DiabloFans

Well, I for one am looking forward to the game regardless of its relationship to any other game in history. If you think of the game industry as an equivalent to the music or art disciplines I think you will find that it is the artists and creators responsibility to evolve, reference, barrow from and re-imagine what has come before. If it's from WOW, Mario Bros or Pong if the alteration or addition to the game is beneficial to the game then it shouldn't matter where it was inspired from. If you don't like a choice that is another matter, but the constant back and forth about what it is and isn't as a whole is rather silly I think, in either direction.

^I'm not sure realistic is the word I would choose. Perhaps, more customizable. D2 no doubt in end will have less or equal customization to D3. It's just a matter of how much time they have and what choices they feel are important to address. I think I should stress that the level of quality they are trying to produce is not something that can be solved quickly, having every character class be able to cross dress armors would result in a lot of extra work.

I'm just guessing of course with what I can see, no way of knowing for sure until a developer tells us what's what.

but, Ya look at the concept art, and imagine you can take the shoulders of one and it it on another and the boots etc. You can get different combos, but only so many. I don't think a Barb can ever look like another class in terms of armor. I am not sure how limited it is as maybe you can take a barbs shoulder pads or helm and put them on a witch doctor, but then I see a potential sizing problem they'd have to address. Think about if you have a person with a size 17 shoe (barb) and you want put those shoes on a person with a size 7 foot (female wizard) you'd have to give them the right size for their body. That is also dependent on if the shoulder pads and helms are different geometry. The rest could be solved by texture swapping, but the UVs for the barb are different than for any other class so that would mean, they would have to go in and give a texture for a witch doctors clothing on a barb and so on for each class. That is a lot of work they may see as something they can avoid by having the characters all look specific to their class. Also, they may say that they also chose to do this for co-op game play so that a barb always looks like a barb and you can't get confused who is who. (Maybe)

Here is a pic of the armor progression concept another person mentioned above:

I don't think if you put the same helmet on a Witch Doctor that it will appear the same if a Barbarian is wearing it. Only the stats will remain the same. The classes have specific sort of defined "levels" of armor with a few variations thrown in. A Barbarian can't look like a Wizard. At least thats the impression I'm getting. So you can mix it up by wearing different shoulder pads in relation to your armor type, but every suit of armor will only result in your character looking a specific number of ways, thus there is a finite amount of variation in how your character looks. How much variation there is in the end is up to how many "Steps" there are in evolution of armor.

There are a dozen different ways this could be different in the final game, but I went back to the original gameplay trailer for some ideas. Maybe this is only there because the trailer was an early stage before they had enough models or artwork to reflect every item, but I think more than anything this is making me lean in the direction that no matter what armor your char is wearing it will result in it looking a predetermined way as in D2. It looks to me that the shoulder pads are different geometric objects at first glance from the trailer, but there is no way for me to know for sure...seems likely to me. They are probably just picking and choosing the best way to do different parts for the characters.

Some screencaps:

If you have a character that is made up of several pieces ie: the barbarian's body and then you simply attach different armors to it you will have polygons hidden underneath the new armor. That is a waste of memory and loading time. That small amount might not seem like a lot to you, but then add all the other covered areas of the character and you reach a point where it makes more sense to just make a new model that reflects the new suit of armor rather than having the hidden geometry.

Secondly, your computer might be able to put up with loading individual armor on top of your character, but what about the kid down the street who has an older computer that can't? They have to optimize the game so that it works on as many systems as possible. If the game was running off a server in many instances the player is limited by how quickly their computer can download data so by loading all the heavy data onto a Hard drive and calling it up via the web you drastically reduce the download times because that data is already on the comptuer. So, everyone will be on as level a playing field as they can be when they load the disk, they can't make the game for the best computer, in some ways they have to compromise for the worst computer in order to have the game run as best it can. Hence, why they might have chosen to not have the armors simply be separate objects; instead they swap the character model completely to reflect a change in armor.

The issue we are talking about relates to the fact that in D2 as Dimebog brought up was that the character classes had a set armor progression that was designed from the get go, limiting how a character could look when wearing any particular armor. So unless the small bit of info we got is wrong then they are taking a similar approach to this in D3. You are right that textures can make a big difference, I think we are all just hoping for a result that is as best it can be considering limitations. I suspect that there wont be any problems in the end with displaying armor correctly. But, No way to answer these questions at all without more info from Bashiok and Blizzard, so maybe it's just best if we all wait.

Quote from "Seth" »

@ Erebus: Erm, I didn't mean to sound oppressive or anything about it- everyone has a right to their own opinion, not that I'm claiming to know what you do or do not believe.

It's just that, along with most other things said, it's too vague. If it's in reference to what Bashiok was mentioning above (animations in relation to weapons), he's talking about how the animations for armor on characters will be mostly the same. That really does not say anything about the looks of the armor, it just tells us that armor will be behaving as should be expected- staying on our characters in correct positions.

That's what I think, anyway.

Even then, though, he left so much unsaid about armor with that meager sentence that he might as well not said anything about it at all.

I don't think you are being oppressive at all. I have full faith that the end product will be the best it can be. I have no reason to think otherwise given the already tremendous amount of positive things I've seen and read about in far more detail than what we are discussing right now.

However, in relation to the description Bashiok gave, as short as it was I think it's clearly stated that it doesn't effect the modeling costs the more armors there are. Perhaps it's simply an incorrect statement from Bashiok himself, however if in fact armor is displayed the same way as D2 it's because it's the best way to do it efficiently at this point. In terms of memory and polycounts it's inarguable that having the armors integrated into the models topology will make the load much less heavy on the engine, especially when you consider that they are trying to optimize the game for weaker systems and that the amount of armors in the game, if they each had an individual model would be a very large number. I was assuming, probably wishful thinking, that each armor would have a corresponding 3d model that was attached to a player character, but in the end that might not make sense. Both, because of the reasons I stated above, but also the fact that Diablo is not run solely on an online multiplayer basis and that the game has to be able to run smoothly on a home PC's hard-drive. All of these balancing issues are things developers have to juggle everyday and I don't take that lightly. I suspect that if the armors are not individual pieces that the team has found a way to lessen the problems we had in D2 where armor did not always appear as it should given what it was ie: leather looked like metal. Even if they haven't...it's not the end of the world and I don't think people should be jumping to the conclusion that they wanted to disappoint us or are lazy...that's just ridiculous nonsense.

No arguing from me, just sourcing what you asked for. I'm sure we will get a more definitive answer in the future for this...but if it what is being implied right now holds up 100% that isn't what I was expecting. Although I suspect there is more variation than what we are assuming from that simple sentence.

There still aren't any armor restriction planned. Armor is a different issue as it's shown in much the same was as Diablo II, so more types don't actually increase the animation/modeling costs like weapon types would.

Source

From Bashiok

I'm on the fence on this because in the end one of my favorite parts of Diablo II was being able to mix and match weapons to make an unusual character build.

However, If you look at it in the sense that Diablo II didn't actually have nearly as many individually unique weapons or armor ie: at a certain point no matter how you mixed and matched your character would appear as one of maybe 12-15 pre-rendered variations on a sprite. Similarly with weapons most of them looked the same ie: every long sword looked like a long sword except for different stats. (See Edit at the Bottom)With that said because of the 3d engine I would expect a vast array of quickly identifiable variations that wasn't possible in D2 especially since armor is unrestricted on a per class basis. So there wont be any problem in making your character look different except for a few cross class weapons. As much as it saddens me, thinking about the extreme amount of work that goes into making each and every one of those variable items, anyone can come to the conclusion that Diablo 3 is a huge workload. (See Edit at the Bottom)

I get the sense and in fact have the personal opinion that Blizzard is first and foremost concerned about quality from each of their departments. The animation department by it self would probably prefer that if a character was to enable a drastically different weapon that it have a specific effect on the character as a whole while it fights; from an animators perspective that is the end goal to lend to believability and professionalism in the final product. Specifically if a casting character is holding a two handed weapon (As mentioned in the original response) then all of the 300+ skill animations need to be altered to reflect that change and if you are going to go to the trouble of doing that, your basically going to have to invent a way for a character to look cool casting with an axe which would mean re-working an animation from scratch not just moving a hand over from a pre-existing file. They could do that and the problem would be solved, but would it look right? Would they be satisfied with that or is it better to skip what is reasonable to skip and add to the game in other ways that aren't a compromise in their opinions.

Seeing that there will be likely in the 300+ category of animations for each class that would be 1,500 animations for just the playable characters without weapon variations. Then if there are 1000 monster types with say 20 animations each on them that would be another 20,000 animations for the department. So (Purely guessing at this to make a point the numbers could in the end be more or less for all I know.) that would be a total of 21,500 animations that need to be created in the development cycle. So lets say that Blizzard had 50 people working on animations for D3 that would roughly equal out to 430 animations each. If they did them all perfect the first time and got them approved (Which probably would never happen.) that would take them roughly a year if they completed one and a half-ish each day. Not to mention that they have to add and create particle effects etc. to each skill that requires them. So in the end if they are looking to meet a release date would they really want to go back and then probably more than double their character class animations for the sake of having each class be able to use every weapon in the game? They could cut those down, by letting character classes share animation clips, but would that look right if a Witch Doctor moved like a Barb when carrying a Long sword? Again, if it's not going to be the best it can be why compromise?

Anyway...if you think about it in those terms...it's not something you'd take lightly when managing a games development schedule as well as obviously not being something that can be solved as easily as some may claim. There is always an easy way yes...but is it the right way to make a game?

On top of all this, we know that the game play mechanics will be different for D3 in that we do not individually assign stats to our characters and rather they are upgraded for us as we pick from the now larger skill tree. How can we judge the end product of the game without knowing exactly how it's going to work and playing it hands on. I doubt that the final game will be anything, but up to the high standard we are all expecting.

And in a comparison between a 2D and a 3D game, everything in 2D is harder to do. Which makes it very sad, on the 3d Game side, if the 2d one achieved more.

^Technically speaking D2 was a 3d game in that all the sprites were modeled, animated and rigged in 3d then simply rendered as 2d sprites. It's not that it's easier or harder to do in D2 rather that D2 was far less complex due to the limitations of the time. D3 has a higher bench mark to hit, in order to meet the demands of current gamers. At least in my opinion.

EDIT:

Hmmm...I missed this part:

There still aren't any armor restriction planned. Armor is a different issue as it's shown in much the same was as Diablo II, so more types don't actually increase the animation/modeling costs like weapon types would.

Source

While it doesn't effect the fact that all the animations would have to be altered as I previously figured, that info does change what I thought was a larger workload in modeling each individual armor for game-play.

Quote from "Seth" »

I was just about to post about that after I checked your website. Is that some form of magic? Can we be expecting even more fantastic effects?

Ya Seth the game will utilize magic and effects to both spice up gameplay/visual interest as well as give you something else to work for as you level other than finding or purchasing new weapons as you gain money. The effect in that screen is just preliminary test and I hope to expand on it as well as improve on the effects and animations as I continue to develop more ways for you to destroy demons in fun ways. Hopefully when you get a chance to see these things in motion you will enjoy them to an even greater extent as the animation as well as sound associated with the attacks adds quite a bit.

That looks awesome! Are you going to make it free to download/play?

I haven't yet officially decided how I am going to release the game, I have considered a model where I'd release the game for free possibly asking for donations from those who felt they wanted to help. The official release wont be for a while, so it somewhat depends on how expansive the game gets and how many people are interested in playing it. It's all just projecting into the future right now my main goal is always to make the game the best it can be for both me and you, I'll worry about pricing details when we get to the bridge.

I am considering entering the fan art contest.

Thanks guys, I'll make sure to let you all know when the game is ready to test to that extent, it will no doubt be the best way to make sure the game is both fun from a user perspective as well as fair and balanced. I'm trying my best to approach my schedule of development with the game as professionally as possible so I wont be releasing anything until I feel it's ready to meet the demands of living on it's own. Any input you guys give however on what I make available or where you'd like to see the game go is always taken into great consideration even now. So as I've said before I appreciate the support and interest, especially from the perspective of seasoned gamers.

Quote from "24Seven" »

I guess I'm in the minority in thinking that party globes are a good idea. Imagine you have a party with a couple tanks and some range players. If the globes are distributed evenly, how do the tank characters heal themselves? The problem with party globes is that damage is not going to be even distributed so making health evenly distributed creates a problem.

(Plus it sounds very pinko commie ;->)

I think that may be why they are experimenting with skills for the tanks that will allow them a slightly better chance to survive a bit longer in close range ie: On death hit gain 30 health for Barb.