Playin' for the Pictures!

A little food for thought.

In Warhammer Online, there is a Class pairing - the Dwarf Slayer and the Orc Choppa. They are basically a whirlwind of steel, a high DPS melee class that can put out good area-effect damage but if they let their rage go unchecked, can take more damage. They can dual wield or use two-handed weapons. They are very similiar as mirror classes tend to be in WAR, with some slight differences.

Perhaps the biggest difference though, is that there are significantly more Choppas than Slayers. Why? Because Dwarfs, in the history of MMOGs, are always an unpopular race to play as a whole.

I don't really have the wherewithal right now to say how this should play into designing something, but I'm sure it's relevant.

Modeling Inspirations & Scale

Ahoy. While I was defending a keep in Warhammer earlier, I noted the scale of things. It's massive. Truly one of the great aspects of the game is the world it takes place in, and in regards to the design of it, they did a superb job.

That said, always be mindful of scale. I'm not really an environmental modeler, so I don't have a whole lot to say about it, but I thought those who might be interested in it could appreciate the design and scale of the Empire capital, Altdorf.

I find it very easy to accidentally make something that's supposed to be huge look very much not-huge. One of the things I can talk about with some know-how is character design in regards to scale; my Ogre for example. The smaller I make his head in relation to his body, the more huge he looks. If I want him to look like he's the size of a four story house, I can shrink his head to be pretty small. Detail is something that helps with scale as well.

You see it time and time again in concept art; a huge spaceship usually has a lot of intricate detail to denote the scale, or, there are other indicators integrated into the design (such as things you expect to be big, looking very tiny when attached to said ship).

Anyways, below lies the environmental eye-pron! (There's a pic of the model that was concepted in the speed painting video from the WAR site, and also a shot of a Dwarf Fortress among the Altdorf ones)

Thoughts On Modeling; Teamwork, Character Type

I thought I'd expand a little on what I said the other day about how some places want to see production sketches for your models.

As a modeler you're going to be part of a team. As part of a team this means you don't do everything yourself, like Miles said. With that laid down, I don't think it's a bad idea to model something that isn't your creation. You don't want to only model stuff that you didn't come up with on your reel, but modeling someone else's creative product can be a very good way to grow creatively, technically, and from a design perspective.




The Orc wins, by the way. Here's another thought;

Character modeling for different genres. Say you've got a character that will always be wearing a specific outfit, whatever it may be. In this case, you may not ever need to model the character without that stuff on. That's great, you build the character up with armor/outfit on and everything.

Now let's hop over to games like WoW, WAR, EQ (I know, I mention these a lot). You need a naked model, because pieces of gear need to be interchangeable, and let's face it - some people like to cruise around nekkid and dance on top of mailboxes. The character isn't literally naked, but the model is. The example above from WAR is to illustrate a character that needs to have everything modeled, versus a character that will never change. It's not that great of an example, but if the pig had gear on that hid part of his organic model, you'd get the picture.

So keep that in mind. What world does your character go in? Are they always in their gear, or are they an avatar that's meant to have different objects attached to their body?

If people are interested in organic modeling, I think we should throw up some image planes/concept drawings of our own on here so that people can model off of them if they wish.

The Game Prodigy

So Cody added a link to The Game Prodigy blog which is an excellent source of tips and tricks in game development. The blog was created to help students and professionals alike either break into the industry or just learn more about game development. The writers even sometimes provide videos with simple games they've created to get their points across. There are also some guest writers from other game development blogs that really know their stuff!

It's well written and incredibly informative! So go check it out!

Another Link from Cody

While cruising my old stomping grounds (EQ, EQ2) I came across a link to the Sony Online Entertainment artists' blog, the 'SOE Art Portal'.

They've got some great articles and art. There's a few 'how we make game characters' type articles that are a good read.

For those of you unfamiliar with SOE or Everquest, they basically set the stage for what we know as the modern MMO. While UO popped up first, it was 2D and very much a role playing game with little structure. Everquest came several years later (1999) with full 3D, an oldschool leveling treadmill, and the earliest real form of Raiding. It took the oldest fantasy archetypes (Paladin, Wizard, Rogue, Monk, Warrior, Ranger, and plenty more) and placed them into a quite large world that was very unforgiving. We're talking experience and sometimes level loss for death, and a very punishing experience curve which included 'hell levels' that required significantly more experience to get through than previous regular levels, at arbitrary points in your characters life. Hey, you're 35 now? It's a hell level, enjoy!

While much of the archaic designs are just that, it's good to know where something like World of Warcraft came from. In WoW, the traditional rigid archetypal structure of Everquest, and the things before it live on. Imagine if you will for a moment, that Ultima Online was the progenitor of the modern MMO; a game that had no classes, no levels, only skills much like EVE Online that let you build your character how you wanted within certain limits, and those skills raised only by actually using them. Shoot an arrow, get better at archery, you get the idea. It was also an early version of the Sandbox MMO, the model that EVE, Darkfall and Shadowbane use.

Well, anyways, check out the link here or on the sidebar.

SOE Art Portal

They're on my list of places to apply to.

Links Added

I've added some links to the sidebar. I don't know if granting authorship lets people alter the blog layout, but if it doesn't I can just put links in there for them.

So post a comment here or on my Danger Blog to get authorship, have links posted et cetera.

For Networking!

This blog will be a place for all of us aspiring game designers here at SOU to chat, share ideas and what not. It doesn't matter what aspect of design you're interested in!