Do you think they will add corpses?

[Holy-Avenger]

One thing that was fairly well done in D2 imo was the random decomposing corpses, blood splatter, pentagrams everywhere helping it create an early theme in dungeons and out of them. Do you think they will add things like this. I heard in the developers panel that they're trying to strike a balance between colour and darkness? How do you think it will end up? As I look through the screenshots, environment is pretty squeaky clean, as apposed to worn torn and show signs of the destruction that has happened. Even from what they have said, adding corpses etc etc dosn't clash with anything they're saying, it just adds more.

Also how do you think they will change the graphics in regards to the green hue, etc etc etc.

[stillman]

I'm glad you asked. Making the corpses go away, and in the fading fahsion that they do, makes me dissappointed. Albeit, this is the ONLY thing that disappoints me about what I've seen and read. In another thread I noted that there IS no blood and gore: it all goes away so quickly, it's like it's not even there. I also noted that D2 is actually superior in this regard to maintaining the corpses.

Some have told me that this is only an early version and all could change, but idk, ANY and EVERY game I've ever seen where cracks appear in the walls/ground also makes those cracks heal up very soon. I see this as primitive and a big weakness. And you're right: moments after a battle it looks like your barb simply walked into a chamber and nodded politely to the cleaning maids as they were just leaving.

I know it sounds crazy, but since it is apparently impossible to keep the polygon bodies, why not make a really, really doctored up and convincing enough 2 dimensional picture of a body and just stamp that onto the screen as the 3D one disappears. This could happen when a huge feast of maggots or flies are crawling all over the corpse so we don't see the change from 3D to 2D. Then, the maggots/flies can gradually diminish and a mostly-eaten carcass is left, mostly bones.

It'd be even nicer if the caracass turns to dry bones and your chr kicks the bones/skulls around the room when walking over them.

[Kiroptus]

I do also want to have corpses in the game. The problem is the polygon counter of the game and how it will affect performance. D2 could have lots of corpses because every monster was just a 2D sprite. But now in D3 it seems something about 2500 times more heavy, in the sense that it has that number of polygons. Plus it has ragdolls which further affect performance. I guess there could be an option to adjust corpses to not dissapear, so if your rig can handle it, let it be. But because of that we can expect that corpses wont be a gameplay element because not everyone will be able to see. So we can forget about CE and other skills that require corpses.

I do think however that its not set in stone, it IS possible to have corpses back, maybe with some relief map techniques, to have a separate "corpse model" that is mainly done by relief so it doesnt decrease performance as much as a normal diffuse map.

Note*Relief map is a texture image that can simulate geometry, its heavily used in team fortress 2 but it works only with objects.

Example: This is a box model (6 polygons) with relief map:

http://fabio.policarpo.nom.br/images/multilayerreliefmapping.jpg

You can rotate and see everything in 3D. It looks like a 3D model but its an illusion, its just a texture.

I dont know if that can work, but switching the monster model with a diferent, identical model made by relief map, would almost not affect performance because its much lighter to read a relief map then to read all geometry. So as soon as all ragdolls effects are gone and the corpse remain static, it would switch to the relief map.

But I dont know if that is right, maybe I am speaking nonsense and looking like a fool but I feel desperate to find a solution to this :(

[Arioch]

The problem there is though that the ragdoll is going to mean that the corpse is in an unpredictable position, so switching to a relief map at that point will be really noticeable (as the corpse snaps to the predetermined mapped pose).

I think the best you can probably hope for is an options slider that allows people with more robust systems to increase the number of corpses that can be on-screen at one time before they fade out.

[stillman]

But what if they drew a 2D body for each of the many ragdoll positions. I know it sounds like an unreasonable amount of work given the number of positions and monsters, but they're only 2D pictures.

Actually, in diablo 2, I often see a sudden mass of bodies flick and change positions so that they all suddenly have similar orientations (idk if this happens on other ppl's screens or what). I wouldn't mind something like that happening if the reward was having the bodies remain. So limiting the number of corpse positions would mean having to draw up fewer 2d pictures. I guess some people wouldn't like this, but let's face it, the bodies fade away far to soon.

Finally, Idk much about these computer limitations and such, but is it so hard to just leave the bodies for 30 seconds or so? That wouldn't be too bad. As we become better players, we'd leave a room fast anyway and not even notice.

[moranor]

They can render the corpses to a texture layer, draw that ontop of stuff and then just delete the actual polygons from the world

The problem with that though is that you would end up with a ton of texture data stored in the memory. I can't see it being anything other than a graphical option, which means it won't affect gameplay = no messing with corpses after they've been there for a while

[Booner]

If the persistent bodies and blood really affects the performance of the game that much, then a player should have the option to turn it on or off.

[marshmallow]

The bodies should remain for a minute or so. Couldn't they just make the corpses have much less detail? Also, even if the bodies disappear (and they did in normal, sprite based DII anyway) then the blood and gore should still be smeared on the floor.

[StevenBrouwer]

I think they should make it warcraft 3 style. The foe does it's death animation/ragdolls and after a second or 5 the 3d model goed down earth and a 2d corpse stays. So the corpses can stay long without using to much system resources.

And BTW you can't make corpses a option in the menu, because in fair play every1 should have the corpses availible for the same time.

[HRP]

Blood should stay, corpses should turn into 2D sprites and stick around for 15-20 seconds.

From the looks of things, it seems that DIII is going to be fairly fast paced and there won't be much time to linger around and really take in the fact that there are 30 zombie corpses littering the ground.

[Holy-Avenger]

Yeah. I think they have to make a compromise between performance and what the fans want. There needs to be some way to tell... there was a battle field before. If the bodies can't happen, atleast some blood or maybe a couple of bones or something.

Also when I said corpses I also meant decapitated Rogues in Act 1 too which give you loot etc. I haven't seen any of that yet.