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5 years ago ::
Jun 13, 2008 - 9:09AM
#111
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Date Joined:
Apr 12, 2004
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The thing is, models in wow are all fully animated too, and can be changed to suit various roles, you might have some peasant orc weilding a shovel, or you might have a mighty orc warlord wearing some sort of magical full plate weilding a two handed mace, or perhaps he is wearing a robe and casting spells from the top of a dragon. etc.. etc.. etc..
its not SO surprising that blizzard decide to make a single basic racial model, and then work in ways to have 100 variations on a theme.
I would hazard a guess that creating a 3d model, and fully animating it for all possible eventualities and then further allowing it to be customised with individual weapons or armour, is probably a more complicated process than creating a single, non animated static model.
Except for one thing: They only have to do it once. Once that is done, all the weapons follow the same path, with just different graphics. The only difference there is there is a 1 handed and a 2 handed movement and posing. Hell even spellcasting has most of the same poses.
And I might mention that armor and weapon graphics are repeated a lot. Hell a lot of spells share the same graphics.
Now making that first character WAS a complex procedure, but after that it was a simple matter of inserting different skins on the same body and different models of weapons in the same poses and movements. That was by design.
Now if Wizards shows a bunch of skeletons that are clearly the same model in different poses, I will call BS on them, but if they are anything like the real minis then they will all be clearly different models. I have yet to see 2 minis that look really similar (unless of course they are actually duplicates) the closest thing I have seen to that are some goblin and kobold minis look like the same model wearing different gear and weapons (or a trap in the kobolds case). In that case they are very differently geared, and theres only 2 or 3 types.
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5 years ago ::
Jun 13, 2008 - 12:55PM
#112
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because they are probably very hard to make.
LoL. Assuming 10 cents of their monthly fee went towards v-mini's and the manage to hook in a 100,000 subscribers to DDI (wow is kicking around 10 million, I'd be suprised if DDI couldn't beat 100k subscribers) Then guess what, they could pay for office space, computers, software, and two full time technically skilled employees (Assuming 50k starting salaries, averaged between a graphical designer and programmer) to do nothing but design mini's all year long, and guess what, they aren't that hard to make since they are non moving MODELS. This is about the simplest part of designing graphics for a 3d application next to textures. That's with 1% of their income, assuming everyone is paying for a year at a go, .6% if people are only trying it out for a month. (also on the topic the cost to upgrade the software itself for changing errata, 2 dollars of the fee would employ a 40 man design team year round to do that.)
Also whoever mentioned bandwidth costs since they need to verify access to different tiers.... assuming 1KB sent upstream for verification (generous) and 2KB sent back as some hash of privileges, lets round the total bandwidth of the transaction to 5k to allow some overhead and whatever anti piracy tom foolery they think will stop people. Assuming they charged a flat one time purchase fee of 20 dollars, for the software, and your average gamer wants to play with the table 4 times a month. In the next 80 years of his life his total bandwidth usage with the software will cost WoTC .015 cents. That's a hundreth of a cent. As a portion of the cost of the game? than 7 percent of a percent of a percent.
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5 years ago ::
Jun 13, 2008 - 1:00PM
#113
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Now making that first character WAS a complex procedure, but after that it was a simple matter of inserting different skins on the same body and different models of weapons in the same poses and movements. That was by design.
Yes. Except even reducing down to the number of base models wow has, you're still talking 50+ off the top of my head? And many new base types have been added as free content, not part of expansions. (AQ, BWL, Naxx, where all free content featuring new model base types, and many new weapons graphics)
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5 years ago ::
Jun 13, 2008 - 4:02PM
#114
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Date Joined:
Feb 14, 2008
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You guys realize you could just take the AutoCAD stuff for DDM miniature sculpts and convert them into a format for DDi? Then clean it up a bit and texture. It'd be quicker than modeling them all from scratch.
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5 years ago ::
Jun 13, 2008 - 6:10PM
#115
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Date Joined:
Sep 25, 2007
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You guys realize you could just take the AutoCAD stuff for DDM miniature sculpts and convert them into a format for DDi? Then clean it up a bit and texture. It'd be quicker than modeling them all from scratch.
Yep, that'd do it alright. If they don't have autocad models for them (they could be made from hand sculpted masters after all) then they can do 3d scans of them (look up NextEngine, it's fantastic stuff, will even create the textures for you).
The big thing about paying for minis is: yes, it costs something to design a mini (unless they scan the physical minis) but once it's designed it's free to "manufacture." In general your subscription to a MMO gets you free content updates (I suspect that they really regret ever comparing DDi to an MMO by now  ). It's basically the "deal" in subscription games: you pay a fee that pays for the servers and you get free content updates. You get new stuff, they make money. Occasionally they bring out a paid expansion but these always add major content.
I'm wondering, what's going to be in DDis "free content updates"? Will there be any?
They appear to be planning on charging us for, well, just about all new content after all. I suppose for a lot of people (me included) it just stings that they think they can charge us 3 times; for the books, for the DDi subscription and for the content (minis, pdfs of books, adventures). Four times I suppose, if you buy physical minis too.
I think that additional mini updates should be made available as content updates as part of the subscription and I don't buy the line that the costs aren't accounted for in the subscription fee; for that price they should be.
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5 years ago ::
Jun 14, 2008 - 9:57AM
#116
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Date Joined:
Dec 19, 2007
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I know I've come late to the dance, but I'd like to put my two cents in.
Page 1 Replies
What does the subscription cost include? The plan is for the subscription to include --
- All Dragon and Dungeon content we produce during your subscription.
- The Online Compendium. The database that fuels the Compendium would include data from all official books and e-magazines.
- The Character Visualizer that allows you to create 2d and 3d images of your character.
- The Character Builder that allows you to create a digital character sheet. This application will draw from the same database as the Compendium, which means that you eventually need just the one stop-shop to refer to material from all the official books and e-magazines.
- The Digital Game Table and Dungeon Builder which allows you to create dungeons and play in them with other people online. The Game Table will very likely include a starter's set of Virtual Minis and Dungeon Tiles to start you off.
Well ignoring the fact that the E-tools are windows only. There are really only two things mentioned there that I have any interest in currently. "The Character Builder" and "The Online Compendium". The "The Digital Game Table" sounds neat, but given my group is face to face not a big deal. I just can't see plopping down $10/month for that (When I'm in I tend to be in for the long haul).
Given that it looks like the builder will be windows only when it's released that makes it 1. (And if the Compendium requires some windows-only reader then it's none) theres just no way I justify paying for this. If push comes to shove I'll make a spread sheet to put my character information in.
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5 years ago ::
Jun 14, 2008 - 3:47PM
#117
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Date Joined:
Aug 16, 2007
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So the Brand Manager says all mosnters from all core publications including the e-zines will be in the tools, but you say otherwise?
Who should we believe?
Both are right, one is talking about tokens, the other about Virtual Miniatures.
The D&D Game Table differentiates between a game piece and it's representation.
All Monsters from core publications will be added to the D&D Game Table as base game pieces (i.e. tokens).
Some of those monsters will also have a 3D Virtual Miniature. We do not plan to have one Virtual Miniature for each monster published.
The D&D Game Table will have a mechanism for you to assign a Virtual Miniature representation to a monster that does not have any, if you want to, or to create your own custom monsters, using either a token with a custom image, or an existing Virtual Miniature you have.
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5 years ago ::
Jun 14, 2008 - 3:55PM
#118
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Date Joined:
Aug 16, 2007
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Will I be able to store data locally from the character builder/ visualizer and the cartographer? Or will all player data be stored on the server?
You will be able to store data locally indeed.
And finally: What is the background behind the descision to use a windows only solution, if there are well established 3d engines around that work on multipople platforms (several of which also provide web plug-ins)?
Right now my only guess would be that they wanted to use that .net code from D&D online... which would also explain the delays 
We are using .Net and we are using a 3D Game Engine that Wizards already had before we started this project, and that was DirectX driven.
There are no links whatsoever with D&D Online, as D&D Insider applications are not a game, but mainly tools to enhance the PnP Role Playing experience.
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5 years ago ::
Jun 14, 2008 - 4:00PM
#119
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Date Joined:
Mar 31, 2008
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Both are right, one is talking about tokens, the other about Virtual Miniatures.
The D&D Game Table differentiates between a game piece and it's representation.
All Monsters from core publications will be added to the D&D Game Table as base game pieces (i.e. tokens).
Some of those monsters will also have a 3D Virtual Miniature. We do not plan to have one Virtual Miniature for each monster published.
The D&D Game Table will have a mechanism for you to assign a Virtual Miniature representation to a monster that does not have any, if you want to, or to create your own custom monsters, using either a token with a custom image, or an existing Virtual Miniature you have.
Thank you. As always you come with a very direct and clear answer!
So I will extract information for ease of reading, and you can correct me if I am wrong.
- All official monsters will be 2D tokens
- All tokens will be free for subscribers
- Subscribers get some free 3D v-minis based on the official monsters
- Subscribers can buy special 3D v-minis not in official products
Does that sum it up correctly? Wherein Scott had corrected you in another thread, it seems you had to correct him from DDXP in this one where it seemed that 3D minis would exist for all monsters, not just tokens. Again, thanks for clearing up the confussion. Merci.
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5 years ago ::
Jun 14, 2008 - 4:21PM
#120
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Date Joined:
Aug 16, 2007
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Thank you. As always you come with a very direct and clear answer!
So I will extract information for ease of reading, and you can correct me if I am wrong.
- All official monsters will be 2D tokens
- All tokens will be free for subscribers
- Subscribers get some free 3D v-minis based on the official monsters
- Subscribers can buy special 3D v-minis not in official products
Does that sum it up correctly?
For most of it yes.
The exact link between V-Minis and official monsters is still up in the air. Technically, there will always be a default stat block for any new V-Mini. Knowing if this stat block comes from an official published monsters or will be made ad-hoc is up to R&D.
So as an example, a mini called Daring Rogue may be appearing in the D&D Game Table as the representation of the Human Bandit from the MM, or may have it's own stats created by R&D as Daring Rogue.
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