EU Graphical Update Feedback - Hands and Feet

[Lusarae]

Just a reminder on top the hands posted above this is a current foot in the game. Some Ps2 level stuff right here:

Yeah this is bad. Though I wouldn't insult the PS2 by comparing it to that level of detail. Looks more like an N64 game. Plus having permanent sandals on that you can never take off is a bit strange.

Look at it this way:

8 races, 14 unique heads once we factor in genders (sorry Hrothgars!), 4 base variants of each head, that gives us a worst case of 56 head models to update if we assume the worst case of them not being able to use morphs to transfer the updates across all variants at once in their development tools.

Now compare that to the hand and foot models alone. How many sandals, open toed shoes and glove models does this game have? Now multiply that for racial and gender variants. It's going to be in the 1000s. It'll be way more than an entire expansion's worth of new gear.

It is a lot. But once you make the "base" hand/feet for each race the hard part is done. All you do from that point on is just copy/paste it into the gloves/shoe models and click and drag to move any armor that clips so it fits the new form. In reality you're going to keep the overall shape of things the same, the only thing that really needs changing are adding toes and rounding out the fingertips and giving them nails. Any armor that exposes these parts conveniently don't have anything covering them up either. Probably takes 2 minutes at most per item. One person could do this tedious but simple workload in a week. Its already been done... for free by some random person on the internet if your google fu wants to verify this supposedly "tremendous" task that a AAA studio can't accomplish on their own.

[Kuroka]

Plus having permanent sandals on that you can never take off is a bit strange.

The joke is there are barefoot npc... not too many but there are lol

[Larirawiel]

More detailed hands and feet would increase the polygon count. I guess, they try to avoid it because higher polygon count means higher minimum requirements for the game, especially the CPU.


Cheers

[MsQi]

More detailed hands and feet would increase the polygon count. I guess, they try to avoid it because higher polygon count means higher minimum requirements for the game, especially the CPU.


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They could be greatly improved with textures alone. This game is about 15 years behind at this point. Not saying it looks bad, but many players have moved on. Retaining lower poly models for older systems is a possibility.

Cheers

[Lusarae]

More detailed hands and feet would increase the polygon count. I guess, they try to avoid it because higher polygon count means higher minimum requirements for the game, especially the CPU.


Cheers

Unless every character is running around with bare feet and no gloves on this is not going to be an issue at all.

[Eraden]

Unless every character is running around with bare feet and no gloves on this is not going to be an issue at all.

Mao would like go barefoots.

[Absurdity]

Unless every character is running around with bare feet and no gloves on this is not going to be an issue at all.

It's not going to be an issue period. Increasing the polygon count on the feet from like 60 to even 500 will be barely noticeable, you're more likely to notice the performance impact of increased texture resolutions in the terrain...if there are any.

[Larirawiel]

Unless every character is running around with bare feet and no gloves on this is not going to be an issue at all.

Ahhh, that is the reason why the framerate is so low when you enter a night club in FF14. xD


And i do not know how the character model processing exactly works in FF14. But it can be, that the feet are still processed by the engine even if your character has clothes on. AFAIR the clothes do not modify the character model like in other games. So the GPU can propably spare some processing time if the engine has a good Z occlusion. But it will still hit the CPU.



Cheers

[TheDustyOne]

And i do not know how the character model processing exactly works in FF14. But it can be, that the feet are still processed by the engine even if your character has clothes on. AFAIR the clothes do not modify the character model like in other games. So the GPU can propably spare some processing time if the engine has a good Z occlusion. But it will still hit the CPU.

Our characters in-game are separated into several segments. When we put on say, a pair of boots, it replaces the foot model with those boots, and depending on the size of the boots, may also replace parts of the leg model. Because of this, the game never has to render anything "underneath" the clothing, the model is just outright replaced and Square never has to worry about our characters clipping through our clothes or calculating model data underneath. Some gear does have priority over others if they're fighting for the same character segment, so bulky gloves and bulky sleeves that make use of the same wrist segment on our character are determined mostly by whether or not the chest piece "allows" the glove to overwrite the sleeve.

As for the topic at hand (heh), it takes very little now to render a few extra polygons on hands and feet, so while it may've been a concern in the PS3 and 32 bit days, we're long past that and I think we can handle having toes and rounded fingers, I'm sure a dedicated 3D artist or 2 can handle the necessary glove/shoe models over the next 8 or so months.

[Ath192]

Our characters in-game are separated into several segments. When we put on say, a pair of boots, it replaces the foot model with those boots, and depending on the size of the boots, may also replace parts of the leg model. Because of this, the game never has to render anything "underneath" the clothing, the model is just outright replaced and Square never has to worry about our characters clipping through our clothes or calculating model data underneath. Some gear does have priority over others if they're fighting for the same character segment, so bulky gloves and bulky sleeves that make use of the same wrist segment on our character are determined mostly by whether or not the chest piece "allows" the glove to overwrite the sleeve.

As for the topic at hand (heh), it takes very little now to render a few extra polygons on hands and feet, so while it may've been a concern in the PS3 and 32 bit days, we're long past that and I think we can handle having toes and rounded fingers, I'm sure a dedicated 3D artist or 2 can handle the necessary glove/shoe models over the next 8 or so months.

I am more than convinced the game can handle this just fine, it’s just they develop a standard and stick to it for sure, so if now is the time when that standard is called into question I want the devs to know this is important to the players and most if not all us are in agreement faces aren’t the only part of the body that need a lot of improvements on detail.

The more we can make them understand this the more chances we get that it doesn’t get overlooked by a company trying to cut a corner somewhere.