Dead State - Design Update: Character Models

Another design update over at the Dead State forums. They've gone from having 16 pieces for each character to just two for companions: a head and body. While having three for generic people: head, hair and body. There is a before and after shot over at the forum.

Here are the reasons for this change:

A couple of reasons why we made this decision:

 

- It runs faster. Less objects is easier for the computer.

 

- Less seams. You can see a bit of a lighting issue on old R____'s right arm, near the shoulder. That's the point where the arm would be taken off if it were cut off.

 

- Less wasteful textures. Before, we had to load the texture information for the entire naked body, even if you only saw the head and arms. Now, there isn't any!

 

- Unique textures. Every pixel of the texture can now be unique to that companion, which, for example, allowed us the tattoos, and the personalized face. That means every companion gets his/her own face, and other NPCs will get a few options as well, whereas this was just one male and one female before.

 

- Unique models. As long as we keep to the standard skeleton, we can vary the proportions. R____ here is a bit chubbier than other women might be, and we can make others thicker still. Nothing too radical, but but a bit of character nonetheless.

 

The textures are a bit bigger, but that it won't hurt performance; they're still very small compared to modern games, and don't use normal and specular maps. Again, a comparison between the old and the new, where the red lines indicate the edges of the separate textures (that is, 6 for the old one, 2 for the new).

 

In all, this ought to make Dead State's characters less of a drain on your computer and less of a sore for your eyes.