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It's way more complicated than you think to print a human figure.

 

Not really.
Old printers using plastic filament maybe, the modern ones can do a 15cm model generated from an 3dscan
There are companies who scan you and print one for 30bucks, and that is mainly for the not so cheap body scanner involved.
Given avatar models are already there it is mainly a question of slicing an avatar model for the print.
http://3dfigureworks.com/
https://www.shapeways.com/product/H4Q7EFAZF/doodz?optionId=1376184&li=marketplace

 

So this means there will be no custom heads in the game at all and that the LB and DS (and anyone else's) custom heads are not visually appealing, they do impact performance, and they were not cost effective to put in?

 

Modelled for 3d Printing? Easy peasey.

Modelled as a game asset? Probably less work to do the duke heads as planned.

 

I'm pretty sure they don't have custom heads.
I think they just took advantage of having the original models and hairstyles being made to suit their appearance.
I might be wrong.

 

Well, sorta. Yes there will be no custom heads of Duke’s or LOTM’s that don’t have one now. But do you really think that DS and LB will have a generic face in game? I guess it pays to be a King, not a Duke or Lord of the Manor!!!

 

Last time I saw them at a dance party, they looked pretty generic to me. Nothing beyond what the character creation already offers.

 

@DarkStarr , any chance of some clarity on this please?

 

I saw the substitution form on my account last night asking for what piece I want and also what signature on the piece. I will not complete the form an I am leaving it blank. I hope all backers awarded this pledge item will do the same. Send the message that we cannot be bought with cheap crap like this!!!

 

Modelling heads for game assets is not only making the 3d mesh but texturing too, if done right by an professional i would guess 2-4 hours (i have no idea what is involved with unity there exactly so rough estimate)
I think it would take some weeks working all theese off.
(and considering how little you notice heads in game where we use most the time 3rd person i do not really see the point)

 

1. If you're going to be printing people's avatars, all that texture, and most of the details, will be part of bump and texture maps, and won't print, as it's not actual geometry. And the avatars themselves will be very low poly, which will not result in terribly great looking 3d prints.

2. Game assets are almost never manifold printable models. They often have tons of bad geometry, gaps, and other issues that require repair, much of which will need to be performed by hand.

And for the record, that includes SotA models. If you have a Dev+ account, you can download a lot of the 3D models. I have, and they are not good for 3D printing. Back when I had some free time, I was re-building a shock monkey so I could print one. I used the 3d asset as reference only- the model would have taken a lot of work to make printable, and most of the details are achieved with textures and not polys. (Plus,that particular model has a lot of really thin parts, so I needed to remodel it anyway to thicken everything up for the size I wanted to print it at.)

And also for the record, that's not a knock on the SotA 3d assets, that's how game assets generally are. They don't need to be printed, so time isn't spent on modelling them that way. I once worked on playing pieces for a boardgame based on [AAA video game title] which was a project that had been handed off to us by a partner developer. They said we didn't need to budget for sculpts, as they were already done. They sent us the files, which just turned out to be posed versions of the game assets. To be fair, they had used the original sculpts (and not the low poly game models) for the poses, so the detail was all there, but it was all too small to show up in the final pieces, and most of it was unprintable. I spent three days trying to make one of them usable, and the end result looked awful. So we ended up resculpting everything.

 

Ok, so you need to make one male, one female basis and slap armor on that ?
(I guess the custom for Sota armors come with high detailed drafts before they turn it low poly and bump everything)
That would still be less work than making lots of heads in my book.

The archer elven sculptures at least i took an closer look at ingame are not exactly what i would call low poly....

 

Maybe. I don't recall how involved the customization was at creation. I seem to remember messing around with sliders a bit.

There are also possibly smoothing algorithms applied to the models to give an appearance of a higher res model. (Or not, video games/animation are not my wheelhouse. You may be right, and the elves are way higher resolution.)

Here's what the Shock Monkey raw geometry looks like. All those yellow lines are broken/bad geometry which requires fixing. In some cases, they're just holes that need closing. But the face and mouth are a mess. The mouth especially, the red you see is the non-normal side of polys, which effectively means the mouth has no "inside." That'll all have to be modeled by hand.If I were going to print this, the smallest I could get away with was about 6 inches/150mm, and some of those parts would be extremely delicate. And that's on the super hi-res fancy-pants printer I have at work. If were going to print this on an extruder type machine to get a more durable print, I'd probably have to go up anther 50% to make sure nothing is too small for the extruder. Or, I spend even more time remodeling the thin parts. And I'd still get octagon knees.

At the end of the day, you're probably correct, in that it would likely be cheaper than modeling a bunch of custom heads. (I was probably incorrect in my earlier exaggeration about it being easier to do custom heads.) But probably not enough to not still be too much money for Port to spend right now. (Not to mention, $100-$300 per print.)





Fun Fact: There is a super awesome "easter egg" in the Unity file of the shock monkey. I don't know if it was cut content, or a basis for future content, but I was super surprised when I saw it.

I'll just say, monkeys could have been (or could still be) a whole lot meaner.

 

I am pretty disappointed on this one as well. Taking two accounts to Duke (or beyond) is costly and to see one of the most valued rewards made near worthless (to me) feels and sounds like bad business. I had really looked forward to this to have a customized "Quasimodo" type character for role-play, etc.

I do agree with your suggestion above as being at least a viable option - but as a part of this - if you do add the City Lot - then the placement of Water Lots needs to be fixed so that we could properly attach a city-water lot to a keep/castle island. The islands were obviously designed with long straight sides for it... but it just won't work and should get attention as well.

 

I feel like the Lords already have so much stuff, that it really rings hollow to me seeing as we just had a giant layoff.

I think some people's heads are in the wrong place on this. It's time for some belt-tightening, including the 1 percenters living better than 100 percent
of any new playerbase that this game sorely needs, coming in.

Did they over-promise during the kickstarter ? Yes.
Should we have known better considering the history of kickstarters in general ? Yes.

 

It is great to hear folks replacement ideas and sympathies. but for those that didn't actually have a duke account to tell us to suck it up .. um .... that is kinda mean spirited.

 

Aye, well you would have been smarter to just pledge lord marshall or less based on how things turned out, I agree there.

However, the Dukes should listen to thy vassals, I have heard that many of the peasants are not happy with their Lords and Ladies !

One only has to look at the guillotine asset and how many have it in use to realize the peril of the untouchables !

 

The bottom line on this is that when you purchase something it is your absolute right to know exactly what you purchased. In the case of people who pledge at Duke level, they spent an awful amount of money based upon what the rewards were as listed. As far as everyone was concerned there were no issues until this thread pops up out of the blue.
I'm quite sure that if the issue had been handled more appropriately, although there would be frustration, there would almost certainly be more amicable outcomes.

This isn't actually about money, it's about purchasing something based upon the description and then 4 years on finding out that what was specified is not going to be delivered.......instead, what is going to be delivered is something completely inappropriate without any real consultation with those who are effected.

If you were to order a Porsche and a month later you were handed the keys to a Skoda you simply wouldn't accept it. In all honesty why should players accept this? Why aren't Portalarium communicating with those effected to arrive at a suitable remedy?

That is my gripe.

This kind of thing starts to create a huge lack of trust between the Player and the Developers which is not a good thing considering the Devs are about to start asking for funding towards Episode 2. Why would I pledge for mounts in game? Based on this scenario I could end up with a Dev crafted rocking horse to stick in a house.

 

Yeah, you'd be correct if you were purchasing something during a Kickstarter, but you are not. "Kickstarter is not a store" remember ? Yeah, they tried to drill it into us.

However, I do think you are right that it probably should have been communicated earlier.

If we don't have a game to log into in 2 years is any of this gonna matter tho ? You know ? That's where I'm coming from.

 

Right, but they are liable after the project has been funded. See below from Kickstarter's website:

Is a creator legally obligated to fulfill the promises of their project?

Yes. Kickstarter's Terms of Use require creators to fulfill all rewards of their project or refund any backer whose reward they do not or cannot fulfill. (This is what creators see before they launch.) We crafted these terms to create a legal requirement for creators to follow through on their projects, and to give backers a recourse if they don't. We hope that backers will consider using this provision only in cases where they feel that a creator has not made a good faith effort to complete the project and fulfill.