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Vanguard World design
WARCRYtm
Member Posts: 875
I found a nice topic at this blog http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/1619 about Vanguard World Design.
Take a look at it, this guy have a good prespective at it.
More on Vanguard and world design
Not trying to vehemently bash Vanguard, just explaining better what I mean for decent "world design".
Since people say I'm deliberately picking horrid screenshots to ridicule Vanguard (the truth is that I picked those that illustrate better my point), here's a good looking one that still shows what I pointed out. A lack of world design. There's this bumpmap effect applied to all the terrain everywhere but it seems that the textures themselves are random noise patterns with a varied hue.
The lack of "world design" isn't the fact that there aren't many objects visible. But that those that there are, like the boulder, the fence and the tents, seem all completely estranged from the environment.
How would it look if there was an at least passable world design? It's not that hard. The lines (textures) between objects shouldn't look so definite. The areas around the tents should have probably used a different texture that shows there's activity in that place and the sand near the fence would surely look different. Since there's water, a possibility of high tide, along with the fact that the sand is soft, that big boulder would have likely sank more in the sand creating a hollow in the area, maybe even a small pond. And I also doubt that a cliff so close to the water would look like that and the same for the transition between the rock area and the beach.
EDIT: Credit to Jpoku for a much better "reading" of the scene (and this is a very good design lesson):
the connectivity is poor for whatever reason. It just doesn't feel as alive. The fence, gate's and tents look like they are about to fall down. The sea creature looks like it has just fallen out of the sky and landed on the ground rather than having led there for ages. Also someone could just swim round that fence. What's it defending against? No signs of it being a real barricade. WoW here would have supplies behind the fence, strong supports holding it up. On the other side there would be bits of broken wood, swords or corpses (like a fight has happened there so a fence is needed)
Another example. If in the real world you make objects on the terrain invisible, you would still see many evident cues that something WAS there. Now imagine to remove all those objects you see in the screenshot. Well, There would be no sign at all that something was there. The terrain would look uniform.
Vanguard world design is this: a fractal terrain generator on which were then dropped with no real logic a number of trees, rocks and buildings of various type. It's the opposite of an organic world design.
In general there's always a glaring clash between the terrain and the objects/models. As if things were photoshopped into the scene. It gives a very "false" feeling (and this is the result half of the art quality of the textures and half the graphic render they coded, which sucks. See Black & White 2 for a terrain render that looks amazing).
Now take these other examples:
1- Transitions. Can you see how in this case the transition between the beach, the grass and then the rock areas is much smoother and organic (dithering aside)? And how the result is a believable, immersive scenery?
2- Detail. Notice how the terrain is painted to have some kind of trailing effect near the wooden planks, as if some water dribbled around them. Imagine to remove these planks and the terrain would still reflect that something was there.
Now go and see if you can find in Vanguard a similar example. WoW can deliver some organic scenery even with an empty landscape. In Vanguard the terrain looks as if it was colored with the airbrush in MS Paint.
Try to walk along the coast in Westfall and you'll see plenty of wooden planks, barrels, tree trunks, shipwrecks and so on. That's world design.
Please understand that this isn't a Vanguard vs WoW. I'm just pointing out one of Vanguard's flaws and using WoW because it offers descriptive examples of good world design.
And consider that I'm pointing out only one tiny aspect of what I consider world design, just because it was the easiest to explain. I hope it illustrates better the kind of point of view from where my comments were coming.
P.S.
I know very little of "world design" and I doubt I could do a better work, I don't have any practice with it. But I see something that looks amazing and then something that feels like crap. What I do is just to ask myself why. I try to analyze and dig what I see and try to understand what makes the difference. So I'm trying to learn by myself. I compare things to learn the differences. It's not simple but I expect that those who actually ARE WORKING in the game industry know these things I'm trying to teach myself.
Comments
Its ok, i know VG took EVE's spot for top mmo atm but dont be angry. Count backwards from 10 and breathe.
Lol, Vanguard will be there for few time.
Isnt because of that, this is a constructive post, and i see you cant handle it.
Can you talk about that topic insted of being angry with me?
Im not angry
I dont even play vanguard. Alas i play nothing atm, waiting on something or another to come out. I was just trying to calm your nerves, it wont be past eve long, nothing ever is when eve fanbois come pileing in.
SWG - Bad Art / Inefficient game engine
Planetside - " " / ""
EQ2 - " " / " "
I find the implementation of the original artwork for Vanguard fares better than what was produced in EQ2, but the engine is poorly optimized and might be more limited than what the developers intended for release.
To me the WoW screenshot looked alot worse than the Vanguard ones LOL. I guess it's just a matter of taste. That first screenshot you posted well i was just there 2 days ago and it's a pirate encampment. I thought it was your basic generic beach camp. I'm not sure what you expect. In some places Vanguards graphics are amazing and in some places they aren't. This could be due to the number of artisans they have on the task. Some are better than others. Comparing WoW to EQ is like comparing Sponge bob to Family guy. Which one looks more realistic? Who cares really. It's all just colored pixels that don't even come close to reality. The only thing that matters is whether you're playing the game and having fun.
Make a difference!
Thank you for that article! For a long time, I have been arguing with people on various forums about the visual design of Vanguard. Yes, Vanguard has a powerful graphics engine, and individual parts of the game are very good looking. Yet Sigil does not seem to know what to do with all that graphical muscle. It's hard to describe to people, that the game can be beautiful, but at the same time look lifeless and barren. Same goes for the characters. There's a lot of detail, but they look creepy and wax-like.
Companies need to learn that you can have the greatest graphics engine in the world, but if you don't hire artists that know how to craft a living world, all those special effects are useless. Look at games like GW, AC, and even WoW. The graphics in those games don't even hold a candle to Vanguard. But the visual design makess those worlds come alive.
Seriously.
It's Are'el. This forum doesn't allow apostrophes in usernames.
Well, if you look, most building like objects, or placed objects have 3 things...
Basically, the have a bank of textures that do nothing but represent color. There is no variation to these textures, just color.
The detail channel is a grayscale image that is “Blended” under the color channel, this creates the variation between being red brick, and red carved stone.
The last is the bump, and maybe some normal mapping (The lighting) that perturbs the surface of the mesh to reinforce the felling of “Red Brick” VS “Red Carved Stone”.
This is a great way of saving texture foot print on the clients HDD, but. I think its what most people are notching and citing as “Crappy graphics”, from a far it looks great! Up close …not so much (Just look at any rock)… Now, top that off with your card my not support the shader they have written, or, you simply have shaders turned off, it looks worse.
I happen to like the style, and they way they went about it, but I completely agree with the article in the OP’s post.
The terrains suffer from the same fate as the objects above, because its created in the same way. Sadly, I think mostly it’s a bad texture splatter routine (Or lack off…im not sure ATM) ..or god forbid, they UV mapped the entire terrain, and thus cant add subtle details that you would expect to find due to hard limits on terrain resources (suck as max number of color, detail, and bump/normal at high images sizes).
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"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
SWG- now thats a game that could be an artist' dream to revamp all the artwork and make it better. EQ II- I think shows how far the SWG engine can go.
VG is a game that has a vast world that you cant get in this format without instances or download screens. Sure it needs improvements. But so does Eve (great game) and so does WoW. I support VG and I know for a fact that the artwork will be completed and updated correctly.
Nice topic though
In response to OP:
You cannot compare the miniature, cramped world that WoW sports with that of Vanguard. It would be the same as me bashing EVE for having copy-paste, see-one-see-them-all, approach to space design as opposed to, for example, SWG's "systems" with lots of unique structures, spaceships, beautiful close-up planets etc.
But we can't really compare those two either, can we? SWG has what, six "systems"? I say "systems" because they are more like orbital playgrounds compared to some 1000+ star systems with who knows how many planets, moons and asteroid fields EVE has.
As the result, EVE systems do not paint the picture for you - players are expected to do it themselves.
In comparison, Vanguard has a HUGE world. I played both WoW and Vanguard and I can say WoW feels like playing in a box after you've tried Vanguard. It's way larger than even SWG's worlds, and those were huge themselves.
So if your point about Vanguard's world design is that it fails due to not every fence and rock is handpainted and placed, it's moot. WoW has a totally different approach to world design. Small, but detailed. Close-up detailzation is not what Vanguard's world design philosphy is about. It's the openness and sheer size that makes it stand out.
I would daresay that Telon is far more detailed than Azeroth when you step back and take the BIG picture in. Try it. You may be surprised.
Oh, by the way, no MMO world that I know of has been made with a terrain generator. You can't have a random generator construct a world for you. Instead, such large worlds are actually hand-made, but with a different approach. Simmilar to how you would use a wide brush to paint entire forests of trees opposed to placing every tree by hand. In that regard, there is some randomness present, but overall design, architecture and terrain are all hand-made. They have to be. Otherwise you'd end up with a shapeless blob, which is what randomness gets you. Good for generating waves on water. Not good for mountains.
That's a very odd arguement.
"Vanguard's gameworld is allowed to look cheap and generic, because it's bigger."
So you're saying, quantity over quality, right?
Seriously.
It's Are'el. This forum doesn't allow apostrophes in usernames.
Sigil are SO 1990's
No, I'm saying you can have it small and detailed, or big and less detailed. It's a trade-off system, you can't have it both ways unless you want to employ about 50 people to handcraft a world for two years. And even then, imagine how big the client would be. If you had all the objects and textures required for a detailed world of Vanguard's size, it would easily go to mammoth proportions. That makes it more expensive to distribute the game, it requires more time to make in the first place and so on.
Quantity over quality is not the issue here. Modern design philosophy has placed too much accent on the graphical presentation of content over what's really important in a game, and that's storyline, quests, plots and all around good lore. We can discuss whether Vanguard's lore is lacking, but that's another topic.
Gamers got spoiled, me included. I remember Daggerfall with it's copy-paste random design dungeons very fondly... it had that oomph of being big and daring you to go out and make your own place in that world. Oblivion wipes the floor hundred times with Daggerfall graphically and sound-wise, but it lacks that oomph. You feel boxed in by invisible barriers. Streamlined and railroaded into a "detailed" world which lacks the adventure pull of "the only limits are your own". And I would still rather play Oblivion because it's prettier and I can't stand Daggerfall's horrid, by today's standards, graphics.
In the MMO world, EVE and Vanguard are two games I can name that have that pull. Sure, you don't have that much detail, but quality is not in the detail, it's in the spirit of things. And here, that's freedom. So I can climb that damn peak, not look at it knowing there is no way I can get there because the game mechanics do not allow it.
Some people like small, but detailed worlds. Some, like me, prefer large worlds and fill in the gaps themselves.
Now, you could say that we are encouraging developers to continue making what you consider poorly designed worlds, but in truth those MMO's are not made for you. They are made for us. And we buy them and play them and enjoy them. Just as you buy and play and enjoy games which suit your taste more.
And that's all there is to it. It's a question of preferences. What's more important to you: detail or size? You can't have both. I wish we could, and maybe one day we will have, but right now our technology is simply not up for the challenge.
And untill it is, I would rather have a less polished world of huge proportions which allows me to ride my steed through a vast steppe and provide the wind in my hair and the glare of the sun myself through imagination, than have all those details in only to run into an invisible wall, unclimbable mountain or unswimmable ocean boxing me in.
Dear OP,
Please take your VG graphics Detail off "Low" and you will see amazing world detail. Sounds like your computer is set to hide all the detail for performance reasons. Because the "great" WoW screenshots you provide are pretty unexciting compared to what I look at nightly in VG. Buy a better PC; you can't expect an older PC to run a New game in all its splendor.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit