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[Denton]

Geralt chillin' with the ladies

 

[Gattsu25]

Geralt chillin' with the ladies

Haha

 

[SpacePirate Ridley]

Geralt chillin' with the ladies

Ciri: Papa, whats mum and aunt doing with you on bed?
Geralt: Eh, they are only helping me kill this Wyvern... Hey, that fucking troll in the window is distracting me!

 

[Objectively Bad Opinion]

Geralt chillin' with the ladies

"Look at this fuckin' downgrade"

 

[Wag]

Mak is not a gamer's machine.

 

[SpacePirate Ridley]

The map from Witcher 3

Wow, the scale of the map in the game is all butchered in comparison with the real maps in the books and the old games.
I understand it was for game purposes but its still a pity everything below Novigrad is completely invented.
So what it seems is that the map shows is a totally invented Temeria. With Skellige and No Mans Land going up (REALLY up) and eating everything from Cidaris, Brokilon Forest, Brugge, Lower and Upper Sodden and Cintra (the real No Mans Land in the books).
Them not naming the rivers in the map also confusses the real placement of things. For example, is the "second" river below the Pontar the Adalette River, or just some invented afluent with no name of the Pontar?
And Oxenfurt has been moved a lot from Novigrad, when they are closer in the real maps.

Seems like they took Bleobheris (it'a zone that goes down from the Pontar until the cities of Gors Velen and Dorian, not in this map), expanded it, and put a bunch of small no name towns and marshes on it.

As I said, totally understandable this happened, but still a pity, because the real maps have much more interesting things than neverending marshes and towns of four buildings, and even seeing them in a small scale, would have been amazing for the readers of the books. Would have loved to see Brokilon or the destroyed city of Cintra.

Still something I like is that I think the big last surprise of the game is going to be that in the last act we will visit Vizima for the last battle against Nilfgaard. Theyve put too much detail into that zone of the map. Same with Kaer Morhen, all those caves seem to be things you can visit in those chapters.

 

[Jedi2016]

Just FYI, but Geralt hates beards. Only one time in the book did he go more than a few days without shaving, and when Dandelion showed up, he pestered him for a razor because the itching was driving him crazy. I read that part after they showed a lot of TW3, so I thought that was pretty funny.

Knowing CDPR, though, I doubt they would have overlooked that, and they might even bring it up in game, with someone mentioning it if they see him with a beard (one of the three or four people that can actually claim to truly know him, anyway).

 

[Auctopus]

"Look at this fuckin' downgrade"

lol

 

[misho8723]

 

[Conduit]

lol

Well, IMO, game doesn't look as good as initial reveal.

 

[Jay Shadow]

Wow, the scale of the map in the game is all butchered in comparison with the real maps in the books and the old games.

You're severely over analyzing a stylized map as something that's supposed to be accurate. It's a mash up of all the different areas in the game. They didn't move these places around in the actual world. Skellig is still far south, but the mainland doesn't extend down to Gors Velen. They didn't move Oxenfort, you just don't go much further east than that city. These are the playable areas that are mashed together on the map.

Would have loved to see Brokilon or the destroyed city of Cintra.

Yeah, Bokilon is the one place in the world I'd like to see. Although CDPR's idea of dryads just being big breasted green women kinda makes me glad they didn't get around to that area.

Still something I like is that I think the big last surprise of the game is going to be that in the last act we will visit Vizima for the last battle against Nilfgaard. Theyve put too much detail into that zone of the map.

Those areas you see mapped out under Vizima are actually the prologue area of White Orchard.

 

[Objectively Bad Opinion]

Well, IMO, game doesn't look as good as initial reveal.

When it's released you can add all the black crush you like, don't worry.

 

[Complistic]

Well, IMO, game doesn't look as good as initial reveal.

Doesn't matter how good the game looked at reveal if they couldn't get it to run properly. I'd rather them shoot to high and scale it back a little bit then shoot too low in the first place.

 

[Conduit]

When it's released you can add all the black crush you like, don't worry.

Here is the better gif :

VGA teaser :

Other :

 

[Gen.Grievous]

Looks more like console vs pc version and different time of day. I don't see why the VGA gif is impossible for the PC version.

 

[Tovarisc]

Other :

Direct feed screenshot Vs. screenshot from compressed uTube video, not to mention different locations and time of day which affects lightning alone.

 

[Conduit]

Direct feed screenshot Vs. screenshot from compressed uTube video, not to mention different locations and time of day which affects lightning alone.

LOL! Why you must emphasize : compressed! What, compression will hide some trees or house maybe?

Even is evening in 1st and probably morning in 2nd, there is a HUUUGE difference in details. Location are not so different.

 

[misho8723]

Please, don't make this into another downgrade thread.. we have enough of that in many other threads .. this is about new informations we have about the game.. can we atleast in here please stay away from the "downgrade" stuff? we don't need to read about the same stuff milions of time again and again.. there are many new info, write about that for once

 

[Baldwin_the_First]

LOL! Why you must emphasize : compressed! What, compression will hide some trees or house maybe?

Even is evening in 1st and probably morning in 2nd, there is a HUUUGE difference in details. Location are not so different.

Don't you maybe think that the reason there's no houses or less trees, might be because even though Geralt is in a swamp, he is not in the exact same location?

Also, wouldn't compression make it so details are less visible and mess up the color a bit? I would think so.

 

[Denton]

Please, don't make this into another downgrade thread.. we have enough of that in many other threads .. this is about new informations we have about the game.. can we atleast in here please stay away from the "downgrade" stuff? we don't need to read about the same stuff milions of time again and again.. there are many new info, write about that for once

This so much. If people want to create "downgrade" thread after the game is out comparing same scenes from trailers in the exact same time of day, camera angles and what not, great. Not really fond of this guess work in every single witcher thread though.

And this example above is really stupid. If you moved the camera closer to Geralt and switcher the location and time of day to match, there is nothing that looks so impossible in the VGX trailer.

 

[Conduit]

Looks more like console vs pc version and different time of day. I don't see why the VGA gif is impossible for the PC version.

I found those screenshots captured from PC gameplay! Dawnwarren gameplay @Gamescom 2014.

 

[Dictator93]

A lot of people generally consider adifferent TOD to be a downgrade. Only if people thought for a second... "hey wait, these shadows are in a different position!"

 

[Denton]

A lot of people generally consider adifferent TOD to be a downgrade. Only if people thought for a second... "hey wait, these shadows are in a different position!"

But I mean the sky has completely different color, the lightning is different, the location is different, the camera angle is different...how anyone can compare like this is beyond me.

 

[tuxfool]

But I mean the sky has completely different color, the lightning is different, the location is different, the camera angle is different...how anyone can compare like this is beyond me.

In every witcher thread there are these utterly specious comparisons. If it were like for like, then OK, we could discuss it, but otherwise people should just shut their traps and wait for the game to come out.

 

[Conduit]

But I mean the sky has completely different color, the lightning is different, the location is different, the camera angle is different...how anyone can compare like this is beyond me.

A lot of people generally consider adifferent TOD to be a downgrade. Only if people thought for a second... "hey wait, these shadows are in a different position!"

You can find b-roll footage of Dawnwarren gameplay. https://mega.co.nz/#!11AAjDzS!hw7kQXMdCOxKhB2ueRrkDj6aZTD38B83MQpPt_1XA-4
Textures are clearly better in that 1st screenshot IMO!

 

[SpacePirate Ridley]

You're severely over analyzing a stylized map as something that's supposed to be accurate. It's a mash up of all the different areas in the game. They didn't move these places around in the actual world. Skellig is still far south, but the mainland doesn't extend down to Gors Velen. They didn't move Oxenfort, you just don't go much further east than that city. These are the playable areas that are mashed together on the map.

Yeah its stylised, sorry i didnt mention that (just like when they put Canary Islands near Spain in the meteo maps). Its just that, as I said, they seem to have chosen an area that's not interesting in the real world map (Bleobheris), scale it up, and add their own small town and things. Still, even if the skellige islands are just visual flare being so near, they have indeed moved up a lot No Mans Land (that was in upper sodden in the books), and I dont know, thats my main gripe with the map. I would also have prefered to have a big city in the south like Gors Velen, to make a frontier with the zone of Bleobheris and the main gameplay map end there in a cool way.
Its true they maybe havent moved Oxenfurt, is just that the sackle is all presented in the visual map makes it look more far than where it really is.

Yeah, Bokilon is the one place in the world I'd like to see. Although CDPR's idea of dryads just being big breasted green women kinda makes me glad they didn't get around to that area.

Would have been really cool with Ciri though, as she knows thats place well.

Those areas you see mapped out under Vizima are actually the prologue area of White Orchard.

Oh, so you are going to play below Vizima in the prologue? Thats sounds really cool. Maybe the game finishes in the city. Would be really cool.

 

[Tovarisc]

Yeah its stylised, sorry i didnt mention that (just like when they put Canary Islands near Spain in the meteo maps). Its just that, as I said, they seem to have chosen an area that's not interesting in the real world map (Bleobheris), scale it up, and add their own small town and things. Still, even if the skellige islands are just visual flare being so near, they have indeed moved up a lot No Mans Land (that was in upper sodden in the books), and I dont know, thats my main gripe with the map. I would also have prefered to have a big city in the south like Gors Velen, to make a frontier with the zone of Bleobheris and the main gameplay map end there in a cool way.

Its true they maybe havent moved Oxenfurt, is just that the sackle is all presented in the visual map makes it look more far than where it really is.

Here is screenshot[?] of in-game map for some version of the game, was linked in this thread too.

How are locations are in this in your opinion, tho we don't scale for this either.

 

[RedSwirl]

I think I said this in the other thread, but the biggest difference between VGA/reveal and now is the sharpening was removed.

Some people on 4chan took one of the latest screenshots and added a shitload of sharpening to it. It ended up looking a lot more similar to the reveal screenshots.

 

[Isendurl]

they have indeed moved up a lot No Mans Land (that was in upper sodden in the books)

Correct my if I am wrong, but isn't no mans land supposed to refer to place where is war going on (so it's literally no mans) so it's absolutely make sense that it's different place then it was in the books?

 

[burritosenior]

Fantastic. Thank you for the info.

 

[DZ_b_EZ]

The biggest thing that stands out the most to me is the "No clone NPCs"

That just boggles my mind. Especially in a open-world game as large as this. It sounds too good to be true. Take over my soul, this game will.

 

[SaberEdge]

Wooooooooow that sounds fantastic. I can't believe there's another town like Novigrad.

Yeah, all of this info does sound incredible. This is easily my most anticipated game, and has been since it was announced.

Also, just wanted to say 'hi' to a fellow Shpongle fan (judging by your avatar pic). I just saw Shpongle and Phutureprimitive in Tucson, Arizona on March 13th. Really great night.

 

[erawsd]

Another huge ass q and a

http://forums.cdprojektred.com/threads/34251-Developer-Spotlight-Miles-Tost

Im on mobile so I cant copy and paste.

 

[Tovarisc]

Another huge ass q and a


http://forums.cdprojektred.com/threads/34251-Developer-Spotlight-Miles-Tost?goto=newpost

Im on mobile so I cant copy and paste.

So it's still going through translation and will be posted tomorrow? Need keep eye on that thread.

 

[erawsd]

So it's still going through translation and will be posted tomorrow? Need keep eye on that thread.

Ah my bad, I linked the last post and not the first. Theyre translating it to other languages but the original is in english.

http://forums.cdprojektred.com/threads/34251-Developer-Spotlight-Miles-Tost

 

[Femmeworth]

It still primarily takes place in the northern kingdoms? Boo, was hoping it would be set in Nilfgaard.

 

[Exentryk]

Damn, lengthy interview. I don't even need to read anymore about this game tbh. Just give it to me. NAO!!!

 

[iNvid02]

i like how they already have 1/1 entered into the age gate for you

cdprojekt knows whats up

 

[SaberEdge]

Im sorry but that screen is not impressive to me in any way. In fact parts of it look awfully rough. Like bad shot Unity rough.

This is what sold me on the game and I am still not seeing it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SpPqXdzl7g


Now granted, What this thread has revealed has sold me in a different way. I will be there day one, but graphically, I have to say that I am worried that they oversold the game and I am about to have a repeat of my feelings with Oblivion back in the day or Dark Souls 2 PC more recently. Where I was promised something on reveal and told to continue to expect it, then near release the hammer was dropped and the truth was that what was promised was never going to materialize.

The recent GDC footage looks as good to me as anything I have seen of the game. It's somewhat blurry due to the video quality, but you can easily tell that is what's causing it because everything is affected the same way. Aside from the softer image quality, the assets and techniques being used look the same.

 

[Tovarisc]

Cherry picked few personally interesting from;

Q&A - Miles Tost - Level Designer

Q:
When designing dungeons did you go for a "horror"'vibe?
Many turns and corners, etc, with areas made for monsters to take advantage of and ambush you.

A:
With some we did, with some we didn't. Sometimes you want to go for more of a mystical vibe, for example. It helps that, much like in the previous games, dungeons and caves are very dark unless you come prepared though. Luckily this time around, Geralt has a torch. Comes in handy should you not have your cat potion or if you have it, but already find yourself at the edge of the toxicity threshold. You can even fight while wielding the torch in one hand, however, IIRC it renders Geralt unable to parry attacks. Does look quite spectacular with the dynamic shadows, though.


Q:
How big is the biggest dungeon?

A:
5 (Okay, seriously. it's 6.). There's some really large dungeons. I guess some of them offer 1+ game time, depending on how good you are with combat, how thoroughly you explore them (SECRETS!!!) and how well you cope with being in utter darkness for an extended period of time.


Q:
How many dungeons/caves are in the game and how do you keep them different (design and structure) without making it copy & paste?

A:
By not copy and pasting them. We have some more or less modular asset sets, that "speed up" the creation of a dungeon. Don't think of these as finished rooms however: it's more like small pieces of walls, bend in varying angles. Every cave/dungeon is built completely from scratch and decorated individually. This results in every single cave having a unique layout.


Q:
Did you design areas with the enemies in mind?
Something like "alright I'll place some ponds here for Water Hags, I'll make this hilltop a clearing so the Griffin can nest here. Or were you more focused on making sure the player had some sense of direction/orientation and wouldn't get lost?

A:
I don't think those points are mutually exclusive. Generally: yes, often, if we knew about a fight having a high chance of happening around a certain area, we would playtest it and make sure it plays out smoothly. Possibly add some destructible objects to make the fight look more spectacular / give the player the chance to use the environment to his advantage.
If we knew what the creature was, like the Griffon you mention, we'd also try to reflect it living within the area and influencing the eco-system there. Trees around a griffon nest, way before you even get to the nest, might be broken half way and show marks of scratching. Apparently they use trees to build their nests and if you have a close look at your surroundings, you can see all these hints in the environments that not even Geralt notices.


Q:
What will the Point of Interest density be like for the sailing?

A:
Can't really answer this accurately, but wanted to assure you guys that there's more to the open sea than the main islands of the Skellige Archipelago.


Q:
Are the most of the doors closed in Novigrad? Can we access a lot of the buildings in the city?

A:
Some doors are permanently closed, many others open up to you as you make new friends in the city following different quests - many more are "generic" houses that add another layer of storytelling to the city. They don't really have any quests attached to them, but entering them offers an interesting view as to how the people in that very district of the city differ from others and how they live their lives.
In the poor district for example you'll find people making the most out of what little space they have, holding on tight to every single thing they own (most of which the people of rich district would consider junk). To come back to the accessibility of houses in Novigrad: I feel like you'd be surprised just how accessible the city is. MANY open buildings. Don't have an exact number, but it exceeds a hundred by far.


Q:
Novigrad is the most impressive medieval city I've seen. How many of those buildings have actual interiors that we can enter?

A:
More than a third of the houses, IIRC.


Q:
Are there in game some super long and complicated dungeons?

A:
Yes.


Q:
Since this is an "multi-region open world environment" how does that effect the flow control of the various points of interest? How does the open world level design direct players towards the goal of a given quest and attempt to prevent confusion and/or idling? Is it just quest markers? Are any of the levels you have designed time sensitive? Are there consequences to abandoning a quest mid-story?

A:
Each of the regions that'd be divided by a loading screen are planned and executed independently from each other, when it comes to POI placement. This means that Novigrad / No Man's Land have been designed as if they were one entity (no loading screen in between) and Skellige was designed on it's own.


Q:
Are you satisfied with the world you have created? There's something you would change/improve now that the contents are locked?

A:
I really love the fact that we managed to create a consistent world. I remember days of planning with Peter about having POIs focused on enhancing the world's overall believability. Every village is there, because the people decided to settle there for a reason. They all have their sources of food (or used to *cough* No Man's Land *cough*), they have "their" thing, like this village might specialise in fishing, this one seems to build ALL the carts/waggons in the world - oh there's people making coal, I wonder where they get the wood for that... would you believe it, there's a lumbermill closeby next to the forest!
You get the drill. Nothing is placed just for the sake of having it there. If we found ourselves wanting to make a village at a hazardous place, or generally a hard to live in area, we'd actively research and try to implement how these people would've done it and how the environment would influence their lifestyle. So these guys live on the side of the mountain, they need to fortify their houses with additional scaffolds. Why would they go through all the trouble of living there? Because there is this super unique resource that they gather and can make a living off. I remember in Skellige we had planned a farmstead to support the "believable infrastructure" thing, which we ultimately ended up removing since the Story Team told us "Skelligers are not farmers. They pillage and take what they need." (We ended up replacing the crop farms by cattle farms - Skelligers still need meat after all!)


Q:
How did you make Novigrad's five districts feel different? Did you change up the architecture, the way the buildings were placed maybe?

A:
They are architecturally different in that you can notice the wealth of the people living in there simply by what material has been used to build the house and in what shape that material is. The poorer the district, the dirtier you will find it. People will be vastly different. No beggars sitting on the streets of the Rich District. You are more likely to be attacked at night by a group of bandits when in the poorer districts as well.


Q:
Are W3's interiors qualitatively different from W2's? How so?

A:
Tons and tons of more detail, even in the most unimportant interiors. We like to take our time and make it so you can tell what kind of person lives in a place, just by studying the interior of their house. Most obvious is whether he's rich or not, but then there's also habits and characteristics you can pick up on. I remember creating the interior of a very poor guy, who (untypical for poor people in our world) was hoarding a lot of books and had a dedicated reading corner, somewhat hidden away in his house. He seems to be smarter than the average peasant. Why is he trying to hide that fact? Nilfgaardian Spy or maybe just a scholar with a streak of bad luck? And with this you sort of end up shaping your own version of this guys story in your head and perhaps you might even find more indication to support it.


Q:
How did you go about creating the level design for the Ciri missions?

A:
Ciri's gameplay sections are a lot more linear in their design in regards to the actual locations. However, they are only like that when you play as Ciri and some of them later can be freely explored by the player as Geralt. In terms of making this feel believable, it's helpful that Ciri never got the hang of weaving signs.


Q:
It's said in the books that many main human cities were built on elven ones, such as Novigrad. Did you keep this in mind when designing them? If so, what did you do to give that vague elven foundation? Or did you work under the concept that it's been such a long time ago that there's barely any elven touch left?

A:
Always something that I remembered from the books and I always tried to bring up and pester people whenever there was a chance for it. Without going into further detail, all I can say so far is: Mission successful.


Q:
One thing I noticed during the newest gameplay video is the really apparent pop-in of distant vegetation, buildings etc as the game was switching between different LOD levels. Is there a way this will be mitigated by the time the game releases?

A:
Not my area of expertise, but I do know that code is working feverishly on something for this.


Q:
What did you do to make sure the underground levels are still varied, in size, design and mood?

A:
Hand-Crafting everything and being aware of possible repetition you constantly go and challenge yourself to create something new. Let's take Elven Ruins as an example. We always try to think what purpose these ruins might've served at some point and how we can translate this to the player without additional dialogue. Ancient Aqueduct or Necropolis maybe? How can we take this function and make it understandable, elaborate on it?
Maybe we can try and show the process of burial, the rituals, etc. Embalming Chambers, a grave that looks more important than others, etc. As with caves, there's a lot more room to play with, especially factoring in a degree of suspension of disbelief and an allowance for grounded, yet a bit more fantastical places. One motivator for us was to have caves always feel worth exploring and one factor for this is definitely by having it look different in ways that the player never knows what he will find.


Q:
About Skellige, will it have any fairly large settlements or will all of them be small villages? Also besides the main island will we see settlements on the other smaller islands? Can they fully and unequivocally confirm that oxenfurt will be in the game?

A:
You win three 'Yes'es.


Q:
Will we get a densely packed forest?

A:
Why only one?


Q:
Can we assume there will be more famous dead bodies for us to find?

A:
I have it here crossed off my to-do-list with a check mark: "More famous dead bodies."
We know you guys like dead bodies of the famous kind.


Q:
How did you decide how far apart to place villages/towns?
Aside from how it would be like in real life, how did you balance that with player needs?
This is especially true now that we've learnt weapon repair requires blacksmiths, and alcohol needs to be bought for potions.

A:
Honestly, we winged it initially. Then you implement quests and encounters, communities and playtest as you go and ultimately end up pissing everyone off when you ultimately have to move the village. Haha, I'm kidding - it didn't happen very often, but we did have some instances where for various reasons we had to move larger locations. Sometimes you have just the content moved, so one village that was less important might suddenly get promoted to a "main quest" village, because it happens to be in a more convenient spot. As with the remainder of your question: lots of playtesting and iterating.


Q:
Since Geralt is now a lot more nimble and can get to more places than ever before, just how big a role does verticality play in TW3 when it comes to level design?


A:
It's fairly important, since it allowed us to grow the world into a different dimension, if that makes sense. I mean, the game is by far no action platformer and Geralt is not Mario or Ezio for that matter. But it did enable us to make some use of situations where we could offer a further branch with the player finding a secret passage through climbing / jumping.
I don't know, you might have a quest where you a) get to talk your way into the fort b) fight your way into the fort or c) maybe take a look around and find an alternate route inside. It's usually of course not this clear cut, but you get the basic idea.
The way we usually like to implement Geralt's newfound jumping ability is in an optional manner, where it's part of exploring the world and rewards some additional goodies for those brave enough to venture out. Top of my mind there'd be a place of power only accessible by performing a series of jumps; you can complete the game entirely without doing this though.


Q:
Kaer Morhen, what we can do there?

A:
Is it just a prologue place or we can come back and explore -maybe a secret door, with secret book , with secret sword and secret story (at least as dlc)?
Fully explorable region. And no, I'm not just speaking of the castle.


Q:
I've played so many games where the scale feels off. Like a game can feel too small and claustrophobic, like ME2, where it just feels like every planet hub is just a small area and even the dungeons feel small. Or the opposite, games like Kingdoms of Amalur, feel too big, like oversized.
How do you focus the scale of a large, open-world game so that it feels large, but still appropriate to scale for a single-player game?
I do think Skyrim did a great job in giving players a large world that felt very well scaled. What kind of thoughts or designs go into scale for TW3?

A:
Hm, I actually had a hard time figuring out whether there's anything "special" we do, to ... let's say "deceitfully" simulate the world's scale. It really is just working with how objects relate in size to Geralt. If you're standing next to a tree, you get a pretty good idea how big that tree is. If you see the same tree in a distance away from you, you will be able to gauge how far it is away simply by how large the tree appears to you - the smaller, the further. So far, simple enough. I think the problem that many games might've found themselves in so far is, that because of the limited amount of actual area they had, people needed to come up with tricks to make distances feel larger than they are. Resulting in awesome views and weirdly short trips to "that thing far away." For us, I feel like we didn't really have that problem.
The sense of scale and distance evolved quite naturally, because if we wanted to put an object far away, we would put it far away. Now talking about individual objects, we like to keep it close to realistic size but are not afraid to put gameplay in favor of realism if need be. Interiors would be one example here, which tend to be quite small. To improve gameplay here, we have a special interior camera that zooms in a bit closer to Geralt's shoulder. Helps with making these spaces play well but at the same time emphasizing how small some of these living spaces really are.
Combat places in interiors had to be planned a bit more in depth and tested multiple times to make sure everything feels comfortable. It's of course also a production issue with interiors, since larger buildings would need more time and performance budget spend when decorating. So again, multiple factors as always.


Q:
We know the world is quite large, so most of it must have been just generated. How much of it actually does get the hand-crafted level design treatment?

A:
Ah, we in the Locations Team are really proud of the fact that everything is hand-crafted, which is why you keep hearing us say it over and over. Your conclusion there makes my heart almost hurt just a little bit. So for this reason, to be a hundred percent sure, I called in what is now called the Environment Council, consisting of me, Daniel Olejnik (Senior Environment Artist) and Marcin Michalski (also a Senior Environment Artist).

We discussed this and shed a couple of tears together. Enough of it is hand-crafted for us to not feel like lying when we say that everything has been hand-crafted by us. Even when the team created the basic land shape it started out in zBrush, then got some erosion applied via software, and then iterated in-engine (sculpting the terrain without terrain brush tools). Terrain Textures are painted by hand, assets including foliage are placed by hand as well. We do have foliage generation for a basic foliage layer based off the type of terrain texture used (which again is painted by hand). It will apply a layer of grass. However, any further vegetation, trees, bushes, flowers, etc, are all hand placed.

Think about Novigrad City: none of the houses have been placed procedurally or by an algorithm, the city was carefully planned and crafted all the way from the rough districts to individual pathways in between (or through) houses. Also I realise that the question might've been meant differently. In that regard: Terrain was shaped by hand, erosion effects are applied, at this point, there's virtually no spot of terrain in the world that hasn't been touched by a dev.

Yes, it is an insane amount of work that we did have to sacrifice our fair share of evenings for - but for us it's just worth it and honestly, we firmly believe it makes for a better game, because it makes the world more enjoyable.

If we wouldn't we would've not done it, right?

 

[SaberEdge]

Direct feed screenshot Vs. screenshot from compressed uTube video, not to mention different locations and time of day which affects lightning alone.

Yep, not to mention that the trees are much closer in the screenshot and there are no trees nearby in the screen capture from the gameplay video.

The assets look the same to me. Just different lighting conditions and somewhat different area.

 

[SpacePirate Ridley]

Here is screenshot[?] of in-game map for some version of the game, was linked in this thread too.



How are locations are in this in your opinion, tho we don't scale for this either.

I stictched that image myself months ago. lol
Now I understand it shows Bleobheris, and with the visual map it makes more sense now.

Correct my if I am wrong, but isn't no mans land supposed to refer to place where is war going on (so it's literally no mans) so it's absolutely make sense that it's different place then it was in the books?

You are right, and we saw Nilfgaard going up at the end of the Witcher 2 (and know we know they have Temeria, becuase there was no one protecting it). But the No Mans Land in the books is not a place that Nilfgaard has captured, but that they razed and left again when they were stopped at the batlle of Sodden Hill. So when you read it in the books you thought of it as a place with not may towns if any but a few houses here and there (like the one were Geralt finds Ciri after the Cintra battle), were crops never grow because the soil went to shit after the war (and probably done in purpose by Nilfgaard throwing salt before going back south), and with cities like cintra utterly destroyed. So more like a place that is nearly unhabitable becuase of past wars that nobody wants than a place were conflict dictates its from no one.

 

[texhnolyze]

Cherry picked few personally interesting from;

Q&A - Miles Tost - Level Designer

Deep dungeons, city interiors, and scaling.
I love it.

 

[Jamaro85]

Cherry picked few personally interesting from;

Q&A - Miles Tost - Level Designer

Amazing. Thank you for this.

 

[Super Stardust]

Still 2 months to go (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

 

[Lakitu]

Yeah, all of this info does sound incredible. This is easily my most anticipated game, and has been since it was announced.

Also, just wanted to say 'hi' to a fellow Shpongle fan (judging by your avatar pic). I just saw Shpongle and Phutureprimitive in Tucson, Arizona on March 13th. Really great night.

Always great to see another Shpongle fan on here Hope you enjoyed the show, I'm jealous. Wish he'd tour UK... Glad you had a great time though!

Cherry picked few personally interesting from;

Q&A - Miles Tost - Level Designer

That all sounds amazing. Thanks.

 

[BatSu]

commentary of the January and PAX footage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HRxbUa3xBcM

 

[Dmax3901]

Q:
Are you satisfied with the world you have created? There's something you would change/improve now that the contents are locked?

A:
I really love the fact that we managed to create a consistent world. I remember days of planning with Peter about having POIs focused on enhancing the world's overall believability. Every village is there, because the people decided to settle there for a reason. They all have their sources of food (or used to *cough* No Man's Land *cough*), they have "their" thing, like this village might specialise in fishing, this one seems to build ALL the carts/waggons in the world - oh there's people making coal, I wonder where they get the wood for that... would you believe it, there's a lumbermill closeby next to the forest!
You get the drill. Nothing is placed just for the sake of having it there. If we found ourselves wanting to make a village at a hazardous place, or generally a hard to live in area, we'd actively research and try to implement how these people would've done it and how the environment would influence their lifestyle. So these guys live on the side of the mountain, they need to fortify their houses with additional scaffolds. Why would they go through all the trouble of living there? Because there is this super unique resource that they gather and can make a living off. I remember in Skellige we had planned a farmstead to support the "believable infrastructure" thing, which we ultimately ended up removing since the Story Team told us "Skelligers are not farmers. They pillage and take what they need." (We ended up replacing the crop farms by cattle farms - Skelligers still need meat after all!)

this sounds fucking amazing. I appreciate this sort of attention to do detail SO much.

 

[Gattsu25]

Cherry picked few personally interesting from;

Q&A - Miles Tost - Level Designer

Yeah, this is a great interview. Thanks for posting.

 

[Kezen]

Sorry for the late responses.

What you get out of those screenshots is a great impression of the game's atmosphere and visual style.

It's not all about graphical fidelity, thankfully.

I like the art but I'm not going to lie I think the tech behind is not "impressive". Unless the ultra settings bring back all the exciting effects. There are games which I found easy on the eyes in spite of their very limited tech such as Alice Madness Returns but the problem is that CDPR promised "the peak in games". I only want to see it.

I think it does though, the exception being early showcased material very selective in what was shown and likely supersampled to keep assets as clean and beautiful as possible (especially in dense scenes like foliage). We've just seen a lot more now, running in real time where smoke and mirrors cannot hide how the game actually looks, and gameplay where they cant cherry pick pretty scenes. Dark Souls II was a clear downgrade. The Witcher 3 doesn't strike me as that.

I would not rank The Witcher 3's "downgrade" anywhere near as high as Watch Dogs or Dark Souls II but looking back at 2013 footage I see a difference in lighting and materials, reflections. It still looks incredible to this day, I'm aware promotional material is touched up but they should be careful enough not to promise something they can't possibly deliver either because the hardware is not there or because of budget.

I guess we will see once "ultra" footage appears but frankly why would they not showcase it ? It makes me think they have something to hide, maybe they are aware that they don't look much better.

But as I've said that's okay, I was never even remotely close of not supporting CDPR because of that. It's just that as a tech enthusiast I wanted more, specifically what was implicitly promised. I don't like being lied to.