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WIP Character Model - Witch Girl

DeathDaisy

DeathDaisy

Freebooter
Storm Modder
this character of mine is very close to my heart and I rly wanted to use her in a quest Im doing. I wasnt satisfied with the retexture, so using ~6000 different programs and/or literal magic I got her out from Sims 3 and into maya. at the pace the quest is coming along shes never gonna see the light of day tho, cuz Im dumb and wrote 100s of lines of dialog before I figured I shld probably plan out how the storys actually gonna unfold. priorities! :facepalm so sharing her a bit informally as a WIP anyway cuz I think shes cute. maybe I can make her an officer or whatever meanwhile..

ENGINE 2018-01-03 22-22-54.jpg ENGINE 2018-01-05 14-19-52.jpg ENGINE 2018-01-05 14-21-25.jpg

Im not very satisfied with the body. to keep within the current character poly budget, with the head and hair using most, I used an existing lowpoly body with a few tweaks like making the breasts more realistic ie not traffic cones and relax the UV map a bit. but the shoulders, hips and almost everything else is too narrow, which I might try to fix, and the arms are a bit too short, which is just how the skeleton ingame is made, so not much to do about that:modding still, shes def a WIP. might end up switching out the body entirely. quite happy with the talky head tho!

Updated 2018-01-11: WitchGirl.rar on Mediafire
 
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A fine start, to be sure! My only suggestion would be to make her eyes, specifically her eye colour, a bit more piercing. More intense. And I'd be happy to help out with dialogue and story mapping.
 
Really cool, @DeathDaisy! :woot

DeathDaisy said:
at the pace the quest is coming along shes never gonna see the light of day tho, cuz Im dumb and wrote 100s of lines of dialog before I figured I shld probably plan out how the storys actually gonna unfold. priorities! :facepalm
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I'm sure you still learned more about quest coding by doing that.
If you gained more experience, it wasn't a waste of time. ;)
 
...and wrote 100s of lines of dialog before I figured I shld probably plan out how the storys actually gonna unfold
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No problem, probably you can use a lot of it. If you need any help with questwriting I know a trick or two.
 
thanks all! xD

Pieter Boelen said:
I'm sure you still learned more about quest coding by doing that.
If you gained more experience, it wasn't a waste of time. ;)
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true I guess :p I learned a lot about branching dialog at least, cuz oh boy did I go overboard w/ that
Mad Jack Wolfe said:
And I'd be happy to help out with dialogue and story mapping.
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Jack Rackham said:
No problem, probably you can use a lot of it. If you need any help with questwriting I know a trick or two.
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thanks, Ill probably take you up on the offer xD
Mad Jack Wolfe said:
My only suggestion would be to make her eyes, specifically her eye colour, a bit more piercing. More intense.
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good idea!
 
Suggestion: in "initModels.c", the character has only the last name "Morgen" - no first name. I'm going to guess that this is really supposed to be her first name, but the system doesn't work too well if a character has a first name and no last name. Actually, it doesn't work too well if a character has a last name and no first name either, as you're probably going to find out when Morgen goes to the store... I'm also going to guess, based on the ship name, that she has Arthurian influence, which means a suitable last name might be "le Fay". (That also fits in well with her being assigned to France.)

I'm also willing to help with dialog and story development, though I don't have as much experience as @Jack Rackham. (You're not the only one to start with dialog before proceeding with the actual story. ;) In working on my sidequest to give people something to do on East Martinique, I wrote some of the dialog for the researcher who sends you there and then wrote the quest code for what happens when he's finished talking...)
 
I don't work linear but someting like this:

1) I have an idea of the story. No details.
2) Fix all the needed locations. Try varying them with retexture/import from other games, using part of them etc.
3) Make the puzzles in the planned situations/locations. Make sure they work so something interesting's going to happen.
4) Write dialogs (+ in WoodesRogers add some "historical scenes"). Add questbook entries.
5) The loading pictures. Very boring.
6) The storyteller. That is the jump starts to different parts of the story.
7) Write the walktrough.
Characters, items are fixed when needed.

So it's round after round. With each round more details are added. The dialog comes late and isn't the story for me. More the instrument to bind the story together. I'm in the dialog phase now since a few months.
 
Whereas for me, part 2 is not needed as I'm not that good at creating new scenes and generally use existing ones (as do most of the stories). The only thing I've needed to do is add locators if I need something to happen where no locator currently exists. If I'm using an existing location (with or without additional locators) then stage 5 isn't needed either.

"Woodes Rogers" is a puzzle-oriented story, whereas most of the others are more a combination of action and dialog. It all depends on how you want your story to play out. Part 3 is therefore more generally "plan out what you want to happen".

The storyteller is also optional - I never bothered with one in "Ardent", and the branching plotline meant that jump starts were almost impossible. In the end I only added one jump start. I suppose my "storyteller" is the Inquisitor who asks you several questions right at the start, but that's only because "Ardent" gives you a choice of two specific characters. Otherwise, depending on how you set up the initialistion file (e.g. "PROGRAM\Storyline\Ardent.c"), you can either restrict the story to one specific character (which most of them do), or allow the player to use any character ("Tales of a Sea Hawk" does that).

So my process was something like:
  1. Make up the general idea of the story. It doesn't need to be detailed at this point. (When I started "Ardent", all I knew was that I wanted to start with a jail escape and end with you uncovering and foiling some dastardly plot, and along the way there was the possibility of romance with a governor's daughter - or son, if you chose to play the female lead character. A lot of the plot was made up as I went along, thinking "How do I get from here towards the end point in an interesting way?")
  2. Do you need a custom location for the next part of the story? If so, decide what you need.
  3. If you did create a custom location, draw up the loading screen. Otherwise proceed to stage 4.
  4. Dialogs. Run through the scene in your head as if you're directing a film - who's saying what to whom? Then write the text files (or add to them, if it's a character who has already been talking earlier in the story). Then write the code files to put your text into sequence.
  5. Test the story to check that the scene works the way you wanted.
  6. Find out why the scene doesn't work the way you wanted and fix it. Repeat stages 5 and 6 until it works properly.
  7. Write questbook entries. Note that once a questbook opens, the game reads the entire book up to that point and does not update it, so if you saved game, added a questbook entry and then reloaded the savegame, the new entry won't show up. You'll need to load a savegame from before that quest started.
  8. Repeat 2-7 until the whole thing is done.
  9. Write the walkthrough.
If you've brought the story to a suitable point, e.g. the end of a quest - think of it like the chapter of a book - then you may want to post it. Partly because you're proud of what you've done so far and want to show it off, and partly so other people can play through it and maybe find problems you didn't spot because they're doing things differently to you. In that case, you're back to stages 5 and 6. (The first version of "Ardent" which I posted had just the prison escape and crew rescue, incidentally providing a nice test ground for the muskets which
@Jack Rackham had just improved while I was writing the storyline.)
 
Well I'm not looking forward to add more cases to my existing storyteller but as I already have him for part 1
situations it will look odd if I didn't follow that up. Also it's a long and complicated story so much can go wrong.
(for ex my coding) So a fresh start somewhere in the middle of it can be of use for the player.

While working on the quest I prefer to make quick starts in StartStoryline.c (just for myself). Much faster.
Maybe useful for you @DeathDaisy?
 
Grey Roger said:
Suggestion: in "initModels.c", the character has only the last name "Morgen" - no first name. I'm going to guess that this is really supposed to be her first name, but the system doesn't work too well if a character has a first name and no last name. Actually, it doesn't work too well if a character has a last name and no first name either, as you're probably going to find out when Morgen goes to the store... I'm also going to guess, based on the ship name, that she has Arthurian influence, which means a suitable last name might be "le Fay". (That also fits in well with her being assigned to France.)
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yeah Ive gone deep down the arthurian rabbithole the last year or two, doing so much research just because of that character like a lunatic.. :oops: I was thinking that a le fay epithet would make the arthurian influence maybe too obvious, but otoh I guess I already majorly botched that with the ship name :p so probably thats for the best

the quest making and writing tips are very much appreciated! xD Ive got a rough idea of where I want to start and where I want to end and I think/hope itll be a special experience, but the middle is very fuzzy so maybe the build-it-as-it-comes is a good idea. I was planning on trying out making some new weapon and locations now that Ive got a grasp of maya and its almost working and all, gotta study how the walkpaths, locators and stuff works... I made an 18th c. street from the old town in stockholm as part of a project in university that I think Ive still got laying around that I might try it out on, but who knows. I was also hoping to have some puzzles but Im having a real hard time coming up with interesting ones so dunno about that. anyway, I feel more confident about it now so probably Ill make a thread once I get sum stuff sorted out :beer:

also, greener eyes coming up!
 
DeathDaisy said:
I was thinking that a le fay epithet would make the arthurian influence maybe too obvious, but otoh I guess I already majorly botched that with the ship name :p
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The mod is littered with all sorts of random Easter Eggs anyway. Why not add some more? :cheeky
 
updated main post with a new rar containing greener eyes and a last name! also increased the res of the face tex to 2048. Id usually say thats exessive, but with the not-optimal UV map the face only takes up about a quarter. having it as 2048 brought out a lot of detail
 
Umm... 2048 x 2048 is the size of one of the huge ship interface picture files, and at 21.8MB it's the same disc size as well. I'll see whether converting it back to .tga and then re-converting it to .tga.tx using one of the compression settings will visibly detract from her appearance in the game. (You could do the same and see what you think.)
 
Grey Roger said:
Umm... 2048 x 2048 is the size of one of the huge ship interface picture files, and at 21.8MB it's the same disc size as well. I'll see whether converting it back to .tga and then re-converting it to .tga.tx using one of the compression settings will visibly detract from her appearance in the game. (You could do the same and see what you think.)
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fair, maybe its unreasonable for a 15yr old game.. if I had been smart Id have fixed the UV map before skinning and importing, but alas, Im not :modding the DXT compression in TX converter really trashes the colors, the gradients go all weird. I can get nice compression out of photoshop, but TX converter blows up the file size again when converting.. better to have it as 1024 in that case. maybe Ill experiment with fixing the UV map in the future so the face and hair use up the whole texture area, thatd make 1024 look equally crisp as 2048 does rn

anyway, heres a 1024 version, its at ~5mb. itll have to do

(fun fact: the texture when I ripped it from sims was a whopping 4096x2048! :p)

EDIT: actually, maybe the DXT comp just looks messed up in the TX converter preview, gonna try it in game as you said
EDIT2: it looks alright! colors are a bit less vibrant, but def acceptable until I potentially fix the UV! :onya removing the tiny trash file!
 
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@DeathDaisy: how would you like a fantasy sword to go with that character? I volunteered to help someone with texturing a sword for CoAS in the hope of getting something useful for PoTC, and what I actually got was "Anathros, Sword of the Earth" from the "Two Worlds" game. But, having put that effort into the texture, I'm not about to throw it away, and it occurs to me that a fantasy character could perhaps use it. Have a look over here.
 
Grey Roger said:
@DeathDaisy: how would you like a fantasy sword to go with that character? I volunteered to help someone with texturing a sword for CoAS in the hope of getting something useful for PoTC, and what I actually got was "Anathros, Sword of the Earth" from the "Two Worlds" game. But, having put that effort into the texture, I'm not about to throw it away, and it occurs to me that a fantasy character could perhaps use it. Have a look over here.
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thx! I can probably put that into use xD can never have enough treasure
 
DeathDaisy said:
EDIT: actually, maybe the DXT comp just looks messed up in the TX converter preview, gonna try it in game as you said
EDIT2: it looks alright! colors are a bit less vibrant, but def acceptable until I potentially fix the UV! :onya removing the tiny trash file!
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Can you upload your version of the textures with DXT compression? Then I can add them to the update which I'll soon be uploading.

As for the sword, I wasn't thinking of using it as treasure, though I am now - it may go into one of the cavern dungeons, replacing the stock sword which is currently there. But "PROGRAM\Storyline\FreePlay\StartStoryline.c" or "PROGRAM\Characters\characters_init.c" could be fiddled to give either Ciri or Morgan a special sword when you start the game.
 
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