Darkest Dungeon - Survival Horror RPG Dungeoncrawl

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Darkest Dungeon - Survival Horror RPG Dungeoncrawl

Xibanya: Sep 17, 2012; Clever Betty

DasNeonLicht posted:

yeah, sorry to criticize your work straight out of the gate, but the first game's look and feel is immaculate; what I've seen of the sequel looks like fan art or like one of those cartoons where the original series kids are in high school now

lol your opinion is objectively wrong

also you maybe need to get your eyes checked because all the character designs for this game are done by the exact same guy, unless "fanart" just means "drawings I don't like"

Bogart posted:

Will the game be good.

Yes

Desdinova posted:

Read the press releases and previews There must be something you can share? An opinion on the game compared to the first one? *flutters eyelashes at u*

One thing that people keep asking me when I show them the trailer/the officially sanctioned screenshots is if the game is a bunch of flat cutouts that get parallaxed. It is not -- the game is fully 3D, the environment, characters, everything. The 2D animated look pulled off with 3D models is sick as hell. And I'm not just saying that because I'm the graphics programmer. :sparkles:

E: and one more question

Eason the Fifth posted:

Is there a Wayne June voice generator I can use to narrate my life

Wayne June is a professional audiobook narrator so you could find a bunch of audiobooks he's narrated and frankenstein them together into a soundboard :thunk:

Xibanya fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Oct 6, 2021

# ? Oct 6, 2021 01:35

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# ? May 27, 2024 22:55

Count Uvula: Dec 20, 2011; ---

CainsDescendant posted:

Did y'all hire the titty mod guy yet? How much titty in DD2?

The titty mod guy makes like six figures a year on patreon, I imagine he is very difficult to hire.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 01:49

MadHat: Mar 31, 2011

Xibanya posted:

lol your opinion is objectively wrong

also you maybe need to get your eyes checked because all the character designs for this game are done by the exact same guy, unless "fanart" just means "drawings I don't like"

Yes

One thing that people keep asking me when I show them the trailer/the officially sanctioned screenshots is if the game is a bunch of flat cutouts that get parallaxed. It is not -- the game is fully 3D, the environment, characters, everything. The 2D animated look pulled off with 3D models is sick as hell. And I'm not just saying that because I'm the graphics programmer.

E: and one more question

Wayne June is a professional audiobook narrator so you could find a bunch of audiobooks he's narrated and frankenstein them together into a soundboard

Are you doing something similar to the Arcsys method?

# ? Oct 6, 2021 02:16

Panfilo: Aug 27, 2011; EXISTENCE IS PAIN😬

Xibanya posted:

Heya folks. I am the graphics programmer on Darkest Dungeon 2, so I'm probably going to be f5ing this thread furiously when it comes out. I can't tell ya'll anything that hasn't been revealed directly by the studio, but I know offhand everything that has been revealed directly by the studio so if you have a question I may be able to answer it!

I heard there were little animations that activate when you mouse over a skill, like the hero 'getting ready' to use that skill. This is a nice little detail that helps liven up the characters. How many animations does each hero typically have? Are they more than in the first game? In DD1 most heroes only had 3, maybe 4 attack animations (typically recycling them when it was relevant to do so) and monsters had even less. Are there going to be more varied animations since it sounds like there's more potential skills a given hero can have?

# ? Oct 6, 2021 02:38

Count Uvula: Dec 20, 2011; ---

MadHat posted:

Are you doing something similar to the Arcsys method?

Actually to expand on this a bit, how are the animations keyed? I assume that's not something you'd be disallowed from talking about though I don't think we have seen DD2's combat in motion :v:

IIRC the 3D Guilty Gears (what MadHat is referring to) are characters usually moving at about 15 frames per second while everything else is operating at 60 FPS and the particle effects use key-frames on a 15 FPS interval. So a particle effect will be constantly expanding/contracting but large changes to color and shape only happen on multiples of 15FPS.

To theorize I imagine the easiest way to get a very style accurate but obviously fancier recreation of Darkest Dungeon's combat animations is to split animations in to 3 or 4 keyframe pairs, and each 'step' of an animation is interpolating between the two. The characters subtly shifted position a lot in DD1 during their attacks in an approximation of the same effect this would give so obviously Bourassa/Castle like the concept, but maybe only in the context that they were doing the best they could with their like 2 frames of animation per attack...

To step on Xibanya's toes a bit and try to figure out how she set her shader up:

The actual end-result of their character draw process is a lot different from Arcsys's method, though you could get it from a very similar process if you tried. Easiest way to get the DD2 look is to split a character in to three parts:
Black fill, base color (effectively the standard model you'd see in a videogame with soft lighting--the model + texture drawn with environmental lighting applied), and color fill for the rim lighting effect.
The black fill is probably a mix of crushed shadows from the environmental lighting + a hand painted texture, but we can't figure out whether that's true until we see it in motion.
Base color no explanation needed, though again hard to tell if the watercolor wash effect is hand painted on the character textures or from the scene lighting until we see it in motion.
Rim lighting - seems to be just straight up drawing a color at 100% opacity over the base colors if an invisible light source would hit part of the character model; doesn't draw over anything black.

Count Uvula fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Oct 6, 2021

# ? Oct 6, 2021 02:58

Xibanya: Sep 17, 2012; Clever Betty

Panfilo posted:

I heard there were little animations that activate when you mouse over a skill, like the hero 'getting ready' to use that skill. This is a nice little detail that helps liven up the characters.

No it's when you have clicked the skill but haven't yet selected your target.

Panfilo posted:

How many animations does each hero typically have?

I literally do not know the answer to this question because I had nothing to do with character animation :downs:

Panfilo posted:

Are there going to be more varied animations since it sounds like there's more potential skills a given hero can have?

Chris Bourassa posted:

"There's really amazing preparatory animations in combat," Bourassa says. "If you click 'wicked slice' on your highwayman he whips his knife out and gets ready, and when you click a target he follows through. The result is combat feels way more alive. People are getting potions out and then launching them on your mouse clicks. Once you get into a flow, if you watch someone who knows how to play, even though it's turn-based it feels very fluid."

(From the PC Gamer feature)

MadHat posted:

Are you doing something similar to the Arcsys method?

I don't know what this is :downs:

Count Uvula posted:

Actually to expand on this a bit, how are the animations keyed?

I have no idea.

Count Uvula posted:

To step on Xibanya's toes a bit and try to figure out how he set his shader up:

I'm a woman :j:

Count Uvula posted:

The actual end-result of their character draw process is a lot different from Arcsys's method, though you could get it from a very similar process if you tried. Easiest way to get the DD2 look is to split a character in to three parts:
Black fill, base color (effectively the standard model you'd see in a videogame with soft lighting--the model + texture drawn with environmental lighting applied), and color fill for the rim lighting effect.
The black fill is probably a mix of crushed shadows from the environmental lighting + a hand painted texture, but we can't figure out whether that's true until we see it in motion.
Base color no explanation needed, though again hard to tell if the watercolor wash effect is hand painted on the character textures or from the scene lighting until we see it in motion.
Rim lighting - seems to be just straight up drawing a color at 100% opacity over the base colors if an invisible light source would hit part of the character model; doesn't draw over anything black.

Hoho your speculation is very interesting; I'll be pretty tight-lipped until October 27, but I did create 99% of the shaders seen in this game including the custom post processing effects, so unlike the keyframe animation stuff at least this I actually do know about. The character shader is one of the things I spent the greatest amount of time on (although part of that was due to back and forth between various teams because it had to satisfy both aesthetic and gameplay considerations.) My goal was to imitate a illustrative style, but in 3D, which required very precise control over lighting; as a result it's safe to say none of that is in any way connected to the engine's built-in lighting. Your theory overall is half right, but you're missing a very interesting and unique technique being used, but that may become more apparent when you can see it in motion.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 03:18

Pb and Jellyfish: Oct 30, 2011

I'm assuming that the move to full 3d will make this game much harder to make custom characters for vs the first, yeah? Not to say that it wouldn't be a fair tradeoff, but there are such a huge poo poo ton of mods and custom characters being even now still made that I feel like it's been a huge contributor to people continuing to play

# ? Oct 6, 2021 03:28

Xibanya: Sep 17, 2012; Clever Betty

Pb and Jellyfish posted:

I'm assuming that the move to full 3d will make this game much harder to make custom characters for vs the first, yeah? Not to say that it wouldn't be a fair tradeoff, but there are such a huge poo poo ton of mods and custom characters being even now still made that I feel like it's been a huge contributor to people continuing to play

(timestamped)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyj8F4YGa1Q&t=1447s

(also if i link things rather than type a reply that's not me being a smartass, that's just me covering my rear end)

# ? Oct 6, 2021 03:32

LazyMaybe: Aug 18, 2013; oouagh

Xibanya posted:

I don't know what this is

I don't know what specific method they mean(aside from maybe limiting framerate on character animations to mimick 2d feel?) but I assume they're talking about the recent guilty gear games made by arcsys, which also have 3d character models made to feel similar to previous games which were fully 2d

# ? Oct 6, 2021 03:46

Count Uvula: Dec 20, 2011; ---

Xibanya posted:

I'm a woman

Whoops, sorry ma'am.

Xibanya posted:

My goal was to imitate a illustrative style, but in 3D, which required very precise control over lighting; as a result it's safe to say none of that is in any way connected to the engine's built-in lighting.

Ah, does it not even use the scene's base lighting for anything? We can see in screenshots released already that characters are colored differently in different areas, though I guess that could be a whole-screen shader or... hand-tuned (scary)

Xibanya posted:

Your theory overall is half right, but you're missing a very interesting and unique technique being used, but that may become more apparent when you can see it in motion.

I am intrigued! Gonna tentatively guess it relates to whatever the gently caress is going on with the highwayman's fluffy coat and other characters' hair cause that's obviously not a simple edge detection effect.

IronicDongz posted:

I don't know what specific method they mean(aside from maybe limiting framerate on character animations to mimick 2d feel?) but I assume they're talking about the recent guilty gear games made by arcsys, which also have 3d character models made to feel similar to previous games which were fully 2d

There's a ton going on in how those games look beyond just the limited frame rate, but like 75% of it is about fine tuning animation which means it's mostly not Xibanya's department anyway

# ? Oct 6, 2021 03:53

Eason the Fifth: Apr 9, 2020

Xibanya posted:

Wayne June is a professional audiobook narrator so you could find a bunch of audiobooks he's narrated and frankenstein them together into a soundboard

Curious methodologies and apparatus�

# ? Oct 6, 2021 04:12

Xibanya: Sep 17, 2012; Clever Betty

Count Uvula posted:

it's mostly not Xibanya's department anyway

we have an excellent animator who's a genuine miracle worker, but I haven't a clue how he does any of that. Animated materials are my wheelhouse, animated characters are not.

Eason the Fifth posted:

Curious methodologies and apparatus�

Wayne June was contacted initially for the first game because the team liked his narration of some lovecraftian horror stuff (possibly literally the work of Lovecraft, I don't recall the particulars) so if you're starved for ominous Wayne June chatter, that's the best place to start.

Xibanya fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Oct 6, 2021

# ? Oct 6, 2021 04:38

Eason the Fifth: Apr 9, 2020

Xibanya posted:

Wayne June was contacted initially for the first game because the team liked his narration of some lovecraftian horror stuff (possibly literally the work of Lovecraft, I don't recall the particulars) so if you're starved for ominous Wayne June chatter, that's the best place to start.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yIqQ2O-zws

oh my god this is loving amazing

Eason the Fifth fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Oct 6, 2021

# ? Oct 6, 2021 05:11

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Didn't realize there was a sequel coming along I'll check it out

# ? Oct 6, 2021 05:17

whydirt: Apr 18, 2001; Gaz Posting Brigade

DasNeonLicht posted:

yeah, sorry to criticize your work straight out of the gate, but the first game's look and feel is immaculate; what I've seen of the sequel looks like fan art or like one of those cartoons where the original series kids are in high school now

Please don�t hijack my question with whatever this rude poo poo is.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 05:29

DasNeonLicht: Dec 25, 2005; "...and the light is on and burning brightly for the masses."; Fallen Rib

whydirt posted:

Please don�t hijack my question with whatever this rude poo poo is.

I am thoroughly chastened / penitent. I apologize for the breezy put-down, and I didn't mean to overtake OP's question with my personal bias

# ? Oct 6, 2021 05:50

MadHat: Mar 31, 2011

Count Uvula posted:

Whoops, sorry ma'am.

Ah, does it not even use the scene's base lighting for anything? We can see in screenshots released already that characters are colored differently in different areas, though I guess that could be a whole-screen shader or... hand-tuned (scary)

I am intrigued! Gonna tentatively guess it relates to whatever the gently caress is going on with the highwayman's fluffy coat and other characters' hair cause that's obviously not a simple edge detection effect.

There's a ton going on in how those games look beyond just the limited frame rate, but like 75% of it is about fine tuning animation which means it's mostly not Xibanya's department anyway

I should have been more precise with my question. I was just interested in the effect and referenced a well known 3d as 2d effect. It is a bit of a hobby of mine though I am more interested in the animation aspect then the post processing, still interesting I just have more Animation background.

Arcsys is using a very involved process that started with the previous Guilty Gear game. The TLDR is they are are doing a whole lot of insane stuff to make it animate more like 2d than 3d. And yeah most of it has to do with how they just do not interpolate at all and do low framerates for most things.

This was 6 years ago and only the first iteration but gives you an idea of what is going on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhGjCzxJV3E&t=12s

# ? Oct 6, 2021 06:57

Wrr: Aug 8, 2010

Xibanya posted:

Heya folks. I am the graphics programmer on Darkest Dungeon 2, so I'm probably going to be f5ing this thread furiously when it comes out. I can't tell ya'll anything that hasn't been revealed directly by the studio, but I know offhand everything that has been revealed directly by the studio so if you have a question I may be able to answer it!

Are the graphics settings in the option menus going have names like like "Low" "Maximum" or "Darkest" "Radiant"? Can I turn up the gamma really high and subvert the need for torches and lighting?

# ? Oct 6, 2021 17:17

Xibanya: Sep 17, 2012; Clever Betty

Wrr posted:

Can I turn up the gamma really high and subvert the need for torches and lighting?

i mean even if you cranked the gamma on your monitor way up the game still knows what the torch level is so, follow ur bliss

# ? Oct 6, 2021 20:48

Sephyr: Aug 28, 2012

Came back to the game after some 3 years away, and it feels a LOT different. Way harder. Enemies seem to focus party members a lot more often, particularly those who stress-causing abilities. People freaking out is the norm even during 'good' runs, and getting negative traits and diseases seems more common.

Has there been a rebalance, or am I just unlucky? And my main pet peeve is the same from the open beta: stress-relieving activities in town having such a high chance of screwing you over is bullshit. "Huh, my merc got pissed drunk, came out of the tavern, opened my trinket chest (because I had unequipped him) and 'misplaced' one of my best trinkets that made another character viable. I pais 1250 gold for that."

Also, what are the best/fun mods currently?

# ? Oct 10, 2021 13:40

Legit Businessman: Sep 2, 2007

Sephyr posted:

Came back to the game after some 3 years away, and it feels a LOT different. Way harder. Enemies seem to focus party members a lot more often, particularly those who stress-causing abilities. People freaking out is the norm even during 'good' runs, and getting negative traits and diseases seems more common.

Has there been a rebalance, or am I just unlucky? And my main pet peeve is the same from the open beta: stress-relieving activities in town having such a high chance of screwing you over is bullshit. "Huh, my merc got pissed drunk, came out of the tavern, opened my trinket chest (because I had unequipped him) and 'misplaced' one of my best trinkets that made another character viable. I pais 1250 gold for that."

Also, what are the best/fun mods currently?

How big do you like your chests? :v:

# ? Oct 12, 2021 02:57

LtSmash: Dec 18, 2005; Will we next create false gods to rule over us? How proud we have become, and how blind.

-Sister Miriam Godwinson,
"We Must Dissent"

Drewjitsu posted:

How big do you like your chests?

I'm listening...

# ? Oct 12, 2021 18:20

DLC Inc: Jun 1, 2011

I was in the early access from the ground floor for the first game---one of my favorite games ever still---and it'll be no different for the sequel. Really excited to play the new take on the formula and happy my boy the Leper King has returned.

# ? Oct 12, 2021 18:29

Count Uvula: Dec 20, 2011; ---

LtSmash posted:

I'm listening...

The first DD modder to make like actually style accurate mods uses his ability to replicate the art style to make stuff like this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1289815222
(he does like boys in heavy platemail as much as he likes tits though, so there's also a bunch of high quality mods made by this guy that are just dudes in armor)

# ? Oct 12, 2021 18:33

Xibanya: Sep 17, 2012; Clever Betty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ6Gdd-pSPA

:smug:

# ? Oct 22, 2021 17:20

Samovar: Jun 4, 2011; I'm 😤 not a 🦸🏻‍♂️hero...🧜🏻

Xibanya posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ6Gdd-pSPA

Looks like one of the enemies is based off of the Green Knight.

# ? Oct 22, 2021 18:04

CAR CRASH CRACKERS: Jan 13, 2008; commemorative spoons and tiny personalized license plates: the regalia of tourism

Xibanya posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ6Gdd-pSPA

# ? Oct 22, 2021 18:11

SkeletonHero: Sep 7, 2010

Good to see Dismas is still around!

# ? Oct 22, 2021 18:20

Panfilo: Aug 27, 2011; EXISTENCE IS PAIN😬

The animations and visual effects of enemy attacks look fantastic.

I'm guessing jailbird Dismas is part of the tutorial?

# ? Oct 22, 2021 18:33

Wrr: Aug 8, 2010

Oh man, at first I was a little put off by the new proportions, but seeing them in motion it looks great.

# ? Oct 22, 2021 18:33

Xibanya: Sep 17, 2012; Clever Betty

Merry Dismas :toot:

# ? Oct 22, 2021 18:41

punishedkissinger: Sep 20, 2017

loving the new animations. game looks gorgeous.

# ? Oct 22, 2021 18:45

Jvie: Aug 10, 2012

Xibanya posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ6Gdd-pSPA

Looks excellent! I can't wait to play it.

# ? Oct 22, 2021 18:47

Xibanya: Sep 17, 2012; Clever Betty

I want to point out that the characters shown in promotional stills of the game are not illustrations, they are the same real-time models you will see in combat, with the same shader they use the entire game. They look that good all the time.

# ? Oct 22, 2021 18:47