Graphics

What to expect?

from Elemental Forums

I've been reading posts by Frogboy that Elemental should be fun no matter what your graphics card is. Is this a way of telling us that the graphics will not be superb or am I paranoid?

I'd be happy to have a game without the latest graphics, but it does make a game fun to play, especially when there are thousands of characters on the screen at once. However, if I had to chose between gameplay and graphics, gameplay would win every time.

I realise that it is early on in development, so the quality of screenshots will improve, but I'm curious to know what the final product will be.

 

Thanks

Skoda89

elemental
4,742 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

What Frogboy meant is that the graphics will be highly scalable. People with shitty computers (like myself) will still be able to play the game by scaling the graphics back more and more. Judging by the early screenshots we've seen, the game is gonna look pretty damn good. Maybe not Crysis good but certainly better than Civilization 4.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Maybe not Crysis good
End of quote
lol, maybe not crysis good?   Undoubtable not crysis good.  If they were THAT good I'd have to upgrade my computer again (I'd say likely team fortress 2 good.  And that game looks pretty good)

I'm not really sure what to expect in terms of improvement though.  Certainly some, but if you're playing this game for Crysis or far-cry type graphics, you're in the wrong department.   An improvement over Civ 4's graphics would be a fair bet.  I think they already look better than Civ 4 just from what they were demoing at PAX, and they were very far from completed there.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

A person who plays strategy games for the graphics isn't a strategy gamer (considering the best ones are about 10 years old...). I've still got all the old strategy titles like MoO. It would be nice to have a strategy game that had the depth of those titles with modern graphics. Elemental sounds really good and I'm hoping for a great game and great graphics.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Elemental has a very nice "Fantasy Cell Shaded" look to it. Also they are using a trick they picked up in the Gal Civ series to fit better textures that use less memory onto high polygon models. It looks good. It's not photo-realistic but it still has a awesome feel to it that I think will stand up to the test of time.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

yea ... I'll be happy with Pax graphics ... just as long as I can zoom in to see all the tiny goings on of my empire :)

 

Or to better rephrase it ... an engine that can do 1) a strategy game "elemental" and 2) a living world, interactive RPG "Tales of Elemental" or "Elemental Nights", ect.

where its possible to take the game, make a zoomed in version (or simply to zoom in) and give much the same graphical representation as a Baldurs Gate or NWN (I'd prefer cell-shading as opposed to hard-to-see details, aka I like Pax)

and in this RPG, I would like for events to, instead of being 100% scripted, to have very strongly scripted AI on NPC nations and NPC leaders. Also, interactions with kings/warlords, instead of being a played out dialouge, could be a highly specialized version of the Diplomacy features used to talk to other leaders in the strategy Elemental game. Non-leader NPCs can be completely scripted though, I don't mind that.