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game is good but could use some more eye candy

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CArankni
5 years ago
The game is great, the graphics are good, but they could use a some more eye candy.

For eg. shields should look better and still be able to see under them when they are stacked. For eg. Supreme Commander Forged Alliance. You could see under shields there even when they were stacked and they looked good.

The units look good but they are missing something. They could use some post processing effects or slightly better textures or both.
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The problem with this is that our art resources are very weak. We don't even have a single dedicated modeller at the moment. I guess i come closest to being such a person, and my output rate given my current schedule is 3 models per *year*.

If you want the game to have better visuals, the first thing to figure out is where to find people to improve them.

Models wise, i've had a fairly decent experience with directing an outsider artist to produce a high-quality model from concept art and a long list of requirements (tank factory) that fits the game very well - so perhaps just finding some modellers would be sufficient. So for models, it is maybe possible to actually commission artists, if you've got big pockets.

Shaders are more difficult. Especially since having all the really fancy things requires a quite lot of changes to the engine and the game. E.g. a modern, gpu-based particle system would be a massive improvement over the currently used CEG and LUPS particles, but for that, not only you have to completely implement a major engine system from scratch, but also you have to reimplement every particle effect ZK has in this new system.

I would say also that one of the things that units mostly miss is good animations. Sadly, Spring doesn't really support easy outsider contributions to animations, because Spring animations are code that is run in a synced context. There are some crutch tools that allow you position the pieces, and i wrote a Blender addon to allow animation exports from Blender - albeit lacking a lot of major features modern animation software takes for granted, like bezier interpolation. However, my experience with directing outsider animator talent was a lot less stellar than my experience directing model work, in large because the entire animation pipeline is garbage.

I will illustrate the animations point with this. Compare and contrast this with the lobsterly nerd pose that the Strike commander strikes when shooting in the actual game presently.
+0 / -0

5 years ago
I think the devs focused on gameplay above all, and settled on "OK" graphics as good enough to support the gameplay. Given their limited (ie - volunteer) resources, I'd say they made the right choice. I'm currently L62 (mid - going -high) and I'm still discovering layers to the gameplay.

Don't get me wrong, the graphics probably could always be improved some, and it would enhance the game, but I'm firmly in the camp of: make the mechanics work, make the gameplay rich, make the gameplay balanced. In this regard the devs have done an absolutely superb job. I've got a fair amount of experience playing RTS and imho this is the best I've played. Very happy camper here :)
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Anarchid, tell me what programs are used for modelling and I'll take a look. I've currently got spare time; might be an idea to wet my toes and mess around with them. You never know where things may lead. I trained as a fine artist so I may be able to help in other areas as well if you are looking for 2d art now.
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5 years ago
Everything that can output Collada (or FBX, it's easy to convert between non-crazy formats) is good enough.

I use Blender, the tankfac guy used Max, the models for Reef, Lance and Wasp were done in something called Wings3d.

Blender is so far the only thing with at least partially working animation export and i can give you more advice with that, so i'd suggest you start there.

Also, get on Discord if you want talk more about this.
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CArankni
5 years ago
Astran: I'm in the same camp. I would rather have great gameplay and a fun game then a great looking one. I raised this point just as something that could use some improvement. I don't think it's necessarily the highest priority or anything, it could just use some improvement

Anarchid: I completely understand what you are saying and that's why I phrased my post the way I did. The game looks good, it could just use some more eye candy. That's also why I didn't suggest making the graphics amazing. That would be fantastic, but I know this is all volunteer. That's why I suggested some post processing or slightly better textures instead of all kinds of post processing and HD textures. Just a slight improvement. I also didn't mention the animations and other things. I also value gameplay and performance over an amazing looking game. It's a balance. You want a descent looking game, great performance and a fun game.

I liked the detail in your post Anarchid. It helps me understand the inner workings of the engine a bit better.
+1 / -0
quote:
That's why I suggested some post processing or slightly better textures instead of all kinds of post processing and HD textures. Just a slight improvement. I

There is already "some postprocessing" - we have screenspace dynamic lighting, hdr and bloom. There's a Depth of Field shader somewhere in the options, disabled by default becaues it didn't seem to really add much value. CArankAdminShadowfury333 uses an outline shader - also shipped, but not default-on - to enhance the visuals in his casts.

You could throw in SSAO, figure out how to animate emissives on unit textures, add dynamic shadows for ground units, and whatnot - but now i'm confused about where you draw the line between "some" and "all". Perhaps you have some specific post-processing effects that you would suggest, though.

Making the textures better doesn't simply amount to upscaling them to a higher resolution. You have to remake them to actually work with that resolution. That is unfortunately a lot of work, especially if the sources for the texturing process done by the original artist are nowhere to be found, which is the usual case.
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What are your settings like? Ive seen shields looking really nice on some other peoples vids before, I'm sure there was some setting that made them shimmer and glow.

I think a lot of what makes the games eye candy less appealing is the maps tbh. Some of the popular maps are old as shit and low res.

Compared to other similar games though I agree the shooting animations are kinda meh. Plasma projectiles and lasers etc arent particularly shiny.
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5 years ago
Also ZK looks a lot better with Nvidia graphics due to openGL compatibility issues.
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EErankAdminAnarchid, re your picture above. Although this pose may seem intuitively more realistic, I think lasers have no recoil so there's no reason the com would have to lean slightly forward as it does. The current com understands this ;))
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CArankni
5 years ago
Anarchid: All I'm saying is that the visual improvements don't have to be professional studio quality.

Fx]Drone: I have the settings on max, though I didn't tweak any obscure settings, so if you know of something, tell me. I think some of the maps look really good, while other don't look too good. The animations could also use some improvement. Lasers and things look ok, but I agree, they could be improved.

GoogleFrog: I use NVIDIA and have it on max. If there are obscure settings to tweak though, let me know.

Is there a guide on the forum commands, like referencing users?
+0 / -0

5 years ago
It's "@" + username
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CArankni
5 years ago
I tried that but it didn't update while editing. Does it only show up after I post it?
+0 / -0

5 years ago
"forum post editor is good but could use some more realtime wysiwyg"
+1 / -0

5 years ago
Animations and some particle effects are the biggest ugliness offenders for me. It's a shame that the animation work is such a shitty process.
+0 / -0


5 years ago
A unit animation is a pretty good bite sized piece of work for a new contributor.
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quote:
It's a shame that the animation work is such a shitty process.

I hope i didn't terrify you too much with what i wrote. It's reasonably straightforward to improve animations if you can into programming and into asking help/advice. I do think these requirements are a bit too much because few artists can code, but i suspect that you personally could be an exception.

Hey, i'll even fix bugs in that blender addon if you want to use it and encounter some!
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What about extra skin for commanders. With the steam DLC incoming. The choices are really limited.
I know its not meant to be 'value for money' but an donation. But there is not even one for the strike commander and only 1 for the assault commander.

Since ZArankAstran is an 2D artist, this looks like an thing for a starter.
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I don't consider myself an artist. I wished animations to be better in many cases. That's such a massive amount of work... I googled before what is model/animation format for zk. I also cannot use blender - I tried to learn like 3 times and gave up each time.

I wish for them to be better but I don't think I am capable of improving that. I have some visions on how I would like them to look, but I don't know how to make them a reality. Also I'm more interested in improving AI of individual units or AI player than this project.
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5 years ago
Well you're in luck because writing animations in ZK just requires attention to detail and a love of trigonometry.
+2 / -0
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