The way I understand it, they were looking at how long each art asset was taking and realized they just wouldn't have the time to keep going in that direction. By moving over to this hand painted art style, they can start working out assets MUCH quicker. So the world will start to look more like a world, filled with things, models, plants, animals, buildings etc., then if they had kept going in the previous direction.
I imagine in terms of performance this is going to go above and beyond, making it much more user friendly for machines. I also imagine something like this will be much friendlier on networking stuff as well.
As far as starting over, I imagine they will be able to use rigs and animations, grayboxing and everything else from before, it is just the texture and graphical aspect that would be brought into a more hand painted artstyle. I imagine this is going to mean that by Christmas, you will see a TON more assets in the game and Pre-Alpha. Right now the game looks very barren.
You start with high polygon models. These will be reduced in game for better performance.
With the new artstyle they can be further reduced for more performance.
The original models are still the same, no need to create new ones.
No need to change the network or the animations either.
zendrel said: 1. Does this mean the 2 years spent on project faerthale was a waste? Wasn't that largely about world graphics? Does it mean the halfling zone and the pool all need to be redone with the new graphics? 2. Does this mean the networking stack change that held everything back was pointless? Wasn't the networking stack meant to make it so the higher graphics could load properly and be playable? Did that fail or something? 3. Does a graphics change mean starting over on building character models, animations, world assets, and all of that dynamic stuff they did with grass and trees shadows wind and day/night cycles? 4. Can anyone tell me this will actually work better for sure or can this new art run into the same issues and need it's own new networking stack etc? I bought into alpha years ago with the intent of playing this with my dad. He is now 65 and I can't wait another 10 years. I have no background in IT so I'd love to hear if this is really like setting back to 2018 or is this actually the good news they are trying to spin it to be?
1. Any world-building is not wasted. The art is more of a texture thing.
2. Optimization is never pointless and the art updates are not directly tied to this. That's not to say that having stylized art won't help performance, because it will, it just wasn't the driving factor.
3. No. The skeletal system of assets and the animations are still usable, they just need a new texture. The character models are a bit different and they will have to be re-worked. The good news there is this texture allows for a quicker pace in world-building and things are getting updated pretty quickly.
4. It isn't a set back of that magnitude. PA pledges will be in game within a month with the new art and 24/7 availability.
Zorkon said:4. It isn't a set back of that magnitude. PA pledges will be in game within a month with the new art and 24/7 availability.
Did VR just drop a PA date?
We have been in PA already and have had monthly sessions. Not really a surprise that there is another session coming.
Artois said:Zorkon said:4. It isn't a set back of that magnitude. PA pledges will be in game within a month with the new art and 24/7 availability.
Did VR just drop a PA date?
We have been in PA already and have had monthly sessions. Not really a surprise that there is another session coming.
That's what happens when I post before I've had enough coffee!