SOTA Characters...Please don't stick a fork in it

Look closely at the elbows; you can see the individual facets on the outside part of the elbow.

Rigging elbows is painfully hard.

 

It's challenging to do a fair "apples to apples" comparison on these kinds of screenshots. A character model, shader, etc. used in-game may need constraints much more stringent than a single image on the Unity asset store. Particularly if there are a lot of *different* characters on the screen; it makes it harder to batch the draw calls.

Remember with Mass Effect there's pretty much just one male player model and one female player model (if I remember correctly; it's been a while since I played it and I didn't get very far), and there's only one of them on the screen at the time, so it gives the developers lots of opportunity to tune for those particular models.

 

Sure we can't compare SOTA to an AAA game from the past 2 years but we can compare the avatars to older games like Second Life, that game is old school yet players in the game regularly design their own avatars which exceed the standard default ones no examples to post just do a search on second life a avatars.

 

Like most character artists, they more-or-less do start with a nude model. Watch a few of the Pens of the Avatar.

 

Curious -- what happened to Conan?

I remember there being big booths advertising it a few years back at Dragoncon, but I didn't follow what happened after that....

 

Again, it's hard to do an apples to apples comparison. Sure, they looked good. But how much computing power did those particular character images you saw on the Unity website use?

(That said -- it would really behoove Portalarium at some point to do some still image promo shots with higher definition models than the lower definition models they are force to use in game...)

 

lol well what a good comment,

I'm sure some will worry about that too and try to hold us back, but that would be a grave mistake...... and I don't believe I have to give anything up.

If SOTA did not improve it's characters and the many other things they are working on here with us there may not be a game or just a mediocre game. It has to be done.

You cannot advertise with that flexing ugly creature, no way. I know they know that too,.

Imagine any game having a trailer with that thing on it, sheesh I'd turn it off immediately, or think it was a joke. It will be done . No one needs to worry that it will take over any other features, it is just a normal part of the process.........decent character models and customization, a great world to immerse yourself in, a great story line, fabulous combat and crafting and on and on. There are no trade offs in our wonderful game, no way

 

Speaking about graphics Conan had nice graphics compared with others MMOs and also had a good reception. But the game had a lot of bugs, technical problems, lag and the sieges and pvp (that were supposed to be massives) had to be very instanced with much less players in a room because the systems were overloaded. A lot of people just run away, even if was an interesting game for mature people.

I think that actually have some kind of f2p system.

 

I can't imagine the level of heartburn of deploying an MMO must be induce! There's really no way to predict what will happen until you go fully live. (Portalarium's instancing tech is so new that they have to do these monthly tests as a shakedown of that, if nothing else... if something on their infrastructure side turns out to be fundamentally mis-thought, they're in for a world of hurt.)

 

Did you see some of the character demos CCP put together for their World of Darkness MMO? They were pretty amazing...



I was very sad when it was announced that the development got cancelled. I hate to think of all those assets sitting around on hard drives going to waste...

 

Whenever people show demos, "concepts", or show video of just a developer playing a game, I always take it with a grain of salt.

The idea for a WoD game is a good one.

 

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Oh that's wonderful. Thank you for sharing abovenyquist.
The models were so graceful and I loved the animations and the way they moved.
So did this game come out ,or what were these models for?

 

Oh, agreed, that's not someone you'll likely see super-soon on a "PC near you" unless it happens to be equipped with the GPU of Prosperity or something.

 

If you are more curious about Conan you can find this small interview interesting. Not very long, but we can read a very good quote: Age of Conan "the best-looking" MMO, but it comes at a cost. But they only spoke about the "good" part of the problem, I think.

 

edit oops I saw development got canceled, yes very sad, I'm sure we would gladly take those
models lol

 

The story ends sadly:

http://www.ccpgames.com/en/public-r...s-halts-development-of-world-of-darkness-mmo/

CCP hosted one of the Georgia Game Developer's Association meetings, so I got to meet some of their people and see some of their tech. It was good stuff. Depressing to see it all close up.

I'm hoping some other party can buy up the rights to do a WoD game, along with the assets already developed by CCP, and do another single-player game if nothing else.

 

Of course, you'd never realize that from that fancy video they showed off. At least we know exactly where SoTA stands, for better or worse.

 

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Yes that is very sad. It sounded like a great concept to base a game on , well since I looked up some details on it too I am a little bit of a fan of a Vampire race, I had one in Everquest2, but would like to see someone elaborate on that race a bit more gothically speaking lol.

Also I know this is dated, but when they created the worgen character in wow, the story line truly started out to grasp you a bit and then they dropped the ball on it. I even thought the character look for the worgen was a bit better a bit gothic. It was a very disappointing thing to me to run around in that form with no more storyline lol

Well that is off topic, sorry and a while ago. Maybe they will continue World of Darkness later, but don't want to get peoples hopes up.

 

I have taken a somewhat back-seat to SoTA and I'll continue to follow the project.

Skyrim development and marketing budget $85 - $100 Million

Shroud of the Avatar development and marketing budget $4 Mil - Unknown

I'm all for the "Ultima" aesthetic and "game play is more" but I would love to see more work put into the character models and textures.

The following are some player made mod's added to Skyrim.

 

Lol, here we go yet again with that poor unity doll with the wacky arms and people posting super high quality renders in comparison...

We're never going to have that level of graphics ! And I for one don't even have a card that can run it, I do hardcore gaming on the PS4, so I don't even care !