Sorry Ryan, but the mobs in this game look a little cartooney. At least the few we've seen. On the other hand, the character models and environment look nice.
A note on character models... It's worthy to note that Camelot Unchained was considering Unity at one point, but turned it down for the same reason that they turned down all the other engines... high poly count.
The goal being to allow large character battles with minimal lag. The poly count on the character models looks very high. How are you going to handle rendering issues when large epic 100v100 battles take place?
Goblin Squad Member
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I think it'd be hard to make a Pathfinder goblin that doesn't look cartoony. Just look at their bulbous football heads. :)
On the topic of the specific screenshot, it was evidently taken from a playtest on a Mac Mini with low graphic settings. With a higher level of detail, maybe the ogres will look more menacing?
I'm honestly quite shocked at how pretty those goblins are graphically - compared to what I've come to expect from games developed in this genre, elephant in the room being Darkfall.
Grass could use some work, but those goblins are the bomb - can't wait to bash their skulls in! :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm liking the stylised art. It looks much better than the majority of sandbox MMORPGs do these days. Very clean, the texture work looks good and the silhouettes appear distinct enough that it makes me feel confident that you can continue that on into the PvP environment (where silhouette distinction is extremely important).
I hope you stick with this style, rather than switch to the realistic, dirty approach that a lot of developers are using lately.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sorry Ryan, but the mobs in this game look a little cartooney. At least the few we've seen. On the other hand, the character models and environment look nice.
A note on character models... It's worthy to note that Camelot Unchained was considering Unity at one point, but turned it down for the same reason that they turned down all the other engines... high poly count.
The goal being to allow large character battles with minimal lag. The poly count on the character models looks very high. How are you going to handle rendering issues when large epic 100v100 battles take place?
Thoughtful questions Qallz.
1) I'm about ok with the level of cartoony they veer on. Certainly for the Goblins who look like critters with needle-sharp teeth to off-set the cuteness factor.
The Ogres shape and texture and muscle compactness is 'perfect'. I like the face: Big jaw, pronounced forehead and flat large nose. All features that allow the face to take a beating and not feel it.
However I think the teeth need to be larger molars in the mouth. Again the teeth really tell you about the mob: Large molars would indicate a large and insatiable appetite.
The other thing the hair is not quite right. I'm not sure in what way. I'd need to look at more Ogre pictures - possibly they have very little hair on the head in my "ideal image of an Ogre" - more bone-headed?! Perhaps the hair is usually most challenging on character models?
I'd feedback by saying really like the frame of the Ogre and face etc. For some more detail later perhaps for characterization things like cut/burn marks and all the other little details that tell you this creature is bad-ass with a big grumpy, attitude problem. Hippoes are a bit like this actually. One or two big tusks says as much (half-broken for even more spite and balefulness, and slightly yellow to indicate a little tooth-rot and painful toothache into the mix) :)
2) This is a good point. Any technical info would be good to hear. That said I don't PFO will be as strongly mass-pvp as CU appears to be firing all cylinders to achieve that one very specific outcome? GW have said in the past that being able to put many more characters into a world than we're used to seeing is possible since wow came out or something along those lines so that gives me hope.
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Thanks Ryan!!
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Goblin Squad Member
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I've got to add if style of the Ogres and Goblins (very small sample) it may track the artwork of Paizo? But for game that has had the inevitable "alarmed" discussion that goes with "open pvp + looting", the upside of these "charming" style of pictures is much more friendly and reassuring and "this is a game world to have fun in".
Perhaps that is a good balance to strike and I wonder if the devs thought along those lines? It's just my 10mins impression after that picture. And we're seeing the standard stuff. I wonder how "gothic" the devs will be able to make the darker forces of the River Kingdoms?! :)
CEO
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I think it'd be hard to make a Pathfinder goblin that doesn't look cartoony. Just look at their bulbous football heads. :)
On the topic of the specific screenshot, it was evidently taken from a playtest on a Mac Mini with low graphic settings. With a higher level of detail, maybe the ogres will look more menacing?
I can tell you from playing yesterday that those ogres are MENACING! If Ryan was playing alone when he took that screen shot, he was probably respawning in town 5 seconds later. Those ogres pack a punch! The only way the playtesters survived is by banding together as a team and working the enemy encampments strategically. We had a lot of fun running around and fighting back the escalation cycle, including taking the fight to the enemy by invading the "monster hex".
-Lisa
They have said that the art would closely match that of PF TT source materials. It is meant to be a little bit "cartoony" and that is fine as long as the gameplay is solid.
No, it's not fine. IT'S NOT FINE!!!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yes! Make Ogres VERY heavy-hitting please. Mike's previous vid ended on just the right note "clonk!".
They are brilliant models. With the hair very faithful to the art and minis I just googled. Concerning the hair I think it is a little too "neat" looking because it's short. I'd assume hair would grow longer and less like a very recent trip to the barbers. Note barber/barbarian both come from the latin word for beard! It's just a suggestion, whichever look the artists feel captures a pathfinder ogre.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think it'd be hard to make a Pathfinder goblin that doesn't look cartoony. Just look at their bulbous football heads. :)
On the topic of the specific screenshot, it was evidently taken from a playtest on a Mac Mini with low graphic settings. With a higher level of detail, maybe the ogres will look more menacing?I can tell you from playing yesterday that those ogres are MENACING! If Ryan was playing alone when he took that screen shot, he was probably respawning in town 5 seconds later. Those ogres pack a punch! The only way the playtesters survived is by banding together as a team and working the enemy encampments strategically. We had a lot of fun running around and fighting back the escalation cycle, including taking the fight to the enemy by invading the "monster hex".
-Lisa
This makes me VERY happy - I love group play, and have missed it in WoW. (Yes, there is raiding, but my life hasn't allowed for guild raid schedules, and PuGs just aren't the same.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yes! Make Ogres VERY heavy-hitting please.
Actually, I'd love to see something like City of Heroes' knock-back power for giant sized critters. If you got hit by a 9 foot tall ogre, it's not just going to hurt, it should knock you off your feet.
Lisa, thank you for the first-hand account of play-testing. Nice to know they're that far along.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think it'd be hard to make a Pathfinder goblin that doesn't look cartoony. Just look at their bulbous football heads. :)
On the topic of the specific screenshot, it was evidently taken from a playtest on a Mac Mini with low graphic settings. With a higher level of detail, maybe the ogres will look more menacing?I can tell you from playing yesterday that those ogres are MENACING! If Ryan was playing alone when he took that screen shot, he was probably respawning in town 5 seconds later. Those ogres pack a punch! The only way the playtesters survived is by banding together as a team and working the enemy encampments strategically. We had a lot of fun running around and fighting back the escalation cycle, including taking the fight to the enemy by invading the "monster hex".
-Lisa
Uh, Lisa...if you guys can go about slappin' around escalating Ogres, can we get an update on when we get to fight in say, a PIT or something?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yes! Make Ogres VERY heavy-hitting please.Actually, I'd love to see something like City of Heroes' knock-back power for giant sized critters. If you got hit by a 9 foot tall ogre, it's not just going to hurt, it should knock you off your feet.
Lisa, thank you for the first-hand account of play-testing. Nice to know they're that far along.
Possibly with such an estimation of Force = Ogre mass * Ogre acceleration on the body, they could add a greater chance of rolling on the injury table maybe? A few broken ribs eg.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Possibly with such an estimation of Force = Ogre mass * Ogre acceleration on the body, they could add a greater chance of rolling on the injury table maybe? A few broken ribs eg.Yes! Make Ogres VERY heavy-hitting please.Actually, I'd love to see something like City of Heroes' knock-back power for giant sized critters. If you got hit by a 9 foot tall ogre, it's not just going to hurt, it should knock you off your feet.
Lisa, thank you for the first-hand account of play-testing. Nice to know they're that far along.
If I'm playing a 6'7", 300 pound barbarian in a rage, I should be able to punt kobolds, not just bonk them on the head. A hill giant should be able to have the same effect on a 5'6" Human opponent when they bat them with their club.
I wasnt saying the Orge wasn't fine (though I don't think it is, but it's obvious that the texturing isn't done yet). I was saying that some cartooney graphix aren't fine. lol
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CEO, Goblinworks
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Pathfidner Battles mini for reference.
A couple of notes:
In keeping with our goal of getting to a minimum viable product as fast as possible, things like variations of monsters will happen as iterations based on Crowdforging feedback as opposed to a part of the target.
The art style if our game will target the style you see in the minis and the cover art of Paizo's books. Over time we'll get better at hitting the target, but if you think that style is "cartoony", you should expect the game will look to you like a cartoon.
There are a lot of reasons not to use Unity. Poly count is not one of them. The polygon density is completely under the control of the developers, and Unity's rendering engine is FAST. The biggest cause of lag in big fights will be N^2 networking scaling, and client-side graphics memory. We have to worry about the former, you have to worry about the latter. But your solution costs a couple of hundred bucks. Ours could become astronomically expensive over time. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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The art style if our game will target the style you see in the minis and the cover art of Paizo's books.
I've sort of been viewing any models through the lens of my old tabletop days. If NPC mobs are mostly uniform, with some small variations, that's the way it was back in my "good old days". We put the real effort into the PC figures - which admittedly were stock figurines with better paint jobs and distinguishing colors and coat of arms. I'm fine with anything that keeps the art style like minis.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just a guess, but those you have what appears to be 4 weapon attacks slotted and there justs happens to have been 4 attacks listed in the May 15 blog. (Wrath guard, wrathful strike, swing, and cross blow for reference.) Any chance those icons correspond to those attacks or am I out in left field?
Also, I assume red bar = health, blue bar = stamina?
Pathfidner Battles mini for reference.
A couple of notes:
In keeping with our goal of getting to a minimum viable product as fast as possible, things like variations of monsters will happen as iterations based on Crowdforging feedback as opposed to a part of the target.
The art style if our game will target the style you see in the minis and the cover art of Paizo's books. Over time we'll get better at hitting the target, but if you think that style is "cartoony", you should expect the game will look to you like a cartoon.
There are a lot of reasons not to use Unity. Poly count is not one of them. The polygon density is completely under the control of the developers, and Unity's rendering engine is FAST. The biggest cause of lag in big fights will be N^2 networking scaling, and client-side graphics memory. We have to worry about the former, you have to worry about the latter. But your solution costs a couple of hundred bucks. Ours could become astronomically expensive over time. :)
Hey Ryan, I appreciate the feedback man. I hope you don't construe my feedback as "hating" because it wasn't intended as such. As I said in a previous post, I think the character models and environment look great, it's just the few examples of mobs which we've seen that look cartooney (ogres not as much, goblins, big time).
Maybe I was mistaken about Mark Jacobs turning down Unity on account of the poly count, he listed a bunch of engines they'd tried out with the goal in mind of huge, epic, PvP battles, Unity was one of them, hence my concern (but looks like Mr. Jacobs won't be having Occulus Rift anytime soon amirite? ;) ).
You should take my concern of your character models having a high poly count as a compliment, as I do think they look great... in fact when I saw them in the demo vid, I was thinking they looked "too great", and was worried about lag, but you're the expert, and I'm sure you know what you're doing, so if you think the poly count is reasonable for large-scale PvP battles, that's good enough for me... just wanted to bring that up. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hehe, I remember when the goblin model was first revealed lots of people felt it wasn't cartoony enough. The model's proportions are much more in line with normal proportions then some renditions of Pathfinder goblins, but that's probably for the best as they would look especially weird animated. Then again, goblins in Golarion are meant to be zany, silly, a-little-bit-dark comic-relief type enemies, not the kind that typically inspire anything but a chuckle (that is, unless one of them has a knife in your gut).
However, I can understand how an enemy like this could be a little immersion breaking in a genre where most enemies are just brutish things that do nothing but attack with a set pattern. You're fighting a bunch of bloodthirsty orcs, and suddenly this crazy, cartoony little munchkin rounds the corner, and I could see how he looks out of place.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The art generally looks good to me. I like the sense of scale I get from seeing trees disappear into the horizon. I feel getting the landscape right is very important to PFO, and essential for immersion into the gameworld. There will be limited themepark/dungeon elements so players will spend most of their time in the outdoor environment.
One suggestion: please consider how the grass might be improved. In the earlier animated clips I found the way 'fans' of grass rotate as you move to maintain their facing relative to you disconcerting and immersion breaking. The ogre clip looks like it has the same grass as all fans are perpendicular to the viewer. I'm not sure if this is a unity issue. Clips from Shroud of the Avatar seem to indicate it suffers from weird grass effects too, eg at the 4 minute mark in the linked demo. To me the animation of grass in parts of that demo reminds me of a subsea kelp forest.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wckfc-0WyPs&list=TLMOOHcKyNIvKkfiUuJxgun NSgLsfgZnqa
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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Just a guess, but those you have what appears to be 4 weapon attacks slotted and there justs happens to have been 4 attacks listed in the May 15 blog. (Wrath guard, wrathful strike, swing, and cross blow for reference.) Any chance those icons correspond to those attacks or am I out in left field?
They're longsword attacks, not the greatsword ones mentioned in the blog. Our attack icons are very much placeholders at the moment, as we work on developing a UI language for them. All seven buttons are available in the build used for the screenshot (1-6 attacks, and a Refresh feat on 7), but the orange ones were the ones that were ready for the PaizoCon demo so had something more exciting than a question mark made for them at the time.
Also, I assume red bar = health, blue bar = stamina?
Yep.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16
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I think it'd be hard to make a Pathfinder goblin that doesn't look cartoony. Just look at their bulbous football heads. :)
On the topic of the specific screenshot, it was evidently taken from a playtest on a Mac Mini with low graphic settings. With a higher level of detail, maybe the ogres will look more menacing?I can tell you from playing yesterday that those ogres are MENACING! If Ryan was playing alone when he took that screen shot, he was probably respawning in town 5 seconds later. Those ogres pack a punch! The only way the playtesters survived is by banding together as a team and working the enemy encampments strategically. We had a lot of fun running around and fighting back the escalation cycle, including taking the fight to the enemy by invading the "monster hex".
-Lisa
Thanks Lisa. I love getting this sort of 'gamer eye view', it provides a very different perspective from the design blogs and progress reports. I'm excited that there's a real playable game that you all had fun with. Progress!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just a guess, but those you have what appears to be 4 weapon attacks slotted and there justs happens to have been 4 attacks listed in the May 15 blog. (Wrath guard, wrathful strike, swing, and cross blow for reference.) Any chance those icons correspond to those attacks or am I out in left field?They're longsword attacks, not the greatsword ones mentioned in the blog. Our attack icons are very much placeholders at the moment, as we work on developing a UI language for them. All seven buttons are available in the build used for the screenshot (1-6 attacks, and a Refresh feat on 7), but the orange ones were the ones that were ready for the PaizoCon demo so had something more exciting than a question mark made for them at the time.
Also, I assume red bar = health, blue bar = stamina?Yep.
Thanks for the clarification!
A couple more questions:
-Do the 3 dots on the left of the hotbar correspond to weapons? Ie. top dot = weapon 1, middle = weapon 2, bottom = weapon 3?
-Where's the 2nd hotbar corresponding to the F1-F10 keys? Is that not developed yet or is it hidden?
Goblinworks Founder
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Pathfidner Battles mini for reference.
The art style if our game will target the style you see in the minis and the cover art of Paizo's books. Over time we'll get better at hitting the target, but if you think that style is "cartoony", you should expect the game will look to you like a cartoon.
I'm very glad that you are going with the Pathfinder Art style. It's a brand in and of itself, and I have been a big fan of that style since it first appeared. It may be cartoony in a way but at least it is staying true to it's brand and it will age well in the gaming industry.
You only need to look at how quickly the characters of Age of Conan aged. Great landscape, but the faces of the "realistic" characters look horrible 5 years on.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I do not look at this being about cute art. But I do not have a history of MMO. My PvP background is not MMO, but more kingdom/resource level.
And with lower level graphics support at my console, I do not want to be excluded from this game (iMac, not Mini but not a lot different). I believe that Ryan has made the argument that that is a different market that neither PC nor Mac ( or WINE/Parallels) can compete.
I would not want this game to depend on twitch or special graphics. My coarse graphics should not penalize me noticing something. My vision is bad enough.
At the other end, I have enjoyed the Pathfinder from the era of the beta pdf distribution.
Hmm, this is an obscure reference. Recent episode of Borgen, "One party can not embrace all of those positions." And later. "People have come to us with viewpoints that are more extreme than we intend to be." PFO is about delivering the minimum necessary for a concept PvP, not a beautiful movie quality graphic environment. I want more that '50's quality animation, but would accept that if the world that PFO envisions works.
LaM
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Graphics has never been a deciding point for me when it comes to a game. I'm looking for gameplay and content (Player or other based).
Plus, I've never seen the wisdom of going all out on graphics that the user has to have a top of the line computer. That will alienate a lot of potential players that can't afford high priced gaming computers.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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A couple more questions:
-Do the 3 dots on the left of the hotbar correspond to weapons? Ie. top dot = weapon 1, middle = weapon 2, bottom = weapon 3?
Yep.
-Where's the 2nd hotbar corresponding to the F1-F10 keys? Is that not developed yet or is it hidden?
No UI representation yet, but a prototype Utility feat is activated when you press F1.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Xeen:
It's going to be the usual 3rd person looking behind your avatar I'm fairly sure. No idea if that is as well as 1stPP as an option? Good question and a clarification would be good.
Here's a previous post by Stephen on targetting as it's tab-target select target approach:
Right toward the end of an attack animation, before the system actually makes the attack rolls, it checks to see if the target is still in range and otherwise valid. If you've managed to get out of range between when the attack started and when it ended, it should fail.
=
There are no cooldowns presently in the design, unless you count Refresh feats.
If your target is out of range and your client knows it's out of range, you can't use the attack.
If your target is out of range but your client thinks it's in range (e.g., the target is moving at the edge of your range and your client and the server aren't quite synched), you'll press the attack and the server should immediately let your client know the mistake. You lose nothing but the time it took you to push the button and get the out of range feedback.
If your target moves out of range while you're animating the attack, it will fail and cost you the Stamina you spent to activate the feat (and, indeed, would use up a charge of a Refresh feat). This is entirely intentional, and one of the drawbacks of slow attacks (which do a lot of damage) is that they're easier to outrange or interrupt. Keep in mind that most attacks don't root you during the animation, so you can move to keep the target in range while you're animating.
Hope those help. It seems DF suffers aimbot problems additionally with it's targeting system?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah, you can use aimbots in DF.
What Im considering in my mind is not being able to assess a battlefield. If you only have 1st or limited 3rd person views then you will not be able to make calls during battle effectively. Kinda takes away the point of formations and etc.
Then finally it takes away the use of spot type skills... as it may not change your view (turn head whatever) to see a person sneaking up behind you that you may have beaten in a spot check. Dont get me wrong, I dont want the game to all of a sudden change my view... But in games like Baulders Gate or Neverwinter Nights, the 3rd person view would allow you to zoom out and see the area... And still allow you to attack with a bow.
