Serious: What's the reason for the look of the NPCs? Technical difficulties?

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UniTrader
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Post by UniTrader » Sat, 20. May 17, 22:14

Nikola515 wrote:It is just possible that they didn't have much time to develop NPC's on first place. I think one of devs was saying something about adding FPS walks to XR in late development.... That would explain why some of NPC hands looks like they are made out of wood :roll: Or perhaps it is engine limitations ???? I would love to see how they would look in XR VR ?
considering this Screen from early 2012 i think they had the NPCs for a while:
https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=320565
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Post by Nikola515 » Sun, 21. May 17, 01:23

That hardly looks like in game footage ;) I can be wrong but I heard some of mods actually looked at 3D NPC models and they look much better than in game it self ?
It's not world hunger because we can't feed poor,it's because there will never be enough to feed the rich .....

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Post by UniTrader » Sun, 21. May 17, 07:25

yeah, it may not be InGame-Footage, but do you think they designed the Characters (and Interior) there just for this April Fools Joke? i would say they had both at this point and made the mockup we got there with them. Just polished up a bit specifically for this Screen.

If you look closer you notice that the Clothing on both female characters in the April Fools Screen is the same as that of the Captain/Manager i posted earlier, just colored diffrently. And their Head is basically Yishas Head with a slightly diffrent Hair Color.
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Post by Nikola515 » Sun, 21. May 17, 10:51

I think they originally wanted to have something like Freelancer but changed to FPS walking. This would explain poor textures and NPC animations. But you are right they do look similar just like in game... Ill try to find that post but i think they wanted to do something with point & click for station navigations....
It's not world hunger because we can't feed poor,it's because there will never be enough to feed the rich .....

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Post by mr.WHO » Sun, 21. May 17, 16:53

Nikola515 wrote:I think they originally wanted to have something like Freelancer but changed to FPS walking. This would explain poor textures and NPC animations. But you are right they do look similar just like in game... Ill try to find that post but i think they wanted to do something with point & click for station navigations....
I wish they would go with Freelancer style of "walking". FPP walking was nice for first 5 minutes and then it become painfully boring and reperetive experience (in dark times of X-Rebirth 1.0)

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Post by Nikola515 » Mon, 22. May 17, 03:14

mr.WHO wrote:
Nikola515 wrote:I think they originally wanted to have something like Freelancer but changed to FPS walking. This would explain poor textures and NPC animations. But you are right they do look similar just like in game... Ill try to find that post but i think they wanted to do something with point & click for station navigations....
I wish they would go with Freelancer style of "walking". FPP walking was nice for first 5 minutes and then it become painfully boring and reperetive experience (in dark times of X-Rebirth 1.0)


All though I like FPS walks in station I agree with you 100%. At this point there is nothing to do in stations worth of FPS on first place. Maybe if they ever decided to do FPS boarding or some useful interaction than I would like to see it. Something what SC is doing right now.... But yes Freelancer style would have been perfect for XR and it would be cheaper to build it.
It's not world hunger because we can't feed poor,it's because there will never be enough to feed the rich .....

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Post by mr.WHO » Mon, 22. May 17, 16:50

God forbid the FPP boarding - Egosoft has no experience with FPP shooters, so the end result would be even worse abomination that FPP station walk.

At best it would be the rambo style you alone vs 100 marines which is silly.

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Post by Nikola515 » Mon, 22. May 17, 19:08

mr.WHO wrote:God forbid the FPP boarding - Egosoft has no experience with FPP shooters, so the end result would be even worse abomination that FPP station walk.

At best it would be the rambo style you alone vs 100 marines which is silly.
That would be funny to play :lol: They could always put flying drones instead (cargo drone vs player Rambo style) :wink: But something is telling me that they will probably keep FPS walks and I hope they find a way to keep them interesting.
It's not world hunger because we can't feed poor,it's because there will never be enough to feed the rich .....

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Post by linolafett » Tue, 23. May 17, 09:38

UniTrader wrote: considering this Screen from early 2012 i think they had the NPCs for a while:
https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=320565
That image was done by me. I used Yishas model and some teladi assets. The scene was rendered in the "captains office" room. All meshes are like they are taken from the game (aside of the disco ball :D ).
The image was rendered in a 3d tool (blender) is therefore not ingame footage and just looks from the shading/lights much better.
01001100 01101001 01101110 01100101 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110100 01101001 01101101 01100101 01110011 00101110 00101110 00101110

My art stuff

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mr.WHO
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Post by mr.WHO » Tue, 23. May 17, 17:20

I must admit that even if overall image was buffed the Yisha face is even worse than ingame :)

This makes me wonder about X4 - will we return to betty or will we be able to choose/customize our copilot/crew?

Betty seems like easier, cheaper and safer option, but some tiny masohist inside me can imagine "space granny" co-pilot :)

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Post by dfm5000 » Tue, 23. May 17, 20:09

They've learned there lesson the in game models will look like this now without a doubt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVRB-aPYci8

To keep up with Star Citizen planets generate worlds that look like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO0EKdy ... L&index=77

nalim27
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Very good Human models

Post by nalim27 » Thu, 25. May 17, 01:03

Hi,
for accurate human models I recommend OpenSource tool Make Human. You can create for example 30 different models very quickly.

http://www.makehuman.org/
Mine rig - X4 ready :-) Windows 10 64b
CPU: AMD Ryzen 2700X (stock clocks 3.7GHz + 4.3GHz boost), 32GB DDR4 3200MHz CL14 RAM,
GPU: AMD Vega64 8 GB HBM, played on 2569x1440, Freesync2
SSD: Samsung 970 EVO 1TB M.2 PCI-ex

CPU before 1.7.2018: Intel Xeon E5450@3.6GHz, 8GB DDR2 800MHz RAM,

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Post by dfm5000 » Fri, 26. May 17, 10:43

That actually looks worst then what their using in X-Rebirth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2ACKt9bssc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOz4n1QOqXs
==============================================
The biggest problem Ego suffers from is the same thing every other company suffers from they fail to make character hair. It's hard to immerse yourself in a game where everyone is bald because someone failed to hire a woman that could implement hair.

Majority of the time for people that play Skyrim or Sims it's always a female Modder that is making the hair.

The next huge thing that fails them, is space games take a while to develop by the time they get X4 out, other engines will be light years ahead of them. Don't make your fans wait this time we already waited for X-Rebirth 7 years. Allow people to participate in a Alpha product, as a fan of this game I don't want wait another long stretch to find out we are duped again.


Thirdly you need to provide us with better development tools, ego soft community is the equivalent to the Bethesda and Bohemia Interactive community. Your games all suck in vanilla but usually the modders were provided with the right tools to begin making the game a billion times more enjoyable then vanilla.

With the right tools even X-Rebirth could have been a great game.

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Post by jkflipflop98 » Sat, 27. May 17, 18:40

linolafett wrote:
UniTrader wrote: considering this Screen from early 2012 i think they had the NPCs for a while:
https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=320565
That image was done by me. I used Yishas model and some teladi assets. The scene was rendered in the "captains office" room. All meshes are like they are taken from the game (aside of the disco ball :D ).
The image was rendered in a 3d tool (blender) is therefore not ingame footage and just looks from the shading/lights much better.
Well then, there's the answer. The game needs better lighting and shaders. The engine should be doing all it can to make the models look better, not making them look so much worse. yisha looks a million times better in that promo picture than the model in the game does.

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Post by mr.WHO » Sat, 27. May 17, 19:11

I think that there is another factor why NPC appear more ugly then they are - bad speech lines.
I mean in gloomy day same things looks worse than in sunny day.
In X-Rebirth literally all characters starting from Yisha act and speak the way that you want to throw them out via nearest airlock.

When someone irritate you, you start to see bad things much more than the good things and the visual appearance is a first victim.

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Post by MegaJohnny » Sat, 27. May 17, 20:02

jkflipflop98 wrote:Well then, there's the answer. The game needs better lighting and shaders. The engine should be doing all it can to make the models look better, not making them look so much worse. yisha looks a million times better in that promo picture than the model in the game does.
I don't have a strong opinion on the game's lighting, but bear in mind that image didn't have to be rendered in real time.

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Re: Serious: What's the reason for the look of the NPCs? Technical difficulties?

Post by kelmenwong » Tue, 30. May 17, 01:30

Boringnick wrote:Was there ever an official explanation given?...
not that i know of. but OBVIOUSLY, it's QA process issue.

any non-blind QA should noticed those fugliness.

it can be QA feedback the poor quality, but their management decided to ignore it. very likely due to $

it cost $ to get studio to workup good model.

but anyway, the quality-"assurance" process is obviously failed.

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Post by Privata » Tue, 30. May 17, 14:46

Boringnick wrote:Also, the Teladi and Split models aren't stellar, but they are much better than the human ones. It's obvious why though: Far less "uncanny valley" with aliens.

Replaying XR the last few days I had an epiphany: The setting of the game should have been an alien sector! (protagonist could stay human for identification purposes). Sure, it would be weird at first, but the team had obviously far more talent creating alien models.

I think an all-alien cast would raise some eyebrows, but, ultimately, would have been more warmly received than the fugly human NPCs.
I love that idea.
X1 and 2 had a very alien feel (to me at least) and its something I felt was missing in TC (to a point) and XR.

On top of that the main quest for the hero could be to find a way back to argon space. a reflection of older X games stories but with a new modern twist.

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Post by Sam L.R. Griffiths » Fri, 2. Jun 17, 09:26

Quality of art assets such as textures/models is a VERY subjective thing and where QA assessment of them is concerned it will depend on the briefing they are given.

From a purely technical aspect, the models/textures are largely ok (everything is to the right proportions and in the right place, and there are no obvious modelling flaws - e.g. unexpected holes, flipped faces, misaligned normals, or t-vertices). They are far from stellar in terms of aesthetic looks and IMO there is no good reason for them to be overly aesthetically pleasing.
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Post by BigBANGtheory » Sat, 3. Jun 17, 00:28

Pretty much everything from the consumer PoV is subjective, that doesn't make it any more or less relevant. The facts are that PC gamers have enjoyed highly detailed character models for many years and reasonably expect progression. When regression objectively happens it stands to reason that it becomes a focus of attention and jest.

It feels to me the models are operating on the same scale as the larger universe and are thus suffering from detail due to their size. You see the same effect in simulators like DCS and Take on Helicopters.

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