Goblin Squad Member
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This thread a TANGENT to the Character-customization thread as this thread aims at the METHODS that'll be used for Character customization, NOT the options themselves.
I'm wondering how Goblin works plans to do Character customization; will they go for the Swap the Character Model (or parts of the model),
Vertex Displacement (Morphing) using something like Mega-Fiers, or a create a hybrid of the two where certain parts are swapped and others are morphed.
Now I know each one has Pros and Cons in implementation, performance, and work required. But each answer gives a different degree of customisation options per amount of work.
I know the swap the model (or it's parts) is the easiest one to execute on, likely has the least work, and has the best performance.
But each piece of work done has the least customisation value.
Where as *Morph based customisation is not the easiest to execute, has a load of work, and eats into cycles to render,
but each piece or morph added increases customisation value in a near exponential value, as each morph can be added to another morph on top of the base model.
A hybrid of the two would not be half bad but could cause some headaches in that a morph might cause the appearance of the seems to appear on the character.
Now I know I would perfer a morph based character system.
But I'm also realistic in that I know some players will go hog wild on the morphs for a perfect look and the character will eat so many cycles to render that it'll slow to a crawl,
So a system should be in place to limit the number of morphs used on the body and the head.
A good method I could think of is a cartesian plane where X and Y both equal a morph selected by the player,
with 0 on the axis equaling 0 percent of the morph, and 100 on the axis equaling 100% of the morph.
This way only two morphs get blended on the body and or head for everyone, and everyone has equal render cycle time.
Now I do think Goblin Works should release a demo Character Creator like the one for Dragon Age: Origin (Model Swap method) or Phantasy Star Online 2 (Morph based) as this will be the front door to Pathfinder Online and it should be polished like crazy and the feedback on the character editor will be of extreme value for the final version of the character creation system. This will also allow players a chance to make the character before Pathfinder Online launches and have it ready for when they do join the Game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not familiar with Phantasy Star, but I did like Dragon Age: Origins' system a lot. I liked the ability to change facial dimensions, like brow depth, chin width, eye spacing, etc. I guess I could contrast that with the LotRO system that has a selection of pieces for each feature which you can then mix & match.
To me, the dimension sliders of DAO sound like 'morphing' while the mix & match system of LotRO sounds like 'model swap'. DAO has a little bit of 'swapping' in its 'preset' options and LotRO has a 'dimension slider' in its 'body type' setting.
Whatever the systems are supposed to be called, it would be great to have a mix of both: individually-swappable features which could then be adjusted by dimension. From a distance, many of the details less obvious than height and body type could be assumed as default, with more detail filled in as you get closer. For example, from far away you just se that the character has a nose. A little nearer, and you could tell if it was average, wide, or narrow. Within a couple meters, there could be 3-5 degrees of narrow, average, or wide, meaning there'd be a total of 9-15 settings on the 'nose width' dimensional slider.
I'd like colouration to have hue and brightness sliders, the result of which should be given something like a RGB value, so we're not clicking on random blocks hoping one looks right. In some character creator systems, the lighting in the creation screen is so bad that different tones end up looking the same until you get out in the game's 'daylight' (DDO was bad about that).
Finally, I'd like there to be different ethnicities for each race that set where the 'average' is on height, build, colouration, and facial bone structure dimensions. Among humans, Ulfen tend to look Scandinavian, Tian tend to look Asian, Mwangi tend to look Sub-Saharan African, etc. You might have an Ulfen who is short relative to other Ulfen but not relative to the average Tian, and you might have a Ulfen who is relatively tanned, but not as dark as a Mwangi. Here are the human ethnicities, and similar things could be done for other races, so elves from Kyonin, the Mordant Spire, or the Darklands all have different average points on their sliders.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The Dragon Age: Origins system was a hybrid of swap and Morph, Now that I've ran it again.
The bodies (Clothes are part of the body), and the head are swappable, but the head had some morph controls, and the body had none.
The PSO2 System is almost purely morph based (with race and gender as swapping the base model), The head and body are really morphable the only parts that are a swapable are the hair, the clothes(each one has build in morphs), and the accessories.
Now on Keovar's note of height, I think a give and take system should be in place, the bigger/taller you are the bigger the hit boxes, but your damage goes up, but the smaller you are the smaller the hit boxes but your damage goes down.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Now I do think Goblin Works should release a demo Character Creator like the one for Dragon Age: Origin (Model Swap method) or Phantasy Star Online 2 (Morph based) as this will be the front door to Pathfinder Online and it should be polished like crazy and the feedback on the character editor will be of extreme value for the final version of the character creation system [edit: CCS].
Just a quick check: I was under the impression the CCS as with other game systems would launch relatively basic and be interated on over time. This might work in conjunction with character changes relational to skills chosen. This was my understanding of the CCS. Perhaps a good question for the FAQs next week's blog? An early release feedback version sounds like a good idea maybe.
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Goblin Squad Member
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PSO2 Character Creator install
Err... what? You linked a forum post or something, but if the art in the corner is any representation of their style, I guess it's just as well. I am not interested in a game with distorted with characters that look like this.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Now I do think Goblin Works should release a demo Character Creator like the one for Dragon Age: Origin (Model Swap method) or Phantasy Star Online 2 (Morph based) as this will be the front door to Pathfinder Online and it should be polished like crazy and the feedback on the character editor will be of extreme value for the final version of the character creation system [edit: CCS].Just a quick check: I was under the impression the CCS as with other game systems would launch relatively basic and be interated on over time. This might work in conjunction with character changes relational to skills chosen. This was my understanding of the CCS. Perhaps a good question for the FAQs next week's blog? An early release feedback version sounds like a good idea maybe.
I hope they do a few early release feedback versions so the final character creation system is easy, user-friendly, fun to use, and still powerful enough to cover a variety of options.
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Goblin Squad Member
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PSO2 Character Creator installErr... what? You linked a forum post or something, but if the art in the corner is any representation of their style, I guess it's just as well. I am not interested in a game with distorted with characters that look like this.
I don't like linking directly to Executable files which is why I posted a link to the site where I found it.
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I just hope there are plenty of clothing options even within each "outfit" or maybe even go without outfits and just include clothing parts.
I prefer swapping rather then morphing. I just can't seem to get morphs to look right. That said, it is better if the swapping has many options and run on small parts. For example in RL there is a detective kit tht can be used to make picturez of people because there are a limited set of options for each facial feature in then human genome, so if they had a swap system like that where I could just elect a variety of options for the brow, eyes, chin, etc, then I would be happy.
Also, while I don't know positively, I am pretty sure that morphs are not additional info that get added but rather a value every character has and whether you alter it or not that value must still be sent as character data.
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I wasn't refering to swapping heads. That's why I mention something smaller, so I could swap eyes by themselves and ears, mouths, noses, brows, etc. There are a limited set of each of those in the human genome.
That way you can get as much variation as real life and more easily then with morphs. That also has the advantage that the graphic artists can more easily prevent someone's tinkering from causing things to show that shouldn't be seen.
So you wouldn't be swapping heads.
There is actually a kit cops can use when an artist is unavailable that has clear slides with each feature individually. You can take a slide from each feature and get an near accurate image of any person on earth. Weight being the only unaccountable variable which really makes the most difference with someone who is very much overweight.
What I am suggesting is something like those slides. Which could still be mixed with morphs.
But trying to get a realistic and good looking face with morphs is a huge pain that never comes out how I want then I am stuck playing ugly unless I get my sister to come beautify my character for me.
I guess this could be described as effecting the same things as morphs but having swaps instead.
This also makes it easier to keep each race looking like the race, maintaining styles among them, the elves might have all their features sharpened, the halflings might have always larger eyes, etc.
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I've done game dev modeling and the face is a morph only zone, no swappable parts for the face peroid.
The only parts that are swappable are body (sub parts Arms, legs, hands, feet, torso), the head(+the entire face), hair, and clothes.
I highly doubt that even if it is uncommon. Older games have glitched where I could see inside the head and see seperate parts for the mouth and eyes.
Now maybe it is easier and more common to find and build on the morph concept, and I could easily believe that since programming builds so much on what others have written rather than always making new which is even further enhanced by deadlines making it more desirable to just use what is already made.
However the morph concept would be fine if it had key points that could be selected if someone didn't want to use sliders. So there could be a simple view and complex view. The simple view lets you "swap" the eyes and brows like I described above, which really just has preset values, then someone else could just click on complex view and see all the mkrph sliders directly, or even use the simple view to get close then make adjustments in complex view.
(Of course it would be called advanced view not complex view, for psychological reasons that somehow don't apply to me. No wonder I can't talk to people and have them understand me.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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...EVE Online is the absolute gold standard as far as character creation goes...
It's gone now, but I spent FAR too much time in City of Heroes' chargen...my personal gold standard. Champions Online has far more options, but it's both overwhelming in its too-muchness and too cartoony for my taste.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As to morphing, the more feature sliders you add, the more data per character that has to be sent to every other client seeing that character.
Lets say you have 16 "features" which can be morphed with sliders. And each slider has 64 possible values in the range(I don't know what realistic slider dimensions are, so just picking one that seems reasonable).
That would be 28 additional bytes per character. Imagine if there is an event that draws 1000 people - a massive multi-settlement battle with allies called in on all sides! That's 28K of extra bandwidth flying through the lines for each client. That doesn't even take into account the performance hit on a server trying to deal with all of that data.
I would love a system that allows for tons of customization. But everyone has to keep in mind that this game is looking to bring lots of people together on occasion for big, impressive events. And MMOs have a lot more concerns about data sizes than do single-player, or even 64 player games.
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Goblin Squad Member
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True, but if you do certain tricks you could cut that data count down alot.
Example from PSO2,
When you morph the base body, your given a cartesian plane where X and Y both equal a morph selected by the player, and each axis has say Six morphs, that means you can only select Two morphs out of the Six.
and the axis are each assigned a nibble, and each is filled will a coded value to each morph
Now you need only send 3 bytes to represent the base body if a morph has a full byte, or 2 bytes if the morphs are a nibble.
This removes unused morphs from begin sent about the base of the body,
This system could also be applied to the face to reduce it's data over head.
Than any additional morphs to the body or head would start adding up unless they came up with some other tricks to remove unused morphs from the data stream, or they could just limit the morphs that can be applied to a character, say giving 64 options, but can only use 16, and it's consider used if it's value is greater than 0.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I doubt that character morphing (and hence changing the slide values) would be allowed during ongoing in-game activity, such as battle. This would fix the data amount sent for each character entering the field of engagement/line of sight for each client. My guess is that once a character data set is loaded into a client, the amount of update data transmitted to a client per character after that may be much smaller.
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True, but if you do certain tricks you could cut that data count down alot.
Example from PSO2,
When you morph the base body, your given a cartesian plane where X and Y both equal a morph selected by the player, and each axis has say Six morphs, that means you can only select Two morphs out of the Six.
and the axis are each assigned a nibble, and each is filled will a coded value to each morph
Now you need only send 3 bytes to represent the base body if a morph has a full byte, or 2 bytes if the morphs are a nibble.This removes unused morphs from begin sent about the base of the body,
This system could also be applied to the face to reduce it's data over head.
Than any additional morphs to the body or head would start adding up unless they came up with some other tricks to remove unused morphs from the data stream, or they could just limit the morphs that can be applied to a character, say giving 64 options, but can only use 16, and it's consider used if it's value is greater than 0.
Unused morphs aren't being sent anyway. All the options are already present at both ends, so what needs to be sent is the data about which options are selected and there is only two possible methods to do that, for each axis of choice a value must be sent, either the axis the value represents can be determined by the position that value holds in the datastream, or each value can be headmarked with an ID for which axis it belongs to. The former is the most practical in this case since there won't be very many unused axi of options (an axis of options being a segment of choice I.E. what hair style is one axis and requires a value to be sent.) The second option can be made to assume a defailt choice for any unspecified options, however since there must be an ID with each value if nearly all options have values other then default, then it ends up actually taking more data, so option two is only useful when the majority of options will always be default.
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Goblin Squad Member
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....Unused morphs aren't being sent anyway. All the options are already present at both ends, so what needs to be sent is the data about which options are selected and there is only two possible methods to do that, for each axis of choice a value must be sent, either the axis the value represents can be determined by the position that value holds in the data stream, or each value can be headmarked with an ID for which axis it belongs to. The former is the most practical in this case since there won't be very many unused axis of options (an axis of options being a segment of choice I.E. what hair style is one axis and requires a value to be sent.) The second option can be made to assume a default choice for any unspecified options, however since there must be an ID with each value if nearly all options have values other then default, then it ends up actually taking more data, so option two is only useful when the majority of options will always be default.
That's what I said.
Though Hair tends to be the swap only type (this covers styles). Hair is hardly if ever morphed into a style. This is especially true if it's dynamic hair (drapes, moves with the wind, responds to character movement.)
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What I said applies equally to morphs, swap, or any other data types/styles as it wasn't really a comment for or against those options.
The only thing I am wondering at this point is "what unused morphs?" For each changable feature there will be a [change selected option method] and it will either make a minor adjustment to a feature or swap out a feature based on a value and each of those changable features will have a related value that will near never be default and anything other then default must be sent.
But where do unused morphs come in? The only things I can think of that you might be refering to is, one, values that are left at default, or two, some odd concept that data other then references are sent and thus extra portions go with.
If one then I highly doubt that enough options are left at default to worry about this and any system to minimize this effect is a double edged blade that could potentialy increase the data sent, and given the use we are discussing that would be the case.
If two, then you have absolutely no idea idea what you are talking about on the this front, and while I could elaborate on the subject I am going to assume for the moment that there is no need.
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Goblin Squad Member
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An unused morph is a morph that is not used,
i.e the morph value for that morph is Zero, not One, minus One, One Hundred or Minus One Hundred, but just Zero.
When you use a Program like DAZ Studio (it's 95% morph based) each character you make loads at different rates because some will use only 1 morph and load in the blink of an eye, while others that use say 100 morphs will take almost 8 seconds to load.
Why, because the the first one only has 1 used morph and the rest of the morphs are unused and not loaded, while the one with 100 morphs takes time because it has to load each used morph and then apply it.
Hence why I stated the PSO2 example above as to pick which 2 morphs are used and leaving the rest unused based on player preference for that character.
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An unused morph is a morph that is not used,
i.e the morph value for that morph is Zero, not One, minus One, One Hundred or Minus One Hundred, but just Zero.When you use a Program like DAZ Studio (it's 95% morph based) each character you make loads at different rates because some will use only 1 morph and load in the blink of an eye, while others that use say 100 morphs will take almost 8 seconds to load.
Why, because the the first one only has 1 used morph and the rest of the morphs are unused and not loaded, while the one with 100 morphs takes time because it has to load each used morph and then apply it.
Hence why I stated the PSO2 example above as to pick which 2 morphs are used and leaving the rest unused based on player preference for that character.
There is a difference between not using a value and having a value of zero. I haven't used Daz studio or similar so I may be missing something, but it sounds to me like you are making two contradictory claims.
You imply that a morph needs to be sent (not merely a reference value), but also that a morph is applied only if altered.
This sounds utterly ridiculous. Perhaps the programs used impart ridiculous requirments, but I would find something else myself.
It's quite simple from what I can see, each of those sliders with a value is required, the option that value represents isn't needed because the client already knows the options, thus there is no need to send the option itself.
Additionally, an option like persay mouth width, requires a value because without a value the mouth can't be rendered, true a default value can be set but that is where my earlier comment comes in. If you want to ignore sending the value for mouth width then not only do you need to provide a default but you also need to headmark all other values with ID codes so the program knows where each value goes.
For example, the user sees the following
Mouth width: ##
Mouth height: ##
Lip size: ##
Lip color: ##
But when it is sent the computer sees,
########.
The client knows that the first two are width, the second two are height, etc.
Now lets see what it looks like if you add headmarking so you can ignore sending lipsize,
1##2##4##.
Notice that it took an extra digit since headmarks were included despite not sending anything related to one of the options.
The only way to get that second string style reduced less then the first is to use mostly default values and there is no possible way any character creator can get by with saying "here is a face. You can change only two parts the rest will remain the same as everyone else"
A morph, near as can tell from references to things I actually used, is not a sticker that gets slapped on anyway, the face has these features and the computer has to load all those values everytme it displays that face whether the values are default or not.
The only way I can think of that might account for your statement of "mkremorphs takes more load time" is if for whatever reason your program loads the default state first then makes changes. It may have advantages in development but many techniques in all fields change between research/development and actual live use, the requirements being different at each stage. The optimum in this case for live use is to load the final values to begin with, then the only changes that need made are the prescripted ones for speech or emoticons.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There is a difference between not using a value and having a value of zero. I haven't used Daz studio or similar so I may be missing something, but it sounds to me like you are making two contradictory claims.You imply that a morph needs to be sent (not merely a reference value), but also that a morph is applied only if altered.
Try using DAZ studio for awhile to get an Idea of the rules that apply to morph based characters and it's free.
No morphs are sent from Server to Client because the client already has the morphs on the Hard drive, but not loaded into memory unless it's used.
It's quite simple from what I can see, each of those sliders with a value is required, the option that value represents isn't needed because the client already knows the options, thus there is no need to send the option itself.Additionally, an option like persay mouth width, requires a value because without a value the mouth can't be rendered, true a default value can be set but that is where my earlier comment comes in. If you want to ignore sending the value for mouth width then not only do you need to provide a default but you also need to headmark all other values with ID codes so the program knows where each value goes.
For example, the user sees the following
Mouth width: ##
Mouth height: ##
Lip size: ##
Lip color: ##But when it is sent the computer sees,
########.
The client knows that the first two are width, the second two are height, etc.Now lets see what it looks like if you add headmarking so you can ignore sending lipsize,
1##2##4##.
Notice that it took an extra digit since headmarks were included despite not sending anything related to one of the options.
The only way to make sure unused morphs are unused is using the
1##2##4## example,as you have to id which morph has what value. and it'll keep the character data stream small.
The only way to get that second string style reduced less then the first is to use mostly default values and there is no possible way any character creator can get by with saying "here is a face. You can change only two parts the rest will remain the same as everyone else"
The default is an un-morphed base model that is always the start point, so a base Head and body are always loaded.
You add morphs from there, but to make the Character Creation system friendly to performance and data sent over the line you could only say select 4 morphs out of say the 32 options available, and those only have say 4 bytes covering all your chosen morphs.
Example Data Structure
Byte 1 + 2: Morph ID 1, Morph ID 2, Morph ID 3, Morph ID 4.
Byte 3 + 4: Morph 1, Morph 2, Morph 3, Morph 4.
A morph, near as can tell from references to things I actually used, is not a sticker that gets slapped on anyway, the face has these features and the computer has to load all those values everytime it displays that face whether the values are default or not.
The only way I can think of that might account for your statement of "more morphs takes more load time" is if for whatever reason your program loads the default state first then makes changes. It may have advantages in development but many techniques in all fields change between research/development and actual live use, the requirements being different at each stage. The optimum in this case for live use is to load the final values to begin with, then the only changes that need made are the prescripted ones for speech or emoticons.
The base model is loaded first, then morphs are applied one at time to the model to shape it into it's final shape.
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So indeed the program used is rather inefficient and imparts ridiculous requirements, gotcha.
Actually that's good to know, I haven't had access to a computer in awhile so I can't try these things out.
I do know how to program so the concept of loading a default first then altering it just seems very messed up way to go about things.
However that said, you don't need to send a value for every option, just every option slot. So you don't need to say "yes/no" to all three mouth options, just need to send info saying which one to use. Therefore, the only way to make the headmarking useful is to tell players that 3/4s of their character will be the same as everyone else, which makes for a poor character creator. Don't believe me? Try making a mass effect character and touching only three sliders.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This looks like two tangled topics!
DarkLight, you were talking about how to code the character "DNA" for efficient communication between server and clients, yes?
RHMG, you are talking about actually rendering the morphed model on the screen, yes?
For sending data, I agree a standardized 'dna array' intuitively makes more sense than headmarking/huffman coding/fancy algorithms. For rendering, the word 'morphed' implies a base model (or several) being morphed and it follows that the less deviation the faster rendering.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm covering both the rendering and the communication of Client and Server.
A standardized DNA array of say 16 morph options with each morph as a byte is 16 bytes, but say you only use 1 option, you just sent 16 bytes for 1 option.
Visual:
M1,M2,M3......M15,M16
Where as the PSO2 approach is you can select 4 options from the 16, but say you only use 1 option (The other 3 are set to a default morph selection).
Each Morph Option is 1 byte. Each morph is a byte like above. So the total sent is 8 bytes for 1 morph, half that of the above, and thus better in data sent efficiency.
Visual:
MO1,MO2,MO3,MO4,
M1,M2,M3,M4.
The PSO2 approach also offers another benefit in that no player can go crazy on the morphs which will not only bog down his machine, but any player who is near him.
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RHMG, you still miss it, limiting the number of morphs won't fly, no one wants to play a character that looks like everyone elses sibling. Your suggest doesn't just limit data, it also limits variety for the players. It must be assumed that at least 90% of each character will be anything but default.
Additionally, my method, one option sends one value, never sixteen. You keep assuming all options get sent, but only each option SLOT gets sent. There is no sending of every hair style, only a single reference value for which hair style. If sixteen things get sent they are sixteen different things that the computer needs to know.
You also seem to think that morphs come in three catagories, unused, default, and alterec. This is false, there a number of slots and each slot will either be default or altered, there are no unused morphs and they wouldn't be sent by my method anyway. Your entire arguement is based on false assumtions of what needs to be known to begin with.
Example of what needs to be known,
Race ##
Hair style ##
Hair color ##
Eyes ##
Eye color ##
Nose ##
Mouth ##
Jaw ##
Hat ##
Shoulders ##
Chest ##
Left hand ##
Etc
I do not send every nose option, not even multiple, I send one reference that simply directs the client to which nose option is selected, the client then loads the relevent data from local storage and processes it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Limiting the number of morphs can fly, the options are still there, but you have to chose which ones are more important.
Are you a Game Developer?
Have you looked at the PSO2 program I gave a link to?
Have you try and player Age of Conan?
If not you don't know what I'm talking about and are assuming you can do anything when making a computer game or an MMO. Unfortunately your wrong, there are limits that must be accounted for and everything thought out before you go crazy with options.
I've worked and looked up on this type of stuff and you CAN NOT have your cake and eat it too, Especially in an MMO.
Morphs are expensive in rendering, and it'll very quickly multiply in an MMO, if the morph count is unrestricted. Each morph using your method requires it's own space when sent over the network.
So If I have 8 body morphs, 16 head morphs, 4 Mouth Morphs, 4 Eye Shape Morphs, 8 Ear Morphs, that's a total of 40 pieces of morph values that need to be sent over the network for one player, now times that by the number of character in a settlement, it'll be a very Nasty Number.
Each morph added is cumulative in the data sent using your method,
Swapping textures and parts is not cumulative in data sent.
Your Above example
Example of what needs to be known,
Race ##
Hair style ##
Hair color ##
Eyes ##
Eye color ##
Nose ##
Mouth ##
Jaw ##
Hat ##
Shoulders ##
Chest ##
Left hand ##
This is a purely swap method, no morphing at all.
Using your example with Morphs
Race ## <<--Swap style
Hair style ## <<--Swap style
Hair color ## <<--Swap style
Eye Shape ## X the Number of Morph options <<--MORPH style
Eye color ## <<--Swap style
Nose ## X the Number of Morph options <<--MORPH style
Mouth ## X the Number of Morph options <<--MORPH style
Jaw ## X the Number of Morph options <<--MORPH style
Clothes ## <<--Swap style
Now you see morphs add a boat load of data and it'll quickly multiply in an MMO.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I'm confused; is the limiting expense in morph style modification in the network overhead, in the rendering (of triangles, because that's what video cards render), in the post-rendering processing process, or is it uncertain on typical hardware setups where the limit is reached?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I've worked and looked up on this type of stuff and you CAN NOT have your cake and eat it too, Especially in an MMO.
Honestly, for me, graphics are low on my priority list. I want graphics to serve interesting information as much as possible. Making beautiful art is nice only if it's really feasible - I don't want a painting that looks great and does not do a lot. As long as there is lots of interaction with players and environment that is the sponge of the cake for me and graphics is the icing.
Comprehensive stylization goes a long way in my book.
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First, I already mentioned my current (and hopefully temporary) lack of a computer. I know how to program, but currently unable to try new programs, not that it matters because I am speaking about the underlying programming.
Second, you are not very consistant with your references to morphs, you keep refering to them as objects, but then keep saying they need to be sent themselves over the net, then you keep saying that multiple morphs need to be used for a single option.
As for my examples, they are just simplified examples intended to show the process rather then be absolute perfection.
Now just to clarify, whatever a morph is, all that gets sent across the net is a value, that value can say "option 3 selected" or it can say "mouth width is 15" either way, it is a single value for that option slot and the client needs the values from every slot, either explicitly stated or an inferred default, but not from every option for every slot. These aren't nominally indepent stickers that just get slapped on top of a base, there are only two states for any potential variable from the programing perspective, default assumtion or specified.
You tried to claim three states for morphs (unused, default, altered) which is inaccurate, whether to change it or not the program must have a value for each slot, any unaltered values are still there, still used. I.E. no matter what happens the computer still needs to know the mouth width.
You speak of these morphs like you pick out three stickers and can actually change one of them, but that isn't how the underlying programming works.
Besides, being an mmo, more room for uniqueness is desirable and if you can only make four changes then having a huge number of options becomes pointless because the character will still look very close to everyone else. The number of options grow by an order of magnitude for each alterable slot, even if there are 52 slots, allowing only 4 changes keeps the variation down to only the fourth degree which is not really much better then having only 4 slots. And everything not changed is the same as everyone else and no one wants the same character as everyone else and blond vs brunette twin sisters won't seem like unique individuals to players.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm confused; is the limiting expense in morph style modification in the network overhead, in the rendering (of triangles, because that's what video cards render), in the post-rendering processing process, or is it uncertain on typical hardware setups where the limit is reached?
It's to improve performance of both the Network traffic, and the rendering done on the Graphics Chip, as Morphing is Vertex Deformation, and it does take the GPU time to process each morph on each character.
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Goblin Squad Member
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First, I already mentioned my current (and hopefully temporary) lack of a computer. I know how to program, but currently unable to try new programs, not that it matters because I am speaking about the underlying programming.
3D Character creation programs require not only Programming knowledge, but also 3D Modeling knowledge.
I have both and have done both.
Second, you are not very consistant with your references to morphs, you keep refering to them as objects, but then keep saying they need to be sent themselves over the net, then you keep saying that multiple morphs need to be used for a single option.
Think of morphs like a file, you have say 3 nose morphs you can't call all 3 nose.max, instead you have to use nose1.max, nose2.max and nose3.max. Each one contains it's own morphing data and shape.
A Avatar/Character file has to identify which morph is at what Percent (0->100), so if I have 3 nose morphs each one has to be identified, and it's Percentage of use known.
As for my examples, they are just simplified examples intended to show the process rather then be absolute perfection.
Now just to clarify, whatever a morph is, all that gets sent across the net is a value, that value can say "option 3 selected" or it can say "mouth width is 15" either way, it is a single value for that option slot and the client needs the values from every slot, either explicitly stated or an inferred default, but not from every option for every slot. These aren't nominally independent stickers that just get slapped on top of a base, there are only two states for any potential variable from the programing perspective, default assumption or specified
I did it in the simplest manner, you oversimplified it.
Each morph needs to be Identified,
Say I have 4 body morphs
BodyMorph1 = Muscular
BodyMorph2 = Skinny
BodyMorph3 = Obese
BodyMorph4 = Curvy
each one of these is a unique body morph, therefore in a Avatar/PC file, each body morph has it's own identifier (reserved space) and percentage value (Data that fills that space).
You tried to claim three states for morphs (unused, default, altered) which is inaccurate, whether to change it or not the program must have a value for each slot, any unaltered values are still there, still used. I.E. no matter what happens the computer still needs to know the mouth width.
Default tends to be unused, but some morphs are used are at a set value when the system boots.
The mouth is part of the Base model, and thus has a base width,
any morph that alters the mouth is required to be tied to the character.
You speak of these morphs like you pick out three stickers and can actually change one of them, but that isn't how the underlying programming works.
If you could, you can apply all the morphs you want. But each one you use takes up resources like space Network overhead, rendering time on the GPU.
If you run Age of Conan, the character creation screen has a basic screen using Sheldon's body types, going into the advanced screen you only have 8 morphs for the body, and only 2 are full body, with the other 6 being partial body morphs.
Besides, being an mmo, more room for uniqueness is desirable and if you can only make four changes then having a huge number of options becomes pointless because the character will still look very close to everyone else. The number of options grow by an order of magnitude for each alterable slot, even if there are 52 slots, allowing only 4 changes keeps the variation down to only the fourth degree which is not really much better then having only 4 slots. And everything not changed is the same as everyone else and no one wants the same character as everyone else and blond vs brunette twin sisters won't seem like unique individuals to players.
Yes, I can agree uniqueness is desirable. But I'm also realistic in that you can't be perfectly unique even with infinite options as some options are going to be very popular and others hardly being used if at all.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Morphing is Vertex Deformation, and it does take the GPU time to process each morph on each character.
Is there a specific advantage gained by implementing the morph as a per-frame vertex deformation in the GPU, rather than putting the vertex where you wanted it in the first place?
The network overhead is less than the overhead required for names; I'm not worried enough about that.
As far as I've seen EVE Online is the absolute gold standard as far as character creation goes (Which is totally wasted because you're in a spaceship 100% of the time), I'd advise looking it up, there's quite a lot done correctly there.
Let's not forget Elder Scrolls (Oblivion and Skyrim of course).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'll look at the Eve character creator, and compare it to others I've looked at.
I once thought Age of Conan had a great character creator, then I ran into a PSO2 character creator demo, and it blew Age of Conan out of the water with a freaking nuke and in my opinion the best made so far.
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Goblin Squad Member
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To Rhgm Animator:
I've worked and looked up on this type of stuff and you CAN NOT have your cake and eat it too, Especially in an MMO.
Actually you just hit a pet peeve of my button, every one always get this backward and for some reason it just annoys the heck out of me. You can have your cake and eat it too. Here is my cake I have it now I can eat it. Ah what you can Not do is eat your cake and have it too.
we now return to you regular posting program about character creation.
The character creator that I believe is the top of what I have seen is City of Heros and Champion on line. Both have creators that alow you to create humanoid creatures, children, rock creatures every thing your imagination can come up with. I can spend hours just create characters alone. Then spend another hour or so fine tuning them in game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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To Rhgm Animator:
...
Actually you just hit a pet peeve of my button, every one always get this backward and for some reason it just annoys the heck out of me. You can have your cake and eat it too. Here is my cake I have it now I can eat it. Ah what you can Not do is eat your cake and have it too.
...
the "you CAN NOT have your cake and eat it too" is a proverb that means "you can't have the best of both worlds."
It means a compromise is always there and you have to make a choice between one thing and another.You could even go so far as to call it a unbreakable universal truth and law.
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Returning to Thread topic
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Looked at the EVE character creator on youtube, will be trying it out myself soon.
The EVE system is very close to the PSO2 system given what I have seen so far. The interface of EVE given the videos is not bad, but to minimalistic for me.