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Some info on why the graphics don't look as good as people think they should...
Cabe2323
Member Posts: 2,939
All,
I have read many posts here concerning the visuals of WAR. There have been many praises. Thank you! There have been some criticisms. Thank you also. Everything we read here, at least in broad strokes, is digested and considered against our design and visual goals. The subject of this thread caught my attention in particular because it speaks to the status of where we are with WAR’s development. So first I will discuss a general point that has been echoed here before.
The visuals in WAR are a work in progress. I liken it to rendering CG movies, like the Incredibles or some of the great stuff Blur has done for us. When you watch a pre-lighting render, things just look flat. There are no shadows. There is no ambient occlusion. There is no atmospheric lighting. There is no real surface lighting. How does that relate to WAR? Well, many of the videos and screenshots we have released have been without even a first lighting bake, let along our final lighting pass, which we have never shown. You also have not seen specular maps on our terrains. We don't even have final skies, light balancing, or final light settings for our terrain shaders.
This means that you have seen visuals in varying degrees of finish depending upon how recently we worked on a zone. None of the environments we have shown you are in their full glory. The hard work of the team shows through despite being shy of complete. And that is where we are now. We are polishing, tweaking, and lightmapping like crazy and we will up until the very last stamp for gold. Until then, yes. Some stuff may look flat, or some animations may look jerky. Heck our lead animator and I finally had a moment of joy as one of the last animation system "quirks" that was making the motions look staccato and choppy was finally fixed. Huray!
In terms of visual variety, I believe we have a diverse palette of environments from ancient forests and eldritch swamps to a huge, gothic city floating over a swirling, Chaotic Abyss. With that said, even now we are working on more cool, signiture landmarks for the zones. I believe anyone browsing our material in depth will agree there is a lot there to enjoy.
So by all means continue dialoguing about what you see, let us know what you like and what you don't, and stay tuned for some more finalized shots.
Thanks!
I have read many posts here concerning the visuals of WAR. There have been many praises. Thank you! There have been some criticisms. Thank you also. Everything we read here, at least in broad strokes, is digested and considered against our design and visual goals. The subject of this thread caught my attention in particular because it speaks to the status of where we are with WAR’s development. So first I will discuss a general point that has been echoed here before.
The visuals in WAR are a work in progress. I liken it to rendering CG movies, like the Incredibles or some of the great stuff Blur has done for us. When you watch a pre-lighting render, things just look flat. There are no shadows. There is no ambient occlusion. There is no atmospheric lighting. There is no real surface lighting. How does that relate to WAR? Well, many of the videos and screenshots we have released have been without even a first lighting bake, let along our final lighting pass, which we have never shown. You also have not seen specular maps on our terrains. We don't even have final skies, light balancing, or final light settings for our terrain shaders.
This means that you have seen visuals in varying degrees of finish depending upon how recently we worked on a zone. None of the environments we have shown you are in their full glory. The hard work of the team shows through despite being shy of complete. And that is where we are now. We are polishing, tweaking, and lightmapping like crazy and we will up until the very last stamp for gold. Until then, yes. Some stuff may look flat, or some animations may look jerky. Heck our lead animator and I finally had a moment of joy as one of the last animation system "quirks" that was making the motions look staccato and choppy was finally fixed. Huray!
In terms of visual variety, I believe we have a diverse palette of environments from ancient forests and eldritch swamps to a huge, gothic city floating over a swirling, Chaotic Abyss. With that said, even now we are working on more cool, signiture landmarks for the zones. I believe anyone browsing our material in depth will agree there is a lot there to enjoy.
So by all means continue dialoguing about what you see, let us know what you like and what you don't, and stay tuned for some more finalized shots.
Thanks!
__________________
---------------------
Greg Grimsby
Art Director
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
This was posted on Warhammer alliance by the Art Director.
Currently playing:
LOTRO & WoW (not much WoW though because Mines of Moria rocks!!!!)
Looking Foward too:
Bioware games (Dragon Age & Star Wars The Old Republic)
Comments
Honestly I know the graphics will be great. Everytime i see a screenshot post with the "pre-alpha stage" stuck on it i realise that these graphics are not final. If you wanna see something amazing, look at Starcraft in pre alpha and you will probably laugh http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://starfeeder.com/assets/blog/images/2007/oct/prealpha2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.starfeeder.com/blog/archives/before_starcraft_pre_alpha_alpha_and_beta/&h=450&w=512&sz=47&hl=en&start=1&tbnid=F2f7qCeg_oY06M:&tbnh=115&tbnw=131&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dstarcraft%2Bpre%2Balpha%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den
of course, if you havent played starcraft then you wouldnt know the difference but i doubt thats the case. BTW, good job design team! i can already see many improvements with some lighting and effects
. Cant wait for beta! I signed up a while ago....
The fact that the developers take the time to actually read the forums and make comments about issues such as this gives me even MORE hope towards this game.
If you follow the game and look at the movies from newsletters, you'll see what kind of shaders and such he's talking about. The game looks absolutely brilliant.
Animations need huge amount of work. Envrioment can be changed with few extra lighting but the animations can't - So far its some of the wors animation system I've seen in MMO released in past 2-3 years. It just looks... CRAP. Its like playing DAOC all over again with every character and mob having 3 basic animations and then some magic effect going over it. Now .. this is 2008. We want our abilites to look great when casting them.
If WAR gets the animations right and they feel natural and responsive then nothing can stop the game. If they fail with this basic element then its another avarage game. It doesn't matter how the MMORPG system is - as long as the gameplay is not fun and your not feeling like your actually playing a game - then its all for nothing. And in modern games - animations is the key to succsessfull gaming.
ATleast try reading Cabe's post before repeating pointless drivel AlanOn they're aware of the issues with the very things you mentioned and you know what...they're working on it / fixed almost all the issues you keep whining about. This is why after all the game is in BETA
Lord baby Jesus is crying! STOP MAKING HIM CRY!
Please Refer to Doom Cat with all conspiracies & evil corporation complaints. He'll give you the simple explination of..WE"RE ALL DOOMED!
Mythic will take care of the problems! I still like what i see and if they make it better......all the better!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Played : WOW, LOTRO, COH/COV, EQ2, SWG, and WAR.
Playing EVE Online and AOC.
Wtg for SW:TOR and WOD
Let just say that WAR will be hardware balanced game. Similarly to let say LOTRO , it will look very good without need of top line GFX card.
The focus is on gameplay , and not on visual effects.
People these days have forgotten what games are all about. Its about having fun. Not how realistic it looks like. Its a game, and games arnt supposed to look as realistic as possible. If you want to se something realistic and beautyful, go out and take a walk and watch the nature around you. Games are ment to be fun, and not realistic.
I just hope the RvR will be great. ^^ I never tried DAoC, so havnt even been in one before. But what I have heard and read from friends and people. I cant wait. =D
QFT
Thalos Vipav
Star Wars Galaxies: R.I.P.
People can be really critical of the screenshots. I guess that's the risk you run when you put screenshots of works in progress out there. Things like this post should be put out there with the screenshots so that people are on notice that, Hey, we are still improving it so don't worry.
I think that it's a better game when both the dev's and player's can work/play the game without being overly concerned with system spec's/settings.
A comfortable balance between graphics and smooth gameplay is expected by anyone purchasing the game. What I'm getting at is that I don't want another game to launch like Vanguard did. And I'd like to see a step up from WoW. But I don't want them to force the issue of graphics to a point where animations are broken or rigid... 'stuffy'.
So once again the videos, screenshots, etc are all with a low version of the engine. What people see to not realize is that the same engine powering DAoC and WAR is the same engine that powers Oblivion. It is a great engine. I have no doubt that the game will look awesome when it releases. I think anyone hoping for the wacky colors of WoW will be dissappointed though. Just like they were with LOTRO.
Currently playing:
LOTRO & WoW (not much WoW though because Mines of Moria rocks!!!!)
Looking Foward too:
Bioware games (Dragon Age & Star Wars The Old Republic)
Why cant we have good gameplay AND good graphics?
Its quite simple really.
MMOs are games that are as good as the amount of the people playing them.
Higher graphic requirements mean less people playing.
Lower graphic requirements mean more people playing AND company tries to compensate for poor looks by GREAT gameplay.
Thanks for the post - i love little snippet of info coming to me instead of me looking for it
Again, people lacking the ability to see past the end of their noses provoking comments from the devs - leave them alone so they can finish the damn game! :P
My question remains; why have they showed their bad stuff instead of the good one? They've probably managed to scare away quite a lot of people already with this, and it's not likely that these will be easily won back with a simple post on the Warhammer alliance forums.
THE GRAPHICS ARE FRIGGIN AWESOME!!!! very immersive...trust me
I play all ghame
oh just wait till you try it (you know you will)......its damn fun and once again..innovative
I play all ghame
LOTRO has very poor animations. VERY poor. First off - the characters dont feel they belong into the world graphic engine. Secondly they movement are just way to mecanical. And lastly - the actual action moves are crap.
Now - thats LOTRO for you in terms of animation. But hey - this is mmo.... its "supposed" to look bad right ?
NOOOO !
To keep it on topic.
There are many types of animations. Character animations is one. Mob animations is another. Dying mob animations is something that should get major think of. Having 4-5 diffrent death animations gives the game alot of replayability in terms of reusing the mobs (like all mmos keep doing). Soooo while killing 20 wolfs u might actually see them die in diffrent ways - How AWSOME would that be in mmo ?
Im sure the visuals will be great when it's released. They need to work on mapping and textures, and I'm sure they aren't gonna release an ugly game to us, especially with such high expectations on their hands with this game.
The visuals may or may not be amazing but do you think they are going to postpone this game several times and then deliver 'crap' graghics? Knowing what the expectations of the gameplay and graghics if they deliver poorly on either then it will be business suicide. I doubt they are that daft.
If it was really poor then look at the bright side. It will create endless days of troll threads...joy
I was there as well, and while the high rez client gave us.. high rez textures. It didn't change anything in terms of polygonal detail, particle fx, world design or art direction. Thats what I'm commenting when I'm talking about the graphics, not so much the texture detail.
If your games 'graphic design' isn't that impressive 6 months out. It's not gonna change. Sure the textures may get sharper, but the models, the art direction, the flat looking trees and land, thats not likely to.
That said LotRO looked way freakin better at this point. The High Rez Client just made it look really need close up
Oh and Lobotomist. Thats a great idea on paper. But you don't need a game with crappy graphics to experience great gameplay. Theres been plenty of games with crappy graphics and crappy gameplay, and vice versa.
As to the 'other' soon to be released MMOG. You don't need a water cooled $3000 system to play it. Check the minimum specs, they are 'Oblivion' range. Theres plenty of gamers capable of reaching and exceeding that. Sure, it won't have the mass market appeal, in terms of systems it can reach, that say WoW has. But at the same time I don't think they are going for that either. They are going for a more focused audience that wants something fresh and different, and more graphically appealing.
Let me say last, I'm not trolling WAR. I'm being a bit critical about it. But it does have some interesting features, and I'm relatively eager to give it a shot once it comes out.
Yeah your not trolling WAR and mentioning that other game at all! It isn't like your a well know fan of that other game.
Okay here is the deal. You can have good graphics and good gameplay but you limit the number of people that can ever been in one area. High poly counts increase the stress on your system and increases FPS lag and getting people together just puts your FPS into the gutter. WAR devs are building a game for large battles. You can fully expect 300+ people to be attending keep raids and because of the poly count you wont be going "OMFG ITS SO LAGGY!".
World design is what it is and I don't much care about it unless it gives someone a major advantage over me and I'm not talking about ranged killing people below them.
Art Direction is spot on for Warhammer. Go look it up, honestly it couldn't be much better. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it doesn't fit the IP perfectly.
Particle effects? Cool looking spells are awesome the first time but after that it is meh. Anyone who plays FPS games can tell you straight forward. If it has a chance at lagging you at any point in time it gets turned off or to the lowest setting. I play BF2142 and even though my computer can handle the particle effects I turn them off just so i don't get that occasional glitch. In WoW if you get 40 people AoEing it brings most computers to their knees. So turning them down or off in a PvP setting where you fully expect to face 100+ people on screen is a good idea.
Animations- They look cool the first time but who really cares after the first time? In PvP I won't care if my hand waves counter clockwise or clockwise when casting or if my hand glows green instead of red or that 2 spells share the same animation. As long as I get a basic idea that I am casting a spell I am happy. In PvP I rarely look at what my casting animation is doing but rather where my enemies are and what they are doing.
In the end? Have a freaking imagination. You don't need the game to do everything for you as long as you see what you want in your head. How can NES games still be so fun even though their graphics suck? Because you have an imagination and can put 2 and 2 together to make a picture in your mind of whats happening.
Does AoC look better than WAR in graphics? Yes. Will it be able to handle the large battles? No, not a chance. In the end thats what matters.
What can i say Fion...
Good that there are companies that think Graphic > Gameplay.
There is another AAA MMO (AOC) around the corner that sacrificed a lot for cutting edge graphic.
Time will show which company was wiser
It will be no contest on what MMO does better. More people can play WAR decently=more subs it s that simple. I honestly never understood why people get so worked up over graphics. I agree really bad graphics isn t great but saying WAR s are bad is odd to me. Its a fantasy world not Real Life why such a big deal? Besides i would rather play a game with friends that can t afford a super new comp.