first person animations/running animations

There are options for 1st or 3rd person view.

With regards to animation, I will give you my honest assesment and viewpoint. There are certain animations that look a little “weird” and could use some work, including a couple of combat animations and cycling animations such as lumberjacking once the gather speed has been altered from the preset length. While it does lower the effect of “pollish” it is something that is probably not deemed critical at this time with such a comprehensive list of features and mechanics still to be implimented. If it comes down to a choice of beautiful graphics and animations or functional combat or controls for faction management I will take the content over the pollish every time. Animation updates can, and probably will, be demoted to a post release issue as it can be rectified via patching as and when dev time permits.

Unfortunately with smaller dev teams this is the sort of issue that people often complain about, but in reality there is not a “animations team” or even a “character modelling team”. The same person will be responsible for far more than one area of the game, and I am being deadly serious when I say person in the singular. The team consists of less than 12 people and that covers everything from web, servers, art, coding, admin, management and any other area you can think of. The small team allows the budget to last longer, but also restricts the rate of progress. If you have 12 staff for example for 6 months, you could double the staff level within budget but then beta lasts half the time. With a low beta population, and little to no advertising budget at this time the number of testers is often as small as the team making the game. The lead dev has the tough decisions of managing budget, manhours and responding to bugs that are found, and VERY few testers actually submit any reports.

I have been around beta’s for many years, and would very much consider myself an armchair developer, but the simple truth is that Idont know the half of it. The business is complex, and the decisions are often critical, not to mention you also have the financial aspect which can often cause more issues.

There are many things on the “wanted” list that simply wont make the launch release. Things such as weather and naval combat have to be put on a back burner simply to get a product that is playable ready before the budget runs out. With the current economical climate investors are nervous creatures, and asking them to wait another 6 months (after several years) to “pollish” a game is a little hard to swallow for the average businessman.

I have gone way off topic, as usual, but wanted to offer a little insight into why some things in Dawntide may not be up to the usual AAA standards people have come to recognise as the standard. If some people decide that is not good enough and they wont pay for the game, then that is what the team have to deal with but for me as a player I woudl rather have functionality and content over fluff and pollish.

FrankJ see your messages ;)