APB: Finally, I Can Be A PUNK!

[Nebu]

Link to customization VID.

That's amazing!  I hope that this is a sign of what we can expect from future games... though I doubt it.  All that customization must be a huge limiter of the number of characters that you can have on screen at one moment. 

[Mrbloodworth]

Link to customization VID.

That's amazing!  I hope that this is a sign of what we can expect from future games... though I doubt it.  All that customization must be a huge limiter of the number of characters that you can have on screen at one moment. 

Its all about give and take.

[Modern Angel]

Goddammit, the video was ruined by Barnett

[NiX]

Goddammit, the video was ruined by Barnett

Barnett ruins everything. I think he has ruined life itself.

[Malakili]

Still, I'm impressed by that video.

[Triforcer]

I like how on the main video on their site a perfectly nice young professional woman describes to become a tattooed murderer for no apparent reason. 

[Kageru]

Couldn't watch it because of the tool talking over the top of everything. But I did see the earlier E3 video and it is certainly an impressive piece of tech.

[Le0]

Call it whatever you want but having seen the character customization tool in action it is quite revolutionnary

Revolutionary in what sense?  

Serious question.  I'm a customization fan.

Revolutionary was maybe a bit too much, but the work they have done on their tools is really impressive for today standards of customization.

[Margalis]

It does look about a bajillion times better than wrestling games while offereing that same level of depth.

[LK]

Fuck making Super Heroes. I'll take this any day of the week.

Instant buy.

[TripleDES]

Someone drag one or more of the devs into these forums and get them to hand out beta invites.

[tmp]

Gamasutra interview with the lead designer.

[Ghambit]

There's nothing revolutionary about that chargen tech.
The only thing "revolutionary" about it is that some designer was wise enough to put it in their MMO.  But really, editors like that have been around a LOOONG time, probably around 10 years.  It's literally just a modified Daz3D (poser) plugin.

Just chalk it up to another gaming element that doesnt take a rocket scientist to realize should be in your game, but it takes MMO devs 10 years to do.

[NiX]

Has it been in a console game before?

[Hoax]

I've never ever in my life seen design your own icon and then drop and rotate onto skin or clothing.  Not ever.  

I've seen submit an icon, I've seen choose a preselected icon for a preselected placement.  Drop and rotate?  Color?  Combine?  Never seen that.

Jus sayin

[LK]

I like the 100-person server idea. Massive enough for me.

[DayDream]

The concept of character customization isn't revolutionary.  We've seen that before with CoX.  I think the level it's being taken to in this game IS revolutionary, at least what's been shown in demo videos.  It looks almost like a light graphic editing tool, with the way logos are made.

CoX is good in how broad its themes are, but it's really easy to find the limits of those individual themes.  There's only so many robot cowboys you can make.  APB is certainly more focused, in its pseudo-realistic crime theme, but I think the image generation APB has gives it a lot more creative area.

[LK]

They should release the character creation tool months ahead of the game's launch as a free download.

[Hoax]

They should release the character creation tool months ahead of the game's launch as a free download.

So true, not doing that will prove they are just not very smart. 

[UnSub]

I've seen this suggestion before - give out the incredibly good chargen system before the game launches to build hype, or something. I probably even thought it was a good idea for CoH/V at some point (and there is a stand alone creator out there for CoH/V, distributed before the Korean version of the game was launched).

However, over time I've realised it is a bad idea from a business perspective. If your chargen is really that amazing, let people pay to use it. Give it away for free and you end up paying the bandwidth for a lot of people who want a free paper doll creator. Plus then there is an expectation of receiving updates as well to keep the free version in line with the paid version (and there has to be updates, or else why release the thing for free to begin with?).

[LK]

OK, free with pre-order and ship it on DVD. Mail must be cheaper than bandwidth and those DVDs would make great con swag.

[Sophismata]

What if you allowed people to create characters freely with the purchase of a box? They didn't need to subscribe, but as long as they have an account they can fool around with character creation.

I'm fairly sure some people will buy the game just for character creation, and you might attract more if they didn't have any monthly expense hanging over their heads. But their lovingly crafted characters will always be sitting there... ready to play... just a subscription away.

[NiX]

Typical MMO design would suggest the characters aren't saved locally, so for people to be able to create characters without being subbed would cost the company.

[Ghambit]

There are already character creators like this that you can get for free, just not linked with a game (which I guess some in here think is revolutionary).
Since most people arent enterprising enough to find said character creators w/o a marketing gimmick, then I do believe it'd be smart for them to release it early as an offline tool available via download for a fee or pre-order.  Link it with social sites like Facebook and voila, free marketing.

[tmp]

There are already character creators like this that you can get for free

Name a few?

[Bokonon]

I've never ever in my life seen design your own icon and then drop and rotate onto skin or clothing.  Not ever.  

I've seen submit an icon, I've seen choose a preselected icon for a preselected placement.  Drop and rotate?  Color?  Combine?  Never seen that.

Jus sayin

Rockband has this... With the restriction of using a large-ish list of base icons (which can be stretched, rotated, color changes,  and combined with others), but that's how you create your band icon/emblem.

[Xurtan]

EQII had 'starter kits' that shipped with the pre-order, which included a copy of the character customization. Anyone know what ever became of that?

I seem to recall it allowing you to create and then save your characters, pre-launch.

[Ghambit]

There are already character creators like this that you can get for free

Name a few?

Daz3d is/was one.
Then there are trial versions of Poser and Clone3d along with a million other 3d character modelers, many of which are open source with thriving communities (like Renderosity) wherein you can pretty much buy or borrow every conceivable appliance you can think of.

Then there's crap like Second Life, Sims, etc.  (obviously a different type of implementation though)

Now, what's "revolutionary" about the chargen is not the chargen itself but how it's applied, namely the way each gameworld/server will work.  Small populations.  Heavy customizability coupled with gang-related empire growth and pvp.  It's the 1st MMO that takes advantage of this particular game design to apply a neat tech. that's been around a while.

And now we'll argue if 100 people/server is an MMO.   

[LK]

Yes. Moving on...

[tmp]

Daz3d is/was one.
Then there are trial versions of Poser and Clone3d along with a million other 3d character modelers, many of which are open source with thriving communities (like Renderosity) wherein you can pretty much buy or borrow every conceivable appliance you can think of.

Then there's crap like Second Life, Sims, etc.  (obviously a different type of implementation though)

I think you may be missing the revolutionary part, then. It's not in the ability to dress up a human figure and tweak its shape with sliders because yes, that's nothing new even in MMOs. It's instead in how easy that APB editor makes quite advanced customization through their UI which is frankly, like nothing i've seen out there. They take care of mucking with projections and UV maps and geometry pieces which is something the professional 3d modelers will generally expect of you, while at the same time still providing these abilities which up to now was pretty much reserved just to these high-end applications designed for dedicated non-realtime rendering. And they also do similar thing for adjusting materials applied to the surfaces, by the looks of it.

It is revolutionary in the sense of bringing very different approach to the subject. This makes Daz Studio or Poser similar only in very basic sense; like say, Everquest is similar to Wow and did these similar things long before too... but it doesn't make the changes Wow brought any less notable.

[TripleDES]

Another 20 minute speech with some interesting footage.

http://www.vg247.com/2009/07/15/new-in-game-apb-video-20-minutes-from-dave-jones-develop-keynote/

They have sort of a Fruity Loops Lite in the damn game!

[Nonentity]

I am extremely wary of the last.fm or whatever music integration tool.

Can't wait to hear people driving around to Urinal Tribunal.

On the other hand, I can't wait to drive around in my car and force people to listen to Urinal Tribunal.

[TripleDES]

Last.fm streaming will probably be an optional setting. However I'm more interested on how they're going to moderate graphics content, given the freeform graphics editor.

[Modern Angel]

I am extremely wary of the last.fm or whatever music integration tool.

Can't wait to hear people driving around to Urinal Tribunal.

On the other hand, I can't wait to drive around in my car and force people to listen to Urinal Tribunal.

Not how it works. Everything I've read indicates that you have to have the same artist in your last.fm library to hear someone else play it. So if I don't like Anal Cunt then I won't hear Anal Cunt from the guy who does.

By the way, I'm looking frantically for the 'Mitchell' theme song for my gang to absolutely no avail.

[NiX]

Last.fm streaming will probably be an optional setting. However I'm more interested on how they're going to moderate graphics content, given the freeform graphics editor.

I've only heard that the content you can use is pre-determined. I'm sure people will come up with ridiculous things, but the game will carry an M rating anyway.