Should Animations be modified to look more real?

[CryptoQuick]

As a newcomer, I don't really know what is capable to be modified in the game, but I'm going to think conservative on this one, and assume that the very AI underpinnings would be very difficult to modify. Unless they're just scripts that are separate from the main game data; then they might be much easier to modify... As far as AI goes.

However, this thread isn't about AI, I suppose. I don't know how the animations are stored, but if you can modify them with whatever tools Ion Storm/Eidos gave you guys, I'd say go for it!

[metche_steele]

All character animations are being redone from scratch by Phasmatis. This has been our intention from the very beginning

[DDL]

We are, however, reasonably limited in how we use those animations: the AI calls very specific animation sequences for various different actions, so all our new animations have to be called exactly the same thing as the originals, and behave as closely to the originals as possible.

It's tricky, basically.

[ZylonBane]

I'd be thrilled if the only thing replaced was the running animation. Ever after years of playing DX it still looks ridiculous to me. Almost like they're moonwalking.

[DDL]

The walking is almost as bad: the synching between groundspeed and animrate isn't quite right, I guess.

If that's what you mean by moonwalking (steps not quite matching the actual distance travelled, so you get a bit of 'glide'), I could maybe look into that, since you can fuck with animation rates via code quite easily.

[ZylonBane]

Yeah, I suppose it's partially that. Aside from looking a bit stiff in general, the running animation is really more of a sprinting animation. The speed AIs run at in DX shouldn't have such exaggerated arm and leg swings.

[Dead-eye]

wow this got out of hand quick.

My Idea was to make the NPCs act like the Conter-Strike:Source Models act. But I found out that Unreal 1 dose not use bones so this idea is close to Impossable. More realistic gole for DX:R
Go here http://dxr.deusexgaming.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=243

[CaptNKILL]

I really don't think this mod should change any of the animations.

I think you guys are taking on way too much as it is by changing the look of the characters and weapons to the point that they don't look like Deus Ex any more.

Just focus on making more detailed textures and making higher poly models. Anything more should be saved for another mod or this one will lose focus.

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

Its a little too late for that. Plus we have to change the Animations no matter what, these are new models, they need to be re-rigged. - and have already been done.

My advice to you would be, not to sign up to a forum where you're first post is to undermine all the hard work we've been doing the past 3 years. This isn't constructive criticism at all - though you are entitled to you're opinion

[CaptNKILL]

Sorry, I didn't realize the animations weren't based on skeletons, you're right, they have to be redone.

I don't mean to undermine the work you guys have done, and I really apologize if I came across that way, I'm just a huge fan of Deus Ex and as with anyone else here, I'd like to see the best come from this mod.

I was going to offer my help (I did a total landscape retexture for TES 4 Oblivion in a month, I have quite a bit of experience with texturing) but to be honest, I don't know if I should now. I like to give a lot of input, and I like to share my opinion. If giving my honest opinion on the way you're handling this mod currently warrants being told I shouldn't be here, then I don't know if we'd work very well together.

I really think you guys are doing excellent work, I just think you're changing some things too much. If there is already talk of changing the AI in the game, you're taking on a huge amount of work. If the mod ends up being an entire revamp of every aspect of the game its going to be quite a huge undertaking and its much more than just a high definition texture pack.

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

If there is already talk of changing the AI in the game

Got a source? Last i heard DX:R was doing some tests.

I don't mean to undermine the work you guys have done, and I really apologize if I came across that way, I'm just a huge fan of Deus Ex and as with anyone else here, I'd like to see the best come from this mod.

Its fine, we've been taking a lot of negative criticism lately and its not helping our efforts to get the mod out into the public.

I was going to offer my help (I did a total landscape retexture for TES 4 Oblivion in a month, I have quite a bit of experience with texturing) but to be honest, I don't know if I should now. I like to give a lot of input, and I like to share my opinion. If giving my honest opinion on the way you're handling this mod currently warrants being told I shouldn't be here, then I don't know if we'd work very well together.

No I said you shouldnt sign up if you are just going to nag, we've had problems with people doing this lately and it doesn't make us feel good when people are saying bad things about us. Firstly I'd like to say that Oblivion and Deus Ex are very very different in capabilities. I don't know which mod you were apart of - there were a few for oblivion that re-textured the landscape. We do accept comments, we do encourage criticism. We don't accept people telling us that we've wasted the past few years doing stuff that "the fans didn't want". Given that you've worked with TES before - I would have thought you'd appreciate what we're doing instead of saying that we've ruined this game.

Have you had any texturing experience with Models and UVs before? I wouldn't know if Oblivion uses them for Landscape.

[CaptNKILL]

I think you're taking my comments a bit too strongly. I wasn't saying anything was ruining the game. If everything has already been discussed and anything more I could say would just be "nagging", sorry.

And about the AI, I was referring to the poll in this thread. I just assumed that since it mentioned animation and AI in one of the options that it was something you guys were considering.

And here are the mods I did for Oblivion:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=71419

In one of them I manually fixed the tiling\patterning in 150 of the landscape textures so that the scenery didn't have big lines and repeating shapes in it. The others were pretty simple replacements for the blurry distant textures. I just resized them a few different ways and applied some filters to make them look more detailed.

I've done a little bit of texturing models in the past but the work for Oblivion was strictly dealing with terrain textures and normal maps.

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

Your work is very interesting for Oblivion, its a lot different when your working with Deus Ex. See we don't resize the existing textures- we've got to re-create every single detail from scratch. The details that exist in Deus Ex are very poor - the textures are so small that you can barely see anything. We've blown them up nearly 3-4x the size that they originally were and added more detail to them. We were also aiming to improve the feel of the game as well.

Given that I never really liked Oblivion - (or bethesda for that matter) I can say that you've done wonders with that mod and I saw your mod a while back when I was actually in the mood to play the game and it was interesting. But I never actually used it, given that by then I had finished and already hated the game.

We do more than just add filters to our textures btw.

[CaptNKILL]

Your work is very interesting for Oblivion, its a lot different when your working with Deus Ex. See we don't resize the existing textures- we've got to re-create every single detail from scratch. The details that exist in Deus Ex are very poor - the textures are so small that you can barely see anything. We've blown them up nearly 3-4x the size that they originally were and added more detail to them. We were also aiming to improve the feel of the game as well.

Given that I never really liked Oblivion - (or bethesda for that matter) I can say that you've done wonders with that mod and I saw your mod a while back when I was actually in the mood to play the game and it was interesting. But I never actually used it, given that by then I had finished and already hated the game.

We do more than just add filters to our textures btw.

Yeah the ones I resized and added filters to were rather simple and only took a couple hours (most of which was from saving a 4096x4096 image in a compressed format).

The other ones were my pride and joy though.

A lot of their textures had large shapes and dark\light spots on them that when tiled on a large area made huge stripes or patterns. I don't know why they did that. I had to use the heal brush, and the air brush to fix around 150 of the textures (with normal maps) so that they didn't do that any more. It took me around a month and a half total I think. Some textures took longer than others because I had to find a balance between getting rid of the horrible tiling and keeping the texture looking the way it should.

I think a lot of textures can be greatly improved by resizing and cleaning up lines then manually adding smaller details (carefully of course, to avoid patterning). This way you keep the original look and have something to go by while adding more details.

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

We try to do the resize thing when we start texturing, but after that its a matter of going by your gut and hoping it all turns out okay. Its really difficult when you're adding detail to a Pixel ?!?!?

You've had the luxury of working on 1000x1000 tiles, we're working on 128x128 and resizing to 256x256. In some cases working 32x32 up to 256x256. Thats why its really hard for us to just pump these textures out quickly. The characters and weapons are being remade from scratch because of the need to add more polygons to the models. However, in order to maintain system stability with this mod, we needed to re-do the models as opposed from just smoothing them, and praying it all works out.

Sometimes we've had problems where things didn't turn out exactly identical to the original. If you've got an issue with something like this then point it out specifically.. Don't just say what you were saying before - as that discredits our work we've already done and makes us feel pretty shit house.