Rubber Ducky
Posted 30 October 2015 - 15:12
My screens
Old 1: http://i.imgur.com/AgVOoTx.jpg
New 1: http://i.imgur.com/gwIZOKZ.jpg
Old 3: http://i.imgur.com/Nt6x2iR.jpg
New 3: http://i.imgur.com/WahSEYR.jpg
Old 4: http://i.imgur.com/xBWTBH5.jpg
New 4: http://i.imgur.com/WDLdtWR.jpg
Old 5: http://i.imgur.com/GqD0Hmo.jpg
New 5: http://i.imgur.com/eW2ruaP.jpg
Old 6: http://i.imgur.com/uJ8Abs8.jpg
New 6: http://i.imgur.com/jWTKro7.jpg
Arcadia Native
Posted 30 October 2015 - 15:42
Old 3: http://i.imgur.com/Nt6x2iR.jpg
New 3: http://i.imgur.com/WahSEYR.jpg
Old 4: http://i.imgur.com/xBWTBH5.jpg
New 4: http://i.imgur.com/WDLdtWR.jpg
Old 5: http://i.imgur.com/GqD0Hmo.jpg
New 5: http://i.imgur.com/eW2ruaP.jpg
Nice screens! I like the improvement to the journeyman inn interior. You can definitely see how europolis is missing all shadows and lighting effects if you look at the benches to zoes left, no shadows on the ground yet. But I think the new engine looks great and is an awesome template to start building new visuals on! 
Arcadia Native
Posted 30 October 2015 - 16:53
To be honest, I can't see why the new screens are better. Different, somewhat darker, sometimes sharper but at the same time seem to me a little less atmospheric, not as detail-rich and dreamlike. Maybe it's different when one actually plays... But let's put it like this: Visuals are the *last* thing that bothered me in chapters. If I'd have to prioritize on technical things, I would say: animations (shame there are no improvements there) --> performance (Glad to hear some people are experiencing improvements) --> controls (which I'm personally fine with) --> lightning issues (which I never had!)
Anyway, thanks for the updates. Unfortunately, I can't test the game 'till Christmas 
Harbinger of the Balance
Posted 30 October 2015 - 17:17
Hey Ubisoft, you can keep your "seamless vast online GTA in space" to yourselves. Signed, one of the greatest Beyond Good & Evil fans alive.
Harbinger of the Balance
Posted 30 October 2015 - 19:36
I'm just not sure I understand why they went (and are still going) through all this hassle. I can't recall anyone complaining about the visuals (animations and bugs aside).
Hmm
We've been over this a few times. Ragnar has outlined it pretty well in the Kickstarter updates, and there is supplemental info in comments and in other threads by both Ragnar, Martin and Morten.
Cliff notes version is that the Unity 4.6 developer tools kept crashing due to only being 32-bit, Unity is discontinuing support for 4.6 in December, Unity 5 brings performance improvements (very significant ones on some systems), Unity 5 is required to make the game run on PS4, and initial tests indicated the process would be much less painful than it turned out to be.
April Ryan is my friend,
Every sorrow she can mend.
When I visit her dark realm,
Does it simply overwhelm.
Harbinger of the Balance
Posted 30 October 2015 - 19:42
Also, just to add, they didn't do this so much because of the visuals. The visuals getting a bit of an update is just a side effect of the port. I know light maps particularly have been a hassle, and then...you know. All kinds of other tinkering that may need to happen with plug ins, textures, etc.
So because of all of the previously mentioned reasons why the port was a necessity, some tweaks to the visuals are unavoidable and part of the process.
EDIT: And actually, on that note, that's likely why Propast is a bit more black than blue right now. Propast has a lot of complex lighting and so such, so I'd expect playing with and updating all of that will be a bit more taxing. So, you know... ...I wouldn't be surprised if we see those visuals change a bit more.
Arcadia Native
Posted 30 October 2015 - 19:45
To be honest, I can't see why the new screens are better. Different, somewhat darker, sometimes sharper but at the same time seem to me a little less atmospheric, not as detail-rich and dreamlike. Maybe it's different when one actually plays... But let's put it like this: Visuals are the *last* thing that bothered me in chapters. If I'd have to prioritize on technical things, I would say: animations (shame there are no improvements there) --> performance (Glad to hear some people are experiencing improvements) --> controls (which I'm personally fine with) --> lightning issues (which I never had!)
Anyway, thanks for the updates. Unfortunately, I can't test the game 'till Christmas
Objectively speaking unity 5 is more capable of creating stunning visuals in ALL departments. If we only speak about the screenshots, some of them are much worse on the new engine at the moment because they lack all the lighting, shadow and ambient detail the old engine had already put into them. Why I wanted to post these screenshots though were to showcase them to people who cant see for themselves during beta and also highlight the positive changes. It might be a bit hard for you, but for me the "new" screenshots dont all look better atm, but they show how much theres room to grow.
Arcadia Native
Posted 30 October 2015 - 19:48
Also, just to add, they didn't do this so much because of the visuals. The visuals getting a bit of an update is just a side effect of the port. I know light maps particularly have been a hassle, and then...you know. All kinds of other tinkering that may need to happen with plug ins, textures, etc.
So because of all of the previously mentioned reasons why the port was a necessity, some tweaks to the visuals are unavoidable and part of the process.
EDIT: And actually, on that note, that's likely why Propast is a bit more black than blue right now. Propast has a lot of complex lighting and so such, so I'd expect playing with and updating all of that will be a bit more taxing. So, you know... ...I wouldn't be surprised if we see those visuals change a bit more.
TBH I think the visuals will change ALOT from what we see in these screenshots. Theres actually no lens flares, no street lamp lights atm, no shadows of structures etc. Some parts of marcuria seem better than others also.
Arcadia Native
Posted 30 October 2015 - 19:52
I think the unfinished nature of Marcuria for example is best showcased in these shots.
Old: http://i.imgur.com/slwC4Rl.jpg
New: http://i.imgur.com/xv2eJEB.jpg
You can especially see it in the grass and the journeyman inn walls and the cart texture. Theyre obviously unfinished. But then again the inside of the journeyman inn looks so much better to me now.
Old: http://i.imgur.com/Nt6x2iR.jpg
New: http://i.imgur.com/WahSEYR.jpg
And the funny thing is, if you compare things like the area under the bar, and under the stools and tables, the new screenshots dont even have SHADOWS in them but it still already looks slightly better imo. Just imagine what adding shadows will do. Looks promising! I think its more of an atmospheric thing Im seeing.
Arcadia Native
Posted 30 October 2015 - 20:09
Oh, I know why they moved to Unity 5, but they seem to have put a lot of effort into redoing lighting, colors, and even design... You can literally see that some of the details look different, i.e. were redrawn. Windows that were previously dark in Mercuria are now illuminated. Hair styles sometimes different. Trees are different. Is this a trivial consequence of moving to a new engine?
Vestrum Herald
Posted 30 October 2015 - 20:17
it's just that they have to redo the shaders and some textures will just look nicer on updated shaders. I could be wrong with this but if it's anything like source, and you want to port over a map and entities from example l4d1 to l4d2, we often came across entities that couldn't work well and we needed to redo them , create a new entity or light which will behave correctly because it has been created in the editor but resembles it's old counterpart that wouldn't work imported. I think lots of that is going on in unity as well.
Harbinger of the Balance
Posted 30 October 2015 - 20:28
Oh, I know why they moved to Unity 5, but they seem to have put a lot of effort into redoing lighting, colors, and even design... You can literally see that some of the details look different, i.e. were redrawn. Windows that were previously dark in Mercuria are now illuminated. Hair styles sometimes different. Trees are different. Is this a trivial consequence of moving to a new engine?
Like I said above...basically yes. Ragnar mentioned that the artists are the ones with the most work to do in this port and that is largely because light maps, shaders, textures and even models in some cases needed to be tweaked or redone to work with the new system.
I don't...fully understand everything, but at least with the lighting, the gist that I've gotten is that U5 handles a lot of things very differently than U4 and some features that were previously being used no longer exist or are very different.
Some of the details that are different I think are not necessarily the result of something being completely redrawn, but may be the result of remapping and/or just details looking different because of shifts in light and shading. Like inside of the Journeyman I really don't think it's so much that a ton of detail was added in certain places. It's just that it was very hard to make out before.
I'm sure some assets are requiring a decent amount of retooling, but based on everything the team has said, they're not doing that because they wanted to completely rebuild assets or make visual changes. It's because the port ended up mucking up a lot more of that stuff than they hoped and they have to sort all of that out.
(Rikke/Mulm has actually vented some frustration about all of this on Twitter.)
Harbinger of the Balance
Posted 30 October 2015 - 20:41
April Ryan is my friend,
Every sorrow she can mend.
When I visit her dark realm,
Does it simply overwhelm.
Vestrum Crier
Posted 30 October 2015 - 21:26
I think lighting is kind of subjective to an extent. But the original is superior in quite a few areas, not for subjective reasons but objective ones. There's not the same radiance in front of windows, there's no more rays of light in several shots where there were rays of light. The outside scenes with fire flys or whatever those are , missing...
The scene where Zoe is standing in white, she's not partially whited out, she's really dark.. it doesn't give the same effect that was originally intended.
The signature blue lighting that we associated with the city is gone...
As much as I originally believed, and would like to argue that lighting is subjective to artistic choice... some of these shots clearly are worse for wear at the moment. The street lights, no radiance... there's a lot of things that have to change, and some things that don't have to as they are left open to artistic interpretation.
There's more that has to change than doesn't though, to be honest.
I know there's a lot of work that has to be done, and we all appreciate the effort but some of this just doesn't have the same depth of realism, attention to detail as before. I support the project 100 percent and honestly I've been playing without shadows anyways because it runs smoother. Even so, some of this lighting just isn't quite finished.
I have faith in the team, love the project so far and have no real complaints, I guess I'm just being brutally honest. i know they aren't done working on it yet. Some of the lighting looks fantastic, and the performance has greatly improved.
RTG is the A team! Keep up the amazing work.
Arcadia Native
Posted 31 October 2015 - 01:33
Yeah. Have to keep in mind that this isnt really for the "general public". This is something we would never get to see if this game wasnt crowdfunded. Therefore I reserve all criticism for the absolute final product since that is the product I would see with any non-kickstarter game.I think lighting is kind of subjective to an extent. But the original is superior in quite a few areas, not for subjective reasons but objective ones. There's not the same radiance in front of windows, there's no more rays of light in several shots where there were rays of light. The outside scenes with fire flys or whatever those are , missing...
The scene where Zoe is standing in white, she's not partially whited out, she's really dark.. it doesn't give the same effect that was originally intended.
The signature blue lighting that we associated with the city is gone...
As much as I originally believed, and would like to argue that lighting is subjective to artistic choice... some of these shots clearly are worse for wear at the moment. The street lights, no radiance... there's a lot of things that have to change, and some things that don't have to as they are left open to artistic interpretation.
There's more that has to change than doesn't though, to be honest.
I know there's a lot of work that has to be done, and we all appreciate the effort but some of this just doesn't have the same depth of realism, attention to detail as before. I support the project 100 percent and honestly I've been playing without shadows anyways because it runs smoother. Even so, some of this lighting just isn't quite finished.
I have faith in the team, love the project so far and have no real complaints, I guess I'm just being brutally honest. i know they aren't done working on it yet. Some of the lighting looks fantastic, and the performance has greatly improved.
RTG is the A team! Keep up the amazing work.
Harbinger of the Balance
Posted 31 October 2015 - 02:01
Absolutely correct TheDreamer! We really, really have to give RTG time to work on it more. The first group of comparison screen shots clearly showed the U5 shots being crisper than the U4 ones. A couple of the later postings seem to show the U4 shots being crisper. I actually wondered if the posters had mixed up the shots.
If at first you don't succeed, do it like your mother told you.
Arcadia Native
Posted 31 October 2015 - 09:46
Absolutely correct TheDreamer! We really, really have to give RTG time to work on it more. The first group of comparison screen shots clearly showed the U5 shots being crisper than the U4 ones. A couple of the later postings seem to show the U4 shots being crisper. I actually wondered if the posters had mixed up the shots.
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