Larian Studios Forums Beyond Divinity (English) Suggestions Concerning Real Time 3D...

I must say, that, I do NOT like the idea of including real time 3D within the Divinity Universe. I extremely loved how smooth the animations were in Divine Divinity(Ordered it the day it came out <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />...). I do not think you should change the style, and in the screenshots I saw... umm... I don't like it one bit where you are heading with the idea of Real Time 3D. What do you guys think?

As much as people generally like the animations, there have been many disappointed that, for example, the dragon shield looks unique in you inventory, but just like any other large shield when equipped. In theory, pre-rendered and optimized 2D animations will always look better than 3D renderings, but it remains to be seen how much difference there will actually be in practice. The 3D character models will allow much more customization and help the atmosphere of the game.
Personally, I am more concerned with the story than graphics (better quality is preferred, but I've played Final Fantasy VII, where the character's hands looked like blocks of wood), so assuming the 3D models are done well, am willing to give up a bit of quality for customization.

I think that this is the whole point for having T3D characters. Nevertheless, I would like to make it clearer to other readers of the forum. Having many combinations of weapons, armour and shields besides a customisable hero makes it impossible to have a predetermined and rendered animation for each unique combination. In <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> the decision was to render a generalised representation, which is a huge amount of work by itself already.

The most perfect alternative is to have a graphical language that describes each item as well as the character in terms of polygons and texture as well.

Here I would like to suggest a very technical point that was missed in <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" />
During any item exchange or popup panel being opened, the game should automatically enter into the pause mode to give time to the player and also to the graphics engine to render its animation strip that replaces the sprite. In other words, I do not see why should there be a huge library of final combinations. The best way to handle this issue is a run-time creation of sprites. This is possible because the game must have a library of item-graphics in terms of a Graphics Language rather than in bitmaps. Now what Larian Studios could break the grounds with, is that rather than real time rendering, the rendering could take place during the assembly of the items in the character’s personal inventory, and a thin progress bar for the few seconds would not heart either.
In this case, the player could wait such few seconds until the engine renders this selection of items being combined and creates a runtime sprite or animation strip complete with texture and all the visual delight.
It is not probable that the player shall constantly change items equipped as long as the items were kept balanced and related to the level. The estimated required rendering should be a score of seconds every hour or so when a much better item is found and to replace a lower quality item. There is no difference in the time taken to display a screen clip of 80 x 160 when it is T3D or P3D because what is being displayed is the final result in pixels.

To render each mini-frame on the fly demands the low quality polygonal description to keep the mathematics at a minimum. However, there is yet another choice of not doing that, but rather creating the mini-frames’ strips for the specific combination of items and character before using them and displaying them animated. This could be done during the game pause mode and after the combination had been confirmed.

The player shall understand that she/ he is in a graphics sub-program and that would be appreciated too as a creative activity.

Games that come with a scenario editor do have huge libraries of graphical items, but item manipulation is usually nonexistent. This concept of having a sub-module of character editing in terms of customisation at the beginning only and in terms of changing equipment during the game should utilise the same engine but with different interface panels. The resultant shall be a memory resident sprite that truly represent the combination with textures and all the visual delight.

Cheers.

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wave.gif" alt="" />

But as I saw in one screenshot with a 3d "demon?"(couldn't tell really WHAT it was) it looked generally bad in my opinion. Guessing that the models are quite low-poly and below 800, I still must say I don't think a 3d isometrical perspective game is ready yet in our current technological state, especially on a very nice looking and beautifully rendered backrounds and landscapes. And if you are able to zoom in even futher, you'd be able to see each polygon, which WON'T be good.

I would prefer if Larian Studios worked on one engine for 5 years along with a huge amount of graphics each unique to every item(such as how Valve did with the upcoming Half Life 2) than if they worked for only a year or two with slow advancements.

Although, in any case, I'd buy <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/riftrunner.gif" alt="" /> no matter what, after seeing what Larian was able to do with <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> . I just hope it ends up a lot better than those currently released screen shots. Although, I find story makes up half a game, and graphics and gameplay equally make up the other half.

thanks for sharing your thoughts, zephyrus. however i remember this has been discussed in one of the threads(can't remember which one) with DAD saying the sme thing. which is why he mentioned that he wanted 2 make things clearer for other readers on his thoughts.

when u talk about 3D isometrical view game, did u not see neverwinter nights? it's fully true-3D or T3D as how DAD puts it. it's gorgeous 2 me. except that the overall look of the game is a tad 2 generic(the fault of the artist not the 3D graphics engine).

regarding larian working on an engine for 5 years instead of one or two years with slow advancement, i guess it depends on larian themselves & who will feed them in their 5-year long work on an engine. u do realise that 5 years is pretty long without churning any finished product out, right? i'm not pissing at u, just asking if u realise this small company has yet 2 have blizzard's credibility where people will give them such time length plus investement.

but they are getting there for sure if RRR as well as DD2 proves them 2 be THE game company. & of course they can work on other projects at the same time.

DAD's ideas are nice once u understand his words. lower quality of 3D objects during animation(move, combat, casting spells, doing stuff) & higher quality pictures when the character(s) is/are still(stand/crouch). scalability is the word. & graphics(mix of T3D & P3D) tricks much like hollywood's perspective tricks.

I understand what he says, but I still don't think it mixes well with a 2d rendered enviroment.

I would not argue your statement on understanding, dear Zephyrus. You are the best to judge if you did or not. However, I am not convinced about the second part of the statement concerning “mixing well with a 2D rendered environment”. Pay special attention please to the fact that all final screen pixels ARE 2D bitmaps. Unless you have bought a holographic display or something that we do not yet know about here in our primitive market {sarcasm is in the spirit of fun only, no offence intended}. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

In fact, your ideas are not too far from mine and your concerns are also typical to mine. I suggested solutions and I would be glad to debate them with a knowledgeable person like you. Please be verbose on your argumentation because a “yada yada” is not really helpful.
If you really understood the concept of semi-real-time animation frame-strip rendering, tell me what is wrong with it and how is that bad for mixing P3D with P3D if the same number of polygons and the same textures are being used in both cases?

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/question.gif" alt="" />

Like Marian sais in the peek of the week:

One of the enhancements that sets Riftrunner apart from Divinity 1 is the 3D character system. The characters in Divinity 1 where done in 2D, which had the advantage that the minimum specs were low and that as an artist, you had full control over the render quality.

Unfortunately, it also had the disadvantage that we needed a tremendous amount of data to store it all. If I recall correctly, we needed 1.3 CDs alone for the hero animations in all their variations. The six heroes in Divinity contained together over 900,000 frames of animation, and the dragon you meet at the end of the game contained over 100 MB in uncompressed data. As a result, we animators had to keep the frame count relatively low, and because of that, the quality of the animations was compromised.

And making 2D animations do take a lot of time in comparison to animations with 3D characters. With 2D characters you have to draw all the animations piece by piece, and for each direction. With 3D characters you "only" have to make the animations with the use of skeleton animation.

So?

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/question.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/question.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/question.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/question.gif" alt="" />

Don't make a mistake here. The type of skeletal animation is the same for <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> and <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/riftrunner.gif" alt="" />. The only differences are the polygon count of the model, the Necessity to render it out for 2D in all Directions (8 for a monster, 16 for the hero) and the limitation of the framecount for 2D.

Ask for turn-based 3D, then.
You cannot change the world, man. You simply cannot.

Eww... forgot about the space part. Umm... nevermind about this topic then <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />