Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
This should give you scope to create a decent design for Hercules. You have suffi-
cient polygons to get the detail you need. Plus, his being the main character means
you can go to town on making him look great. Sufficient levels of detail can be ad-
opted to make sure he looks good at any distance while ensuring he only uses the
needed polygons. (We talk more about levels of detail in
Chapter 10
.
)
Tip
Here's one thing to remember when creating a character who is viewed
from the third-person perspective: Chances are that 99% of the time the
character will be viewed from behind, so you will want to make the char-
acter's back interesting for the player.
Tip
An RTS (real-time strategy) game—a top-down, isometric, Diablo- or
Warcraft-type game—often requires some extreme proportional distor-
tions for its characters to read well onscreen: Head and shoulder areas of-
ten need exaggeration, and limbs might require thickening to make sure
they don't “wink out” at distances (become too negligible in width to mer-
it a pixel onscreen).
Animation Considerations
Youcanseehowagame'stechnical restrictionscanaffectthelookofyourdesigns.Anoth-
er important question you should ask is, “Will it animate okay?”
Implementing a cape, ribbons, or hair into your character concept may look cool—but
when it comes down to it, do you have the resources to animate the feature successfully?
Take the cape, for instance. Essentially, if it's hand animated, you can consider it an addi-
tional character. So do you or the other animators on the project have time in the sched-
ule to animate it? Your programmers may have a nice dynamics engine which will drive
the cape cloth for you while obeying real-world physics, such as wind, drag, and gravity.
This will save time, but will it give a good enough simulation? Will it move convincingly?
Therearedangersinemployingadynamicssimulationtoanimateclothorhair,andifdone
wrong it can destroy the player's connection with the main character and the game. If the
simulation moves unpredictably or pops through the character or surrounding area, it will
distract the player from the game and ultimately become annoying.
