Daggerfall Workshop Forums

megaten wrote: ↑Tue Dec 18, 2018 8:45 pm The size also becomes an issue - 700 mbs for only warhamers is a lot, I agree, but I'm not doing anything about that for now

Sure, optimalization comes last... I recommend trying 50% resolution and see how it works visually and size-wise
Also playing with a bit depth can work... but beware that unity changes the bit depth on import I think. So when I made my textures 8bit, it reduced the size on HDD but did not have effect of VRAM/RAM usage ingame (because it was upped on import)
Interkarma / The Lacus or other folks might know more.

Ah... and when u pack it to DFMOD, u can set compression, that will help as well - maybe even reduce size to 2/3 or 1/2 size in good scenario

Texture baking really helps. you get a really high quality material render and polycount and then "bake" the image onto a low poly simple material and model. This is a technique i've used back when I was doing 3d art stuff (8 years ago!) with 3dsmax 2010 and 2011.

SO i've really been smitten by your impressive work and i've just been pondering...

Is it possible to make short swords noticeably short, like having the hilt show?
is it possible to have katanas/wakisashis/tantos?

in the game i mean. i don't know if you've monkeyed around with the code, but i know that each weapon is classed to use a CIF texture, i'm wondering if these classifications can be expanded is all.

I absolutely adore Daggerfall's magical weapon effects, but I understand that besides low resolution they also have atrocious framerate. Using 3D renders is probably inevitable, but I'd at least voice my support for simple, pseudo-realistic surfaces. Among the hammer variants in the first post I'd prefer something between the third and the fourth.
I'm totally happy with the shapes of everything though. If nothing else satisfies purists (like me, to a degree), I'm sure those renders could be used as base for painting into/over them. AFAIK that's how most recent 2D fighting game sprites are done.

I know it's a fine line when updating old, beloved classic. On one side you have overly rigid purism that considers every visual bugfix a desecration of masterpiece. On the other there is a desire to get rid of every visible pixel or polygon edge at the cost of breaking the original distinct art style apart.

Regarding resolution I don't think there is a downside to rendering stuff at absurdly high resolutions. In case you need to go back you don't have to re-render, and your work is a bit more future-proof. What will your grandson with a 16k screen say when you introduce him to Daggerfall? And you can always downscale the final result just before release.
Just today I learned my paperdoll figure is too fat. Luckily I paint at half the target size, so I can just squish the whole thing without noticeable loss of quality.

One more idea - would you render each weapon from the same angle as seen in the inventory screen? I'd grab those, incorporate them in my paperdoll art and we would maintain consistent look among mods. Or anyone else for that matter, if my graphics turn out to be unpopular or I happen to burn out.

I'm working on incorporating my "Spriter" asset into DFU and making a first person weapon mode for it.

https://forums.dfworkshop.net/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1613

What it does is "flatten" a 3D object into a 2D sprite in real-time. Since it's done in real-time, it doesn't pack a sprite atlas so the VRAM usage is only the memory needed to render that one frame. It is also fully configurable so the user can changer their desired resolution and animation framerate. Another benefit is that it picks up the world lighting so the resulting sprite is very dynamic.

Would you mind sharing a 3D weapon mesh and animation for testing purposes?

MasonFace wrote: ↑Mon Jan 14, 2019 3:34 pm I'm working on incorporating my "Spriter" asset into DFU and making a first person weapon mode for it.

https://forums.dfworkshop.net/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1613

What it does is "flatten" a 3D object into a 2D sprite in real-time. Since it's done in real-time, it doesn't pack a sprite atlas so the VRAM usage is only the memory needed to render that one frame. It is also fully configurable so the user can changer their desired resolution and animation framerate. Another benefit is that it picks up the world lighting so the resulting sprite is very dynamic.

Would you mind sharing a 3D weapon mesh and animation for testing purposes?

How many sprites can the spriter support in one scene? For example -player is in exterior of the city of Daggerfall, many NPCs are walking around -so my question is (roughly) how many of them it could support at default visual distance? (Ive noticed that in dungeons and some exteriors, like big taverns, frame rate significantly drops)

Thats quite huge, cant wait for this one.

How many sprites can the spriter support in one scene? For example -player is in exterior of the city of Daggerfall, many NPCs are walking around -so my question is (roughly) how many of them it could support at default visual distance? (Ive noticed that in dungeons and some exteriors, like big taverns, frame rate significantly drops)

In the context of a player's weapon, there should be no noticeable performance hit when using Spriter, but I haven't experimented with using Spriter on a large number of game objects. I suppose how many objects Spriter can handle depends on your PC hardware, whether or not you mean vanilla Daggerfall default view distance, and also the complexity of the models, but it's something that I'm looking forward to benchmarking in the future. I do need to dedicate some more time towards it and polish it up first; I've been spending too much time working on the AI upscales lately.

I like it

added maces