[quote]How easy is it going to be to impress us with a barren desolate world?[/quote] It's going to be tough, but we're up to the challenge ;) [quote]The Mucha thing is what led me to stick around [/quote] Yeah, Mucha made some beautiful paintings of women...but no paintings of a fantasy world with cities, dragons, and knights :) So adapting his artistic rules to our game has certainly been quite the experience.
Just a heeds on on what we specificaly have in the gfx pipeline... 1. Terrain Textures: We have a couple of tricks to employ to get the terrain textures looking less..boring :) They dont currently have the washed/painted feel that we want, so expect improvements there. 2. Forests: Gah, where to begin! Basically, forests are getting a major overhaul, from their toothpick trunks to the size/plcement/number of leaf clumps, to FINALLY getting shadows beneith them.
This was discovered and fixed internally after hte cutoff point for new code to be added, so next update will have that taken care of. Thanks for the catch, tho!
Ships that feel HUUUUUUUGGGGEEEE!!!! :D
theprogress: Replied :) cyrogenic: I really never get sick of talking about the art style, but the way we're developing the game (engine and game in tandum) has made 'selling' the style a real uphill battle. Most major companies have the visuals NAILED before really showing the public. You guys were along for the whole ride, of which we still have ground to make before the art team is truly happy with the result. That said, and knowing what's in the pipeline, I can see being v
No paralax mapping...the ground does have a VERY subtle normal map on it, but even that is used sparingly. The more of those 'realistic' effects we slather on, the further we get from the intended style :( My goal is to have CRAZY paralax mapping going on in GC3 tho :)
kyogre: Do you think announcement facilitates a rekindling of the Elemental twitter account? ;)
[quote] We should trust that there will be videos later about backstory and character depth.[/quote] We have some cool plans regarding this area of exposition :) But that's for another day.
That link makes my heart sing :) Too much algorythmic genius to behold.
OK, so lets actually use that old (OLD OLD OLD) screenshot as a variable in our test... This is a really quick rehash of that shot in the most recient build of the game. Going back and forth I can see spots where the old shot trumps the current one: - The old river was bendy and natural (it
Actually, I think all the triggers to make quests based on this idea are in...I'm going to go make some right now :) Thanks for the great suggestion!
[quote] sry but can i ask why?[/quote] See post #4...if you blow your spot in the retail calender, then you have to wait for the next opening (which would be post-Christmas).
dsk2293: There is literally a "More Shit on Map"(tm) option where empty tiles get 2x, 5x, or 10x more groudcover. I accidentally turned it up and it very quickly did away with the barren stretches :) Enjoy! esrever: Yeah, the conversation gets difficult when people start asking for more 'stuff'...part of the reason we picked the style we did was the contrast between the wide swatches of color with spots of detail where necessary. <a href="http://marinacorreia.files.wordp
[quote]I'd hope that someone could state an opinion without the need of having pre-ordered, or displaying extreme fanboyism.[/quote] No, your critique is certainly valid and well thought out...we're just a bit weary of discussing the topic ATM :) Until things are more finalized (finished shadowing system, per environment lighting, distance fog tweaks, etc) it's probably something not worth discussing (you've seen the name calling thoughtout the debate). But yeah, when I saw thos
[quote]No. You'll need a DirectX 9c card that supports Shader 2, although be mindful that some of the video cards lie about what they actually support.[/quote] I think he was joking about the Ultima shot ;) But the girl speakth the truth...be careful about DirectX9 cards, cause they have been known to overhype their abilities.
Thanks guys :) And don't take it personally if we don't use a suggestion of yours...but know that we are listening to what the players are saying and will try to make a game that makes everyone happy in some fashion ;)
[quote]The graphics are the thing that makes me least excited about this game, and I'm even afraid it will ruin the whole experience for me.[/quote] While I can understand disliking a different art style, I certainly hope it wouldn't RUIN a gaming experience [e digicons]8C[/e] (edit: here's an IGN article where we lay our artistic decisions on the table...if you're interested http://pc.ign.com/articles/101/1019369p1.html )
re: LOD DIfferences The major selling point with the Elemental engine is that LOD is handled in a matter more appropriate for strategy games...it's based on zoom level, not distance from camera. With distance based LOD, you're iterating through all those objects and performing that visibility check that can get really expensive if the scene gets busy. The way our sceneview tree is implemented meens there are really only 7 major checks being done to toggle the visibility of those objec
Yeah that's me :) I'll be smiling like that again when Elemental's finally done ;)
[quote]That's really disappointing. I was hoping that the A.I. wouldn't cheat at any level like in Galciv2[/quote] You'll notice all those ratios are at 1:1 (or below) up through challenging, so they're playing the same game as the player up until the higher difficulties (GC2 cheated a bit on the higher levels as well, IIRC).
kochujang: One of the big debates over here...CVS has been our version control choice for years, but SVN is looking to be our next tool of choice once Elemental hits the shelves.
OK, a few suggestions... 1. Update the Video Drivers: '08 was AGES ago in video-driver years. I bet that's what is at fault, but if not... 2. Try Turning off your SoundFX and all Music Options: Some people in XP are seeing this fix their crashing. 3. Bring down the Resolution: We'll need to find the root issue, but try bringing down your res to something less....insane :) Mostly with those old drivers, I can see this setup dying pretty easilly. Let me kno
Thanks Tormy! I'll give it a look.
[quote]Unfortunately, it crashes for me every time in the world build stage so Im totally stymied.[/quote] As we weed out the major bugs and start getting into the per-user issues, we'll be working with players one-on-one to nail down hardware configs and determine what the fringe issues are. In the meentime, hopefully we stumble upon a fix for your problems, but if it's not playing nicely now, it probably needs a closer inspection. For the sake of thuroughness, can you post a
Advanced lighting :)