Fallen Earth: QotW #10: Answer some Art questions!

Question: Answer some Art questions!

This week our art director Fred is handling the Question of the Week duties. Some of the questions are very related so we clumped them together.

1. What are you working on right now?

My second cup of coffee and answering the Question Of The Week. That was pretty easy. Next question.

2. Will there be giant Scorpions? And if so, will they be big enough that they could be ridden? And if so, can we mount them?

Yes. Without a doubt there will be giant scorpions. I think they might be big enough to be ridden if one sat in a lotus position... Scorpions are pretty low to the ground and a rider would have significant foot dragging.... however, anyone who actually tried to sit on a scorpion's back would find themselves square in the path of the stinger and that is not recommended. Basically, if you really feel that you must, you can try to ride one, but I don't think it will turn out well. (ed: NO! You can't really ride giant scorpions in the game... But...wow... Giant scorpion mounts would be cool...)

3. How about a QOTW regarding character generation? What skill choices / limits do we have as starting characters? How much can we change our character's appearance? (Some screenshots with images of the avatar designer would be great.) What limits on equipment choices can we make at generation? What choices for starting 'locations' do we have? How many characters can we have on one server?

When you are creating your character, you select a head from a number of choices. You will not have sliders for facial features. Let's just say that there's a reason the clones look somewhat similar... and that will come into play later as a storyline element. I cannot say any more about that at the moment or Lee will be sending his jack-booted thugs to pay me a visit.

You can alter your age slightly, and you can alter the pigmentation of your skin. At this point, we do not have the ability to have overweight player characters. Since almost all of our items in the game are "real" and are visible on your character, it becomes tricky to change the proportions of the characters in any non-uniform way. We do allow you to scale your characters proportionally up or down slightly so you can have a smaller character or a larger bruiser-looking character, but we are not supporting big bellies in our initial release.

So... what can you customize about your characters during character creation? I've included an image of the character selection screen. (characters1.jpg below) You can have four characters per server. I didn't include any screens of the character creation process since a lot of that is still temp graphics and there are choices in there that will not be available as starting choices for players.

You can select Male/Female head model, skin tone, age, eye color, hair style/color, body scale. You can select a number of accessories such as facial hair for men (2 slots so you can have stubble independent of beards/moustaches)* and makeup for women (one slot for eye shadow and one slot for lipstick). Men and women both can select up to two sets of facial piercings. Men can choose to have some degree of body hair while women can opt for a belly ring.

As far as equipment goes, players get a choice of some very basic starting clothing. You can choose a shirt, a hat, some pants and some shoes. Everything else you'll have to beg, steal or fight for.

There are other character modifications will be available once the player gets out into the world. Players will be able to select from 18 starter towns broken across five counties in the first sector. Each town has its own stories, missions, merchants, items, tradeskill knowledges, etc, though the towns in each county are tied together in terms of story and background.

Enjoy!

~Acropolis