Friday with Means - July 31st, 2009 - It is still Friday in North America

[sternrav0r]

Wootage!! News update on the new engine! That's what I been hoping to see for like the last 2 weeks. Now I wanna see my male NM head rendered in the new engine.
Man I can't wait for the new engine to go live. Having been around the current AO engine since its beta days I can certainly appreciate the hard work you guys are putting into this update. Hell I can remember way back when T&L lighting was added to the engine via some DX8 programing wizardry. Anything that makes the game more visually immersive helps the enjoyment of the game IMHO. Not to mention the benefits of utilizing the current day GPU's. I can only begin to imagine the new visual nano effects on nukes and buffs.

Keep banging away at it guys and gals, I'll be re-subbing the moment the new engine is released. maybe sooner if you're gunna shoot it over to test live.

[vallikat]

DragonCon this year is going to be epic - I'm predicting partying on a legendary scale. And yes, I will be dragging Means to the karaoke bar.

This is just the post I was looking for. I thought perhaps being left in your hands meant you not coming to DCon.

I believe it will be epic as well. One month!!!!!!!!!!

[vallikat]

the GSP dancers are gonna be nm instead of opi now go figure

??????

[epolass]

Hi Means !

Hi Kintaii <3 !

I lub j00 papy

[heruharoth]

Besides new textures (that so far look awesome , are we getting stuff like new animations? Weapon holstering, for example? Or is it just reworked textures?

[Wrangeline]

Besides new textures (that so far look awesome , are we getting stuff like new animations? Weapon holstering, for example? Or is it just reworked textures?

New higher res models, new textures, better water effects, better lighting and shadows, better foliage (grass) and such that come with new graphics engine.

[Worldofalts]

The closest towns to where I will be spending the most of my time are Port Carling and Bracebridge, Ontario (Muskoka area). I will be spending a couple days in Grafton, Ontario and a couple days in Montreal, Quebec as well. Mostly slow...sitting and drinking close to the water...nothing too exciting. Except maybe a few fast boat rides...if I feel like living on the edge I might even do some water skiing...I might be too old now though...don't want to limp for a week afterwards.

Sweet! Hope you enjoy it here in muskoka. I know i do

Hey baby, nice dodecahedrons. Wanna party?

ROFLMAO



Last!

[Drmorte]

Nice update - that takes skill, to make a nano mage look that good

Enjoy your time off, good luck with decompressing!

[Chrys]

Nice update - that takes skill, to make a nano mage look that good

Butbutbut I thought ugly nanomages were a feature of AO

[Noxira]

So why can't the whole character creation system just be revamped to the extent that we could choose from different faces and hairstyles to combine the character looks we want most? This would bring a lot more variety to the game and most MMOs utilize this system. Just throw in a few retexture options for different hair colours, maybe varieties for eyes (since it looks like you're giving the eyes real, blinking eyelids and using the eyeballs themselves as separate meshes) and face tattoos, which would be easy enough to do as alpha mapped textures that would overlay the face texture.

I'm even thinking this would take less time and work than just remodeling every head separately, since you could make a set of 4-7 base heads (different facial features), give sliders or a few options for skin colour, and then make a bunch of different hairstyle options, with varying recolors available. Hair is generally almost ridiculously easy to do in countless different varieties. I'm talking about using this style of modeling in particular, it's generally very sparing in polycount and looks very realistic at best. I mean, random Elder Scrolls nerds with some time on their hands can make stuff like that, I'm sure it would be a breeze to AO devs.

[shadowgod]

So why can't the whole character creation system just be revamped to the extent that we could choose from different faces and hairstyles to combine the character looks we want most?

...

I'm even thinking this would take less time and work than just remodeling every head separately, ...

as has been said a million times now. remodeling some heads is trivial compared to having to rewrite several systems that generate the things behind the models. if you think its taking a long time for them to impliment a new graphics engine... hope you got even more years to spare for them to impliment such options.

at that point, it'd be better for them to just make "AO 2", which would have to wait till TSW is closer to being released.

[Javafan]

....
I'm even thinking this would take less time and work than just remodeling every head separately, since you could make a set of 4-7 base heads (different facial features), give sliders or a few options for skin colour, and then make a bunch of different hairstyle options, with varying recolors available. Hair is generally almost ridiculously easy to do in countless different varieties. I'm talking about using this style of modeling in particular, it's generally very sparing in polycount and looks very realistic at best. I mean, random Elder Scrolls nerds with some time on their hands can make stuff like that, I'm sure it would be a breeze to AO devs.

I don't think that the problem is redoing some textures all over again (though it would look awkward to have some polish added to some, while others wouldn't get it).

If you add sliders for different sizes in body anatomy, I think they'll need to redo the entire armor-wear system and how items show on the characters. It's one thing to allow for more items to be shown on a character, less work that is, and another to redo almost the entire wearable items database to fit a few hundred-thousand possible combinations of body sizes.

If you add 2-3 sliders for face, 2-3 sliders for torso, 2-3 slides for arms, 2-3 sliders for legs, that already entiles a very high number of possible combinations for which they need to rework armors, weapons, vehicles etc. And besides that, it depends if the physics engine can support that.

If I remember correctly, they had enough problems with the hover chairs to fit some body types...

Why other games have it while AO doesn't? It's about how they been developed from the beginning. Maybe in time they'll be able to rework the entire character creation system with all the monstrous work it includes. But at the moment, that's not the priority.

Also, I don't think that kind of modelling would go great with AO... At least, I am very fond of how my atrox chars do ballet and for sure I would not like to loose their clunkiness

[Chrys]

It's Friday morning in Asia!!!

[Neuromotor]

It's Friday morning in Asia!!!

Now it have even spread to Euroland

[Luiza]

yus

[Boltgun]

It's Friday morning in Asia!!!

Tough luck that it is posted on the end of the day, but it's nice to read em on saturday morning.

[Reids]

I never get to be first cos Means always posts when i'm on my way home from work

[SSK]

It will be "Friday with Kintaii" and we don't know when he'll post, so you have a chance to be 1st

[Kintaii]

We're gettin' there - Won't be too long now.

[Reids]

We're gettin' there - Won't be too long now.

first!