It's all the different skeletons. Nobody back than took into any consideration how these characters would be supported 20 years down the road. Characters that you would think would share a skeleton don't so they all have slightly different proportions and arm lengths. So if you animate something on one character, say holding a two hand sword or just placing a hand on their face, the next skel will be putting the hand into their face or holding the sword in a totally different position. This means that one animation has to be done at least 6 or 7 times to get right. And that's not even including SOGA models. They are a whole different level of broken. I just added one emote yesterday and it took the better part of the whole day getting it working on all of the characters. So one animation, when I'm usually animating 5 or 6. That's just the animation side of things. Fitting armor on the modeling side has it's own set of issues. So when people ask for something like new hair, which we would all like to do, it's not a matter of taking a piece of geometry and popping it on there. It's days of work getting it to work properly and the code only allows for a certain number of pieces so we have to get them involved too.
this is the amount of seperate skels we have to deal with https://discord.com/channels/228604818057330688/228604818057330688/857998201360744488
Not everyone has to have the same . . . . Hair. I mean in other games. . . *insert any game here* There are different hair styles for each set of characters so say. . . Guild wars 2 for example. . . the NORN have their own hairstyles, the HUMANS have Their own hair styles. . . the plant people have THEIR own hair styles. A human cant have NORN styles and Norn cant have PLANT hair. I know we have umteen million Races. . . but out of the Human looking ones . . . maybe just 1 or 2 hair styles for each one. I don't know. . . take a poll to see who would want LONG hair. . . . I only make Arekyns now. . . . I wont make anything else! take that into consideration. Frogs, rats and cats and lizards don't NEED HAIR
Easy fix, ttobey. Just have the dev team load this up over the weekend, I'm sure it's an easy switch.... Edit: Media embed doesn't seem to like Vimeo anymore.... Here's the full page, video is about 1/3 down: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/unreal-engine-5
Oh, I know - if it was easy, it would have been done already. At some point though, the amount of tech debt continuing to pile up means it may be better to just rip the band-aid off, and go all in on an engine upgrade. Push off the 2022 expansion for a year and focus on framework / infrastructure updates. Of course, I think we all know that's not likely to occur. Edit: If it did though - I think I'd feel comfortable committing to a revival of the Draco'Kyn/T.King UI.
engine upgrade / infrastructure updates = NEW EXPENSIVE computer most likely which we can't afford so there would go my game.
God, I remember back in the early 2000's, possibly in the video I posted that screencap from, where someone was talking about how all of the player characters would share a skeleton and how all of the armor would autofit so they only had to make it once and how easy it was going to be for everyone. I feel like something went horribly wrong somewhere in the development of the classic game.
Haha yep, I'm sure they were strapped for time and threw a lot of grand plans out the window. Let's do it this way! We can fix it later! And then the fix for the fix probably by then would have broken more than it fixed.
Doh, and you got left holding the bag? Is there anyone still around from then that could and would do a Q&A with us about the game's initial development? I feel like that would be crazy interesting.
There actually isn't anyone left that would have been involved in the original character set ups. Dave and I disappeared them.
That is a lot! Thanks for sharing. I did notice that the alternative halfling was having a problem with one of the shirts I tried on him. One thing that had occurred to me is that it might be an idea to use existing race skeletons to make variant races. The slender erudites, the athletic kerrans, could be used to make different appearrance humans, for example. Fae/arasai could be used to make wingless pixies. Just an idea, but an idea I would be willing to pay for if it became available. Here is something I would pay money for: being able to have faction with every city.