Update #41: D&D: Dwarves and Doors

[guardious]

Other kickstarters need to follow your example, you guys come out with awesome information even when sometimes it's meh, this particular update is very interesting thou so thank you!

[Defiler]

Thanks for the update; sounds like a good time! I hope we can whack doors into people as they open, knocking them back.

[Kaldurenik]

Are we going to be able to smash doors / chests to open them and maybe have the items break depending on a chance?

[Azure79]

Thank you for the continuing updates. It's really interesting to see what kind of problems game devs tackle and how games get made, although its just a glimpse. 

[Sacred_Path]

1. smashable doors y/n?

 

2. no Auamaua/ Orlan exclusive armor? q_q

[anek]

Best update yet.

I vote for more Adam Brennecke updates.

[Zombra]

I've always thought dwarves were ugly and boring, but I would almost be tempted to play one if I could make one without a beard.  That model looks great.

[OldRPG'sAreGood]

Nice update, thanks for keeping them coming.

 

The thing that mainly caught my attention was that some races may have problems with helmets. So maybe race specific armor limitations? Waiting eagerly more on that.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

I would totally pay an extra $5 for the game to have 3d renderings of our characters heads like this after we customize them and have the portrait tweaked to look kinda like a painting. I'm sure it's faster just to paint 12-20 pictures versus sculpting 12-20 head variants, but 3d head busts are pretty awesome. Although my buddy's pretty fast I've seen him do a head in like 45 minutes. No offense to the original IWD and BG artists, but I'm hoping the new portraits are a bit more refined and dynamically posed compared to back then. I Really hope we can have flowing hair and capes/cloth when the game comes out. Serious question though, why put in so much detail in the models face when the avatar's face is about 20 pixels wide on screen? I still wish the scale of everything was like 10%-15% bigger, but I guess you all really want to keep that old paper doll model.

[Osvir]

Great update as always   

 

 

We first tackled this problem creating a list of all the features that doors need to have. It's easy with doors since we all know how doors work: Doors have a few states, like open and close. Doors can be locked, and be unlocked with a key (or skill). Doors can be used, meaning the player can click on a door and the selected character will be commanded to go and "use" the door. Doors can animate to match the open/close state. Doors block character pathing when closed, and don't block pathing when opened.

 
Maybe a silly question, but what about smashing/smashed doors? Would this be counted as one of the states? I mean, c'mon, you have to be able to smash a wooden door or something with a big axe if you don't have the key, right?

 
This was the first thought that popped up and additionally: Kicking doors open, for a more "grand" entrance. Perhaps it could serve as some sort of "Element of Surprise", and whilst you are instantly detected by enemies in the room, you can get a (based on a dice roll?) a morale check? Of course, if there's a high and mighty Demon in the room you might get a bad morale check and might even have to run away. Burning Wooden Doors down with Fire Spells. Perhaps being able to bash Metal Doors open with blunt weapons and Earth Spells (Rock Fist~). [Door Smash] for the race that has trouble getting on a helmet (Unless its a small one).

A God of Doors, however, that makes doors invulnerable sounds like a cheap shot but I guess it could work for a "logical" reason (in the P:E world) for you to not have to model+program interactive doors more than they are already interactive.
 

No. Those two pieces were not done by Kiernan Yanner. Sorry for being so vague about it! I would love to tell you, but I don't want to get the artist in trouble. He is relatively new to the games industry, so you will have not heard of his name (well... maybe). All will be revealed in due time - thanks for your patience.

 

I was curious too. Much respect for this. Tell him he makes beautiful art regardless 

[GhoulishVisage]

So some races may have trouble wearing helmets?

Probably the infernal type God-like with those pesky horns.

 

Great update, love the bald, beardless dwarf. I'll probably play one myself.

 

I'm glad to hear that there are going to be many armor-types and slots.

Maybe an update in the near-future could show off some of these?

[beerflavour]

Concerning the pathfinding doors are a challenge. Will NPCs / Opponents be able to open/close doors? But this is not only a challenge to the pathfinding. There are a few strange situations that happened in existing games

 

1. (Advantageous to the player) Opening a door to just enter a room with hostile opponents --> combat encounter. Retreat from that same room and closing the door --> opponents remain hostile, but don't follow beyond the door --> combat pause to regroup and heal up.
2. (Detrimental to the player) Opening a door to enter a room / hallway with hostile opponents --> combat encounter. Retreat from that same room and closing the door --> opponents remain hostile, but use an alternate path to reach the party and additionally arousing all other opponents which are encountered on the way --> players are surprised at the following stampede of opponents.

There are surely more repercussions and side effects to such a little feature.

[Echon]

Will there be racial armours or will they all magically be able to use the same suit of armour?

[Tikigod]

Few things come to mind from reading this update:

 

#1

I find it rather interesting that your pipeline involves making the high poly designs in Zbrush to use in baking texture maps first, and THEN make the low poly models based on the high poly.

 

Would be interesting to hear why you've opted for this over what I feel is the more traditional 'low poly -> duplicate -> subdivide -> add details -> bake'.

 

Are the high poly creations also serving as a aspect of concept design to fully flesh out the look and feel of races before making the actual game assets for example?

 

Or perhaps your artists just find it much quicker to churn work by using a sculpting focused tool like Zbrush to make high poly designs compared to making low poly meshes from the ground up, and instead are opting for making the low poly by essentially masking it over the high poly topology (minus the extra detail geometry)?

 

 

#2

You mention that you are aiming to have one armor mesh serve across all races, and then have the proportions scale accordingly (by being married to either the mesh itself or the armature?).

 

But you don't mention what your plans are for textures for armors, with these kind of distortions to a mesh what exactly are your plans to approach texturing the different variations from the same mesh design to avoid things such as textures being stretched, and details visible and sharp in one proportion, becoming either too stretched and blurry on larger races or too insignificant and lost for smaller races? Especially when you're dealing with proportions that don't relative on all 3 axis equally! (E.G. Dwarves being short and plump, but elves being tall and slender)

 

Is it really your intent to have one armor mesh per design used for all races and body form variation, and then UV unwrap each variation one by one and texture them all individually to varying UV layouts adjusting to proportions as needed? As that sounds like a serious amount of work for your texture artists not to mention creating a lot of extra processing work for the modelers ...  

 

So any details on your plans for the texturing process to go along with the outline for the armor pipeline would be extremely interesting (at least to me anyway! lol).

[eirik]

On the doors, why not have them not block pathfinding, and instead trigger collision instead, which tells the game that the path is blocked by an door/iron bars/etc (and in turn displays a message to the player, perhaps with a ping att the collision point)? That way, your party can pathfind at least to the first obstacle in the way before stopping, and once you open the door, they can continue on their way.

Since it would only apply to areas you've already explored (unless you skip fog of war/unknown terrain), you could add an option for characters automatically trying to pass obstacles (with certain risk if monsters patrol the area).

 

You could also have an option for the doors that decide whether they block pathfinding or not, so that the collapsed ceiling blocks pathfinding, even though it can be dug out, and a door blocks pathfinding until it's been passed once.

 

 

On the topic of armors, perhaps one size fits all with the regular difficulty settings, and race-specific armors with the highest one? You can still use the same texture, it's just that armors are normally crafted after a specific body build. I.e. all armours in the game has a tag for racial requirement, but it's ignored by lower difficulty settings. Or you could wield armours from other races but receive a penalty for doing so.

[Gyges]

Great update, the dwarves look just right. Hoping the Aumaua is as unique as some of the other races weve seen pop up in rpgs the last few years, particularly Bws.

[Elerond]

Will there be racial armours or will they all magically be able to use the same suit of armour?

 

I think that they have said that they probably will go with one size fit to all in armors, because problems that multiple different armor sizes causes in design.

[Xarg]

Hey Guys! Thanks for the great update, everything is looking shiny. Just one little thing. On the kickstarter update somebody messed up the upload, because the paragraph "One of the goals in preproduction was to figure out how we could make character modeling pipeline be as efficient as possible...." got in there 3 times. I mean it is good writing, but three times?

[Osvir]

More door thoughts:

- Barricade a Door (The tank in your group holding the door)
- Door-Choke Points and enemies pushing you back and overwhelming you, similarly, being able to push enemies back and overwhelm them.
- Some Windows in Houses/Huts as an alternate route? (Doesn't require an animation, imagine Baldur's Gate and entering a house through a window in just the same way as you enter a house through a door)
- Teleporting through Doors? Teleporting Doors xD Secret passageways, a Wizard opening a Portal in a door-frame getting to the realm of the God of Doors? Perhaps you could put the Orange Portal in a Door Frame by the beginning of a dungeon, and putting the Blue Portal further down and can get in-and-out swiftly?
- Door Damage (If you can blast a door with a fire spell, it could fly across the room and hit enemies in the room? A Guard could be knocked out if standing right next to it as your Barbarian kicks it open?)
- Not to forget "The Door" from Adam's Icewind Dale gameplay.

- Door obstruction. A wizard throws a direct targeted spell, but I close the door before the animation frame reaches the target location by AI, will the spell hit the door or will it go through it? Arrows fly through doors as well?
- Wizard Lock+Wizard Unlock, can the Player [Lock] doors? Will an enemy Wizard [unlock] it? Enemy Rogue? Bashing it down? Etc. etc. I'm envisioning an awesome escape Quest :D
- Door Shields: Pick up the door from the hinges (if applicable) and use as a Shield (Nullifies the "Wielder of Door" from attacking or using any skills) -> Throw Door 
- Evil Enemy Doors (I'm thinking Mimics that are Chest Monsters, but what if they could be doors too?)

[Nikos]

Here's a suggestion, based on something I've had on my mind for quite some time while playing Infinity Engine games.

 

True, doors have three basic functions: open, close, lock. But when, for example, a minotaur is charging the group and they all hide behind a locked door, there are two possible outcomes. Either the minotaur stays behind the door completely baffled (pathfinding around the door is equally ridiculous) or he makes a check against the lock to "open" the door. This is what is expected in a game that comes out in 2014 (battles stopping because of doors are a thing of the past XD ).

 

However, since you guys are doing such good work already and seem intent on delivering a great game, not just a good one, consider this: instead of "opening" a door, certain creatures can BREAK them. The minotaur in the example above makes his check against the door (which, if very large and heavy, won't budge), and if he's successful the door breaks into pieces in a spectacular 21st century animation!

 

This could serve particularly well in sequences where the group is being chased, and a monster is breaking through several doors, aiming to break some bones next.

 

Of course, this might be a foolish suggestion since I have no idea of the limitations that might exist on the graphics engine etc. etc. I just think it would look --and feel-- much, much better

[IndiraLightfoot]

Wonderful update! 

 

The dwarves look great, kudos to you, Dimitri! And Kieran, if it's you who's made that lovely Sherlock Orlan (I mean, hey, it's a "K"), then a big hug from me!

 

As for doors, this is a subject that I certainly love and hate myself. I recently made a topic about it:

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63298-listening-at-doors-and-peeping-in-pe/

 

The hate bit comes from modding. It often is the doors that make you tear your hair out. Not only the snapping but them working reliable, including calling its Use-function.

 

2Late2Die: Welcome to the forums!

 

You wrote: "So I was wondering about door states - you only mention "open" and "close" but talk about "a few". Does that mean we might see another door state? Like maybe a partial open state that could be engaged by a theif and if they're skilled enough they could partially see and hear into the other room - maybe to overhear a piece of key dialogue w/o having to engage the enemy, or spy the monsters' position before entering the room."

That's basic our suggestion over at that topic, so yeah, it would be great! JFSOCC proposed an ear icon, which could pop up and be used for such occasions. And if your idea with another door state is in: Like the door is AJAR, then the risk and the benfits would increase.

 

Osvir and Nikos pretty much covers what you could do to doors and doorways (even windows). I just would like to add that I think XCOM EUs bursting through a door-mechanic when dashing is pretty neat. Not that we would need a pre-made slomo cutscene to go with it.

[Osvir]

Could mindlessly breaking through a Door cause damage?

I'm thinking of Dungeons of Dredmor, where you can lose Health trying to kick down doors. Would the Minotaur take damage bashing doors open? Could a Wizard reinforce a Door with magical spikes causing even more damage? How often would you need it versus how interesting is that type of interaction?

If there is a God of Doors, could that allow a sort of Door Spell Tree? (Door, in this fictive example = Time/Space/Illusion/Quantum Physics/Dimensional~)

Great post Indira and thoughts on peeping and hearing through doors. It is a mechanic I absolutely loved in Dishonored, what would I do if I couldn't look through those keyholes? I advocate for something similar in P:E, but instead of seeing through the keyhole, perhaps the Field of Vision becomes more of a "ray of light/vision" through the Fog of War in the next room that you can control (like a cannon in some old 2D defense game, 180 degree control edit: from the point of which the door is located).

Edited February 6, 2013 by Osvir

[Tamerlane]

I kinda doubt "smash open door" is going to be A Thing in PE. Same for "smash open chest". Lockpicking can pretty quickly become useless if your fighter can get through them simply by existing. And yeah, you can create mechanics to put greater emphasis on lockpicking (smashing chests destroys some contents, smashing doors draws more enemies, etc.) but those sorts of things are usually varying degrees of lame (Really? I broke a suit of armour busting a lock?) or irrelevant (Did you know that running through a door in the new Xcom is supposed to draw enemies? I wouldn't if I hadn't read it in an interview.).

[Chocrates]

Yay! Great stuff guys, we're glad you can talk about development too.

 

That said, LOLz at Adam's paste-oopsy in the update email... (I've done that too.)

 

Edit: The oopsy being the "The problem is fairly complex: All of the six playable races, human, elf, dwarf, aumaua, orlan, and the god-like..." appearing three times.

Haha, yeah.  I had to read it 3 or 4 times to make sure my brain wasn't lying to me.

[Tuckey]

So cool update, interesting to see the thought that goes into the process. With regard to how doors worked in the infinity engine games sometimes I wanted (for roleplaying reasons) to be able to knock on the door and greet the householder. In baldurs gate 1 there where often quests hidden behind locked doors. I tend to play good aligned parties and didn't want to pick the lock because that would be a distinctly (are you a burglar?) type action. So maybe an option to knock on the door? That would be cool. Also like the idea suggested by others to trap a door; bar the door; and break down the door.

 

Even if you were not good aligned an option like knocking on the door would be cool so you can lure people closer to the door you just trapped; or perhaps you plan on kicking the door down when enemies get closer, knocking them down.

Edited February 6, 2013 by Tuckey