Jump to content

Recommended Posts

     Before I begin let me say that when I play an RPG I like an immersion factor (perfect example would be Skyrim i.e. killed enemies stay for a certain time as well as the ability to pick up fired arrows...etc...) When I saw a recent trailer for Wasteland 2 (Alpha gameplay Unity engine) I notice a thing that did bother me from immersion standpoint, after killing enemies they vanish into thin air. Since Project: Eternity is being developed using Unity engine will that be the case with it as well (I really hope not.) :biggrin:

 

Thanks in advance for anyone who can shed some light on this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Corpse retention is usually limited by hardware, since having all those dead bodies on the screen can be pretty tough. I'd be surprised if it was a Unity problem. I don't even know if they made a hard decision about that for WL2, or if that might change.

 

Edited topic title to make it more specific.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For what it's worth, that might've only happened in the Wasteland 2 video because it was an Alpha build. "Make sure the corpses don't vanish" isn't exactly at the top of the priority list for getting a game build to the Alpha stage. *shrug*

Should we not start with some Ipelagos, or at least some Greater Ipelagos, before tackling a named Arch Ipelago? 6_u

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Usually only a problem for 3d engines. If it's just a sprite you can have as many as you like. It's pretty borked in Skyrim by the way. The engine leaves the corpses for 20 game days before it starts cleaning them up if I recall. That's a whole lot. Makes saves incrementally larger the longer you play, totally unnecessary.

 

It also illustrates that having 200 dead bandits scattered by the roadsides is quite possible with today's hardware. In Divine Divinity they stopped being lootable after a while. Seems like a good compromise.

Na na  na na  na na  ...

greg358 from Darksouls 3 PVP is a CHEATER.

That is all.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i dont mind them disappearing, as long as it happens after i ve left the area. if i kill 10 guys in village A then go to village B, i dont mind the bodies in village A gone when i get back. but as long as i am in village A they should stay  put unless there is a plausible reason for them to be gone (villagers actively go an pick them up in front of me or i rest for the night at the inn and someone cleaned the mess in the meantime). as long as they dont just vanish in thin air before my eyes its fine

  • Like 2

The words freedom and liberty, are diminishing the true meaning of the abstract concept they try to explain. The true nature of freedom is such, that the human mind is unable to comprehend it, so we make a cage and name it freedom in order to give a tangible meaning to what we dont understand, just as our ancestors made gods like Thor or Zeus to explain thunder.

 

-Teknoman2-

What? You thought it was a quote from some well known wise guy from the past?

 

Stupidity leads to willful ignorance - willful ignorance leads to hope - hope leads to sex - and that is how a new generation of fools is born!


We are hardcore role players... When we go to bed with a girl, we roll a D20 to see if we hit the target and a D6 to see how much penetration damage we did.

 

Modern democracy is: the sheep voting for which dog will be the shepherd's right hand.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For immersion factors, it can work as simple as a God sucking up the flesh/soul/entity/being or whatever of the fallen one in an "instance" so to speak. Perhaps not Final Fantasy styled where it directly "disappears" but like in Baldur's Gate, if you leave the area and come back the bodies are gone (I think they are gone after a little while if you walk around a bit as well). But yeah, it can be easily be explained as some underworld God that feeds on bodies or whatnot.

Or souls.
Or magic.
Or the Project: Eternity physical earth~

Tons of stuff that can be used to add the immersion factor and "explain" why they disapper.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Once a battle is over, a legion of high-speed 3 foot long carrion worms erupt from the ground devouring all of the corpses and dragging their bones underground to decorate carrion worm living rooms before the player can react.

 

Problem solved!

  • Like 7

I cannot - yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do "must" and "cannot" meet? Yet I must - but I cannot! ~ Ro-Man

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Once a battle is over, a legion of high-speed 3 foot long carrion worms erupt from the ground devouring all of the corpses and dragging their bones underground to decorate carrion worm living rooms before the player can react.

 

Problem solved!

 

"Well fought, men!  It was a fine battle, but despite all odds, we conq-What's that noise?  Anyone else hear tha-Oh god, worms!  They're huge!  They're stealing the corpses!  Close call, glad they didn't grab the lot of u-OH GOD, THE LOOT!  DAMNIT!  NO!  SOMEONE GRAB THEM!  NO NO NO!  Shovels!  Now!  We need shovels, fast!  Move, you idiots, move!"

Edited by Dwarfare
  • Like 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Once a battle is over, a legion of high-speed 3 foot long carrion worms erupt from the ground devouring all of the corpses and dragging their bones underground to decorate carrion worm living rooms before the player can react.

 

Problem solved!

 

"Well fought, men!  It was a fine battle, but despite all odds, we conq-What's that noise?  Anyone else hear tha-Oh god, worms!  They're huge!  They're stealing the corpses!  Close call, glad they didn't grab the lot of u-OH GOD, THE LOOT!  DAMNIT!  NO!  SOMEONE GRAB THEM!  NO NO NO!  Shovels!  Now!  We need shovels, fast!  Move, you idiots, move!"

 

Something that a Digging mechanic could use every now and then? :p (as in, rarely & prompted)

 

Could totally see it happening at some point in the game, in some murky scary cave battling a horde of Goblins, then realizing that the Goblins weren't fighting you to fight you, they were fighting you to get past you and escape from this "horror".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

See - problem solved AND a useful reason to have a little used in console RPGs digging skill!

 

Giant carrion worms - the gift that keeps on giving.

I cannot - yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do "must" and "cannot" meet? Yet I must - but I cannot! ~ Ro-Man

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Perhaps, upon return to the area, the corpses should all leave a mysterious stain behind with drag marks leading off toward the exits?

 

I enjoyed the way they did it in the old Warcraft games where an animation caused the corpse to decay into the ground.

  • Like 2

"It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe after leaving the area, all the corpses should be re-animated as the living dead.  Giving you more reason to loot their body and carry all their stuff in the deep stash so they can't use that +7 Mace of Skull Bashing on you a second time around.

 

And then giant carrion worms can get involved... :p

I cannot - yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do "must" and "cannot" meet? Yet I must - but I cannot! ~ Ro-Man

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It can be immersion breaking if the other way around: the bodies never disappearing.  Having tons of bodies just lying everywhere can look...bad....

  • Like 3

"That rabbit's dynamite!" - King Arthur, Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail

"Space is big, really big." - Douglas Adams

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Once a battle is over, a legion of high-speed 3 foot long carrion worms erupt from the ground devouring all of the corpses and dragging their bones underground to decorate carrion worm living rooms before the player can react.

 

Problem solved!

 

"Well fought, men!  It was a fine battle, but despite all odds, we conq-What's that noise?  Anyone else hear tha-Oh god, worms!  They're huge!  They're stealing the corpses!  Close call, glad they didn't grab the lot of u-OH GOD, THE LOOT!  DAMNIT!  NO!  SOMEONE GRAB THEM!  NO NO NO!  Shovels!  Now!  We need shovels, fast!  Move, you idiots, move!"

 

Hahaha. But... who takes the corpses of the corpse-takers? o_O

 

 

Oh, this is something that really bothered me in the Shadowrun Returns video recently. Immersion breaker indeed.

 

In their defense, that is still an alpha build, as far as I know. They commented, specifically, on all the spell effects still being "programmer art," So I would bet that corpses disappearing in that video doesn't necessarily mean that's the planned, final effect.

Edited by Lephys

Should we not start with some Ipelagos, or at least some Greater Ipelagos, before tackling a named Arch Ipelago? 6_u

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Corpse retention is usually limited by hardware, since having all those dead bodies on the screen can be pretty tough. I'd be surprised if it was a Unity problem. I don't even know if they made a hard decision about that for WL2, or if that might change.

 

Edited topic title to make it more specific.

I do wonder about this....it's suddenly a hardware issue to have them lying motionless, when seconds earlier they were walking around...with animation, AI and everything

I can understand it causing save game bloat, but surely clearing them up after you've left would be the best option

 

I like to see the aftermath of the chaos I've caused :devil:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let the bodies disappear once they've been looted.  I don't need more strain on the GPU and bodies have the potential to fall across something I'm looking for.

http://cbrrescue.org/

 

Go afield with a good attitude, with respect for the wildlife you hunt and for the forests and fields in which you walk. Immerse yourself in the outdoors experience. It will cleanse your soul and make you a better person.----Fred Bear

 

http://michigansaf.org/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

At the risk of sounding like a parrot, seems like these days this could be one of those graphic menu options (squawk, lots of options, squawk!). That way people can choose, either for aesthetics or performance.

 

I like it when corpses stick around for at least 15 minutes or so - after that I don't care because I've usually moved on. On the flip side, I'd rather corpses don't even really exist vs. having to watch them "blink out" on the ground after only 30 seconds or something. I find that distracting. :)

“Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.” – Alan Watts
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let the bodies disappear once they've been looted.  I don't need more strain on the GPU and bodies have the potential to fall across something I'm looking for.

How can it be more strain on the GPU than them running about trying to hit you with stuff and hurling spells though?

 

Optional would be good.....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Let the bodies disappear once they've been looted.  I don't need more strain on the GPU and bodies have the potential to fall across something I'm looking for.

How can it be more strain on the GPU than them running about trying to hit you with stuff and hurling spells though?

 

Optional would be good.....

The problem comes in when you get piles and piles of bodies hanging around.  If they're not on screen, it won't effect the GPU, but it will effect memory usage.

 

That said...I don't particularly care if corpses hang around.  It doesn't break my immersion either way.  My personal preference would probably be to have them disappear, just because I don't want them cluttering up the landscape.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I remain pretty far from convinced that it's a problem, If "dead baddie at x+y coordinates" brings your computer to a standstill then you're going to have bigger problems trying to run games on it. and it's going to have to remember whether they are there or not anyway...unless you want everything to respawn constantly

 

Making it an option is the best solution, I don't want to see things disappearing into thin air, but if someone thinks that enemies take up more resources when not moving then they can turn them off....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe a lot of work, but how-about corpse-states on a timer. 1-3 days: fresh 4-7 days bloated, ugly messes, carrion flies droning and making you miserable, oh and the smell!

2nd week, half-disembowelled by predators (provided in the wild) or gone (urban or other non-isolated environment)

3rd week, skeletal remains (isolated or wild) or gone (public)

 

I dunno, sounds like a lot of work. still, would add a great deal to immersion.

  • Like 1

Remember: Argue the point, not the person. Remain polite and constructive. Friendly forums have friendly debate. There's no shame in being wrong. If you don't have something to add, don't post for the sake of it. And don't be afraid to post thoughts you are uncertain about, that's what discussion is for.
---
Pet threads, everyone has them. I love imagining Gods, Monsters, Factions and Weapons.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It should be logical on how the bodies disappear.

 

If enemies respawn there, the bodies should disappear some time after you leave (once enemies respawn). Partially because you could potentially end up with infinite corpses, partially because the enemies themselves would clean up the bodies.

 

If the enemies die in a place trafficked by people, they should be cleaned up after some time even if enemies don't respawn there.

 

If enemies die in a place that there is no respawn and no one would logically go by there (except you), then they should just stay there for a long time. Maybe after like a week or two in game passes you could say critters get to them and despawn them then. Or if they're out of reach of critters, the corpse could turn into a rotting corpse, and after a long time, a skeleton. That'd be cool too.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

that's probably a much better idea than mine.

Remember: Argue the point, not the person. Remain polite and constructive. Friendly forums have friendly debate. There's no shame in being wrong. If you don't have something to add, don't post for the sake of it. And don't be afraid to post thoughts you are uncertain about, that's what discussion is for.
---
Pet threads, everyone has them. I love imagining Gods, Monsters, Factions and Weapons.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...