I love ZK, but:

raaar at the risk of splitting hairs, perhaps ZK doesn't look bad exactly, but it doesn't look attractive. Compared to the average BAR screenshot people aren't going to think "that looks amazing" and go to install it. They'll have to read a bit more about what it does.

Various aspects of game quality behave very differently when attracting and retaining players. Ordered from "seen the game for the first time" to "been playing for years" it looks something like this.

• Website fanciness.
• Screenshot-appropriate graphics.
• Narrative/setting hooks.
• Bugs/crashes.
• Music (for those that listen to game music) and sound effects.
• Overall aesthetic feel of playing.
• The game being learnable/approachable.
• Overall game systems design.
• Replayability/modding/patch rate.
• General community character.

Graphical readability isn't even a factor before players play the game for themselves.

quote: BAR is a good example of what the spring engine can deliver. i doubt zero-k devs have a goal of achieving BAR level of visuals however it wouldn't hurt to have at least a major fx, sound and texture overall.

Well idk, what is the nature of a goal like this? Improving graphics would be good. It seems more like something that is tied to resources than a distinct goal of the game. Anyone could start learning the skills to do this today and become a developer.

You are right in the sense that I don't expect to push a graphics overhaul myself. It should be done by someone who can see the problems and is motivated to gain the skills. Overall I am not hugely impacted by graphics, but tend to care more about silhouettes and the geometric design of units than textures. I have already implemented my personal low hanging fruit, eg I screwed around in paint.net for a while to remove the old ugly brown donut on the explosion decals.

I wouldn't want ZK to look exactly like BAR as I think they have made some poor tradeoffs. Most things have tradeoffs, and a lot of fancy graphics tends to trade off against readability and game mechanical diversity. For example, the BAR mapping style has a lot of niches and ravines on the cliffs and ramps. This looks nice but it can be hard to tell exactly where bots can walk, and the cliffs be randomly unsable for spiders. I don't know whether BAR could support a full factory of spiders with such cliffs. I also didn't think the units were that distinguishable, but I haven't looked recently.

The effects and textures do seem like a good place to start. There are people in the spring discord working on using the new animated sprite sheets. Go talk to them. Generating normal maps for all the units (and integrating the BAR tech to use them) also seems good. I think the lowest hanging fruit is to fix the terrible lighting on many maps. Perhaps something changed in the engine about how units/terrain is lit, but I don't remember it being this bad. Just having units consistently lit properly would go a long way.

Effects are much easier than models. Technically all you need is notepad and something like Paint.net. Fancier programs are good if you know how to use them. Anyone could get started on this pretty quickly, it just takes time and effort.

quote: On a more basic level, what % of players stumble on crashes or other bugs where the game doesn't seem to work for them and quit?

Based on things like crash reports, feedback and requests for support, this percentage seems low. The engine devs are fairly responsive too. The low hanging fruit has already been plucked here.

I have put information about the lighting and water on the wiki: https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Sun_and_Water_Overrides

Someone fixing the lighting and water on every map seems like a good place to start. It just involves tweaking values with a UI and sending files.

I made some improvements to the widget just recently, so anyone doing this now should get it from the repository and install it locally: https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K/blob/master/LuaUI/Widgets/gfx_sun_and_atmosphere.lua

One thing ZK's game list desperately needs is some divider that splits autohosted games vs player hosted games. Right now it's like playing where's waldo finding Teams All Welcome #1. Just making it obvious that there's a publicly hosted match for anyone to join, would probably make a huge difference. New players kinda sorta have to have been playing for a while to recognize that there's a lobpot.

Made separate thread about the sound:

https://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/36127?postID=256775

quote: What is the ZK narrative and lore? I'm assuming that's the campaign? (I haven't played it). I'm assuming it loosely follows TA lore?

How important is it to know? The campaign is hard to summarise and the context beyond the campaign is a bit nebulous. It doesn't follow TA lore though, loosely or otherwise.

quote: One small change I think you could make is to remove the need to connect the grid - just make it automatically connected.

Overdrive used to exist without the grid. The grid was added because otherwise it is too swingy. It's just a mathematical result that, with global overdrive, the first mex that you lose has the greatest absolute impact on your income. The goal of the grid is to reverse this, as mexes on the edge of your territory are unlikely to be gridded. I also like how it motivates a bit of structure in energy placement. Without it we would end up stacking all energy in a corner, rather than making it in lines. But mostly I think it is fine for new players because they don't have to worry about it and the campaign doesn't mention it early on.

quote: One thing ZK's game list desperately needs is some divider that splits autohosted games vs player hosted games. Right now it's like playing where's waldo finding Teams All Welcome #1.

Sounds ok, but the solutions are not obvious. It would probably involve cutting down the number of autohosts. The code side would not be difficult though, if anyone has a workable suggestion.

quote: BAR has an amazing fire effect. Let's use it at least for Pyro.

You are welcome to work on the fire effects. You can't simply take it from BAR though. Look at the definition files for their effects and learn how they structure them, then make one for ZK. The sprites themselves are art. You would have to ask them for permission to use their sprite sheet.

There actually was a fancy wavy fire effect in ZK a long time ago. It was removed because it didn't have anything to do with the projectile. In particular, the effect wasn't blocked by shields (and maybe it moved at a different speed, not sure). I expect the BAR system won't have this problem though.

DESC?

yes I meant descending order : more populated rooms would show up first

Now consider how running battles are sorted, where matchmaker games go, and the fact that there are eleven autohosts. Also, what does "Autohosts" really communicate to a player? The "Private rooms" are not entirely private either. People make rooms for mods and invite others there.

Putting the visuals in question, why not have a setting that makes colors stronger? Increasing the glow or gloss, to make them pop a bit more.
Put it as non-default first, so if it does turn out to be eye-poking pain it's optional thing people try to test but regular players don't get flashbanged, and if it's good put it up to a vote for being default visual.

quote: Putting the visuals in question, why not have a setting that makes colors stronger? Increasing the glow or gloss, to make them pop a bit more.

Because that stuff is actually pretty complicated if you want it to look "proffesional". I know because I tried postprocessing on videos. And I failed horribly.

For some godforsaken reason, knowing the exact amount of how much more color/gloss/glow you need and can get away with without looking like a cheap DIY-video requires a lot of expirience.

The thing is that the pros in this field, like all "pros" do nothing else 8 or more hours a day. So, if we are realistic: we can do our best, but it will never look as good as commercial titles. We can try or best to get as far as possible towards it tho.

All the above is also true for the sound: I can`t make a living from mixing, and hence can`t afford to mix all day. I can do my best, but you cannot expect me to be as good as someone who can afford to mix music all day.