When I first walked in to the South Hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center I quickly noticed NCsoft’s booths; the most unique of which being Guild Wars. Four stone pillars rise from the ground arching inwards to set the stage for a Player vs. Player tournament which is in constant demand. Two teams of four, red vs. blue, battle a best of three match, and to the winners the spoils: a 32 MB USB memory card.
Outside the tournament ring are nearly twenty stations for attendees to play on. It’s quite rare that you find an empty station at the Guild Wars booth. E3 for Everyone has been just as successful on the floor as it has been off the floor. While you’re playing at home, we here at E3 are joining you with the ArenaNet staff looking over our shoulders.
The mood from ArenaNet is very positive and they’re very forthcoming with information; needlessly to say very eager to show the world just exactly what Guild Wars is about! The list of staff in attendance includes, but is not limited to:
- Aaron Coberly - Character Artist
- Bobby Pontillas - Character Animator
- Chris Chung - Director of Business Development
- Darrin Claypool - Level Designer
- Dauiel Doriy - Art Director
- Dave Dunniway - Artist
- Gaile Gray - Community Relations Manager
- Horia Dociu - Weapons/Environment Artist
- Jess Lebow - World Designer
- Josh Foreman - Level Designer / Artist
- Lowell Vanghen - Marketing
- Richard Anderson - Aritst
- Scott Robinson - Animator
- Xia Taptar - Artist
After meeting the team I sat down at on of the stations, outside the Player vs. Player arena, and played Guild Wars for the first time. Since most of you have likely played Guild Wars already during the E3 for Everyone event I’ll spare you my initial reaction to the game as I’m sure you’ve all formed opinions based on your first impressions.
The computers on the floor here at E3 have been provided by Dell and are quite powerful (to say the least). To give you an idea of just how powerful they are; I was running Guild Wars at a resolution of 1600x1200 with an average frame-rate of 60! So how much power does it take to accomplish such an amazing frame-rate:
- CPU: Dual Pentium 4 3.20 GHz Extreme Edition
- RAM: 1GB
- Video: ATI Radeon 9800 XT
- Sound: SoundBlaster Audigy 2
- OS: Windows XP Pro
Like I said, the machines on the floor are powerful!
After shortly considering stuffing one of the systems in my backpack I spoke with various staff members in regards to the more technical aspects of Guild Wars; such as: polygon counts, texture resolutions, animations, and utilized software.
Polygon Counts:
- Character
- Average: 2,000
- Maximum: 2,300
- Hands: 80
- Monsters
- Props
- Average: 100 - 500
- Trees: 150
- Environment
- Viewable: 100,000
- Average: 1,000,000
Textures:
- Character
- Skin: 512x256
- Armor: 512x512
- Monsters
- Props
- 112x112, 112x256, 256x256, 512x512
Animations:
There are approximately 200 animations per character. There are six professions and two sexes per profession and thus twelve different character types giving a total of approximately 2,400 animations for all of the characters.
Software:
Interestingly enough, ArenaNet utilizes only one software package for their modeling and animation: 3D Studio Max. Although many employees admittedly would like to use Maya, they say they’re very pleased with the product they’re able to produce in Max. Some of you may be interested to know that characters in Guild Wars are jointed, meaning their bodies are technically made up of many pieces (generally from joint to join). The other software that ArenaNet uses on a regular basis is Adobe Photoshop for their textures.
And so concludes Day 1 From the Floor of E3!
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