An Update On The "A Valley Without Wind" Art Rework Project

[x4000]

I've been out of touch for the last few days, as I was sick over the weekend and then had to go into the hospital yesterday to get an infusion of liquids due to still being dangerously dehydrated after 2 days of trying to rehydrate.  Note to self: don't forget to drink water or similar throughout the way!  Being a supposed camel is not a virtue!

Anyhow, as to a few of the questions from above:

1. Erik pretty much answered most of the marketing stuff as most directly as we can.  That said, there is 0% chance of having a new expansion before sometime next year.  All our staff is going to be absolutely hugely invested in working on other things and will just be doing the free DLC stuff for AVWW, aside from the art update.  Before we embarked on this art update process, there was much thought put into whether we should also pair that with an expansion.  The decision was that that was too risky -- putting too many of our eggs into one basket -- and thus we're working on Shattered Haven with the hours that would have gone into an AVWW expansion this year.  And ideally next year we can do an AVWW expansion if it gets a reasonable amount of traction.

2. If we can get a solid feature at a certain major distributor based on the revamped art, and basically market that as a re-launch with their help, then it won't really matter what happens in the press.  Probably.  Based on past experiences, these sort of distributor features with things on sale seem to have a life of their own.  Beyond that the hope is for word of mouth, and obviously any sort of feature with a distributor is conjecture at this point -- first we have to get the art to the point where they'd find that an enticing option to go with.  I haven't even asked any of them about that as yet.

3. Regarding the particle effects, I'll be redoing a few of those that are bad (looking at you, forest rage), but in the main those will not change at all.  For one thing, that would drive up the cost of the reskin pretty majorly.  For another, most every art studio uses very much the same techniques as I already have been.  One is much the same as another in most cases, except that there were a few examples of sloppiness on my part (again, forest rage).

[nanostrike]

Awww man.  You went with H instead of G?  I'm a bit disappointed, but I'll have to see how it looks while animated before I judge it too harshly.  And anything is better than the current art style, I suppose (No offense).

I'm just worried about it looking too cartoony and bright.

[x4000]

It won't look that cartoony or bright, don't worry.

[Mánagarmr]

Awww man.  You went with H instead of G?  I'm a bit disappointed, but I'll have to see how it looks while animated before I judge it too harshly.  And anything is better than the current art style, I suppose (No offense).

I'm just worried about it looking too cartoony and bright.

Massive disappointment here too, but I'm swallowing it since I trust in Chris to do the best for AVWW. H must be capable of some awesome stuff, so I'm waiting to see it

[Giegue]

H instead of G? what are you talking about? anyway, just keep the tyrian mines in the falling missions in. those things are cool. unless if they stick out like a sore thumb.

[Mánagarmr]

I'm only curious as to why you went with H instead of G, seeing as H was (almost) unanimously disliked by the community, while G (again almost) made people go "OOOH WOW!" From my point of view, it makes absolutely no sense

Care to shine a light?

[x4000]

I'm only curious as to why you went with H instead of G, seeing as H was (almost) unanimously disliked by the community, while G (again almost) made people go "OOOH WOW!" From my point of view, it makes absolutely no sense

Care to shine a light?

1. G cost twice as much, as did K, making both of them cost-infeasible.  And my desire to avoid a kickstarter: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,11250.msg113886.html#msg113886

2. I had seen enough from H to know that they could do a really stellar job if given enough time to actually put together something for us.  They were working on custom styles for us rather than just going with their default studio style.

3. All the other reasons that were mentioned in another thread somewhere around here.

4. The latest H stuff was not unanimously disliked, and in fact was received quite positively in the main.  The aspects that are still disliked are things that are about finishing the shading, not about structural work or scene design.  That was something that I liked the best out of H.

5. Ultimately the polling of the players about their feelings about the art mockups was only indirectly related to choosing a studio.  It was a matter of finding out what attributes of the various art styles people liked and did not like, which we very much did.  Meanwhile, I was figuring out which studio would be the best partner and which would be flexible enough to produce something that would meet the goals of as much as the community as possible.  Ultimately that has some relation to how much people liked a specific given early mockup of one specific scene, but only some.  Instead those mockups and people's feelings about them are much more related to what sort of final style gets produced with the studio we went with, after we verified to my satisfaction that the studio would be capable of doing that kind of work on time and in budget.

[Mánagarmr]

Thank you! That was all I needed to hear. Now bring forth the awesomeness!

[x4000]

My pleasure!

[Giegue]

sure just everyone ignore me. I love it. 

[x4000]

sure just everyone ignore me. I love it. 

Not trying to ignore you, but I can't really comment on the tyrian mines at this point because I don't know how this is going to work out in terms of what they might look like.  Though they are slated for replacement, because they would likely stick out, it's possible that they will still be a new-style version of the Tyrian mines rather than a completely new interpretation.  But that's something that really I'm not going to harass the artists about, because I'd prefer them to be able to be a bit creative with their stuff (tends to lead to better results), so that's mainly why I can't comment: it depends on what the artists choose to do.

[keith.lamothe]

And you could always put the tyrian mine graphic back in for the mines

Edit: by "you" I mean the player, rather than the developer

[FlyingShisno]

I think the cartoon style looks amazing!

[Nalgas]

I've wanted to give AI War a proper go, as I've seen enough of your style of design to know that I might like it, buuuuuuut the extreme focus on mouse use currently prevents it;  I'd have to work up some screwball way to do it with the PS3 controller, which is a monstrous pain in the ass and I'm guessing isnt really feasible for an RTS, as they often seem to me like extreme precision and fast clicking is in order.   I've been able to do this with damn near any game I've had an interest in (even Diablo 3), but the one exception is stuff like Starcraft 2.... just isnt doable.

If you have a ton of patience, it would certainly be doable.  You can do pretty much everything in AI War while the game is paused, so rather than worry about clicking frantically in real time you can pause whenever anything interesting happens, queue up all your commands, and then un-pause the game.  Many of the best/most experienced players of the game do that some or all of the time, at least in single player (it can get a bit obnoxious in multi-player with half a dozen people constantly pausing the game if you're just playing casually).

What would most make me run away screaming from attempting such a thing with a controller is the lack of keyboard shortcuts.  AI War might have more keyboard shortcuts than every other game I've ever played in my life combined.  You can do just about everything without them, but it's so incredibly tedious to that I don't think I'd bother playing the game that way.  If you can play with the controller in one hand and the other hand on the keyboard chording three modifier keys at the same time (and shut up, "n" and "4" are modifier keys if AI War says they are), you may be in luck.  Heh.

[Mánagarmr]

O_o

Using a controller to play typical mouse-driven games sounds like trying to run the marathon without legs. Why cripple yourself?