Topic: Ideas for a Character Generator...

[Morgul]

Here's a youtube video of a program called Quidam which edits stock models and lets you create new characters. Well, I saw these videos of it and I think that we want to do something kinda like this for the Character Generator. Check out the video, and the others listed in the side. Think we can do something like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZyQC9JCgx8

[Caenus]

That's pretty awesome, but here's a question: if that generates a new character MODEL for each player, won't that take a lot of computing power to have a different model for each player?  As opposed to a set number of models and different skins?

[contingencyplan]

I haven't watched the vid yet, admittedly, but I'd say no, it shouldn't, so long as we have some limitation on the size and complexity of the character models. then it wouldn't make any real difference whether we're displaying 10 characters that all fit a certain template, or 10 different characters from 10 different models.

The main thing is size and storage space - we have to store those models somewhere, and having each player be able to create their own model would require a massive amount of storage space on the client computer. Perhaps some sort of model life scheme or something, where the model is automatically deleted after it hasn't been encountered in a certain period of time.

Alternately, we could do something like Spore, and have procedurally generated models. That would make it very easy to store and transmit the models, since the actual graphic model is generated client-side. I'll have to watch the vid to see whether that's possible from the program or not, though. And I got enough shit up in the air right now.

[Morgul]

Well, the idea is to emulate this program, not use it. I would think that a procedural model baed system would work the best by far. Still, I would think that we could easily store some sort of delta file from a stok model. This way we just apply the delta to the base, and generate their model, and store it client side. (The delta would be stored server side).

[whitelynx]

The question of storing models client-side basically feeds into the whole caching idea, and I'm pretty sure CS has at least basic facilities for that... on the other hand, it could probably use some optimization for use in an MMO.