Weekly Torch - the barrel of questions

Now you can ask questions to Jan “Bodkin” Němec from our design team.

Are the faces of the characters, well the common npc’s at least, final? Something feels off about them.
The enviroments look great, but then the npc with a blank face just walks through.

1 Like

True, those people do not fit the environment.

Hello Jan,

is there a story behind? :slight_smile:

Looks like, work at WH is dangerous (“Picture”)
https://forum.kingdomcomerpg.com/uploads/default/original/3X/5/1/51352a842a0bee7e33fc27c5a5086939461597a5.jpg
Do you have friends at work? After you designed your quest,… do you need now protection?
Or is this a kind of corporate identity…???

What is the name of your quest?

Which parts(of your quest) haven´t worked, and will not be part of the game?
Many things, which are in the game are(at the moment) a secret, but maybe you can talk about, what´s not included…

There is one sentence I am really proud of.<

Tell more…, plaese!

1 Like

Hi Bodkin!
For start, is it possible that I know you? Perhaps from Pavel Renčín’s underground movement, ruled by evil triumvirate? :-))

But to the real stuff now :slight_smile:
Can you tell us something more about your quest? Is it core story, or side quest? You have said you weep silently, is it love story? :heart:
And you wore armor. For best immersion you should wear gloves, they are changing whole experience! :grin:
Did you have to change something about your quest, when was decided that dog companions will not be included and polearms were added?

And now you can ask questions to our Animator Karel “pan Tau” Taufman.

Hi Karel,

In every game we get to see walks,

But in real live every person walks different. Normally you can identify a far away person just by watching him walking. Also groups of persons; old people walk slower, younger walk more dynamically and maybe they hurry more. Woman walk with more caution…drunken people… ect.

Have you made different animation for all these groups? Has every NPC different walking (or let´s say animation in general), predefined by parameters? Are there unique animationssets for special NPCs?

very close to each other, many markers were hidden from the cameras and the actors’ motion could not be recorded properly

Have you recorded some seasons with only one actor and/or on a glass plate? Or have you recorded the bed scens in the vertical? In the end have overlayed all this movements?
(Glass plate> being abel to see the markers from the bottom)

We use an in-house tool to procedurally build basic mouth animation from the dialogues

Lipsync; in the forum is a big discussion about this and the quality of it.
Can we expect only for the English language lipsync, or for German and French also? Will there be a different lip movement for every language, or only one and the different speakers bring it in order (like in a movie)?
Can you tell us the speakers for the German version?

The new trailer is …okay, but maybe a little rushed. Like at 0:37 or1:10 where you can see through the body under the armour.
Wasn´t enough time for a quality check?

At the end of the new trailer we saw arm wrestling.
Is arm wrestling also a mini game, or just a cutsceen?

similar motions turn up not only in games

Are all animations made by WH,or is there a kind of database/market where you can get/buy animations?

for the stone that gets loaded into a trebuchet.

Can Henry handle/use a trebuchet? Or is this also only for cutsceens?

Is facial capture to expensive? Wouldn´t this be much faster and with a better quality, than doing this by hand/your basic face tool?

1 Like

Hi there, first of all good work and keep tight until to release date.

  • Cumans are will be an important role at story mode?
  • Are you thinking add 3rd view option? I hope not…

I think they planned to let you fire from trebuchet. Otherwise good questions.

Hi,

Will the animations be significantly improved in final game?

I’m sorry to say it, because there is obviously lot of work behind it, but animations are so far the weakest part of Kingdom come.
When you go through village characters don’t look like people, they move like awkward robots.
During dialogue they stay like two planks. Facial animations are also not very impressive.
Both in and outside combat:
Transitions between animations are unnatural. Character are changing direction like they don’t have any weight. There is awful lot of foot sliding:

Why there is no clothes, hair and armor physics?

I just want to remind something Dan Vávra wrote in article about skyrim:

A 2011 game where half the characters wears different coats and flowing clothes, and it does not attempt to simulate the physics of clothes is a bad game.”

Sorry to be so harsh, hope you will improve the animations.
Good luck

4 Likes

I’ve seen in trailer, that only long coats had cloth physics. Maybe, i’m wrong, but that’s it. :confused:
P.S But, we’re playing in first person, so… I’m not going to be hyped for cloth physics, if i’m not able to see this on my character like it was in Mafia 2.

During e3 presentation the small part of gameplay was shown.the characters look wooden and even there is no movement; no blinking of eyes.Is the dialog system final in game or are u going to fix it??? In beta it seems better

That is some high quality breakdancing right there.

That’s a good one!

2 Likes

Now you can ask questions to our Lead Cinematic Designer Martin Klekner.

You were involved in the recent change of Henrys hair-style, can you tell us more about that?

(…) But I did make some comments about Henry looking a bit too metrosexual for a son of a blacksmith. And I probably mentioned this to Dan, Miki and Ivan… :smiley:

Man of the people! True hero! You will be forever remembered as a saviour of KC:D! Who came up with the original hair cut to begin with? How come that Dan Vávra was ok with that metrosexual look, considering his ranting on fb how hard it was to find a manly actor for the main hero, because all of them were feminine hispters with high pitched voices?

9 Likes

They were not manly for their voices, they could not yell, scream, talk tough, that way it was meant. Not about the appearance. Obviously old Henry’s haircut looked too modern.

So your 4 member Cinematic dept. has less than 1,5 year to assemble animations from mo-cap into polished 3 hours cut-scenes right? Than each of you have to produce 10 minutes of finished product each month? Or do you iterate the whole thing together with with quality passes? How do you work in the team?

"trying to achieve the best results possible in our limited conditions"
What do you feel is limiting you the most? Is it just time/money limitation? Or do you wish for better technology or more people perhaps?

The production quality of your new story trailer exceeded my expectations tremendously (congrats to 2mils views in 8 days just on WH channel), but there are some people hoping for improved facial animations. Will you take some extra care to improve on those in final product?

I wonder how difficult it is to make facial animations right? 60 hours of voice-overs must be hell. But the Google’s DeepMind AI can lip-read TV shows with shocking accuracy now. I wonder when someone will make AI to make lip-sync perfect in games.

1 Like

Hey Martin,

nice work with the game so far. Big fan. My question: Why do you have procedually generated mouth animations, but have to craft every blink and eye movement yourself? It should be easier to create a similar algorith which automatically lets character blink from time to time, move the eye in a natural way, and so on. Other games have done this as well. Would it not be a waste of your time to handcraft everything?

Also, you said you played the Witcher 2, but not 3. Try it some time, see what I mean - they got the facial stuff right in that game. :slight_smile:

And about the haircut of Henry - why not make a barber ingame, where you can choose between some hairstyles? Would be nice to have. But probably not your department, so you can ignore this question, haha.

Thanks for your answers.

That’s really sad. Can you not somehow adjust the engine itself to combat this bug? It really breaks the immersion. Just imagine the videos on youtube after release, showing one of your sieges (200 knights breakdancing - hilarious bug). If you can not fix it, get someone who can! Game development is hard these days, no shame in admitting that you need help. Maybe get some crytek guys to check this problem out, maybe they could help. Thanks.

2 Likes