How to get past the "Graphics Look Dated" issue in no time flat

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Vladamir Begemot, Jun 11, 2017.

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  1. Vladamir Begemot

    Vladamir Begemot Avatar

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    TL:DR; The UI may be causing most of the graphics complaints.

    I keep seeing posts about graphics looking like they are from 10 years ago, from 2005, etc. I haven't understood that, as I've seen some pretty breathtaking vistas, and I know there is no way they would have happened in 2005.

    Then I was reading this thread from @Akiromi and it all made sense.

    Makes total sense all of a sudden! The interface is preloading the players brains with the idea that the game has dated graphics. Start screen, then concept art, and probably then the chat menu/NPC dialog.

    It doesn't matter how fancy the world is, if the players are seeing an old school UI, they are going to "see" old school graphics.


    Update UI and I'll bet that most of the visual complaints disappear.

    Here's one of HL2's (2005 Game of the Year) images the developers cherry picked for a loading screen, as it shows off the HL2 engine to it's great benefit.

    [​IMG]

    I'm grabbing this from the town I'm currently in, and trying to kind of replicate the same elements. House in the distance, water, trees, and sky, not set up a screenshot for marketing or anything. As you all know you can make some much better shots than the following, but I didn't want to set it up, just make a picture where I'm at so it can be an honest assesment.

    [​IMG]

    Element by element, our water looks much better (particularly at sunset,) there can be lots of house details in the distance (back of that row is ugly, but that's the design of the town, not the graphics,) trees are incredibly better (except the harvestable ones, when you fixing that Port?,) lighting and shadows are better, draw distance is much farther, and depending on the day, our skies are fantastic.

    But the reality is that none of that will ever make it into many people's consciousness because the first screen they see has a dated UI feel, then there's a chance they will see a low rez image during loading. Boom, damage done, the game could look like it was made in 2025 and it would no longer matter, it would have the reputation of dated graphics.

    One very quick fix might be to take some amazing screenshots and use those as the loading screens!

    So, improve the Main Menu and other dated UI elements and see a lot of your problems going away.

    Epilogue:

    Legitimately our NPC's aren't as good as HL2's.

    (Not that we are competing against HL2, we're competing against the Witcher 3. Compete harder!)

    2005 Game of the Year NPC's:


    [​IMG]

    2016 first NPC in SotA (I think she's still the same):

    [​IMG]

    Unfortunately or NPC's look pretty plastic still, missing that "skin" shader that gives them pores and such.
     
  2. Kabalyero Kidd

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    AGREED... the first step is updating the graphics styling of our User Interface... the icons look OLD... if they can make it modern looking then it will improve the look by a TON... :D
     
  3. Preachyr

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    Hmm... you think these 2 pictures look really different graphically?

    It's all subjective I guess. To me, these 2 pictures just help help to reinforce that much of SOTA's graphics are comparable to 2005.
     
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  4. Vladamir Begemot

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    Totally different. Look at draw distance. It's far closer in HL2. The water is missing a lot of special effects. No big fields of grass. Trees are all burned out, and you can pretty much bet that's on purpose for frame rate. If I were betting, I'd say the water tower and trees to the back are a skybox, not really there. The building is a square with a roof, like 10 polygons.

    Look at the Avatar screenshot. There's a crafting pavilion way the hell back there and you can see the poles that make it up. We've got curved geometry all over the place, from the Shogun building to the airship to the Oracle. Dynamic lighting, which also works on the water, much better wave effects.

    But here's a couple of other, non-loading screen shots from 2005, as well.

    Battlefield 2:

    [​IMG]

    First HL2 screenshot on my Google search:

    [​IMG]

    What do you see here? Squares, and not very many of them. We could probably count them up in a few minutes.

    First SotA shot:

    [​IMG]
     
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  5. Vladamir Begemot

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  6. Kabalyero Kidd

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    2005 graphics are more cartoony... see Cabal Online... I played this game 8 hours everyday until I quit because of Botters... Shroud of the Avatar looks much much better... :D

    [​IMG]
     
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  7. Kabalyero Kidd

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    ahh... Flyff... played it with my eldest son back then... he became much stronger than me... LOL... 2005 MMORPG but I think Shroud of the Avatar looks way much better...

    [​IMG]
     
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  8. Vladamir Begemot

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    @Kabalyero yes, people forget how bad graphics were back then. HL2 was game of the year, and graphics was a big reason, and it doesn't compare.

    I'm really certain that a lot of the "Graphics aren't good" complaint is due to a prejudice that takes form the moment players see the UI.
     
  9. Link_of_Hyrule

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    @Vladamir Begemot Arabela the NPC in your picture is currently getting a refresh. I 100% agree the NPCs are honestly one of the most dated looking things in the game and the character creation is kind of a joke when compared to other games. No matter how hard I try I can't really make a character that looks any different. We need at least 5 or 10 starting faces if not 20 or 30! You can't just change a guys skin color and make him look like a black or an Asian guy. I wish they could hire someone from one of these other games with a great character creation and work solely on that project until it's perfected. Phantasy Star Online 2 is always my go-to reference when it comes to character creation you could spend literally hours making a character look exactly like you want. The good news is I know eventually they are going to go back to the character creation again and add more faces, hair, voices, and hopefully other more defining features. As for other NPCs, they've made some better ones that are more prevalent in the starter areas. UI is going to get more refreshes but it would be super awesome to have like an Old School theme and a New trendy theme which is the default. Possibly even allow user created UI themes like other games have done.
     
  10. Hornpipe

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    About water, SOTA waters don't look good at all. I made a post about that once, here.

    It was in the dev+ part of the forum. Bad idea from me as the dev+ forums don't seem to be read so much.
     
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  11. Kabalyero Kidd

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  12. Vladamir Begemot

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    Hmmm.... I've often stopped to just look at it, particularly during sunset at sunrise. I admit those shots in Skyrim look freaken amazing, but I don't thinuk that SotA's water "doesn't look good at all."
     
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  13. Hornpipe

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    I say that because :
    - with overland map water at least, there is near to no difference between rivers and sea.
    - when you look at the ocean, you can see that the same pattern is applied indefinitely, resulting in a sort of grid thing,
    - there is no influence of the weather on the water while this influence exist for the trees...

    ...and so on...

    I will try to talk about water in my comparison thread soon.
     
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  14. Rufus D`Asperdi

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    I submit that graphics that do not achieve that level of nuance do not qualify as Sucky Graphics, and rather that any graphics that Do achieve that level of nuance would and should be counted as Superior Graphics.

    Do you hold the position that Shroud of the Avatar, with their budget and resources, should be judged against a Superior Graphics scale?
     
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  15. Hornpipe

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    I didn't say Sucky. Please don't misquote me. I said water was not good at all. That means "it's not beautiful as it is". It doesn't mean "it's ugly". That's quite different because ugly water effects reach the level of "unrecognizable things".

    My observation don't take the financial aspect in account (for now) but you should be aware that Portalarium could use some water mod available on the Unity store.They probably do that already.
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2017
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  16. Hornpipe

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    Here you can have an exemple :



    not the best one through...

    For a more complete list.
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2017
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  17. Burzmali

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    At least the HL2 water has a reflection, SotA just uses "texture_water4" which looks the same as it does in the other dozen or so games I've seen it in. It doesn't look bad, but every Unity game made in the last few years look the same, good at long range, decent up close, meh at moderate range.
     
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  18. Preachyr

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    Up close is definitely where SotA's graphics are the weakest. At a distance there are certainly some really beautiful shots, and a lot of scenes can look really good when you are standing back and looking at a 'big picture' sort of view. However, up close where you can see the textures and details (or lack) is what hurts it most in my opinion.

    For example:
    [​IMG]

    And then there is NPC's, which in many cases I would say look worse than 2005's Half Life 2, but absolutely look worse than many other games from 2005-2010. Maybe i'm asking a lot but I think even with a small team, the tech is good enough that we can do better than this:
    [​IMG]


    Now before I get called a troll or told that i'm just complaining for no reason or whatever, i'm not bashing the games graphics completely. Just pointing out that there are some good reasons that people call the graphics dated.

    At a distance, I think there are some really nice looking areas, and lots of the newer areas coming out look pretty decent. I just think that NPC's, and when you look at things close up, it loses a whole lot of it's appeal. If any dev time is still allotted to graphics, I hope cleaning up the textures is something they plan to do.
     
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  19. Stundorn

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    Grafic is always personal flavor - i like it more than all newer Games i know - it has its own style and doestn look cartoonisch. If ot looks carrtonnish its less immersing to me.
    They should concentrate on features and content instead of GUI or Grafix Tweaking - my personal opinion.
     
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  20. MrBlight

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    Yea i dunno. Graphics are mediocer. I mean ... the thread is comparing it to games over a decade old. In an industry that things improve as fast as they do...

    Theres a lot i like about sota.. and i dont know enough about effects to know if what they have yet to implement will make a huge difference or not..
    But graphics arnt the strongest pull in sota imo.
    That being said, a good game can be 8-bit and be popular. Long as its a good game.
     
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