(04-09-2014, 08:54 AM)Ildur Wrote: I doubt in depth character sliders take any more computing time than shadows or reflections. While I don't know how a MMO does it and my knowledge of the required programming skills are pretty bad, I'd wager that they just slap a very lenghty code somewhere to the character. When they appear in the vecinity, the system reads that code and models their face until they leave. This would be no different nor more lenghty than drawing armor, boots, gauntlets, helmets or a weapon. It would also not take considerable space in the server. It's just one more variable for the character. Like quests.
Don't worry about it because it's a non-issue. Shaders, reflections and textures is were all the resources will go.
Well that's just it. Â FFXIV is showing, for example, 4 or so nose types. Â Essentially, when drawing a character, it calls up nose3 or whatever, which is loaded on everyone's version of FFXIV. Â It's fairly quick. Â Conan had a slider for the nose that allowed you to lengthen, hook, crook, flare, and more to your nose until it was just the way you thought you wanted it.
While highly customizeable, I can't remember ever noticing a character's nose in that game. Â Or any game. Â But that means in a major city, everybody's nose has to be rendered individually as a scalar unit. Â So instead of nose3 for several characters, everyone has a 6-part variable function for just their nose.
Not sure that's essential to modern gaming.