Insider: Character Visualizer canceled?

[pukunui]

So ah....

How do these products look today?

I think the visualizer got canned some time ago, but they're now doing a closed beta of the VTT ... in a vastly reduced form (it's now a basic 2D sort of thing with tokens rather than a fancy 3D table with virtual minis). See here

 

[Keefe the Thief]

Youp, me and many others are in the VTT beta. The visualizer is in ugly-software-stuff-heaven, or perhaps in i-hate-poser-purgatory, where it belongs.

 

[Sorrowdusk]

I can see the visualiser still being useful without the game table (import image of your PC onto your Character Builder sheet, for example). What we've seen of it suggested it was pretty far along, but if the game table is in doubt then a decision may have been made that the need to constantly add new art assets to the program as more and more splat books were released is just not worth the money.

I hope neither have been cancelled, and that the web site has been purged only because two constantly greyed-out boxes on the DDI page was becoming something of an embarrasment.

And it looked so promising

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfSYJDge4Fs]YouTube - D&D Insider Character Visualizer[/ame]

 

[Aberzanzorax]

I think it's sad.

4e was in development for 3 years (if I recall correctly). They announced VTT would be out with 4e's release.


Now, I remember, they got screwed.

They had contracted a software firm to make it, and the firm failed to deliver. That sucks that such a thing happened.



BUT it's now been 2.5 years since the books for 4e were released (with ads for VTT in the back, no less). WotC has had nearly the same amount of time (or more, who knows?) to create a VTT...and it's still not done.

...and was delayed AGAIN today.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-discussion/299880-dungeons-dragons-insider-1-18-update-delayed.html

Whoops! Browser Settings Incompatible

Sad.

 

[shadzar]

I think the visualizer got canned some time ago, but they're now doing a closed beta of the VTT ... in a vastly reduced form (it's now a basic 2D sort of thing with tokens rather than a fancy 3D table with virtual minis). See here

fixed your link for you. And it looks pretty pathetic, to take so long to get to that point. It is the same as every other VTT, except it does D&D 4th edition?

And it looked so promising

YouTube - D&D Insider Character Visualizer

Just your standard gaming character designer video games have had for years.

These are the directions they both should have taken from the beginning. A simple program to make a character image for your character sheet, or you could play with to make a character, and a top-down game surface just like a tabletop, that you can play on.

All that camera angle junk and isometric view was silly and a waste of time if you are not making a fully developed game like NWN.

If the VTT doesn't handle rules, then it would be pointless to have behind the paywall of DDi, since it offers nothing over any of the free ones out there, except for proprietary graphics, such as Dungeon Tiles.

 

[Argyle King]

I always thought the Visualizer was a waste of time. Most players I know spend very little time dealing with their character's appearance - not nearly enough to warrant some sort of mini-MMO style character creation thing. I'm interested in just about everything Wizards produces for D&D but I had no interest in this at all.

I was all about the character builder. With it out, I'd prefer they work on new templates or open it up to the community to create more templates. Get these fans working for you, Wizards!

Odd; most of the people I game with would probably say the exact opposite. Most of them have an easier time putting together the crunch aspects of their characters than they do drawing their characters.

I wonder why no one's made a mod based on an existing, finished full-featured character visualizer, such as that which can be found in Oblivion or Mount & Blade. Seems like you can simply add a screen-cap & print utility, and you'd be done.

I've asked a similar question elsewhere. A lot of games have amazing character creation tools. Even console games do; the create a wrestler utility for the WWE games is amazing. A friend of mine has created Elmo, Superman, and Beavis & Butthead as wrestlers, and they look very accurate. Somewhere on youtube is a video showing a guy who created all of the Street Fighter characters.

My knowledge of programming is virtually zero; however, it seems as though it would be possible to look at how those utilities work and model something on the same concepts. Without needing the rest of the game they are attached to, you could -in theory- I think use the extra space to include more options such as swords, armor, races, etc.

 

[pukunui]

fixed your link for you.

Thanks. I was missing the last " in the URL tag.

And it looks pretty pathetic, to take so long to get to that point. It is the same as every other VTT, except it does D&D 4th edition?

I know. I really liked the look of the original VTT ... it looked like an actual computer game, with "fog of war" and stuff like that.

All that camera angle junk and isometric view was silly and a waste of time if you are not making a fully developed game like NWN.

When 4e first came out, I used the character visualizer from NWN 2 to "visualize" some of my initial characters. I don't see why WotC couldn't just take the NWN software and use that?

 

[shadzar]

Thanks. I was missing the last " in the URL tag.

I know. I really liked the look of the original VTT ... it looked like an actual computer game, with "fog of war" and stuff like that.

When 4e first came out, I used the character visualizer from NWN 2 to "visualize" some of my initial characters. I don't see why WotC couldn't just take the NWN software and use that?

We would have to have that Danny(something) that is a lawyer to give thoughts, but AFAIK, WotC owns NWN as well as D&D, but Atari or Infogrammes, or whoever, owns the code to the game. So even when the rights revert back to WotC/HASBRO, the code for that/those visualizers form the NWN games, will belong to Atari. They may not be able to use that code again even with different images, or might not even be allowed to since it was used in a licensed title.

Also since Atari owns the rights to video games for D&D (until 2017? 2015?), WotC might not be allowed to make things that look like a video game and be confused as one, so might have caused problems for them going forward with any of the plans had for the VC or VTT. Which is funny, if they didnt attack fans for fan made things like character sheets, or tools, then maybe they would have gotten fan support enough to let WotC make its VTT and VC resemble a video game more, so that Atari wasnt made to look like a bad guy from fans with signed affadavids stating that the VTT and VC are not confusable with an actual video game. But you know...bite the hand that feeds you and you have to deal with the wound until it heals.

 

[Hussar]

Just a couple of points about the WOTC VTT. There are currenlty a few bells and whistles that existing VTT's don't have - the primary being built in VOiP. No more fiddling around with Skype or Vent or what have you to chat with your fellow gamers. Plus it does come with "voice skins" for the DM to use to change his/her voice. Which is nice.

Other than that, it's pretty much stock standard for VTT's. Nothing paricularly earth shattering. Now, if they can integrate it with the character builder and the monster builder, then I'd be all over it. Not having to stat up tokens and having token that automatically come with macros would drop prep time to almost zero. Pull up a map, drag and drop monsters on it and you just made a dungeon. That would be very nice.

 

[shadzar]

Just a couple of points about the WOTC VTT. There are currenlty a few bells and whistles that existing VTT's don't have - the primary being built in VOiP. No more fiddling around with Skype or Vent or what have you to chat with your fellow gamers. Plus it does come with "voice skins" for the DM to use to change his/her voice. Which is nice.

The silliness of a voice changer aside, which most other places find an annoyance, rather than a benefit; does it have a language lobby?

Granted you could end up in a game where everyone is typing in a language you don't understand, but if the routine things were done for you, attacks calculated, etc it wouldn't matter "much" as you could squeak through it. But if you are required to hear the DM and they aren't speaking a language you speak, it could be a lot of trouble entering a game and leaving.

So what kind of lobby exists and does it have that choice to set the language as ability to communicate is a high requirement for these types of games?