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Post by dareka on Sept 8, 2016 23:19:49 GMT -6
Yeah, I definitely agree with Dengojin and the other folks here, it seems the community's reaction to the news is very constructive, mature, and positive. You guys have made me proud to be a Bloodstained backer and member of the community! Now, sure, delays are always a little disappointing, but even at this early stage IGA is being specific about what he's planning (bringing in extra development help). I hope he reveals to us what those extra resources are and whom those folks might be, 'cause if he's chosen well--and I think he may have--some good talent will bring enough hype to more than offset the disappointment of delay. What this proves, I think, is that gamers are not a monolithic group of entitled man-babies, as some developers seem to think. Sure, there are many notable exceptions, but by and large people respond well to bad news when they're consistently being shown respect by the developer. IGA had our trust from the start, and he's further cultivated it throughout the Kickstarter campaign and the development process. We trust him - we believe what he's saying about the game's development and that the game will be better for the delay. The problem is that few developers have ever shown us the respect that IGA is showing us right now. A publisher's modus operandi is normally something like this... (conveniently expressed in pseudo-pseudo-code) IF > Game won't be on time THEN ( IF > we can get something playable by release date THEN compromise quality ) ( ELSE > notify gamers of delay at the last minute AND make the delay as short as possible so that the game is playable AND say it was to "make the game even better" ) See, publishers? THIS is why we get pissed, not because of the delay itself. Learn from IGA's example!
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Post by dareka on Sept 8, 2016 18:55:54 GMT -6
Same here - sure, it's a shame we won't get to play it next year, but we've waited nearly a decade for a new original igavania. We can wait one more year. What's great is that IGA decided to let us know as soon as he knew the game would be delayed, as opposed to, say, a week before launch. I'm sure the game will be well worth the wait!
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Post by dareka on Aug 8, 2016 22:04:01 GMT -6
The whip animation was awesome. Kinda vaguely reminded me of one of the attack animations from Lament of Innocence... The gun's shooting animation and idle pose gave me a chuckle (in a good way)
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Post by dareka on Jul 19, 2016 18:02:47 GMT -6
Well, I wouldn't want this particular debate - one that has no means to reach an objective conclusion - to end up dominating the original discussion, but I do think I should answer one point in particular... A) Irregardless of how much blame you want to assign to Inticreates vs. Comcept for how MN9 turned out, they (and Iga) were paying attention and they still learned something. I'm not 100% certain (nor are you of course) but I see nothing to suggest that Inticrates are just a bunch of code monkeys with no say or input into the project and communication be it for MN9 or Bloodstained. I do think it matters that Iga is at the helm and not Inafune but I think you're underselling Inticreates? I said that I thought IGA himself probably had more to do with the game avoiding many of the pitfalls that affected MN9 than IntiCreate's previous experience with Kickstarter. I said that Inti are primarily a developer and that PR and project management are not things they have the ultimate say on (while acknowledging that it's something they can offer their input on). That's quite different from saying that "Inticrates are just a bunch of code monkeys with no say or input into the project and communication be it for MN9 or Bloodstained", and honestly I'm not sure just how you came up with that interpretation
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Post by dareka on Jul 14, 2016 11:10:37 GMT -6
Wish you'd been at IGA's side when he was deciding on the villan's name for Lament of Innocence. You weren't, and we got WALTER. I think Walter is a pretty good name. It sounds like your harmless stuck-up uncle and or butler. Pretty good choice for the butler in Hellsing, though.
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Post by dareka on Jul 14, 2016 11:00:31 GMT -6
Thank you for sharing this Mana . It sounds like Miriam isn't the only character needing a VA... Since Igarashi doesn't speak English, are you assisting him with the casting process, or will that role be assigned to another person? I don't think so but IGA usually asks for my opinion whenever he's deciding on something . Since he doesn't speak English, I help out with the spell names that Miriam will shout out. Something that sounds cool in Japanese doesn't always sound cool in English and vice versa. Maybe if they're still stumped on spell names I can open up a thread for suggestions. Wish you'd been at IGA's side when he was deciding on the villan's name for Lament of Innocence. You weren't, and we got WALTER. On the quality of the dubs, Japanese vs English ... my personal view, speaking both as a non-native speaker, is that it's not so much a problem of the quality of the voice acting in English: the problem is that the script and content is skewed towards Japanese, so that when English speakers are forced to interpret it, they sound worse than they would in content that was originally in English. Just compare your average japanese anime English dub to your average dub for material that was originally in English. It's quite noticeable.
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Post by dareka on Jul 14, 2016 9:46:33 GMT -6
People keep saying that it has to be different than the konami interpretation... I don't think Konami HAS much of an interpretation.. being a skeleton in black robes and a scythe is pretty much the common interpretation to begin with. The only unique spin konami really adds to him IMO is having this ability to make miniature scythes spin around in mid-air randomly. Right, all it has to do is literally not be a copy-paste of one of the graphics in konami's games.
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Post by dareka on Jul 13, 2016 17:38:57 GMT -6
Igarashi can use any public domain monster including the Alucard name that don't belong to Konami either since it appeared in a old Dracula movie called Son of Dracula. Now the question is if the character designs are owned by the company Konami or by Koji igarashi or the ones who drew and painted them like Ayami Kojima among others. The publisher for a game is normally granted copyright for all of the assets, regardless of who made them. The person who made them has (in theory, anyway) the right to claim authorship, but not the right to distribute and sell the work - that's the right ceded to the publisher. I remember reading or seeing something about IGA getting to keep the rights to Bloodstained (I think Ben mentioned it when talking about their relationship with their publisher), but this type of arrangement is very, very rare, and it just doesn't happen when you are an employee of the publisher. In fact, when you join a developer of any kind of content - even business software - your contract will stipulate that you cede all of your copyrights for any and all things you may create in or outside the company to them. It's more of a precaution so that you don't do stuff for competitors in your free time, but it's real.
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Post by dareka on Jul 13, 2016 17:25:00 GMT -6
B) I think its important to note, and this isn't to try to downplay the smart moves Iga et al have made, that MN9 was a learning experience for many. Inticreates is behind both MN9 and Bloodstained. They know what shit went down with MN9 better than most so they are going to be eager and prone to avoid the same pitfalls. To some of the points you made - It was both a good idea an necessary that Iga was upfront about the goal of the Kickstater, that they had a publisher on board that would provide funds, etc. (There are spots he could have been a bit extra clear but I 'd still say he passed the bar). However, crowdfunding campaigns that get extra money or work out deals after the fact are very common. Inafune didn't do the same at the start of the MN9 campaign because couldn't. He only got Deep Silver involved at a later time. Some backers got upset but honestly they had no right to. They were still set to get what they paid for and working out deals to replace all physical backings with the physical copies that were set for retail is something I've never seen done for any other kickstarter and is a hassle I feel many underestimate. I can understand disappointment (you are paying more to get a "faux" physical version) but that's not cause be angry with the campaign - such a demand wasn't realistic and there is no precedent to my knowledge.
- Yes this was something super smart they did and I think it had to do with the fallout for MN9. Many of the complaints about MN9 were due to the graphics that it makes sense that they would want to alleviate concerns for Bloodstained by being VERY proactive in involving the community here and early.
- MN9 also had a demo that went out to backers quite some time before the final release. Whereas the Bloodstained demo has been received very positively, I had heard mixed things about the MN9 demo. So it seems Inticreates didn't or couldn't respond to feedback to it for the final game? Or didn't set up a good system to collect feedback? I'm not sure what went down there. I would note that demos/betas for crowdfunding projects are perhaps not the norm but they aren't uncommon either (though they are planned or have already been released for every game I've recently crowdfunded).
- MN9's issue was that it was promised for too many platforms but that never involved Inafune going behind backers or not communicating that properly. Obviously what Iga has said/done in this respect is the right call but I'm not sure how it relates to what went wrong with MN9. Or are you just using it as an unrelated example of something Iga did right?
- From an optics standpoint this was the right thing to do but again I feel the issues with MN9 had little to nothing to do with Inafune being too busy with the multimedia stuff to focus on the game. Multi-tasking and delegation aren't outside a good producer's scope
- Yes I agree with this, Mana has been doing a great job I will say though, I still don't entirely understand what went down with the CM they initially got for MN9 and every time I try to get it explained to me or read up about it, I feel more sympathy for her than I do the backers :/
Personally, I see some things here a bit differently, perhaps. I think IGA's personality was far more important here than IntiCreate's experience with MN9. While I'm not trying to change anyone's mind, I'd like to elaborate on why I think this is so, though in the end anything short of asking IGA himself will settle the matter. OK, so IntiCreates was behind MN9 and is behind Bloodstained, right? So on the surface it seems logical to think they'd use they experience to their advantage: you mess up MN9. you won't mess up Bloodstained. My problem with the argument is that IntiCreates did not mess up MN9, in as much as the mistakes made with MN9 were on the project management and PR sides, both of which fall squarely on Comcept's - that is, Inafune's - shoulders. IntiCreates could have learned a bit from the production side, but they already knew about this. What they may or may not have done, based on their experience with MN9, is say " please don't promise more than x platforms because it killed us on MN9" - but that's assuming it even needed to be said to IGA, and I doubt it. I mean, you don't have to be a genius to realize the number of platforms for which the game was promised was just unrealistic. Inafune himself said he'd never done so many different SKUs for a single product at Capcom - common sense dictates you shouldn't promise as an independent developer what you've never done as a mega-publisher. But I digress. The point is that I don't think IntiCreates could do much about MN9's PR, and they couldn't do much about the goals Inafune set - and these two are, in my opinion, the causes of the game's woes. Comcept hadn't even finished blundering the PR for MN9 by the time Bloodstained was a success: remember, the Red Ash debacle came after Bloodstained had been very comfortably funded. They couldn't have learned from that experience. Note also that, as far as disclosing publisher relationship beforehand, Shenmue III kinda messed up the PR for that, too, and it launched after Bloodstained. So, to me, the biggest difference is not the hindsight as much as the guy in charge. Do I think Inafune was "distracted" by making multimedia deals, and that it had an effect on the quality of MN9? No. The game's woes in terms of production, and ultimately quality, had already been decided from the start of the campaign by the sheer number of SKUs they'd promised. But I think that it was a bad PR move to announce them when the game was experiencing that much difficulty just getting to the market. Heck, even on the eve of launch, Inafune was going on about how he felt like making a sequel even if the game didn't sell. He hadn't learned his lesson. At this point, the user base felt used by him. He should have picked up on it and acted accordingly.
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Post by dareka on Jul 13, 2016 1:30:37 GMT -6
Since both Death and Dracula are public domain, unless the game copied the look of specific iteration of the characters as they appeared in one of the Castlevania titles, Connami can't do jack. In theory IGA could make Dracula the last boss and they still couldn't (successfully) sue. The game may be called Akumajo Dracula in Japan, but the thing is that game design has no copyright (one of the things I learned in game design school!). Only the game assets have copyright - not the way they're arranged, which is what the game actually is. So you can't say " the association of this public domain character to this game design is of our authorship," since, um, neither have copyright to begin with.You'd have to copy-paste Dracula's visuals from one of the games to infringe on Connami's copyright. Hell, they don't even have copyright over a vampire named Alucard, as the manga Hellsing demonstrated. They have copyright over the Belmonts and the vampire killer whip, as well as things like the details of Alucard's backstory and such. Anyway, I personally agree with those whose say the point is moot, because IGA probably won't go there (though it would be awesome to have Norio Wakamoto in a speaking role in the game, because any and all things are made better by having Norio Wakamoto in them). But is it legal? Damn straight it is!
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Post by dareka on Jul 13, 2016 0:19:07 GMT -6
Is this based on any data or just anecdote and "gut"? I prefer the term "introspective analysis", but I guess anecdote and gut will do. You're of course right in that its a risk if you try a multimedia approach and the main, anchor product is subpar but there have been too many examples of new IPs or IP launches in new markets (where you aren't guaranteed to replicate success) or significant reboots (significant enough to not have a guaranteed audience) that have successfully launched with a multimedia approach to say issues with demand is a given. One of the boons of trying a multimedia approach is that if your base product is successful, you are already primed to make a lot of money and fast. For some of these IPs, the time to capitalize off them (or at least extract the most money) can pass if you wait for confirmed success before you launch your off-shoots. A multimedia approach also has a reinforcing effect. If your main product is a videogame, having a TV show or a comic or whatever can reach those who aren't interested in videogames but consume those other forms of media to become aware of your IP. That hook may lead them to explore the game itself or other related media. It also allows you to exploit multiple revenue streams from the same person or groups of people. To clarify, I didn't mean to say issues with the demand were a given - just very likely. I could be wrong, though, but I can't really bring to mind any examples of the multimedia approach having a noticeable effect on a product launch. I'd be happy to hear of some counter examples, of course. It might be that I was away from the western markets too long, but in Japan I saw the multimedia approach a lot and ... my impression was that it mainly worked in instances where there was really no main franchise, so to speak, or when the franchise was niche to begin with. Hobby Japan does it a lot with what I like to call their, uh, kinky portfolio... which is just about all of their portfolio, but the situation's a bit different (they know the products have limited appeal but that people who are into kinky franchises will buy into it just because it's kinky.) The part I underlined is something I've anecdotally seen in the wild though and its unfortunate because as I said before, it's rarely born out of any truth or reality - just assumptions. It also REALLY reminds me of this picture below (which also applies to a million other cases in life): Once people decided they hated MN9, literally anything they did was seen in a negative light. Combined with the actually dumb stuff they did, it was not a good time for Inafune et al. I think for KS projects, the most important commodities are goodwill and trust. Because of this, I think a slow burn approach is the best way to go (which I think overall is your point - I just took objection with some of your characterizations of multimedia strategies). Yeah, damn little bitch probably had Inafune buy her those crackers with the money raised for Mighty Number 9, wait, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, slow burn approach is good, yes. With Mighty Number 9, I mean, yeah, that was a perfect storm, if ever there was one... you could list the missteps they made one by one, and who was responsible for each, but I think that when you get right down to it, the big difference between MN9 and Bloodstained is that IGA understands the crowdfunding paradigm better than Inafune. I don't mean this as a knock against Inafune, I mean it as a compliment to IGA. He may be a quiet guy, but he's really good at communicating with the fanbase and making them feel like they're a part of the project. Some examples of this: 1. In the crowd funding video, he specified that he had additional, external backing and that the kickstarter was not the full budget for the game, but only something to show that there was a market for the game. 2. He asked the dev team to come up with a new shader based on community feedback, which ended up being the one adopted for the game. The process was so transparent that even the few who dislike the shader have nothing against IGA ( well, I'm sure there must be someone who's angry, but you guys know what I mean). 3. He provided a free demo to backers that he hadn't even promised at the time of the crowdfunding campaign. The demo was extremely successful in that it reassured fans the game was on the right track, while at the same time it offered the developers valuable feedback relatively early in the production cycle (see how he's building trust here?) 4. When he mentioned the possibility of an NX version in place of a Wii U version, he was quick to mention that he wouldn't make a decision on this without consulting backers first. 5. When he mentioned the possibility of spin-off products just now, he clarified that he himself was focused on the game at this point. 6. He chose a great community manager! It's unfortunate that you can basically take each of these examples and find a perfect counter example for Inafune on the MN9 project.
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Post by dareka on Jul 12, 2016 14:59:50 GMT -6
First let me preface by saying I understand what you're getting at and don't wholly disagree on some levels. I think it's dangerous to get TOO DEEP into property expansion too soon (I think that happened with Mighty No 9, more because the entire campaign seems to have been an exercise in what not to do (lack of communication if not deliberate miscommunication, delays upon delays, etc.), understand that a vaunted game developer like IGA raising ~6 million that we know of for a new IP is all the evidence many people need to explore expansion into other media. Think of it like, say...Tite Kubo (creator of the anime/manga Bleach, among others) or Masashi Kishimoto (Naruto) or Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball franchise), or in the game world, someone like IGA or Inafune or Hideo Kojima, or in the movie world Tarantino or the Wachowskis announcing a new IP. Their NAMES are almost an IP in themselves because of the cachet they've built off their previous successes. Combine that with some polished, promising promo materials, evidence of massive public interest (funding, publicity, etc.), and a generally seamless connection to other media (a Bloodstained manga seems like it could be an easy sell, because video games and anime/manga are often peanut butter and jelly) and it would honestly be weird if they weren't exploring other media. I would be very upset if this detracted from the game, but it certainly seems like IGA has the right attitude about things and I haven't had reason to doubt him or his team yet, so... I've no reason to doubt him either - I was actually just trying to express the risks inherent, in terms of public perception, in franchising a kickstarter project too much, too early.
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Post by dareka on Jul 12, 2016 11:00:55 GMT -6
While I'm sure many will disagree, I think there is a more basic danger in multi-media franchising than most people realize.
The way I see it, consumer products respond to consumer hunger: if the hunger is there, consumers will eat the products up; but if you're stuffed, then you won't be eating anything, no matter how good the product is.
So, if you launch a game and it's successful, you'll leave people hungry for more, which justifies the existence of the tie-in; but if you launch a game with too many tie-ins, you risk stuffing the consumer base before it's gotten a chance to develop a real hunger for the franchise.
With well established franchises like Batman, Spiderman, Star Wars and such, the amount hunger for tie-ins is already well known - and note that these did not exist when the original property was launched. It's similar with Final Fantasy XV: while the game itself is new, the franchise itself is old (and the original property did not have any tie-ins).
When you attempt to launch a property as a multimedia franchise, you're making the initial acceptance of the product that much more difficult, because there's already all this "food" before you're even hungry. You've had enough of the game before you've even tried it. This is the gut reaction, I think, but it needs a rationalization. So, the rationalization becomes something like this: which is the main property? The game? The comic? The anime? The book? Why does it need so many mediums? Do I get the full experience if I just get one, or is each designed to lure me into buying others?
In the case of a Kickstarter, the rationalization becomes much more straight-forward: they're using my money without my permission. This may not be the case, but it doesn't matter - people are trying to rationalize their dissatisfaction.
Most powerful of all, I think, is this apparent contradiction: if this is a property that needed crowd funding to get off the ground, why is it suddenly a franchise? Now, you can argue that the answer is simple: the crowd funding success is what enabled the property to become a franchise in the first place. But that's not the way people's perception works: the sight of an "independent" game being marketed like "fully-established" property makes the "independent" label seem like a scam, even if it isn't.
This is what I ultimately think marketeers misunderstand: it's one thing to bring out tie-ins with the latest installment to an established franchise, and another to launch a new franchise with countless tie-ins to begin with. It goes double for crowd-funded projects.
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Post by dareka on Jul 11, 2016 20:20:39 GMT -6
I'm sure something like a tie-in manga or UDON comic, and also a figure or two would be cool, and welcome by the fans. But I do think that, with a kickstarter project, PR's very important, and spinning off the franchise before the product itself is complete, and before its been well-received by at least the backer community, has its risks ( see: Mighty Number 9 ). I'm not really worried about this happening to Bloodstained, though: IGA seems to have his eye right on the ball, and communication with the backer community has been outstanding. (Thanks, Mana ! ). I really hope, and I believe that come next year, Bloodstained will go down as one of the textbook examples of how to do a Kickstarter right. Hopefully, the game will also sell well enough to build a long-lived franchise, as undying as Dracula himself.
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Post by dareka on Jul 11, 2016 17:00:21 GMT -6
Well, he said something along the lines of being very receptive to offers from other companies, but that, being a game developer, his focus right now is on the game itself . So I'd say he's doing it right. I couldn't make out further details because the audio of Ben's translation was in the way (really wish they didn't do that, overlay the translation with the audio - when the translation's not quite accurate, it leaves you with no options).
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Post by dareka on Jul 7, 2016 9:06:15 GMT -6
If you drop the cyan glow, the black borders, and the hard shadow delineation, the only thing left to do is tweak color balance and you have "character 1" in the bag (as long as the essentially unimportant normals of a cel shaded model don't actually prove a barrier, assuming they even have any). Well, they have normals. See: how they're doing the black outlines. It's likely they also need them for the cyan glow - otherwise, how would they know if the polygon is oblique to the camera or not? By calculating the normal in real time? Yes, it can be done, but it's a bit too computationally expensive for something you could just include in the model data. As for the rest of the shading, "the essentially unimportant normals of a cel shaded model", are exactly that: unimportant to the cell shader. Any shader with any kind of lambertian-like gradation component needs normals, and they're likely missing because the cell shader doesn't need them. The ones that are there are not adjusted to look good on a lambertian shader: they're there to stretch the vertices in the right direction, and to predict if a given triangle is facing the camera or not. This is assuming there are no other texture layers at work in the original shader templates, layers needed not to know whether the vertices are facing the light source or not (like the normal), but to "tweak" the color balance, as you say. But anyhow, I think we can agree there are a lot of assumptions here: we'll know more once modders have their hands on the finished product.
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Post by dareka on Jul 7, 2016 0:24:32 GMT -6
Correct me if I'm wrong, asterra , but I gather that what you're saying in your last post is different than what you said first. This was the initial argument: Solution is very simple: Leave all of the proposed shader templates in. Make the cartoony look the default, per the wishes of the community, but let players have access to the others.
The initial proposition is that the previous shaders should be left in. The argument against this is that, when the 3d data (textures, normals, etc.) is created with a specific shader in mind, it doesn't look good on other shaders. This is your latest argument (I paraphrase): You can just write a shader that is essentially the same as the current one, but ignores the watercolor textures, drops the cyan glow, and drops the outline, and the game would look better. Well, whether or not it would look better this way is ultimately a matter of opinion, but this is very different from leaving all of the proposed shader templates. The game might look better to you and those who share your opinion in this state, but, at the very least, it would not look the same as it did with the other two shader templates. For the game to look like it does in those other shaders, you would have to rework the textures and the normals, etc, which is why the dev team wanted to have this locked down before commencing mass production. That said, you could float it to the dev team as an option: let me turn the black outlines on and off, or at least reduce their thickness. I'm sure you know they're likely being done "the old fashioned way", i.e. by rendering the triangles facing away from the camera in black, having previously stretched the vertices in the direction of their normals; and this would of course mean that, while stretching them past a certain point is out of the question, shrinking the outline is very easy to do. So, as far as the outline goes, I'd say it does become a question of whether or not they want to listen to your suggestion, as opposed to whether or not they can.
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Post by dareka on Jul 6, 2016 10:32:00 GMT -6
It's been mentioned by others, but it bears repeating: switching shaders is simply not feasible.
Let me try and explain why, in layman's terms.
Graphics have two components: the 3D models and textures, which are done by the artists, and the shader programs, which are done by the programmers.
You'd be forgiven for thinking that these two components are independent, that 3D models and textures can be changed without tweaking the shaders and vice versa.With very simple graphics, this is indeed the case. However, with a relatively complex shader like the one in bloodstained, the 3D data (models and textures) and the shader program need to be intertwined. I know: I've done this. The shader program needs data baked into the models and the models are made under the assumption that you'll be using a specific shader.
What's more, while we normally just refer to a single shader, in reality there may be more than one shader program. There could be one for Miriam and another for the enemies, and another for the bosses, for example (that's not to say that this is the case - I'm just saying it would be an added difficulty if it were the case). There's definitely a different one for the background, for one.
What all this means is that from a technical standpoint, it would present a problem: in the best case scenario, the current 3D models and textures, which you can definitely not change, will look ugly under a different shader; in the worst case scenario, you could have outright graphical bugs and potentially even game-crashing bugs.
To fix this, you'd literally need to create at least one alternate version of all the 3D models and textures, one that plays nice with the other shaders.
And since that is the most expensive part of game development, it's not gonna happen.
So when IGA and Co. said there was no turning back once the shader was chosen, they meant it.
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Post by dareka on Jul 5, 2016 0:18:57 GMT -6
Also character vote? Is that an idea people like? The thing with characters is that, without a playable prototype, all you have to go on is the characters' appearance. In the absence of a prototype, I think it's more feasible to vote on a predetermined character's appearance than the character itself. I get the feeling we're a little too late in the game for that, though, plus it would ruin the surprise of who the additional playable characters are. What could maybe be done is something similar but with Miriam's costumes ... like "vote for the costume you'd like to see in the game", or "here are three designs for corrupted Miriam, which do you like best", and such. If it's not in the budget, though, I don't see it happening unless it's paid DLC down the road.
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Post by dareka on Jul 2, 2016 17:09:40 GMT -6
I thought the same thing you did, Winchester. I didn't think it made much sense as a lure, but totally makes sense to me as some kind of sea-mother demon. My thought was " what kind of fisherman would be attracted to a giant woman?" Wait, sailors spend months and months out at sea, and I hear that when they get back.... no, wait, nevermind.
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