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The importance of smiles.

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Whip
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The importance of smiles.

Hey there, fellow titans!

Smiles are a funny thing. When you see Superman smile, you know everything's going to be okay. Well, that or some serious business is about to go down. Or consider the joker. His grin is equal parts cheerful and completely nuts...then again, it is the joker. From the tiny smirk to the giant cheesy grin, there's a place for smiles everywhere in a superheroic community.

Now, I'm not saying that there's not a place for the surly, angsty hero (I have plenty of those, myself) but what I'd most like to see is a large variety of smiles in the character creator. It's not a big request, but I think it should be put out there.

The fact that I don't have a sig is a nemesis plot, but now that there is one, it could only mean...that my head hurts.

Lin Chiao Feng
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Don't forget to slot Gleaming

Don't forget to slot Gleaming White enhancements in your Smile power. Those have a decent stun(blind) proc.

Seriously, though, facial expressions would be great emotes at the least. Some of the "smiling" faces in CoH were clown-in-a-nightmare scary.

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...

Cymmetri
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There weren't too many

There weren't too many smiling faces, and those than did were a little overboard.

The plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces are called Aglets; their true purpose is sinister.

WarBird
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A greater range of emotion on

A greater range of emotion on the faces would be nice. From Elated to Furious. Somewhere in these threads "face" sliders were mentioned. I used them extensively in CoX. If it were possible to use them to alter the mouth and forehead in such a way as to subtly affect the expression, that would be even better.

Not sure how they'd work as emotes. Mechanically, I mean.

Lin Chiao Feng
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WarBird wrote:
WarBird wrote:

Not sure how they'd work as emotes. Mechanically, I mean.

I'm not either, but I know that Tabula Rasa had a lot of detail in their head models, including things like teeth, making the jaws and eyes separate objects, etc. so there's probably some way to do it.

Or did you mean control mechanics, like say a /em smile command?

(Side note: because TR had all those pieces in the head, they couldn't do the "make character partly transparent" trick to indicate stealth, because it looked a tad disgusting.)

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...

Cymmetri
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WarBird wrote:
WarBird wrote:

A greater range of emotion on the faces would be nice. From Elated to Furious. Somewhere in these threads "face" sliders were mentioned. I used them extensively in CoX. If it were possible to use them to alter the mouth and forehead in such a way as to subtly affect the expression, that would be even better.
Not sure how they'd work as emotes. Mechanically, I mean.

Lots of work, I'd bet. CO doesn't let us have different faces because of the expression tech.

The plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces are called Aglets; their true purpose is sinister.

Gangrel
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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

WarBird wrote:
Not sure how they'd work as emotes. Mechanically, I mean.

I'm not either, but I know that Tabula Rasa had a lot of detail in their head models, including things like teeth, making the jaws and eyes separate objects, etc. so there's probably some way to do it.
Or did you mean control mechanics, like say a /em smile command?
(Side note: because TR had all those pieces in the head, they couldn't do the "make character partly transparent" trick to indicate stealth, because it looked a tad disgusting.)

it was a side effect of the graphics engine (I take it that you are referring the "aura of stench" that cropped up when you were wearing stealth armour.

Deferred lighting (at least the way in the which they implemented it), had a problem with transparencies.

One thing that it *was* good for though, and which it was readily abused for, was the ease of being to able to have multiple *moving* lighting effects affecting a single model easily... it scaled nicely, so that 2 models was *not* double the processor load.

I believe that Rustoleum (one of the TR developers, forget his real name, I might have it written down somewhere) has written a paper or two on it.

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

Riptide
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I touched on it in another

I touched on it in another thread, but SWG had arguably more character customization options than even CoH did and there were very complex character models, for it's day.
Not only were there emotes which made the face smile, frown and scowl etc., but you could set your default expression and change it anytime you wanted.
Additionally, many emotes were triggered by your speech. I called it "contextual emotes". I don't remember if that was the official name.
If I said something in chat like "That makes me mad", my toon would automatically shake his head and scowl. If I said "I feel happy", I'd smile.
Saying "yes" or "no" would make you nod or shake your head appropriately. Typing "LOL" triggered a laugh emote ("ROFL" would actually make you drop on the ground and roll around for a few seconds). Saying "Hi", "bye" or anything similar, would make you wave.
Another, very subtle but very immersive feature, was that anyone you targeted, your toon would "look" at them. I didn't realize how much it added until I moved to CoH.

"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."

Redlynne
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TERA has that system too (now

TERA has that system too (now). They call them "embedded emotes" and are really just keywords in your chat text that kick them off. This was made easier in TERA by the fact that they've really only got about 15 emotes to work with. The thing is, because they had so few emotes, they were actually able to create a UI element which showed you the list of all of the emotes and the keyword that would trigger that emote in chat ... and then gave you the ability to change the keyword to anything you wanted. That way you could set up your character to /lol whenever you said the word "golf" ... or whatever you wanted.


Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.
Lin Chiao Feng
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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

it was a side effect of the graphics engine (I take it that you are referring the "aura of stench" that cropped up when you were wearing stealth armour.

No, that's what shipped. I'm talking about something else: in a conversation with a dev (possibly at the AFSWC), I asked why they didn't make stealth armor do a transparency effect like CoH did.

His response was that they tried that first, but because the eyes, teeth, and tongue were modeled as separate objects outright, (and possibly in a few other areas), turning on transparency made you look like a monster because you could see through the back of your head and see your two eyeballs and the insides of your mouth in their entirety, albeit partly transparently.

That's when they went hunting for other effects they could do, which led to the lighting issues you mention.

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...

Gangrel
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Ahh, I never heard of that

Ahh, I never heard of that side... then again, I never went to the AFSWC, so I have a feeling that it was something that was mentioned there (or at least only to those who asked it).

It looks like it was something that was done fairly on in the game life (pre beta IIRC), because I remember the "aura of stench" in beta. I believe that that effect also caused some players migraines as well...

That definitely looks like a interesting problem to resolve though, and I wish I could have seen that.

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

Shadow Elusive
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I have also played a game

I have also played a game with those keyword emotes...mind you, it was an anime style game (Mabinogi) so expressions were easy. From what I know about the technology being used, this should be possible - no wait. I know for a fact we will be able to control expression at character creation - we will be able to pick a face and then create our expression on it. The dev explaining it to me at the time referred to the technology SWTOR used in their cutscenes on their characters. How easily they can implement a system to change expressions on the fly I don't know.

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Interior Map Lead and UI Designer
Lin Chiao Feng
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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

It looks like it was something that was done fairly on in the game life (pre beta IIRC), because I remember the "aura of stench" in beta. I believe that that effect also caused some players migraines as well...

The impression I got was that it never left the Destination Games offices.

Gangrel wrote:

That definitely looks like a interesting problem to resolve though, and I wish I could have seen that.

You'd have to get creative with the z-buffering. I'm recalling from a decade-old computer graphics class I took, so the terms might not be dead-on, but bear with me. Going to assume knowledge of z-buffering from here on...

So, normally, when the scene is being rendered (I'm assuming) transparent objects don't alter the z-buffer like opaque objects do, so things behind are allowed to "show through". Polygons on the far side of the object are eliminated (i.e. not drawn) as normal (assumption: all objects are closed polyhedra), Some other algorithm then does the alpha blending.

Problem being, of course, is that (for example) the hemisphere of each eye facing the camera gets rendered, even though the camera is behind the head...

To do this right, you need to have two z-buffers: one for the main body in addition to the normal one. So when the main body is rendered, it updates the former buffer and uses the latter z-buffer (which just has the opaque object data) but when the internal objects (eyes, teeth, etc.) are rendered, they use both buffers, so parts "inside" the main body (i.e. farther from the camera) are eliminated.

Needless to say, this is a lot more work and VRAM (which means less VRAM for textures), and probably out of the question for lower-tier video cards in the mid-00's.

I can try sketching an example if it would help. I'm a n00b with Pixelimator, though, (I don't have Photoshop anymore) so it might take a while.

IIRC, there were a bunch of things DG couldn't do because they didn't want to cut off the lower tiers of graphics cards, and having started out on one of those lower tier cards (GeForce 6200, IIRC) which only had a few shaders (or was it pipelines? again, it's been too long) total. I'm glad they made that decision, or I never would have played it. (Odd karma: Richard Garriott himself talked me into playing TR at a NCSoft meet & greet here in Austin, even though I was only there for CoH. The sticking point was the graphics card.)

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...

Gangrel
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It makes sense to me at least

It makes sense to me at least.

Thankfully now, off the shelf game engines have improved a *lot* over the years. Although that is not to say that sometimes it is still beneficial to "roll your own".

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

Lin Chiao Feng
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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

It makes sense to me at least.
Thankfully now, off the shelf game engines have improved a *lot* over the years. Although that is not to say that sometimes it is still beneficial to "roll your own".

By now, there's probably a hundred papers explaining how to do it better and maybe even a patch to the Unreal engine to do it, if it's not already in there.

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...

Gangrel
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Hell, right now, there isn't

Hell, right now, there isn't as much limitations in the graphics RAM either, so even the solutions that were "unfeasible" in the past due to memory limitations, are pretty much going to be null and void now.

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

Lin Chiao Feng
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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

Hell, right now, there isn't as much limitations in the graphics RAM either, so even the solutions that were "unfeasible" in the past due to memory limitations, are pretty much going to be null and void now.

Yeah, but you still have to watch out for I/O bottlenecks and memory bandwidth.

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...