Those are slightly better than I thought I would see. The characters where not ment to hold up at close distances I'm guessing. It looks like the standard NWN view is what they had in mind. Some things still could have been done to help them out. I would like to see more texture blending between the buildings and thier suroundings, but given the modular design of the game that could be hard to do without coding. Considering how poorly everyone is saying it runs they had more on their plate than texture blending. =/
And yeah this is classic next gen. Next Gen = bloom effect over kill.
Vig: The game doesn't actually run badly for me at all. I'm not sure what's causing other people's problems, but for me it's all set to high and running smoothly. :P
Anyways, yea, it's not perfect by any means, but I've yet to see a game that is even close to being so.
As to the close ups, it is still meant to be a top down rpg. It's nice to have em, but the game is still meant to be viewed from angles like I posted, and is most of the time.
Jimmy, this might be more of a style thing for you. Both games you mentioned (Esspecially jet grind) I find have very dull and uninspired graphics. Jet grind specifically I find to be incredibly dull looking.
I think why people get pissed at stuff like this is that they possibly think that a game that could be excellent, through laziness, is turned in to an average game(graphically at least)
Its not just about the environments, it's about the whole package and if any one element is lacking, then people are savvy enough these days to pick up on it.
okay yeah dosent look that great, cant fault them for that, the companies first priority dosent have to be graphics... BBBBBBUUUUUUUUUUUTTTT for christ sake, there is a whole whole color spectrum for you to choose from why only use 1 10th of it. there are red and blue flowers, orange mushrooms, i have been camping a thousand times and even in the middle of the forest there are all kinds of colors. everything in these games is brown or a version of brown.
RPG=brown
They should create these "make your own videogame" where they just give you a skeleton-game, boxes and planes and stuff like that, maybe an occational teapot, That way we could buy the games and make the art for it ourselves!
hehe, thread is awesome indeed!
Ok, my opinion:
1)Next gen games- looks like clons.
really...
Look on Oblivion and NWN2, i think they looking similiar, but in that moment i can't say what Morrowind look like NWN1.
Both old games have unique style.
2)Next gen games- styleless.
I mean games done in America/Europe, Japan don't have that problem.
tell me what u think.
I think the 'problem' with the poor quality of some next generation graphics is complex, but for what it's worth, here's what I think in a nutshell: Eld touched on it I think, but basically I feel like some developers simply dont quite know what to do with 'next gen' tech just yet. They seem to have this checklist of things they think they need. Normal mapping>tick, per pixel shaders>tick, stencil buffered shadows>tick, fancy water shader>tick, bloom>tick but they seem to have forgotten to check wether or not that stuff either individually or in conjunction with other features *actually* helps their look or hinders it. Somehow suddenly these things have become perceived 'requirements' wether or not the Art team knows how to get the best out of them or not.
The technology has moved on, but cheapass pc developers have not. They are still stuck in the dark ages artistically and style wise, and could do a lot worse than look at some console teams for guidance.
For the love of God, why do all animators on PC RPGS seem to think that a convincing idle pose is stood straight up with an even weight on both sides of the hips with arms perfectly straight down? Who the fuck ever stands like that? Many small studio pc developers need to step outside of their boxes and get with the bloody program.
i think it has more to do with trends in technology, right now everyone is on a reality kick, not that everything is photo real at the moment but there is a push for this and instead of pushing continuity in other ways a global muted color scheme has a better chance of coming off as realistic than throwing in every color of the rainbow.
i went on a tour of Disney animation studios not too long ago, and one of the things they did for their films i thought was ingenious was lay the entire movie out on one sheet of huge paper. just stills from every scene and you could see the slow progression of colors change. it had a rhythm to it almost like a song, it started out slow and not much change, you could tell when the villain was introduced because there was sudden dark shift in the colors, and the climax of the film was all over the place, it was like every color of the rainbow one after the other molesting your senses.
the squares were so small you really couldn't see the pictures, but you got a feel for the whole movie and sense of mood just by the overall colors of the scene. i wish games would do more of this type of color harmonics for different areas or sections of the game. when i see screens and really get back on them and not inspect all the details what i see is a dull, lifeless, desaturated blah. details are great but i feel the industry needs to take a step back and use age old techniques to develop mood and rhythm.
at the moment everything blurs together into a greyish brown mess or a game will keep the same tonal value throughout its entirety. i am sure these things will change we are still in infancy of the current tech and have a lot of ground to uncover.
eastern and western games differ for the most part i feel because eastern and western ideologies differ. they want to accomplish different things. i found this so true when i went to international fireworks competition. the american fireworks were huge grandiose displays. nothing new, just bigger and bolder than any fireworks i have ever seen in my life. and the japanese fireworks were the most technically impressive breathtaking things i have ever seen. intricate pictures drawn in the sky and even one that was animated. they also had fireworks that were full blown percussion compositions with beats and rhythms. not in anyway as huge or grand as the american fireworks but they were amazing and did things i didn't think was possible with fireworks. after i saw it i instantly thought of the game industry and how the east is pushing conventions and in the west the idea of more better of the good stuff still reigns supreme. but in BOTH cases i said WOOOWW! that sure is cool.
about those colors and color transitions. In my music composition class in school, our prof taught us to map the color and contour of our song with a colored line, a lot like that... like start off dusky blue and low, in the middle/climax getting bright orange and spiky, and then dropping off purple. or whatever. In the concepting phase, it really helped the cohesiveness of what I was writing. I bet you could apply the technique to any art form that happens over time.
Does anyone remember Super Metroid? That game used colors better than any other that comes readily to mind. Especially the end, where Zebes is exploding (again), the colors are freaking epileptic! I loved that. really had my adrenaline rushing, too.
[ QUOTE ]
For the love of God, why do all animators on PC RPGS seem to think that a convincing idle pose is stood straight up with an even weight on both sides of the hips with arms perfectly straight down? Who the fuck ever stands like that?
[/ QUOTE ]
BiPed does. And for whatever reason they don't think past the default pose. You can tell which team uses footsteps also, or rather uses footsteps poorly.
Haha I like your check list Daz. Bloom effect, tick, default stiff as a board pose, TICK-TICK. "hey shouldn't we give our characters more life?" "Umm I don't see that on the check list".
"Art director, whats that?, we have some guy from atari to handle that stuff now!"
I soo hoped for nwn to actually be that worthy successor of neverwinter nights..
nwn might not have had the best singleplayer campaign, but they nailed the epic feeling and had some great art under polygonal limitations, and the portraits ruled!
Methinks you have to lay off the shrooms for a bit and get back to the gritty reality that realism brings to the table. why else woould next gen games need to have orange or purple or pink fairy homo colors when scientific studies and army fashion have shown that poopydoo brown is a REAL mans color, as crappy colors reminds us that reality stinks like dog doo anyways.
i have to wonder just how limiting it is to have to make 'next gen' stuff with the same amount of time as a 'old' gen' games. i know we are strapped for time and resources at work and no one wants to deviate from what has been laid out because that could prove to be a risky move, on top of the other risky moves taken to improve production as it were.
tried and true is always better when you need to make a buck
wille, yes, some things, like certain armours contain speculars in the alpha of the normalmap, but others, like faces, do not contain any kind of trace of a specular map.
How large are the diffuse maps? If they're tiny (and i do mean TINY) then it may be allright, but if these are over 32x32 (as they really don't do anything to describe material, they only separate colours) it's absolutely scandalous.
I think a lot of purely next-gen artists (ie. modellers who never textured any past-gen assets in their life) could stand to learn a LOT from just texturing a lowpoly character. Preferably one they didn't make themselves.
One of the main things i see lacking in a lot of these new games is material definition, something that i realise mustn't be easy with next-gen, as you're not just painting it, you have to force the technology to show what you have in mind, but still...
I totally agree Pea. Or their idea of material definition is to put a burlap texture on cloth and leave it at that. I honestly think this work flow comes out of the Art Institutes where they don't actually teach people how to paint textures but just apply materials they find on the interweb.
I think it is unrealistic to expect an engine to do 100% of the lighting, shading, color bleeding and have it look good. We just aren't that far along yet. Painting even subtle shadows has a huge impact.
Yeah that is pretty bad, but what I love is that the artist took the bueatifull face texture, and mirrored it for a full face. I guess he couldnt spend the other 3 minutes it took to do the first part. I just can't understand why you wouldn't mirror the uvs, and use the texture space for something else, rather than just wasting a full map to flip the same texture.
[ QUOTE ]
Yeah that is pretty bad, but what I love is that the artist took the bueatifull face texture, and mirrored it for a full face. I guess he couldnt spend the other 3 minutes it took to do the first part. I just can't understand why you wouldn't mirror the uvs, and use the texture space for something else, rather than just wasting a full map to flip the same texture.
Spark
[/ QUOTE ]
Because they wanted to have an asymmetrical texture for the face, and you can clearly see, the left side of the face has a mole! (Yes, this was sarcasm)
Replies
jet grind radio? Gold.
Final Fantasy 9? Awesome.
And yeah this is classic next gen. Next Gen = bloom effect over kill.
Anyways, yea, it's not perfect by any means, but I've yet to see a game that is even close to being so.
As to the close ups, it is still meant to be a top down rpg. It's nice to have em, but the game is still meant to be viewed from angles like I posted, and is most of the time.
Jimmy, this might be more of a style thing for you. Both games you mentioned (Esspecially jet grind) I find have very dull and uninspired graphics. Jet grind specifically I find to be incredibly dull looking.
Its not just about the environments, it's about the whole package and if any one element is lacking, then people are savvy enough these days to pick up on it.
RPG=brown
dumb
No no, dear sir, you have it all wrong.
Next-gen = brown
fall of man is a nice grey brown
rainbow six is orange as fuck
lost planet is blue with splashes of yellow for fun.
but yeah maybe the next next generation will re discover the long lost color wheel
My performance issues were fixed when I switch my resolution lower, than back up to normal.
Ok, my opinion:
1)Next gen games- looks like clons.
really...
Look on Oblivion and NWN2, i think they looking similiar, but in that moment i can't say what Morrowind look like NWN1.
Both old games have unique style.
2)Next gen games- styleless.
I mean games done in America/Europe, Japan don't have that problem.
tell me what u think.
what's left ? do they make games in antartica ?
tell me what u think.
[/ QUOTE ]
I think generalizations are bad.
Look at games like bioshock.
If I were to generalize I'd say I find japanese games to have the least style overall, because they all try to do the anime thing.
The technology has moved on, but cheapass pc developers have not. They are still stuck in the dark ages artistically and style wise, and could do a lot worse than look at some console teams for guidance.
For the love of God, why do all animators on PC RPGS seem to think that a convincing idle pose is stood straight up with an even weight on both sides of the hips with arms perfectly straight down? Who the fuck ever stands like that? Many small studio pc developers need to step outside of their boxes and get with the bloody program.
i went on a tour of Disney animation studios not too long ago, and one of the things they did for their films i thought was ingenious was lay the entire movie out on one sheet of huge paper. just stills from every scene and you could see the slow progression of colors change. it had a rhythm to it almost like a song, it started out slow and not much change, you could tell when the villain was introduced because there was sudden dark shift in the colors, and the climax of the film was all over the place, it was like every color of the rainbow one after the other molesting your senses.
the squares were so small you really couldn't see the pictures, but you got a feel for the whole movie and sense of mood just by the overall colors of the scene. i wish games would do more of this type of color harmonics for different areas or sections of the game. when i see screens and really get back on them and not inspect all the details what i see is a dull, lifeless, desaturated blah. details are great but i feel the industry needs to take a step back and use age old techniques to develop mood and rhythm.
at the moment everything blurs together into a greyish brown mess or a game will keep the same tonal value throughout its entirety. i am sure these things will change we are still in infancy of the current tech and have a lot of ground to uncover.
eastern and western games differ for the most part i feel because eastern and western ideologies differ. they want to accomplish different things. i found this so true when i went to international fireworks competition. the american fireworks were huge grandiose displays. nothing new, just bigger and bolder than any fireworks i have ever seen in my life. and the japanese fireworks were the most technically impressive breathtaking things i have ever seen. intricate pictures drawn in the sky and even one that was animated. they also had fireworks that were full blown percussion compositions with beats and rhythms. not in anyway as huge or grand as the american fireworks but they were amazing and did things i didn't think was possible with fireworks. after i saw it i instantly thought of the game industry and how the east is pushing conventions and in the west the idea of more better of the good stuff still reigns supreme. but in BOTH cases i said WOOOWW! that sure is cool.
man i have been super board lately....
Does anyone remember Super Metroid? That game used colors better than any other that comes readily to mind. Especially the end, where Zebes is exploding (again), the colors are freaking epileptic! I loved that. really had my adrenaline rushing, too.
For the love of God, why do all animators on PC RPGS seem to think that a convincing idle pose is stood straight up with an even weight on both sides of the hips with arms perfectly straight down? Who the fuck ever stands like that?
[/ QUOTE ]
BiPed does. And for whatever reason they don't think past the default pose. You can tell which team uses footsteps also, or rather uses footsteps poorly.
Haha I like your check list Daz. Bloom effect, tick, default stiff as a board pose, TICK-TICK. "hey shouldn't we give our characters more life?" "Umm I don't see that on the check list".
I soo hoped for nwn to actually be that worthy successor of neverwinter nights..
nwn might not have had the best singleplayer campaign, but they nailed the epic feeling and had some great art under polygonal limitations, and the portraits ruled!
ps. dreading that the game doesn't actually have any specmaps.
i have to wonder just how limiting it is to have to make 'next gen' stuff with the same amount of time as a 'old' gen' games. i know we are strapped for time and resources at work and no one wants to deviate from what has been laid out because that could prove to be a risky move, on top of the other risky moves taken to improve production as it were.
tried and true is always better when you need to make a buck
Btw, I'm trying to find the specularmaps for this game, can't find them anywhere.
ps. dreading that the game doesn't actually have any specmaps.
[/ QUOTE ]
I think they need to wrap their heads around a good defuse map before they worry about clogging memory space with spec maps.
I think a lot of purely next-gen artists (ie. modellers who never textured any past-gen assets in their life) could stand to learn a LOT from just texturing a lowpoly character. Preferably one they didn't make themselves.
One of the main things i see lacking in a lot of these new games is material definition, something that i realise mustn't be easy with next-gen, as you're not just painting it, you have to force the technology to show what you have in mind, but still...
I think it is unrealistic to expect an engine to do 100% of the lighting, shading, color bleeding and have it look good. We just aren't that far along yet. Painting even subtle shadows has a huge impact.
And here I found the diffuse for the dress of the J-lo girl, I couldn't find a specular for it.
Spark
Yeah that is pretty bad, but what I love is that the artist took the bueatifull face texture, and mirrored it for a full face. I guess he couldnt spend the other 3 minutes it took to do the first part. I just can't understand why you wouldn't mirror the uvs, and use the texture space for something else, rather than just wasting a full map to flip the same texture.
Spark
[/ QUOTE ]
Because they wanted to have an asymmetrical texture for the face, and you can clearly see, the left side of the face has a mole! (Yes, this was sarcasm)
And: Woah, all my fears about not being adequate enough to eventually get work in this industry are gone.
Rush job? Freelancing out to their 13 year old nephews?
There has to be some kinda explaination for that level of crap
um...why do I not have this persons job?
[/ QUOTE ]
They're hiring sr. artists, it seems.
AND a question for you professionals:
Are these dds compression artifacts, and wont those just seriously screw up the result of the normalmap ingame?