Graphics

you can already do that

I'm glad you're having a blast TFLFatal. You've been posting for so long, nice to finally see you in the game! We are currently exploring different variations of the ship icons to help make this easier for everyone.

Instead of ship icons it might be easier to use shapes, like in SupCom, I'd be content with triangles circles and squares to represent ships...

I dont think that in multiplayer it would be a good idea to see what ships are experienced or not. If that would be the case then most people would destroy them first and it would be next to impossible to build up experience on your ships.

Agreed!

experienced can be purchased

Hey, does anyone else have this problem. When I first start the game the graphics lag behind for a few seconds and then after a while the graphics seem to catch up. It seems to do it every game and sometimes during the game

... Random much?

Make your own thread and describe the problem in detail there!

NO.

at least not as the ONLY option.

people would realize and go after them anyway. its just a matter of ease.

where've you been...

look at the date when posted

ah, true. but then again he wasnt around before then either.

quite...

After a bit of a break I've fired up Beta2 for another look at SoaSE. Now I've always liked the in game effects, but the models haven't really moved on. To quote one of our TFL forum members when I posted an image of HW2 vs. SoaSE (beta1): 'tbh I prefer the HW2 screenshot'.

I'm gonna just say this right off the bat without meaning to cause offence, 'Come 2008 are we likely to see significantly updated ship models (comparable to X3 & Eve e.g 'http://img256.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hammerhead2ar8.jpg') or not?'

This is a thread about graphics, and I am just giving feedback about graphics there are many other elements of the game which are doing very well.

Have you looked at the recent shots with Vasari/Advent ships? TEC ships are blocky by design, but the other two races are much curvier and shinier. They seem pretty comparable to the image you posted aside from the [IMO excessive] bloom used there.

Well, Sins still loses to the beauty that is X³.

Sadly, over all the graphic improvement Egosoft made for X³ they absolutely and totally screwed the interface. The user interface in X³ is so cumbersomely it could be straight out from the DOS era.

And the graphics are also quite a resource hog and it never runs as smoothly as Sins does.

But one thing you could imho easily improve are the planetary textures. The current ones have just a too low resolution. Imho it should be easy for your graphic artists to improve on them. The current planet textures seen from near are just ugly. And since planets are so large, you'll see them from near quite a lot, where as you don't see ships so near, so their textures are imho fine.

Oh, and the orange background still doesn't fit well where the edges of the texture touches each other.

Similarly for the north resp. south pole of the sun/planets. They need more work there to fit well.

If you like the hammerhead, you are going to love the Vasari

Thanks Vandenburg!  The seam has been fixed. Which planets/suns did you notice seams on?

It's dissapointing the planets don't meet your expectations. They are easily the most publicly complimented graphical feature we have in the game. The original texture sizes are much larger, but with the quantity of planetoids we feature, we would need to sacrifice texture space somewhere else. Other options include artificially restricting the camera zoom distance for planets, or reducing the size of planets - which we know nobody wants   X3 is a beautiful game, but keep the genres in check, would you rather background fluff, or fully interactive 3-dimensional planets   

 

so dose this mean we might get a new race in the up coming beta.

LOL, you say that in every post where the dev's responds

ontopic:
Well i agree that the ships in X3 has much more detail then sins, but id rather have a good gameplay then graphics

Just for a reminder to everyone, the dev's are holding back on some of the goodies...

like these 2 planets

lol i know i say that cos its nagging tactics and those 2 screens look ace!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and i have x3 its tooooooo complicated sins beta 1 was 5x as good lol. those 3 ships look ace i realy like the ships thats like half the size of the planet! vasari maby? and where u get those screens?

i... hate... you... devs...

those are old images so i wont count on the ships, but the planets im sure are somewhere on Craig's comp

i dont they just annoy me u have to keep in mind they are making this fab game.   just dont like it when they hold stuf back as you might be able to tell. iv neaver seen umm be4

time to start the hacking

No, no. The planet textures are beautiful, it's also one of the graphic features I like most with sins. Your graphic artist really did great work on them.

I'm sorry for the misunderstanding.



This is what I meant. Imho they are just too low resolution. The design of them, the colour composition, colour saturation, etc is great. Seeing them against the deepspace background makes a beautiful picture.

Because of that I find it even more sad that when zooming near they lose their sharpness so fast and get blurred. Even more so with the planetary lights.

I just find it a waste that you can't use those higher resolution textures that your graphic artists have.

Would it be possible to release them separately? If I remember the files correctly it should be possible for me to replace the current ones with the higher res. ones.

that would be very nice for those of us who hate having HD space to spare

Craig, I think he's talking about the poles on the suns. Where the animated texture meets the pole...