I've seen lots of screen pics and videos at various resolutions. There's no consistency at all.

A lot of it is a video of the computer screen, like the Italian video footage. How can you judge graphic quality from that? It's impossible.

It's hard to say this is crap, or this is decent, when you don't even know what you are looking at.

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

I've seen lots of screen pics and videos at various resolutions. There's no consistency at all.

A lot of it is a video of the computer screen, like the Italian video footage. How can you judge graphic quality from that? It's impossible.

It's hard to say this is crap, or this is decent, when you don't even know what you are looking at.

The Italians thought it was the best they seen in any MMORPG.

Latest ingame screenshots from beta make me think they're just right.

http://beta.thenoobcomic.com/df_preview/screenshots/sun-big.jpg

Guess we just have to wait and see for ourself.

Are you just trying to troll? 

I'll bite.  Firstly, people are not all super duper excited about the potential game Darkfall because it may have wowzerz graphics.  They are interested in a well thought out non-linear sandbox (non-instanced) game that the mmo field has been missing for some time.

Second, you are right about the graphics in a way.  Every computer is different.  If your computer is top notch, but you are viewing an image taken from someone with garbage, well then, you will see garbage.  If you have garbage, then it doesn't matter who takes the pic, it will look like garbage. 

The only way to get a true feeling of how the game will look is to see it first hand on your rig.  (hopefully in 2008, maybe in 2009, maybe never).

Originally posted by Aragon100

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

I've seen lots of screen pics and videos at various resolutions. There's no consistency at all.

A lot of it is a video of the computer screen, like the Italian video footage. How can you judge graphic quality from that? It's impossible.

It's hard to say this is crap, or this is decent, when you don't even know what you are looking at.

 

The Italians thought it was the best they seen in any MMORPG.

Latest ingame screenshots from beta make me think they're just right.

Guess we just have to wait and see for ourself.

Hey, these graphics are the best ever, which is why we didn't give you a video capture of the game, but instead used a video camera to shoot the computer screen and moved the camera around the whole time. WTF??!!

Good point.  Yeah until we have a working model we can all try for ourselves it's really difficult to actually make a good judgement.

Plus computer graphics are very similar to art.  it's very subjective and opinions vary, so....

Originally posted by timmyjames

Are you just trying to troll? 

 

 

Well, duh, I posted in this forum, and I didn't say Tasos was God, or that Darkfall was the cure for cancer, so obviously I'm trolling. What else could it be?

Originally posted by EbonHawk

Good point.  Yeah until we have a working model we can all try for ourselves it's really difficult to actually make a good judgement.

Plus computer graphics are very similar to art.  it's very subjective and opinions vary, so....

I'm talking about graphics quality, not art style. Graphic quality is objective, art style is subjective. Graphic quality is resolution, smoothed edges, specular lighting, shadows, etc., etc.

Art style is Ryzom, vs EQ2, vs Anime, vs WoW characters, and how they are drawn, and which one you like or dislike regardless of quality of computer graphics.

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Hey, these graphics are the best ever, which is why we didn't give you a video capture of the game, but instead used a video camera to shoot the computer screen and moved the camera around the whole time. WTF??!!

They gave us 17mins of direct game video just recently, and some (clueless) people complained it wasn't real and that they wanted a video of someone playing the game. voila.

The graphics engine is good (lighting effects, foliage instancing, etc).

Some of the textures/models are not (low res, low poly, etc).

Some things are bugs or appear incomplete, and despite claims from some people that MMOs never ever have graphical glitches (cough) and that's just the way the game looks, I wouldn't plan on these glitches making it past beta (animations, z-buffering in this pic, etc).

Anyway, it's relatively easy to create a good graphics engine (hell, there are some free graphics engines that can look pretty spiffy), but that won't fix a low res texture.

The unavoidable truth is, creating decent quality textures and meshes takes a lot of man hours - which takes a lot of money (we're talking millions here). Aventurine, obviously, have decided to spend their money on a fancy-ass engine and sprucing up some of the more common models, while skimping on more... obscure models (such as background_prop_rock#427).

This is pretty common. Look at EVE - when that game released, some of the ship models were just atrocious. I'm trying to remember which ship it was (either Typhoon or Raven, can't remember) where the textures weren't even aligned properly, so you'd see a row of half-windows running along the edge of the ship! That didn't change for 3 years, but it never really mattered, because the engine itself covered up for it (to an extent).

I'm not trying to make excuses for Darkfall - some of the models look terrible. On Aventurine's budget, this was expected by anyone being realistic. It doesn't mean the graphics suck, and if the gameplay's halfway decent I don't think I'll notice either, because I'll be too busy sneaking up behind people to backstab them or gawping at the pretty sunsets to notice whether background_prop_rock#427 looks good or not.

Originally posted by NeroScuro

The graphics engine is good (lighting effects, foliage instancing, etc).

Some of the textures/models are not (low res, low poly, etc).

Some things are bugs or appear incomplete, and despite claims from some people that MMOs never ever have graphical glitches (cough) and that's just the way the game looks, I wouldn't plan on these glitches making it past beta (animations, z-buffering in this pic, etc).

Anyway, it's relatively easy to create a good graphics engine (hell, there are some free graphics engines that can look pretty spiffy), but that won't fix a low res texture.

The unavoidable truth is, creating decent quality textures and meshes takes a lot of man hours - which takes a lot of money (we're talking millions here). Aventurine, obviously, have decided to spend their money on a fancy-ass engine and sprucing up some of the more common models, while skimping on more... obscure models (such as background_prop_rock#427).

This is pretty common. Look at EVE - when that game released, some of the ship models were just atrocious. I'm trying to remember which ship it was (either Typhoon or Raven, can't remember) where the textures weren't even aligned properly, so you'd see a row of half-windows running along the edge of the ship! That didn't change for 3 years, but it never really mattered, because the engine itself covered up for it (to an extent).

I'm not trying to make excuses for Darkfall - some of the models look terrible. On Aventurine's budget, this was expected by anyone being realistic. It doesn't mean the graphics suck, and if the gameplay's halfway decent I don't think I'll notice either, because I'll be too busy sneaking up behind people to backstab them or gawping at the pretty sunsets to notice whether background_prop_rock#427 looks good or not.

Amen !!! could careless about graphic's after the nightmare wot was AOC.