Size matters???

Hello

Anyone feel like the size of your avatar within a house, seems to large. The house from the road seems just fine, but once inside, its odd IMO

Thanks
~Jason

 

I think the real problem with the perception of furniture and the avatar and so on being 'too large' is that the ceilings are at a realistic height. Most games make the ceilings much taller than they would really be to make the spaces feel larger.

 

THIS. They really need to heighten the ceilings. I know it may not be as realistic, but I think it would enhance game play a lot more.

 

raising the ceiling would allow us to also zoom out a bit while in the house... which is something I would really like to be able to do.

 

In addition, the camera effect of being placed above and behind the character (over the shoulder) creates an optical illusion that makes the room appear smaller than it really is.

I suspect that if 1st PoV was enabled, then the size of the rooms would appear to be be much more normal.

 

My main problem was actually placing objects. Bigger houses with higher ceiling were not so much of an issue, but placing rugs in the smaller homes was a nightmare. I like the design of the houses, but if at least the top of the roof was invisible when you were inside so you could zoom out more it would help a lot.

 

A roofless, 3/4 view like in the Sims (you see the far wall and about half of the walls to either side, but not the wall closest to you or the roof) would be nice, honestly >.>

 

Actually this is something that really interests me. For my sins I've played around a lot with building in Second Life and what you very rapidly discover is that buildings need to have ceilings roughly double the height of a normal ceiling to allow you to pan without it feeling cramped. Most avatars in Second Life are around 2 meters tall and yet it's unusual for you to find a ceiling that is less than 4.5 M tall or even 5.0 M tall. Most rooms are at least 5 meters/5 meters and even that feels a little cramped. The main reason is that you're viewing your avatar in a building in 3rd person view so you need a little space to be able to pan effectively.

I suspect that this is exactly the problem in SotA and I'd greatly encourage the devs to grab an SL account and quickly throw up a couple of buildings to get a feel for what works or what doesn't without having to go through all the work of actually creating or re-sizing buildings in SotA.

Very much looking forward to seeing where you go with this guys and good luck!!

Darius Falc.

 

Remember the character creator does have a size control.. If this concerns you try a quick new character with minimum height?

 

I guess the point here is that I shouldn't need to be a dwarf to fit comfortably into the houses.

 

I was actually wondering if it would be possible to make the ceiling translucent if you cam out while inside the house so you can zoom out as far as possible to get an overhead view. Could do multiple floors in a UO fashion. Not sure how feasiblethe idea is in 3D though.

 

Your comment brings to mind the issue in the opposing direction, multiple floors and the camera and being able to see them given that some of the perks for higher backers and in the store is multi-level basements, so there'll need to be a way to navigate the camera easily while maneuvering / decorating within the basements. So theres layers upon layers, and looking at the preliminary ideas, they don't exactly stack directly above and below each other.

 

That's a very good point. Not sure how exactly that could even work.

 

Something else that might help is the "thickness" given to the walls and ceilings in the buildings. Exterior dimensions need not be changed as much if the "thickness" of some of the walls and the ceilings were lessened. This doesn't apply to all of the buildings of course but it's definitely something to look at. There's also a LOT of wasted space in some of these layouts, and spaces that are being passed off as "rooms" but would barely be called a closet honestly...

 

I agree, many rooms feel small. I think this is a perception issue. I do a fair amount of rendering and the house/room models I use are scale, not 5 m ceiling type. But, I am placing a character as an object into the scene for the render and all looks normal. In game when I placed my character and zoomed out for a screenshot, it all looked in scale and fine. Yet the over-the-shoulder cam made things seem cramped. I am intrigued by the idea of translucent ceilings etc. but perhaps the easy fix is a simple 1st person view as Ser Alain suggests.