Demo Graphics Downgrade

bloodful You need only watch estebant's linked video on the previous page, Development Update 7. When procedural generation kicks in for the game, that pretty much takes care of it. We have no reason to believe that won't be used still.

Procedural generation is already being used. It's done on the development side and then hard baked into the release. You will not see things change as if it's random generation during run time. In the podcast I spoke with Mana about it she confirmed this.

 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.

Angel-Corlux thank you for the answer!

To summarize it then, an observation gets made, previous videos and screen shots get referenced, people show how the demo can look like those with post processing, doubts arise about the game on release, Angel-Corlux saves the day at the bottom of page 9.

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.

Ori is in a whole different league with its graphics. Graphics aren't everything though. For the experience I expect delivered I think what we see in the demo is fine, but I just wish it looked as good as the old shots. As far as what sells, a good game sells and it's not all about eye candy, though it certainly helps. In Bloodstained's case, a balance has to be met between cost, time and how it looks. We can't push this to 2020. It's gotta run well on Vita too. Ori doesn't.

I'm well aware of that, it was never possible for Bloodstained to look like that, but it's still direct competitor and people will inevitably compare the two. Just like they compare every game to Witcher 3. Noone but developers will care that game has to run on Vita.

And honestly, no, not every good game sells.There are LOT more factors to that but that's entirely different topic. Graphics like you said aren't everything but they are first thing anyone sees and as such are very important, especially trailers (There's reason why publishers spend disgusting money on Cinematic trailers)

I never expected some mindblowing graphics and aesthetics, but I did expect it to look nice, cozy and pleasing to the eye. This demo unfortunately doesn't deliver on that.

Couldn't have said it better myself, really.

All kidding aside, we should judge Bloodstained's graphics at least by its older standards without comparing it to other games. If you have feeback about the graphics, make it count. Be specific and use screen shots if possible.

Comparing Bloodstained to other games isn't going to be useful feedback other than saying this game doesn't match up to current market standards. That's not going to be that useful.