High Resolution Graphics In-Game

Striker · Post by **Striker** » Sun Dec 13, 2009 12:41 pm

Morning:

I've got a question I want to ask the developers. I've poked around on the forum, but I don't see a clear answer. Why are the high resolution graphics not standard in the game? Since the graphics are 10 years old shouldn't we update the default graphics?

I know this was touched upon a year or so ago. It was then discussed that people with older hardware couldn't run them. It was brought up that this was seen as a "feature" to get more people to play who couldn't afford the latest and greatest in gaming hardware.

Is it possible to default the high resolution graphics for the game and offer some sort of option for the standard (ie lower) ones? Better graphics may help keep some players. I know quite a few people who won't play games when the graphics are sub-par. Some people like their eye candy.

I know that some might argue saying they could just log on to the web site and download them. To me most new players are not going to actively seek the download unless they know about it in the first place. A lot of gamers make a decision to continue playing a game within the first 15-30 minutes. After that they could lose interest.

If all this has been brought up recently please link me to the thread. I'm not trying to rehash anything. Thanks!

Valiance · Post by **Valiance** » Sun Dec 13, 2009 5:22 pm

There should be 2 installers; low res and high res.

Post by **Raveen** » Sun Dec 13, 2009 5:47 pm

To my mind the hi res packs should be included into the installer only when all equivalent items have a hi res texture.

So the backgrounds and nebulas could go in. Same with the rocks. But not the bases or ships until they're all done.

Adept · Post by **Adept** » Sun Dec 13, 2009 6:48 pm

Raveen wrote:QUOTE (Raveen @ Dec 13 2009, 07:47 PM) To my mind the hi res packs should be included into the installer only when all equivalent items have a hi res texture.

So the backgrounds and nebulas could go in. Same with the rocks. But not the bases or ships until they're all done.

Rav, that means pretty much never.

It's better to put in the option to have the candy we have ready.

Heck, I don't even like some of the high res stuff. The revamped explosions annoy the heck out of me, so I don't use them.

madpeople · Post by **madpeople** » Sun Dec 13, 2009 8:02 pm

there are some good explosions, and there are some bad ones.

I know that one of my packs was more of a test I was sharing with the other art people where we were working out the best tools to use, and where I tried to incorporate a shockwave into it before I knew that there was a seperate shockwave image, so it ended up with lots of shockwaves that looked silly because the game plays the explosions over and over instead of just once.

Anyway, poke around, try different packs, I think the best combo had one of YP's and one of mine.

Striker · Post by **Striker** » Sun Dec 13, 2009 10:29 pm

So how many high resolution models are missing? Can someone tally up what's available now and what's missing?

Quia · Post by **Quia** » Mon Dec 14, 2009 6:50 pm

At a glance, for bases, Belters and Rix are done, Bios is missing only the SY and Tac, IC has two very different versions floating about, they both are missing a few bases, and Giga has nothing except for the rocks the bases are built on. For the player created factions, only GT has gotten any love, they're done. TF and Dreg both need new models if they're going to be redone.

For ships, a lot less. Rix has the most done, having an int, scout, con, miner, and a few caps(Jeeze, I made them and I can't remember how many I got done.

) Bios, giga and belts all have a few small ships done. Based on my experience remaking rix, if you're looking to make an official pack of textures, I would say include cons and miners, and then optionally, in decreasing priority, bombers, gunships and HTT's, caps, small ships. Cons and miners are big enough that they benefit from having more texture detail, and you see a lot of them, every game. Caps certainly could use the extra detail, but they're not seen often enough that I would say that they have to be finished before anything official is done.

It's worth noting that we do have 512^2 textures from the art source for most of the ones we're missing, and while they don't look as good as the higher resolution ones we've made, it would be well worth it to put those into the default installer.

Adaven · Post by **Adaven** » Mon Dec 14, 2009 11:17 pm

The other thing is that for the High-Res textures we have, a number of them are still in 16-bit color, so in the end they don't look as detailed as they could.

We'd also need to consolidate some of the multiple versions we have of things and do some cleaning up. A number of the high res nebplanets, for instance, have bad artifacts on the edges. The Nebulas I made are pretty distorted (quia's look pretty good, although I may have overtweaked the colors when making the pack). Someone (quia?) made a photoshop action to correct the distortion, or another option would be to remap a few of the nebula models to something easier to modify in the future.

As Quia said, an interim solution would be to include a 24bit color mid-res pack of all the 512x512 and 512x256 textures that came in the Art CD's for the MS factions, while we work on standardizing the community made High-Res content.

fuzzylunkin1 · Post by **fuzzylunkin1** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 5:00 am

Don't higher resolution graphics also increase the download size?

Not a problem for me, but there are people who would dislike this.

Adaven · Post by **Adaven** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 6:04 am

As mentioned above, we could create 2 "official" installers. Or we could add a "recommended" texture pack installer here instead of making people dig through mesial's site.