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Author Topic: AoD May Update  (Read 43801 times)
Oscar
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« on: May 04, 2011, 01:56:56 am »

Welcome to the second monthly update for AoD! Yes, we made it to the second one, and we'll continue with them until the game is out.

So, what have we been doing in the past month?

We spent some our time bugfixing and improving the combat. We ironed out some rare bugs (looping AI, freezes, crashes), along with some minor ones, and we are working hard on making a good target selection for the AI, especially in group combats. We are also working on group communication and combat awareness of the NPCs. We also added a bonus to range when attacking from different floors, so beware of the archers in the towers!

We practically removed the loading screens from Teron, so the game will provide a seamless experience instead of being cut by loading screens. For example, the first quest for the Imperial Guards. Before, you had the briefing, then a loading screen when you went to the site of battle, and then another when you get back. Apart from the loading screens, there was a small "hang" when the levels loaded all the textures and models on it, which looked VERY bad. Now the whole sequence plays out smoothly, with a nice fadeout between them and no hangs of any kind.

We also made some performance improvements to the game, reducing the number of individual objects and replacing them with instanced ones. For example, every tree in the level was an individual object, that brought down the performance of the game. Now, we are using a "forest brush" that instances all of them, netting us a 15% fps improvement. We are doing this with several repeating objects, improving the performance of the game quite a bit.

Visually the game is looking really nice. The town of Teron looks very cool as a "single" place. The outskirts are in the same level, but in "invisible" places. We've replaced some very old vegetation models, and optimized many other models for better performance. We have the artist who made the portraits improving the GUI, and we are also improving its functionality (better support for higher resolutions and different ratios, more viewing space and information, more customizable). We will show you how it looks soon (probably in next months update).

We are also done with improving all quests in Teron, I must say that the Thieves Guild quest there is quite awesome, but I won't spoil the details. We are working on making the NPCs more "reactive" to the events in the town, and your reputation, plus the already mentioned flavor descriptions.

And as we say, what was promised is a debt, here is a video showing some of the new combat animations. I hope you enjoy them!

« Last Edit: May 04, 2011, 04:06:16 pm by Oscar » Logged

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Hiver
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« Reply #1 on: May 04, 2011, 02:39:45 am »

What the...!!?

Whoa dudes!! Thats freaking incredible! I wasnt expecting new animations to be that good!
Wow. Look at them dudes getting impaled, knocked down and burned with acid.
Love the stab in the neck one and new hairstyle too!
Looks freaking great!

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MaximB
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« Reply #2 on: May 04, 2011, 02:51:12 am »

LOVE the new Animations !
Just like Mortal Kombat Fatalities Wink specially the impalements.
Although I think some of them are too fast (for the good and bad).


P.S
What about other weapons "fatalities" ?
Like cutting the head with a sword, or shooting several arrows in the head, or crushing the head with a hammer... Wink
Or the best part - Acid Fatality - melting the enemy Grin
« Last Edit: May 04, 2011, 02:53:35 am by MaximB » Logged
jeansberg
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« Reply #3 on: May 04, 2011, 02:52:29 am »

My favorite is the hammer pwnage. Smile The game looks really good.

Edit:
Oh, and I spotted this on your facebook page.
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34s Cell
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« Reply #4 on: May 04, 2011, 03:13:07 am »

Pretty fucking good. I assume some of these fatalities require high strength?

The graphics I've noticed look very nice, some of the screenshots even look like painted pictures; not amazing graphics but even better, I think.

On the possible dungeon crawler using the same combat, would you consider adding animations to go with certain mechanics i.e. ducking under an ally's spear?

:watches video again:

I will fuck this game
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Dragatus
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« Reply #5 on: May 04, 2011, 03:20:58 am »

Those animations are impressive indeed.
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« Reply #6 on: May 04, 2011, 03:25:25 am »

Some of them looked a bit goofy, actually. I think you recorded them with the animation speed set too fast, because it just looks unnatural.

Exception: The fucking SPEARS, dude. Goddamn it those were awesome. Keep them. Try slower speeds for the rest of the stuff, and if you can spare the frames I think a bit more looseness and sense of momentum would be good to shoot for on everything.

Yeah, call me a nitpicker. I prefer to think of it as constructive criticism. These videos just look so... thrown-together. I'm sorry.
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Corvinus
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« Reply #7 on: May 04, 2011, 04:16:11 am »

Awesome! Keep it up! Approve
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Vahha
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« Reply #8 on: May 04, 2011, 04:36:29 am »

I wish there were an option to switch them off.
They remind me a silly slasher like Gods Of War.
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Lexx
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« Reply #9 on: May 04, 2011, 04:45:52 am »

I just decided that I will play a spearman in my first playthrough.
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34s Cell
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« Reply #10 on: May 04, 2011, 04:52:52 am »

I wish there were an option to switch them off.
They remind me a silly slasher like Gods Of War.

You mean in general or the more silly ones? So long as they're limited by stats it should be fine; maybe the flagpole move should be str 10 only. Fallout had an option to turn off extra gory animations.
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Vahha
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« Reply #11 on: May 04, 2011, 04:55:00 am »

Yep, disabling all of them Fallout 2 or Arcanum style would be great - you will grow tired of them repeating after the first playthrough, and then they will become a boring delay in the gameplay.
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GhanBuriGhan
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« Reply #12 on: May 04, 2011, 04:57:11 am »

I really like the animations. There will always be a certain goofiness to animation in a Turn-Based game, but apart from that, I think they are really nice I doubt I would want to turn them off. And great to hear that steady progress is being made. Whats the rate-limitng task now? Still going through all the quests / writing?
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titus1
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« Reply #13 on: May 04, 2011, 05:49:29 am »

Nice!
Be careful with instancing as older cards don't support that feature. Mount & Blade uses it but they made it optional. You can set it on or off from options. I`m sure that you already thought about that, I`m just pointing it out.
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Hiver
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« Reply #14 on: May 04, 2011, 06:23:49 am »

The animations are not goofy. At least not in a bad way.
Nor will they get boring but if its not a problem you might add the options to turn them off... which i definitely wont use.

I kinda agree that the move of impaling and raising an enemy on the spear like a flag should be reserved for characters with high strength only. 9 and 10 i think. Keeping it only for 10 st characters is a bit too restrictive. It could be a cool visual reward for people that go extreme in that sense.

Shield bash looks very smooth also.

Nice to hear about the rest of improvements too.
Did you remember to fix the trading screen thingy? You know when you confirm buy or a sell of an item the list of items snaps back to the beginning thus making me scroll down to whatever i want next which is a bit tiresome.

Feng looks like Mad Max hehe.
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