Developer Diary video

[funcroc]

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/rpg/alphap...l-dev-diary-1-1 Edited November 20, 2008 by funcroc

[Morgoth]

Awesome! Finally some ingame footage!

 

Looks very good. Keep up the good work, funroc.

[pcrk2]

It looks good but when he's trying to hack the door right before it opens a wood bar falls and then disappears

And a few other glitches.

But overall looks awesome

[Cl_Flushentityhero]

First of all, I'm ridiculously stoked to see some in-game footage and it looks good. Secondly, on to details.

 

Facial animation and models look great.

 

Voice acting: well, Thornton's VA sounds really nondescript, which I guess fits the part.

 

Environments look . . . well, decent. I don't think the critics will be particularly wowed in that department, though the lighting in the office-type area is pretty nice.

 

The cover system seems to be channeling Gears in how fast and apparently responsive it is. This is probably a good thing, given that a slow cover system is usually a recipe for players ignoring it.

 

The actual shooting looks, well, I dunno. It's good to see that you can drop an enemy with a single AR burst. That said, it almost looks like the recoil is just shaking the screen more than forcing the players to correct their aim (either that or whoever was playing is *really* good). Also, the RPM on automatic weapons sounds and looks artificially low.

 

The CQC, well, eh, *sigh* . It looks flashy, and I guess that's what you were going for. On the plus side, whoever did the mocap appears to have pretty sound body mechanics, and that IMO will play even to the "martially naive" audience. On the minus side, the whole "ignoring the fact that the enemy is armed" gets my goat, though it might not bother the general audience (then again, it might).

 

So, I'm still amazingly excited about AP, but pre-release material upon which I do not offer criticism is like a day without sunshine.

 

P.S.- SoZ rocks my socks.

[crakkie]

Facial animations are probably my least favorite part. Lip syncing is decent, but everyone seems dead-eyed. Brows and cheeks are paralyzed, apparently, or perhaps everyone is too hardcore for facial expressions. The camera is a bit joggy when following Mike, stuttering up the steps with him.

 

Overall it looks sweet though.

[pcrk2]

On the minus side, the whole "ignoring the fact that the enemy is armed" gets my goat, though it might not bother the general audience (then again, it might).

I agree on that part. Maybe Obsidian can change things until the release.

[Pop]

The facial expressions on the weapons dealer are much better than the other ones shown (notice his eyebrows move where other characters' don't), likely because that particular scene has been polished up for journalists. I suspect that the other scenes are at least somewhat incomplete. The game's only just gone into alpha.

 

Otherwise, I'm impressed by the animation, certainly. Can't wait to see more.

Edited November 20, 2008 by Pop

[Joseph Bulock]

The facial expressions on the weapons dealer are much better than the other ones shown (notice his eyebrows move where other characters' don't), likely because that particular scene has been polished up for journalists. I suspect that the other scenes are at least somewhat incomplete. The game's only just gone into alpha.

 

Otherwise, I'm impressed by the animation, certainly. Can't wait to see more.

 

 

Pop gets two bonus points for figuring out which scenes are still WIP and which have been given a pass or two of polish.

[Morgoth]

I'm not expecting Mass Effect quality facial expression, though it would certainly be nice if Obsidian could match that. Not a fun-breaker for me, though. Primary the most important parts are the eye movements, mouth and eyebrows.

[Gfted1]

So does funcroc just have mad info gathering skillz or does he work in the industry?

[kirottu]

I think we should start a score board between funcroc and Matthew Rorie.

[Alvin Nelson]

folks, i have NO idea how he finds things. Seriously, he found the dev diary was up before i did!

[kirottu]

Magic.

[mkreku]

It looks really good! I am still getting strong Deus Ex vibes from this! I know I'm probably mistaken, but still.. It works for me :D

[Pop]

Funcroc is obviously an Elder of Zion.

 

Pop gets two bonus points for figuring out which scenes are still WIP and which have been given a pass or two of polish.

Sweet. I can turn these in for prizes, can't I?

 

I'm really interested to see how twisty the plot's going to be. We'll have gone from an amiably-paced plot (SoZ) to what I imagine will be a crisis-a-minute plot.

 

I'm not expecting Mass Effect quality facial expression, though it would certainly be nice if Obsidian could match that. Not a fun-breaker for me, though. Primary the most important parts are the eye movements, mouth and eyebrows.

I imagine we'll get that at least. ME's NPCs sometimes seemed somewhat expressionless. One thing AP will have over ME is the lack of a facial creation system. At the climax of ME there's a part where Shepard breaks into a wide grin. On the default character models it looks a little off, on a player-created model it's terrifying.

Edited November 20, 2008 by Pop

[Matthew Rorie]

So does funcroc just have mad info gathering skillz or does he work in the industry?

 

Like me, I'm betting funcroc has Google Alerts set up for a number of search terms. I have them for Alpha Protocol and Storm of Zehir, which turns up a lot of interesting stuff, but you'll find out about most stories and previews as soon as Google indexes them if you have real-time alerts.

[Cycloneman]

It looks to me like the link in the first post isn't working anymore, and I tried to get it on the gamespot website (it just gives a 404 error if you try to access the video from a search). Is this just me? I mean, I got it earlier so that seems unlikely.

[Matthew Rorie]

It looks to me like the link in the first post isn't working anymore, and I tried to get it on the gamespot website (it just gives a 404 error if you try to access the video from a search). Is this just me? I mean, I got it earlier so that seems unlikely.

 

Big version here:

 

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/alphaprotoc...ev-diary-1?hd=1

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

ahmahgawdthisissoawesomeicantwaittoseethevidIloveyouObsthisgamewillbesoawesome

 

...

 

Okay, from looking at the game, here's what I see:

 

Lip synching wasn't exactly top quality, and definitly felt like the weakest part of the trailer, but having the eyebrows move on the Weapons Dealer makes everything better (and it seems it got some additonal polish). Michael never really close his mouth, just kinda opened it or closed it. Feel free to have Michael lift an eyebrow when intrigued. Sometimes facial expressions can say more than lots of dialogue, making it more human as well.

 

Faces were well done, with the exception of Michael, who IMO doesn't have a sort of... texture to his skin. Maybe its just because he's clean shaven, but ME had this normal map on nearly every face that made skin feel very real, and perhaps a bit too grainy.

 

Voice acting felt like Mass Effect, in the sense it's not very expressive from what we see here. The old guy in the suit sounded like the Gman a lot, which is pretty cool actually.

 

Graphics look great on the environments and characters, also for combat animation and martial arts (those look really awesome, but let's not get into how practical they actually are). One thing I dislike is the particle/effects textures. I'm a sucker for amazing explosions ala Call of Duty 4 or Lost Planet, with lots of animated textures, but these are looking okayish. Gunfire is blurry and explosions are alright. I love the environments though, apart from a slight weird pixelated reflection on the table in the office. I see you're going with a sort of clean feel to the levels, which is alright, but "clean" doesn't mean "solid block of a single color". Even clean metal needs to have some sort of "texture" feel to it, like it's slightly rugged. If anything, you can always add more "dirtyness" to certain environments.

 

Combat looked a bit clunky, from the small amount of footage we got. Mike was shooting while crouching right in front of an enemy, which felt weird, just like when he was shooting from some sort of cover while holding his gun in pimp mode.

And please do not have texture popping. Don't even bother shipping a game that lets you see textures load.

 

Really, the best way to make combat satisfying is giving weapons an extra "oomph" factor when shooting, some sort of extra "this gun is very destructive" power. Seeing damage done to the target is important, and having characters receiving shots to the body without flinching at all is strange. Last I checked the UE3 engine had destructible environments, and this is something you really want to use as an advantage. Animated particles/textures are your friends here.

 

Overall, it looks really like a good, if not great, RPG. All I can hope for is you take the time necessary to iron bugs and glitches, as they make even the best games feel broken. Basically, I don't want another KotOR 2, and I doubt I'll be disapointed.

 

Good work, Obs.

Edited November 21, 2008 by WILL THE ALMIGHTY

[Redfield]

Gameplay footage is looking pretty friggin' awesome.

 

Although I gotta admit--that lockpicking minigame looks like a copy-paste right outta Oblivion

[mkreku]

Last I checked the UE3 engine had destructible environments, and this is something you really want to use as an advantage.

It's supported, but I'm pretty sure they still have to do a lot of work to get it in the game. Just like the Unreal Engine 3 is supposed to support streaming maps, yet all that's been released are corridor shooters (basically) so far. Maybe it just supports tiny amounts of streaming, just enough to load one single long corridor on the fly?

[simulacra]

Why does Michael wear a spider man suit in combat?

Can we plz choose our own clothes (within reason) before the missions, that "tactical" suit looked waaay too "let's do something cool for combat"-ity

[Pop]

You haven't read a lot about this game, have you?

[Cl_Flushentityhero]

You haven't read a lot about this game, have you?

 

Well, AP isn't exactly the most widely-publicized game out there.

[Pop]

I suppose. Don't we have a thread with all the basic info on the game somewhere? Can we pin it to the top of the forum or something?