Aion and normal maps

Ged

Hey it seems people are getting excited about this game Aion, Ive looked at it a couple of times over the past year and dont really see much new or different but it could be great?

Wasnt Aion going to be made in cryengine using normal maps and shadows and stuff? what happened to that idea? I mean heres some old screenshots of the game

http://www.aionsource.com/photoplog/file.php?n=14&w=l
http://www.aionsource.com/photoplog/file.php?n=13&w=l
http://www.aionsource.com/photoplog/file.php?n=68&w=l
http://www.aionsource.com/photoplog/file.php?n=77&w=l

and some new ones from the nice new website

http://eu.aiononline.com/global/includes/images/media/screenshots/screenshot03.jpg
http://eu.aiononline.com/global/includes/images/media/screenshots/screenshot05.jpg

do people just not use normal maps in mmos? it still looks good quality but I was a little sad to not see those shiny curves :P

JacqueChoi

Looks awesome without.

^_^


Diablo 3 is doing the same, and I hadn't heard many complaints about the lack of Normal Maps for that game either.

BlackulaDZ

yeah it does look pretty sweet, I played one of the betas a couple weeks back. It definitely has normal maps and shadows, though if you're in a crowded place with all the fancy fx on, it does slow down (a lot). maybe they turned down settings for some screenshots?

stoofoo

Aion definitely uses normal maps.

It's expensive to do per pixel stuff in MMOs as most of them composite textures together based on the armor you put on. It bloats hells of fast.

Guildwars had normal maps even--they just were not displayed right. Only on environments, though. We've since righted that wrong.

So much normallssssss

Autocon

EverQuest 1 uses normal maps and so dose Aion. The thing with normal maps and MMO's is that there not there to define shapes only enhance with subtle details so people who cant run the game without normal maps on arnt going to miss out on the art.

Also im sure most MMO's bake in most of there lighting and only have dynamic lights on the character you play as and in some other areas that require it.

JohnnyRaptor

i was in one of the later Aion closed betas, and it looks freakn awesome. It does use cryengine2 but obviously its not at crysis level of c.r.e.a.m.!

check these out, not the best samples, but shows u better what its about:)

http://www.thebloody.de/chiara/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Aion0003.jpg

http://denjin108.com/Aion0301.jpg

bugo

it seems to me that its not using normal maps entirely, more using per pixel shading with specular maps. Some parts of the clothes uses, but at the hair we cant see any. Its just beautiful tho! I'm pretty sure they had to optimize lots of stuff just so they cant use too much texture to load lots of worlds and characters. Also it costs way more time to create normal map unique stuff.

Ged

interesting responses, it does look quite nice in some of those screens johnnyraptor. So do you think in the future we might have completely normal mapped characters in mmos? I mean surely most peoples computers can handle basic shaders these days eg half life 2 looked real good and its pretty old now.

BlackulaDZ

@JohnyRaptor
It's not cry engine 2 its 1. the same one far cry used.

rolfness

any idea when this will be out ?

CheeseOnToast

Wasn't Age of Conan fully normal mapped? Although it made heavy use of instanced areas....

Ged

your right age of conan does seem to have quite alot of normal mapping http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/ageofconanhyborianadventures/images/0/128/?full_size=1

actually aion looks pretty damn cool in game, the engine seems cool lots of atmosphere in some of those clips

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBtpUGrgUL0[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IhtsHk8r8o[/ame]

Wells

bugo wrote: »

it seems to me that its not using normal maps entirely, more using per pixel shading with specular maps. Some parts of the clothes uses, but at the hair we cant see any. Its just beautiful tho! I'm pretty sure they had to optimize lots of stuff just so they cant use too much texture to load lots of worlds and characters. Also it costs way more time to create normal map unique stuff.

The characters do have normal maps, but they're very subtle. Used more to get proper spec than OMG bumpmaps.

The character/monster textures in this game are gorgeous. I wish the same polish had been given to the environments.

JohnnyRaptor

oh snap your right!, good ol cryengine 1. soz, my miss.

still looks freakn awesome tho

sir-knight

think I might try this game it looks so nice

Rayph

The big thing with MMO's is always going to be having the engine run on as many machines as possible, so the fact they scaled back a bit isn't surprising at all really.

ceebee

I don't know if I want to give this a try or not. I'm hoping I have much better self control now than I did when I was 18 and started playing WoW.

Damn MMOs.

Ged

haha Im wondering wether to give an mmo a try but Im not sure which one, Ive never really properly played an mmo. Just guildwars for a bit but I didnt enjoy the combat and a tiny session of silkroad.

moose

Ged wrote: »

haha Im wondering wether to give an mmo a try but Im not sure which one, Ive never really properly played an mmo. Just guildwars for a bit but I didnt enjoy the combat and a tiny session of silkroad.

said the same thing when i tried out wow. waaay too long later im still playing Be careful play em smart, not an idiot like me!

stoofoo

Ged wrote: »

interesting responses, it does look quite nice in some of those screens johnnyraptor. So do you think in the future we might have completely normal mapped characters in mmos? I mean surely most peoples computers can handle basic shaders these days eg half life 2 looked real good and its pretty old now.

I'll repeat that they are fully normal mapped. The diffuse has heavy handed lighting, though. If you took off the diffuse you'd still see those shapes. We are in a half-way stage, you know. Not enough people can scale up to a 3 texture setup. So if you turn off specular and normal you dont want it to look like hot garbage. Til recently just changing texture sizes was adequate to tweak performance. Now it's more important to drop textures.

We definitely use full per pixel nonsense on guildwars 2, though.

Wells

stoofoo you companywhore, get me in the GW2 beta

Thegodzero

When does GW2 come out anyway? Before or after the end of the world?

Ged

stoofoo wrote: »

I'll repeat that they are fully normal mapped. The diffuse has heavy handed lighting, though. If you took off the diffuse you'd still see those shapes. We are in a half-way stage, you know. Not enough people can scale up to a 3 texture setup. So if you turn off specular and normal you dont want it to look like hot garbage. Til recently just changing texture sizes was adequate to tweak performance. Now it's more important to drop textures.

We definitely use full per pixel nonsense on guildwars 2, though.

somepeople were saying it was specular or something so I assumed most people were responding with guesses, sorry stoofoo you seem to really know what your talking about and guildwars 2 does sound very interesting indeed.

Wells

Yeah, I can for a fact corroborate what joe is saying

sir-knight

I've never done a stint in any MMO for more than 6 months... I usually get bored of the gameplay and environment... I don't really find it fun to run around pressing buttons to shoot pixels at pixels for 8 hours at a time (to do anything meaningful)

Ged

sir-knight wrote: »

I've never done a stint in any MMO for more than 6 months... I usually get bored of the gameplay and environment... I don't really find it fun to run around pressing buttons to shoot pixels at pixels for 8 hours at a time (to do anything meaningful)

yeah if I did play an mmo it would have to be in my free time eg 1 hour a day maybe 2

Wells

sir-knight wrote: »

I don't really find it fun to run around pressing buttons to shoot pixels at pixels for 8 hours at a time (to do anything meaningful)

you just described most games

Frump

I checked this out at my friend's place the other day. The characters definitely have normal maps. But right away I noticed the environment textures looked really flat, like they tried to paint simulated depth but didn't pull it of that well. Overall though, it looked pretty damn good.

I will probably play it for 3 months and then stop... like with every other mmo I've played, which is quite a few when they only last you 3 months. I've probably played way too many for someone who doesn't like the mmo formula...

Gilgamesh

Shame the game sucks balls :P

I liked the look of the characters but everything was quite generic looking, and the differentiation between the characters was quite poor (was quite hard to tell even what class someone was from a medium distance). Overall the game was quite mediocre even after playing some unbalanced pvpve last weekend with high level characters it didn't really pull me in like some other mmo's I've played.

sir-knight

Sectaurs wrote: »

you just described most games

that might be a good explaination of why I haven't played many games in the last few years :poly142:

These days I'll only play a game if I really find something rewarding, some sense of accomplishment or payoff... usually in a story or narrative. Art is pretty and all, and I can study it all I want, but if I want to play a game, it's because I like being swept up in the story... and for most of you guys from what I can see, don't like linear games and stories.

I find less entertainment value in being able to run around forever causing junk in an infinitely huge environment than I do if a game is just 12-20 hours long with a good solid beginning middle and end of an engaging narrative.

Probably why I can't play mmos for extended periods of time.

Crash

AoC uses normalmaps for pretty much everything as far as I know...

ebagg

This game has such crazy Korean style artwork, it's like Lineage 2 on crack. It's pretty!