EPTThough "small units" are actually hard to see, when there are few "large" units standing next to them, for example few ultralisks standing around the zerglings.
Visibility/Clarity in SC2 - Page 7
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member1987
141 Posts
Though "small units" are actually hard to see, when there are few "large" units standing next to them, for example few ultralisks standing around the zerglings. | ||
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hoborg
United States430 Posts
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zee
201 Posts
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Random()
Kyrgyz Republic1462 Posts
On February 19 2010 23:49 BluzMan wrote: The truly fundamental difference between a sprite-based and a model-based game is in maintenance - slight tweaks of an animation for a sprite involves redrawing tens to hundreds of pictures, while tweaking a skeleton animation is just adjusting a few skeleton transformation constants. It's ridiculously easier in 3D and that's why you can maintain a much larger amount of game content with the same costs. But the sprites don't have to be hand drawn, do they? It's quite obvious that most of the sprites in SC1/Diablo1-2 are just pre-rendered 3D-models. So why not use the same efficient 3D workflow, only instead of exporting the models in 3D feed them to a tool that automatically generates all the necessary sprites? Given the computational power of current computers rendering several hundred tiny high-quality images shouldn't take too long at all. I could even imagine an engine that stores all the assets in 3D, but uses the graphics card to pre-render and cache the sprites when needed. This would allow even the shittiest of cards to run a beautiful game that could live with a fixed camera. Readability issues aside, there are also performance and scalability issues. It's easier to make a 2D engine fast and stable. There were some really bad transitions to 3D that I can remember, such as Heroes or Civilization series that looked and played perfectly well in 2D on 500 MHz machines, but sucked in 3D, both visually and performance-wise. | ||
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Random()
Kyrgyz Republic1462 Posts
On February 22 2010 01:30 elTy_bbq wrote: You make a couple of very interesting points, but I was really amused that you picked this screenshot to illustrate the visual clarity of SC1. I assure you for people who have never played SC1 or are simply not familiar with its looks, this looks like a complete mess with no logic or order. Of course, but given a picture of a single gargoyle, and then a picture of a single interceptor, and then asked to count how many of each were there on the pictures, I suppose a neutral person would have a much easier time with the SC screenshot  | ||
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PGHammer
United States132 Posts
On February 19 2010 11:36 shadowmarth wrote: It's worse than SC, but it would be rather impossible to be as good in a 3D game without being way cartoonier, which people would have bitched for eternity about. Also streams are pretty poor quality. Which isn't their fault, but watching in HD is probably going to be the way to go for a while. At least until we all get it in our hands, and can identify units at a glance better. Watching replays in-game will always beat the heck out of stream-watching due to the nature of streaming (streams are always lossy). It's not a knock on streaming SC2, either. The same can be said about C&C 3/RA3 streaming (even via BCPT) compared to in-game replay viewing (again, lossy vs. lossless). In short, it's the nature of the streaming animal (not the fault of the game/content being streamed). With SC, we notice it less because the resolution is not as high. SC2, however, is designed for higher (much higher) resolutions than SC is (the detail gone into is a dead-giveaway; even at the lowest resolution and detail level, it blows SC into the weeds). Basically, the fall is further with streaming HD (it's not unique to SC2, or even to gaming; this is something I've noticed with *all* HD content streamed to a PC vs. watched via a higher-bandwidth mechanism) vs. lower-resolution/lower-definition content streams. | ||
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synapse
China13814 Posts
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0neder
United States3733 Posts
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crabapple
United States397 Posts
On February 19 2010 11:40 talismania wrote: I think we whined so much about the game being so bright and shiny that they went ahead and made it darker and broodier and now it's too hard to see low-res. time to start whining about both eh? | ||
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carwashguy
United States175 Posts
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StarcraftMan
Canada507 Posts
On February 22 2010 11:31 PGHammer wrote: Watching replays in-game will always beat the heck out of stream-watching due to the nature of streaming (streams are always lossy). It's not a knock on streaming SC2, either. The same can be said about C&C 3/RA3 streaming (even via BCPT) compared to in-game replay viewing (again, lossy vs. lossless). In short, it's the nature of the streaming animal (not the fault of the game/content being streamed). With SC, we notice it less because the resolution is not as high. SC2, however, is designed for higher (much higher) resolutions than SC is (the detail gone into is a dead-giveaway; even at the lowest resolution and detail level, it blows SC into the weeds). Basically, the fall is further with streaming HD (it's not unique to SC2, or even to gaming; this is something I've noticed with *all* HD content streamed to a PC vs. watched via a higher-bandwidth mechanism) vs. lower-resolution/lower-definition content streams. I think it's more than the resolution issues. SC1 units simply use brighter colors, period. Even on the dark tile sets in SC1, the unit colors stand out because they are bright. Anyways, are any of the TL beta testers leaving feedback for Blizzard? This thread is totally useless if the people that would leave feedback can't because we aren't in beta, while those in beta aren't leaving feeback because they don't really care. | ||
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Bob123
Korea (North)259 Posts
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ShaperofDreams
Canada2492 Posts
i think it will come with time..after playing and watching for so long bw is second nature and i dont think its a fair comparison. | ||
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[X]Ken_D
United States4650 Posts
Anyways, people were bitching long time ago about SC2 being too "colorful". Lol, as if SC1 was any more realistic looking. It looks like a cartoon! People ask for more "gritty" graphics in SC2, now they complain about it being hard to see  | ||
ArvickHero
10387 Posts
Something I noticed especially is how easily you can discern the zerg buildings in BW, yet it takes a bit more effort in SC2, not because it's a new game and I'm unfamiliar with things, but rather because everything looks really blended in due to such similar color palettes. It's a lot worse on that one city map where it's really dark. | ||
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0neder
United States3733 Posts
1 - up the lighting, whatever angle it may be 2 - maybe zoom in the camera a little bit, although I don't think it's necessary. | ||
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Spawkuring
United States755 Posts
On February 23 2010 10:09 [X]Ken_D wrote: Set shader level to low. It should more easier to see as there is more contrast between units and background. Anyways, people were bitching long time ago about SC2 being too "colorful". Lol, as if SC1 was any more realistic looking. It looks like a cartoon! People ask for more "gritty" graphics in SC2, now they complain about it being hard to see The problem isn't that SC2 is too colorful, the problem is that the color is in all the wrong places. I actually remember pointing this out over a year ago. SC1 has: - Extremely dark environments - Moderately bright unit colors - Extremely bright team colors It's this combination that allows SC1 to maintain such high visual clarity. Now let's compare that to how SC2 looked. SC2 when it was first announced had: - Extremely bright environments - Extremely bright unit colors - Extremely bright team colors And of course this caused massive amounts of complaints since the game was so bright that it was literally blinding to some people. Blizzard of course did the right thing and changed it, but there are still some lingering issues. SC2 CURRENTLY has: - Extremely bright environments - Dark unit colors - Dark team colors And this is what is causing most of the visual clarity issues. The terrain often overpowers the visual screen and takes attention away from the units themselves. This is made even worse when you consider the fact that SC2 units bunch up closer, the high amounts of noise in the textures which cause slight blurring, the lighting system which dilutes the unit colors and makes them blend in with the terrain, the lack of anti-aliasing, and all of this added together creates a much less clear experience. Now the game isn't totally hard to see. I mean it's certainly a lot clearer than other RTSs, but there's no denying that the clarity is worse than SC1, and that's a big problem for a game that's supposed to be the next big e-sport. EDIT: And don't even get me started on how bad the creep color is... | ||
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BluzMan
Russian Federation4235 Posts
On February 22 2010 06:16 Random() wrote: But the sprites don't have to be hand drawn, do they? It's quite obvious that most of the sprites in SC1/Diablo1-2 are just pre-rendered 3D-models. So why not use the same efficient 3D workflow, only instead of exporting the models in 3D feed them to a tool that automatically generates all the necessary sprites? Given the computational power of current computers rendering several hundred tiny high-quality images shouldn't take too long at all. I could even imagine an engine that stores all the assets in 3D, but uses the graphics card to pre-render and cache the sprites when needed. This would allow even the shittiest of cards to run a beautiful game that could live with a fixed camera. Readability issues aside, there are also performance and scalability issues. It's easier to make a 2D engine fast and stable. There were some really bad transitions to 3D that I can remember, such as Heroes or Civilization series that looked and played perfectly well in 2D on 500 MHz machines, but sucked in 3D, both visually and performance-wise. Several hundreds is key. What you say is possible (albeit if you're doing that, why not just use 3D in the first place?), but you still have to rebuild those pictures. Either manually (a nightmare) or you have to take some time to make a mechanism that will do that for you. A compression algorithm as well. No matter how you try to do that, hundreds are still there and it's still more expensive and less intuitive. | ||
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MasterDana
United States114 Posts
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gentile
Switzerland594 Posts
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