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Hello map making community. I love the work you guys do and think the maps generated here are fantastic. I check all and regularly post encouraging things if I can. The support and advice that that is given to people on these pages is admirable.
To my point. Dark maps in the ZvZ matchup where players select dark in game colours can make it and extremely unpleasant viewing experience.
Prime candidate in the current map pool is dusk towers. When a ZvZ is being played on this map and their is lots of dark creep on a very dark background set against the black sky is just not very nice to watch in my opinion. What, as the talented map making community do you guys think about this? Are their easy ways to get around these issues? Do you even consider this to be a viewing experience issue?
Just hoping to create a bit of debate, get your thoughts and hopefully, get Blizzard to use some of the better maps that regularly feature on these pages but don't make the map pool.
Keep up the good work y'all!!!
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United States43 Posts
good point, i like snowy maps the most, so bright and easy to see everything that's happening.
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"Black Sky" isn't something we can fix if you're regarding the black boundaries. Else, Dusk Tower's "sky" is a green fog, so I'm not sure what you mean. Possibly the lighting?
Here's the current lighting vs a slightly brighter "day" lighting preset:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/MCiNVhu.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/041C8OE.jpg)
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On March 14 2016 10:18 maximus_0 wrote:
good point, i like snowy maps the most, so bright and easy to see everything that's happening.
Snow maps are also harder on the eyes, though not nearly as bad as BW snow maps.
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Russian Federation4295 Posts
On March 14 2016 12:06 ZigguratOfUr wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2016 10:18 maximus_0 wrote:
good point, i like snowy maps the most, so bright and easy to see everything that's happening. Snow maps are also harder on the eyes, though not nearly as bad as BW snow maps.
Depends on lighting and averall brightness. Polar Night and yeonsu were great
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Dark maps should be disallowed tbh, so depressive
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On March 14 2016 11:07 Avexyli wrote:
Else, Dusk Tower's "sky" is a green fog, so I'm not sure what you mean. Possibly the lighting?
My mistake, I meant to refer to the black background on Orbital Shipyard, granted that map isn't as dark as Dusk Towers but in ZvZ when the map can become full of creep I just think it looks very dark all over. And regarding changing setting, I was primarily referring to the viewing experience. Such as watching competitive games on streams or vod's on Youtube. Quality is of course less than it is in game thus exacerbating the problem in my opinion.
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On March 14 2016 10:18 maximus_0 wrote:
good point, i like snowy maps the most, so bright and easy to see everything that's happening.
Agree, my personal favorite map to watch games on was The King Sejong Station. Such a fantastic map, well balanced, made for some great games, could be long games or short games and aesthetic was gorgeous.
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
Else, Dusk Tower's "sky" is a green fog, so I'm not sure what you mean. Possibly the lighting?
There is a lighting issue that affects a lot of maps - some of the ladder maps, most of the campaign stuff. Instead of having colors go from 0-255, they actually go from like 20-230 so the darkest color available is a light grey, usually tinted one color.
seems to be a map editor setting, because some maps run normally and others have that problem. If you know the setting, could you post comparison screenshots (with fog of war, of possible) between the live ladder map version and a "fixed" 0-255 version?
Neither of your screenshots seem to really show the issue. I'l take a screenshot ingame of what the map actually looks like.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/hGZVQxl.png)
The colors of everything dark on the map is squished. The blackest black is 14, 15, 23 - a blue tinted grey - and this also extends to the UI for some reason. On other maps, this is 0,0,0 as it's supposed to be.
-----
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/nzIkLCq.png)
I made another picture, cut out a bit of the solid color and replaced it with black like it is on a bunch of maps and all of the pre-LOTV maps, to show the amount that the color has changed.
it seems obvious now that this might have been done with some artistic intent - but the end result is completely awful IMO. AT THE VERY LEAST it should be toggleable back to normal.
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On March 15 2016 07:50 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +Else, Dusk Tower's "sky" is a green fog, so I'm not sure what you mean. Possibly the lighting? There is a lighting issue that affects a lot of maps - some of the ladder maps, most of the campaign stuff. Instead of having colors go from 0-255, they actually go from like 30-220 so the darkest color available is a light grey, usually tinted one color. seems to be a map editor setting, because some maps run normally and others have that problem. If you know the setting, could you post comparison screenshots (with fog of war, of possible) between the live ladder map version and a "fixed" 0-255 version? Neither of your screenshots seem to really show the issue. I'l take a screenshot ingame of what the map actually looks like.
I also have a really nice monitor with great color clarity and higher brightness settings, so I might straight up not be able to tell, even when I'm designing maps. I found that my Starbow map Aiur Heights is apparently really dark for many players (especially on low settings)
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
Having a better & more accurately calibrated monitor makes it look worse, it looks shit compared to everything that's actually correct. Nuked contrast, especially in dark areas & fog of war.
It's not just an eye sore (i use vision correction for myopia & astigmatism, i don't usually have it on for sc2 and these maps in particular can trigger headaches from eye strain) but it also makes the game harder to watch and play for everyone as OP has said.
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ust saw your edit. I'm a little confused now, if the map is dark why should we be making colors that "should" be black, closer to actual black, which is darker? Am I missing the point? Also I think I know what the issue is attached to.
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
The darkest color available should be black
I'm a little confused now, if the map is dark why should we be making colors that "should" be black, closer to actual black, which is darker?
The problem right now is that stuff that should be blacker is being made lighter. As a result, more stuff is stuffed into a narrower range of color than it's supposed to be. Dark stuff is being made lighter but light stuff can't be made darker.
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But wouldn't that make the map darker? I thought the issue is that maps are too dark. Did I completely misread the thread and/or misinterpret it?
Edit: OH. I see what you're saying now. So the problem is more that the color variety is lessened due to the overall tint, which is the actual problem, rather than the map being "dark".
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
That's just confusing wording. The issue is that a lot of stuff is a similar color that's pretty dark. As a result of it being a similar color, you can't see as well. If you make the areas that are supposed to be dark darker - and leave the light ones lighter - then there is more difference between the colors and you can see well.
I'l try to demonstrate this.
Ok here you go. The first pic here is set to 0-255 viewing a youtube video. The second one is crushed to 16-235 by changing a video playback setting in graphics driver. That's not as bad as what sc2 is doing on some maps (crushing more, sometimes a lot more and also tinting to one color)
http://i.imgur.com/fUwt4YE.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Ll9NcZ2.jpg
open both and flick between the pics - you should be able to see a significant difference. It's nowhere near as bad as on Dusk Towers, but i don't know how to get a "fixed" picture of dusk towers to compare with.
Edit: OH. I see what you're saying now. So the problem is more that the color variety is lessened due to the overall tint, which is the actual problem, rather than the map being "dark".
Yes, that's the main issue. Not just the tint, but the blacks being lightened up to all being the same grey shade.
Being dark overall is a secondary issue - I have the strong feeling that if the color issue was fixed, the map would be fine at its current brightness or just slightly tweaked.
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Agreed with Cyro. Some maps, for some reason, just have the limited colour range whereby the darkest colour (which should of course be black) isn't black and ends up being a tinted greyish colour.
It's very obvious. The botto panel of the UI should be black, as it always has been throughout SC2 history. You can clealry see in the above pics that it isn't black at all.
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Oh, okay. I got you now fam.
So, this is the live version of DT right;
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/BBdxdC4.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ayM0FZ5.png)
Overall a blue-y tint masking over the entire terrain, including the tinting of doodads such as the fallen building to the far left. The important part will be seen in the next picture. But as we can see here in the lighting module; there is a slight variation in Saturation and Hue that change it to have a blue sheen (as many of the Void tilesets use) as well as the Filmic Tone Mapping method, which brightens the map slightly (and I think it does a bunch of stuff under the hood, I can't see the results).
Now, toning that down to zero, we start to see this result:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/hhIG50B.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/NLgv5Bf.png)
It's much more grey, and some of the textures are now obviously different color schemes (look at the hex tiles at the bottom right). For me, the issue here is that it looks like the Immortal Forge tileset with some shakuras city doodads scattered about, because it basically is. The same cliffs are being used, the tiny hex tiles are a more updated version of an older texture, the tone of green, etc. And to look at the fallen building I mentioned earlier, you can see how starkly it stands out with the doodads nearby and textures below it.
So I think it's totally intentional that some of these light sets are narrowing the color range, and it seems a large amount of the light sets in general do this to capture a theme. Shakuras has always been blueish/purple in their color range, and rather than retexture a bunch of the tiles used, a simple lighting change would do the same trick.
EDIT: I also recall Vaani Research Station having a horrible lighting problem when it first debuted, but I guess I never really notice too much. Why the UI is able to be affected by lighting is.. beyond me.
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
@Avexyli that looks exactly like the problem
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Interestingly enough you can even see it stream thumbnails:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/hF8zaQh.png)
Also, Orbital Shipyard is using a HOTS tileset - so it's a good comparison to use. (It also doesn't use the legacy creep as a side note).
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
Here's a before and after pic: What the map is actually supposed to look like vs what is actually looks like in-game.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3UPf6V3.png)
This is a huge problem right now. Playability & watchability is ruined IMO. One important thing to note is that the bottom pic includes fog of war, but that's part of the problem. Fog looks particularly bad on these messed up color maps - anything dark (like the UI and fog of war) looks particularly bad.
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Here's a better comparison:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/GalpAE5.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/CQ0L47x.jpg)
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
I'm not sure why but it seems to look substantially worse ingame than in your second pic there. Are you using max settings? I'm on competitive settings for visibility and performance.
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Yep, I make all my maps on the max settings.
I messed around a bit and turned contrast to 10 while touching no other settings, and it shows how weird black is:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/HukKM5B.jpg)
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
Can you look at comparison on med and/or low?
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Including Texture Quality?
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
Texture quality is probably not a big deal, i use max textures on med shaders to get this awful result.
Thanks for the help/discussion, i thought map editor for a while but it's not easy to dig around in stuff that you have no understanding of
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/eKjxKhL.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/GFLYmCJ.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/G31pO7f.jpg)
EDIT: Hmm, not much difference, might need to restart editor.
EDIT2: Nope, still no difference.
It could be that t he editor directly saves as .jpg and thus has loss. Here's some direct crops:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/B3iQCaX.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/bOMANhd.png)
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
It's still a large improvement but i'm not seeing the "holy fuck where is anything" that i get when i load the map myself like this pic: http://i.imgur.com/3UPf6V3.png
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Not sure, there are no lighting effects on Low settings, and it looks like this:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Ul14cW2.jpg)
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
It's fixed on low :D (good to know, but i don't want to be on low 24/7 when playing and it doesn't fix any casted games)
+ Show Spoiler +
Here's 3 ingame pics:
low
medium
extreme
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The only thing I see added on extreme is a bit of ambient occlusion along the ramp.
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
med vs extreme shader looks practically the same and both awful to me here. I checked with restart and it seems to be the same - everything over low shader has crushed colors & awful contrast in dark areas.
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/X8IyzN0.jpg)
Messed with some key lighting, turned colorization to 0 (as the darker pictures show), and it seems like the same effect of the live version could be completely by slightly brightening and hueing over the textures with blue.
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
That looks a thousand times better than anything i see now outside of low shaders!
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On March 15 2016 09:05 Avexyli wrote:Messed with some key lighting, turned colorization to 0 (as the darker pictures show), and it seems like the same effect of the live version could be completely by slightly brightening and hueing over the textures with blue.
Oh my god that looks so much better
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That looks a ton better now.
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Playing zerg on any dark map is nightmare. Hard to see creep hard to see burrowed mines lurks statis wards. LotV has been a step down on the map visual aspect
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Cheers for the feedback and discussion, I think we might be onto something in regards other people not liking very dark maps. Just imagine those screenshots with a load of creep all over them and watching it as a youtube video. Even worse...
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On March 16 2016 02:18 Hexe wrote:
Playing zerg on any dark map is nightmare. Hard to see creep hard to see burrowed mines lurks statis wards. LotV has been a step down on the map visual aspect
That's one of the reason I've been avoiding a lot of the LotV textures, many of them are busy and make mines and such too hard to see.
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So do I understand it correctly that this issue discussed here should be invisible to me, as I play on Low everything? I always considered SC2 quite dark, but I have just cranked up the gamma and it's generally fine.
The only exception for me is Central Protocol, which I have banned after one game. There is weird blending of creep which makes every place where I have creep really confusing with random bright and dark places, where I can't even see my units properly.
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You shouldn't see any lighting issues on Lowest settings, no.
The creep thing is because LotV uses a different normal.dds for creep than HotS does. You can see this when looking between maps like Orbital Shipyard and possibly Lerilak Crest, with any other Legacy map.
I talked about this here.
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On March 16 2016 10:07 Avexyli wrote:You shouldn't see any lighting issues on Lowest settings, no. The creep thing is because LotV uses a different normal.dds for creep than HotS does. You can see this when looking between maps like Orbital Shipyard and possibly Lerilak Crest, with any other Legacy map. I talked about this here.
I have problems seeing mines/burrowed on low. Lurker spines by themselves on white paint would be hard to spot where its coming from, let alone Fields of fucking Death.
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
Yeah, i tried playing on low after this discussion and went back after 2 games because i was throwing half of my stuff away into widow mines that were suddenly way harder to see
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Russian Federation4295 Posts
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
That's something that would help but it's a bit of a band-aid fix to the problem - it creates some other issues (not being able to see some other things as well, have to use certain graphics settings) and will not be used by casters. I'd like to call for this to be adressed on a higher level.
One of my friends also said that he uses those settings because of map lighting issues and variability
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On March 15 2016 07:50 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +Else, Dusk Tower's "sky" is a green fog, so I'm not sure what you mean. Possibly the lighting? There is a lighting issue that affects a lot of maps - some of the ladder maps, most of the campaign stuff. Instead of having colors go from 0-255, they actually go from like 20-230 so the darkest color available is a light grey, usually tinted one color. seems to be a map editor setting, because some maps run normally and others have that problem. If you know the setting, could you post comparison screenshots (with fog of war, of possible) between the live ladder map version and a "fixed" 0-255 version? Neither of your screenshots seem to really show the issue. I'l take a screenshot ingame of what the map actually looks like. The colors of everything dark on the map is squished. The blackest black is 14, 15, 23 - a blue tinted grey - and this also extends to the UI for some reason. On other maps, this is 0,0,0 as it's supposed to be. ----- I made another picture, cut out a bit of the solid color and replaced it with black like it is on a bunch of maps and all of the pre-LOTV maps, to show the amount that the color has changed. it seems obvious now that this might have been done with some artistic intent - but the end result is completely awful IMO. AT THE VERY LEAST it should be toggleable back to normal.
I noticed this color issue on release day when I started playing the campaign. I profile my display and use a colorimeter to calibrate led TVs ect, so this black level issue stood out immediately for me.
I'm bumping because I'm wondering if you found anymore info on a fix? Settings edit or something like that.
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Well the new map pool seems to be a bit brighter. Other than that, I doubt much will change. Even broadcasters can't really do much I assume. I don't play zerg myself but when watching a ZvZ of pro players sometimes it's still a bit of a nightmare on some maps and it certainly detracts from the actual gameplay at times, in my opinion anyways.
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
On March 29 2016 08:47 FoxShine wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2016 07:50 Cyro wrote:Else, Dusk Tower's "sky" is a green fog, so I'm not sure what you mean. Possibly the lighting? There is a lighting issue that affects a lot of maps - some of the ladder maps, most of the campaign stuff. Instead of having colors go from 0-255, they actually go from like 20-230 so the darkest color available is a light grey, usually tinted one color. seems to be a map editor setting, because some maps run normally and others have that problem. If you know the setting, could you post comparison screenshots (with fog of war, of possible) between the live ladder map version and a "fixed" 0-255 version? Neither of your screenshots seem to really show the issue. I'l take a screenshot ingame of what the map actually looks like. The colors of everything dark on the map is squished. The blackest black is 14, 15, 23 - a blue tinted grey - and this also extends to the UI for some reason. On other maps, this is 0,0,0 as it's supposed to be. ----- I made another picture, cut out a bit of the solid color and replaced it with black like it is on a bunch of maps and all of the pre-LOTV maps, to show the amount that the color has changed. it seems obvious now that this might have been done with some artistic intent - but the end result is completely awful IMO. AT THE VERY LEAST it should be toggleable back to normal. I noticed this color issue on release day when I started playing the campaign. I profile my display and use a colorimeter to calibrate led TVs ect, so this black level issue stood out immediately for me. I'm bumping because I'm wondering if you found anymore info on a fix? Settings edit or something like that.
The fix is to yell at blizzard and post stuff on twitter/reddit until they edit the official maps 
Not much more we can do, i think. Really just bring the issue into the public eye. This is something that i think a lot more people should have noticed (because it's extremely obvious to me and bothers me every time that i play) but it seems like a lot of people won't really notice it unless you show them an A vs B with an improved version.
It's the same for some other issues, like the microstutter that the game has. Everyone is just used to that and they don't know what a better version would feel like.
Fortunately this colour thing looks super fixable with a few slider drags, so it should be easy. I have not played for a little while so i can't say how the new season maps are yet
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Blizzard needs to make the ladder maps also just not super dark. The old maps that were dark such as Shakuras Plat were just really darn hard to see. They're not fun for anyone when you can't see a thing.
Its like playing Gameboy in your mom's car at night.
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
The darkness is a much smaller problem than the lighting settings IMO. I didn't have memorable issues seeing on Shakuras but it's physically uncomfortable to play on Dusk Towers
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Not a zerg, but I would like to throw in my two cents and say that a lot of maps are frustratingly dark to play on. I wish they wouldn't make it so you have to play on high graphics settings just to be able to see the map.
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Not to necro, but I was messing with some map reskins and I think these images show how much the new lighting styles mess with dark colors:
Ladder Bridgehead:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/b2GQJ92.jpg)
New Bridgehead:
Basically means we can use the new lighting style (Filmic) but would have to get rid of Colorize - which kinda ruins the point of using Filmic.
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
On May 20 2016 07:25 Avexyli wrote:
Not to necro, but I was messing with some map reskins and I think these images show how much the new lighting styles mess with dark colors:
Basically means we can use the new lighting style (Filmic) but would have to get rid of Colorize - which kinda ruins the point of using Filmic.
Both links there are to the same image
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the difference.. is incredible!
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/1CweRwb.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/D6YU52q.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/VkVOi5Q.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/K0xtL5f.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/tA235gZ.gif)
