Yeah, that looks pretty rad. The shadow casting as a little choppy in bits, but its a WIP. Characters are pretty stunning! I really enjoyed KOTOR, so if this is anywhere as good, Im sure I'll enjoy it.
God that looks boring. Pretty though. Well, except the weapon effects, and the combat in general looks pretty dull. I guess another 'all talking heads all the time!' game from Bioware.
Spacemonkey my hat off to the whole team that game looks f-ing outstanding . Along with Crises and UR7/Gears of war that is the best looking and truly Next Gen game ive seen..and certainly the best looking RPG for the next gen by far . I'll be waiting very impatiantly for this game !
alright, i was trying to remain sceptical since i thought kotor blew really hard, but it does look really cool. the realtime combat is what sold it for me
i just wish everything didn't look so damn sterile. it didn't look like people actually lived in that universe, let alone aliens that came from very different cultures. makes for some really boring environments.
"One of my favorite games from a long time ago was Privateer 2. We'll see if this one can live up to it for me "
meee tooo, didnt see much sace ship flying action though, and some of that voice acting was pretty gameish/lameish, but the graphics were particularly fine
In a manner of extreme understatement, yes, I like it.
More accurately, it made me splurg. Reenforced two things for me as well, how much I wish I could work at bioware, how little of a chance I have. Oh well, playing the games is good enough for me.
KotOR blew? What planet are you from, that game was amazing. Even if you didn't enjoy it on a personal level it was an extremely solidly developed and designed game.
[ QUOTE ]
"One of my favorite games from a long time ago was Privateer 2. We'll see if this one can live up to it for me "
meee tooo, didnt see much sace ship flying action though, and some of that voice acting was pretty gameish/lameish, but the graphics were particularly fine
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, while I liked the spaceship flying in privateer, that wasnt the reason I liked it so much. It was just the whole feel of the game.
yeah it had a prticlularlly solid universe,
i remember the stresss of carrying valuable cargo, and haveing to wait at each jumpgate thingy for your engines to charge, wandering if the pirates were gonna jump in
character artwork looks great, environments are a little stale but its still development. If it plays like jade empire, I'll buy it. If its like KOTOR i'll never touch it.
Very cool:) Characters do look great and space bar has a nice feel to it. Looks like some normal map blending going on with the hero's face, looks slick. Great job Spacemonkey and crew!
yeah this one looks sweet, another next gen game that has me excited, great job spacemonkey + team. I wonder how much voice acting and character animation is put into a game like this, with all the different possibilities of outcome, im sure it will fill the game disc to the brim. cant wait.
I dont even want to know how frustating the "team" based combat will be, if its like 99.9% of games you are better off doing it all alone.
But it looks cool mostly, the skybox on the spacestation map was too obviously an image tho and it made it look like the station is inside some cheap film studio, the guy responsible should go check out EvE Online to see how you do space backgrounds.
Also the voice acting was kinda flat.
I know there are some other polycounters and cgchatters doing freelance work on Mass, which is being handled by Liquid. From what I have seen they are doing some very good work!
I'm sorry but I hate games with multiple choice talking, one of my all time turn offs for a game. Also I'm really not liking the black shadows, they are very unrealistic, there seems to be no concept of light shadow or form so far. Just one directional light that casts really hard shadows on the characters is not next gen for me.
Huh, I thought the hard lighting gave the game the feeling of Bladerunner.
The shadows are pretty awful
I thought about it a second and I can't figure out why you wouldn't like conversation options in a game. So why not? What is so bad about being given options?
I don't mind the black shadows so much, it's what looks like too low-rez shadow maps on the faces that detract for me, hopefully that'll be ironed out. The design of it all still looks very awesome..
the gameplay however looks similar to but not as fun as republic commando.. Still, one to watch I reckon
I don't know, I always feel like I've made the wrong choice, or the game punishes me for choosing the wrong conversation topic by setting me back a step. Personal preference but I've never liked this feature in any game, I just feel like I'm spending half the game playing a mini game of extracting information instead of doing something fun. As for the lighting I haven't seen anything on 360 yet that has soft lighting so I'm convinced it's not the fact they are trying to stylize the lighting but more the fact no one has figured out how to light a game on next gen yet. Even some of the sports games have this harsh directional lighting with black shadows.
[ QUOTE ]
I don't know, I always feel like I've made the wrong choice, or the game punishes me for choosing the wrong conversation topic by setting me back a step. Personal preference but I've never liked this feature in any game, I just feel like I'm spending half the game playing a mini game of extracting information instead of doing something fun.
[/ QUOTE ]
A lot of times conversations in games are pointless and stupid. You just randomly select options until you hit on the "right" combination. I think that is just bad gameplay though. A good conversation system could let you interact with a game in a cool way that you normally wouldn't. A traveling merchant could ask you what town you thought was the best place to set up shop, for example. That would let you choose an option that had a lasting impact on future gameplay.
One of my pet peeves is where you are given a conversation option and no matter what you pick, it results in the exact smae thing.
i'm rather intrigued. Bioware looks like they're going to apply all the lessons they've learned honing the KOTOR games to an original IP (which is great) and mating it with real time combat combat sequences (even better!)
the milieu of commander and his ship with colorful crew never gets old--we've had it for basically as long as we've had sailing ships. and a good percentage of the best science fiction books/films etc. have made good use of it as well--so here's hoping Mass Effect is up to the standards we know Bioware is capable of.
oh, and damn you spacemonkey for getting to work on it. it's looking gorgeous
Looks great to me. Excellent job Tim and crew. Certainly looks to be a fun game to work on.
Personally, I don't really understand the lighting complaints. The lighting model is arguably as sophisticated as anything currently out there, and looks great in screenshots. I suspect that by the time you are viewing it on a TV and not watching it in media player on a pc monitor that it will soften a little and look pretty darn good.
The pixellated glitchiness on the faces is quite clearly what rooster said. Low resolution self shadowing artifacting. The fact that the models are self shadowing at all puts it a step above, so you can't have your cake and eat it. Self shadowing models is still very expensive. *VERY* few games actually do yet, and certainly not on several characters in one scene.
I think its cool to put in use the latest technology, but if it causes flickering right over characters faces maybe its worth thinking twice? As a personal preferance, I'd rather see lower tech rendering that doesnt cause distracting artifacts.
edit: of course yeah it might look fine on telly in which case I take it back
well, u can download this video in HD for the xbox360, i've watched this on a hdtv round my friends house and the niggles people are pointing out are just as noticable, the selfshadowing is the same.
This is still a WIP so maybe they'll think twice about the tech, but i doubt it.
Personally I think it looks like a next-gen KOTOR without the star wars properties and with a different combat system. Imo, that's freaking awesome.
[ QUOTE ]
I think its cool to put in use the latest technology, but if it causes flickering right over characters faces maybe its worth thinking twice? As a personal preferance, I'd rather see lower tech rendering that doesnt cause distracting artifacts.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well yeah, totally. I didn't mean for a minute that developers should cram all the latest tech they possibly can in for the sake of it, regardless of how it looks. I guess I was just trying to stress what it was, since it seemed people were possibly missing the fact that the models were self shadowing. But totally yeah, If it's visually irking they should probably re-consider! I guess I'm bummed all around with the lighting advances in next gen games. Nothing's really changed.
I look forward to it malcolm!
Love the animation of the eyes, very nice work. Really sells the characters!
I'm curious if the conversation engine will be switching the camera so much during the actual gameplay, I'm thinking it could be a pain to watch, unless it's done really well.
Do you think someone manually added in each set of camera moves into every single response? Or is there some algorithmic framing/switching going on? (start with 2-shot, cut to c/u during 1st speech, cut to over-shoulder for response, etc.)
The self-shadow blockiness is bothering me too. Happens a lot, worst on the visored chick, but flickers quite a bit on the hero as well. I'm curious about yours malcolm too.
Bioware gave an amazing lecture on character design at Conceptart.org & Massive blacks latest workshop, about just how much work actually went into creating detailed characters and settings that we're very original. The concept artists worked very, very hard on this one.
Im proud of them, this game will definetly put them on the map.
Replies
Frank the Avenger
not my kind of game really, but goddamn is this a new high water mark
i just wish everything didn't look so damn sterile. it didn't look like people actually lived in that universe, let alone aliens that came from very different cultures. makes for some really boring environments.
meee tooo, didnt see much sace ship flying action though, and some of that voice acting was pretty gameish/lameish, but the graphics were particularly fine
glad to hear some of you like it
[/ QUOTE ]
In a manner of extreme understatement, yes, I like it.
More accurately, it made me splurg.
KotOR blew? What planet are you from, that game was amazing. Even if you didn't enjoy it on a personal level it was an extremely solidly developed and designed game.
"One of my favorite games from a long time ago was Privateer 2. We'll see if this one can live up to it for me "
meee tooo, didnt see much sace ship flying action though, and some of that voice acting was pretty gameish/lameish, but the graphics were particularly fine
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, while I liked the spaceship flying in privateer, that wasnt the reason I liked it so much. It was just the whole feel of the game.
i remember the stresss of carrying valuable cargo, and haveing to wait at each jumpgate thingy for your engines to charge, wandering if the pirates were gonna jump in
But it looks cool mostly, the skybox on the spacestation map was too obviously an image tho and it made it look like the station is inside some cheap film studio, the guy responsible should go check out EvE Online to see how you do space backgrounds.
Also the voice acting was kinda flat.
The shadows are pretty awful
I thought about it a second and I can't figure out why you wouldn't like conversation options in a game. So why not? What is so bad about being given options?
the gameplay however looks similar to but not as fun as republic commando.. Still, one to watch I reckon
I don't know, I always feel like I've made the wrong choice, or the game punishes me for choosing the wrong conversation topic by setting me back a step. Personal preference but I've never liked this feature in any game, I just feel like I'm spending half the game playing a mini game of extracting information instead of doing something fun.
[/ QUOTE ]
A lot of times conversations in games are pointless and stupid. You just randomly select options until you hit on the "right" combination. I think that is just bad gameplay though. A good conversation system could let you interact with a game in a cool way that you normally wouldn't. A traveling merchant could ask you what town you thought was the best place to set up shop, for example. That would let you choose an option that had a lasting impact on future gameplay.
One of my pet peeves is where you are given a conversation option and no matter what you pick, it results in the exact smae thing.
the milieu of commander and his ship with colorful crew never gets old--we've had it for basically as long as we've had sailing ships. and a good percentage of the best science fiction books/films etc. have made good use of it as well--so here's hoping Mass Effect is up to the standards we know Bioware is capable of.
oh, and damn you spacemonkey for getting to work on it. it's looking gorgeous
Personally, I don't really understand the lighting complaints. The lighting model is arguably as sophisticated as anything currently out there, and looks great in screenshots. I suspect that by the time you are viewing it on a TV and not watching it in media player on a pc monitor that it will soften a little and look pretty darn good.
The pixellated glitchiness on the faces is quite clearly what rooster said. Low resolution self shadowing artifacting. The fact that the models are self shadowing at all puts it a step above, so you can't have your cake and eat it. Self shadowing models is still very expensive. *VERY* few games actually do yet, and certainly not on several characters in one scene.
edit: of course yeah it might look fine on telly in which case I take it back
This is still a WIP so maybe they'll think twice about the tech, but i doubt it.
Personally I think it looks like a next-gen KOTOR without the star wars properties and with a different combat system. Imo, that's freaking awesome.
I think its cool to put in use the latest technology, but if it causes flickering right over characters faces maybe its worth thinking twice? As a personal preferance, I'd rather see lower tech rendering that doesnt cause distracting artifacts.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well yeah, totally. I didn't mean for a minute that developers should cram all the latest tech they possibly can in for the sake of it, regardless of how it looks. I guess I was just trying to stress what it was, since it seemed people were possibly missing the fact that the models were self shadowing. But totally yeah, If it's visually irking they should probably re-consider! I guess I'm bummed all around with the lighting advances in next gen games. Nothing's really changed.
I look forward to it malcolm!
I'm curious if the conversation engine will be switching the camera so much during the actual gameplay, I'm thinking it could be a pain to watch, unless it's done really well.
Do you think someone manually added in each set of camera moves into every single response? Or is there some algorithmic framing/switching going on? (start with 2-shot, cut to c/u during 1st speech, cut to over-shoulder for response, etc.)
The self-shadow blockiness is bothering me too. Happens a lot, worst on the visored chick, but flickers quite a bit on the hero as well. I'm curious about yours malcolm too.
Im proud of them, this game will definetly put them on the map.
Props to Rhodes and the rest of the Biofolk!