3rd Person Mod/ Patch?

[Steve from Long Island]

Are there any modders who already announced they will be looking into modding a 3rd person mode into the game as soon as it releases? Or even any words from the devs about the possibility of adding 3rd person down the line? Would not be the first time a new camera mode was added to a game after release btw.

[Serpico]

That would be impossible.

It would require a fully modeled, fully rigged and animated character model that is able to interact with every situation, door, lever and enemy in the game.

Unless your are fine with a stiff not animated headless Jesus with detached arms floating through the level while the 3rd person camera is stuck and/or floating through walls.

[Steve from Long Island]

Originally posted by Serpico:

That would be impossible.

It would require a fully modeled, fully rigged and animated character model that is able to interact with every situation, door, lever and enemy in the game.

Unless your are fine with a stiff not animated headless Jesus with detached arms floating through the level while the 3rd person camera is stuck and/or floating through walls.

Im quite sure I've seen a fully modeled character model in the first teaser, which made it seem like in certain sitiuations the game actually switches to 3rd person. Wouldn't most of the nessicary things you mentioined also be needed in 1st person, since reflections and mirrors are a thing?

[Serpico]

It's fully animated for cut scenes but not for gameplay.
To be more precise "motion capture" like in movies.

I try to explain in a simple but elaborate way:

Motion Capture being that your actors for cut scenes have coordination dots plastered all over their face and body that get recorded while the actors act for a cut scenes. Meaning you have a fixed recording for that scenes that can't be changed.

Every moment in the game where you see Indy not in the ego-perspective is a fixed recorded animation judging by all the footage we got.

Now if it comes for a playable 3rd person character you need multiple small separate animations that have to work together depending on the situation in a believable way.

For example in a FPS game if you stop running forward your character does a 100% immediate full stop without questioning how realistic it actually is.
Try running down the hall at full speed and stop 1inch or 1cm before you hit the wall.
Believable in game, but no realistic

In a third person game you need to address that though to look maybe not realistic but believable.

Now if you have a game with a third person view like for example Uncharted or
Tomb Raider you need a correct animation for each interaction a character does
which isn't all just prerecorded like for the CGI in movies/cutscenes.

Going back to the running part:
- you need an animation for standing around doing nothing, like... breathing or maybe scratching your balls
- you need an animation that looks believable when we start running
- you need an animation that looks believable when we while running
- you need an animation that looks believable when we stop running

So we have already multiple animations we have to blend together just to have the character moving around and all of that has to look believable.

Now
- what happens when we reload the revolver while running or even stop running
- what happens when we got hit while running or reloading
- what happens when we got shot while trying to reload
- what happens when we got shot while interacting with something else

There are so many different things a character can do and interact with in a game
and each thing has to be addressed in some way. It is actually quite complicated to get all these animations working together properly and they are often often the first things breaking and falling apart.

We also can't blame the developers here as well, if they didn't get the budget or the needed big animation team from Bethesda.

It's also not like you can pull together a large and talented animation team out of thin air.
Machine Games only made FPS games so far.
It was Bethesda's decision to make an Indiana Jones game and not a decision by Machine Games.

______________


To address this last point:

"Wouldn't most of the necessary things you mentioned also be needed in 1st person, since reflections and mirrors are a thing?"

Only if you actually have mirrors and reflections. For a good reason many games don't have mirrors or also not working mirrors. There are no working mirrors in Machine Games previous games for example.

If you have working mirrors in FPS games characters often have "only" simple animations for that.

In the FPS "DOOM Eternal" for example if you stand on the moving train and look at the floor you can see the DOOM Slayer walking, so he is actually moving the train ^^.

Jokes aside, DOOM 2016 & DOOM Eternal have both multiplayer so they needed an animated main character anyway.
But in no way do these animated DOOM Slayer character models have the complexity in animation like you need for for a full 3rd person game.

[Tanoomba]

Originally posted by Serpico:

If you have working mirrors in FPS games characters often have "only" simple animations for that.

In Cyberpunk 2077, for instance, mirrors need to be "activated" before they show a canned animation of your character looking into them.

[Serpico]

^ That is correct. That is also a compromise we still have to do.
I guess by the time we reach the "PlayStation 7"-Era we have some real full ray-tracing so we don't have to compromise on real time mirrors anymore.

New technologies, tools and software are also still coming
streamlining development even further.
Procedural generation and AI will also further improve.

Recently read you can by now even animate characters in Unreal Engine 5 itself as well.
I guess not as good but who knows how much it will improve in the future as well.

[Steve from Long Island]

Originally posted by Serpico:

It's fully animated for cut scenes but not for gameplay.
To be more precise "motion capture" like in movies.

I try to explain in a simple but elaborate way:

Motion Capture being that your actors for cut scenes have coordination dots plastered all over their face and body that get recorded while the actors act for a cut scenes. Meaning you have a fixed recording for that scenes that can't be changed.

Every moment in the game where you see Indy not in the ego-perspective is a fixed recorded animation judging by all the footage we got.

Now if it comes for a playable 3rd person character you need multiple small separate animations that have to work together depending on the situation in a believable way.

For example in a FPS game if you stop running forward your character does a 100% immediate full stop without questioning how realistic it actually is.
Try running down the hall at full speed and stop 1inch or 1cm before you hit the wall.
Believable in game, but no realistic

In a third person game you need to address that though to look maybe not realistic but believable.

Now if you have a game with a third person view like for example Uncharted or
Tomb Raider you need a correct animation for each interaction a character does
which isn't all just prerecorded like for the CGI in movies/cutscenes.

Going back to the running part:
- you need an animation for standing around doing nothing, like... breathing or maybe scratching your balls
- you need an animation that looks believable when we start running
- you need an animation that looks believable when we while running
- you need an animation that looks believable when we stop running

So we have already multiple animations we have to blend together just to have the character moving around and all of that has to look believable.

Now
- what happens when we reload the revolver while running or even stop running
- what happens when we got hit while running or reloading
- what happens when we got shot while trying to reload
- what happens when we got shot while interacting with something else

There are so many different things a character can do and interact with in a game
and each thing has to be addressed in some way. It is actually quite complicated to get all these animations working together properly and they are often often the first things breaking and falling apart.

We also can't blame the developers here as well, if they didn't get the budget or the needed big animation team from Bethesda.

It's also not like you can pull together a large and talented animation team out of thin air.
Machine Games only made FPS games so far.
It was Bethesda's decision to make an Indiana Jones game and not a decision by Machine Games.

______________


To address this last point:

"Wouldn't most of the necessary things you mentioned also be needed in 1st person, since reflections and mirrors are a thing?"

Only if you actually have mirrors and reflections. For a good reason many games don't have mirrors or also not working mirrors. There are no working mirrors in Machine Games previous games for example.

If you have working mirrors in FPS games characters often have "only" simple animations for that.

In the FPS "DOOM Eternal" for example if you stand on the moving train and look at the floor you can see the DOOM Slayer walking, so he is actually moving the train ^^.

Jokes aside, DOOM 2016 & DOOM Eternal have both multiplayer so they needed an animated main character anyway.
But in no way do these animated DOOM Slayer character models have the complexity in animation like you need for for a full 3rd person game.

You didn't need to explain how motion capture works, but the idea I had was about taking those cutscene animations, and somehow modifiying them into gameplay animations. Its probably very hard to do, but the job certainly doesn't need to be perfect. If we got animations at the level we know from Emperor's Tomb out of a mod that did this, it would already be fine. And maybe those simple animations intended for refleticons you mentioned are already good enough for a mod like this, should there be any reflection sources in the game

Ulitmately, good thing that adding content post release is a normal thing these days. Should the game not do so well, the studio, publisher or whoever is in charge may be incentivized to add a desired, game defining feature known from previous, well recieved Indiana Jones games, such as 3rd person view to get that second wind even Bethesta themselves are trying to catch with Starfield currently

[Serpico]

^ My long winded comment was actually supposed to explain why it is now impossible to add a third person mode to this game.

The point being that making a fully playable 3rd Person Character is MASSIVE amount of work just to be able to interact with the game world and its enemies.

The "simple animated character" would only exist if the developers actually add mirrors into the game, which is 99.9% unlikely to happen.

TLDR: it will never happen.

[Serpico]

Originally posted by Steve from Long Island:

Originally posted by Serpico:

^ My long winded comment was actually supposed to explain why it is now impossible to add a third person mode to this game.

The point being that making a fully playable 3rd Person Character is MASSIVE amount of work just to be able to interact with the game world and its enemies.

The "simple animated character" would only exist if the developers actually add mirrors into the game, which is 99.9% unlikely to happen.

TLDR: it will never happen.

Easy to say it will never happen, while ignoring all the ways I've mentioned it could happen. Of course, its always easy to expect nothing to happen in these cases, but recently I've learned thats just peasent mentality and a thing gamers shuld try to get out of

Well... I put effort into it and politely explained as to why it will not happen.

if we now start throwing insults for no reason, I must tell you I didn't expect you to be such mentally handicapped smoothbrain ♥♥♥♥♥♥ a$$hole that isn't even able to understand the simplest things.

[Steve from Long Island]

Originally posted by Serpico:

Originally posted by Steve from Long Island:

Easy to say it will never happen, while ignoring all the ways I've mentioned it could happen. Of course, its always easy to expect nothing to happen in these cases, but recently I've learned thats just peasent mentality and a thing gamers shuld try to get out of

Well... I put effort into it and politely explained as to why it will not happen.

if we now start throwing insults for no reason, I must tell you I didn't expect you to be such mentally handicapped smoothbrain ♥♥♥♥♥♥ a$$hole that isn't even able to understand the simplest things.

Again, no reply to my thoughts why, even though unlikely, or a hard operation,it still could happen, as I have thouroghly and politely stated earlier. Maybe its me who is just supersitcious, but you sounded alot like a gatekeeper from the start

[Serpico]

Gatekeeping... you sure live an illogical fantasy world.
Bye...

[Steve from Long Island]

Originally posted by Serpico:

Gatekeeping... you sure live an illogical fantasy world.
Bye...

Yet again, no reply to my points, further confirming my suspicion

[Steve from Long Island]

Originally posted by Thadd:

Originally posted by Steve from Long Island:

Are there any modders who already announced they will be looking into modding a 3rd person mode into the game as soon as it releases? Or even any words from the devs about the possibility of adding 3rd person down the line? Would not be the first time a new camera mode was added to a game after release btw.

I doubt it right now. There's too many dumb f**k idiots who think Indiana Jones is a rip off of Tomb Raider. I saw a moronic comment the other day someone said they hoped this game wouldn't be the film version of Tomb Raider or some stupid ass ♥♥♥♥. I guess people are too dumb to do simple research and find Indiana Jones was a cultural hosehold iconic name like 15 years before anyone gave a ♥♥♥♥ about Lara (Indy rip-off) Croft.

Might be a good thing in the long run. As I said here before, look at what Bethesta is doing with Starfield, they are trying to patch in new things to regain interest in the game. If this game, in part thanks to those people you mentioned, and in part due to other reasons bombs, they could be trying to do the same here

[Tanoomba]

The best one can hope for is a 3rd person mod similar to what Cyberpunk 2077 got, which was still very janky and awkward and made certain game mechanics inaccessible.

[MrKane]

Originally posted by Steve from Long Island:

Originally posted by Serpico:

Gatekeeping... you sure live an illogical fantasy world.
Bye...

Yet again, no reply to my points, further confirming my suspicion

Man, you sure are an shallow thickheaded ignorant person.
Insulting people and then just making of nonsense.

[Steve from Long Island]

Originally posted by MrKane:

Originally posted by Steve from Long Island:

Yet again, no reply to my points, further confirming my suspicion

Man, you sure are an shallow thickheaded ignorant person.
Insulting people and then just making of nonsense.

What I told that person was less of an insult and more of an observation. Weren't they being ignorant of the points I made?