Main Menu

Constructive criticism #1

Started by Petra Rocks, July 30, 2006, 05:21:23 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Petra Rocks

*Wink, nudge*  I don't want to nag, but the spelling of criticism in the sub-forum description is still wrong.  :)

Yonkey

#21
Quote from: Rick_Florez on August 03, 2006, 08:55:21 PM
On the bright side other Isles have been expanded so it sort of makes up for the few scenes we removed.
Yes.  Actually, you could say that we even replaced Beauty's scene with another that didn't make it into the demo, mostly because we couldn't figure out dynamic scene loading back in November.  I would actually love to re-add that scene if possible in RC2, but I'll need to check with you and Petter/Johan to see if there were any changes to it since. :)

Quote from: Petra Rocks on August 03, 2006, 08:59:23 PM
*Wink, nudge*  I don't want to nag, but the spelling of criticism in the sub-forum description is still wrong.  :)
Not anymore! ;P

Oh and I missed this before:
Quote from: Animan on August 02, 2006, 11:34:07 PM
As i understand Torque to operate ... couldn't you simply load the current scenes into the updated engine? It would probably work and provide you more flexibility ... unless the issue is upgrading all of the currebt developers to a newer version?
Actually the whole notion of a "scene" is something our team developed and it is not baked into Torque whatsoever.  In fact, Torque's defintion of a scene and isle is what was causing the choppyness/audio bugs/out-of-sync animations in RC1. :P  Our modifications are both on a source-code level and scripting level, so it's not just a matter of dropping in files.
"A wish changes nothing. A decision changes everything."

doom saber

I am curious, after the completion of the 3 chapters, are there plans to make add ons like how Sierra was going to make extra missions for QFG5?

Yonkey

Quote from: doom saber on August 04, 2006, 01:29:09 AM
I am curious, after the completion of the 3 chapters, are there plans to make add ons like how Sierra was going to make extra missions for QFG5?
While it's possible to have expansion packs, there's no need to because after the first 3 chapters, will be the next 3 (Part Two: The Two That Are One), followed by the final 3 (Part Three: Eternities). 8)
"A wish changes nothing. A decision changes everything."

copycat

Quote from: Yonkey on August 04, 2006, 08:45:45 AMWhile it's possible to have expansion packs, there's no need to because after the first 3 chapters, will be the next 3 (Part Two: The Two That Are One), followed by the final 3 (Part Three: Eternities). 8)
I think instead of 3 chapters he meant the 3 games/parts. :P
Fannatic of the cat team.
Official Manager of the TSL Asylum ©
Defender of all things against Connor. :stabs:
Grammar Police superintendant.
The Silver Lining rises from its ashes!

Official member of the Kelsey Fanclub :thumbsup:
Official TSL: Shadows Beta Tester (ret.) :yes:
Official Cognition: An Erica Reed Mystery Episode 1 QA.

Yonkey

In that case, no.  After TSL we will be diving into original games using our own intellectual property. 8)
"A wish changes nothing. A decision changes everything."

vertefae

Thanks for answering my questions.. sorry I've been away from the net for a bit. But I am looking forward to the full chapter 1.

Antdog24

Just got done with the demo and I am impressed.  Was always a big fan of the KQ series and am excited to be playing a new adventure game again.  The graphics are beautiful.  Alot of good feedback on this thread, I can't think of anything to add that hasn't been mentioned.  I appreciate the hard work put into this so that we the fans can enjoy it.  You should be getting paid big bucks for work this good.  Kudos!

scorpion007

Regarding the graphics, don't underestimate how much you can push those textures. Look at this guy's work on some game characters:
http://www.rendernode.com/articles.php?articleId=218

This is just an example I found. As you can see, textures can really make or break the illusion of detail and complexity. The actual models are not particularly high in terms of polycount, roughly 3.5k tri's. How much tri's are you guys using for your characters on average?

Cez

around 2ks, so yeah, they are significantly lower than that 3.5ks :)


Cesar Bittar
CEO
Phoenix Online
cesar.bittar@postudios.com

scorpion007

2k's? Well thats plenty too IMO. Nintendo 64 games like Zelda OoT, and some older PC games like Quake 3 had far less hardware resources, yet still managed to look pretty amazing.

But im sure you guys know what you're doing. All I'm saying is that textures can really be amazing in faking detail.

Just curious, what texture size do you generally use for characters? And do you keep the head and body in the same texture, or have 2 separate ones?

Yonkey

Both the head and body are on the same texture.  The texture size varies, depending on how much detail we need.  In the demo, both Grahams are 1024x1024, and all other characters are 512x512. ;D
"A wish changes nothing. A decision changes everything."

scorpion007

cool, thanks for the info. I suspected it would be so.

Baggins

#33
QuoteNintendo 64 games like Zelda OoT, and some older PC games like Quake 3 had far less hardware resources, yet still managed to look pretty amazing.

Zelda OoT is not exactly amazing by today's standards. If you play the game with the higher resolution on Gamecube version the polygons really show, and certain textures look absolutely horrible since they used some shortcuts on the N64 utilizing its lower resolution, and lower draw rate(it had alot more "fog" hiding certain graphic shortcuts). But with the gamecube's higher draw rate and cleaner resolution the textures come out looking muddy  and fuzzy. Especially on 2-d graphics on walls such as vines.

That being said sure it looked good when it was released, but graphics have evolved multiple times since then. TSL is on a generation of graphics higher than Zelda Oot.
Well, ya, King's Quest is on Earth. Daventry is very old city from a long time ago. It's in ruins now and people aren't quite sure exactly where it used to be. There are some archaeologists searching through the ruins, they think they know its Daventry. But its somewhere on Earth."-Roberta Williams http://kingsquest.wikia.com/wiki/File:Daventryisearth.ogg

scorpion007

I absolutely agree. Both Quake 3 and Zelda OoT are nothing amazing by today's standards. In fact if they were released today, they would be considered pretty poor. But in their time they made the very most of the resources they had and managed to pull off some very amazing results with what they had.

Another example is WoW vs Guild Wars or Everquest 2. Even though the latter 2 had somewhat more sophisticated engines, many say that WoW generally looks richer and nicer, despite using a less powerful (perhaps) engine, but having great art direction etc.

Everything IMHO of course.

Cez

and having a lot of resourcers we don't have in the first place ;)

See, we can go back and keep updating and updating characters, textures, backgrounds, poly counts, etc, but we don't work like a real company that takes 2 to 3 years to make a game with a full team of resources working 5 days a week for 8 hours or more on crunch time. I'd love to have the team we have at my work so that we could make TSL shine to today's standards.

The sad thing is that we don't. Things are pretty much constrained to our lives, our work and other duties like school. Directors and leads normally put the most time into this, but in the same sense, there are times, like now for me, that I'm in crucnch time at work and have family in town, and Yonkey went back to school to a very hard semester, so things go up and down, up and down. It's never steady, it's never reliable, it's never what we'd want it to be. So, going back to fix characters means time we don't have, and the more time we spend on this, the more outdated it will look anyhow. So, it's a catch 22 situation. We lost our character lead, and we were lucky enough that he could do all the most important characters before he had to take off, and we always could rely on him until his life took an unexpected turn.

So, yes, we could probably do wonders, we do have the talent to do the wonders, we just lack the time.

:)


Cesar Bittar
CEO
Phoenix Online
cesar.bittar@postudios.com

TribeHasSpoken

Quote from: César_Bittar on September 14, 2006, 01:48:17 PM
I'd love to have the team we have at my work so that we could make TSL shine to today's standards.

Um, did César just diss us?  :'(
Once the votes are read, the decision is final. The person voted out will be asked to leave the Tribal Council area immediately. I'll read the votes...


oberonqa

Quote from: TribeHasSpoken on September 14, 2006, 04:35:32 PM
Quote from: César_Bittar on September 14, 2006, 01:48:17 PM
I'd love to have the team we have at my work so that we could make TSL shine to today's standards.

Um, did César just diss us?  :'(

Naw... I think he just dissed the people at his work.   ;D
 
Chronicling the history of Sierra through the conversion of it's premiere magazine into an easy-to-use, searchable wiki format.

Cez

hmm, I actually meant that I wish the TSL team had the same working conditions as my team at work :)


Cesar Bittar
CEO
Phoenix Online
cesar.bittar@postudios.com

dark-daventry

In response to the cut scenes, I remember in a gamespy interview, new screens were released with new locations, which I assumed were the isle of the crown. So I believe that the Isle of the crown was expanded a little. I think the market place was expanded wth a few new places. Or am I wrong? Also, I do not know how beauty's house would play a very significant role. Granted, I was surprised by it's absence, but I also noticed the ferry was significantly changed, so I think they modified/deleted/added scenes for the better good. Overall, the demo was great, and I did enjoy the castle of the crown a bit, because we saw more than we normally do. One question though. In the full game, do we explore the basement, like in KQ6? To be honest I always believed the basement in KQ6 was the castle, and just realized around the demo's release that it was the basement... XD
Founder of the (new) Left Handed Alliance Of Left Handed People (LHALHP)

Gay and proud of it!

Avid Adventure Game fan