Weekly Torch - the barrel of questions

[kaiman]

Personally, my main motivation for playing games these days is primarily to experience a good story, making P&C Adventures and story-driven RPGs my favourite genres. Visuals are secondary to me, so forgive me for jumping at the following statement:

“I believe there is a lot of unexplored territories when it comes to storytelling in games when compared to other works of drama.”

Are you satisfied with how this aspect is handled in KC:D?

If you had a say in the writing department, what would you add, change or remove?

[Waldkauz]

1. Will there be disabled or ill NPC’s (fever, limping, hunch, harelip, blind, one-eyed etc.) in the game and if how difficult is it to get some data for the animation, so it looks realistic?

2. Did you have to do some research how a mass was celebrated at 1403? Is it well known or was it partial guessing?

3. Could we expect to see NPC’s doing old craftmanship that is forgotten or nearly forgotten?

4. Any specials about the dog animations?

5. Any chance to see hunting animals like a fox taking a chicken?

6. Will there be different personal expressions of emotions? The emotional expression from some people nearly everybody is able to interpret varies to some other people showing only poker faces.

[iamidea]

My Qns:
(1) Nowadays, people are utilizing full performance capture (body, face and voice). Are u using any such method now? or planning to do in future Acts?

(2) Tomáš Plch mentioned about adaptive animations. What is it actually?

(3) How do you test your animations while the game is still in development?

(4) What improvisations do u usually do in making of cutscenes? (in other words, going beyond the storyboard provided) Did u get appreciations for such improvisations? Any instances?

(5) Any funny bug encountered while making animations or cut-scenes?

(6) Which are the recent games u awed for the quality of animations and cutscenes?

(7) Ur favorite buddy whom u usually hangout in workplace?

(8) Any person u envy in KCD for their talent/genius? Who is it?

Thank u…

[DrFusselpulli]

Now you can as questions to Cinematic Designer Petr “Pepe” Pekař.

[kaiman]

I am a bit torn when it comes to cutscenes in video games. In the past, when the actual in-game graphics were restricted by technology, a cutscene could be very rewarding for the player indeed, and convey information that could not be easily presented in-engine. In modern games, however, I see less need for cutscenes, and rather have every part of the experience be interactive, especially if it is a first person game like KC:D. So my questions:

• What’s the purpose of cutscenes in KC:D from a game design perspective?
• Will cutscenes be reasonably short?
• Will cutscenes include actions of Henry not controlled by the player? I.e. conversation, etc.?

Another gripe of mine with cutscenes in many games is that they often cannot be paused, and neither be replayed. I know this does not fall under your responsibility, but perhaps you’re in the know regardless:

• Will I be able to pause inmidst a cutscene, if important matters (read: my wife) call me away from the PC?

[DrFusselpulli]

And now it is time to ask questions to our Marketing Manager Josef “Pepa” Vítek.

[Blacksmith]

Can we expect new merchandise products in the shop?
Maybe Henrys hand forged “stealth” dagger?
The kickstarter stuff, … the coins etc?
Will there be (another) contest to win cool stuff?
Can we expect a PS4 or X1 bundled with KCD?
Waiting for a new video…

[DrFusselpulli]

And now you can ask question to our Environment Artist Gabrielle “Brie” Adams. It´s fun!

[Blacksmith]

Your grafics look fantastic! Can´t wait for more…

I am making LODs (level of detail) <

How many different LOD will we have in the game (PC version)? Any difference to the console version?

Is the bell on the screenshot funktional? Can the player ring the bell?

The trophys on the wall,… can the player hunt all of them?

Usually makes no difference as long as I can give them a stupid name
and laugh when npcs have to say it or when I see it written somewhere.<

You can´t rename Henry,… are you working on the wrong game?

What is your favorite current game? Which game (and film) is your all time high?

Prage is a nice city. Do you stay longer, and work on… KCD2?

[Wenceslaus]

Hello! I’m glad you enjoy living in Prague. Also, you are doing great work making the world feel alive… I mean dead… eh… believable?

I always wanted to be able to walk to work and now I do through a tunnel every day!

I suppose you meant the Žižkovský tunel. Did you know it is an entrance of a small Vault from 1950’s? No water chip or G.E.C.K. though…

I am making LODs (level of detail) of objects which reduce the poly count of the model the further away the player gets from it.

Does all LOD need new textures?

Do you use programs like Quixel or Substance Painter?

Warhorse Studios Weekly Torch

The “bacon” here isn’t really bacon at all.

How does the true bacon looks like?

Thank you.

[iamidea]

My QNS:
(1) How do you continue to grow your passion and skills as an artist?
(2) Is there anything on the horizon, an upcoming trend or technology, you’re excited about how it will change the way you create?
(3) How far u used photogrammetry in KCD?
(4) Any Easter Egg u placed already?
(5) How much FPS is increased after applying LODs of objects?
Thank u…

[DrFusselpulli]

If you have any questions to our Senior Technical Designer Petr “Baz” Ondráček, please ask here:

[McWonderBeast]

Yo Reeky hows it hanging?

[Aradiel]

Any chance of Playstation button prompts on the PC? I don’t expect PS controller support, for some reason that’s difficult to do, but I know I’m not the only one that uses PS controllers on PC. An option to display PS button prompts would make using an emulator to get the PS controller working more comfortable to use.

[Blacksmith]

Will your face be in the final game or was it just temporal for the beta?

Have you done some ingame acting in general?

I can easily turn Henry (our main character) into my face,<

Maybe the better choice, I dont like the new face of Henry

Edit: Stop wait! If its easy… Why not make more than one presets of Henrys face? Many want to have a different one.This is a game of decisions!!! Let’s give them a choice…

Edit2: Can we expect different face (textures) of Henry(and maybe NPCs),… with wounds, black eyes, scares. Depending if Henry was in trouble, in a fist fight or meet an angry women?

Can you explain the schematic in pic2 a little?

You mentioned Ambermoon; which RPG are great on PC and a must play? I like the storydriven more than hack n slash…?

you look at the other game as a "competitor.<

Is there anything, you wanted to have it in the game, but it was not possible? Something that make “competitors” better (like children)?

Fighting is not the best way to solve a problem/game(for me). Is it possible to finish KCD without killing a NPC?

we’re almost finished! <

Nice to hear, but the last 10% are the most challenging. Can´t wait for the final game. After feature freeze and internal beta (?end of the year?) Warhorse needs some months for bug fix. I think earliest date should be May. What do you say???

Is there a plan to make a demo of KCD after release? Maybe something like the beta but optimized?

[iamidea]

My Qns:
(1) How much you are proud of the AI system in KCD?
(2) As a Senior Technical Designer, do people come to you for solving the technical issues or do you task others to solve problems diagnosed by you? Which one happens most?
(3) Are there cutscenes in side quests?
(4) Any other funny bug?
(5) For this year, if you are given a chance, which game will you award for the Best Technical Design?
Thank you

[Tsunamik]

which of the things you had to cut out from game for money/time reasons will you miss most?
Will AI work like planned, or some compromise had to be made?
What improvements to combat you did since last beta?

[GingerFOX]

I would like to understand how the Quest scripting works in AI system. I saw everything you shared about the matter so I have some basic idea about your AI system and how NPCs rutines are implemented in it(using logical boxes forming a branching tree etc…). But I cannot quite imagine how Quests are injected into this AI system… Could you give some trivial quest example and clarify how it looks under the hood please?

[Bazilisk]

Well it is easier to show than tell by words First of all you have a controlling object (Quest Smart Object), that receives messages from quest system about this or that quest objective status change (objectives can start, fail, complete or cancel). This message goes into the brain of QSO and there is small subtree about what to do. For example you find on link from QSO an NPC and send him a message about changing its daycycle behavior (from now on, you will regularly go to meet John by the church). These we call patches to the standard daycycle. It also might have some more things to do: add some new item into inventory of player, complete some related objectives, calculate a ballistic curve or whatever. We simply split up the whole quest on events connected to quest objective changes. One can change objective status in many ways: enter some area, ending dialog with some particular response, collecting 10 wolfskins in inventory, etc. The quest flow is however visualised differently than as a tree (because quest is not a tree We use crytech’s flow graphs for visualisation, where nodes of flowgraph represent objectives and arrows represent which objective’s completion (automatically) starts which objective. If quest is linear, this flowgraph is a line with quest start node on the left and quest complete node on the right. Does this answer your question a bit?

[Blacksmith]

Thank you for the explaination.
Interesting, but sounds a little static. Always like …if than… If there are 5 times the same start parameter, the result will always be the same. I hoped there will be more AI „magic“. Looks like, the player (Henry) has to trigger something different, to change the result. It´s not the high dynamic environment, with changes, without scrippting the daily cyclus of the NPCs,… I wished…

Sometime I stand still and only watch the world of KCD,… something like sitting in a coffeeshop and watching people living their live…
Doing this 30 minutes in game without watching repeat something would we the next gaming level