Some player opinions on roleplay and character design etc.

[WKFO]

Copy-pasting directly from Youtube comment section of a video of me showing that Haber container ship, on my suggestion and the commenter's request:

Mads Birkedal Søby

This looks really industrial and gritty, i love it :) Alien vibes!

Is/was space legs ever considered?

I know its like opening up pandoras box of making new game-systems, graphics, sounds, AI etc. etc... But wow, it would be so, so intense.
This game is already very roleplay worthy, because of the realistic flight model, and it feels vast and very lonely. Almost eerie at times.

I think spacewalking, planetwalking and being able to walk around and explore in big industrial ships, would make perfect use of this setting, as a start.

Being able to meet other characters, walk in stations, and maybe even dock with other ships to trade, in person, would compliment this game and the lonesome vastness, so, so much.

And i know a lot of people might immediately assume, that having actual avatars for people ingame, means high poly count, next gen animated characters, full red dead redemption 2 graphics...

Thats not what im after, tho. It has NEVER been what i wanted from a game anyway.
What i enjoy is possibilities and good design.

Take (vanilla) World of Warcraft for example (what an example).
Because of the extremely low poly count, the graphics are very reliant on textures to look good.
BUT! The low polycount also means that every polygon has to be used very well. No polys wasted.

At the same time, it doesnt really matter if its low-poly. Theyre not going for a realistic look. They take the limitations, and make them into an artstyle.
Its like looking at a caricature character, they all have huge hands and feet, the men have arms like logs, its basically a cartoon, and it really just makes sense with the low poly.

Thats why Vanilla WoW still holds water, graphics-wise

Other games simply try to mimic photorealism as much as possible, which IMO, is not really art, more than tracing.
Ofcourse it takes skills to make an IRL tree in a 3D modelling program, but is it art? No. Is it interesting to look at? I dont think so, not compared to a tree-sprite from HoMM 3, which is more a painting, the artists impression of a tree, the way they see trees, the way they want them to look. The feeling they want it to make you feel when looking at it.


Anyway, im ranting.
What im really trying to say is, smack some low poly, simple animated, kinda-low ress texture art characters in the game, and i would play it A LOT.

The RP, the immersion, oh lawd.

If this could lead to actual human combat, space walk ship repairing, and creepy ass spacewreck exploration.. words cannot even.

Regarding character creation (<3):
Do you know Asherons Call?
Old 3D mmorpg.
Character creation consisted of changeable skin color, haircolor and cut, but also, the face consisted of mouth texture, nose texture and eyes texture, just like Pioneer, except it was plastered on a VERY low poly 3D face.

It just worked. So many possibilities, i swear it was good. And simple.


IF you at some point think about making new character textures, consider (plz) making it consistent with possible future lowpoly 3D realtime player and AI controlled character avatars ;)


BIG Love from Denmark.

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WKFO

Not actual 3D walking, but as far as I know there are plans to expand RPG elements a lot. Like point-and-click station interiors, bars where you can meet interesting people, ship-to-ship docking and interactions (boarding even) etc. However, the devs are all volunteers and there are no set deadlines for any project. Point to note here is that most of these things will likely be static image or text based and physics engine will only continue to run the spaceflight part of the game for a while.

Character creating or 2D art are not my things tbh but I'm sure the dev team would like to hear about ideas. I think I'll copy-paste this comment to the dev forum if you don't want to do it yourself.

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Mads Birkedal Søby

please do, by all means :)!

And could you link med to the post if you do :)?

[impaktor]

Indeed. Except for the whole discussion on polygons, this is something I think all devs agree we want. I have zero interest in 3D / polygon stuff. I want the gameplay of characters, thus 2D / isometric or what ever takes least effort to implement and extend is what I'm backing.

@WKFO you can direct the original poster to my rant on the subject here:

My dream for entering stations / cities

[WKFO]

Of course