The other races

by Malagate , Sea of Tranquility, Thursday, May 16, 2013, 09:20 (4219 days ago) @ marmot 1333

It's not so much that alien locomotion is hard, as it is a lot easier to adapt skeleton systems between similar physiques. Imagine the difference between a human of height 4' and a human of 6'--not that much programming would change. But between a human and a tiger, the animation rigs would have to be completely redone, controls would have to handle the wider skeleton footprint, everythin

I understand (at least most of) the technological implications. There would surely be tons of work needed to tweak and perfect animations, making sure nothing clips(if you care about that), and all the bugs and required fixes that would result from running even a single model through all of the different contextual animations (or equivalents) that the humanoid characters have, not to mention all the permutations of gear, powers, etc.

Again, not that it is harder, but it simply takes more time, time is money, and that time could be used to perfect other things.

Sure, but I think it's a pretty weighty choice that the developer has to make. The attention to detail and thoroughness with which the world is crafted are going to be things the community thrives on. Given that FPS as a format has some pretty entrenched standards ( or at least developer habits) across the industry with regard to how things move, fight, obey physics, etc. I think that variety and originality not only go a long way to set a title apart, but sustain a title.

Also, as the other poster mentioned, we humans like looking at/playing with other humanoids.

Eh. Well there's always CoD for that. I say bring on all the creatures.

~M