C4LYP50
Invictus Australis
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Posted - 2011.01.19 13:04:00 -
[1]
Having played with the character creator on Sisi several times over the last couple of months, I found both positives and negatives with the live version today:
Positives: Thank you for getting rid of those terrible wheels of misfortune, which were counterintuitive. I found the dropdown system quite easy to use, and the options subkeys (1-?) quite interesting. Overall, I felt the graphics load on my machine was not overwhelming, although I had set all options to highest level before I logged in. (Before I get flamed for this one, please note I'm running WinXP, 2 Gigs ddr2, on a 4 year old motherboard with Intel Quadcore 8200 and a factory set NVidia 8800 GT (512), so not exactly "state of the art".) I had very little lag, and sculpting presented no difficulty @ 1920 X 1080. I feel the accessory/clothing options, while quite limited, were acceptable (no high five, but acceptable) for the release, considering the use intended (character portrait only) at this stage.
Negatives:
Sometimes when posing, you accidently end up sculpting. Sculpting should be disabled by the time you reach the pose/lighting/background phase. The Back Button: Means SCRAP IT ALL. And should be LABELLED as SCRAP. "Back" means, intuitively, to me, "I want to go back a bit (a couple of stages or so) to change something, which will go better with this option I'm at NOW." Yes, the warning box is nice, but we get used to ignoring those, and it looks like a tagged on "fix", which it isn't, really.
Photo Time: At 1920X1080, the actual character creation area you are modeling on is the centre 1/2 (1/4 on each side is used for the interfaces). IE, a tall rectangle. But when you take the photo, it's "squashed" into a square. This has 2 obvious results:
1. your character's face gets fatter. Solution: change the pose area to a square, instead of a rectangle, or warn people to change their resolution to something as close to a square as possible before they start (although this migh fubar the previous stages of creation, I dunno.) THIS, more than any other thing, is annoying, and affects the saved photo immensely.
2. Your character now appears to be looking just over the top of your head, instead of right at you. This can be overcome by trial and error at the viewpoint stage, but it needs to be explained.
Photo Time: Blinking. Just unecessary. Get rid of it. If you can't get rid of it without losing the other facial movements, fix it.
Photo time: I think 4 snapshots is very handy, to compare the changes when you move the pose slightly, or change the lighting. HOWEVER, here I think we need that warning box. "WARNING: You are about to complete your character creation, using the portrait HIGHLIGHTED on the left of your screen. You will not be able to change or recreate this character. ARE YOU SURE?"
Overall Score : 8/10 In my opinion, we got about what I expected. Not a polished product, but usable and quite beautiful, if the player is WILLING TO TAKE THEIR TIME to do it right, and not rush through. I'm satisfied. Saying that though, if its still like this in 6 months, the grade will drop from pass to fail. Good luck.
Brunette By Birth...........Blonde By Nature. ------------------------------------------------ "Your suffering will be legendary, even in Hell." "No tears, please; it's a waste of good suffering." |