Aesthetics thread

Actually I love the look of the smoke clouds in the PA trailer. I love the solidness of them. It looks much more intense and fun than the hazy shapeless smoke in FA and really fits the overall aesthetic. I'm really nervous they might change that.

Honestly the thing that would make me the happiest would be if the final game looked just like the trailer.

I hope it will look like that too, I'd love those effects. I can't wait to blow up everything in PA.

Minus the swirls,

They look like a path finding, base building nightmare.

No, those were confirmed to not be in the final game, it will look more like actual terrain. I hope that I can find those screenshots from the stream they made some time ago.

True. Forgot about that.

Oh and one more thing...I don't like the big blue shapes around the edges of the screen in system view. They make it hard to appreciate the beauty of it all. Minimalist UI FTW!

Unless I'm forgetting something the rest is absolute gold already. And I love the concept art of the terrain we saw a few weeks ago.

Just please make it client-side and switchable. I prefer to play FA with lowest possible settings, no matter how powerful rig is. Cause it's just less distracting and most of time I spending zooming out to make a big call, or zooming in to make a particular micro-command.

Something missing from SupCom that I'd like to see (it was modded in): When a ship sinks, I'd like it to be a slow, sinking death, that leaves debris behind, rather than floating belly-up like a fish for a little while, or crashing to the bottom of the sea and leaving no trace. It'd be nice if the wreckage could block waterways too: with the narrow, winding rivers I've seen, clogging them would be an strategic decision.

Well as said in my other (highly unpopular) threads about the game I'd like to see a more TA approach to the visuals where you spend more time zoomed in and ground units and planes operate at a similar scale so you see all the action going on at once, and can navigate clicking on the minimap like TA or Star Craft instead of spending half your time looking at symbols which isn't very aesthetically attractive. Vast differences in scale between units looks cool initially but then the smaller units end up looking like scuttling ants at playable zoom levels.

You are completely right about it looking boring, but I wouldn't want to get rid of it. Strategic view is great from a gameplay standpoint but supcom is such an incredibly boring game to watch. I think in this game though you only have to worry about that on larger planets though...just based on the trailer it looks like on small planets you won't be zooming out very far.

I tried to watch a game of FA on YouTube, but even when you zoom in really close you can barely see some of the units, and almost all of the game is played zoomed too far out to see anything. It would be nice to be able to see the units more while still Getting an idea of whats going on. Supcom 2 did it pretty well, but that was probably because all the maps were smaller.

Replays will save you. Play a game with mostly zoomed-out, make a replay, make an automatic "render-to-avi" (should be easy to mod if there would be good replays) with auto-zoom on most interesting parts and little manual camera control.

Then get it on your full-wall TV (you should probably have one of two if you do care so much) and enjoy.

Really, aesthetics never matter for gameplay. Your imagination will make a trick if you into the game. Aesthetics are required only for trailers and for replays to attract new players.

And it's not something really important at this stage of game. Only thing you should worry about is unique look&feel for each unit. And that was the one huge problem of TA.

I would rather enjoy the game while I'm playing it, not after. Besides that I've never in my life seen a replay of supcom that was exciting to watch. And boy have I looked.

That's downright false. Graphics aren't critical, but aesthetics are. There's a massive psychological link between enjoyment of an activity and the environment/aesthetics of that activity.

Now is exactly the right time to talk about the aesthetics, while they're still in the early phase. And your concern about units looking unique is moot if you're zoomed out the whole time. I had no trouble telling units apart in TA.

Imagination can only trick you into the game if it has proper aesthetics. You're confusing graphics and aesthetics I think.

One thing PA has going for it is a ground-up design for multiple windows. This has a lot of implications for being able to control the global scale while making it possible for the player to have another window following his combat group, and another window looking at his base. With the addition of some smarts in the zoom control, the player could definitely get much less of a 'dot vs dot' experience I think.

Well, maybe I'm wrong on terminology, but I always thought than "aesthetics" are whistles, like effects, aircraft making rolls, fancy turret barrel rotating animation and other stuff you won't notice after first 15 minute battle anyway. It's not graphics (which is more pure numerical stuff like resolution, FSAA, HDR, blur, possible particle effects and maybe 3d modeling style), it's more like additional-to-graphics things you are talking here about.

Look&Feel are completely different thing. You may obtain good L&F with different sized boxes, just by making different textures and proper moving speed (something heavy is moving slow. Something heavy is well-armored or equipped with heavy weaponary. Something red is very dangerous, something green is not).

TA got awful L&F cause may units where sharing same projectile and same chassis. Like two types of rocket kbots. One have two tubes, other have one tube.

Example of bad L&F from SupCom is UEF t3 bots (persival and titan), which have very similar icons (but quite different L&F when they are moving, less unique when they are standing still). That's what is important - current shape, correct speed (including animation speed) and correct icons.

Fancy animation, blowing units to bits, aircraft making rolls, idle animations and other things are cool, but are not important in any way.

Especially with scale of PA and with limited resources UberEnt have.

I always equate aesthetics with look & feel. Art style, UI, game 'environment,' etc. That stuff is important. Sorry about the confusion of terminology.

I agree about the bells and whistles though. Aircraft rolls or idle unit animations aren't important.

Relevant:http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/graphics-vs.-aesthetics

Somewhat relevant:http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/aesthetics-of-play
Aesthetics of play that I expect from PA
Sense pleasure - seeing planets blow up with immersive sound effects and a good soundtrack playing in the background
Fantasy - controlling robot armies and destroying planets
Challange - discovering new strategies and tactics
And at the core: Competition - beating humans with different strategies and tactics

In short, aesthetics are sound, music, look and feel, graphics and especially the style. I do want coherent and engaging aesthetics.

WOW. That was really interessting. I like those episodes.

not to metion the explosions had patricles that bounced by half height in a loop unil the bounce was too small.
and people try to say TA had physics or real-er physics, when out of the two, supcom was the one with simulated projectiles.

Never played TA :-( but acrobatics sounds kinda cool.

I think one of the most memorable "aesthetics" of PA will be interplanetary stuff.

When they make planet smashing look better, and craters left behind... it'll be epic to wage war on a planet pockmarked with craters from freaking moons smashed into the planet.

And I'm sure launching missiles and units from planet to planet are going to look awesome. Just think about how epic it'll look when you launch a wave of nukes, projectiles, and missiles to a nearby planet and immediately follow it up with waves and waves of several hundred units. It'll be so beyond epic.

They've also mentioned changing the way the dark side of the planet looks in such a way that'll actually effect gameplay. Not sure how they'll do that, but I'm sure it'll be cool and memorable.

The graphics of PA are very much under construction. A Uber dev (can't remember who) said he was flat out embarrassed by the current state of the graphics. Things are gonna be epic.

Uber is pushing the limits in the genre. There will be lots of memorable moments.