dispute about the role of the
Cathars in society and how it related to the Papacy. On the legate's
trip home
the King had him killed. In retaliation, the Pope moved forward to
issue his crusade. The reason that so many joined this crusade against
their good neighbors is completely monetary. The Pope said things
such as they were heretical etc... but in reality, this happened
because of the state of society in W. Europe. There were many nobles
and not enough inheritance to go around. This was a chaotic time in
history,
because for this reason people found it easy in their hearts to engage
in violence for the taking of the other's belongings. This was a
problem since 11th century, and part of the reason for the 1st Crusade
as well.
The Cathar's were a rich and intelligent culture that got outnumbered,
murdered, and sacked.

The Kingdom would be a good place to relate all this disturbing and
interesting info. A town setting would show how the average townfolk
would interpret their surroundings.

[Gera Gundorov]

The reason I'm inquiring about our setting is the difference between
a dozen villagers and a few dozen townsfolk, which for our small-at-
the-moment team would make a tremendous difference. I will look into
artwork of the period and see what I can dig up for costumes and
environments.

G

[Gera Gundorov]

I've added some images of locations and artwork from/based on that
time period. One thing I've found out while sifting through the i-net
archives is that most Cathar castles and strongholds were destroyed,
when their opponents tried to erase history. They've mostly
succeeded, but there are foundations and isolated parts of these
fortifications (like individual rooms, for example) that survived
miraculously. I couldn't figure out whether they've rebuilt these
structures based on the Cathars' original designs or from scratch. I
will hit up Borders today and see if I can find some books that might
have a collection of artwork pertaining to the Cathars, since you all
got to bust ass at work and I still have a week before my classes
start :)

G

[Chris Lum]

The way I see it, we can go a couple of ways with this, character-
wise.

We can have swappable body parts, like heads and torsos to generate a
lot of townspeople (a lot of games will do this).
Pros:
* We can generate a lot of models for less effort
* We can more easily populate our world

Cons:
* After a while, NPCs begin to lose individuality
* We may not have the time or tech to support a large number of NPCs
(modeling, texture swaps, animations, rigging, VO, AI, all considered)
* More AI work to make them not just stand around looking bland

Or, we can just use fewer NPCs, but make them all unique
Pros:
* Players will remember the NPCs, what they represent, who they are
* If we only have a few, this may possibly mean less work
* More Adventure-game-like; fewer, but more meaningful interactions

Cons:
* Could also mean more work, depending on how many we want, since they
will be unique and we can't reuse their assets
* Harder to simulate a believable larger world
* Need for more voice work and modeling

I'm inclined to go with choice 2, simply because most adventure games
I've played have stressed the quality of NPCs over quantity. I would
prefer to have fewer NPCs that are well written and memorable, than a
plethora of clones *cough* Oblivion *cough* (don't get me wrong, it's
a great game but I really have to strain my brain to remember any NPC
that really stood out as unique, save Sean Bean since he's awesome).

[dantef...@gmail.com]

Coming from the tech side, I have a few comments.

The swappable body parts idea is what they used in Morrowind. I modded
a lot in that game, so I have a very good understanding of the method.
Do I want to code that? Not particularly... that is quite a bit of
extra work adding onto the engine to attach meshes and bones together
like legos. Also, you run into bad clipping problems with each part
going into each other on movement.

Make every character completely unique? I also want to say, not really
attractive to me to make every NPC completely unique. That seems like
a bit too much work to have all these unique rigged and skinned
characters.

I'd like to offer a middle of the road suggestion. This should be
considered more so by Tyler and Gera. I think it might work to make
some basic rough outs of characters with blank faces in Max/Maya, save
them as templates, then build off those templates to make each
character quickly. Many characters will still probably end up having
similar body types or builds, but we can also use scaling to adjust
for that.

I'd like to know what you guys think. Any other suggestions we're
overlooking?

[Gera Gundorov]

Modified templates works for me. I had seen some amazing
transformations with just a different hair piece/hat/facial hair +
texture swap. I wouldn't have known they were the same mesh. I think
that can work well, but I believe we should distinguish the few main
characters that we want the players to build an attachment with.

On a different note, I also wanted to clarify the images under the
files tab. "a" - architecture, "c" - characters, "w" - weapons. Hope
it's OK, there's no option for creating folders or sets that I could
find. It's purely for organizational purposes.

[Tyler Fermelis - Artist]

Quality over quantity. I think adventure games do always have
memorable npcs, and modified templates sounds like a good way to deal
with "background" characters. but I think the people that the
character speaks with at length should be very unique, very different
models.... unique=memorable. memorable=good. :)
Example:
Farmer John tilling the field looks like farmer Joe but with a beard
and different shirt.. fine, all cool, but when we're talking to Milon
Bovon the "crazy" old man who carries a frog in his hands and speaks
through his cracked teeth of another world, we don't want him in any
way to resemble background folk...

[Chris Lum]

Sounds good. It's a lot like the Universal Man concept that Pixar
used for The Incredibles. With a good base mesh, it would be easier
to generate some background characters. But yeah, I agree with Tyler
that the key people the player interacts with should be as unique as
we can afford to get them.

[dantef...@gmail.com]

Agreed.

So, to recap: Templates for background characters, unique story arc
NPCs.

Next step will be prioritizing a schedule. I think we can all agree
that we need a prototype for our player character first?

Gera, about the filenames, let's open a new thread for File Naming
Scheme.

[Tyler Fermelis - Artist]

Yep. And main character should probably be male? female? anybody
care?
I don't know what the gender roles were in this period, but I guess
from what it sounds like, if we are focusing on our story, and less
research, then it shouldn't matter so much. Thoughts? Opinions?

[Chris Lum]

Hmm, I think for our project it would just be easier to have a male
protagonist, since the team is currently all guys ;)
It's easier for the writers, voice work, etc.

It would be cool to be able to choose genders, but that means that we
would have to choose between:
1) Have 2 models, 2 voice actors, and swappable dialogue tree segments
(Deus Ex 2, KOTOR)
2) Have 2 models, 2 voice actors, and the same dialgoue trees and just
never mention gender (I assume Mass Effect is like this since both
genders are stuck with the name Sheppard?)
3) Have 2 models, and swappable dialogue tree segments, no voice -- he/
she doesn't speak, only through text. (Many RPGs do this, Baldur's
Gate, Fallout, Neverwinter Nights, etc.)

I think the above 3 choices, while viable, are probably more work than
we need to take on at this time. Though I actually prefer believable
female protagonists, my vote is for male since as previously
mentioned, we're all guys, it's easier to write for a male character,
and provide a male voiceover if needed. Plus, less work, which allows
us to focus on other areas of the game.



On Jan 22, 10:15 pm, Tyler Fermelis - Artist <tferme...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Tyler Fermelis - Artist]

Sounds great! Male it is, and George has come up with a list of names
from the looks of it. cool.

[dantef...@gmail.com]

Another vote for Male.

[Gera Gundorov]

I think it would be a great deal of help to us (especially in
developing the story) to decide how many characters and environments
would be a sensible objective, assuming our team stays this size.
Dante mentioned end of '08 target date (ideally) for completion of
this demo. Can someone throw some figures on the board and see what
we can agree upon.

Gera

[Chris Lum]

Hmm, for the time being I can only think of a bare minimum figure,
which would be 6.

1 Hero model
1 Mentor model
1 Real World Enemy
1 Otherplane Enemy
1 Quest critical NPC
1 Interactive townsperson or other non-critical character

This would be pretty bare bones for a working demo, and I think would
be a good number for showing off the basic gameplay mechanics and a
taste of the story. Ideally, we could expand on this number, maybe
include a few more NPCs, or maybe another form for the main character
in the otherplane (or could be a texture swap and a particle effect,
who knows). Or maybe only have real world enemies and leave the
otherplane as more of a puzzle-solving or interaction area, which
would be a little more in line with the mental-focus of the
otherplane.

[Tyler Fermelis - Artist]

Solid thinking Chris. great minimum, we should hit these characters
STRONGLY, then add on from their once everything else about the demo
is in shape and we're happy with it.

[Gera Gundorov]

So... environment wise, should we go for 1 in our world and 1 in the
Other plane = 2? That is minimalist as well, but will it be enough to
demonstrate what we want? maybe 2 smaller for the Real world and 1
big one for the Other plane - since there might be some running around
in there, based on the latest draft?

Thoughts?

Gera