I've read several reviews on Empires, and it seems that they all have the complaint that Empires isn't the most visually attractive game out there. I can easily run everything on High with much room to spare, so I was thinking about a new graphical setting for those who have hardware like quad cores, 4 GB of RAM, and top-end graphics cards, especially reviewers who have large budgets and most likely have these system specs on their testing rigs. Essentially the models and textures would have much more detail involved in them, and the explosions/effects would be more visually appealing, at the sacrifice of performance. What do you guys think? Too much effort on part of the devs? Discuss.
I think Art before Graphics. To make this game visually appealing. We would need a team of dedicated artists to do an almost complete rapprochement to the games models and themes. Other wise lets just get 1 artist to Dedicate his time on the characters faces.
Well, the game is so huge and the people who do have computers that make God feel slow are not much a majority, it's just cosmetic, it looks fine the way it is, maybe low priority.
It's already 780 megs. If we put in 2048x2048 textures for everything it'll probably become a gig or two. Guess what they'll complain about then?
I'd like ultra high graphics, even if it was a seperate download. definately worth keeping up with latest game graphics if it's possible.
I think if the graphics were to be improved too much, the mod would lag a lot. Take a look at Insurgency. That mod looks amazing, it used to look even better, but they had to tone down the graphical effects to reduce lag. Leave it as it is. Empires runs smoothly and looks fine. It might not be comparable to Crysis, but it looks good enough.
Maybe some improvements are needed. But maybe the real winner would be to make some insane alternative levels and details such as a full size BLIMP and other fun stuff . I wonder if those reviewers have gotten used to stalker/bioshock/crysis/UT3 level designs or something. Most HL2 mods have this level of art work so I dont see the problem. Perhaps it could be good to have a contribution/art development area on the forum with stickys for models/sound/textures ?
A seperate download shouldn't be too much of a problem. Newguy: This is talking about adding an entire new graphical setting, nothing would be changed one bit unless you were using the higher settings, there are Low, Medium, and High settings for a reason :p .
Don't games using the new source engine have a new "Ultra High" (or whatever the hell it's called) setting? Anyways I agree with an optional patch for those who have high end cards & want everything to cast a shadow, have moving grass, & all that fancy crap. I think people seem to forget this running on the Source engine.
Yes I understand what you are proposing. I started the exact same thread with the exact same thread title as this a while ago, but for Insurgency. The only things an ultra high graphics setting could do is make the textures better.
I'm not expecting anything. D: Better graphics won't just be achieved by increasing texture size and polycount, but by adding detail to the maps, models, and animations.
They can't just add detail to the maps without having that detail implemented for all the other graphics settings. They can't add decals for the ultra high setting and have no decals for every other setting. The same goes for animations.
whoa there! graphical enhancements will NEVER generate more lag. ever. that's like saying that painting cars black makes them go faster. (actually it's painting cars red, and stripes help too. same applys for shoes, and if they light up then you can jump higher.)
just when we thought this thread was safe don megel has to come along and make it TOTALLY FRICKEN AWESOME!!!!!!
That is indeed AWESOME!!! There is one thing that seems a bit strange to me about the buildings and that is especially the NF barracks. Its so simple compared to the amount of detail in the BE rax that has beds and crap all over the place. hmm more modellers..... what about the guy that remade some of the buildings. He made a lower version of the NF barracks right ?. Also this might be a good reason to maybe have an art section on the forum or something as I said, so old contributions and stuff doesnt just drown and get lost/forgotten in the suggestion/generel area ?.