Welcome! We've implemented a brand new feature with the latest update to Old World that will help bring the game’s impressive cast of characters to life like never before.
Portrait Interpolation
While the Portrait Editor is a great tool for modders, players will already be able to reap the benefits of the new content we've put in place, as in-game characters not only age gradually, but their facial expressions will change dynamically based on that character's opinion of the player's faction leader. Let's look at these two concepts in a bit more detail!
Aging
In Old World, portraits are organized into sets of five, representing Baby (ages 2-6), Youth (6-15),
Teenager (15-23), Adult (23-60), and Senior (60 and up). Previously, these images would be static, and only change when a character moves from one age bracket to another.
With the new Interpolation features, a combination of crossfading and subtle modification allows a pair of sequential age groups to merge together into a single image, which changes over time as a character progresses from one age group to another. Once a character shifts into the next bracket, the process starts again with the new "current" age-group portrait and one after that, and so on.
Opinion
Portraits now also display a character's expression based on their opinion modifier of the player's faction leader. These portraits are configured with these expressions to show that character's most extreme negative expression (Furious) at -200 opinion, and most extreme positive opinion (Friendly) at +200 opinion.
With these two extremes set, the game then blends between the two (much like how it does with aging), so that you can get a range of expressions based on where within that spectrum a character is sitting at any given time.
We've prepared a more in-depth guide for any modders who want to create custom portraits for their games. The new update is available now and comes with the usual round of bug fixes and tweaks, which you can read here.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/597180/Old_World/