Feedback: NPC's - Expressions etc

Firstly, great job on R2, totally awesome and amazing to see the progress from R1. You can really feel the difference as you explore.

Okay, so my critical feedback is around the NPC's. What I loved about Ultima 7 (my favourite Ultima) was the way you felt like you got to know the NPC's and felt emotion around them. You had their portrait come up which gave them life.

The one issue I have so far (and it is hopefully just because the NPCs are in a 'pre-alpha' state is that I feel like I can't 'bond' with them so much. The dialogue is fine, but their face's all seem a bit repetitive and lifeless or something. A couple of things I think could improve this:

1. Create some simple facial animations:
None of them blink, and this makes them seem like zombies - if you could add a subtle 'blink' to each one it would improve them 100% and give them life. As an advanced option on this, you could have some blink faster, e.g. flirty, or nervous, then those that don't blink so much (or not at all) would have a very intense look about them.

A smile or animation or a frown, depending on their temperament and on what you say to them would help.

I know this could be time consumer in terms of development but if it was kept simple that would be fine.


2. NPC Routines
Not sure if this is already planned, but I'll say it just in case... hopefully NPCs will go about their day like real people... eating, sleeping, drinking etc according to the hour of the day.
Perhaps some NPCs out hunting and fishing?


Example: If this NPC could have blinked a few times it would have made her so much more believable. Hopefully that's an easy win for the dev team!




A smile from this pretty lady when I complimented her would have made my day:

 

Any other ideas for facial expressions?

 

Hi all,

We are working on that. All the characters have a facial rig already in place. We are figuring out how much, when and how best to propagate it gamewide.
Not sure when on the list of importance, but it will happen I assure you.

As always, thanks for playing and keep the feedback coming!

Qball

 

Good to hear Qball, thanks for the update

 

Have you or anyone on the dev team seen Chris Crawford's recent post re: his old Erasmotron facial rigging system?

http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/interactive-storytelling/erasmatron-faces.html

YMMV when it comes to Crawford, and his "results" on this are kinda uncanny valley. But I think that may have more to do with the really creepy lip/teeth art than anything else, and I like the idea of making emotions as procedural as possible. Maybe it's kinda outside the scope of your ambitions for this project, but I like Crawford's crazy essays generally, so you might find it interesting?

 

Might I add one suggestion, when a player just leaves a npc without saying bye, or goodbye, that NPC will say "bye player" automatically when the player leaves the radius of the NPC.