Diablo III Forum Activity
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 888
On keeping blood on the floor:
Even decals, which are textures, impact performance. So there has to be some limit on how many of them are allowed to linger and for how long. We have to try to strike a balance somewhere. Also, a ground literally covered with corpses or blood becomes less and less interesting, more and more confusing, and can actually create some frustration.
Regarding visible markers, we put a lot of effort into building rooms and areas to ensure that the randomly generated dungeons are indeed random, but also not confusing and maze-like. We don't want everything to look the same. So in that respect a visual marker of a blood spot or corpse really shouldn't be necessary.
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Ok, you guys pushed and pushed, and now I have to talk about things I don't understand! HAPPY!?
Julian Love, our lead tech artist and forum lurker extraordinaire offers some additional insight into these things we call graphics.Every independent thing that we show in the game has to be put into a special package that we call a "draw call," which is then delivered to the 3D card to be rendered on screen. It's not too different from preparing xmas gifts in that everything you want your relatives to receive must be packaged up in some way and then driven across the country in order to arrive there on time. Your CPU does this packaging and delivery and it takes a lot of bandwidth, so it ends up being one of the most crucial expenses to manage. Now, the truly horrible thing is that from a draw call cost perspective, each individual splattering of blood on the floor is every bit as expensive as a character or a dead body: they both cost one draw call. Beyond that, the differences tend to be somewhat trivial.Thanks JLove.
So, that's a lot of words just to say that blood splats can be every bit as expensive as, and in some ways, more expensive than dead bodies. It's counter intuitive, but this is the way it actually works.
On Diablo III statue preorders:
The Diablo III premium statue "Overthrown" depicts a mighty barbarian atop the conquered Diablo, shouting towards the High Heavens in vicious triumph. It was first unveiled as a grey prototype at San Diego Comic-Con 2008, and after a year and a half of continued development, is now being made available for pre-order.
Standing at a massive 18" (457.2mm) high, hand-cast in high-quality polystone, and painted to exacting standards, each piece is individually finished with a unique edition number. To see brand-new pictures of the painted statue, download an intense new wallpaper, or pre-order the piece (available fall 2009 for $299), head on over to Sideshow's website now.
http://www.sideshowtoy.com/?page_id=4489&sku=80231
On floating health bars:
I think we essentially agree with you. The floaty 'above creature' health bars raised a few different concerns and they've since been changed. Health bars for uniques and bosses are displayed at the top, and health bars for everything else are displayed at the bottom (both stationary). It works well, it's all out of the way but still accessible if needed and more importantly you can keep an eye on boss/unique health as well as any lesser minions you happen to be fighting.
On tomes of knowledge:
It's already in. There were three or so tomes you could pick up in the BlizzCon demo. You could keep fighting while lore was delivered audio-book style, with a nice little interface to go with it.
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If the Leoric journals are any indication, they may each be read by the character that wrote them. A generic narrator may not be necessary if that's the case.
