I can't remember where I read this, I think it was some of the initial feedback from Blizzard regarding the lack of anything from the release of LoD, but they basically were working on the Diablo III engine for six years, and that's why they didn't have much of the game done when they announced it publicly. I think it was mostly due to the lack of staff from the mass firings and leavings. I'd have to source that, though.
Hm... Would they have to tweak their engine to implement randomized body parts like this?
Well Will Wrights main focus in the Spore engine was the randomized(or customizable) body parts, much like the A.I for the Sims took 7 years to develop and in both cases the focus of the game was centered around given 7 year development XD. If randomized body parts is anywhere as hard as making customizable ones(in the sense that it works, functional, looks good and doesn't cause crashes every 30 seconds), then i think it would've been one of their larger selling points by now. We can see them flaunting the Havok physics engine left and right, and they're keeping the randomized events in the game which would play into the engine as well, i think the randomized body parts may cause problems on the physics integration side, but it's right at home with the random encounters, so i'd say 50/50 based on those shallow facts XD
(I remember reading something like what you said btw)
Yes, most likely they would have to alter the engine, if it all characters were going to all of a sudden have to be a combination of several different meshes to create a character, not only that, but all the characters they have made up to this point would have to be scrapped or they'd have to cut them all up into pieces and hope it worked out. Plus they would have to go back and rework the animations to be applied to the new divided mesh. There is no reason to make Diablo this way...it doesn't make sense for what it's supposed to be doing. Having characters be a combo of meshes is the exception to the rule not the standard practice by any means. It only makes sense to complicate things like that if it makes sense to game play, as I mentioned Quake works this way so that the head can be looking one direction, the hands and torso can play a shooting animation and the legs can run all independent of one another.
Was on Gametrailers.com and came across this new game that has been in development for a while now and this particular video clip reminded me of this thread. Just thought I'd share:
Hm... Would they have to tweak their engine to implement randomized body parts like this?
(I remember reading something like what you said btw)
>{Dynasty DiabloFans Thread}<
Artist Portfolio: http://www.JonathanSabella.com
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/8937.html
The other gameplay videos are pretty cool too:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/7107.html
By the way, these clips were posted in 2-4 years ago.
Yea. I liked how Titan Quest did that; but we do not need Unique drops by random mosters. lol