Spring RTS Engine

^^

I tend to very much agree with that.

One thing I have noticed at great length...

Gundam does not suffer from the giant detailed blob that so many of the games in spring do. It seems that overdetailing of textures just makes everything look blobish when at a normal zoom level.

It could just be the design of the models, but I have never noticed blobage from gundam or sws. I find it interesting considering the massive amount of detail put into the textures.

WHat makes it different? Is it color variation? I've been up all night at work, so examples are a little slow in coming, but the point still stands. What seperates these two games in particular from the rest of the herd?

higher constrast in light and shadow.

certain modelers are not adding any preshading to their models.

Argh wrote:It's not translucency, it's gl.Blending, IIRC.

This comment made me laugh.

Forb: It's probably because people overemphasize small details (leading to a noisy look) without having large and medium details.

Now that I've had time to think about it...

MRD's models/texturing = beautiful, however, ingame I imagine that it looks pretty bad and normal zoom. Kinda unfair of me to say that without seeing it firsthand, however, it wouldn't surprise me.

sucks.

I think to an extent we have an advantage because of the very familiar silhouettes and colours. You know your stormtroopers are white and what shape they are, it doesn't matter how far you are away from them. You can spot an ATRT or a TIE Crawler fighter very easily from far away because of their distinctive shape. I think once you've identified the unit, to an extent your mind can fill in some of the blanks.

Well this has me wondering...

I originally chose an art style for Evolution that is rather cartoony and in many ways ameturish, however, I actually prefer it because of the way that the units are structured. To recognize a unit, all you would have to do is see an outline and you would what what it is.

A lot of people (generally the overachievers here ) dump on it, but I've been feeling more and more that it was a good decision on my part to do it that way. Obviously I put a lot of effort into pretty explosions, cegtags, etc. Moreover, I like the way it looks.

I am personally of the opinion that an art style is an art style, and in that referance alone is not right or wrong, perhaps simply different.

It's the same reason that I chose very distinctive shape for my units. There are no beans about what unit is what, or even in many cases what it's function is. To some extent, it's obvious.

I'm not planning on changing anything, but I am rather interested in perspectives other than my own on hte subject.

Im glad effects have been brought up, this is another area i feel the general principles of serving gameplay and transmitting data can be employed.

One of the advantages of the default spring explosions is they prettymuch perfectly reflect the AoE and damage of the weapon. This is important information to convey, and to do it in such a simple, universal fashion is highly beneficial to the players understanding. Im not entirely sure, but i think that the effects even change the amount of dirt thrown up depending on the weapons cratering, and other important information.

This is something i think a lot of mods have done away with in the hope of being pretty- CA is an unfortunate example. I felt the AoE of the raider (ravager) and stumpy was too high, we even reduced it- it felt wrong to have such a high AoE on those units. That was, until i checked the groundscar (i had decals off). It was tiny. The explosion effect didnt reflect the actual AoE of the weapon at all- it then hit me that i was merely presuming unfoundedly that it did, and we had lost a huge amount of important information that was being conveyed to the player. Even a developer who understands these variables pretty well can be fooled by the graphical presentation. I didnt even realise just how much i was relying on the visual effect to tell me the AoE of the weapon.

However, with the default explosions, some other information is not presented. For example, the core nuke effect in CA lasts so long and is so large that you know when you've been nuked (I cant count the number of times someone, even myself, has come back from fighting on the front lines to see they have no base and gone 'What the hell happened, nuke?!' in BA). Equally, a distinctive explosion on a weapon can tell you exactly what you are being hit by (a bertha, a vanguard, or something else) or just broadly the weapon type (for example, in BA plasma uses the same explosion as rockets). This might not be as useful information as its damage or AoE, but if the player doesnt catch the projectile in flight he can at least see the larger, more obvious results of its impact. In this way custom effects can serve to convey even more information.

Sound effects are also invaluable for conveying information. The d-gun sound that travels across the whole map that everyone is familiar with (You KNOW when someone has shot a d-gun, ANYWHERE), and others such as the distinctive 'crunch' of a black dawn and the sound a bertha makes when it hits. But even something as simple as the noise an AK makes versus a Storm, which can tell you what unit an enemy is using. These are all audio clues as to what is going on, and can tell you the general direction and distance. Personally, i cant play with sound off (At least, not as well), it totally ruins my situational awareness. I rely on it very heavily.

So, and this is the main point of this thread- it should not be ignored when making the art for a game that all the elements that can be used to make a game more attractive are, can, and should be used to convey important gameplay information to that player. In fact, id argue they are more attractive and immersive when they reflect a physical reality within the game, as it gives them more solid and concrete meaning to the player.

I agree that effects are an important part of the UI - and explosions should always reflect AOE in some way or another. It's something I think supcom was missing a little; in it's quest for ultra-realistic effects, it lost a sense of the drama from OTA, but also a level of explanation that only a big explosion can get you.

Yeah, effects are really important to understand what's going on at a glance. AoE's looking wrong are a big thing that's confusing.

I think the problem with FX is just that people's expectations about physical reality can't always be matched in the game design, and designers always have to keep their eye on the ball. A powerful weapon needs a fairly elaborate effect, to show users that it's powerful, but it may not also have a giant area of effect- contradictory issues.

As for stuff turning into blobs... I think it's basically about keeping stuff simple, visually. Using lots of colors makes things much more confusing than a few colors. Using strong contrast makes areas of a model pop out, especially if they move. And whenever possible, work with the geometry, instead of against it. When it's shaded by the engine, what people see should make sense, at all angles and all lighting conditions- if you're using so much preshading that it doesn't, you're probably doing too much.

Yeah, I have to agrea, too much weathering is no substitute for shadows. A lot of people will scratch or rust the shit out of thier models and call it gritty or real. To date, currently I feel that SW:IW has gotten the best realism grit with s44 having the best simple realism. Realism is about subtlety and they both have it really well, it also has a lot to do with the style of model. The more fantastical the model(IE a gundam in white) the harder it is to convey realism.

That being said, realism on a large scale is hard to carry out. The only reason I have never faulted s44 for becoming icon war is that it makes me war and fuzzy when I think of tt wwII games. Not that I played them, but I like looking at them. And the models look great so when I watch a replay for an awesome match, then the close up models do a great job of showing off a cool fight.



on evo, if this help I hope it does.

Forb, the problem with your evo models conveying their form is that the simple textures lack shadows and details to separate out the parts. Last time I tried it a few things about the unit textures and design kind of highlighted in my mind as bad. Now when I say bad I mean in terms of unit differentiation.

Things like extremely thin barrels and lack of textural style between components made the model pieces hard to tell apart. For example, if you made the barrels metallic, added some sort of paneling or other details it would help greatly with unit differentiation. When I played evo I played it on a I played it on a desert map, the yellow textures and noise blended well with the scenery, too well actually. Things like panel lines or shadows help to accentuate your model curves and bring them out of the 2d.

on effects
In the end a rts is just a glorified chess game, cool pieces are neat but the reason I get all particular about effects, esp custom ones is that they convey something very important in a very flashy manner. when an effect is overused it becomes dull and no longer represents anything of note. however, distinct sound effects and explosions can strike terror in a player. I know in gundam when I hear that damn beam rifle I always curse because I know a gundam is coming.

blobby blob

Problem with modelling 'realistic' shit is that 'realistically' camoflage is used to intentionally break up the shape of a thing. But oh well.

Atleast its not this!



or this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7k3ZM6bQx4
(first 50 seconds)

Problem with modelling 'realistic' shit is that 'realistically' camoflage is used to intentionally break up the shape of a thing.

I agree, it's a problem. That's why, after trying some camo patterns and some dazzle stuff with the Resistance units in P.U.R.E., I settled on the two-tone look, to make units a lot easier to identify at a distance. I found even throwing relatively low-contrast camouflage onto the armor plates was obliterating all of the details, and decided that I'd rather have it feel less realistic than cause confusion for players. It looks cartoony, I know, but I really didn't like how my units were just turning into brown-green animated blobs at a typical play distance. I know that it'd gain me more "coolness points" to make them totally realistic, but it would only get me applause in screens, at the detriment of gameplay. I think the approach 'S44 has used, where you guys are picking from different camo schemes for the different vehicles, instead of sticking to some sort of standard, is probably the single best way to reduce confusion for your players- "hey, that's a brownish tank with a wide footprint! It's a Tiger!", etc.

smoth wrote: on evo, if this help I hope it does.

Forb, the problem with your evo models conveying their form is that the simple textures lack shadows and details to separate out the parts. Last time I tried it a few things about the unit textures and design kind of highlighted in my mind as bad. Now when I say bad I mean in terms of unit differentiation.

Things like extremely thin barrels and lack of textural style between components made the model pieces hard to tell apart. For example, if you made the barrels metallic, added some sort of paneling or other details it would help greatly with unit differentiation. When I played evo I played it on a I played it on a desert map, the yellow textures and noise blended well with the scenery, too well actually. Things like panel lines or shadows help to accentuate your model curves and bring them out of the 2d.

Unit differentiation: I have a really hard time understanding what you mean by that. THe basic units are based off of geometric shapes, e.g.
Light tank = Kite (Then unit name is kite as well for obvious reasons )
Mediumtank = Circle
Heavytank = rectangle
Artillary = Octogon (with a triangular turret and a ridiculously long barrel)
Missiletank = Kind of a conglomoration of shapes, but easy to recognize for what it is (Notice the areola's which the missiles fire from )

Riottank and surgeon (kinda specialized units for either side) = THe riottank is designed to somewhat resemble the ota leveler, because the purpose is remotely similar. It is also by intention particularly ugly (and also happens to be my favorite unit in the game). The surgeon is not supposed to be quite as ugly, but it's distinctive by the radiator coils on the back of the tank and the peculiar looking turret (or lack thereof, considering how it looks when it fires).

THose are the basic ground units.

When you say differentiation, that translates to me that you have trouble telling them apart from one another, which makes me go O_o o_O

One thing that may have thrown you off, is the fact that evo uses lua to draw the teamcolors. Maybe your teamcolor choice was particularly blendy with the terrain. 256 color pallete teamcolors generally look the best in this particular case.

I'm also not sure what you mean when you referance the barrels. Many of them are ridiculously large. They're supposed to be. It's not supposed to make any particular sense. THis would be an exception of the aa tanks, cause their turrets are pretty small.

Maybe the pic will demonstrate it a little bit.

Pls explain in more detail what you mean (if you want to anyway. I'd be interested to hear it). However, it would be handy if you update to the latest version and took a look. There is a good chance that the last version you saw was many many revisions ago.

thing is forb that the shapes were not isolated by any shading. team color wasn't such a big deal as much as I had a hard time just picking them away from what they were near. I had the team platters off as I was looking at the models. The team platers may help and it looks like you are using more of spring reflective mapping so odds are it may be different now.

I'll have to look at it later and give you more feedback.

Teamplatters aren't the only way that teamcolors are applied. THere is also the included xray shader.

I was referring to the xray shader earlier.

Not that I don't appreciate trepan's work, but it just doesn't look good as something to be plastered all over all of your units to make up for laziness.

Laziness???

There are good reasons for doing it that way. I had planned on that before I even started the mods. THis is because each side is supposed to have it's distinctive allegiances and teamcolor kinda farks that over in a way, and I love the way that the xray shader looks on s3o units.

It wasn't laziness, adding teamcolor is too easy to be considered lazy. BTW you won't notice it I imagine, but there is a very faint overlay of teamcolor on the textures, it is very little, but it is there.

Ok well, it seems as this discussion has all of a sudden become about evolution and that is not what I intended, I simply wanted to know exactly what smoth meant, because I was having trouble following what he was trying to say.

Revert back to this question:
Which is more important in your opinion and why; Unit detail, effects, both.

I dunno forb, my original problem with the question is that it's essentially (in my mind) akin to saying "Which is more important for living? Food or water?" Both are as essential in conveying information as the other.