Illwinter Next Project

[JonBrave]

Thank you! I've played a few of those games, and I don't like them as much as Dom3

[jimkehn]

Pfff....I think the game is just fine as is. But....I would sure like to see a graphics overhaul. With the capability of true 3D now wouldnt this game be something if it were state of the art Graphically?

[Gandalf Parker]

Pros and Cons. It would be cool to see.
But 3D does slow the game down, and it definitely slows down player modding for the game.
Ive seen some of my favorite games die from going 3d.

[legowarrior]

Yeah, creating images is hard enough as is, making said images in 3d would make it impossible for me to work on our mod.

[rdonj]

3d would kill modding dead here, yeah. We don't really have modders who can do that sort of art, and 3d makes it a lot harder to produce art for the game. Dominions could certainly benefit from being prettier, but 3d... meh. I think the sprites overhaul sombre is working on right now is a much better solution than going 3d. Unfortunately there's some things we just can't realistically change with mods, but we can certainly do a lot to improve on some of the older sprites. If you want to see dominions look better, lend a hand there!

[elmokki]

Technically nothing prevents having 3d models and sprites side by side, expect it probably looking pretty weird. Depends on the models though. That said I do kind of doubt it'd be very feasible to make Dominions 3 battles really 3D. There are potentially like 10k units there anyway, and if the 3D models have to be simplified too much for that it'll just end looking like crap compared to well drawn sprites.

Sombre's sprite improvement project really makes sprites look well drawn too. So many Dominions 3 sprites are legacy stuff from the original Dominions that it's no wonder they don't look as good as some of the new stuff. Especially the illithids stick out when you compare them.

But yeah, regardless the biggest thing is that in general drawing sprites for Dominions 3 is very easy. I am no artist at all and yet I still dare to claim that Bubastis, Al-Nadim and UnitGen stuff all look at the very least decent.

[nordlys]

Originally Posted by rdonj

3d would kill modding dead here, yeah. We don't really have modders who can do that sort of art, and 3d makes it a lot harder to produce art for the game.

That's not exactly true. Back in late 90s, being a part of Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures (FRUA) scene, I predicted Neverwinter Nights to fail for this very reason, that producing quality 3d models would be too much of a task for would-be modders. Apparently, I was dead wrong, and NWN modding scene thrives to this day. Of course, that might also have something to do with the fact NWN was about 100 times as popular as FRUA at its heyday.

What is certain though, is that making 2 thousands 3d models for Dominions would cost Illwinter an unimaginable fortune. Even AAA titles with an 8-digital production budget rarely exceeed 50-100 unit models. For something as vast (and niche) as Dom, "modern graphics" are absolutely out of the question until some arabian petroleum sheikh gets a fancy to fund it out of sheer generosity.

[rdonj]

I don't know what the scene was like for one particular game, but dom3 is definitely a game with a much smaller following than NWN had. And we have a very small number of modders. I don't know of any of our modders that specifically can make good 3d models, but I know we have some that definitely can't. And sprites are already the primary bottleneck for mod-making. Increasing the difficulty in producing usable images would mean that, for this community, modding would not be viable and basically every current nation mod would disappear.

And yeah, illwinter making thousands of 3d models is never going to happen.

[elmokki]

The thing with NWN is too that you can create A TON of content without creating new models at all. In Dominions 3 majority of possible content needs spritework currently (maps and mods) and would probably need 3D modelling in the future.

[Jomen]

It would be cool to control your troops in battle , not beeing tide by scripts.