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Concept art

Sat, 21 Dec 2002 01:41:50

mago

"The NPC you sent me looks cool, just keep sending more... " Yes... I'll try. In the mean time, I have made these sketches of characters we might meet in SE, like the leaders of Legion, Arcannum and Church (we could give it a better name. Only Church is kinda simplist). I'm also sending others various sketches, about new movements, for hipootetic new characters, or even for the players in 3rd pov (I think you still misunderstand me about this one. What I wanted was to give the game another camera, or "3rd pov", where you would see the player from behind in a upper level, so you could still see the monsters and know the distance between you and the world around you, just like Heretic 2. I know, you didn't like it much and you prefer 1st person pov, but as I said it would be a optional feature, which would only make the game better, even if just for contrasting with the better 1st pov. You would actually see the projectiles coming at you, you would have a different way to interact and travel trhough the game, and it would be good at talking to people, etc. But don't worry, I won't bug with it untill I have time to actually make it, instead of just talking about it. <!-- s;) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt=";)" title="Wink" /><!-- s;) --> ). You may think it is a waste of time to sketch those npcs, but I think it is anecessary step in developing a game and it's features, and bad design can really make it hard for the player to believe in our mod, in the world that we will build for them. They must impress, amaze, make the player actually have emotions for that character. That's why the U-Heresiarch must be the ultimate villian, not just a adapted Heresiarch, and that's why the leaders and the npcs must be real persons, capable of making us want to interact with them. Otherwise, we would really be wasting our times, making something that just wouldn't be cool. All right, enoubh talk, I gotta bet back to work. See you, and post your comments. Everybody must participate in these kind of decisions. By the way, Janis, where are you?
Sat, 28 Dec 2002 00:17:27

mago

Are the damn drawings so horrible you don't even bother comment? At least tell me if you actually saw them... <!-- s;) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt=";)" title="Wink" /><!-- s;) --> Allright, here are some more concept art, and let's see the info about them: Concept 3: Contains several images illustrating some normal city folks, their costumes, and every-day affairs. By them, I hope to inspire whoever the writter of SE may be, to imagine rich sidequests for the player. Every npc in this one can come with a sidequest, and anybody who played Antara will likely guess their type. We may have to help the soldier watch the streets at night; follow a thief's path and recover the goods stolen; help the old mage to find some special item (potion,book...); hear some story about a hidden chest full of neat stuff in a swamp, while eating dinner in the Tavern; help the lady find his runnaway son; or help the blacksmith in change of a needed steel/iron item (key, plate,...). Concept 4: There's a pic of Baratus being congratulated by his Leader, after a battle, or in a reunion, etc. Can be used as the Leader model, if you like him. In the botton, there's two pics showing a new monster I designed, and I feel it could really be implemented, and would fit into Hexen's world and engine. I wrotte myself a bunch of notes, so here's the description: SWAMP THING: It has 3 different attacks: 1- tentacle ; 2- Throw arpoon/sharp bone from tentacle ; 3- Bite. It's a monster which shows up from inside the waters, and possess 8 tentacles, which one having it's own life, and in terms of engine, it's own will and behaviour: when it comes from inside the water, it has 2 directives - the 1st one is to attack any near enemy, and the 2nd one is to "populate" the zone within 90? in front of the THING's head, in order to prevent charges and attacks to it's most vulnearable and fragile part. The tentacles move slowly, and 3 at the maximun move toward a single enemy at the same time, the others keep the area in front of the head protected. When a tentacle looses all his HP, it's destroyed and won't come back. So it has a defense mechanism, which consists of: when the tentacle is receiving too much repeated damage (like the 3 fast hits of the red mage's wand), it dives into the water, and emerge in another place (often from behind the player). Other tentacles may do this, even when aren't being attacked, in order to surprise the hero. When the player is out of the area the tentacles can reach (often it's the own lake where the THING is located, but large lakes may need to have a marked area for this), the THING will attack by throwing the sharp bones that are placed in the tentacles. In terms of gameplay, they are endless, and have poison, which acts like the Cleric's flechette, but stronger. When hitting with the tentacles, all the damages merge to be one (the cutting damage, the concussion damage and the poison damage). The head moves veeerrryyy slowly, and can't get out of the water. It has an absurd amount of HP, and can attack the player by bitting him. It can act just like the tentacles when attacked too much, diving and appearing around the player, bitting him in a fast move. The damage of it's bite is VERY big, to add a bit more of difficluty, since the head only attacks by bitting when the player manages to avoid the tentacles and get near it, or, normally, when all the tentacles were destroyed. It's common to see the head diving (when it's out of tentacles), and taking a large amount of time (like, 10 seconds...), before appearing suddenly. If the player get out of the water, the SWAMP THING will wait for him for about half a minute, and then will dive, and won't come out untill the player gets into the water again, and go near it. Concept 5: Just a dragon in this one, but since I intended to actually include it as a NPC into SE, here is some details: The dragons won't attack automaticly the player in sight. Actually, there's a big chance (60-70% ?) it won't attack at all (maybe just make some noises), letting the player even get near him, for a talk, if it wants, with the small human. As a side history, the Dragons lived together with humans, hundreds of years ago, accepting being worshiped, their offerings and their dumb vassalage. But somwhen the humans decided the Dragons were too much of a threat to their race and progress, launching a war that lasts untill today. The races are deadly enemies, which explains most of the attacks from both sides. For being a superior race, magical, yet rare, the Dragons are in disadvantage, and since the elder leaders of the race refuse to declare official war against the humans (considered untill now for them as friends and pupils who must be brought back to reason), and actually form a united army, which would be surely invencible, isolated Dragons continue to suffer, being chased and attacked contuniously, and their repeated deaths just contributes to weaken and threaten even more this mighty race and it's surviviour. DRAGON: Dragons are very dangerous, by all means. They move quickly besides their size, and it's attacks are very strong and lethal. They have 3 attacks: 1- Claws ; 2- Bite ; 3- Breath. The dargons may fly to avoid repeated attacks, landing somewhere near the player. Their attacks (be it claw, or bite), is so powerful that will trhow the player several metters away, without counting the damage inflicted. When the hero is too far for it's claws, the Dragon will attack by using it's magical breath, wich may consist of 4 types: 1st: Fire, which is the deadlier of them all, killing REALLY fast. In the center of the cone of fire, it's impossible to live, but in the outer limits, it will just cause continuous damage, like normal fire, but really fast. The idea is: either you duck behind somethign, or you will die. 2nd:Energy, which is the second more powerfull, and consists of a continous stream of balls of energy, acting like a machinegun. 3rd: Posion comes next, and acts as the Cleric's flechette, but way stronger, leadig to death almost everytime (unless the player start to drink some healing potions, and fast). 4th: Ice, which consist of dozens of ice shards (way deadlier than normal), and form a mass which is very difficult to avoid. Repulsion discs are worthless against those attacks (or at least, work in 50% of their original potential). A Dragon is very intelligent and wise, and it's a lot easier to talk to them than try to kill. Concept 6: The last concept is another race of enemies. They're called Hiktos (?), and are a warrior nation, consisting of barbarians and wilders. They consider all civilized nations as enemies, and declared a terrible war, that lasts for several generations now. They spread destruction and fear, by attacking isolated areas at the neighbour countries, that have a frontier with their own, called Wild Lands, or Black Land. The soldier of those countries often find themselves helpless and useless, since the Hiktos tend to retreat after fast and furious campaigns, and few Lords dare to send their Legions into the dense forests of the Black Land. They are fierce warriors, even more terrible due to their great number in attacks. Even though they possess all these negative aspects, they are also konwn by their complete lackness in civilized manners and moral corruption of the modern civilizations, and their rigid code of honour and conduct made them earn, as a race, the respect of even the Dragons. That's why there are rumours that in the middle of the Black Land, where the major villages (giant in size), are located, entire populations of the 2 races live togheter, in harmony and peace. They live in harmony with Nature and with their land, respecting animals and all involved with it. HIKTOS: a normal Hikto warrior possess just an axe. There are some with bows, and every now and then, a group of warrior have also a xaman with them. They can cast Mage's spells, and although we can find xaman with high levels and lots of spells, they are rare. The Hiktos attack in groups (huge. 9 to 20 normally, but some groups are even larger). Due to the lack of armor, they are vulnerable to powerfull weapons and attacks (can be killed quite easily), but they are also fast, agile and strong with their axe arm (much stronger than Ettins or even Centaurs). 20 to 30% of the groupes have a xaman, and 70 to 80% have archers. That's it for now. I hope those were useful to the project, and I hope to see some of them in SE.
Sat, 28 Dec 2002 20:36:14

RambOrc

Hey sorry for taking so long... the concept art images of both batches are now up at <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.korax-heritage.com/koraxdev/conceptart/">http://www.korax-heritage.com/koraxdev/conceptart/</a><!-- m --> . Regarding the NPCs, they are really cool, I wish I would see some of them in-game in color. <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) --> Actually, I think sitting NPCs might prove difficult with sprites on 3D chairs, so ask Janis before making any. Anyway, I think 50 different standing NPCs with one frame are better than 3 fully animated and moving NPCs, so I'd say let's concentrate on the first. Most NPCs will be indoors anyway and there it's not so obvious they don't move around. Swamp thing: good idea, I'd like to see it implemented. In the maps we're going to use there are quite a couple of ponds, so there should be enough place for them. It just depends on the programmers and artists whether we'll have it in SE. The drawing of the city street gave me a completely new idea BTW... what do you people think about using black & white drawings for the cutscenes instead of colored ones? If I understood Mago right earlier on, it's WAY less work, meaning a lot more such cutscenes could be created in the same time it takes to make one in color. With a PhotoShop filter or 2, they might even look something different. Dunno whether any good, just made 4 test runs with effects on that drawing, you can see them in the same directory, the 4 JPG files (c and d is the same emboss effect, just different depth). I wish someone else would chime in too.
Sun, 29 Dec 2002 17:32:04

Moose

Really nice work, now for my hour of typing a reply <!-- s:roll: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_rolleyes.gif" alt=":roll:" title="Rolling Eyes" /><!-- s:roll: -->. C2) I like the idea of using B&W cutscenes, I don't know why but B&W line drawings look good IMO. Out of the 5 versions I've seen I prefer 'a', but 'a' wouldn't look right if it was a daytime scene. C4) Swamp Thing again I like the idea and can't wait till I see it working. And it will be even more interesting in TSP when we can follow it under water. C5) Dragon is my favourite of the new enemys and I'm going to put high on my to do list. C6) And for the last time in this post I like it. I might have an enemy idea finished some point later today, I'll post the idea tomorrow, maybe with some art (if I feel up to it).
Mon, 30 Dec 2002 03:07:41

mago

At last!!! <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) --> Well, as for the black and white cutscenes, I must say you are actually right, it's MUCH easier to make drawings in pencil only, and then add some automatic effects, like making it darker or blurried, which makes them look good enough, and make it possible to work with a much bigger number in the same time. I actually thought of something similar to Antara, instead of b/w, we would have a background texture, like a "papiro" or old paper, much like the background texture of this forum, but I haven't figured out yet how to implement the background properly, since pencil works have too many differences in saturation of colors... I see you didn't like the Dragon idea, nor the Hiktos one. Could you tell me why, RambOrc? Because I really think they would fit into SE universe... Dragons are classical to any fantasy game, and they add more diversity, because they are fantastic, intelligent, magical beings. They are not humans, but we can actually talk to them, something allowed only in fantasy. As for the Hiktos, well, you might not want to see human enemies, but I think they also have everything to belong in the game. They have unique characteristics and behaviours, making them a completely different type of enemie (and original too, since they don't exist in Hexen) , and would be useful to populate a map with a forest, or for some side quests. I hope you reconsider. Anyway, thanks Moose, for the support. And RambOrc, if we will actually have the pencil only cut-scenes, an idea I like very much, I say again, please send me as soon as you have it, a script, explainning all the details for the "movies" that will be necessary to the game, with a detailed description of everything, and your suggestions for what you think each frame should show. This kind of stuff. This way we can discuss about what we can do, how we could do it, etc. I think I could be more useful in this area. <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) --> See you later boys. -Moose: please send those ideas, and drawings of course! <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) --> And speaking of ideas, once everybody look at them and decides what should be implemented, I think we should talk about the "making of" of them, what can and can't be in the game, what are easy to be implemented and what would be too hard, that kind of stuff. Because depending on me, we would have so many new features and engine/gameplay advancements that the mod tc would be considered an entire new game. <!-- s;) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt=";)" title="Wink" /><!-- s;) -->
Mon, 30 Dec 2002 17:29:52

RambOrc

"Cutscenes": If you send me a background pic and a GIF or PNG drawing with only one white color (i.e. if I make white transparent, not only parts of the image will lose the white background but all of it), I can put it together (as I did it with the KH logo). As for the final storyline, I'm months behind my schedule, I'm still struggling with those 30 or so maps to put them into an order and build a world out of them and determine their order so the story can be formed around them (the baseline of the story is in the design guide). Dragons and Hiktos: OMG... just because I said nothing about them, it doesn't mean I find the idea crap. <!-- s:P --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt=":P" title="Razz" /><!-- s:P --> All I meant was what I said, i.e. that the swamp thingie sounds real cool (reminds me BTW of "The Thing" in Stonekeep). I said nothing about the other ideas, but that doesn't mean because I don't like them. Indeed a humanoid race would be cool, this way I woouldn't have to use the Ettins for intelligent species. Dragons are a nice touch in any fantasy game, just make sure they're BIG. If the player can't go too near, it shouldn't be a prob with the awkward view angles, as I could verify with the Big Maulotaur test from Ichor. As for implementing any ideas, there are a couple of things to consider: 1) Forget about any new engine features for SE aside the ones in KMOD 2.2 and the ones I'm listing further below. Technically seen, SE is an evolutional dead-end, once it's out we'll leave the jHexen engine behind forever. 2) Moose is theoretically the only really active programmer on the team at the moment and while I don't want to criticize anyone's progress, it seems he doesn't have that much time on general, meaning we shouldn't plan too many new things. The good news is that to make the whole SE concept work not much more is needed (most important part is the extended inventory and to be able to make quests with rewards possible), see the list of already existing "new" features below. 3) Though we've got several art guys, in several discussions it seems we pretty much established the capacity will probably end with all hurt skins, a couple of NPCs, maybe 1-2 new enemies and the cutscene drawings. Since this all is pretty much essential, nothing much should be worked on before this all is done (unless I forgot something to list). 4) The maps are all ready and finished, thus there isn't much room for any new ideas for locations (there is simply no capacity as there's no mapper on the team except for me and I'll be glad if I can finish up the town and the swamp and mines maps I've halfway finished back in 2001 and before). OK before I go on here the list of features not present in KMOD 2.2 as gameplay features but already in the codebase: - selling items (indeed the shopping system is as good as finished, not a very advanced one but it works) - journal (new graphics would be needed, but that can be done even in the very last days of development) - spellcasting system (works the same way as the journal, which is a very simple system) - calendar, changing of day and night (though I start to have my doubts about this latter feature, it might cause quite a couple of big probs and a lot of work, I might want to leave it for TSP) - and last but not least something new present only in the SE codebase, the conversation system which is 99% finished AFAIK Here the roadmap once again: Alpha test. As soon as I built all maps together for a world, this can be started. If by this time quests can be created, a couple could be added for better testing. Alpha will be mostly internal, with a couple of externals from the Korax forums. While I have absolutely no idea when I'll get this far, I can pretty much guarantee it'll happen nearly from one day to the other, with maybe a week's warning or so. Beta test. This time, all basic features need to be in place and story/quests/etc. mostly working. Beta is basically SE with a lot of bugs and a couple of things missing. Testers will be pretty much the same as for Alpha, maybe more external people. Final release. I don't want to release something like Outcast that needed 3 patches just so that it could be installed at all. Anything I forgot this time, it's not because I don't want to talk about it, but because I forgot it among all this. <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) --> If there is such a thing, just mention it again and tell me you want me to talk about this explicitly.
Thu, 02 Jan 2003 08:09:56

dj_jl

A grayscale image can be easely combined together with the background in the engine. This is a cheap trick.
Tue, 14 Jan 2003 21:18:13

mago

Well, after a long silence period, I'm back again, since I finnally got my pc to work again. Ican't talk much now, but as soon as I get back home, or at maximum tomorrow, I'll answer everything and provide the latest nes (if any). Sorry about all this time, I couldn't start the damn windows and it took more than a week just so a friend could come here and help me out. Well, see you guys! Gotta go to college!

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