Ch Ch Ch Changes
December 18, 2001
Original Link (now dead) - http://acdm.turbinegames.com/?cat=0&id=71
Ch Ch Ch Changes
By - Sean Huxter, Lead Artist
For our first feature we will be implementing a weekly series of articles written by developers on the current AC Live team. All the different skill sets that go into our content: art, design and programming, will eventually be covered in these articles, as we cover a wide range of topics of general interest to the AC public. Our hope is that these articles give you a better sense of what we do and why we do it, and perhaps a little insight into the people who create our Events each month.
This week:
For our site's opening, we have a great article written by the AC Live Team's Lead Artist, Sean Huxter. In it, he talks about that interesting word in AC, "change", and how when it applies to the advancements in our art tech and models it can be a very good thing, but when it applies to items like the Heaume and the Canescent Mattekar Robe, it can mean something different...
The Asheron's Call engine is ideally suited for change. We can update almost anything we want, easily, seamlessly, whenever we want. That was part of the plan. This is useful since our plan was to have monthly events where things change. New things happen, and old things happen differently, or they’re gone.
The bonus there is that at any time, we can update things that have grown old or stale.
One of the things I have taken pride in since the initial release of Asheron’s Call to the public in November of 1999 was the AC Live team's willingness to go back, look at what we did, and see where improvements could be made, and make those changes.
Due to time or end-user system constraints (keep in mind that most of AC was developed on P90s or thereabouts, with no accelerator cards until shortly before we shipped Beta, and we had to fit into a 32 Meg system) we often made art that did its job, but was less than inspiring. Hey, if we ever wanted to ship this puppy, at some point we had to be satisfied that an item was finished and never touch it again.
Some of the earliest creatures for AC were developed prior to 1996. Yes. I interviewed with Turbine (then known as Second Nature Interactive) in December of 1995. Part of my interview/audition was to animate a Tusker. "Make it do a few attacks, a walk, whatever" I was asked. I did. I sat down with Lightwave (I was very familiar with the package) and in very short time that Tusker was cheering and scratching his butt. (I think the butt-scratch got me my job) All of those animations I did remain in-game today. Watch a Tusker sometime, if you get the chance before he kills you.
Drudges, Mosswarts, Tuskers... these creatures were very blocky and lacked detail. That very same Tusker I played with in 1995 was the one that shipped in 1999. Pressures to ship this game, the need to add new monsters, rather than fixing old ones, and to add new art rather than revamping old, overtook us.
Despite intense pressure from the producer to get this game done, artists still risked their necks and took it upon themselves to fix old art anyway. Constantly we redid art that was already done. Constantly those artists were chastised for taking valuable time to fix something that, to some, wasn't broken. However, our small team of artists were, to an individual, perfectionists. Nothing galls an artist more than releasing something before it's ready, or before it's just right.
Yet even when we shipped, there were many things we wanted to change. All the new art was coming in with higher polygons than the original stuff, and sometimes looking at a Mosswart was an aggravating and embarrassing experience.
Call the Plastic Surgeon...
Not long after we shipped, to show the player community that we cared, that we were committed, and really wanted AC to be the best visual treat in gaming, we updated the Drudge. Mike Sheidow, a fantastic artist and modeler, took it upon himself to redo that sad little creature.
What he came up with was not only faithful to the original design of the Drudge, had a much higher polygon count, and higher texture resolutions, but he gave us texture options, so the creature could wear pieces of armor if we wanted them to; or tattoos that really stood out and made the nastier Drudges look much more menacing. Truly, this was a huge improvement in every way.
The response was overwhelming. People just loved the new Drudge.
By this time the producers (a different set of folks from the original) were convinced that revamping old art was not at all a waste of time, but rather in fact a valuable investment in time.
Not to mention that when I gave up the role of leading seven artists for Asheron's Call only to become the leader of exactly one full-time artist for Asheron’s Call (me) I decided that from time to time, whenever I could, I would beg, borrow or steal art time from another one of our fine team, and I'd get that person to go back, pick a creature that sorely needed help, and give it the love it needed.
The result was a much cooler Tusker, a revamped series of Golems (wow, doesn't that Wood Golem rock?), much smoother and more menacing Olthoi, and various other improvements along the way. Most recently, we saw the Mosswart get a similar treatment from artist, Ben Smith.
All this, while we were creating new creatures too. In one month we added Grievvers, Ursuin and Niffises. Each new creature we add to Asheron's Call uses a new set of standards that far outshine the ones we used before we shipped.
Players should probably note that putting a new creature in the game is the most time-intensive art task there is. And it involves other teams besides art. Getting these things to fight players requires certain data that crosses teams. Those teams must work closely together to get these things to function properly. So putting three creatures into the world in one month was a gargantuan task. One I could not have completed alone, and certainly not while also doing my normal daily job of adding all the other goodies into the world, like I do every month.
It's easier to model a new creature model using another as a base, so all the animations for the original creature can be used on the new one. The Moarsman was an example of this. It uses the basic animation set used by Drudges, Banderlings, Mosswarts and Monougas. So the main body of work was to model a new creature that would fit seamlessly over existing animations. I did a few unique animations for it, but mostly it uses animations used by its non-swampy cousin, the Banderling.
But for this particular month, we wanted to introduce new creatures that were entirely new. Not just new models, but whole new animation sets as well.
So for that month, the producers gave me a team of artists to work with. I had some of Mike Sheidow’s time. He concepted the three new critters, modeled them, textured them, and handed them to me for animation setup. I set them up, and handed that data to Ian Wilmoth and Karla Zimonja, who animated them. Since their time was precious, and I was not 100% satisfied with some of the animations, I took it upon myself to fix and reanimate some of the movements. So my involvement with this process was incredibly hands-on from start to finish. Also, I could do just about every task to make these creatures work but one, which required Elliot "The Machine" Gillman, the Weenie God!
We had an intern working on the sounds. I remember watching Ron Winter blowing through a straw into a paper cup of water to make the Niffis sounds. He was an inspiration to watch. The resulting sounds were very nice.
We had interns animating the creatures as well. One intern, Sean Koriakin, I believe, or was it Bobo Do? animated the Ursuin death sequence. He did it as a bit of a joke. I looked at it and said, "Perfect. Don’t change a thing." So he didn’t. That’s what you see now whenever you kill an Ursuin.
This process of updating creatures in Dereth is ongoing. Whenever we can, a new creature will get the Salon treatment.
But what of other things?
Besides updating the look of some of the Fauna of Dereth, we decided it was also a good idea to go back and improve the look of other items in the game.
Ah.
Yes.
Here’s where the problem arises.
Here’s where change, often thought to be a good thing; a thing that builds character; a thing that strengthens the human spirit, proved to be something else entirely.
I hated the look of the original Heaume. Most artists did. The model itself was ok, though it was extremely low-poly. However, the texture was muddy, muddled, and just ugly. So, again, Mike Sheidow took some time and remodeled and retextured the Heaume. He looked at books, concept sketches, web pages, many sources of reference, and found a helmet to replace the Heaume.
Mike actually modeled several new helmets, and I just chose the one I thought was new and interesting enough to replace the old bucket.
What we ended up with was a round, bullet-like helmet with a beak-like front peak.
We replaced the Heaume with this new model, and shipped it.
Oh boy.
Ouch!
I’ve never seen so many people upset about change. It was like we changed the time of an ‘NSync concert to six hours earlier or something, and it was over before the screaming teens even showed up.
Something we learned that day is that change is not always a good thing. Change is good for some things. Obvious things. Creatures that looked bad looked better. No one complained when the Drudge got his face-lift. No one complained when they saw the new Tuskers. But change something a person had owned and used for some time, and even though the result was a nicer, higher polygon object, they were not happy.
Boy, did we hear about it!
People called it the Teapot. And that was the kindest, and most non-pornographic, name. People suggested that rain would fall into the helmet under normal usage, and many other complaints came my way, not the least of which was that it was unrealistic.
To my delight, several people e-mailed me pictures of helmets (real, honest-to-goodness helmets from the past, like) that looked exactly like Mike's beaked Heaume. Vindicated! But still the people were unhappy.
The new look was not what most people hated. The fact that I forced the change on them was what was really getting the reaction. So it didn’t take long for me to see my mistake. Never change something someone owns. They own it. They may like it, they may hate it, but they own it, and its theirs.
So I chose a new Heaume model based on the old one, but with improvements. I reverted the change. People with old Heaumes got their old Heaumes back. New Heaumes spawned would have the new Heaume look. And to keep the new helmet in-game, (some people liked it) we created a new helmet called the Armet, and put that into the treasure system as well.
People seemed satisfied with the result of that change.
When it came time to revamp the Olthoi Helm (which was just a bright purple cubic pot) I decided it was better to change newly spawned helms only, and allow people to keep their old version if they so desired. This was a good solution. Hey, if you didn’t like your old helmet, you could pass it in to the Olthoi Crafter who made the helmet in the first place, and he’d scrap it and give you the new model.
We did the same thing with the Olthoi Sword.
Both of these were quest rewards that we just didn’t have time to model specially before we shipped, so we made do with old art colored purple. A quick solution that stayed around way too long.
This new policy met with practically universal approval.
Where is this article going, you may ask?
The Canescent Robe
Ken Troop (the boss man) came to me one day and said, "We need a new look for the Canescent Robes."
"Ok," I said. "I'll get right on that." Paused for a second, and asked "What the heck is a Canescent Robe?"
See, I had a supervisory role on the art in the Asheron’s Call Dark Majesty expansion pack. Whenever an artist on the dedicated ACDM team needed help, advice, or a cup of coffee, I was there. (I usually sent interns for coffee, if there were any around.)
I integrated some of the art, especially the new creatures, and some of the quest items that needed extra attention.
I did not, on the other hand, dive into every detail of what they were working on, and I did not know every single item being introduced. I probably should have, but that would have required human cloning. And we all know that’s only in its infant stages at the moment. I couldn’t wait that long.
At no time did anyone mention to me the Canescent Robes. And I was a bit too mired down in my own regular monthly work to do much digging.
So when Ken said "We need a new look for the Canescent Robes" I did a bit of checking and found that it was an ACDM quest reward, and currently it looked just like the standard Aluvian robe that there were way too many of. The item was not special-looking. It was a normal Aluvian robe.
So I thought I should do something different for it. Since we have three major heritages in-game, and there are robes available for each, I opted to go for a new look for this particular robe that incorporated elements of the Gharu’ndim style. Variety = good.
So I did a bit of texturing work, made a leather front-panel on a nicely wrinkled cloth robe base, and used objects meant for the Gharu’ndim robe, to make for a truly unique quest reward item.
I was always bothered by the restriction on robes that don’t allow you to wear footwear. And since Aluvian robes covered the feet, there was no problem there. But Gharu’ndim robes showed the feet. Bare feet, by necessity. I figured I'd add false shoes to this robe, so people don’t have to go around in bare feet. It was an aesthetic addition, not a functional one. You really weren’t wearing shoes, but the robe covered your feet in shoe-like objects.
I considered putting feet (booties, they’ve been called) on all Gharu’ndim robes, but Dave Javier nixed the idea. I was easy to convince. Besides, we'd already learned our lesson with the Heaume, right?
And after all, no one has this item in-game yet, right?
Well, at that time, no one had. However, I neglected to realize that we would be shipping ACDM a month before I could change the robes. A bit of miscommunication between Ken and myself resulted in me changing an item a bunch of people already owned.
OOOPS!
The complaints ranged from "I hate the new bellhop uniform! CHANGE IT BACK NOW!" to "Cant you at least color-coordinate the shoes?" And of course "Is Huxter Color-Blind???" Apparently so, since I didn’t even color-coordinate the shoes...
Some people complained that it was so ugly that even the Town Crier wouldn’t wear it when they gave it to him.
But when I showed the results to the content team, everybody liked the new robes. There was no reason to change the colors I made them.
So what’s to be done?
I still want that robe to be the unique item it is now. I want it to be a visible sign that you have completed this certain quest and reaped the reward. I want it to not look like every other robe in the game, and now that it is the official Canescent robe, and more people own them, I will not be changing it back, I will not be putting back the original for those who want the original, the Canescent robe is going to remain as it is. The fact is, if I hadn’t been so darned busy during the production cycle of ACDM, this is how the robe would have looked from the day we shipped it. And now it is.
I may indeed change the shoes. But I’m wary of even making that small change to something people now own in large numbers.
So the upshot is that the policy of not changing anything someone already owns is still alive and well here at Turbine. Any new revamping of clothing and armor will most likely result in a new item being generated with the new look, and the old item remaining the same. And if I ever decide to go back and change something on the Canescent robes, the ones you currently have will not change. If a change is made, only newly spawned robes will be affected.
Because change is a good thing... or so someone told me once.