Archive for August, 2010
Pumpkin Pie, from Guild Wars 2 Guru, went and turned a couple of the Guild Wars alphabets into actual, useable fonts. OMG FONTS!
I’m a bit of a font snob.
I’m getting visions of a young Krytan poring over dusty old ledgers in the Durmand Priory, searching for her lost lineage.
So far we have Old Ascalonian and Canthan.
I’ve got my fingers crossed for one in New Krytan. That one might be a bit coming though, because I think we’re still missing 5 or so letters.
The Hall of Monuments is a place for your Guild Wars character to put up her prizes for future generations. I already know that my future incarnation in Guild Wars 2 will have fur and enjoy ripping face.
But what about Morgan’s actual descendants? I’m a bit crazy about geneology (damn you Civil War for destroying my family’s papers so that I’ll never be part of the DAR!!!), and throw in a timeline for everything that happens in the Guild Wars universe, let stew for 250 years and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
I present to you the product of my insanity. An account of my main character in Guild Wars, Morgan Ascot, and her children, as laid down in the Durmand Priory by her youngest son.
After the youngest son dies no more history is recorded. Instead I’ve set myself up a history for any human character I might like to make int he future.
The Ascot family, as founded by Morgan and Bayhas, remain strong devotees of Dwayna. Through trade and support of Queen Salma (and later Queen Jennah) the Ascots now enjoy a prominent place in human society. They are largely of Elonian descent.
The Billings family, as founded by the warrior Asma and then Lidda Ascot and Daniel Billings enjoy a modest life as Moa ranchers. They produce the finest moa meat and eggs in the Divinity Coast region as well as offering Golden Moas as pets for aspiring rangers. They marry widely and are largely of Krytan descent.
The Leovinus family, thanks to the actions of its founder, Marcinta, have never been what one would call respectible. To take the low road in Divinity’s Reach is to find a Leovian trickster plying his trade. They are largely of Ascalonian or Canthan descent.
Also, I have fanart.
I don’t know why an asura would want to wear a fedora (other than the fact that they’re awesome) but this one certainly loves his.
Specifics – Sketched and painted in Photoshop CS2 using a Wacom Intuos 3.
It's not pink, it's faded blood.
So I made this fantastic drawing of an excited charr and then Hunter had to go and pooh pooh all over it whining that the fierce felines don’t wear pink.
Well what do you think about THAT?
<—-
Hmmmmmm?
I also have it on good authority that the charr behind the pink one (who is, incidentally, wearing white and pink) is none other than Regina Buenaobra.
Neener neener.
All light-hearted bickering aside, did you see the dye system? Holy CRAP! The best video I know of (if you know of a better one please link it in the comments) is my friend Tasha’s (fellow cohost on Relics and DJ at SI Radio).
You have to skip to the end if you want to see the dye stuff. I recommend watching the whole thing, however. Tasha plays at a bit slower pace than I saw in most of the other videos but I thought that gave us a nice opportunity to actually look around. I also enjoyed how the camera operator zoomed in on the screen, though the auto-focus was a bit slow.
I’m thinking that I might try to unify all my characters with a single color scheme. I don’t think it will involve pink (I’m not a huge fan, my favorite color is actually green), but we’ll just have to wait and see. I see plenty of opportunity for hideous color combinations, but that’s the price of freedom and I’ll take the occasionally gaudy-ugly character over a restrictive dye system any day.
Also, I updated PeltWatch. Enjoy!
Hunter, you were spot on. I am RIDICULOUSLY EXCITED that charr run on all fours (At least until they pull out weapons, then it’s back paws only). I don’t think I can over-state how excited I am about that. It scratches my bestial itch. I’m not a furry, but I do enjoy the primal nature inherent in beast-like classes and races. The charr give me the same satisfaction that I had from playing a feral druid in WoW. And now I can feel bestial and cast spells if I want to! (instead of being an overweight moon chicken) It kind of puts the kibosh on skirts though. My mattress is on the floor and if I try to wear a nightgown to bed (sometimes I feel like being ye olde Tiger) I just end up tripping all over it and eventually breaking either the nightgown, nightstand, or myself.
I’m clumsy. Shut up.
Where was I? Charr on all fours. Excellent.
Also special thanks to Guild Mag for posting the unofficial gameplay video of the charr on their itunes stream. I can see that at work. More please!
The first videos I saw, however, were of the human starting areas.
Here’s some of my initial reactions:
• I’m not a fan of the glowing halo around monsters and allies. After watching the charr video though I think I’ll be able to get used to it. It will certainly make selecting monsters and allies easier. In GWC I rely heavily on tab-targeting and my party window. Every time I try to select from models on the screen I fail miserably and give up in disgust.
• I’m pretty underwhelmed with the User Interface, but that’s not a big deal. Remember what the GWC beta interface looked like? (I actually liked the beta interface btw)
Yeah. I’m sure it’ll get a nice coat of “ooh shiny” before the game goes live. As far as the layout of the interface goes I like it just fine, actually I like it a lot. If there’s clickable things on the left I wish they were on the right where the energy bar is (e.g., swapped) but that’s just because that when playing I usually keep my mouse in the right half of my screen. GWC offers a stupid amount of built-in customization options for the interface. I have no reason to doubt it’ll be any different for GW2.
I’m getting a strong WAR vibe from it. I think it has to do with the objectives being in an itemized list in the upper-right hand corner. That’s not a bad thing, I really enjoyed WAR. I think that vibe comes from just seeing the human areas however. Once I saw the charr video that vibe wasn’t there, but once again, I’d like to stress that I don’t consider the WAR vibe to be a bad thing at all.
Also, hunter you have my eternal gratitude for posting a screenshot using photobucket! It’s hanging out in an extra tab, not pulling bandwidth (like a video would) and not getting me in trouble. You’re awesome man.
(notice how I just gave up using bullet points? Yeah what happened there?)
In the video that GuildMag posted, Martin seems to be playing a warrior and I’m excited to see that the character still feels very lithe. I’m not a fan of big and bulky which is why I usually shy away from heavily-armored professions. If I can get the lean jungle cat feeling from the charr I just might be sold on playing a warrior.
My thoughts on the charr video:
• Martin doesn’t do a very good job of “don’t stand in the bad” but I guess if you’re a developer playing a tricked out character it doesn’t matter all that much.
• Gender lines for the charr are feeling a little blurred. It’s probably just because of the video quality but I really have to squint at those tails.
• That dual-mace spin-attack skill looks really cool. I want ten.
• I like the brush-stroke activation bars. More of their painterly aesthetic.
• Turrets! Turrets are always fun.
• Steeleye Span can be overrun. I’m thinking it probably won’t be mobile. Ah well.
• I like the map functionality. The zoom and fade effects when pulling it up and down are very nice. It looks big. I mean really big.
• Also moas. /cheer.
• The sounds in the NPC communication ‘windows’ (they’re not exactly windows) reminds me of Kingdom Hearts. I’m not too crazy about it. (I didn’t care for Kingdom Hearts and I don’t feel its cartoony aesthetic fits with GW2.) That’s just my opinion though, and the sound could have been distorted.
• Who let those harpies out of Elona? Bad harpy, no biscuit! I haaaaaated Elonian harpies. Heket too.
I was really excited to finally hear from some animators on ArenaNet’s blog. I love working in 3D in general, but animation is my passion. Heron Prior mentioned that the dragon wasn’t mocapped and I’m curious to know who asked about that. How do you mocap a dragon, really? Toss a cat on the ground? It would just be easier to animate by hand.
All in all, it’s still a game I really want to play. I can’t wait to see some higher-quality in-game footage. That’s going to be fantastic.
Secret Agent Cat 