Final Release Graphics

I also think aesthetics is far better in SC2 than in SC & FA. I find the design of FA quite tasteless...
Only two points are bad in SC2 for me : classical economy and map size. Apart from this, I think SC2 is a very good game.

bloom or high dynamic range lighting is just something I can't get behind it just obstructs the cool thing that i want to see. i don't need it to be that realistic no one likes a bright light in there eyes why simulate it for "fun".

I like the visual design in the video and am excited to see the finished designs.

Okay okay... maybe it's because I actually design robots for a living as a mechanical engineer...

A lot of the things I've seen and played around with that are simply for transport assistance or manufacturing look more threatening than these things haha.

I'll drop it I suppose... sounds like there's a lot of people on here with bad PCs that are afraid it won't run well ; (

Let me repeat (with emphasis this time since you're having trouble):

http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/planeta ... ith-moons/[/quote]

I suppose there is potential based on some things out there to see some good style...: http://stevekozie3d.blogspot.com/2012/0 ... omage.html

Sigh, the one thing I don't like about this game and it looks like it will disappoint. There was not one thing I disliked about TA or Supp Comm and the community is once again crying foul at complexity.... such a sigh....

So the style will remain similar but there may be more detail. I spent some time talking to Steve about these issues tonight and he's definitely going to punch things up a bit for final.

I think this was my biggest grip with the new style, not so much that its not super gritty like supcom or TA but rather, the units look like legos that have been stuck together in the video. The style is good for readability however when the unit looks the same at planet level as it does zoomed it I can't seem to like it.

As long as the aesthetic from the demonstration video is maintained, I think we'll all be happy

Yes, that's the key thing. And Steve is driving the process the entire way (as he did with the video).

We spent some time riffing on the terrain today. One of the first orders of business on that front is to mock up some more final "test areas" in Max. Basically each type of terrain gets a small custom made piece that's conceptually represents the finished terrain. This it then used as input during the design of each of the procedural terrain types. So for example a piece of the metal planet, some desert, some water areas, forest etc. It's basically defining a terrain archetype.

There is also a bit of tech research happening during this conceptual phase on the exact terrain representation. As I've said before I don't want to use a traditional heightmap unless we have to. I'm trying to put a new twist on some semi-old school tech and apply it to the terrain to get something like we've never seen before. Of course we could always fall back to a heightmap of some sort or even use a variety of other techniques. For example tiles of some sort (TA used tiles).

Can we see an example, perhaps in a future update?

We will be doing updates of some sort, not sure exactly what we'll be showing though.

The Style is shifting? Blargh, there goes my fanart! xD

Mike

No, it's not shifting. It's just going to be refined. Steve has had the same vision the whole time, it just hasn't been fully realized yet.

Guess I'll just have to go on what we've got so far, I'm kinda in a time crunch.

Mike

A cartoon oriented style as in the trailers would not be bad (personally, I would still prefer a supcom look). But, please dont let effects and explosions look cartoonie. I really liked the flashy explosions TA and SupCom had. It gave a good feeling of energy and power thats inside the shots/units. Also units should not go instantly boom when health bar is 0. They should at lease fall and have their last sec before they get annihilated. It's more ..heroic.

My personal wish ever for rts like this is so have units in sutch games that stumble on hit, maybe loose an arm, maybe fall and stad up again, get a "used look" after battle.
I wonder y noone did this before in a classic rts, and I think also PA won't go for that. But for me it would make the difference between an army of faceless minions and individuals.
Just a little dream..

No way I loved the look of the explosions and smoke etc.

I enjoyed the effects from the PA promo video.

I also enjoyed most of the effects and Sup1 and to a lesser extent even those from Sup2 (they were scaled too high so they were visible for consoles, but otherwise I found most of them a-okay).

The stylised effects in the video fit well with the rest of the style. There's nothing explicitly wrong with either that, or more realistic ones; they just have to gel-together nicely and match up.

I like the look of the PA effects so far, although the explosions are maybe a bit on the large size for those small robots.

One thing I like about ZK and... I think TA... although I haven't played it for some time... is that the projectiles fired by units are very varied. I've been playing SupCom 2 and it's sometimes pretty hard to work out what projectile comes from which unit, because they're mostly kind of glowing balls of a similar colour (within each faction).

In ZK there are guided missiles (different sizes), unguided and semi-guided rockets (different sizes, different trajectories, some are fired in clusters), plasma balls (several types with different sizes, speeds, and explosions), beam lasers (different colours, some are intermittent), penetrator type lasers (different beam diameters), HLT type lasers, heat rays, gauss rifles, gravity beams, cluster bombs, star wars style lasers, bombs, nuke bombs, nukes, D-guns, grenades, slow beams, napalm bombs, flamethrowers, machine guns, lightning guns, artillery mines, melee weapons, shotguns, EMP weapons, and probably some other stuff I can't think of right now.

Essentially the projectile of every unit is immediately identifiable as having come from that unit. I like that.

Are you saying the explosions and all such where bad in the trailer?

also, I said I would like more detail I just don't think they should make it a high priority.

And in fact I where playing in tournaments, and I played a couple of matches with people from the leaderboards (though I only won one match) and most of them told me to make sure to have the unit overlay to "always on" to make sure unit diversibility is clear.

This is what I want, this is what I love about the supcom and TA but that doesn't mean that the style from the video can't be maintained

why do I have a feeling that you're going to cry from not having the gritty grainy brown polaroid style where every unit looks like the next one?

once again, I love to have massive special effects and I love to have big explosions with pieces flying in all directions, but the units can still have a simple art style.

Awww did my little drawing hurt your feelings big man?

I hope if they ramp up the graphics that I can still turn it down. RTS usually plays better with plainer graphics. First this you do with SC2 is turn down all the visual effects because you can more easily see what is going on.

I think PA has an art style that can still look really good even in such a configuration.