Revealing the In-Game Character Models
Context
We’ve teased a lot of concept art and promotional material for the Lucid Realms MMORPG, but haven’t yet revealed the character models that’ll be used in game. Now you finally get a sneak peek at what’s to come for our Genesis Wanderer mint!
But first, some context is needed to understand why we went with these particular character models for the MMORPG.
2D
From the beginning, our plan was to build a 2D MMORPG similar to Realm of the Mad God. If we needed a small, bounded collection of assets for the game, we might’ve chosen a more feature-rich character representation. However, we felt that the variety of items, weapons and equipment added to the allure of the traditional MMORPG’s that we were used to playing. Thus, we went with 2D graphics to allow us to ship larger quantities of quality artwork as a relatively small indie game studio.
Social
All the best MMORPG’s we’ve played have had some social elements involved, whether it be Maplestory’s Henesys/Downtown area or Runescape’s Grand Exchange. Such experiences greatly enhanced gameplay, as players could interact with real people and feel a sense of togetherness rather than simply interact with robotic NPC’s or enemies. To enable such social behavior, some threshold level of identity is needed for the user to feel as if they have an in-game presence. The typical 32px resolution characters of past pixel RPG’s was not going to cut it. We chose to go with a 48px resolution to allow for enough detail to establish key visual features that we felt gives players a greater sense of identity (and adds to the allure of cool items). With these larger character models, its now possible to distinguish smaller facial features like eyes and mouth in-game and in portrait view.
First Draft
Pictured above was the first draft of our character models, designed by our wonderful character artist. While the dimensions are somewhat off in this version (mainly the girth of the limbs), the overall structure was retained in subsequent iterations.
Some Armor Sets
Here’s an example of some class-less armor sets that’ll be available in our MMORPG. Please note that this is only a single colorway out of a multitude of possibilities, so there is some variety amongst players wearing the exact same set of armor.
We hope this gave you all some clarity about the appearance of the Lucid Realms character models and why we chose these specific models. We’ll be previewing a LOT more characters, items, equips and weapons in the coming weeks prior to launch. Stay lucid, Wanderers!
charactermodels