Mod_West

Mod_West



13 May

Comment

Originally posted by BoulderFalcon

No worries at all, I just thought it was funny to spite the dark crystals :)

But yeah I think examine text is part of what makes RuneScape so great - you can basically interact with your environment even when you're not interacting with it, so to say.

P.S. you are a great mod and we're lucky to have you on the OSRS team!

Yeah, I’ve gone in and added some variety to their examines :) my intention with the future reworks is to make the crystals less of a common feature and more of a hero piece to the environment. That with a considerably toned down terrain colour should help make Arceuus great again ;P

Thanks for the compliments, always a pleasure to work on this game that we’ve all enjoyed for so long!

Comment

Originally posted by ScreteMonge

From a rather long-winded player who, in reality, doesn't deserve a measure of what you guys do for the game: thank you for taking this criticism head-on. Tactility and interaction are such a defining features of this game, so I'm very glad to see both given proper attention!

Haha, thanks! I did start writing up a response to your recent post about OSRS art but I’ve been so knee deep in Shayzien rework I’ve not had a chance to get back to it. Hoping to get something a little less of a direct response but a review of where we’re going with the art style written up for the next Gazette, although I’m unsure myself when that would be... hopefully the Shayzien rework is a step in the right direction as it certainly feels (to me anyway) a new bar in quality for OSRS environment design :D

Comment

Originally posted by BoulderFalcon

I actually asked West to make the Crystals examinable a couple years back. He asked if people really cared, a bunch more people chimed in yes.

Then he made the large crystals have examine texts. Now "Large Crystals" read "A large crystal."

Wonderful.

Worst part is they only did it for SOME OF THEM.

Oh man, I don’t remember fluffing that up. I’m really looking forward to reworking Arceuus but there’s nothing stopping me from fixing the examines on the crystals for the Shayzien rework. There was a lot of feedback with Camdozaal about scenery lacking examines so we’re going to make sure that isn’t repeated again.


21 Apr

Comment

Originally posted by TheHapster

Tfw I genuinely don’t know if that’s real

It's real. I've attempted to make 3 runes capes at this point and they've all not worked :D


14 Apr

Comment

Originally posted by Large_Presentation16

Hey man, just want to say I think it looks good. Your work is great. I think a lot of the criticism comes from people wanting end game updates and only getting early and mid game updates for years now, and as a result being frustrated over it.

Potentially, that might be the case for some. That doesn't mean the criticism is baseless, so I reckon it's still worth engaging with. It opens up the conversation and gives me an opportunity to further understand where the problem might be.

Thanks for your feedback :D Glad you like it!

Comment

Originally posted by NinjaGamer1337

I noticed that the altar for offering fish has a Zarosian symbol on it, and Zaros's colour is purple. So that makes sense.

What doesn't is Dwarves following Zaros, as Dwarves have been canonically Guthixians. Is there a reason for this? Is it an imcando dwarf thing specifically or is there another piece to this puzzle?

There certainly is more to the puzzle :D After all, the Zarosian symbol is very recognizable to us as players, but to those in the world it is just an old ancient symbol from a time long ago.

Let's not forget about our friendly Chaos Dwarves, who I'd assume are more into Zamorak? Humans are free to follow whatever religion they like, I imagine the same applies to Dwarves even if they do tend to lean more towards Guthix.

Comment

Originally posted by benosthegreat

You go Mod West, people complaining about literal colors of content only show how spoiled some of the player base is.

I agree :D When the specific hue of an update is the issue you know you've done something right!

Comment

Originally posted by Aurarus

The entire update feels like a parody amalgamation of a bunch of previous updates.

The primary reward, the new mace is your typical "didn't want to upset the meta so it's a good crush weapon for its tier" that has that weird high fantasy "cool" design that really just looks like a fancy gem on a stick.

Questionable on why it's introduced since FTP is kind of the more puritan form of OSRS with hardly any change to the core identity on that more muted fantasy setting, well known gear, and very simple PVP.

The setting is run of the mill underground ancient ruins/ old mystery technology with that purple + cyan crystal motiff being used once again. You can argue "we can't just make up new colors" but that specific motiff has been associated with rushed feeling "nuscape" content so often that it's hard not to wonder why you didn't understand why we didn't like it the first few times. A big allure of old runescape's gen...

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Thanks for the response :)

The primary reward, the new mace is your typical "didn't want to upset the meta so it's a good crush weapon for its tier" that has that weird high fantasy "cool" design that really just looks like a fancy gem on a stick.

Maces look like maces. Not entirely sure what else we could've done in this regard.

Questionable on why it's introduced since FTP is kind of the more puritan form of OSRS with hardly any change to the core identity on that more muted fantasy setting, well known gear, and very simple PVP.

While we don't usually make content for the free version of the game it's not that wild of a concept. The free game has some very out dated content which doesn't lend well to converting free players into paying players. As a business we need to think about that a lot as we're strictly against adding MTX, which I think is for the best.

The setting is ...

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Comment

Originally posted by wash_and_wank

I hate this so much its so out of place in f2p, what happened to low fantasy?

I'd love for you to convince me OSRS is low fantasy :P There are certainly parts of the game that are much more grounded than typical fantasy games but ultimately this game has a lot of magic and the world should really reflect that.

Comment

Originally posted by Aurarus

The game certainly did not need more purple/ flat shaded/ glowy things in it I feel. The dungeon is literally everything this game needs less of.

Every time we make something purple, players complain. At this point I've just stopped caring because purple is part of the colour spectrum and we're going to use it. We have enough restrictions working in OSRS as is, I don't think limiting our available colours is really helpful feedback. We do try to keep it to a minimum, but there's only so far we can go.

The key is using specific colours for content that makes sense. It might not be apparent now but the purple colour palette is tied to the lore of the area. It'll be a while until we use it this heavily again in the future, so there's that :D


29 Mar

Comment

Originally posted by DranTibia

Well you had me until you say " east is beast " .. because clearly..

West is Best.

yes.


26 Mar

why

Comment

Tile based blocking

is the answer.


20 Mar

Comment

Originally posted by i_hate_blackpink

its not engine work, the client already supports light multipliers on models, they could just change the light modifier in the definition although that might f**k up the ingame model too

I believe when we boost ambient light on the item it only impacts the icon/drop model as worn equipment follows a hard-coded front facing light that ignores config settings. I'll have a play around and see what I can do ;)

Comment

Originally posted by CactusHopper

2004 Internet Explorer was peak technology, every piece of code written after is a pox.

Wild though, so it doesn’t even save those images anywhere, just grabs the model and pumps it through this thing every time you look at the icon? What a game.

I suppose you might have a point there, still quite impressive though :D

It is wild. Another strange one is how animations are stored. Rather than being a single file that can be played on a single skeleton the frames are all stored individually and can be Frankensteined together and played on literally any skeleton. Not advisable as it would look distorted and nonsensical, but if used correctly a programmer could make a new animation without needing to bother an artist. We are starting to move away from this though as managing the files as individual frames is a bit awkward.

Comment

Originally posted by CactusHopper

You could use this tool to just export a PNG, and use that PNG as the sprite, cleaning it up or making adjustments in photoshop or whatever after export. But it seems like the sprites maybe just are the list of parameters used as inputs to the tool.

Ah, you're missing the genius of the Gowers. You see, this game used to run through a browser in the year 2004. A fully 3D experience in internet explorer of all applications. This wasn't a quirky way to make icons for the sake of it, it was memory saving - why store 1000s of sprites when the engine can just render a small image of the drop model? Every strange thing this game does is purely so it could run efficiently in a browser :D

It also saves us Artists a lot of time too, so it has development benefits as well. Of course, wanting to improve the quality of the icons is a little more of a hassle, especially with specific requests like this one - but it can be done :)


18 Feb

Comment

Originally posted by Luke_Orlando

I mean, they're more than similar.

The composition and subject matter are nearly identitical, and the name Bob is a crazy coincidence if it wasn't intentional.

The examine text just says it's a "beautiful landscape".

Which is certainly odd, because most landscapes are painted as, you know, a "landscape" in format, where as this is a portrait.

I think that's a subtle clue as well that this was knowingly done.

Unless a Jmod responds there is no way to know for certain.

Edit: not sure why I'm getting downvoted for a completely logical argument.

/u/Mod_West help me out here. I'm appealing to the art gods for clarity.

I'd love to say you're correct but honestly it seems more like a coincidence more than anything else :( The asset in question is just named "painting1" so it doesn't say much. Very old asset, easily from the early 2000s but unless we can get hold of the original artist we will never know for sure :/

If you want... just pretend it is :D


16 Feb

Comment

Originally posted by Regenitor_

Fascinating. Really appreciate the reply West!

Do you personally prefer TAPP or Ideation? I suppose both have their perks - TAPP sounds like it might've been more conducive to your professional development but ideation sounds like it produces better outcomes for the game more consistently?

I think I used TAPP once or twice to play around with some shaders but I mainly used it to generate updates for oldschool. Ideation has evolved over the years and it's essentially what I was doing before but much more refined so I definitely prefer it over the former. We've got plenty of great updates from this process and we're all currently working on something quite exciting - I think it might be the most participants we've ever had in a single update proposal before.


10 Feb

Comment

Originally posted by Regenitor_

Just curious about your ways of working - when you say free time, do you mean to say that this was a passion project of Ry's that he worked on outside of office hours? Or have you guys gone back to that old "TAPP" time model where employees get a certain amount of time allocated in a given month to work on whatever they like?

When we lost TAPP we were given a new iteration of that called "Ideation" as many of the ideas that go on to become updates for the game originated in TAPP time. It's a little different as we take 2 days at the end of the month rather than every other Thursday/Friday. It's a lot more focused on ideas for OSRS while previously TAPP could really have been anything, from going over some online courses to working on other games/disciplines.


23 Jan

Comment

Originally posted by little_timmylol

Insane how they think nerfing face guard will have any impact whatsoever anywhere in the game. Is this really the type of trivial shit they’re spending time on?

Funnily enough I believe the faceguard was the catalyst to the entire discussion re-emerging. On release, it wasn't received in an overly positive way as it usurped a BiS item from a high level boss with a medium level slayer creature.

The fallout from that was a string of meetings where we discussed as a team what needed a nerf and what required a tier adjustment but unfortunately this was delayed quite heavily by COVID and then TBL. While some things may seem trivial now I can assure you there was a point in the past where players were very concerned about it. Otherwise, it wouldn't be on our agenda.


06 Jan

Comment

Originally posted by TorturedNeurons

Don't mind it being the CoX area necessarily, but the lack of snow is sad.

I remember making snow for it so unsure why it isn't in there :/ In hindsight it would've made much more sense to have made Mt Quidamortem a snowy mountain...