3d battle scenes are looking horrible! :(

[Nerfix]

Well, it might as well be 256. Or not.
I would place my bet on 16-bit or 32-bit personaly.

[Pocus]

I seriously doubt that the game would be running with 256 colors. Thats pretty impossible to get a good (understand usable for everything) color table for particles if you have only 256 colors.

16 bits has always been a bit messy to use, so I guess strongly in favor of 32 bits (well 24 in reality, 8 being used for alpha channel).

the higher the resolution, the smaller the graphics, so I guess this is what Daynarr is implying with his remark. If you zoom, you get pixated sprites again in this case. On the other hand, with a high quality screen you can zoom with less crenelation (aliasing) visible, because you will have more dots on your CRT/flat screen for the same amount of pixels (this depend of the highest resolution that your crt can do, and also I think you must use a special feature of your video card to activate this hardware anti-aliasing).

for what its worth,

[ September 22, 2003, 13:47: Message edited by: Pocus ]

[Nerfix]

Also, Mortifer, why should Dominions II cost less than AoW? If you answer because of the GFX, i pity you.

[Mortifer]

Well if it will be 16 bit, I can convert and modify awesome unit gfx from other games, just like the civ3 modders are doing.

Well it should cost less imho, since dont forget that making AoW was lot harder than making Dom II. A huge dev team worked on that game, and only a few on DoM, if am I correct.
The AoW team put in lot more work to release that game, and its not just because of the gfx.
Just think: gfx, sounds, music, effect etc are all superior there, not to mention the awesome gameplay!
Anyways I will buy DoM II. regardless of the price, as I said it wont scare away me from buying, but Im sure that lot of people will think twice before ordering it, if it will be 45 or 50 bucks..

PS. I noticed that you rated me of 1 star Nerfix. Thanks for it...

[ September 22, 2003, 14:46: Message edited by: Mortifer ]

[Nerfix]

Yah, sure they can make GFX work but they can't make map editor stable before they relase it and they can't make concealment work so that AI won't see your units. I have played a game that has been made with effectively 1 man team, and "concealment" works in that game. In fact "concealment" works in Dominion too.
Dominions I earned Illwinter nothing but pocket money, it's about time for them to get some money for their work.

[Mortifer]

I hope that they will.

PS. Im getting lot of bad votes, LOL!

[Nerfix]

I was referring to AoW 2 team...
AoW 2 gave me te bitter lesson of "NEVER TRUST THE HYPE, ALWAYS PLAY THE DEMO!"

[ September 22, 2003, 15:04: Message edited by: Nerfix ]

[Pocus]

side topic : Where you do see **who** voted for you?

To be fair with Mortifer, it is true that the AOW2 team (at least 3 devs , 4+ artists and surely more persons, all this full time for 2 years) has surely made the game costly to produce that dominions.

but in our society, thats not the amount of works which is of importance, but the end result. For example Master of Orion III is a flop, and the sells are low enough to prevent any hope of MoO IV... still the game asked far much in manpower than AoW II.

Daikatana also, the infamous game, was a black hole in money, and was total failure (from a selling stand point, I never played it).

so I dont think we should use the amountofwork-o-meter as a measure to the selling price of a game. I prefer to have the price in accordance with the pleasure we get from it. True, AoW II graphical engine is a pleasure to behold. But I prefer in the end the gameplay, and simultaenous multiplayer ability of Dominions.

no need to start a flame war about the fact that dominions do not deserve 45$. Your milleage may vary as the proverb says. I have paid 45$ for the ugly graphics of dominions I, because, as I have played it several hundreds of hours, the price paid is small compared to the pleasure it gave to me. The most beautiful scenes of any game are in your head.

[MythicalMino]

I totally agree....AoW2 totally sucked....then, Shadow Magic came out, and everyone on the Boards said that it fixed everything in AoW2...so, I bought it...30 bucks down the drain...meanwhile, a gem called Dominions was waiting for me to discover it.

Personally, I think that illwinter has pulled off something harder than the folks that did AoW...just compare the size of the teams involved...

Sure, Shadow Magic might be pretty, but that only gets you so far (at least with me)...gameplay is what matters...Shadow Magic i played, but every game seemed the same....gameplay to me sucked....really really really bad....

Dominions, the gameplay is infinite....(or near to)...and Dominions II only builds on that....no, I would pay 50 dollars for Dominions II (hell, I would pay 40 or more for Dominions I, now that I know what the game has to offer)...If I could go back in time, I wouldn't give a nickel short of dollar for it...

[PDF]

Bah,
Entertainment economy doesn't work on a "quality price" basis, crappy movies and books cost as much as good ones !
It's just a matter of Return on Investment : how many copies will sell regarding development effort.
Dom2 costed something like 2-3 man/years, and will sell maybe 5,000 : that's only 250,000 bucks for Shrapnel and Illwinter to reward their work. not that much. Before that Illwinter sold the games but didn't expect to make a linving of it.

OTOH, a big hit can sell 1,000,000, and so generates 50M money : even if half of that is going to the retail stores, there still is 25M for publishers and devs ... That's more than enough even for a 2-year 20 devs teams !
AoW2 falls somewhere inbetween, I don't have the sales figures, maybe in the 100,000 range or more.

Anyway, Mortifer, I gave you 3 stars