Chris Parker and Pete Meihuizen Interview
Icewind Dale (IWD) is a dungeon-crawl being developed by Black Isle Studios. Chris Parker, the Producer, and Pete Meihuizen, the Animator, provided answers about the game's art. Yesterday, Matt Norton fielded the design questions. I'd like to thank all the participants for their time and excellent answers.
- Silverdawn (posted November 9, 1999)
Please introduce the various members of the art team and indicate what each is currently focusing their attention on.
(Pete Meihuizen) Okay, we've got Kevin Llewellynn working on concept art and chapter breaks. Aaron "The Master Modeler" Brown modeling levels, and modeling and texturing characters. Kelly Wine on texture maps. Stone Perales is lighting and texturing levels. Derek Johnson and Dennis Presnell are building, lighting and texturing interiors. Jason Manley on character portraits. John "Ping Pong" Dickenson creating the interface. Justin Sweet concepting and overseeing the look and feel of the levels. And myself, Pete Meihuizen, animating. We also have some members of the Planescape crew helping us out. So, we have a pretty good sized team working on the project. And a pretty talented team at that!
You have stated that the animations in IWD will be smoother than those in BG. How was this achieved and how many frames of animation are required for all the actions of a typical monster model?
(Pete Meihuizen) Well, I don't like comparing projects to one another. Lets just say, the way we did things differently is we have tried to come up with different animations for each critter. Some may look similar, but each monster has been individually animated. I would like each character to be unique. So when you see a goblin walking up to you, you won't mistake it for something else. As far as smoothness, I can't give it all away. We like to have our own little tricks of the trade.
Frame-wise, each monster could have anywhere from 172 to 298 frames of animation for each of the eight directions. The numbers given are not exact.
The monsters in IWD can be up to 400% larger than the wyvern of BG as the cyclops animation impressively demonstrates. Describe how you have accomplished this and does it involve "mirroring" the creature models as was necessary to create the larger character models in Planescape: Torment?
(Chris Parker) This was actually a fairly small code change that didn't require much effort. We actually didn't think it was going to work, but we tried it anyways, and it did. We aren't using mirroring or any other tricks. They are just really big sprites. We render them pretty much the same as they appear in the game engine, with a maximum frame size of 256x256 pixels.
I noticed in a screenshot that the cyclops appeared to have a stomping attack. How many different attacks will each monster have and how will they chose which one to use? Frost giants have also been hinted at; will giants have the ability to throw boulders as they do in AD&D?
(Chris Parker) This is determined more by the monsters stats than by anything else. We have support for a monster to have between one and three melee attacks and one ranged attack. If it is a melee attack, the animation chosen is essentially random. For example, the Cyclops has one attack for 6-36 damage, but we thought that it would be visually boring for the 'clops to just punch the characters all the time. So we gave him one punch and one kick and those are just randomly picked between. You still get hit for 6-36 either way, but he doesn't do the same thing over and over. It's the same way BG works.
As for boulders, we do have one of the giant-class creatures with a ranged attack right now. We are trying to come to terms with realism on this a bit. Within the game, we can-t make the giant realistically pick up boulders, so they would have to magically appear or something. We are still arguing about whether we want that to happen or to just give them some other sort of ability to make up for it.
Of the items present in BG, which items do you plan to keep and which do you expect to redo the icon art for? What about the weapons and armour graphics that appear on the characters?
(Chris Parker) We are planning on redoing all of the art from BG with the exception of the PCs within the game world. So all icons will likely be redone on some level. Many of the icons are just going to be cleaned and recolored though, to make them fit our interface. Also, I personally think we should leave the symbols for all of the spells the same for the players that have played BG, I don't see a reason to introduce them to new symbols for that stuff.
We would like to add new art for the character models. That is, new swords and shields and armor and stuff, and we have been conversing with Bioware a bit about that. It is actually extremely complicated, and may be something that only occurs for the exceptional weapons and armor in the game.
Do you plan to change the graphic look of the interface from the current gray stone? The theme so far seems to be in greenish/ice blue, brown and off-white, and related to trees.
(Chris Parker) Yes. We should have some interface material ready for release soon.
The character portraits in BG were amazing. What style are you planning for the portraits in IWD and how many will there be to choose from?
(Chris Parker) There are 32 different portraits planned for currently, of which you have seen a few. We picked a couple of the early ones and placed them on the Icewind Dale website [they were released while this interview was in progress]. The paintings of characters are actually our portraits, and that style will be the style for all of them. The whole body view will only be seen at character creation and on the Character Record screen though. We take a cut-out bust shot of the character for the right side of the screen.
|
RSS Feeds
