Screenshots Posted!

2005 development system configuration not the same as 2010-2011 system config…

Dynamic, shadow-casting lights utterly destroy performance. I worked on a contract project a couple years ago using the Unreal3 Engine, which has far more optimized lighting then the ILE engine and even then we had to be pretty conservative with dynamic shadow-casting lights. If we did this for all skills with light-sources that should cast shadows, I think it would be crippling even for most higher-end computers.

I see - too bad :cry: But thanx, for letting us know. So, if I understand you correctly, this will only become a standard feature once technology has been improved … hardware and (your) engine.

It’s not so much a limitation of the engine.

Shadow mapping requires that the scene be rendered an additional time per shadow casting light. It’s expensive and there is no way around it.

Have you tried magic, or science?

We initially calculated it with SCIENCE! This lead us to our current acceptable but non-ideal situation. In attempting to reach beyond the boundaries of science we dabbled in magic but with disastrous consequences.

Ultimately the problem is that your computers suck. We have the dynamic shadow-casting lights, now you just need a computer from the future to run them!

Up to 3 Tesla c1060 GPUs + 1 Quadro FX5800

http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=5tNPlJiMwf2v4zDo

Would it be feasible (and look good?) to switch temporarily from the general source of light to the glare, and back again once the explosion is over? This way the engine had to render the shadows only once, but they would be cast according to the dominating source.

And for multiple fires being the dominating sources of light (e.g. in a tunnel, a dark alley at night) … would it work if each fire/lamp had a limited radius, so that each spot had only one light source at a time?

Just as an interim solution as long your magic and our computers suck … :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ll take 2!:rolleyes:

Erm how much is it? :eek::wink:

If you have to ask how much it is, you probably can’t afford it…

I’ll just take the one for now. It probably won’t run Sacred 2 anyway…

Good one Batman. :smiley:

And I think they are around 15,000 USD. And with the rate of development on graphics cards, I cannot imagine how fast a machine like this would become out-of-date. Regardless, I think it is more for number crunching than gaming.

Probably not, no. :wink: Though I suppose if there are drives for it that support DirectX it should work. :stuck_out_tongue:

Not to be an ass or anything but it looks very rough indeed. It looks 10 years old. I’m hoping you were just a little too quick to release screenshots and that it will surpass TQ in looks in the end… Because that ~6 year old game beats this a thousand times.

The game is pre-alpha. It explains this right above the screenshots you were looking at…

Ten years old? Surely, you’re from the future, cause these are ten year old games :




It’s a figure of speech. You get my point. Stop reading things literally. And I saw many others agreeing with me in this thread.

And as for “pre-alpha”. I already made a note that I realized they were early screenshots. I also felt it might be rash to post such early screenshots lest people get the wrong impression and lose interest.
My interest will stay, since I was a fan of TQ (and I realize they might be very, very early shots), but if I hadn’t played TQ, I probably would’ve turned right round and walked the other way. Granted, these guys don’t have Blizzard’s budget and can’t wait several years before showing near completed work, but still.

Heh, well, we’re all entitled to our own opinions.

The look of the game will certainly improve before release but it won’t be a radical improvement, or at least, to me it won’t be. Maybe a little tweaking and polish will make a significant difference for you or maybe not. I guess it depends on what makes the difference for you between 2000 and 2010 graphics. :wink:

Is it actual graphical quality or just different art direction? Are you comparing screenshot to screenshot or is this based on what TQ looks like in-game? Games always look better when you’re playing them and they look even better in your memory.

Personally, playing Grim Dawn, I think many aspects of it look as good or better than TQ in-game. I made a lot of the terrain textures in TQ and I cringe when I look back at many of them and compare them to the new ones in Grim Dawn.

The moodier, gritty art direction is a big departure from the sunny, super-saturated world of TQ. It could be that you just don’t dig this direction. I can appreciate both but I think many people prefer one or the other.

We may actually offer users the option to choose different post-processing configurations similar to what they do in Gears of War so players can pick whatever level of color saturation, contrast, etc suits them. If you just flat out think the individual pieces of art all look worse - I can’t help you there. Everyone sees things differently…

Anyway, we’ll be releasing our first video soon. Maybe that will change your mind. Of course, it is still early in development, so that won’t be totally polished looking either. I guess that is just a price we’re ok with paying in order to support the more open, small-indie style of development we’ve chosen to follow. If we weren’t sharing stuff with fans, interacting on the forums, and getting feedback from fans as we go, I don’t think we’d be half as motivated as we are to make this game.

I call upon Evil Medierra to time warm to completion of this game.

I will be sacrificing a baby.

KTHXBAI

I think the graphic is great! Just need a dash of color from the GUI and some floating numbers. So I made a quick PS mockup :slight_smile:

Oh hey, I appreciate you replying!

It’s not entirely true that I’m viewing TQ through nostalgia goggles. I played it vigorously till only a few days ago (when I got MW2 and started playing that instead, heh).
My biggest gripe with TQ’s graphics was the often weird looking normal maps. Anyway, my problem isn’t the art direction. I’m terribly bad at putting things into words but first of all, the textures look very low res. They look blurry. The overall impression of the screenshots is that they seem to lack contrast. Both in lighting and in textures. As a result, everything looks very flat and dull. Now, you might tell me it’s the mood and the setting, but I don’t think there’s a conflict between a foggy swamp/dirty village and attractive, contrasted light/shadow and texture. Quite the opposite. It looks like there are some normal mapping but the specular isn’t very prominent… they could show more (IE better lighting I guess).

The color of the flame in the barrels and torches look very detached. They don’t seem to glow or radiate any light. Ok they do, but not in a very dramatic and visual sense. And this IS a dramatic game, is it not? The light they DO radiate look very much like a generic omni/point light placed above it. It doesn’t feel like the flame itself is lighting the area around it.

I think maybe the textures look a bit photo sourced as well… Maybe that has something to do with it looking rather uninteresting. Before you tell me I’m biased because of the heavy influence of WoWs art style that everyone seem to copy (D3 and Torchlight come to mind) there’s no contradiction between realistic-ish texture and painting them a little bit more and only using photos as grunge overlays/guides as opposed to just color correct photos (I’m not saying that’s all they ARE at all, I’m just trying to convey my feeling of it).

And as someone said earlier in this thread, the intersection between ground and wall is just generally very unbelievable and sharp and “old-3D-gamey”.

I agree wholeheartedly that once seen in motion everything looks better and different. So I look forward to that.