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Post by CastleDan on Jun 30, 2018 6:25:28 GMT -6
I’m just saying guys mock up or not those graphics shouldn’t be unattainable. It largely looks similar to the bottom two but with a stronger lighting effect that lights up the whole wall and a foggy type background effect. I’m saying stop discrediting it’s best look... use EACH period of time to make the point. It’s the best way. I’ve seen plenty of 2.5d games that look on level or better than that first pic and again the boat comes close to that’s level now. The castle does not.
The castle for whatever reason looks worse.
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Post by gunlord500 on Jun 30, 2018 6:32:15 GMT -6
I mentioned this in another thread, but yeah, the graphical downgrade is kind of jarring. Off the top of my head, and I know nothing about programming of making 3d environments look nice, but if I had to guess, maybe it's because they're in the middle of 'renovating' the castle, so to speak? Like, maybe they changed its layout since the last time they showed it off in 2017, but in the process had to reset the lighting, so the castle we got now looks a little dull but when they're sprucing and optimizing everything in the final build, the good lighting/textures will come back and it'll look really cool. I mean, from what I've seen, the Galleon Minerva wasn't "downgraded"--it looks as good as the upgraded 2017 screenshots did. This tells me that the Minerva is more or less complete (what we see is what we'll get in the final game), but the castle is being worked on further. But I admit that may be a long shot...
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Post by h00dz on Jun 30, 2018 6:44:08 GMT -6
Jan 2016 ![](http://i68.tinypic.com/2u5aovm.png) June 2017 ![](http://i67.tinypic.com/2nhq143.jpg) June 2018 ![](http://i63.tinypic.com/2zjkh2o.jpg) Everything seems to be getting worse with time. This same downgrade seems to occur in multiple areas including the Zanguetsu arena, a lot of the garden and under the drawbridge. I can totally disregard the 2016 one because it was just a mockup. But the difference between 2017 and 2018 is just unacceptable. First post! But I had to join just for this. The art style and direction they are going is getting WORSE. And its totally not acceptable. I would take a delayed game in order to fix this. FYI I backed at 60$ and if this is what we get then thats just a reason for me to never do kickstarter again :/.
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Post by XombieMike on Jun 30, 2018 6:49:34 GMT -6
Jan 2016 ![](http://i68.tinypic.com/2u5aovm.png) June 2017 ![](http://i67.tinypic.com/2nhq143.jpg) June 2018 ![](http://i63.tinypic.com/2zjkh2o.jpg) Everything seems to be getting worse with time. This same downgrade seems to occur in multiple areas including the Zanguetsu arena, a lot of the garden and under the drawbridge. I can totally disregard the 2016 one because it was just a mockup. But the difference between 2017 and 2018 is just unacceptable. Well shit. I thought the game looked good, but when compared to older examples it does appear to get worse and worse as time goes on. How disheartening.
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Post by CastleDan on Jun 30, 2018 7:03:14 GMT -6
As said though it seems to be specific to the Castle area because the boat definitely did improve and feels much more in line with the Jan 2016 pic. ![](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/458416269310296086/462599528915402753/20180630134302_1.jpg) Very nice lighting and detail.
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Post by Arikado on Jun 30, 2018 7:16:05 GMT -6
![](https://i.imgur.com/cHYWiJk.png) Compared to I remember that first image, the cel-shading was done really well. I thought it looked pretty, colorful, and full of personality. Compared to it, the new Miriam model looks generic and quite bland, if I'm being honest. What happened?
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gunlord500
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Post by gunlord500 on Jun 30, 2018 7:18:02 GMT -6
CastleDan Yeah, I agree. I suppose we can tag Angel-Corlux to get an official answer, but if it was a change in art direction we'd expect the boat to look "downgraded" as well. However, it still looks to be improved. So I suppose only angel would know for sure, or he might be able to tell us some of the technical details, but if I had to bet I'd put money on the castle being in a lower state of completion than the boat due to changes they decided to implement after the final lighting was applied to a previous layout in 2017. But again, only someone who knows more about the technical side of things could say for sure.
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Post by Astaroth on Jun 30, 2018 8:56:47 GMT -6
actually, it looks more like some lighting effects are turned off for the castle, when you look at the galleon they have those lighting effects on and it looks great, so perhaps this is intentional so they can get feedback on which version of lighting we like more, brighter and more even rooms, or darker and more moody, or because the lighting in the castle were not quite ready yet so easier to turn it off than have rooms look super wierd however theres a full game to look at and another approach is to give each area a very distinctive color palette and make keeping track of where you are and where you need to backtrack to after a new ability to get to new areas and items, remember if you light the entire game with orange yes it can give you some really pretty areas like the earlier shots of the entrance, but other areas may end up looking really clashy or downright ugly so while i think they could do with maybe turning the brightness down a little bit and give the entrance more oomph to really up the wow factor of the starting couple areas, i dont think the gray is bad, it contrasts well with the gloomy ship and orangey reds of the town to illustrate, this is great lighting, but this lighting scheme wont look good in every instance, and if every area had this lighting, the game would all blend together after a while, its a curse of not being able to fake light 3d using gradients like you can 2d pixels and you cant just go 'this areas gradient will be greenish!' like the library in sotn
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Post by CastleDan on Jun 30, 2018 9:43:08 GMT -6
Astaroth Having gray be a different color to separate it from other areas is fine but there still should be other colors mixed in. At times it looks like they literally forgot to color an area. Here's a good example - ![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HcHdViIC5_M/maxresdefault.jpg) Look behind Zangetsu....it's just completely devoid of ANY color. It looks incredibly bland. Having gray be a focus for an area is fine but sprucing it up with lighting and more color helps make it look far more alive and interesting. I hate to use mirror of fate as an example but look ![](https://i.neoseeker.com/a/castlevania_mirror_of_fate/image2012_0807_1146_3.jpg) Gray walls but all the columns being red with gold, the symbols behind the portaits having red in them, the cloth like emblem on one of the walls has a greenish color with gold trim. There's a mix...Not to mention the lighting really lights up the environment well and creates a mood. The best way to say it is, in the castle entrance there's a lot of objects in the background that look like objects that should have color but don't. So it's offputting a bit.
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Post by savingprincess on Jun 30, 2018 9:53:24 GMT -6
My suspicion is that they invited Tomonobu Itagaki to come play test the pre-E3 build and he said it was too dark to see and they were too scared to tell him to take off his sunglasses so they just brightened everything. ![;)](//storage.forums.net/forum/images/smiley/wink.png) In all seriousness... this just feels like design creep, which is a very real and very problematic thing in all creative projects. You try to solve an issue in an area where it's too dark to distinguish something, but the effort it takes to fix that issue is costly, and it's cheaper/faster to just apply a blanket solution that affects everything, so you do that, and then you realize it causes this other issue where these textures don't look quite right, so you adjust those... but those are also used in this other area where now the lighting solution and the new textures don't play well together, so you change another global thing... and now you've got a washed out game but at least everything is functional... so you go with that for the time being until you can convince the people higher up they need to spend a lot more money to fix the last 5 fixes you implemented to address the original issue that would have just cost less overall to fix but you couldn't get the budget approved at the time. Hopefully they will add some more contrast and color depth to the final build.
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Post by Astaroth on Jun 30, 2018 9:53:46 GMT -6
im agreeing with you actually, im simply torn on the fix for this because i dont have an idea of the color scheme of the rest of the game, if this area being gray is precisely what sets it apart from the rest of the game you then need a light touch on adding color as an accent, if its not then the previous method of giving it more oranges and blues akin to earlier versions of the room would really give it that early game wow factor
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Post by dareka on Jun 30, 2018 9:58:28 GMT -6
Like I said, what they did is obvious by looking at the screenshots: a downgrade in geometry (fewer polygons for the backgrounds and the characters), downgrade in texture resolution and detail, and a downgrade in lighting/post-processing. gunlord500 So, you'll say, "but the galleon looks great" - yeah, that's because the geometry is pretty flat: you can make it look good just with good art direction. Very little post-processing needed. If you want to do something like the castle, though, then you need better geometry, better textures and more complex lighting and post-processing. It might seem like it's just the lighting - but what happens is that good lighting effects sometimes require more geometry and better textures. Now, I don't know jack about procedural generation, but if it generates geometry and textures, then it might have been toned-down/adjusted to work with less. The reason why geometry and texturing has an effect on lighting is because the geometry and texture information is what's used to calculate what the lit pixels look like. So... anyway, just look at how everything looks flatter. Additional post-processing effects can also give the 3D more " volume" and depth, etc. So, post-processing is the sort of thing that can be enabled/disabled according to the hardware specs, but if the information needed to do it is not there in the first place (like textures and polygons), then you can't just upgrade it. Anyway, I'm no expert on this, but get a seasoned modder or 3D artist here, and they can tell you exactly how it was downgraded (and where I might be mistaken). And again, there are only two potential reasons to downgrade assets you've already made: to reduce the cost of mass production (better assets = more money, oh, shit, we can't do the whole game at this quality, we need to bring our original assets down to the quality of the assets we're going to order), or to facilitate development on a platform with lower specs than the lead platform (Switch/Vita/Lower spec-ed PCs).
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Post by CastleDan on Jun 30, 2018 9:58:57 GMT -6
Astaroth Yeah but there's gotta be a way to better tackle that. I think the problem is what works well in 2D just doesn't as well in 2.5d. Gray might have been fine for locations in 2D games but with 3D it looks super bland and boring. I hate being critical of this project because I really like all the people involved. Honestly the visuals are the only issue I really have with the game. So at least the game itself is fantastic and incredibly fun. I'm never disappointed by IGAVANIA gameplay.
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Post by savingprincess on Jun 30, 2018 10:02:06 GMT -6
Astaroth Having gray be a different color to separate it from other areas is fine but there still should be other colors mixed in. At times it looks like they literally forgot to color an area. Here's a good example - ![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HcHdViIC5_M/maxresdefault.jpg) Look behind Zangetsu....it's just completely devoid of ANY color. It looks incredibly bland. Having gray be a focus for an area is fine but sprucing it up with lighting and more color helps make it look far more alive and interesting. I would say it's a lighting issue for the most part... you can make grey marble pop, but you have to adjust the lighting. ![](https://i.imgur.com/akFJEdi.jpg) This adjustment was made by only adjusting overall white/black contrast levels.
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Post by CastleDan on Jun 30, 2018 10:03:46 GMT -6
savingprincess Lighting is definitely a big issue there but it's still incredibly bland. To see a huge environment without a single unique color to it. Here maybe this will better describe what i mean. ![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qNDe65HwsJc/maxresdefault.jpg) There's gray but there's purple walls, golden statues, gold trim. ![](http://cf.shacknews.com/extras/c_sotn_p/070111_castlevania_sotn_05.jpg) ![](https://www.gamereactor.eu/media/65/_2126533b.png) Remember what i said about golden statues, golden trim. There's objects below the steps and not a single one has color. They LOOK like they should have color but dont. That's what i mean.
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Astaroth
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Post by Astaroth on Jun 30, 2018 10:03:52 GMT -6
ooh that does look good, and keeps the theme, im really curious to see what they can do to the area in future updates
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Post by dareka on Jun 30, 2018 10:05:25 GMT -6
Also, I'm too lazy to do it, but someone needs to make a meme: 2016 > concept art 2017 > 2017 prototype screenshot 2018 > beta backer demo screenshot 2019 > Miriam in Curse of the Moon.
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Post by CastleDan on Jun 30, 2018 10:07:38 GMT -6
dareka I don't know why people say concept art. Looks in-engine graphics to me. A lot of it looks like stuff that is STILL in the 2018 shot. Nowhere did it EVER say it's concept ART. It's in-engine graphics.
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Post by dareka on Jun 30, 2018 10:12:09 GMT -6
Edit: And whatever happened with that procedural generation gimmick shown on this development update? Since that video we haven't heard a word about it, and there is no sign of it on the backer demo. Most likely dropped because switch and vita? ![;-|](//storage.forums.net/forum/images/smiley/squint.png)
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Post by savingprincess on Jun 30, 2018 10:13:33 GMT -6
savingprincess Lighting is definitely a big issue there but it's still incredibly bland. To see a huge environment without a single unique color to it. Here maybe this will better describe what i mean. ![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qNDe65HwsJc/maxresdefault.jpg) Yup, but also I think we're dealing with this: This is what it looks like if you remove the lighting differential: ![](https://i.imgur.com/zYIt9MO.jpg)
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