Demo Graphics Downgrade

purifyweirdshard Yeah that room looked better in 2016 demo. We had more details. Buuuut, then again. We came to learn the demo is in a very light version, both in tone and and in details. I think it just need some darker filters.

Nice to see you stream this. I haven't gotten around for it. I figured you guys would cover it.

It seems to me odd that it would be because of a lack mip-mapping, but if he's done digging, then maybe he's found just one model and texture... in which case texture filtering (such as improving the mip-mapping), would definitely help, but as you say, it is not very taxing on performance (not nowadays, anyway) - so it's odd that they wouldn't have made it better to begin with, but maybe they're leaving it for the very end.  All you have to do is tell the API to increase the number of mip-map levels, like changing a 2 to a 4... so it seems odd, but who knows...

EDIT: I'd like to note that increasing the mip-map levels is, essentially, adding additional, higher resolution textures.

What mip-mapping does is basically create a really small texture from the original, and then lots lots of little textures of varying resolutions in between, which is know as a mip-map. So when deciding what a texel looks like, depending on how close the character is to the camera, you average the value of the closest textures in your mip-map. All game systems since the Nintendo 64 have made use of it, so much so that it's practically a given for all 3D games. Normally you don't notice it's artifacts, but in this case, the levels may be way too low.

Just to add to PurifyWS' post.

You can force a lower or higher mipmap in UE4 pretty easily by changing the mipmap bias in the texture assets setting.

Chaning it to -1 instead of zero will mean that the texture will skip 1 mipmap switch.
Again you literally change a 0 to a -1.
It wont affect performance much afaik.
What you should be wary of nowadays more than anything when it comes to graphics performance is shader and overdraw(transparancy).
Modern graphics card have no issue with pushing millions of polygons. Textures mostly affect RAM. And how those textures are used in the shaders/the shaders themselves are the most expensive.

Apart from that I talked about the screenshot comparisons as well.

In UE4 you can take 'highresshots'. When doing that you can take screenshots at higher resolutions.
At higher resolutions the mipmapping is also lower. So the textures appear sharper.

Couple that with oversampling, rendering at higher resoluyions and downscaling. Which will make everything look sharper as well.
Kinda like the 'screenpercentage 200' trick.

Now keep in mind while some things take 5 seconds to 'fix', its usually takes allot longer if it gets fixed at all.

Something like this would probably get logged as super low priority.
As it works as intended. its not a glitch or a bug. Its just polish at this point.

But what with the community feedback, its priority will probably rise a bit and since weve already described a solution it could be theyd only need to review it and decide wether its worth it to just flip the switch.

All in all my personal opinion on the texture quality of the characters is that it is not a big deal.

When it comes to environments though...

Yeah not a big fan.
They seem to be using allot of overlay textures and a colour overlay through shaders to colour stuff and add detail.
For example i didnt find any 'albedo'/diffuse (colour) textures for the environments.
They were all normal maps(bump) and roughness/gloss maps.

That contributes to the 'genericness' of the environments.
And obviously the big thing is the lighting. Its so different from what it used to be. Everything looks flat, again a lack of contrast.

ps typing on mobile1. excuse typos

Oh also,

When it comes to the character shaders,they have made some changes as well, I had probably mentioned this somewhere on discord a few days ago.

Basically it looks like they have removed some subtle colour overlays.
The 2016 version for example had a slight pink tone. Most notable on the ruffles.
The 2018 version just looks grey and muddy.

The 'fresnel' effect, the glow near the edges of the model. Use to have a teal colour.
Now its just white.
There could be a simple reason for this though.
When you enter the ''Red moon room'' Miriam gets a red effect applied to her as well. The Fresnel becomes red and her overall model becomes darker and has a red tone to it as well.

So it looks like they have made the overlay colour and the fresnel effect more dynamic. Making it so that Miriam can blend in with the overall atmosphere of the environment.

When it comes to the lip syching.
It looks pretty bad, especially on Miriam, bcause they only hav 5 poses for the lip synch. Basically only the vowels. A E I O U have poses.
You can imagine an ''ah..'' sound and a scream ''Aaaaah!'' would use the same pose.
This is ''bad'' for multiple reasons.
1 if they went with the most ''neutral'' A sound. The lip synch for ''ah..'' would be too strong and for a scream ''Aaaaah!'' to subtle.
2 if they went with the most extreme the ''ah..'' would be way too strong, and it would only be correct for the scream.
3 if they went with the most subtle variant, th ''ah...'' would look correct but the scream this time would make no sense.

Basically what I am trying to say is that they have waaaaay too little amount of visimes.
Heres one of the first hits from a google search,
www.annosoft.com/docs/Visemes17.html

They seem to be using some kind of bulk importer for the facial animations. I am not exactly sure how they set up their facial animatins though. So apart from the limited visimes i cant comment about that.

its still simplified for Japanese as well. It might not be super appearant.

For example Konichiwa. It would get simplified to O I I A.

A Ni sound versus a Chi sound has different visimes.

Just try saying O I I A versus Ko Ni Chi Wa.

I mean if it works for Japanese, thats great.
But looking at their survey numbers and sales of CotM, most of their audience is in the West/US.

I know everyone is keeping their hope up high and say ''its just a beta/demo'', but a Beta generally means its near final and only tweaks/bug fixing and polish is left.

So personally I am a bit worried.
However I also think most of this stuff isn't super important.
As it's ''just polish'', so it would be nice to have, if not its not gonna break the experience.

This is a bit weird coming from me... as I am a graphics guy... but really it doesn't really matter regardless.
If you consider older CV games just had a static portrait during dialogue, this is a huge step up.

I agree with ya Nezuto. As much as I would like the graphics to be polished in this game, particularly the character models, I'd have to say that's probably the lowest priority for me.

I grew up with the first Nintendo as I'm sure many of you did too and in those days the graphics were quite frankly - shit. As much as I appreciate amazing graphics these days, I also lament at how shallow many modern games (especially AAA) have become, because they devote so much of their resources on creating a flashy cinematic-experience but skimp on depth and quality of gameplay.

Back then, when we didn't have amazing visuals to depict a place or voices to give to characters, we used music to create atmosphere and emotion. And at the end of the day it was how the game played that's what made a game; the depth, the challenge, the duration and all the little discoveries we had to make by playing again and again when the interwebz wasn't around. Other than perhaps a really cool box cover art, few games relied on graphics to succeed and sell.

I'm absolutely certain that someone is going to shoot me for saying this but when I first picked up SotN I actually thought it looked really bad (of course I look back at it now and realize how timeless and beautiful the graphics are now). And look at what a gem that turned out to be.

Back on topic; I hope RoTN will be more like the games of old - not soley relying upon graphics, but remembered for using everything else to make it a rich and memorable experience. I think if this comes to pass many will be less concerned with the visuals as they stand today.

The thing about graphics is while indeed they should have lower priority, the game still has to look pleasant to the eyes. Accomplishing this doesn't require the latest graphical technology and techniques, just good art direction. I, just as you, grew up playing what we call now "old games", though in my case it was Super Nintendo, not the 8bit console. And I can say with confidence that if I boot up Castlevania Dracula X (yes, the bad Rondo of Blood port) or Super Mario World right now, the first thought that will cross my mind when the game starts will be "Well, for a 5th generation game, this doesn't look bad at all, in fact it's good!" and why's that? Because those games have good art direction, something that unfortunately the demo lacks heavily.

The problem with 3D graphics is that when it is badly done, it can look extremely generic and unpleasant to look at. Changing that involves clever usage of lightning, textures, colors and materials. Lightning, for example, is something the backers have been pointing out since early 2017, when the development updates with areas made by the new team were being rolled out. Lack of environment detail, bad usage of colors (or the lack of), all of them are things that we all have been complaining since the very early stages of development, yet we got a demo that looks worse despite our feedback. That's why we are worried. Yes I agree that gameplay is top priority, there is no good game out there that has bad gameplay and good graphics, the opposite being true however. But even still, when we already know that gameplay-wise and music-wise Bloodstained is in good hands, the next thing we should focus our attention is the art direction, because right now the game looks generic with extreme lack of polishment, save for the character models.

When I spoke on the graphics part, was mainly generalizing the 'god awful graphics' part, seeing as to how these days, people are more apt over how pretty that mountain is, how real the grass looks and how bouncy those boobs are. We all know the majority of games/devs tend to rely on flashy sights more than anything else and it creates a meh experience. That's not saying there are no games that can't have both and pull it all off (Witcher 3 comes to mind).

I was pretty tired when I typed all that on top of it and was a longer way of saying, let's not focus on just graphics, when there are other important aspects as well. Again, I agree that the graphics need some more tweaking, so does the gameplay and so on, but for everyone being a bit too worked up (myself included) over some 'pretty pictures'

freddythemonkey pretty much hit the nail on the head with what I was trying to say, as well as Ciel