Soft: 75
Soft: 100
No HDR.
Still working on lighting. I still worry it’s not…happy and friendly enough. But I’m not sure. What do you think?
The middle one is blurry. I prefer the first one.
I want to see crease lines on the cloth map, darn it. I've seen only one I can remember without them. Lighting is important there too!
I prefer the no HDR one. Guessing it looks a lot different in motion, but in the stills the blurriness bothers me.
BreadMan017: Better!
BreadMan: It is better for the human side, but for the Fallen it looks worse than before. It has a look, as if moss or something like that is coming through, so mother nature tries to reclaim the ground.
Concerning the original three pics: With HDR it looks less like a cartoon, for the cost of a blur-filter. I think Soft50 or Soft25 would be the best choice. For the moment i prefer noHDR slightly before Soft75.
The best would be to add an option for the HDR-usage. An on/off switch and a slider for the strength of the effect. At least for the beta test this would be nice, so you could ask the testers, which variant has the best look&feel for them.
How about Soft0?
That would be HDR without the blur, so it only creates a glow (blur) when the colors go overbright, not everywhere.
There may be a distinction between what looks good and what's most playable over the long term. I'm trying to think of a good example. Maybe calligraphy fonts work as an example. They look very cool and are nice for flavor, but I wouldn't want to read an entire book in that kind of font.
No HDR didn't look quite as "nice" as soft 75, but it seemed crisper and easier to pick out the details, which is something that I'm going to want in my graphics when I'm still playing at 3am.
soft 75
Quoted for truth!
Same goes for spell graphics. Elaborate and beautiful animated spell effects sure are awesome to look at, but in the heat of battle I still want to know where my hero is and what's happening to them. Something to keep in mind I guess
You just made me remember the mess about Neverwinter Nights 2 spell effects: pausing the game in the middle of a battle to queue new orders wasn't as simple as it could have been, considering all the characters hidden by layers of magic balls and such
About the screenshots, I support the observation made by BreadMan017 about the saturation level.
No HDR is by far the best looking of the bunch as a screen shot, but without seeing it in full motion, I can't really judge it properly.
New coke is a great example. It was supposed to be much better and got great scores on all the taste tests and totally bombed in the marketplace.
Put the decision off. Thow a slider and a checkbox on the configuration screen and instrument collecting what configuraiton the beta testers play with.
Ralph
