Its funny, but I'm pretty sure that the Fallout 1 heads were denser poly models than Fallout 3's heads (I've not counted them), but have a look...
http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/FModels.jpg

Personally I think the originals just look better (even with my F3 mutant re-skin).
The only real difference is that a P1~90MHz cannot animate the model at the speed of a P4~2400MHz so they pre-rendered it out as still frames.
(and I suggested the option for the super detailed heads rendered as still frames should a P4~2400MHz not be fast enough to manage the UBER heads with good framerates...) :shrug:

~A side note: I asked a member a trick question not long ago (I told him it was a trick question)

He had posted that he absolutely would never play a game with less than 16-bit color...
So I asked him if he'd play a game that looked like this....
http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/Oblivion.gif

He never replied...

I'd personally have liked FO3's dialogue system & facial animations to have been like in Mass Effect. That would have been "state-of-the-art", like FO1's talking heads in '97. I personally find FO3 worse looking than Oblivion (which probably explains why the game runs better than Oblivion on my system, ha ha).

Possibly. That's neither here nor there, though. Polycount has little to do with quality; and I'd be suprised if modellers haven't gotten better at making more refined models with less polygons in the past ten years. (I'm not as big a fan of the texture work on the bottom example, though, to be honest - that can make or break a model, I find.)

I know you have a preference for your talking head models, I'm just not as impressed, to be honest. To me, I can tell instantly that they're from the mid-90's. They have that stuffed-doll animatronic look so common to that time. And when they speak it's even more noticeable. To me, it's like watching very good claymation - they have that aspect that I can only characterize as "lippy" for lack of a better term. They look to me like they don't have any teeth, or any real structure of muscle and bone to form the shape of their mouth when they're forming words.

Fallout 3 is hardly a prime example of quality animation, either. But I find it's at least consistent.

We've had this conversation before (I believe it may well have been our first)... The Fallout heads were digitized http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/harrold.jpg

~and neither of the models in that photo I linked are mine. The bottom one is the Bethesda model (same poly count ~though I moved about 12 vertices (slightly) to make the head look flat on top).
The texture is in fact the one that shipped with the game (but the green is intensified and I doodled a leather strap on the cheek, and some hair).

The top model is the actual Harry model from the original Fallout game (not something I modeled myself).

Fallout's heads have crude (static) mouth positions that work with the lipsync files (quite like Fallout 3 in that way, though not like F3's keyframed speech).
*and yeah ... its is a decade old after all. Directly comparing the two is misleading, but a relative comparison puts FO3 behind IMO.

You know, I think you're right. I don't think it ever lead to much that time, either. (I'd forgot about the clay models, as well.)

Beyond head comparisons (and that's always going to be more a matter of the skill of the modelers than polycount and texture resolution, I think - there's no inherent reason an in-game face couldn't work as well as your talking heads,) I do believe it comes down to usefulness and how it serves the game. If you're playing a game with a pulled-out camera, or lower-res in-game models, then a talking head plays a useful role. If the game is more Fallout 3-style, there's little to be served by an incremental increase in the head resolution. It might bring something to the game, but the question is would it really be enough to be worth the effort?

I can concieve of a sort of compromise, though. Texture-swapping seems to be a big thing these days to get the highest resolution possible at a constant framerate (it's especially noticeable in Mass Effect, for example.) Since shifting to a dialogue interaction would possible cut down on the resource strain, you could pop a higher-res model specifically made for dialogue and cut-scenes, and hide the swap during the transition. So you have your standard LOD for basic gameplay, along with all the intermediary resolutions; and an "extreme" resolution LOD for the dialogue interactions. You probably wouldn't really need to swap meshes too much - for the most part a higher polycount model isn't going to make as much of a difference as some good texture work.

Agreed; (Its also exactly what I expected to find with F3)
I kept mentioning this very point for almost two years

~However: Poly count makes a real difference. You can make a great looking low poly mesh but its still a low poly mesh and hence more limited in its "draping" of the texture onto the polygons. You can also do great tricks with normal maps and textures, but unless the object really is that angular, it won't look as good as a higher poly model in all situations. (like during deformations and certain lighting).

The fact that they can generate that Nvidia head demo on consumer hardware... kind of means they should in my book (so long as it falls within their target specs ~and especially since it would essentially be Fallout² ~it would have just fit the series like tailored kid gloves IMO. :shrug:)

heh heh. Yeah, I think this is kind of your own personal campaign, though. There's a lot I'd have liked to see in FO3, but that wasn't one I was thinking of until you brought it up.

I see your point, but I think you could do just as well with some extra polys in the standard game model. At some point, I do think you come across a law of diminishing returns with polygons, after all. You're only ever going to need so many polygons to map out someone's face. That NVidia example you showed, probably doesn't really have all that many polys compared to what we already have in-game, I'd wager. The trouble I see with switching models out, in-game, is that you can only hide so much in a transition from first/third-person to a close-up of the face. Probably better to just increase the polycount in the face all around (likely wouldn't take up too many resources, really - it's mostly the textures that eat up your graphics card anyway.) I think, at least.

Honestly, though, as much as those talking heads were iconic in the old Fallouts, I think it's more an aspect of that sort of gameplay than anything else. That's not really the only isometric game I've played that had dialogue that was pretty much just like that. Pretty much any game where you can't already see the NPC's faces during regular gameplay, you're going to get a window that pops up with an animated close-up of their face. (Civilization - or pretty much any strategy game like that - as well as plenty of RPGs. It's really just a natural progression from the static portraits you'd see in other games from before that time.)

Really, I'd wager that if for some reason Fallout 1 was a first-person 3D game, that we wouldn't have ever seen those talking heads. (Though obviously only the lead designers would be able to confirm that.) I just think it's more an aspect of that style of game than something that's intrinsic to Fallout itself.

As a fallout vet, and someone who likes the FP view, I really like what you've done Gizmo. Hope to see more of it.

Seriously Gizmo. Your work seem extraordinary and you seem to know exactly what you're talking about and what you want to achieve.
With that on mind I'd say that you really should stop bothering about 'fixing' Fallout and go do your own thing!
Because, at the end of the day, all your hard work and dedication will, at best, result in Bethesda earning more money from it.
Doing your own stuff won't get you any fame or riches of course, but it's obvious you're not going for that anyway...
And at least you will have your very own achievement to be proud of.

I intend to (and am), but the GECK and engine are fun learning tools, and the results are sharable.
At best it will give me a few mods to customize my game; and allow me to post them for any others that want the same.
Most of my MOD ideas are rather Niche, but not all of them.

FO3/GECK is a part time hobby. (and I "play" in the GECK more than the game)
*and the underlying drive is the mastering of the two 3d modelers I'm using.

_________________________________________
I have an http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al3qhaMHn6A&feature=channel_page that is stalled, because I want to put the rifle in a Scavenger's inventory...

*Hmm... I'll post about that in the mod section... with feedback, maybe I can finish (and upload) that mod today...
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1012611

Don't Fallout 1 and 2 look beautiful?

I think it'd actually be pretty cool...to see B.O.M.B. -001 on the launchpad in glorious 3D. To see the Glow off in the distance at night. To wander through West Tek, careful not to fall through a hole in the floor.

If we were to get a Fallout remake, the whole game would be toned down because of how stupid the ESRB is now. I don't know if the PC really cares about games that are really edgy (can't think of a better word), but the PS and XBOX are real jerks about games rated advlt Only which is probably the rating that Fallout 1 and 2 would receive in this day and age. Fallout 3, I thought, was very dull and boring compared to how great Fallout 1 and 2 were, and I played them after I played Fallout 3. The games are fine the way they are, but if people don't want to play a turn-based Fallout game then screw them no Fallout for them...

i might be wrong here but i think the whole point is not beth remaking it but a community effort and in this case ESRB can **** my ***** (sorry some dude is watching south park here)

in short there is already such a mod in progress and right now we in the middle of yet a discussion about game mechanics (its like i never left )

HELL YEAH. I would play the hell out of them like i did with the originals...

I would not mind an official "re-issue" using the actual imported Lightwave models (which nobody has I bet); The Remastered original voice tracks; Mark Morgan's current remastered Music tracks from Fallout; and the Gamebryo (or other engine) geared for the same vantage (ISO), with visual results somewhat like Dawn of War with Fallout style close ups.

(barring the original models... use new ones made to match)

This has actually been done with other games (like Myst) and could be done with Riven... its now just a matter of not degrading the source material so much.

Fallout's code is possibly a spaghetti nightmare... but I bet there are people that could recode the whole thing in Action Script even and sell it as a Flash Ap (or Shockwave).
*Or it might be easiest to convert the game over to the Tactics engine [modified].

The point being, for me at least, is not a remaking of the original, but a re-presentation of the original without the limitations of a mid 90's Pentium PC holding it back. Sprites like Vic and the Cue-Card girl [in F2] were grafted into the original assets, and that could easily be done again ~for the whole set. The maps are trivial with modern tools (not so, if using the original tools).

Have a look at this guy's [admittedly amazing] hobby efforts done in Flash and Director...
http://necromanthus.com/Games/Flash/diablo.html
http://necromanthus.com/Games/Flash/warcraft.html
http://necromanthus.com/Games/ShockWave/half-life.html
http://necromanthus.com/Games/ShockWave/quake.html



The hitch is that Bethesda almost certainly can't commit anyone at all to a nickle and dime Flash/DBpro/Torque/RealmCrafter project like that... but I'd bet they could publish it for another studio ~one that would jump on it; beg for it... do it on spec... (if such could be found), Then just sell it along side the Oblivion Mobile, and DLC offerings, at small (but perhaps pure) profit. :shrug:

I'd buy it, (and I'd bet there are groups that would agree to make it).

**Of course, the other hitch is that Han Shot first.... :rolleyes:

Keep the classics the way they are;Nothing to change here,there good already

Instead of reinventing the wheel, why dont we just polish it into a new Handheld game with same gameplay, but added things to make it appealing to Fallout vets...

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!! :bowdown: Somone who understands me!!!!!

FALLOUT DS: turnbased games are extremely popular on the DS, why not make a "true to the originals" fallout DS game?

I'd buy that for a dollar.

(actually I'd spend $50)

use the van buren assets as a start?

bah it'll never ever happen so whats the point in thinkin about it

How about a new PC game with the same gameplay style?

No, there's no good reason not to make a PC game in the same style as classic Fallout.

The only reason is that it would look silly if it was called a spin-off while Fallout 3 is called a sequel.

Making Fallout on portable consoles would be very, very, very awesome, but it should be very similiar to the originals, with the fixed point of view n'all.
Would actually get me to buy a PsP/DS just for that.

I'm always shocked when I hear Fallout 3 referred to as a "sequel" being that it has so little in common with the Classic Fallout's