SE5 screenshots ugly?

[Noble713]

For many people, myself included, the level of immersion in a game is directly related to how realistic the graphics look. If the characters on my screen feel fake I won't have as much fun playing the game. I'll take Oblivion (agreed it's not as fun as Morrowind and clearly dumbed-down for the Xbox 360 crowd, but it's BEAUTIFUL) and KOTOR 1&2 over Kings Quest 3 and Zork any day.

As for performance issues and upgrading systems: get with the times. If you want to purchase and play new games, expect to get new hardware to run them. Fortunately SE5 is easy to mod, but I can already see the outrage when mods start coming out with beautiful, high-poly ship models that cripple the performance of the P2-300MHz 64MB RAM systems running in software mode that seem to be all the rage amongst the turn-based game grognards.

And to snip any possible counter-arguments about the gameplay in such mods probably sucking b/c the modders spent too much time on graphics: there is a HUGE wealth of easily available 3d starship MESHES for the more established sci-fi universes. A good 3d program (like 3DS Max) and a DirectX .x exporter plugin, and having quality ship models takes virtually no time at all.

I love Space Empires, I've been playing since a friend loaned me Space Empires II waaaay back in 8th or 9th grade, but I'm glad the series is finally being dragged into the modern era of gaming.

[Captain Kwok]

Like I've said already, it makes sense to hedge the ship models a bit to allow for the large ship battles that are a key component of the series. A large battle with ships of several thousand polys each would be unruly for even top-end systems. That said, most of the models in the game right now are quite nice even if they are poly-economical.

On the UI side of things, David Gervais' work always seems to be hit/miss with people around here - but you'd really find that anywhere. The key here again is that this time the complete interface is moddable - so maybe some enterprising artist will put some effort into an alternative UI for those players that would like something else. (Although I think it might weigh in at 50ish Mbs!)

[Ed Kolis]

Does SE5 support Dynamic LOD? That would be very helpful... ship models could start at 2000 polys for the small battles early in the game and when you zoom in, but when you zoom out in a large battle the game could switch to lower poly models, giving you the best of both worlds...

[Phoenix-D]

I wouldn't get too hopeful about upping the poly counts, either. Most engines have a point where if you raise things too much performance starts to drop off all out of proportion to the actual appearence.

[Nats]

Well the Rome Total War is a case in point. That game has many thousands of troops and yet the graphics remain very good and gameplay is very good also. Obviously one not would expect a small independant outfit to meet RTWs standards. But amount of ships on screen meaning low standard of graphics ddoes not cut mustard with me. And there are many very old games like Frontier Elite, XCOM and Civilisation that were small games in terms of programming these days but I feel their graphics are still better than some of those shown on the screenshots page. Perhaps they will be far better when seen in the flesh I cant comment on that.

The UI IMO would look far better done in a metallic stylish hi-tech look rather than the rather uninspiring cartoony look it has.

I tend to prefer realistic graphics that pull me into the game. Im not a fan of cute or overly colourful cartoony graphics myself. Many of the ship graphics although admittedly quite fantastic still look very cartoony and 'unreal'. They need a bit of 'weight' and some rust/dirt. Has nobody here seen Star Wars?? Clean new spaceships went out with 2001 A Space Odyssey! What about some smoke effects that linger into the strategy map part from your tactical battles if your ships are damaged like GC2? What about some nice metallic finishes?

Perhaps some background nebula would help the sparseness of the space graphics as well.

And finally some of the grpahics look quite blocky and low res when close up - eg the info panels over the planets and ships. Theres no way jagged lines can be considered acceptable in this day and age!

Sorry to be so blunt but lets get real here. I'm not paying my good money for a game however good the gameplay is that looks bad. Lets face it there are millions of old games with fantastic gameplay that are resigned to the bargain bins or you can pick them up for a couple of quid - XCOM, Gunship 2000, Stealth Fighter, EF2000, HOMM, Shogun Total War, M1 Tank Platoon, Civilisation, Silent Hunter just to name a quick few!

Im one of the first people to express the importance of gameplay and gaming choice over snazzy graphics and repetitive linear missions etc. But that doesnt mean graphics are unimportant.

Nats

[TurinTurambar]

Edit: cleared out by /me.

[Suicide Junkie]

Personally, I prefer the iconic look, to the more "realistic" renderings.

The point as I see it is to know what the thing is, even just out of the corner of your eye so that you can make your strategic decisions, not to stare awestruck at various works of art until the turn deadline expires.

[Phoenix-D]

If you think X-Com looks better than SE5 you haven't been looking close enough.

Rome can have many thousands of units on-screen because Rome cheats: there are actually at most 160 "units" on screen at a time. The thousands of little soliders don't have any actual bearing on the combat, so you don't have to worry about their position quite as much.

Still a very slick engine, though.

[Renegade 13]

Nats said:
The UI IMO would look far better done in a metallic stylish hi-tech look rather than the rather uninspiring cartoony look it has.

Well, I may work on just such a mod, to be ready when SE5 comes out if there's enough interest and if I don't feel too lazy

I tend to prefer realistic graphics that pull me into the game. Im not a fan of cute or overly colourful cartoony graphics myself. Many of the ship graphics although admittedly quite fantastic still look very cartoony and 'unreal'. They need a bit of 'weight' and some rust/dirt. Has nobody here seen Star Wars?? Clean new spaceships went out with 2001 A Space Odyssey!

Well...rust/dirt would make no sense at all. After all, rust requires water and oxygen in order to oxidize the iron. Space has neither. Dirt is the same...there's no dirt in space. There's really no reason ships wouldn't be clean and shiny, except for battle damage, micrometeroids (though shields should stop them), accidents aboard ships that damage the hull, etc. Rusty space ships would be very unrealisitic!

Perhaps some background nebula would help the sparseness of the space graphics as well.

Again, if it's realism you're going for, you wouldn't see nebulae from space unless you were really REALLY close to them, in interstellar terms. Oh, and there are some background nebulae in the system view.

Sorry to be so blunt but lets get real here. I'm not paying my good money for a game however good the gameplay is that looks bad.

Im one of the first people to express the importance of gameplay and gaming choice over snazzy graphics and repetitive linear missions etc. But that doesnt mean graphics are unimportant.

Nats

Many people would like a game that is more original than most of the derivative games out there today, even if it meant dated graphics. Though I do agree with you, graphics are important. But I don't think gameplay should suffer due to them.

Oh, and not all of us who think graphics aren't as important as gameplay have crappy systems...my system can handle anything I throw at it, even the latest massively graphics intensive FPS games.

[Suicide Junkie]

Phoenix-D said:
Rome can have many thousands of units on-screen because Rome cheats: there are actually at most 160 "units" on screen at a time. The thousands of little soliders don't have any actual bearing on the combat, so you don't have to worry about their position quite as much.

Unfortunately, as I have noticed, that game dosen't worry enough about their positions.

In multiplayer, me and my brother end up playing two different games as soon as the first shots are fired.
On one computer, the general dies from a catapult shot. On the other, he just got tossed on his butt and gets back up.
On one computer, the player's whole army routs, and on the other, it wipes out the enemy.

And the combat replay is a totally random third view.