Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta The things walls, roofs and everything occlude

Ok? We need to talk about this imo.

I played the murder quest few times now and I am by no means an D:OS expert, but only in the 3rd time playing this game up to the conclusion of this quest I noticed that, lo and behold, if you walk further to the left in the INN close to an area that is occluded by 3 walls there is a 2nd floor stairwell there.....

I spent a long time being stuck on the Evelyn part of the quest because the hatch was occluded by the west wall and the stairs were occluded by the west wall... You see a pattern there?

Dear Larian, this is really really annoying. Not that there are things to discover when you explore, but that the only reason I am not finding some things in this game, is because the WALLS ARE HIDING THEM (because of view angle and view height). And this is a problem as I am scrolling ahead to wherever I am moving to see what's there, the "blend-away" when characters pass by something sometimes eludes me completely.

An fix would be to make the mouse cursor do the "cut through" effect when we press a button. But you can not honestly expect us to constantly fiddle around with the camera in every room and scene (which only works half the time, as often this triggers the roof to appear or some other weirdness) or walk in every corner of every house just to make sure you haven't hidden a vital chest (murder scene chest!) on a western wall. (The wall that is always not cutting away until you are literally standing next to it)

And if you expect us to do this in every room, then ALT should do more than it does now. Alt should highlight stairs and hatches and chest and npc's (outlines) yes, all of them on screen. Currently it's very easy to miss NPC's , hatches, chests and stairs entirely, because of the occlusion walls and roofs and pretty much any item provides. (or make that another button, alt for text highlight, and other button for outline highlight) ,p)


Opinions? Please share them. Am I the only one that is bothered by this? Or am I just going blind? I am no stranger to "free" cameras like in NWN, and I have no problem in THAT game finding where I want to look but the camera in that works smoother and better, or more intuitive, I am really not sure..... also there is no clutter that obstructs view in that...

Currently, I feel really restricted by the camera angles that Divinity Original Sin has (and the odd choice to restrict our rotation to 90° ) I see no reason in this game why that is the case. Surely you have made proper 3d models for this game, and so you could allow us a completely free camera rotation around our character pivot. Including pitch and height, no?

This brings back memories to NWN2, and why that had 3 different camera modes, none of which were as good as the default mode in NWN1.... ehem, anyway

Unfortunately, no. The game has been designed from the very beginning as having a fixed view angle - so models lack textures etc. on sides which you can not see.

I know that is speculated here, but that is not how I would ever do 3d-models, and I am 3d-modeler (actually more like hobby/freelance/something in-between render-artist for space stuff and modeling of space-ships and medieval scenes and general stuff for indy games.. oh, and sprite effect artist... so I have some idea what I am talking about here) ;P You can google my deviant gallery but I am inactive for a few years now as life has taken me into a different direction lately.. anyway

That would not just be EXTREMELY strange way to make 3d-models but also hamper their ability to reuse art-assets properly. 3d-models and placing is often varied by rotating. Only texturing from 1 side would mean all their art assets could only be used in very narrow view angles and thus, rotations which in turn would mean all their buildings and houses would have very narrow variation ranges... and I can't believe a professional studio would ever do something like that. It saves no money. Modelers model full models, it's what they do best. And texturing half a model or a full model is literally the same thing in most cases.

Either way, if not rotation, highlighting ;P Or some other fix to this issue. Walls should never occlude things in a room when I am in that room. ^^

Actually I was bugged by the fact you can look inside houses even if you are not in them.
Talk about people never being happy.

eRe4s3r - although 360-degree rotation isn't going to happen, I completely agree that the "walls blocking stuff I should be able to see" thing is a major problem. I also agree that one way to fix this would be to make "ALT" consistently highlight all items/containers/doors/interactable objects (currently, only some of these are highlighted - i.e. all chests, as well as most items, including keys, which I personally appreciate). This "highlight everything" option should probably be a main menu controls toggle, so those who have these kinds of problems and/or don't find pixel-hunting fun could benefit, while those who would find this balance-breaking could be happy as well.

I've posted more on this in the "UI Wishlist" thread, so I'll stop now. But yeah, I agree.

Yeah, but that is a gameplay thing. Walls occluding views even inside rooms is a technical / usability thing.

Maybe I should add that I still think that ALT and anything else should only highlight things our characters can see.. but my problem is that *I* can't see what is occluded by walls without walking literally up-close and personal to that wall. (or rotating the camera the little it can be rorated and hoping nothing else occludes what I want to be looking at.

Hence why imo, highlighting + outlines is far more important than highlighting + text. ;p

Any my post has nothing do with being unhappy I am in fact in an extremely good mood, which is the only time I ever make posts here.

I agree here, it can be rather annoying to see things in the fron in indoor areas. Rats often make it very troublesome for me hiding there...

Related to this, it's also annoying that if your current camera angle has a wall at least partially blocking a container etc., even though you can see (at least the edge) of the container, you can't interact with it. Not sure how easy that would be to fix - e.g. by having the mouse pointer "cut through" walls etc., as suggested in the OP - at this point though.