For those of you who don't have it already, the Dragon Age character creator is available for download at dragonage.bioware.com. I can't wait for this game to come out.
Why do games let you change ever little detail on your face to ridiculous extremes but every character in the game is the same height/weight/proportions/muscle tone...
ZacD: because its a pain in the ass to do? Change the proportions and height, and you have to start messing with the rig, and tadaaa... problems! Changing the face is easy peasy in comparison. :P
Like great games like mass effect and Fallout 3 suffer from the everyone looks the same issues, it shouldn't be that hard on the rigs... I think its worth the extra effort.
Like great games like mass effect and Fallout 3 suffer from the everyone looks the same issues, it shouldn't be that hard on the rigs... I think its worth the extra effort.
I think they have a pretty damn good idea of what they are doing, and good reasons for the choices they make.
Zac, that'd be great..but it's not as easy as you might think. If you get into being able to scale the body like that, you've got to account for the, what seems like, hundreds of sets of armor in the game. If you just do a uniform scale, the guy's just going to look 'bigger' but not fat. For all the heads and stuff they're probably doing morphs, using just one head and pushing the same vert count around. That could be harder to do if you have to throw girth on top of that (stretched uvs...etc..) I only have a little bit of experience doing that sort of thing..but yeah, like bounch said...i'm sure they have a great reason why.
On a selfish side note, I saw a friend from work messing around with this and some of my textures are in the character creation menus
Aion seems to do a pretty good job of character customization. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think it allows for changing the "fatness" of a guy and stuff like this.
Why do games let you change ever little detail on your face to ridiculous extremes but every character in the game is the same height/weight/proportions/muscle tone...
<shameless>APB, game i work on, allows you to have fat people of any hight </shameless>
Also when you get into changing character scale you start to have issues when characters physically interact. Which, from what I read somewhere, is why they only have a Human rig and an Elf/Dwarf rig.
Dragon Age's character creator is a lot better than the Mass Effect custom characters. Hopefully Mass Effect 2's will be even better.
I was actually pleasantly surprised with this character customisation tool, I was half expecting something as hideous as Oblivion/Fallout 3 or Mass Effect (though you could get good looking characters in ME & Fallout3 if you spent silly amounts of time on them.)
It seems quite quick and painless to take one of the default templates and tweak 'em into something good.
Whilst I still maintain the opinion that this game visually looks like ass, I think I'm still willing to warrant this game a purchase as the latter trailers have been more appealing story wise.
The visual quality of this last generation of RPGs is so bad that I don't get how they still sell. It's so damn ugly that I don't want to play it at all... I'll pass on this one.
I never had an issue with the face-editor in Oblivion.
Then again, I made my faces in the editor, using a tablet, with high-quality textures and custom races, so I can't really say anything about people who play the game stock.
Having finally finished the download (stupidly slow internet) and messed around with the character creator a bit, I only have one question.
Where are my buttons?
Seriously, no independent mouth pucker/frown control, no specific tonal control, limited nose editing, no age settings, and no skin clarity. Let alone asymmetric functions such as axial twist or displacement. The hair selection is also pretty sparse.
I might be expecting too much from it after going from Oblivion with more modded content than not, but it still feels like there is a large gap where all the fun options should be. Now, if they released an SDK....
I just saw an ad for this game claiming it is "dark fantasy"-- lol
last I heard they were referring to it as 'low' fantasy, which means all the crazy fantasy shit is in the game but it's not all super crazy obvious and cheesy. the example they gave was The Song of Ice and Fire series.
last I heard they were referring to it as 'low' fantasy, which means all the crazy fantasy shit is in the game but it's not all super crazy obvious and cheesy. the example they gave was The Song of Ice and Fire series.
Haha, perhaps that is why in the trailer the characters do 30 foot flips while shooting out magic arrows and effortlessly killing dragons. If low fantasy was what they were shooting for they failed miserably.
This is the new shit, gotten off an RPS ad mere minutes ago:
10x more of everything the 'hardcore' crowd hates about bioware games (same characters every time, cliche bloodandviolenceandsexisMATURE themes, et all), and then more oldschool rpg gameplay? I think they are screwing with them.
i must say... heads look mighty impressive, it seems like a running theme these days, people just keep getting better and better at doing heads, and you can tell these weren't scanned or generated with facegen, they look really good. I think it could have done away with all the slidery stuff, and just have more presets and haircuts/accessories. So yeah, the floating beards aside that definitely looks better than oblivion. the outfits though... ehhhh i don't know, i'm prepared to not be blown away.
The heads are getting pretty nice. I managed to make a genuinely attractive woman without much difficulty, something I've never managed to do in a Bethesda game (mods don't count).
Rest of her isn't very pretty, though. The texture on the armour is what, 128x128? I guess it's starter armour and you'll get rid of it right away but still. 99% of the art budget in this game seems to be in the heads alone. That would be fine if the game was Baldur's Gate style "camera always really far away" but it's obviously got a lot of close ups so it's really a mistake in the design, IMO.
But it's a pretty head! Or it was. When I clicked on Modify Character after saving, it had covered her face in a very dark and terrible tattoo, so that sucks?
And the whole dark/low fantasy thing is a joke. After playing The Witcher, Dragon Age is just another generic Tolkien cliche. Not that The Witcher didn't have it's share of cliches, but it never felt like I was watching a LOTR movie.
With regards to the whole body shape argument, didn't GTA: San Andreas allow you to change your appearance by working out or eating too much, and it still made all the clothes you can buy fit the new shape?
With regards to the whole body shape argument, didn't GTA: San Andreas allow you to change your appearance by working out or eating too much, and it still made all the clothes you can buy fit the new shape?
Yeah. That was a really fun aspect of the game. Plus you could swim underwater and there was loads of stuff to find. Why that wasn't included in GTA 4 I don't know. There is an amazingly detailed city for you to walk through but I missed that humanizing element. Maybe they decided it just wasnt enough fun,... all those extras, and put the energy into other stuff. Also the clothing in GTA is a lot less elaborate.
This dragon game looks amazing, man I am there. I am a great Bauldur's gate and Oblivion fan though
Replies
Why do games let you change ever little detail on your face to ridiculous extremes but every character in the game is the same height/weight/proportions/muscle tone...
I think they have a pretty damn good idea of what they are doing, and good reasons for the choices they make.
On a selfish side note, I saw a friend from work messing around with this and some of my textures are in the character creation menus
<shameless>APB, game i work on, allows you to have fat people of any hight
Dragon Age's character creator is a lot better than the Mass Effect custom characters. Hopefully Mass Effect 2's will be even better.
It seems quite quick and painless to take one of the default templates and tweak 'em into something good.
Whilst I still maintain the opinion that this game visually looks like ass, I think I'm still willing to warrant this game a purchase as the latter trailers have been more appealing story wise.
Then again, I made my faces in the editor, using a tablet, with high-quality textures and custom races, so I can't really say anything about people who play the game stock.
Frank the Avenger
Where are my buttons?
Seriously, no independent mouth pucker/frown control, no specific tonal control, limited nose editing, no age settings, and no skin clarity. Let alone asymmetric functions such as axial twist or displacement. The hair selection is also pretty sparse.
I might be expecting too much from it after going from Oblivion with more modded content than not, but it still feels like there is a large gap where all the fun options should be. Now, if they released an SDK....
last I heard they were referring to it as 'low' fantasy, which means all the crazy fantasy shit is in the game but it's not all super crazy obvious and cheesy. the example they gave was The Song of Ice and Fire series.
Haha, perhaps that is why in the trailer the characters do 30 foot flips while shooting out magic arrows and effortlessly killing dragons. If low fantasy was what they were shooting for they failed miserably.
This is the new shit, gotten off an RPS ad mere minutes ago:
but I'm assuming they meant the way the story is presented, in a more serious tone.
but that's nothing new for games. oh well! I know it's gonna be bad ass
I will buy it anyway
10x more of everything the 'hardcore' crowd hates about bioware games (same characters every time, cliche bloodandviolenceandsexisMATURE themes, et all), and then more oldschool rpg gameplay? I think they are screwing with them.
Rest of her isn't very pretty, though. The texture on the armour is what, 128x128? I guess it's starter armour and you'll get rid of it right away but still. 99% of the art budget in this game seems to be in the heads alone. That would be fine if the game was Baldur's Gate style "camera always really far away" but it's obviously got a lot of close ups so it's really a mistake in the design, IMO.
But it's a pretty head! Or it was. When I clicked on Modify Character after saving, it had covered her face in a very dark and terrible tattoo, so that sucks?
And the whole dark/low fantasy thing is a joke. After playing The Witcher, Dragon Age is just another generic Tolkien cliche. Not that The Witcher didn't have it's share of cliches, but it never felt like I was watching a LOTR movie.
This dragon game looks amazing, man I am there. I am a great Bauldur's gate and Oblivion fan though