Hi there. Insofar as graphical updates and modifications are concerned, the answer is two fold. 1] Yes, we are actively working on providing visual enhancements to the game, as in environmental rendering (Bloom with lens flare, DoF, Deferred Lighting, Rayleigh's algorithm for atmospheric scattering (so there is a nice gradient effect in the sky as you near horizon view). I will be posting some pictures in the near future to showcase these features. The main thing for us at this stage in the game is optimization of the maps, and re-categorization of model assets. We are no longer using brushes to shape the world of darkness, instead we are creating meshes based on those brushes for optimization so we can add in the new graphical features (which will be changeable in the settings for lower end machines). The weather system has also been upgraded to add more haunting and dreary environmental effects.We have discussed the usage of procedural materials (substances) based on the original Bloodlines textures as well. This has not yet been tested, I will most likely be performing some test runs later this week using the procedural materials to see if it's feasible.2] We don't have the resources to recreate all of the models for the game. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the artistic style would likely become incongruous if we started creating new characters for the game. We want to keep within the same dark and dreary world that Troika originally blessed us with in 2004. That said, I will be creating animations to better suit our needs. I personally don't really care for the animations that were used, but this can be a very long process and it is likely that early releases will include those animations driven by Mechanim which gives us a nice system for masking transforms, creating blendtrees, mixing animations etc etc.-Stephen
Im not part of the team but since I know the business of animation and CGI I can say theortically that doing what you ask is increasing the scope of the project substantially so even if they told me they could do it, I wouldn't believe that they will:=To improve on their animation its very likely that you would need motion capture with actors or really really good animators. its not impossible considering that today there are cost effective motion capture applications using the kinect etc but it still is a whole lot of work to make something as good=Improving on the models is hypothetically possible if you use them as a base mesh in a sculpting application and re-sculpt to export the models at higher resolution with extra detail but again it is not easy and it is tons of work considering the amount of models there are and the complex procedures of preparing a character to be used in animation.
Yeah, retopologizing the characters and baking the normals to capture detail for the game ready model is rather tedious and very time consuming. Animation wise, using the base animations and fixing them up by adding layers and custom controls to the skeletons we need to modify is also a very time consuming process. I personally don't like retargeting animation not specifically made for the character to be animated, not only does it kill the 'uniqueness' of the character in motion, more often than not you end up with poor results due to scaling / weight...it often times takes MORE time to use other animations that weren't originally created for your character to get everything to jive. With that said, the animations in bloodlines look rushed and in some places even the weightmapping is noticeably poor. Those little flaws we will fix over time, but I can't see myself spending 40 hours a weeks retopologizing or reanimating what is already there. Insofar as cloth and hair effects are concerned...unity is not known for its cloth simulation lol, its pretty bad to say the least, nothing like unreal. Its a resource hog too, the best we would be able to do with what we have is to add some joints and procedurally animate the transforms based on animation state.
Quote from: Radical21 on April 21, 2014, 04:11:26 AMIm not part of the team but since I know the business of animation and CGI I can say theortically that doing what you ask is increasing the scope of the project substantially so even if they told me they could do it, I wouldn't believe that they will:=To improve on their animation its very likely that you would need motion capture with actors or really really good animators. its not impossible considering that today there are cost effective motion capture applications using the kinect etc but it still is a whole lot of work to make something as good=Improving on the models is hypothetically possible if you use them as a base mesh in a sculpting application and re-sculpt to export the models at higher resolution with extra detail but again it is not easy and it is tons of work considering the amount of models there are and the complex procedures of preparing a character to be used in animation.Quote from: Stephen_Webb on April 21, 2014, 04:37:44 AMYeah, retopologizing the characters and baking the normals to capture detail for the game ready model is rather tedious and very time consuming. Animation wise, using the base animations and fixing them up by adding layers and custom controls to the skeletons we need to modify is also a very time consuming process. I personally don't like retargeting animation not specifically made for the character to be animated, not only does it kill the 'uniqueness' of the character in motion, more often than not you end up with poor results due to scaling / weight...it often times takes MORE time to use other animations that weren't originally created for your character to get everything to jive. With that said, the animations in bloodlines look rushed and in some places even the weightmapping is noticeably poor. Those little flaws we will fix over time, but I can't see myself spending 40 hours a weeks retopologizing or reanimating what is already there. Insofar as cloth and hair effects are concerned...unity is not known for its cloth simulation lol, its pretty bad to say the least, nothing like unreal. Its a resource hog too, the best we would be able to do with what we have is to add some joints and procedurally animate the transforms based on animation state. Again, referring to my original post, I have no idea what limits the team were going. I have no concept of building games, so if it seemed like a dumb question, I'm sorry. I didn't know if any MINOR changes or enhancements would occur.
If I understood ATRBlizzard correctly over Steam chat, he said the textures are already compressed and Source engine compresses them further, so they don't look as clean. This is perhaps in part why the Bloodlines textures look really good in Redemption (linked below), even with a much older engine using DX7. Unity doesn't have this issue and will be more flexible for modders with much improved looks and features.
Again, referring to my original post, I have no idea what limits the team were going. I have no concept of building games, so if it seemed like a dumb question, I'm sorry. I didn't know if any MINOR changes or enhancements would occur.
I mean sure, you can get away with a few post processing effects like bloom with lens flare, depth of field, deferred lighting and so on, but those wouldn't be enough for the expectations of today's world.
and since we're using a powerful engine, why not push the limits further and create something unique while keeping the same feeling of darkness?
Please make post processing effects like these optional, because people might not like them, like myself ;)!
I like your idea of including all the small side maps into the main hubs without loading! But creating something unique would mean to me to create a new story, like the Sabbat side of things, or a prequel or sequel to Bloodlines.As for Bloodlines animations, Tim Cain wrote (http://books.google.com/books?id=lroZsP4zyIYC&pg=PA102&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false): "We were also working on smoothing out the walking animations of characters during in-game cinematic sequences. The embargo occurred during the middle of this process, which left a great many characters skating or stuttering during those sequences." Which explains some issues with the animations. I have a suggestion in that regard, I don't know if it would be possible, but I would like to see no out-of-body-cutscenes at all in the remake, except for the intro of course...
The problem with that idea is that some buildings don't really fit properly and will require some editing of their entire structure.
With that said, you can have several base mesh to use and the character customization sliders to add more uniqueness to your character.
As for the cutscenes, I am not sure how you would be able to capture all the view from your eye that happens out of sight, like some of the tutorial cutscenes or the first cutscene when arriving to Santa Monica (or any other similar ones).
I'm quite aware of this, but even if you use tricks like teleporting the player into those buildings, less loading time is a plus :)!
That sounds great because very often people here want to swap models because they don't like the default models for a specific clan.
It would probably be a little bit of work to make sure the player is looking the right way, but on the other hand, the cutscenes are probably the worst parts of Bloodlines. And I don't know if using better animations can fix all of them!
Just to be sure, does Unity gets rid of the hardcoded number of kinds of items in-game that the actual engine has? (by items I mean items such that are able to be store in one's inventory. In the old game, there seems to be a limit on how many kinds of item do you have, so if you ant to create an alltogther new iteem, you ned to get rid of an old category. Will this be avoided with Unity?)
Agree with everything Rick said, from top to bottom :)