Demo Graphics Downgrade

Valtiel


I actually agree that the rain effects are a bit TOO strong. Tone it down inside the ship more and keep it similar when you're on the top of the ship and it'd be great.

its a weekend, and a holiday weekend at that so chill, when they get in theyll be able to look through our feedback and tell us what they can as well as get started on fixing some of the bugs for the main game, and what they cant tell us now will probably be in the next update

Tanabata in Japan also comes up around this time, July 7th to be exact, so even the Japanese side of things will have a short week as well possibly.

Regardless, more feedback = more for them to work with.

So say what you think and feel. It doesnt hurt.

I know I personally feel that the ambient lighting int he Entry area is turned up way too high. But we shall see what happens with all the conversation in this thread.

Just here to add a voice. The greyed out look and lack of lighting effects to many areas is very disturbing, as is the lowering of fidelity too. The contrast and lighting needs to brought back up big-time.

If as some have already speculated the vita release is the cause to this, the vita build should be specifically downgraded into, rather than setting the mark for every other platform platform.

I'm hopeful they fix this (player feedback should help), but as things stand I'm very disappointed.

Just a quick note. Seeing the post regarding the 2016 picture, it was when the WINNER SHADER was decided. I just wonder what happened during development that they completely scrapped the one shader we chose as a community. Here's the full post on update 36.

Hello, I am a long-time lurker, but I felt compelled to give some of my own feedback on the graphics issue.

Due to the respect I have for the main Bloodstained team, I previously felt reluctant to offer any criticism about the project, and simply hoped any issues I had noticed would be resolved further along in development. After playing through this second demo and particularly after viewing the other comments in this thread, it seems that perhaps the best way to make a difference is for us to offer our concerns in the hope that at least some of them might be addressed prior to the release of this game.

Let me also say that I am a strong supporter of the 2.5D aspect of this game due to the great potential it offers for combining classic gameplay with modern graphics. As such, I've maintained quite high expectations, especially since the game is using such a modern and versatile engine with a great reputation. However, there are a number of ways in which I believe this advantage is being underutilized. I also have some critiques about the overall consistency of the graphics and art style.

Areas (and assets) lacking visual contrast:











Overuse of glossy material settings:



Dynamic lighting:



I made an example to show how adding this to her fireball might look, but it's really self-explanatory:

Before:

Liquid material settings:
















To conclude, I do feel like all the necessary components for success are there, though in some cases they are not being fully utilized due to a general lack of polish and or inconsistent art style.

On an slightly unrelated note, I'd like to say that I'm glad they ditched that cyan shader. While I never voted for this particular shader, and would have preferred some kind of option to freely switch between various options, I understood why people were drawn to it. However, I think several updates and the first demo later, people realized that the garish cyan color was permanently baked into Miriam and also added to the NPCs and other interactive objects. It might have been interesting if that cyan effect could have been somewhat more dynamic and change color depending on environmental lighting, or simply remained exclusive to Miriam. No doubt the static cyan color was simply going to clash with a lot of backgrounds in the game.



I keep hearing talk about downgrading assets to accommodate the Vita port. While this apparently hasn't been confirmed one way or the other, I find it interesting that we haven't seen any evidence of a traditional graphics options menu. I'm talking about one that has settings for model details, texture size, lighting/shadows quality, etc that could be set to low, medium, high, ultra. As a backer for the Steam platform, I would hope that the PC version would represent the best quality version of Iga's vision and would not be have to be downgraded simply to accommodate less powerful platforms.

BloodyHell

I love this post cuz it hits everything I had issues with regarding the visuals. It could be applied to other things too. When you talk about Cannon's being the same color or a tree branch not being brown. It's the same issues i have with the castle entrance, so many objects could have color in the background but don't.

Here's an example of that in the church 2017 demo.



Look under Miriam. The cross designs the statues....... that screams color me but it just stays the same color as everything else.

I appreciate your feedback on the feedback.  

It's true that emotions run high and there's a sense of betrayal, but I, personally, don't have any issues with asking for an explanation for a general downgrade, because it happened, and there was no explanation.

Kickstarters are different than regular game development. You provide updates, you communicate with the backers - the people who are partially funding development - and when you show something in an update, and it's downgraded (the word is appropriate, I think) in the build you receive, I think, as backers, we should be told why. I mean, they made these forums official to communicate with fans and backers; they added Discord to communicate with fans and backers; the devs need to know that this is the kind of thing we would like to communicate about.

Now, the feeling one might get from reading this thread is "everything is bad"; but if you look at individual posts, while some merely express dismay (something which is natural),  many posts talk about what is wrong. There can me no more specific feedback than a screenshot comparison, and this thread is full of them. So, I don't believe that this is feedback that is hard to work with; it may be uncomfortable to look at the situation, but it's not hard to work with. I don't believe we ever had a "I wish things were different"; it's "I wish things looked like this specific previous build of the game." The devs can't get more specific feedback than that.

Well, all of this is just my personal opinion, of course. My belief is that it might make things a bit sour in the short-term, but it might also make them less so in the long-term. If devs don't know people are upset, they won't respond, won't take it into account in their approach to communication (both internal and external) and that can't be good for anyone.