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Post by dareka on Jul 5, 2018 12:04:12 GMT -6
purifyweirdshard You probably know of George Kamitani, right? The founder of Vanillaware (Dragon's Crown, Odinsphere). Besides being the creators of some of the best 2D artwork in games, one of the things Kamitani does is force you to do things in a more direct way, even when using a menu would be simpler, because it's more memorable. So, in Odinsphere, you need to control a little girl, having her go over to a book and open it to load a file. It could be done with just a menu button, but they make you do it that way. Same for the cooking in Dragon's Crown. I just mention it because I was reminded of it by what you say in this thread. Personally, I think it'd be great if Miriam did actually eat her items... and for instance, if she looked tired or hurt if you open the menu when your HP's low (when the screen starts blinking red), and then got her "genki" back by eating. It probably won't happen, though, for the same reason that, to this day, FFXIV has characters just make a motion with their hands when exchanging items: it would require creating a distinct animation for each item you eat. It's a shame, but I doubt they have time or budget for that.
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Post by dareka on Jul 5, 2018 9:55:58 GMT -6
I didn't stream it actually, just recorded my first run for youtube. I don't play anything often enough to run a stream really. Anyways dareka and others, I was talking with fatihG last night (guy who has done a lot of modding/digging for the game) about the Miriam resolution thing, and he's informed me it's probably a feature called mipmapping being used. The character model is always the same, but the engine recalculates the amount of texels (texture pixels) rendered on screen pixels depending on how far away the character is - meaning the farther Miriam is away, the more aggressive the effect is. We/I believe that if they only adjust the bias of the effect a bit, she would look "high res" in the dialogue screens like she does in scenes, and same for the other characters afaik. Fatihg thought that it wouldn't be a huge tax on performance in doing that and I hope he's right. I imagine this will be part of what Angel-Corlux comes back to tell us. So I think that's good news, too. We're essentially seeing the effects of an engine setting. It seems to me odd that it would be because of a lack mip-mapping, but if he's done digging, then maybe he's found just one model and texture... in which case texture filtering (such as improving the mip-mapping), would definitely help, but as you say, it is not very taxing on performance (not nowadays, anyway) - so it's odd that they wouldn't have made it better to begin with, but maybe they're leaving it for the very end. All you have to do is tell the API to increase the number of mip-map levels, like changing a 2 to a 4... so it seems odd, but who knows... EDIT: I'd like to note that increasing the mip-map levels is, essentially, adding additional, higher resolution textures. What mip-mapping does is basically create a really small texture from the original, and then lots lots of little textures of varying resolutions in between, which is know as a mip-map. So when deciding what a texel looks like, depending on how close the character is to the camera, you average the value of the closest textures in your mip-map. All game systems since the Nintendo 64 have made use of it, so much so that it's practically a given for all 3D games. Normally you don't notice it's artifacts, but in this case, the levels may be way too low.
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Post by dareka on Jul 3, 2018 17:26:48 GMT -6
For the third time... please get this topic back on track. Thanks. Alright, Mike, no problem. For the record, though, what I believe you're referring to as the first time, didn't seem like a direct instruction to avoid mentioning other games, and the second time was posted while I was writing my own message. To me, there was no warning at all, especially since you yourself commented on other games.
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Post by dareka on Jul 3, 2018 16:03:46 GMT -6
...Also for the record, I don't like MN9 as a whipping boy. Aye. Quality of the game aside, I can't help but feel like Mighty No. 9 is becoming the new Dark Souls in terms of games that uncreative people compare everything to because their reference pool is too small. That may be; but in the case of Bloostained, though, there are several similarities which will inevitably cause comparisons to MN9, I think. 1. High-profile Japanese developer leaves company that abandoned franchise to create spiritual successor. 2. Breaks Kickstarter records, vastly exceeding it's funding goals. 3. Exceeding funding goals causes a sudden bloat of feature set as stretch goals. 4. Is promised for multiple platforms of varying hardware capabilities. 5. Is delayed over a year. 7. Ben Judd is involved. 8. Inti Creates is/was involved. Key differences so far 1. High-profile Japanese developer is nicest-man-on-earth, as opposed to a conceited a**h*le. 2. Biggest delay and developer switch were communicated to backers in a timely, adequate fashion. 3. Save for a few missteps (*cough* delaying the demo the day it was supposed to launch, *cough*) communication has been mostly on-point. 4. Gameplay has been very well received so far. Some people might add "disappointing graphics" to the things they have in common, but I'll personally reserve my judgement until I see the finished product. While it's certainly not pushing modern GPU hardware, if it looks like updates 7 to 10, I'd say it's pretty good looking, actually. All it needs is a higher-poly/texture resolution Miriam model for the PC/PS4/Xbox One versions, and we're good.
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Post by dareka on Jul 3, 2018 14:56:26 GMT -6
So when I mentioned that there was nothing to worry about, my opinion gets pretty much pushed to the curb, but others state the exact same thing, and it's suddenly okay lol A closer look at the situation calmed (some of us) down. Sorry!
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Post by dareka on Jul 3, 2018 12:12:39 GMT -6
Ok low texture resolution and shadow is just temporary realy ok what is that is 4K bug angle ? -_- ho and im say nothing for effect of water on the boat (the rock have a onyx ? drop pickaxe on the monster and post processing of modelization ) If it's been there in the previous builds and it's not here now, then yes, it's probably just temporary. I doesn't seem like any real-time effects have been cut. I thought they had, at first, and that's why I was worried. But then I realized I was wrong: only texture resolution/detail and maybe some alpha effects for the lighting are gone. No reason they would invest so much into the textures for the previous builds and then just drop them for this one, other than they're still working on optimizing how they'll be managed and what they'll look like for the final build. Expect differences according to the platform, but I think what we're seeing here is the bare minimum quality. They'll only get better.
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Post by dareka on Jul 2, 2018 22:47:58 GMT -6
As much as I like the idea of "modders, do your thing", I would still largely prefer the game to come out better polished rather than making modders have to go back and do the work for them. Especially since console users won't have the opportunity to take advantage of that. If it's the design choice of the textures and not the actual resolution/quality of them, then there really shouldn't be much difference in regards to performance, right? Well, I can't very well answer here without first thanking Angel-Corlux for going through the thread and giving us an update. I'm a lot less concerned now that I'm satisfied that know more or less where the differences are, technically, between the different versions, but, it's always great to known when the team is looking into our concerns. lovelydumpling So, I've been playing the game and going over the videos, and I think there's no better comparison than the village update with the procedurally generated textures present. It's crazy more detailed than the one in the demo. The carts are a really good example. Where the demo has basically a generic-found-this-on-the-internet look for the textures, with no lighting effects or shading of any kind, really, the one in the update is really, really detailed, with lighting, wear and tear, and just an overall look of actual wood. So procedurally generated textures are a fancy term for letting the computer make random variations on it based on a set pattern. If these textures are generated in real time, so to speak, uhm, yeah, it's a real hit on performance (and that's probably putting it lightly). If, however, they're "baked" (i.e, not generated in real time - you just save the procedurally generated asset into a texture file) then yes, it's not necessarily a hit on performance. I say not necessarily because things like the volume of textures that need to be loaded probably increases (since you have all these variations, instead of just one or two patterns that are repeated over and over), and some hardware might have to take a hit in texture resolution (lower res in order to fit more textures in memory). Expect this to be the case in the Vita version, and to some extent in the Switch version, maybe. Also, textures are sometimes used to send information for post-processing to the GPU. So, if everything is baked into the texture and the GPU doesn't need to process them, then there's zero hit on performance; if, on the other hand, they're being used for some form of lighting, then there technically could be a hit on performance. So it really depends on how much information is baked into the texture and how much post processing is being done with them. As far as I can tell, there's very little post processing being done in the game. So yeah, very little hit on performance - in theory. The thing is, though, if the textures are too detailed, too high-res, and too many, some console hardware won't be able to fit them in their RAM, and some GPUs might have trouble keeping up with the rendering (they need to keep them in their own RAM, for one). So what we got in the demo is probably a lot lighter on a GPU than what can be seen in the videos with procedurally generated textures (those are probably higher-res, to contain more detail), and maybe a bit lighter than what you see in the 2017 Zangetsu fight. In this sort of situation, the first thing you'd cut is the real-time shadow maps - or at least lower their resolution. This is probably the most computationally expensive thing in the demo. But there's no option to do that, is there? There are no graphical settings to speak of. So that might be the reason they decided to just leave the base textures, the plainest textures, and offer everyone a uniform experience. At this point I'd wager it was not an artistic choice. It was more likely a "we're still working on the graphics settings and updating the system, got no time to put non-optimized textures in the demo, oh, hell just kill them on the town and castle sections" thing. Making a playable demo in mid-development is a lot more taxing on the dev team than people imagine. You have to splice out things that are not meant to be spliced for the final version. Sometimes, things that are a lock for the final version have to be cut from the demo for whatever reason, and that might include graphical effects.
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Post by dareka on Jul 2, 2018 19:19:37 GMT -6
Another character could replace them at their stores, though. And I don't know if Anne's actually the last boss, but she's definitely the creepiest thing in that demo, lol. You can thank her English VA for that, who tried to sound like a child, but ended up sounding like an old lady. It's worth noting that her Japanese voice is pretty fitting for a child. It's what you would hear out of a loli character in anime. Mind if I ask how'd you get to listen to the Japanese voice? Is there a link to a video or something? For me, it's also the cross-eyed look that's creepy about Anne, though.
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Post by dareka on Jul 2, 2018 17:38:37 GMT -6
Both Johannes and Dominique play important roles as NPCs, from a practical perspective it wouldn't make sense to do a twist making one the villain. However, there probably will be some sort of twist that casts one or both of them in a different light. Another character could replace them at their stores, though. And I don't know if Anne's actually the last boss, but she's definitely the creepiest thing in that demo, lol.
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Post by dareka on Jul 2, 2018 17:29:20 GMT -6
My thoughts exactly, (though I'd appreciate some refinements to the gameplay model as well - brighter colors and higher res textures or better anti-aliasing). Yeah, absolutely. If that's all taken care of, the extent of my graphical concerns have been satisfied. My assumption is the demo's lighting isn't final (or even present) and the textures are something I didn't even notice until I leaned forward to check the jpgs here. If those are changed/improved, that's great, but for the most part I'm satisfied. The cannon thing I agree with though, and some parts of the village area are rough (ground textures and two trees being placed identically next to each other). Procedural generation will fix a good bit of that though. A final note that came up earlier in Discord too, the village as seen in Dev update 8 has much better looking colors imo. I don't think the rocky floor is there anymore either? The thing is, I believe the lighting was also done with high-res textures... I was fooled by it at first too, but when I kept looking at the trailer for the Zangetsu fight (the pretty one), I noticed the lighting, though pretty, was completely static. There's no reason why this won't be a high res texture overlayed over the other textures. So many objects that look 3D are also actually 2D billboards with textures of pre-rendered pasted on top, which they can get away with convincingly because of the 2D nature of the scrolling. ... I dunno, at this point I'm just getting the feeling they haven't gotten around to baking in the textures used in the procedural generation process, and that those textures are the ones that are missing... I mean, look at the carts in that video. Then look at the ones in the game. It's basically the same geometry but a vastly different texture. What appears to be lighting on the cartwheels is also fudged with textures. So we might end up worrying for nothing. Why would they not just say so if that were the case? Well, I dunno, but it's possible it's just an oversight. Yes, I know, to us it seems like too big a deal to be an oversight, but game devs, especially in Japan, are generally not PR wizards - and that's being generous. At any rate, there's only one obstacle to going back to the pretty textures - which seems to me to be the only element downgraded, actually, even though its effects are huge - and that's whether or not they made those texture assets, at that quality, for all of the rooms in the castle or not. If they did (and I'd find it odd if they didn't considering how much they already invested on procedurally generated assets), then the final release will look like the previews or better. If they didn't...modders, do your thing.
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Post by dareka on Jul 2, 2018 15:25:25 GMT -6
Thanks, that is just what I had suspected, in-game Miriam being down-res'd for gameplay. If it's not possible to keep her high-res at all times (which may be borderline unnecessary - especially in portable platform cases), having her at least so in menus and dialogue would be a big improvement for me. My thoughts exactly, (though I'd appreciate some refinements to the gameplay model as well - brighter colors and higher res textures or better anti-aliasing).
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Post by dareka on Jul 2, 2018 14:25:15 GMT -6
Well hold on a second here. That thumbnail...yeah, if you go to the scene at the very end of this, post-Vepar where she's posing, that's very close to the old character model, just the face is different (and of course the cyan outline is gone). Far as I can tell. In-menu, dialogue scenes and gameplay it seems to be different. Hm. Unless I'm crazy. dareka what do you make of it? It at least seems closer/close enough that I don't mind In regards to BloodyHell's points, which I just finished going through, I'd agree for some and not others. I think that glossy look is great for the ship's pillar on the interior because it gives a greater sense of depth/volume to it than what the 2016 demo showed. It makes enough sense to me that it could be damp in there anyway. I think the garden comparison shot near where you first walk in looks better now than it did before. Well, I'm not willing to say anything definitively by looking at two videos (versus actual gameplay), BUT, here's what seems to be going on, to me. 1. Other than the blue fresnel shading, the main difference between the two models (E3 2016, E3 2018) seems to be coloring of the frills (pink vs black/grey). 2. The original model for Miriam - the one that was used to showcase the shader - used some additional, different colored lighting, and also, it seems, higher resolution textures, at least for details such as the frills. So it would appear that texture resolution had dropped for the in-game model, which is the same model that appears in the menu, by E3 2016. 3. The model in the cut-scenes, however, has higher resolution textures than the in-game model. This applies to both E3 2016 and E3 2018 versions. Conclusion: The in-game model has always been the same one used in the menu screens, and is not as good as the original model for the shader voting. However, this contrast stood out as a result of using this model for the dialogues in the 2018 version, because you zoom in closer on it. Lower resolution textures tend to become noticeable as you zoom in, obviously. The models used for the cut-scenes (as opposed to dialogues) has always been higher-res, and very close to the original used for the shader voting. So it's not a change between 2016 and 2018, it's a change between cut-scene model and in-game model, and the fact that the latter is a downgrade became noticeable when they used it for dialogues for the first time. So lovelydumpling , it's not that it's gone per se, it's that it's always been cut-scene model, not an in-game model. Fortunately, if the model's already in there, it should be easy to implement for gameplay, or a the very least the dialogues and the menus. Since items equiped are reflected in cut-scenes, it's probably the same except with higher resolution textures. And if the devs don't do it, this is probably the sort of things modders can do on day one.
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Post by dareka on Jul 2, 2018 1:11:23 GMT -6
2D billboards? Like in Resident Evil? A "billboard" is a technical term for a transparent square put on screen just so you can present a texture. +-----------+ | put | | picture | ← transparent polygon (square, made up of two triangles). | here | +-----------+ The picture could be of a 3D image, giving the illusion that a 3D object is there, when it is not! Works well when you don't move the camera much.
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Post by dareka on Jul 1, 2018 21:41:27 GMT -6
After playing the backer demo, i get some bad vibes concerning Johannes' role. When confronting Alfred, it is clear the "Book of Logaeth" is a must have for any alchemist still alive. Let's imagine Johannes is interested in the book, he would need a cunning plan to get it (like obliterating his guild and his mentor since they would never let go of something that precious). After all, it's a coincidence that the only two shardbearers remaining are his "friends" : one who destroyed the Alchemist guild and got out of control, and the other one who mysteriously wakes up 10 years later, like a backup plan to clean the mess if anything had gone wrong... I guess i might be paranoid. I've actually always pegged him for last boss. He's as unassuming as they come, and too closely related to the two main characters not to play a pivotal role. Going by past Igavanias, we pretty much know Gebel's not going to be the real last boss. Alfred's too obvious a candidate, so that leaves Johannes and ... Dominique as my second choice ( because there's never been a Japanese game where the Church has not been up to no good). My money's on Alfred replacing Johannes at the alchemist shop when the time comes.
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Post by dareka on Jul 1, 2018 20:59:52 GMT -6
7. The story trailer is the exact same build as the demo. I was wrong in my analysis. They just picked nicer camera angles/locations. But it's the same as the demo. No doubt now. You might want to have a little bit of doubt. We already know for sure it's not the same build because the gold plating isn't on the stairs in the trailer but is in the demo. Story Trailer
Demo 2018
Story Trailer
Demo 2018 asks "What even are shadows?"
The differences are smaller compared to the 2017 build but certainly there.
Alright then, a build previous build. But those shadows are, again, probably just textures that were altered/removed. It could be just them wanting to make it brighter, but that's it. Between the story trailer and the demo, I'd call it a change in art direction rather than a downgrade, albeit a bad one.
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Post by dareka on Jul 1, 2018 19:13:28 GMT -6
dareka freddythemonkey Even if they wanted to lower the graphics to get feedback from more people for the demo, it wouldn't explain the odd transitional middle child that is the Story Trailer, looking worse than the 2017 demo and better than the 2018 demo. That could be explained by them simply splicing captures from different builds, or from builds with settings that are forcibly turned off in the demo, turned on for the capture. EDIT: I just looked over the story trailer again. In seconds 17 - 19, the castle clearly looks like the 2017 protoype, while in seconds 30 - 32 and 36 - 37, it clearly looks like the demo. We're back to 2017 prototype for 49 - 51, and then with something in the middle of the two (demo quality, but different lighting) for second 52. The fight with Zangetsu is then like the demo. I also noticed that the model in the cutscene when she fights Vepar (at least in the trailer), is clearly of higher quality than the one for the conversations - much closer to the earlier version, just with a few differences in shading. My guess: the dialogues/conversations that take place outside some of the cut-scenes (and also the Zangetsu one) are using the gameplay models, while the cut-scene with Gebel and Vepar is using the high-end model. The more I think about it, the more I look at it, the more I think they just disabled tons of graphic flourishes from the castle for some reason... it gives me hope that they'll add an option to enable them for the final PC release. Scratch what I said about the demo - and just about everything else I've said up to this point. I played the game for an hour, going over every area, and looking at the Zangetsu fight videos and others.... and I have some important news... I should have done this from the start, instead of relying just on the videos. 1. The game is made mostly of static 2D "billboards" (flat squares on which you hang a bitmap image). What looks like specular lighting and ambient occlusion is just bitmaps baked into the textures. 2. There doesn't seem to be a downgrade in the geometry of the maps - just a downgrade in the variety, detail, and perhaps resolution of the textures. 3. There was no global illumination in the Zangetsu fight - they just fudged it really well with the textures. And those textures were changed/removed for the demo. All the "lighting" is being done with semi-transparent and non-transparent textures. 4. Miriam's model is definitely downgraded from the original prototype shown. That said, it shouldn't be much trouble to implement the older, more detailed model for those that have a PC that can run it. 5. The boat looks better because there are actually more flat "billboards" than in the castle. Also, they're cycling a semitransparent texture over a texture with specular lighting baked in to simulate wetness, and these things draw a lot of attention. The rest is just art direction. The castle has a lot of geometry in the background, and the textures that had apparently been baked into previous versions of that same geometry to give it more detail/the illusion of lighting are what's missing. That's it - that, and a downgrade in the texture quality of the columns billboards in the hall. That's all it took to make it look worse, precisely because the castle has a lot more geometry than the boat. The reason beats me, but in any case, it's something that out to be easily remedied. 6. The quality of the textures in general has always been perhaps lower than what a youtube video allows us to see. Video compression = anti-aliasing, like it or not. 7. The story trailer is the exact same build as the demo. I was wrong in my analysis. They just picked nicer camera angles/locations. But it's the same as the demo. No doubt now. So, basically, textures and maybe youtube video resolution are all that's at work here, guys. That's it. Some tweaks in the art direction and the devs adding the nicer textures for the final build will fix it. They've surely gotten the message by now. Now we just wait for Question and Angel-Corlux 's answers, but let's not get too pissy if we don't like what those answers are. Everyone's surely doing their best - it's just communication.
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Post by dareka on Jul 1, 2018 17:04:20 GMT -6
dareka freddythemonkey Even if they wanted to lower the graphics to get feedback from more people for the demo, it wouldn't explain the odd transitional middle child that is the Story Trailer, looking worse than the 2017 demo and better than the 2018 demo. That could be explained by them simply splicing captures from different builds, or from builds with settings that are forcibly turned off in the demo, turned on for the capture. EDIT: I just looked over the story trailer again. In seconds 17 - 19, the castle clearly looks like the 2017 protoype, while in seconds 30 - 32 and 36 - 37, it clearly looks like the demo. We're back to 2017 prototype for 49 - 51, and then with something in the middle of the two (demo quality, but different lighting) for second 52. The fight with Zangetsu is then like the demo. I also noticed that the model in the cutscene when she fights Vepar (at least in the trailer), is clearly of higher quality than the one for the conversations - much closer to the earlier version, just with a few differences in shading. My guess: the dialogues/conversations that take place outside some of the cut-scenes (and also the Zangetsu one) are using the gameplay models, while the cut-scene with Gebel and Vepar is using the high-end model. The more I think about it, the more I look at it, the more I think they just disabled tons of graphic flourishes from the castle for some reason... it gives me hope that they'll add an option to enable them for the final PC release.
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Post by dareka on Jul 1, 2018 15:25:45 GMT -6
May just be from the early state of things, but we haven't gotten a response, yet, weekend and holiday coming up. I had noted, a few days ago, about the rain seeming a bit too 'slimy' and doesn't look natural. That mockup that BloodyHell did for it seems to work a bit better for the theme. This really does seem like it's a downgrade, currently, but it really is entirely possible that all assets haven't been added in/activated just yet(that being said, I really am not a fan of the changes to the floor, lighting and how the banners are now just a plain red, with dark red, rather than that detailed 2017 image). I'd say we should wait for an official response as to what is going on and then decide if we have something akin to Colonial Marines' graphical fidelity at hand or not. That being said, I'm as concerned about this as everyone else, this is surely not going to win favors, especially right during the whole keyboard situation that seems ongoing. What I'm personally hoping is that they just went with their lower-end character assets and turned off the effects and textures that would make it look like it did in the 2017 prototype: normal and/or displacement maps, global illumination, ambient occlusion and specular highlighting for the castle. Global illumination and ambient occlusion in particular would make a big difference, but there's no way they would be featured in the Vita version (or even the Switch version, really). So I'm hoping it was a case of "we need this to run on the lowest common denominator PC, so that we get feedback on the gameplay, and not that someone can't play it because it's too taxing on the hardware." But we definitely need to open a channel of communication with the dev team, here. It'd give it a few more days, though, since you might need to have a meeting with people on both sides of the Pacific, in different time-zones to deal with this, and that can take time, especially during development crunch.
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Post by dareka on Jul 1, 2018 10:42:46 GMT -6
But the general sense that is being conveyed in this thread is anger, disappointment and loss, even though I expect several of the people here did not have such a negative reaction when just playing, free of comparisons. E.g. this: As I said I'm generally pleased, bu there are some places in the demo that I absolutely feel does not look good. But I think rather than demanding explanations for general downgrades, it would be more constructive to talk about what specific things are not working for you. Work with what we've got, so to speak. I know many of you are already doing it, so kudos to you. Giving examples of places that you DO think look good is also helpful for knowing what to shoot for.
Because when the comparison game is not to say, e.g. : "This room would look better if it was darker/had more color", but instead devolving more into a general sentiment of "I wish things were different", it doesn't really help anyone.
I know personally that development is hard. There are always reasons for what happens. They might be good reasons or they might be bad, but regardless, hard decisions may have to be made, and it is almost always close to impossible to go back. I think that essentially demanding the devs to answer for a perceived betrayal will only make things sour for everyone, them and us.
I don't know if I managed to say that as eloquently as I had hoped, but I think it is important to not focus only on the bad. Then the message that comes across would be "everything is bad", and that kind of feedback is hard to work with. I appreciate your feedback on the feedback. It's true that emotions run high and there's a sense of betrayal, but I, personally, don't have any issues with asking for an explanation for a general downgrade, because it happened, and there was no explanation. Kickstarters are different than regular game development. You provide updates, you communicate with the backers - the people who are partially funding development - and when you show something in an update, and it's downgraded (the word is appropriate, I think) in the build you receive, I think, as backers, we should be told why. I mean, they made these forums official to communicate with fans and backers; they added Discord to communicate with fans and backers; the devs need to know that this is the kind of thing we would like to communicate about. Now, the feeling one might get from reading this thread is " everything is bad"; but if you look at individual posts, while some merely express dismay (something which is natural), many posts talk about what is wrong. There can me no more specific feedback than a screenshot comparison, and this thread is full of them. So, I don't believe that this is feedback that is hard to work with; it may be uncomfortable to look at the situation, but it's not hard to work with. I don't believe we ever had a " I wish things were different"; it's " I wish things looked like this specific previous build of the game." The devs can't get more specific feedback than that. Well, all of this is just my personal opinion, of course. My belief is that it might make things a bit sour in the short-term, but it might also make them less so in the long-term. If devs don't know people are upset, they won't respond, won't take it into account in their approach to communication (both internal and external) and that can't be good for anyone.
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Post by dareka on Jun 30, 2018 21:14:57 GMT -6
I don't think we disagree at all, it's mostly a misunderstanding in words. I was not suggesting your points would be invalid, but rather how the dev team could improve the demo. For example, I suggested a model swap for cutscenes and the in-game menu because it's simple to do and they already have the more detailed model from the previous demo. Setting up tessellation isn't as simple on a character model, and I'm not sure this dev team has the skill to do so properly, but sure that's an option.
I think you assumed I was making some excuse for the dev team having lower resolution textures? My point was there's no reason they shouldn't provide higher resolution textures than what was in this demo. If my integrated graphics card can run this game at 60 FPS, they can definitely provide some better textures for this game. Many textures were noticeably muddy.
There's a lot of detailed lighting aspects you've mentioned in your previous post, but I am referring to the overall color and design of the the lighting in the scene. The shadows are all in the same spots, with mostly the color and shadow contrast altered for the overall look of the scene. I don't think them changing the overall lighting color and design back to the 2016 render is going to be a technical hurdle. What you've mentioned are specific lighting effects that help draw out detail when staring closely at a scene, such as ambient occlusion. This is not what I'm referring to when saying the game lighting can look like the 2016 screenshot, I'm referring to the color and contrast which is what you'll see in a thumbnail image. I'm glad we cleared that up, them. I guess we do agree after all! I can't believe the official team/staff haven't addressed this yet. Well, to us it's incredibly frustrating, but I'm not really surprised they haven't said anything yet... it's just the speed at which things move. But anyway, if they're going to wait until the very end to bake the procedural effects into the game, that takes care of one mystery. Makes sense, in a way: probably won't put in as much detail in the lower-spec-ed platforms... So, the question that lingers is ... are the graphics supposed to be final or near final, and were they compromised for the low-end platforms? Or did we get the low-end of versions of higher-end assets just for the demo, so that it runs well on low-spec PCs and/or because they haven't implemented graphics setting toggles yet? I wonder if the bugs found at E3 have anything to do with this. Theoretically possible, but highly unlikely. Also, the game looked like this in the E3 build. There was just very little footage, so we hadn't noticed.
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