Detail Level

[Louisiana Night]

How much detail, should we expect in the game(as far as graphics go)?

I'm sure that detail is often sacrificed, for speed, and to allow more people to play it(not everyone has a 512meg videocard ). What I'm wondering, is how much detail is going to be sacrificed.

[mark_the_merry]

i wonder if EGA compatability will be out of the question

mmmm 16 colours

[Petter Holmberg]

I'm not a 3D artist so I can't give you the technical specifics, but let me tell you... The scenes I've seen imported into the actual game engine so far are amazingly detailed! The art team has really impressed me with the level of quality in the stuff they produce, all the way from concept sketches to animated 3D models. Oh, and the textures are incredible! While we're not reaching the graphics detail of the latest commercial game engines (although we're not too far behind), the art itself is definitely of the quality that you'd see in a commercial 3D game today.

[Cez]

putting it simple, textures are set to be in a given resolution. In our case, I believe it is 512. The REAL detail comes from the painting itself, so, adding a whole bunch of detail to it doesn't really slow it down.
However, a very nice detailed texture is nothing without a good lighting. We do a combination of painted lights and maya baking (what is otherwise known as prerendered textures, which is not the same as prerendered backgrounds). Finally, we bring them into the engine and add even more light and more shadow, in this case, dynamic lights and dynamic shadows, which Torque can do both.

The results are incredibly looking backgrounds and characters.

On the question of speed, we try to figure out ways to make the game work in slower machines. This in itself doesn't really come from the amount of textures as much as it comes from the amount of polygons in each scene. But, with today technology, what looked blocky in games like Gabriel Knight 3, can look really smooth with a simple work of textures.

So, polycount wise, what we try to do is create different levels for those scenes that have a large amount of polys. Let me give you an example:

As we brought all the scenes into the engine for chapter 1, one of our programmers mentioned the game was really going slow in his machine, so the programming team tried a few things and finally figured out that the reason was the Main Hall of the Castle of the Crown, given the complexity of the scene.

So, we decided to put the Castle of the Crown in a different level than the rest of chapter 1, and that way it runs smooth.

To be totally honest, this game will probably not run smoothly in slower machines, and while we don't have final specs yet, we have an idea of what kind of machine you would need.

But I'll let either Neil or Petter talk about that

[Allert van der Leij]

@ LouisianaNight

Obviously we can't ellaborate too much on this subject. What I CAN tell you though, that it will exceed any King's Quest and/or other fanmade games I know of (and I know a lot of fan games, trust me )

We will be pushing limits as to low-poly modeling, our characters are really detailed without the texture even, so imagine what they will look like, once you see them all textured  So prepare to get yourself a good 3D card, for you will need it. For those of you wondering, we won't be using any 'normal' mapping, all our detail will go in the models and texturemaps themself. We will rely heavily on Torque's new lighting engine to even more up the detail and realistic feel. Characters will cast shadows dynamically on surrounding geometry, so they really blend in perfectly.

Animations will be catagorized in three steps: the actual ingame animation loops (walking, sitting, wandering around, standing, resting, talking etc..), cutscenes: these will be ingame quality as well, but they can't be touched by the player, ie. these are pre-determined animations which will occur when you trigger something, and it will have a dynamic camera animation as well. Last but not least, there will be the pre-rendered cutscenes. These will have all the goodies in them, particle effects, dynamics (gravity , cloth effects), depth of field, motion blur, really fancy camera tricks, realistic lighting and shadows, highpoly geometry, etc. etc...

So all in all, you don't have to worry about if the game will suit your needs, because in the end I'm pretty sure it will be just like you're playing a commercial title.

So, stick around for more info soon

[Yonkey]

Like Petter, I'm not a 3D artist, so I can't give you the exact details, but in general we are designing models with the least amount of polys (3D model) and highest amount of detail (3D texture).  

For example, if there were hundreds of books on a bookshelf, instead of creating all those books, they could either become one rectangular cube that contains all the touching books, or they could be baked into the background texture.  It all depends on how important the books are and how realistic they need to be.

If Graham needed to pick up one of the books, we would obviously have to have a separate 3D model for that one book, but the rest can remain as one solid block.

Number of polys is probably the main thing that affects frame rate (and graphic card specs), because those polys are created, shaded and possibly even animated in real time, while textures are just 2D images that are mapped onto these polys.  And because it's faster to render 2D than 3D, our focus graphics-wise is creating detailed textures, rather than detailed models.  

[Elessar]

How well does the charactor interact with surfaces? Does part of the body go through the wall, and does the camera go through the wall? I hate it when this happens.

[Yonkey]

There are things called collision meshes, which are added to sets that prevent the character from walking through walls and stuff.

However, since we are creating pre-defined walk paths and a static camera view for the most part, you'll never experience walking halfway through walls or the camera going through one.  

[Elessar]

Great! Pre-defined walk paths, just like the old King's Quests!