I really like the update. The graphics are getting gorgeous, especially the landscapes, and the animations look top-notch.

I approve this message. Great job. 365 days and counting. /em salute

The game's getting better looking all the time. Great update.

Looking good, but not obnoxiously so ;) I've always found graphics overrated...maybe I'm just poor.

I'm glad to see you're taking the slow route on the Avatar Builder: making sure all the pieces work before adding more. And it's good that there'll be more boot lengths than knee high!

Nicely, nicely. Happy holidays, and keep on keeping on...

All I was expecting was an outfit update...

Well, I got it. Great progress, even though I don't know the technicals, glad you explain.

Silent Sillo wrote:

"Rooftops like we bringing 88 back"
Nice rooftop party - lounge theme. I also like how the bot actually walked on the steps. Many games glitch at that point, usually causing hovering.
This stage looks vivid compared to completed games on the market.

My go-to comparison for MMO appearance quality is Neverwinter; it's solid in terms of appearance without being really graphically notable. Pretty if you turn up the settings, but still fairly light on the computer.

The video we saw here isn't up to par with what we'd see in Neverwinter, but that's mostly because the areas are fairly empty. Once there's some clutter around, I imagine it'll be easier to see the beauty of things; for instance, the suburban test neighborhood I feel looked much better than what we got here. that mostly had to do with the detail, though. At the same time, though, it'd be capable of running better on low end computers due to fewer particle effects being in the environment. That's a thing of beauty, and exactly what I want.

As to the character creator: yay! So looking forward to that. So so much.

Halae wrote:

Silent Sillo wrote:
"Rooftops like we bringing 88 back"
Nice rooftop party - lounge theme. I also like how the bot actually walked on the steps. Many games glitch at that point, usually causing hovering.
This stage looks vivid compared to completed games on the market.
My go-to comparison for MMO appearance quality is Neverwinter; it's solid in terms of appearance without being really graphically notable. Pretty if you turn up the settings, but still fairly light on the computer.
The video we saw here isn't up to par with what we'd see in Neverwinter, but that's mostly because the areas are fairly empty. Once there's some clutter around, I imagine it'll be easier to see the beauty of things; for instance, the suburban test neighborhood I feel looked much better than what we got here. that mostly had to do with the detail, though. At the same time, though, it'd be capable of running better on low end computers due to fewer particle effects being in the environment. That's a thing of beauty, and exactly what I want.
As to the character creator: yay! So looking forward to that. So so much.

Never Winter had cool detail, fun gameplay. Just limited to phantasy realm and outfits though. The hero elements in COT should fit perfect with those type of graphics

I'll jump to throw money at CoT! Webcomics aren't so much my thing :p

warcabbit wrote:

We're not quite ready to launch, but we're gonna link it all sorts of places.

Yes, once it's ready I'll be reading it. What funding model are you planning to use?

Quote:

Oh, did you guys get the all-hands e-mail I sent? Did you like it?

If you're referring to the "City of Titans, and The Mystery of the Vanishing Emails", marks 1 and 2, then, yes I got them, and if I weren't the type who checks this site daily (or more often ^_^ ), I'd find it to be very useful information. I hadn't noticed until I got them that I hadn't gotten an email for update #168, The Deadly 7.

If you're not referring to the "City of Titans, and The Mystery of the Vanishing Emails", marks 1 and 2, then, no, I have no clue where the all-hands email went. Which would be odd, since the address Kickstarter has is the same one I used to register here...

warcabbit wrote:

We're not quite ready to launch, but we're gonna link it all sorts of places.
Oh, did you guys get the all-hands e-mail I sent? Did you like it?

No I did not get your email. I changed my email and just updated the mail here last night.

as to the update: Magnificent! Now this is an update!
Video: Looking good...but what stands out are the EMOTES! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
The first zone is looking sweet. But my eyes were riveted by the animations.

The costume update is a welcome site. after COH, we are all spoiled. You are doing this right!

This update gets an A+. A round of applause goes to the entire MWM team!

Right now we are working on control of number and placement of textures, ie best way to be able to put one thing on one hand, another on the other arm but NOT over the glove, etc.

Shadow Elusive wrote:

Right now we are working on control of number and placement of textures, ie best way to be able to put one thing on one hand, another on the other arm but NOT over the glove, etc.

Good to hear! So it's not scrapped then :p

I suppose it could be troublesome to allow such variety of placement in a way that's user-friendly

And performance friendly, that's another biggie.

Great Update! Here's to celebrating the 4th in the City next year. Also I did not get the All Hands email.

Inquiry.

That lighthouse you showed.

I looked at that structural design and the first thing that came to mind was that it would be really cool if the light beams from the rotating lamp inside the structure could illuminate the "arms" of the lighthouse on either side as they sweep around ... and ... if those portions of the "arms" of the lighthouse were covered in a highly reflective material. Angle the "arms" in such a way as to make them SHINE with the illumination from the rotating lamp and you could get a very distinctive and nifty looking (secondary?) strobe effect of light on those structural elements.

I'm thinking that something relatively simple light this (reflected light) would be somewhat trivial to do with UE4, but you have to build for it if you want to do it.

Just an opportunity that probably shouldn't get passed over.

Could also do fiber-optics throughout the wing, to transfer the light hitting the side and/or bent front across the whole wing. Or even along the rim.

The texture on the lighthouse appeared to be a brick and that texture appeared to be over every inch of the house. I figured that the wings at least would be metal. But based on the above having the wings made of glass or act as a reflector would be really cool. Radiac had a good start, but having the wings angled and shaped to reflect or diffuse the light through their entire surface area would be quite spectacular from out to sea. You would of course need to have a dual beam light inside to have both wings light up simultaneously. I have some other ideas about the illumination of the lighthouse but it may depend on the light houses history. One thing that did disappoint me was that the lighthouse is basically a lighthouse with giant wings painted yellow, it's a bit too utilitarian. You gave it the wings, go full Art Deco with it. Make the light coopula a phoenix head, give the lower tower a bit of form and detail (ideally clad in polished metal) so that it looks like the body of the phoenix. Combined with the reflecting wings the lighthouse would truly be a sight, a destination, a wonder of the eastern seaboard.

Second note. The windows on the side of the buildings didn't line up with the windows on the front of the building. They were about half a floor off. If only a single window were like that I could see that being the stairwell but it was the entire level of windows. /alpha tester

I did like the video and the comic looks like it will be fun. I'm not super thrilled with having to sign up for another site and hand over CC information. I think patreon is a recurring payment too. which is great for the artists and I've been pushing my art major sister to set up there (but she's stubborn) but not ideal for patrons. Maybe that's just my bills speaking. I've been unlucky lately.

I like what I am seeing in regards to customization and architecture (also the first zone looks nice). And I do also like the idea of a comic.....

Redlynne wrote:

desviper wrote:
Could also do fiber-optics throughout the wing, to transfer the light hitting the side and/or bent front across the whole wing. Or even along the rim.
Ehh ... I suppose you could, in terms of "build it in the computer" ... but Lore-wise, I'd have a hard time justifying such a thing. First of all, fiber-optics didn't really become a "cheap" technology until the 90s, so such a feature really wouldn't "make sense" unless the lighthouse got (historically) refurbished some time after 2000, which for a building is really narrow time frame for installing such a feature, and even then it would be a retrofit.
Now, in terms of razz-matazz, I'll readily admit that installing "light pipes" into the edge of the wing pointing at the building and then "routing" that light to show up as "stars" that light up in the darkened (because the beam of light doesn't illuminate everything) portions of the wing, that would be VISUALLY impressive! Totally a retro art-deco effort though.

Didn't a huge hurricane hit Titan City in 1998? I'd think that'd be a good enough event to justify a refurb.

Most people never realized that the reason superspeed had a bright aura around your feet was to provide a visual interruption so it wasn't obvious that they were "moonwalking". Sleight of... foot? can cover a great many sins. One of the really nice things about UE4, though, is that you can control the speed of animations, in multiple ways, and making them sync up to how far the feet have moved is actually pretty easy for the simple cases. Still not easy for stuff like climbing stairs, but that's where the engine's and and foot IK anchors come into play. Which means that the animators can focus on getting the overall movement right and not "how can I cope if the ground shifts from flat to a slope without tilting the character early or putting the foot through the ground?" Which I suspect everyone can agree is a better use of time. :)

blacke4dawn wrote:

Silent Sillo wrote:
"Rooftops like we bringing 88 back"
Nice rooftop party - lounge theme. I also like how the bot actually walked on the steps. Many games glitch at that point, usually causing hovering.
This stage looks vivid compared to completed games on the market.
Fairly sure that it's a design decision (or more likely lack of one) since my understanding is that stair are more commonly done as a flat angled plane, like a ramp, with a "stairs texture" underneath it. A.k.a it's built like the actual stairs are underneath a thin sheet of glass. Or at least the clipping plane is set in that way.
I think it has been done so because hardly anyone has routines to automatically step up over low "barriers", hence why one could get stuck on such small things like pebbles or even edges between otherwise flat objects.

And thus it was that stone tanks most powerful adversary was born: the six inch curb.

One of the great things about the advance of technology is that folks find new and creative techniques to do things... and that includes programmers. Such as those at Epic, who -- in either their wisdom, their frustration at the limitations or earlier engines, the bidding of product management, or more than one of the above -- caused UE4 to join the class of "hardly anyone" (and that is not necessarily an inaccurate assessment, even now) that supports stepping up and down onto, well... pretty much anything that is set with the flag that says "you can stand on this". Including height limits that can vary based on a number of factors. It partially ties into the fact that they allow "blending" of animation-driven motion and physics / IK-driven motion; as long as the animation has the foot somewhere remotely reasonable for "stepping up", the engine can fine-tune it to actually line up to the "physical surface" involved. And it also handles some amazing sorts of conditional blending of animations, making it a lot easier to get the foot into that "remotely reasonable" spot in the first place.

Best part? If you can run UE4 at all, you can pretty much run that part of the engine at full speed. It is actually fairly cheap, certainly compared to things like hit detection or particle systems of any non-trivial complexity. Most of the cost is in making sure that the animation rigging is set up to handle it cleanly, and that is generally a "once per skeleton" cost. Large, but paid mostly "up front".