EverQuest II Developer Diary #2

GameSpy has dished up their second EverQuest II developer diary, this time written by Derek Benson, lead character artist for Sony Online. Check it out:
A geek aside: If you follow game development stuff, you've heard of texture maps. It's the paint job applied to the polygons that make up the game object. Lately you may have people using the word "shader" when they used to say "texture map." A shader is actually several texture maps linked together and applied to a surface. That's how you simulate bumpy, scaly skin without modeling the scales, for example. It's a big change in how game artists do things. You'll be seeing it in other games soon. That's how they do it in movies, too.