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GalCiv III visuals

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GalCiv III visuals

from JoeUser Forums

So yesterday the art team gave me a tour of the new rendering technology being used for GalCIv III.  If you’ve been with us for many years, you know that I’m not a graphics guy.  I drew the original OS/2 version “art” myself with the built in OS/2 icon editor.  As you can imagine, that means I have only a little understanding of all the cool stuff they’re doing.

To me, I thought the GalCiv II ships looked pretty good. But the art team cringes when I say that.  I am intimately familiar with DirectX, Mantle, OpenGL and the other technical side of things. But I’m a lot less familiar with how different features affect the beautification of a game. So I’m just going to tell you some of the stuff in the engine and you tell me (And other clueless people like me) whether it’s cool or not…

GalCiv III 3D engine features

First off, the game will require DirectX 10 minimum.  Ships are made of many different types of materials which the player can control in the ship designer. The materials affect how light interacts with them.  The lighting in much truer in GalCiv III than in GalCiv II making the ships look more real (not real as in photo realistic but less like computer graphics, GalCiv III still has its own surreal art style).

The Ship Designer is expected to export your ship designs as FBX files which should pave the way for lots of interesting things being done to them outside of GalCiv.

The ships reflect what is around them.  So for instance, you can see the reflection of nebula and such on reflective surfaces.  They are also in the process of implementing diffused point lights which should result in ships “popping”  more on the screen because the light affects the ship much more realistically than traditional harsh directional lighting. 

Now, how much of this gets in by the Alpha remains to be seen.  Currently, my opinion is that the ships look better than GalCiv II but not spectacularly so but we have over a year to go on that aspect so by the time we ship, they should look amazing.

Was anyone here in the GalCiv II beta? Remember how sad the game looked? The alpha of GC3 will look far far better.

188,112 views 80 replies
Reply #51 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Yeah, to be honest as I grow up, while gameplay is important so is graphics, After all I have an i7 2600, a GTX 660 Ti, over 8 GB of RAM, an SSD OS drive and Raid 1 Game drives (Storage) on my gaming PC. Of course running a 64 bit O/S and Have been since XP 64. I miss the days when a new game meant "buy new computer", yes I understand not everyone likes the new computer for new game concept, and most games will allow people with pathetic machines to play on low even medium. (Looking at you guys running Intel integrated Graphics) You know where a $25 Nvida/AMD card can steam roll it on performance every time!

However in a genre such as this turn based, graphics are not much more important than the overall gameplay and customizability. I'm for an adjustable UI (Like MMO level adjustable) Enable disable, add hot buttons for things you macro etc. Key Mapping (ability to assign your preferred hot keys (controller buttons).

I loved being able to edit the config files with a regular text editor (I could use notepad but I prefer Notepad ++)

Sounds good for those wondering he said min dx10 capable didn't say they wouldn't implement DX11 and Mantle. Hopefully mantle will be in there for some extreme games...I'll probably switch to an AMD if Nvidia doesn't get on the low level API bandwagon.

Reply #52 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Tridus, reply 50

I doubt its that. Vista is out of mainstream support at Microsoft, is falling back to 4% on the Steam hardware survey, and is generally irrelevant. Most likely they just don't want to have the expense of supporting it.

That's the thing, there should be nothing to support. There is no fundamental difference between Vista and 7 that I'm aware of, in fact windows 7 is basically a minor UI update to Vista. Vista is windows 6.0, while windows 7 is actually windows 6.1. It's a splash of paint on the same core OS, with different factory settings for the people who couldn't figure out how to get Vista running smoothly. A game is going to be built around DirectX, not the slightly different taskbar in windows 7.

Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #53 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

There's lots of little differences buried in there. It's pretty likely that it's going to work, but saying "it'll probably work" and officially supporting it aren't the same thing. Supporting it means adding a test suite for Vista, and if it breaks, figuring out how to fix it. Not supporting it means not worrying about that, and is thus cheaper.

Since Vista is going to be on older hardware at this point with potentially dodgy drivers (the thing that plagued Vista throughout its life), for a tiny and shrinking share of the market, why bother with the expense?

It's been fairly common for anything that is cutting XP support to also cut Vista support. XP is supposed to die in two months, and yet it's *still* a more important part of the market than Vista is.

Reply #54 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Wow Vista is becoming an invisible operating system just like Windows 99 or 2000.

Reply #55 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Sanati, reply 52


Quoting Tridus, reply 50
I doubt its that. Vista is out of mainstream support at Microsoft, is falling back to 4% on the Steam hardware survey, and is generally irrelevant. Most likely they just don't want to have the expense of supporting it.

That's the thing, there should be nothing to support. There is no fundamental difference between Vista and 7 that I'm aware of, in fact windows 7 is basically a minor UI update to Vista. Vista is windows 6.0, while windows 7 is actually windows 6.1. It's a splash of paint on the same core OS, with different factory settings for the people who couldn't figure out how to get Vista running smoothly. A game is going to be built around DirectX, not the slightly different taskbar in windows 7.

The problem i see a lot in doing some 'ad hoc' technical support is that people on Vista are by far almost worse than people on XP. Most people on Vista are inexplicably on SP1. Many refuse to upgrade to SP2 for some reason. At least XP users were on SP3 while they were whining about the end of support.


While thre isn't any 'technical' reason you can't support Vista/Win7/Win8, I find the 'culture' Vista users to be stuck in some temporal vortex where SP1 is 'better'.

Also just like in the Linux world, yes 'major' revisions of the kernel are big, but even going from 2.4 to 2.6 certainly isn't a 'trivial kernel upgrade'.

Reply #56 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Here's a screenshot from in-game.  It's a Yor ship built by one of the guys on the team.

 

We're still relatively early with our lighting and effects but as you can see, the unit is self shadowing and the light bonces off the materials. 

BTW, this is with no anti-aliasing.

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Reply #57 from Elemental Forums Top

That ship looks shiny!

 

Also I don't know what anti-aliasing does xD

Reply #58 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Anti-aliasing gets rid of the jaggies.  We're still in the process of implementing that part.

Reply #59 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 56

Here's a screenshot from in-game.  It's a Yor ship built by one of the guys on the team.

Reduced 72%Original 697 x 608

 

We're still relatively early with our lighting and effects but as you can see, the unit is self shadowing and the light bonces off the materials. 

BTW, this is with no anti-aliasing.
My mouth dropped when I saw this.I love the new Yor look!

Reply #60 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Thanks Brad, hope ya feel better. Eagerly awaiting to kill time in the ship creator.  :thumbsup:

Reply #61 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

That's a cool ship not like the survey ship in 2.

Reply #62 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting satoru1, reply 55
The problem i see a lot in doing some 'ad hoc' technical support is that people on Vista are by far almost worse than people on XP. Most people on Vista are inexplicably on SP1. Many refuse to upgrade to SP2 for some reason. At least XP users were on SP3 while they were whining about the end of support.

While thre isn't any 'technical' reason you can't support Vista/Win7/Win8, I find the 'culture' Vista users to be stuck in some temporal vortex where SP1 is 'better'.

Also just like in the Linux world, yes 'major' revisions of the kernel are big, but even going from 2.4 to 2.6 certainly isn't a 'trivial kernel upgrade'.

I really don't think there is any sort of vista "culture" and I find your generalizations bizarre. I use vista (SP2) because it came with my PC. Over the years I have replaced everything inside that PC except for the master HDD and the case, I've kept vista because it works fine and I'm too lazy to change it. If I didn't already have a windows 7 disc laying around I'd also mention that it's not cheap, I'd never pay $100 for some useless cosmetic OS updates, ever, not for any game.

Reply #63 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 58

Anti-aliasing gets rid of the jaggies.  We're still in the process of implementing that part.

 

Ahh, I see. Thank you.

Reply #64 from Sins Forums Top

Will there be heat fog from exhaust ports on the ship? :)

Reply #65 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Looks similar to the Arnor ships in GalCivII...

 

EDIT: But the Terran survey ship in the Vault looks sw--eet!

Reply #66 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The Krynn looks cool. I also thought the picture quality was better than before.

Reply #67 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Ahh, the OS/2 icon editor.

We had OS/2 at home when I was a kid and the 9 years old myself would make custom icons for all his games. Good memories.

Reply #68 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 56

Here's a screenshot from in-game.  It's a Yor ship built by one of the guys on the team.

Reduced 72%Original 697 x 608

 

We're still relatively early with our lighting and effects but as you can see, the unit is self shadowing and the light bonces off the materials. 

BTW, this is with no anti-aliasing.

 

During the subsequent expansions, will there be similar efforts to try to improve graphics as there were in GC2?

Reply #69 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Я знаю, что  вы сделаете лучшую GalCiv III. Где можно оставить предложение по игре?

PS: If you do not understand what I wrote, then Google translate help you.

Reply #70 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Ericridge, reply 57
Also I don't know what anti-aliasing does

This is the best demo I could find. Sorry for the giant image, but you miss the full effect otherwise. (link)

The difference is most noticeable at the power lines and the tall building in the background:

Not really related, but I would argue AA is most important for snipers in FPS games. When your target is far enough away that they're only represented by a few pixels (even on a 1080 monitor) AA makes all the difference.

Reply #71 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Holy shit, I've always been turning anti-alliasing off.

*headdesk*

Reply #72 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting chuck1es, reply 71

Holy shit, I've always been turning anti-alliasing off.

*headdesk*

Ouch! AA should only be turned off if your video card can't handle the performance hit or in certain edge cases where using it is crashing a game. The rest of the time it makes stuff look awesome.

It'll be that way until we all have retina level displays, because at that level pixel density is so high that AA makes less of a difference.

Reply #73 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Always had a soft (by nature) spot for "not very organic friendly" robots. Be that Cylons, Cyberdyne, the Cyberiad, or the former (Yor) Collective! Sweet imagery is not going to purge any such urges!

*Runs off to start a Yor campaign in "Twilight of the Arnor" to exorcise any emotional misbehavior caused by the above picture*

 

 

Reply #74 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The pic of the ship looks great.  The Yor will be mercilessly exterminating their enemies in style. :)

Reply #75 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

DX10 ? Why ? OpenGL is much more widespread, if you use that one, you can easily port the game to OSX/Linux, or even to iOS/Android. Not to mention Steambox ... It would be a shame, if the choice of the graphics engine would prevent playing it on wide range of systems.