Visuals Discussion

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by MrTBSC, July 6, 2015.

  1. MrTBSC

    MrTBSC Post Master General

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    Probably the most talked about topic in varius threads ...
    so why making this one?
    So while i am hearing people wanting more spectacular visuals such as explosions and projectile effects ammong other things i went over a couple various RTS´s gamesvisual videos and playing around with visual mods for PA wondering if that realy is a good direction to take ...

    because honestly while playing with @Alpha2546 ´s visual mods and watching @dom314 ´s own mod
    i realised how busy the view gets when hundreds of various units launch their projectiles accross the field
    often coverering what actualy is going on and decreasing readability that way
    now players who play occasionaly may not care about but competitive players who do in fact zoom in to micro may do ...

    i am not saying that modders should change their visuals to more readability as they can mod their visuals however they please (and they definitively just look awesome) and players chose how they want their stuff to look anyway ..

    but people asking uber to change the vanillavisuals (whenever that may happen) maybe may reconsider what they realy wish for ...
    how spectacular and saturated looking can the effects be before they get too messy for how much zoomed in/out players play?

    in that regard really as much some people may hate that i say it the current vanillavisuals help keeping a good readability imho .. can they look better? sure but readability should stay a priority

    what do you think?
    Last edited: July 8, 2015
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  2. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    We're missing pretty smoking wreckage.
    In general I don't care much about the readability reducement you might get from a few more effects. As long as the icons are displayed on top it doesn't matter.
    Nicb1, stuart98, tunsel11 and 3 others like this.
  3. MrTBSC

    MrTBSC Post Master General

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    that varries from player to player maybe some more settings in the options menu for that would be helpfull other than just lowering the overall graphics ...
    for example i don´t use much shadows ...

    another way would be adding a good ammount of transperancy to some effects
  4. rivii

    rivii Well-Known Member

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    well Doms mod only increases the readability of the game because he used a color system similar to TA in regards to lasers and made custom ones for others. You can see very fast what is attacking you forces even when they are in the FoW. if you play competitivly i would even recommend the mod as you will know how to act much faster than when u use vanilla.

    NExt thing... Graphics Sell. Look at AAA studios they try to make it look as good as possible because it sells. Now don't confuse realistic graphics with polished graphics. AAA go with realistic because they have the money for it. Uber uses stylized graphics because they 1, dont have the money for realistic graphics, 2. need it for performance of the game. There is absolutly nothing wrong with the art style Uber went for, its awesome, it fits the mood of the game and enhances readabilty where as realistic graphics might not do.

    There is however a problem. And thats polish. A game with unpolished graphics or half polished graphics means players won't get convinced to buy a game. It requires a lot of work, a lot of money and a lot of time, but polish is so immensly important.

    At this state I find the game very fun to play. The game is quite balanced and we have a lot of gameplay features that are interesting and fun to play with. I just really wish they spent more time on art polishing as at this point it will increase the fun value WAY more than a "asteroids/mini planets spawning out of thin air" gimmick.
  5. Alpha2546

    Alpha2546 Post Master General

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    At the moment the standard visuals are kinda placeholders and it shows. For developing visuals there always is a careful balance you have to think about. The visuals mods that you see aren't a good example for looking at vanilla effects. While I do try to make it look like vanilla and not overdo it its really hard to actually balance that out.

    The PA-FX has a couple over the top thingy's for instance which if installed gives it this busy and messy look for instance.

    So yeah I think the effects do need some polish. How and what they should update only Uber knows best in my opinion.
  6. MrTBSC

    MrTBSC Post Master General

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    i think no one is disagreeing with that

    as i said myself the current visuals surely could need a good ammount of improvement ... however the mix say how large the projectileeffects are and how satured/bright the effects f.e. are is what matters ...
    is the pewpew mod the right ammount or does it not need as much to look good and visible/readable enough ..
    Last edited: July 6, 2015
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  7. rivii

    rivii Well-Known Member

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    Well the Pew Pew mod is flashy, fancy, looks great and even enhances readability. IF you look at my game many people will find it too distracting, PA- FX, Pew PEw, Cplosion, Darker nights(the light one) and many more. The Icons tell you how big your army is, and the flashy particles from Pew Pew makes it easy to distinguish what is actually shooting. so yes very flashy and high bloom certainly do have a place within PA.

    Alpha's PA-FX should be toned down a bit though. As good as it looks fancy and bloomy, it doesn't use a system for distiguising building with light. So that means it's not important and shouldn't draw more attention to it than nessesary.

    Basicly when there are underlying systems, for example color systems, than people are going to learn that system and act faster accordingly. Now with buildings you can allready tell the diffrence duo to silloutte. Uber did a great job with that. But it can be enhanced with a color system for its lights and/or other fancy stuff that one can come up with.
    Planktum, ace63 and dom314 like this.
  8. dom314

    dom314 Post Master General

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    I worry about this too, I mean yes, my goal is flashyness and colorful projectiles that are easy to distinguish, but have I gone too far?? And that's where I rely on the opinions of players such as yourself to give me feedback. I think it could probably be less flashy and still possible to read the units from the effects, but I still want there to be a bit of a factor of sitting back, forgetting about the game, and just going "oooooo the pretty colors" (Don't judge I do that xD).

    Hmm I think I agree a lot with what is said here. I would also like to stress how hard it is to come up with effects that are restricted to a particular style. PA already has a style, and I think @Alpha2546 is doing very well to polish effects that are well within the same feeling I guess of vanilla PA, so hats off mate!

    So to answer the OP, I think there is room for improvement in PA's vanilla effects. But I also think there is danger (as you seem to imply I think?) in creating effects just to sate the people who want better effects for everything - a loss of clarity and probably just a lot of noise.

    Ohhh and one more thing, things really do get noisy when there are a lot of units. Unfortunately, even though it is a goal of my mod, it still happens; if you try to clash all of the unit roster with all of another unit roster, it becomes much harder to absorb all the information. This doesn't usually matter that much though, since most of the time the units you end of deploying are not going to be the full roster. i.e. Bolo + grenadiers, bolo + dox, dox + grenadier and then there are t2 combinations as well.
    I say this to address your remark that how busy the view gets with lots of units across the field, since I think the usual unit combinations mitigate this problem somewhat (and this applies to vanilla effects too).
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  9. MrTBSC

    MrTBSC Post Master General

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    yea pretty much this .. sure it may not matter as much in say a 1v1 ranked were people mostly only see t1 units but in competitive team games it is more likely and of course leveldesign will matter ...

    as for testing mods/stuff ... i currently am experiencing consistent disconnects :(
    Last edited: July 7, 2015
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  10. Planktum

    Planktum Post Master General

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    The More Pew Pew mod is AMAZING!!!! The color choices show projectile damage range and the projectiles are different enough to distinguish you unit composition. Well done mate!

    I would like to see the same ideas implemented into the design of the PA-FX mod, for me this mod is currently way to messy and distracting. Some of the effects are good and if I could pick and choose which ones to use then it would be awesome. For example I still have the now deprecated CResources mod installed.
    rivii, ace63 and dom314 like this.
  11. radongog

    radongog Well-Known Member

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    Loving the vanilla style!
    Anyways, the game would benefit from better textures. The current ones aren´t bad (espacially with SSAA enabled), but they could still be better! Same thing for particle lighting! More pixel-accurate lighted explosions could be an interesting feature!
  12. billthebluebot

    billthebluebot Active Member

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    i personally think PA needs better working class explosions, more varied as well. right now they're all basically just some pictures of puffs going from orange to gray and leaving, always in the same dome shape, its really dull.
    the mine and aircraft explosions are alright i suppose, mines being the better of the two imo.
    ace63 likes this.
  13. igncom1

    igncom1 Post Master General

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    I will say that explosion clouds, don't conform to the planets darkness level.

    That can look a little weird.
    ace63 likes this.

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