Sad post for FF fans/ Graphics frustration

[Desyphur]

Originally Posted by RocKwell

-
~quote from review~

That review doesn't deserve to be quoted! ARGH

[caesium]

firstly, apologies for not having time to read the whole thread.

improved visual clarity is something that i feel extremely strongly about and have been campaigning for behind the scenes pretty much ever since i first pld FF. imo it's also very important that mappers properly realise their role and understand that due to the awesome insanely fast speed of FF the choices they make really do significantly affect visibility/clarity and hence the gameplay. some of the discussions about all this back before FF's release got pretty ugly at times lol, but i like to think that not all of our efforts to discuss it were in vain, because things have improved sooooo much since then (including the recent improvements with the 2.0 grens/models, and the option to turn motion blur and stuff off).

however, while i think that it is now much much better now than it used to be, i still think that it is not good enough (especially on the default settings). imo the area currently by far most in need of improvement is players. the good news is that it is now relatively easy to spot a player, but often hard to determine his team/class [the obvious solution is the option for team coloured markers above player's heads, as many other games do], and usually impossible to infer much useful information from the subtleties of each player's individual movement technique/habits (which for me was a major factor in TFC, but some ppl seem think anyone who says this is nuts lol!..) [this would be greatly improved by having distinctive "momentum-exagerated" player movement animations that don't all just blend into one]. things are definitely moving in the right direction though, and hopefully these or alternative solutions will get implemented sometime.

mushy: i spent a very long time making a custom pack (cfgs/etc) that made FF "feel" right to me (i suppose kinda like TFC does: extremely clear, smooth, precise, and responsive). among other things this "feel" included visual clarity, audio clarity, and control responsiveness (there are some v weird issues regarding this in FF). i tried to give this pack out to anyone who wanted it, and the feedback that i got was that lots of ppl seemed to agree that it made FF feel loads better. if you can find this pack anywhere then give it a go, but i'm going to tidy it up and do a couple of updates to it soon when i get the time, so it maybe better to wait til i've done that. btw there's a common misconception that it is simply a "max fps cfg", which it is not: it is the settings (and all other non-default stuff) that i find make FF feel best purely in terms of gameplay, and although one side-effect of this is an increased fps there are many settings that are definitely not optimal for improved fps.

[BumGravy]

Got any SS?

Personally I dont have much problem with issues discussed itt, but what would help most without requiring resources we dont have - ie an animator - would be more work on the skins. Theyre going in the right direction but i feel with the right materials for player model skins a lot more could be done to improve visibility.

[Ginger Lord]

I'm sure theres a console command that ramps down the texture quality a lot, making things blurred and boxy which might be of help.

cl_mipmap or something.

[caesium]

yep, the mipmap level thingy was one of the literally many hundreds of settings i pld around with, but i don't remember the level i decided was best (in general my goal was to lower the detail on gameplay unimportant things and increase the detail on gameplay important things - although it's more complex than that and you can't just go to extremes because you have to strike a balance to retain decent clarity for things such as weapon impact decals).

bumgravy: i don't have any screenshots atm, but it's much more to do with the feel rather than specifically how it looks. i used to have rather controversial fluerescant fullbright grens lol, but took them out a while ago. i think the only major visual changes atm are paintball bullet marks (and a v useful script that clears them all at an appropriate time - great for ppl who struggle learning concaim), and fullbright yellow pipes that flash. it's the settings that make 99% of the difference, and although you probably wouldn't notice much difference at all when comparing screenshots, it's amazing how much clearer i find everything is when you play with everything feeling ultra smooth and responsive.

p.s. remember that a lot of parameters allow different settings when cheats are on/off, so don't spend all month working on your cfg on a localhost only to find that half the settings are classed as cheats and won't do anything on a real server...

[dys]

^^ looking forward to that! Thanks

[Doompiggy]

Making models in ff more "clear" will NOT bring us tfc'ers over.

[Sh4x]

Originally Posted by Green Mushy

So, at 1:30 am on a Monday night, the mIRC Channel #fourtress, for tfc, fills 2 pickups of 8 people each in probably 2 minutes or less. We try to start a pickup in #ff.pickup, we get 3 people and sit there and talk about why nobody plays it. A stupid sourcemod called Pirates Vikings Knights II has like 5 full servers running all the time, and all u do is run around and melee people!

One conclusion is that the game of tfc is MUCH more clear and smooth looking then FF. You may blame this on the pc, but i think the same theory applies. The game of tfc is so clear, you can distinguish a player type from across the map easily. When chaos is going on, u can see whats happening. 2.0 was a huge improvement in that front, but it is still miles behind the clarity of tfc. Holy shit so far away. And to tell you the truth, i miss that clarity so badly.

Is there any way to change the graphics look of FF so that it has more CLEAR visuals with models, lighting, physics? I think that would entice tfcers to come over, because the gameplay of FF is so much better. Look at TF2, the game looks like a comic book and people love it. Same goes for tfc, its from the 90s for god's sake. We need a more simple and clear game, and the awesome gameplay will take care of the rest. So i propose (if this is even possible) to have an easily accessible option to turn the graphics down to an obscenely low level, where the clarity is greatly enhanced.

Let me note that im already running on dx80 and everything turned down graphics wise. Id rather play a clear cartoon with this gameplay then good graphics but squinting my eyes to figure whats happening. Im sure others agree. What do we do!?

That's funny cause when they started releasing media of models at the beginning of it all, I was already saying how they should look more like the old TFC models, cartoonish and all... and people were saying fuck off man.

I never understood the logic behind having realistic models in a game like TFC where everyone flies all over the map like a super jet. And on top of that, it makes them harder to differenciate at long range.

[Titan`]

Originally Posted by mushy

One conclusion is that the game of tfc is MUCH more clear and smooth looking then FF.

Very true... not that I have problems running FF on my computer, but TFC is much more distinct and playable.
The TFC people I've spoken to about playing FF said they had tried it out once or twice, then stopped. Reasons? Probably a few, but this thread sure does address the major reason.

Originally Posted by caesium

i spent a very long time making a custom pack (cfgs/etc) that made FF "feel" right to me (i suppose kinda like TFC does: extremely clear, smooth, precise, and responsive). among other things this "feel" included visual clarity, audio clarity, and control responsiveness (there are some v weird issues regarding this in FF)

Sweet, can I get a copy?

[BumGravy]

Originally Posted by Doompiggy

Making models in ff more "clear" will NOT bring us tfc'ers over.

I consider myself a tfc'er and ive been "brought over". i take this to mean you dont/wont play FF, may I ask what you feel is stopping you from wanting to play FF?

[WATER]

and you wont have to cry about the game not looking "clear"

[Beast]

What are you talking about. the graphics are great. I have no problem seeing who is on the other side off a big map

[v3rtigo]

Originally Posted by WATER

and you wont have to cry about the game not looking "clear"

I think, in fact, that having everything high detail/realistic actually makes it 'worse'. It's mainly the shapes and colors that matter and, IMO, they need to be clear and bright, so you can see what class is on the other side of the yard. While FF has decent models, I think they're too grey and lack saturation.

[Jiggles]

I dunno, I think the 2.0 textures saturated the character models almost to the max. Part of the problem is the default Source lighting, which is much more "moody" and "realistic" than TFC's. Even neon colors (assuming they're not fullbright or selfillum...which looks awful, imo) come out dark in lighting that's at all dim.

When we get upgraded to the "orange box engine," we should try out TF2's rim lighting shader. That might help. Sadly, I don't really know much about programming shaders.

[mervaka]

i dont mean to take a dump on the work our texture artists have done, they're masterpieces. however, i just think that in hindsight the busier textures do make the eyes work harder, and distract one from the game

[Credge]

Originally Posted by mervaka

i dont mean to take a dump on the work our texture artists have done, they're masterpieces. however, i just think that in hindsight the busier textures do make the eyes work harder, and distract one from the game

QFT.

[myersjr]

Originally Posted by Doompiggy

Making models in ff more "clear" will NOT bring us tfc'ers over.

Well, to use your answer in order to form my question, What would??

[Ihmhi]

Originally Posted by mervaka

i dont mean to take a dump on the work our texture artists have done, they're masterpieces. however, i just think that in hindsight the busier textures do make the eyes work harder, and distract one from the game

I think the easiest thing we could do is sort of... place colors on certain identifiable places.

Blue shoulderpads and hat? It's a Soldier.

Blue legs? It's a demo.

Full blue suit? It's a Pyro.

Pyro probably is one of the easiest classes to recognize because he is one solid color.

[Credge]

Make the colors more dull. Currently, the colors are very bright. Compare this to the old TFC classes...

http://www.gamespot.com/features/teamfort_gg/p3_01.html

The soldier, now, looks like a blueberry. The engineers gloves are almost glowing =\.

Don't add more grey to the models, just tone down the values more.

Something like... 149 149 255... for blue would be a great start.

[tu!]

ive been saying all this siht in this thread since day 1 but not in so many words and no one listen to me!

then green makes this thread and everyone agrees witrh him basically, that is bs lol!