Preview Riftrunner Peek of the Week #2 at RPGVault

[Spazmo]

Tags: Beyond Divinity; Larian Studios

!rpgvult have put up the <a href=http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/434/434872p1.html?fromint=1>second installment</a> in their series on <a href=http://www.larian.com/>Larian Studio</a>'s upcoming sequel to <a href=http://www.larian.com/Site/english/divinity/divinity.html>Divine Divinity</a>, <A href=http://www.larian.com/riftrunner/>Riftrunner</a>.
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<blockquote>Unfortunately, [2D graphics] also had the disadvantage that we needed a tremendous amount of data to store it all. If I recall correctly, we needed 1.3 CDs alone for the hero animations in all their variations. The six heroes in Divinity contained together over 900,000 frames of animation, and the dragon you meet at the end of the game contained over 100 MB in uncompressed data. As a result, we animators had to keep the frame count relatively low, and because of that, the quality of the animations was compromised.
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With low-polygon characters, you don't have such limitations. Once the model and the skeleton are finished, you can add any animation you want without getting even close to the amount of data needed for pre-rendered animations. Because of that, we've been able to add a lot more animations in Riftrunner. The fights, for instance, are a lot cooler. And the nice thing is also that the animations softly blend into each other. A vast improvement!</blockquote>
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Ooh, can we have <b>particle eff-ecks</b>, too?

 

[Sol Invictus]

This is a welcome change, actually. While it was nice and all that Divine Divinity came in a DVD case and packed a terrific manual with 3 CDs and all - the fact is simple: nobody likes long installations and nobody likes having 1.8 gigs of their hard drive for just a game. Unless that game is Medieval : Total War, that is - in which case we can make an exception to this immense dislike most people have for large installations.