Originally posted by VoodooHoodoo

Originally posted by Death1942

i accept the graphics are a tad crappy due to the tech requirements of the game but seriously...even for such a tech heavy game...they can do better ( and no doubt they will try).  SWG was pretty openworld/big and it managed to have way better graphics than what Darkfall currently has.

 

You never played 40 vs 40 in SWG combat then.  You could wait 6 seconds for any actions to happen. When was the last time you actually played a large PVP SWG battle? Mine was 2006 on a very decent PC at the time. FPS was not the issue, it was pure bandwidth.
 

SWG's list of "features":

Auto target. Check.
Physics. No check.
Running up vertical walls. Check.
Unable to jump something poking 6 inches off the ground. Check.
Weather system?  HAHAHAHAHA.
Collision detection? Not unless you mean doors opening when you got close.

Yes, SWG had better graphics, but it also had a much MUCH more limited engine to run on.

true but you have to take into account the time of the releases.  SWG came online way back in 03 and Darkfall is set for an 08 release.  i know they are a small team and needed the extra time but sometime in those 5 years they could have re-done models and textures to match or beat an 03 game.

Originally posted by lotharr

About graphics and gameplay, doesn't EVE Online have quite good graphics and massive battle at the same time? I've heard of the occasional node crashes, but I've heard of succesful battles in the game, too.

more than 20v20 in EVE is basically a slideshow, even with effects off and using the original lower quality client. the best large-scale PVP i've seen was DAOC, 100v100 was totally playable with minimal (but noticeable) lag.

Originally posted by Death1942

Originally posted by VoodooHoodoo

Originally posted by Death1942

i accept the graphics are a tad crappy due to the tech requirements of the game but seriously...even for such a tech heavy game...they can do better ( and no doubt they will try).  SWG was pretty openworld/big and it managed to have way better graphics than what Darkfall currently has.

 

You never played 40 vs 40 in SWG combat then.  You could wait 6 seconds for any actions to happen. When was the last time you actually played a large PVP SWG battle? Mine was 2006 on a very decent PC at the time. FPS was not the issue, it was pure bandwidth.
 

SWG's list of "features":

Auto target. Check.
Physics. No check.
Running up vertical walls. Check.
Unable to jump something poking 6 inches off the ground. Check.
Weather system?  HAHAHAHAHA.
Collision detection? Not unless you mean doors opening when you got close.

Yes, SWG had better graphics, but it also had a much MUCH more limited engine to run on.

true but you have to take into account the time of the releases.  SWG came online way back in 03 and Darkfall is set for an 08 release.  i know they are a small team and needed the extra time but sometime in those 5 years they could have re-done models and textures to match or beat an 03 game.

well, Darkfall has always been about the gameplay first and even back in 2003 they were explicit about going for lag-free high-FPS and not shiny-shiny graphics.

second, IMO DF graphics are vastly superior to SWG, i don't even see the comparison.

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Originally posted by quilnar

daoc is pretty good when it comes to large scale pvp. frame rates in this vid aren't that bad but even here you can see the lag and rubber banding.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkl_fAjmLmA&fmt=6
i'm curious to see how darkfall will deal with this problem. i doubt scaling down graphics alone would solve it especially with twitch based combat.

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Darkfall uses server clustering and dynamic resizing and load balancing of (virtual) zones, that is, as the number of players in an area increases, the Darkfall server tech splits the (vitual) zone into smaller and smaller pieces and re-distributes them over more machines in the cluster. more info here.

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i'll reserve judgement on the graphics because they weren't at full as some of you say but i do wonder why they didn't record this highly anticipated video in better quality.

---

it's clear they don't have anti-aliasing on in the video, which certainly does suggest a medium quality setting.

thanks for the info, javac. i hope it'll be enough to provide smooth combat but forgive me if i remain skeptical. i will be giving this game a try so i guess i'll see for myself when the time comes.

First minute of this sums up graphics whiners quite well: www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/203-Braid

Originally posted by Blodpls

First minute of this sums up graphics whiners quite well: www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/203-Braid

yep, 100% spot on.

Originally posted by Blodpls

First minute of this sums up graphics whiners quite well: www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/203-Braid

I love this guy, but i hadnt seen that one till now, well done sir.  In fact its going in the sig.

Also, good job mods for deleting the troll posts in this forum (look at the front page as of this time).  Nice to see we are getting some moderation love.

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Originally posted by Jadar
So what do we have to judge the game on? A 600+ MB Video. The graphics are about all that we can judge. And yes, they are important. MMO's need to create immersive, believable worlds - worlds people are willing to pay money to play in. What's more, all the griefer's and PK's that follow this game should welcome an inviting game world; it's hard to get your nut off fucking with people if no one else plays the game.

Besides, it's as absurd to criticize people for judging the games graphics as it is to praise the gameplay of a games you've NEVER played. How do you know the game is "Awesome!!"

---

uhm graphics is soon forgotten when you play. personally i absolutely adore DF graphics though - i really dig the artstyle, and even if some explosions or animations look abit akward, it just gives me this nice old-school feeling.

The thing that makes it a believeable world is no instances and full loot, the huge amount of spells/skills and items that makes every person different, and the sandbox model, that gives you freedom to do whatever you want, without guiding you along a certain path and holding your hand all the way.

you are not restricted by instances or invisible walls that prevent you from attacking whomever you want. players will make societies and make up their own rules to protect themselves, politics will create kingdoms and break them.

these things are BY FAR much more important when talking about creating a believeable world that you want to immerse yourself in.

vanguard graphics are terrible, everything is so ugly. AOC graphics are high quality but the artistic side of the game is pretty terrible. WAR graphics are low quality but artistically are better than AOC and it runs decently in large scale RvR.

I'm not going to judge darkfall until I see it in action in person but the graphics looked very uneven like it was shot from different phases of beta or like some of the older models aren't as good as the newer ones.

I still think the game is a complete failure at release though~ I hope I'm wrong but it has been too long in development at this point for me to have faith in it.

Originally posted by javac

Some point to emphasise:

 

1) if you're judging the graphics from youtube without watching the hi-res version, your opinion is pretty worthless.

2) darkfall's graphics are not instanced in any way, it's a seamless world, with no zoning except for dungeons.

3) darkfall's graphics were designed for 100v100 battles at playable framerates.

4) the general standard of Darkfall graphics is very high, they are just let down a bit by *some* poorer quality graphical elements, specifically cannonball explosion effects are pretty ordinary, and some character animations are a bit jerky, eg: dwarves walking down slopes needs tweaking.

5) certain things, like Darkfall's outdoor environments, sky/clouds, and dynamic shadows are absolutely top-notch, not to mention the amazing wind/weather effects on trees & grass moving, eg: aerdian cat video.

6) it's still only a low-resolution video of footage taken on medium settings.

 

 

Just to back up your points, this is from Tasos in the previous dev diary:

"We’re talking about a long 100% in-game pure gameplay trailer with no scripting, no simulation, no post-processing. It’s us play-testing while fraps is running on free cameras and playercams and all the footage was collected and edited. The scenarios for it had to be run as part of our testing and development schedule as they came up." So, this footage is from development and development play testing.

To all who are upset about the quality, let's make this clear. This is what they've collected up while they've been working on the game and testing out the features. So you've got any number of game builds in here, which means you can't tell anything about what the current version looks like or does.

I also note that it looks like low-res captures to keep frames up - FRAPS is hard on the machine while it's recording. I had to go down from 1280x1024 high quality to 800x600 low quality to keep frames playable when I used FRAPS before.

So I'm guessing a buttload of the graphics options are turned off on the recording machines as well.

All of which means, this isn't what the game would really look like if you ran it right now.

Edit: I retract all of the above. On the official website:

"We've released an extensive Darkfall Online gameplay trailer which shows a multitude of Darkfall's unique features in action."

So this is how the game actually looks right now. Beats me how they can say that, when the previous battle video showed a wizard taking a massive chunk out of a warship with a fireball, and here ships take no visible damage, just sink?? weird.

yea im sure there huge diffrences between settings. too

Originally posted by lotharr

About graphics and gameplay, doesn't EVE Online have quite good graphics and massive battle at the same time? I've heard of the occasional node crashes, but I've heard of succesful battles in the game, too.

Not to go too far off-topic, but actually, no. You need to make that "constant" node crashes. Guilds were (and still are AFAIK) completely able to crash nodes at will, just by jumping enough ships in.

As far as massive battles, no again. You could get 100 ships at a time in the same place and not have the NODE crash, but the PLAYERS were a completely different story. You get frozen in time, hoping that the weapons you clicked would actually fire before you were dead. It's really pathetic, considering how you thought you'd be all space battle cool and stuff.

Darkfall has graphics comparable to Morrowind at best...

However, I still play Morrowind while it's "graphical superior", Oblivion, is nothing more than a fancy coaster on which I rest my coffee mug.

So really, I'm not complaining.

Just be nice to Darkfall's graphics, because denizens of the uncanny valley have feelings too.

criticising Darkfall's graphics is like saying a Ferrari isn't red enough.

Originally posted by javac

criticising Darkfall's graphics is like saying a Ferrari isn't red enough.

 Ferrraris don't look like 1974 Ford Pintos

Originally posted by javac

criticising Darkfall's graphics is like saying a Ferrari isn't red enough.

This.

Sorry DF is a game you aren't following, but that is no reason to make flat out lies about the game to discredit it from others who may not want to play another linear MMO.

Darkfall's graphics are fine, and some of the landscapes are simply amazing.  The animations need some work but if thats what it takes to accomplish massive battles where other games have failed, then so be it.  Even if that is not the case, they can be fixed later and are not so bad that they detract from the breathe of fresh air that this game will bring to the genre in regards to gameplay.

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by javac

criticising Darkfall's graphics is like saying a Ferrari isn't red enough.

 

 Ferrraris don't look like 1974 Ford Pintos

How can you make that comparison?  A car can look great and run great, a MMO without instances and with largescale battles cannot look like an instanced MMO and get the same performance.

Originally posted by Brenelael

Originally posted by SignusM

Originally posted by Brenelael

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by javac

3) darkfall's graphics were designed for 100v100 battles at playable framerates.

6) it's still only a low-resolution video of footage taken on medium settings.

 

 

 

100 vs 100 battles at decent framerates across the internet even on the lowest graphics setings is going to be a hell of a trick.  Shadowbane can't do it and their client was designed to run on a pentium III 1.2ghz and a 64 Mb openGL  compliant video card minimum.  Then again SB's horrid avatar graphics and animations are better than the ones seen in the Darkfall video. So far.

Sorry but Lineage II has had 500+ player battles since 2003. It's very possible and has already been done successfully. Darkfall should have no problem at all having 200+ player battles with the level of graphics we've seen in the videos to date. Just because some of your personal favorite games haven't been able to pull it off is far from "it can't be done".

 

Bren

 

And it's been done by Dark Age of Camelot as well. Though when you got to full 400 some people on screen it started to lag something awful. The MAIN issue is not JUSt the graphics, but the fact that combat is twitch based, not turn based, so lag is a really dangerous enemy here. With collision detection, physics (horse charges, knockback, spell knockback), twitch FPS style combat with real arrow balistics, AND 200+ people, then you really have to make some graphical compromises.

I realize that but what I'm trying to say is with the level of graphics that DF has having 200+ player battle shouldn't be that hard to pull of if a main stream MMO can do 500+ with equal or even slightly better graphics. The compromise in this case is the numbers not the graphics.

 

Bren

lineage2

this is lienage2 siege and pvp

www.youtube.com/watch

you

darkfall siege and pvp

www.youtube.com/watch

if for you, is the same, you are

Darkfall graphics charecter compared with other games

lotro

wow

lineage2

aoc

warhammer

DARKFALL

if someone said that the graphics are bad, this

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by javac

3) darkfall's graphics were designed for 100v100 battles at playable framerates.

6) it's still only a low-resolution video of footage taken on medium settings.

 

 

 

100 vs 100 battles at decent framerates across the internet even on the lowest graphics setings is going to be a hell of a trick.  Shadowbane can't do it and their client was designed to run on a pentium III 1.2ghz and a 64 Mb openGL  compliant video card minimum.  Then again SB's horrid avatar graphics and animations are better than the ones seen in the Darkfall video. So far.

Sb graphics are nothing compared to this.  That statement is just utterly false.