Friday with Means - March 13th, 2009

[Tiralee]

I imagine it is unlikely we will simply replace all the heads in game as all of us have some attatchment to these...but more likely offer a choice to move to a "new" head if we want...

I think having a choice to move to the new head or keep the old head on a character is great. There is likely at least one character where I'd want to keep her orginal face, even if the new face is a lot better.

[Harios]

It's already an option, check/uncheck Helmet Visible.

Harios, do F10 - Visual - Misc - uncheck helmet visible ; )

Mkay, thanks

still would be nice to have an option to turn it off in a non-combat situation only.

[unseelie]

Awesome update Means!

About the heads, they look sweet but please keep the opifex looking a bit elven if you could, and please, keep the evil looks of those soli heads that have facial tats and white eyes.

I can't wait for this update when it comes!

[Technogen]

The art team has done an awesome job, that render looks great.

Make sure they get to the weapons and make them more width wise then the current ones. Also make sure the attachment points are correct so that a player isnt holding a 2hand gun in the wrong spot.

And like Klod said, make some idle animations.

[flyinguns]

Hum i don't know why, but i think the old opifex face was a way hooter .




Can we at least get some info about the ranged advy situation?

Like why we don't get new Guns while mele got new sword and why our perk are so crappy for example?

[Ophiuchus]

Wow, what you guys have done to that poor opifex , lol. Old one was a hottie, this new one looks like some 500 year old cave gnome. And there is something coming out of her nose!

Just my opinion though.

QFT. It's some aged cute gnomey thing, not a sleek Opifex. I'm all for revamped heads but, uh, could they maybe look like the original and preserve the breed features such as slender opis with slightly pointed ears, rather than childlike pale solitus wannabes? Pretty please?

Other than that, smoother and less polygon-y character animations sound great.

[mongomad]

some good news...

however, any other news on Sync Issues? and how you intend to allow Melee profs to play premium content theyve paid for, ie - Battlestation !!!

[Technogen]

Like why we don't get new Guns while mele got new sword and why our perk are so crappy for example?

Don't tell me you're expecting a Perk redesign any time soon... They have made almost 0 changes to perks.

Not everyone got a new weapon out of the LoX upgrades.

[Auroch]

Wow, what you guys have done to that poor opifex , lol. Old one was a hottie, this new one looks like some 500 year old cave gnome. And there is something coming out of her nose!

Just my opinion though.

Yes! Let's just be thankful this is just a work in progress. Don't get me wrong, the level of detail and textures look great. But she is one ugly chick... and she definitely does NOT look like an Opifex.

List of things to please keep for opi:
1. thin, sleek head shape
2. pointy ears
3. narrow eyes
4. upturned nose
5. snobbish lip shape
6. more grey-ish lips
7. thinner, more pointy hair
8. overall elitist look of dissatisfaction

[aleah]

Character design is (going to be) a hot topic.
Any choices we can get would be greatly appreciated.

You find that you like one face, though the lipstick is too dark.
Another appears to have buck-teeth.

Other games have faces that appear surprised (botox!) or sleepy all the time.
AO's current faces don't have that so much, thankfully.

[Firestorm518]

I haven't spoken about the engine for awhile...as it is difficult to make code optimization interesting...I only listen in those meeting because I have to. The coders are working hard at optimizing the new engine..as currently it is an "all features on full" affair that provides all features...but poor framerate. Optimizations that were missing from "old" AO are being looked into..like mesh instancing (load that tree once with a single call...and populate it out at no real framerate loss) was one aspect of the coder work this week. They were very excited to have 500 Turbine mesh's on the screen at once without significant issues. I'm going to assume this is a good thing...I sometimes don't always get those "coder moments". At any rate, an effect system is now working and we can begin to start producing some new effects, everything is being rendered...now optimization and the grunt work of producing a great number of effects can begin. Both these are going to take time...but we'll keep at it.

There will of course be some graphical updates with the new engine...the full extent of which isn't fully decided. New trees to freshen up the outdoor environments are definitely coming. Character bodies are going to be "smoothed" and better optimized for animation to lose some of the nasty poly issues. One test in progress at the moment is new character heads...AO has a huge number of these...so we are currently working on a "work in progress" opifex female head as a test case for possible production of new heads. I imagine it is unlikely we will simply replace all the heads in game as all of us have some attatchment to these...but more likely offer a choice to move to a "new" head if we want...and remove the old ones from character creation so all new characters will get new heads. Like I said...this is in the early phases...and not final yet...but exciting so I wanted to share an image with you for this week.

Huge means. huge. That is a good sized step forward in the engine. Making sure a common graphics card can handle it is a very nice thing. Well done and keep us posted!

[Techna]

Hopefully that head is just a bad example... while the details and textures are obviously much better (good job on that), it looks very common, doesnt have anything from the opifex characteristics left and mainly, it's not futuristic.
Please do not forget we are playing a sci-fi game, more futuristic faces/gear would be much more coherent, dont you think?

[Wrangeline]

If there will be new heads while also keeping the old ones, there will no longer be war between omni and clan. There will be a new war between "smoothskins" and "blockheads"

Edit: Btw, one small "tip" or whatever you want to call it. When I look at AO characters today I get the sense that one of the characteristics of AO is that our eyes are often a tad smaller than "normal". Or at least it looks that way. If you take a quick peek at most avatars then the eyes are quite narrow and small compared to the overall size of the face.

That new 3d model head seems to have Disney eyes in comparison. Make the eyes a tad smaller (they look ok for a normal face but not for a AO face!)

[ninor]

Seriously, not having instancing as part of the current AO engine is a serious offense against any common gfx sense. I mean it was standard of OpenGL 10 years ago. But at least it explains a lot. I just hoe all the world building tool have instance information or the worldbuilders are in for some seriuose overtime rebuilding RK and SL.

[Praetos]

There will be a new war between "smoothskins" and "blockheads"

If they're all as ugly as the opi female example, I'll be fighting on the blockhead's side.

[Adjuster3]

@Means

I smell featurecreep!!!!

[Junttius]

Remodelling the old heads will be a tough task. IMO the old heads are extremely well made considering their poly count. The face we saw here is promising, definitely, and i hope we see some breed varied visual attributes in the future. I bet atrox will be the hardest one.

[Wrangeline]

Remodelling the old heads will be a tough task. IMO the old heads are extremely well made considering their poly count. The face we saw here is promising, definitely, and i hope we see some breed varied visual attributes in the future. I bet atrox will be the hardest one.

I shudder at the prospect of a similarly updated 3d model of the head you have in your avatar

[raw_fox]

Thank you Means.

great info, kepp it up ^^

[Tazalanche]

Synch Issues:
We have for some time been working on a more permanent solution to the "synch/lag" issues that seems to be randomly affecting players for some time. Within the next month we should have test dimensions up and running at another provider that will hopefully perform better during peak hours. Setting the game up itself isn't difficult, as we publish new servers etc all the time, it is the arcane art of monitoring/error reporting/billing/support tools for AO that is difficult. Either way I am very much looking forward to examining results from this new server/network environment. If all looks well we will move to the new environment as soon as humanly possible. Of course I will let you know when.

Instanced Cities:
Macrosun has taken it upon himself to create the instanced cities that have been long requested by the player base. This will be difficult...but he feels he is making good progress. The instanced nature of these playfields will make it impossible to have player owned shops...but the city bonuses and alien attacks should now be available to everyone. This is a long way from completion but at least work has begun on this issue that has been with us for a long time. "Normal" cities will still retain value due to their size and their player shops...but more AI content will now be available to all. I'm hoping we can also grant fr00b access to the org HQ's at the same time.

For example I didn't fully realize how much people were affected by the spammers in game...work has already been done to make this problem easier to deal with (something not easy in a game that offers free accounts..) and we look forward to having better ways (less player driven) in the near future to deal with this issue.

Updates on these please!