Nova's Feedback

[Novaman5000]

This game shows alot of promise, I'm very excited for the eventual release.  I love the graphics (esp at high res).

As for areas for possible improvement:

-The character movement, specifically the walking, is "floaty".  Graham seems to be ice skating more than walking.  He slides often, and there's no weight to his steps.  Also, the stair climbing animation is not as smooth as it could be.

-The lip syncing (which I realize is not 100% but i'm just listing things here that I noticed.  Also, Titania's face reacts somewhat strangely when she speaks.  It's as if her jaws widen instead of simply opening and closing.

-Sometimes the characters load before the scenes, resulting in Graham floating for a moment before the ground appears beneath him.  I noticed this the most in the main hall. (I am running at far above the minimum requirements, so I'm assuming this was a software thing.

-There is clipping when Graham bends over for the chest as well as every time the cloak is handled.

-Some of the textures in the cutscenes appear low-res, even when I was at high res.  For example, the oracle was very low-res in the final cutscene.  Her textures were especially blurred and not nearly as crisp as alot of the other parts of the game.

-I also think that there could be more effects implemented in the game to give it a more detailed feel.  For example, when the oracle is splashing in her pool, perhaps some particle effects?  Maybe some magic, glowing eye effects (instead of just plain white textured eyes), etc.  Little things like that really add to the world, in my opinion.

-I don't know how much of this is simply because this is a demo and how much of this is in the final product, but I would like to see more camera movement during the cutscenes.  Again, going back to the oracle scene... How much more interesting would a moving camera be, perhaps spinning around the two as they speak, than the couple of standard stationary angles in the scene right now?  Certainly nothing crazy or "MTV" but a moving camera in a cutscene is a great way to making something more cinematic, which I know is one of the goals of this project.

I realize this is a demo and probably alot of this stuff was being fixed before you even read this, and please don't take anything I'm saying as malicious criticism.  I'm only listing them to hopefully help you guys in your push to perfect the game.  Either way, it's just my two cents.  Overall I think it's amazing that this is a fan project and look foward to the next demo or *gasp* the release of the game.

Anyone agree/disagree?  Can you think of something I missed?

[Cez]

most of these are noted, I'll talk about the more 'movement" cameras. There will be a lot more of cameras in the game, however, things like a camera going around the two characters is unnecessary. That's overkilling it and driving you out of focus from the conversation, which is what you should mostly be paying attention to.

I comment on this because I kind of used to think like you: More cameras, more movement, the better. It actually works better when you constrain it and use such movements when you can really justify the movement (as to create an effect of grandiosity, or expressing loneliness with a composition, or creating confussion *your circle moving camera for example*, etc) There aren't really any directing ruules that corelate one camera to one type of feeling either, but as a director, you can't just add camera movements just because, you gotta be careful about them and justify them.

That said, there are cameras like that in the rendered cutscenes. when, again, we need them

[Novaman5000]

I understand the bit about the camera, and I'm not suggesting going crazy with the cameras (the spinning was simply the first thing that came to mind... and it would have to be a very slow spin ! ), but I just feel like sometimes it's a little boring to watch the same profile of two characters during particularly lengthy conversations.  It was fine back in the day of pixels and 2D art, but you guys have some great 3D graphics, why not show them off a little more?  I'm not talking bullet time here or pointless camera tricks that make the player nauseous, but I don't think more camera motion during longer conversations would hurt, either.  It's just when I think "cinematic", I don't think "the side of Graham's head for 10 minutes while he talks", that's all.  Certainly not a necessity for the game... It just happened to be something that thought of when writing my feedback... Something I would like to see more of in the finished product.  Glad to hear it's in the cutscenes.

Also, I thought of something else that might be handy to add:

In previous KQ games, if you wanted to cross a screen faster (when backtracking and whatnot), you could double click and the character would sort of speed walk... It'd be a nice touch I think, especially since the walking is a little slow at this point.

[Petter Holmberg]

Here's my take on the comments:

Character movement: This is a matter of adjusting animations and character movement speeds. We'll take care of this in the final version and make at least the main characters as near perfect as possible. This also includes stair climbing etc.

Lipsynch: There's no actual lipsynch in the demo. Just a generic lip animation. The final game will have accurate lipsynch. We're developing the system for it and it's coming along really nicely.

Character loads: This is also going to be fixed in the full game.

Clipping: We'll do our best to match animations and positions to avoid visible clipping, but as I'm sure you've noticed from playing other games this is really tricky to avoid completely.

Textures: Our original textures are high-res but in order to improve framerate we convert some to a lower resolution when the high detail level is not required. Scenes will be optimized for a good compromize between looks and playability later, so you can look forward to improvements.

Effects: That's also something that will be added to the degree that we have time and resources. It's a question of priority. But you are right, those things are important to the feel of the game.

Camera movement: That's the director's call. But we'll have a pretty cool camera system in the final game allowing various camera modes similar to what you see used in movies, and they will be used when appropriate.