Graphics are not everything in a game

Hi all I was just looking at the video for like the 100th time and got me thinking. I think the Graphics and visuals should try to keep close to the video as poss. Reminds me of Red Alert old school with a polish. Trees are trees look good but I don't care if I cant see a million leaves moving. The rocks just look cool and the units look very good but are easy to see almost a blocky look but polished. I think the size of this game would suit plainer looking visuals and not the likes of say modern RTS game C&C 3 or 4 (Good visuals for the game but will not suit this game I think.) and as for the way units was being built that is a must...... I just don't think this game needs rolling clouds or dust particles in the sky.

Supreme Commander F/A looks way better than Supreme Commander 2

Here we go...... Rip away!. :lol:

This has already been confirmed as the General Community Consensus.

Mike

Fa looks better than supcom 2? Supcom 2 may be a worse game but it definitely looks nicer

I think you're Confusing Graphics with Aesthetics.

Basically SupCom2 might have better Graphic Specifications, but overall FA has a much better and solid Aesthetic.

Watch this to understand the difference.

Mike

Would graphics be how the units look an their animations and detail and such?

Would graphics be how the units look an their animations and detail and such?[/quote]
Refresh to see my ninja edit.

Mike

It looks like the OP is talking about graphics not aesthetics.
And I completely agree with the OP about how PA looks.

They are shooting for the same looks as the video, and keeping it low spec to be played even on embedded graphics HOWEVER, the scalability of the game will push machines harder the bigger it gets... and theres no way around it in a 40 player game.

Supreme Commander 2 has worse aesthetics than Supreme Commander 1? Are you kidding?
It´s like comparing some drawing of stick figures to a van Gogh painting. The graphics in the original Supreme Commander weren't that hot even when the game came out. Everything was so bland and uninspired. So little animation and life. Everything looked the same, and that, if something, is unaesthetical.

Don't get me wrong; the scale of the battles is still impressive to look at and the game play itself fun, but the graphics are awful. And though i like the original, i just can't get past that butt ugly and dull presentation.

Supreme Commander 2 on the other hand looks amazing to comparison. The detail in everything. The way you could recognise every unit from afar. There is more animations on the factories, units and the commander. The maps are detailed, not just some random blobs of sand and/or grass.

When i saw the Kickstarter pitch video for Planetary Annihilation, i fell in love. The same kind of colorfulness and detail that i love in SupCom 2. I just hope that the final product will look as much alike the trailer as possible.

Disagree that supcom graphics were bad. Did you ever hit space and rotate the camera?

I'd agree that all the 3D the models should keep the simplistic designs.The low amount of fine detail helps people distinguish different units and buildings from far off. Also the simpler terrain will really help you tell what surfaces you can build on, and what your units can walk on.

I remember watching the transformers movies and not being able to tell who was who or what the hell was going on because everything is a giant busy mess of metal parts.

But I'd like to see the game go nuts with it's special effects. We could still have (semi transparent) dust, clouds, atmospheric effects, along with glowing laser beams, giant explosions, and everything else.

Just to put my worthless 2p forward.

I would have completely happy with a game that looks like the Kickstarter concept vid, Stylised Graphics and all.

Then again i'm someone who can go back and play the Original X-Com and still enjoy it for its gameplay and ignore the graphics that make some peoples eyes bleed.

That's because it's one of the best games ever and no amount of graphics can ruin that

(The new one, despite having better graphics, is not an improvement by the way)

I like them both... Only put 68 hours into the new one but managed to finish Classic Ironman once and have a save half way through a second.

Its really fun, but so many things could have been done better. Firaxis are one of those companies that start out a game sub-par and make it great with patches/mods/expansions, whether is purely a money making scheme or sub-par Q&A.

The best thing Firaxis could do is open up X-Com to the modding community like Civ 5 is and maybe add some new aliens complete with Interrogation videos and descriptions...

Oh and release a proper Ufoapedia not just a bloody research history list...

Oh I definately liked the new game. It's just not "XCOM". It lacks a number of things that made the original so amazing. Not in the least the feeling of dread and hopelessness.

The new one doesn't feel like a doomed initiative to try and do something against a superpowered invasion, it feels like being a SWAT-team shooting thugs in a one-sided shoot-out.

I guess that's my main gripe. Nothing in the game feels threatening and hopeless. You are never really terrified about what the aliens are up to or how many of your soldiers are going to die in the next 5 seconds when you click 'end turn'. Or looking at the geosphere thinking 'sorry Paris, but I can't risk saving you'.

But it's a side track I guess from the topic I guess

I think most people liked the aesthetic of the Kickstarter video. However, very few people in this forum seem to realize that the graphics in that video are far from simplistic. Sure, the textures have a lot of uniform areas, but there is plenty of high-poly detail to be found. Nearly every edge is bevelled, there are an absurd number of trees, and the explosion effects, while not completely transparent, had a lot of depth to them.

Of course none of it was rendered in real time, but if the game looks as good as that video when it comes out, you'll have to turn down some settings on anything but the most recent hardware.

That's nothing modern (mid-end) tech can't handle.

A lot of polygons for a lot of similar units? Batching and instancing.
Trees? Sprites, batching and instancing.
There is no alpha (but water) - no need to sort (it's very easy to sort water).

Normal RTS engine is far less complicated than ordinary FPS shooter/RPG engine, for instance. PA's engine should be a little bit more complicated, as it actually should have space separation and some kind of invisisble clipping, but it's all also very simple.

There is no dynamic lighting, no dynamic shadows, no other fancy stuff.

Explosions? 4 textures and trivial particle system. And don't forget about batching (again).

So, graphics from trailer are rather trivial from programmers point. Art style, on other side, is not. Especially for new concepts - original ACU looks much simpler than additional ones. Maybe it's just fancy concepts, but who knows.

I have no doubt that something quite similar-looking could be made to run on reasonable hardware. However, the trailer was rendered offline, and used that advantage to incorporate:

• Global illumination. All that ambient occlusion and first bounce light is subtle, but perfect.
• Trees with lots of overlap and no shared rotation. You can't turn that into sprites and have it look the same.
• Zero perceived level of detail. You won't find that holy grail of LOD in any realtime game.
• All of the lighting is dynamic, and the sunlight casts perfect dynamic shadows. Although individual laser beams don't appear to cast light, the explosions and asteroid engines do.
• The explosions aren't as complicated as I previously thought (I'm not sure any more if there's any transparency except as they fade out). However, the smoke is all dynamically lit, and the puffs are all 3D spheres that cast and receive shadows (see the commander rocket launch).

Ah, well, you are talking about offline render comparable to online render. Really, it doesn't matter. In RTS game there is no need to GI or. Trees are perfectly done with sprites, you just need to switch sprites in the right time. LODs are optimization. When configured and programmed correctly you'll never notice switch. But it doesn't matter to - single switch is not immersion breaker. Shadows are precalculated and just projected on sphere with respect to sun position - easy. Smoke shadow is something a little bit complicated, but not much too (you could just make "shadow particles").

Real-time graphics are about cheating. IMO, you may cheat here in such way that it's not too heavy for you GPU, but gives subjectively similar results.