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. 2112Starman

    2112Starman Avatar

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    Ive said this many times before so:

    graphics are a trade off. This game hammers my 1070 in places like ardoris. There are clearly things they are working on to improve but it will continue to get worse over time.

    Why?

    This game focus's more on "complexity" then beauty. We have zones now with hundreds of thousands of placibles. You cant have beautiful graphics with such a set up. You computer and video card have to deal with that complexity.

    however, like say wow, if you walk into a zone with 10,000 placibles (or any other traditional MMO), you can jack up the "beauty" significantly more. You can give the chars very complex graphics and sparkly effects since its not dealing with all the complexity.

    This is why Adoris kills your computer and a much much smaller area in SOTA does not.

    name any game more complex with placibiles then SOTA is now.
     
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  2. Preachyr

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  3. Burzmali

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    It doesn't, your 1070 is cool as a cucumber. The bottleneck isn't the GPU speed or CPU speed at the moment, it's probably ram or HD reads. My system can't handle Ardoris for more than a few minutes, but my GPU doesn't even ramp up its fan.
     
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  4. Vladamir Begemot

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    It's sounding like Ardoris will be running fine on your computer at the end of the month.

    I'm going to float the idea again, because everyone has responded to "how good are the graphics" but no one has responded to "why do people say the graphics are bad."

    Does anyone else think that the UI is prejudicing people into thinking the whole thing looks dated?
     
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  5. Hornpipe

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    Some of SotA graphics are pretty cool, especialy in the newest scenes or about the newest effects. It would be unfair to keep complaining about that without mentioning the many improvements Portalarium brought over the years. Their artists did a great job. But those improvements mix up with the old assets and bad textures used in the oldest part of the game. Water was an exemple. NPCs are an other one.

    And yes, the UI need some love
     
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  6. Grimbone

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    I totally think we need a new UI.
     
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  7. Bubonic

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    I don't agree with this. Even in the screenshot you posted, its pretty obvious that the HL2 lighting is more realistic.
     
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  8. Burzmali

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    SotA's graphics look like a bunch of pieces were snapped together like lego sets from different decades. The animations have always been my personal pet peeve, nothing reminds you that everything is weightless like a dragon rotating on a lazy susan. SotA's static images aren't so bad, but then you move and notice that your shadow is in the wrong place, 70% of the corpses clip through the ground almost completely and MP mode puts everyone on roller-skates.
     
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  9. 2112Starman

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    Placeable decorations.
     
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  10. MrBlight

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    minecraft!
    I win. lol
    But no, ill give you that, i cant name a lot of games off top of my head that have as much custom/player placeable decorations as even the POTS.

    I dont think thats a VALID excuse for it to be a decade behind in graphics.. but i understand some trade off.
    Hopefully some of hte new lighting features they were talking about make a big difference, and just general scene polishs.

    Also its hard to say without seeing their next performance push. The last one they did was a huuuuge reduction to load times, which leads to a smoother game, and that helps offset the graphics. I hope their next one cuts load times/lag. We wiilll see
     
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  11. 2112Starman

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    I agree that things like the UI are dated, but I dont think that way for graphics, especially placibles and how powerful many of them are like for example the new sundials.
     
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  12. 2112Starman

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    Lets take a look at the entrance of my PoT. Consider all of this is placible and I can take it all down in probably 10 minutes. I think the graphics are pretty damn good:

    [​IMG]
     
  13. Preachyr

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    um, Skyrim? lol practically everything in that game can be picked up/stolen and also tossed back out on the ground anywhere... many more objects than SotA per town.
     
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  14. Time Lord

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    As you all know, I've been following along and reading all you comments.

    Immersion through the Video Images;

    I've been trying to see the subtle differences within the graphics that some have said are clearly there, "but I don't see it" o_O I really have been trying to see what's being described and I was thinking the opposite when comparing the differences of all the graphics in relation to the many subjects discussed about them. Some said that it was effecting immersion, for others it's the water. I've seen allot of real water and it's generally dirty. Some of the other offerings of water looked like bottled water, which is rarely the case in real life. I think this is more about style than it is about realism and at some point fits somewhere between discussing Leonardo da Vinci, Filippino Lippi, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Vincent Van Gogh, a Nikon camera (using Fiji or Afga film) and an I-phone selfie o_O... that is to say it's all about the "style of the art" and which style an artist likes to paint it or an art lover likes to see, "it's all in the eyes of the beholder".

    [​IMG][​IMG]

    [​IMG][​IMG][​IMG]

    I've been through jungles, deserts and after 1 week in Cancun Mexico it's great, 2 weeks it's tiring and 3 weeks it's a beach with sand fleas, but no matter what, it's not going to relate as well being on a computer screen. We've read the many posts on how immersive some felt in UO or other Ultima products and how to bring that immersive quality experience here to our SOTA, but more realism in our graphics isn't going to get us there. We already blow many #1 most played game's graphics out of the water with what we have. What I'm getting at is that our graphics are fine without further changes because that immersive quality lay elsewhere for our development $ to become that #1 most played game because of our immersion.

    if our game looked exactly like the Hollywood movie "A Knight's Tale" it's not going to provide us a more immersive game. It's like the difference between reading a book or watching a movie, the book is always going to be better and last longer than the movie, so in comparison the book lasted longer in entertainment value while the movie impacted us for a single day. One was something that held our attention while the other had shock and bang value with a few laughs between, yet UO and Ultima Prime had lingering personal effects that's lasted forever, inspiring our SOTA. Competing in graphics with other games can't get us to becoming that #1 most played game, it's going to have to come through other means and those are subjects for other threads in respect for this OP's header.

    I learn allot from our graphics people here and I do enjoy reading along and learning, but adding more realism isn't going to transfer immersion better from our screen to our players and will have to be accomplished in other ways.
    "In my opinion", which is only a single drop in the water ;)~Time Lord~:)
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2017
  15. Spoon

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    Absolutely.
    The windows, the top-right icons and the hotbar all detract the overall feel of the graphics.

    But I think the point about the NPC look and feel is also valid.
     
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  16. Jaanelle DeJure

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    @Vladamir Begemot I think you have an interesting observation there. Two things:

    One is people might not be specific enough in their complaint.. i.e. "graphics are dated" could mean a bunch of things. As others have noted, in actuality "the graphics" has many components, some of which appear more modern than others.

    The most accurate assessment of the graphics in this game is that there are some aspects which are better than average, some at par, and some below average.

    Another thing is that, once people have a perception about something, they tend to defend their perception, even when presented with clear evidence to the contrary.
     
  17. Burzmali

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    A few counterpoints:
    [​IMG]
    "Pretty" water up close, clipping through the shore to boot.

    [​IMG]
    Slightly more flattering shot, but now including vampire house (no reflection, might also have sun passing through it)

    [​IMG]
    Taking flight without leaving the ground. Not the worst case of flying shadow I've seen, but still jarring when you notice it.
     
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  18. Wintermute of CoF

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    I think there are issues with the graphics themselves: the animations and the shadows as have been mentioned, distracting pop in on the overland map as well as what appear to be either really low res or very stretched textures for many rocks (inside mines for example). These things don't stop me playing, but graphics are an important factor in the wider market we're all hoping the game can attract and so need to be improved (and I'm sure they will be).

    Also I would disagree that the UI could be fixed "in no time flat". Aside from "good UI" being a difficult thing to achieve by itself, it's also something that you try to avoid doing a lot of work on until the end of a software project because you're going to have to spend time redoing that work if the underlying systems change.
     
  19. Bubonic

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    I wish I was as sure as you are. With the very rough story being forced into completion by July, and the entire game being filled with content and officially launched 4 months later, when do you expect they will have the time to do this?
     
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  20. Burzmali

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    I'm more concerned with uncloning scenes, do we actually have a count of scenes left to build? Current rate seems to be 2-3 a month.
     
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