36 réponses à ce sujet

[WebShaman]

Nissa has the gist of it here - the NWNCQ overrides from Chico is NOT really for builders. It is for Players.

It is something that I have attempted to talk to you all for awhile now - as builders, obviously you see things and know things that players do not. You can routinely manipulate 2das and solve hak conflicts, yadda yadda yadda without real effort.

Players mostly cannot.

Thus, providing them with an easy to use graphical improvement (over the basic Bioware standards) is something that most Players go gaga for. The PRC realized this when creating the PRC and included the injector as well as the Java Character Creator (modified, of course, from the original CODI Character Creator of yore ).

Most Builders (IMHO) create for other builders. They automatically assume that certain abilities and understandings are already present. And although there are graphical improvements included as overrides that are better than NWNCQ for specific environments, they often conflict with other equally good ones for other environments, etc.

Take many of the best tilesets, for example. They look great! They wow, ooh, and ahh the audience. But most Players cannot really use them. They have no idea how to open up a Mod, recreate a place with a new tileset, delete or rename the old one, and then tie up any "loose ends" like 2da incompatibilities or hak conflicts in order to enjoy the "new look".

When I think about all the modifications I use for NWN, and just how much work I have to put into making it happen, it boggles the mind. I once had to re-install NWN due to a HDD crash. It took literally weeks to get it back to where it was before! D/Ling all the changes that I have to have now, then putting them together to get them to work...it is a nightmare, really. If it was not for the override version of the ingame appearance changer, OMBs OHS system (really easy to "drop in" as an override), etc, I am not really sure if I would have the enthusiasm to re-install everything again, should my HDD crash in the future (which it will, eventually). Chico's system is just easy to use - it is not the "best graphical" improvement out there. Since something is easy to use, it spreads fast among Players (Hey, have you tried X yet? It really improves the game! Take a look at this!).

If there was a thing like a Community Override Project or somesuch, that took the best content (graphically speaking) and modified things without any work, I rather suspect that the NWN Community (Playerwise) would go bonkers with it. Include the new, cool characterizations, VFXs, etc, and perhaps an injector (for obviously I doubt that merely an override will work here) that basically solves things for Players, and one will soon see the best graphical content everywhere.

Much like the DA compiler - it takes packages that improve the game, graphically, and makes them compatible with one another, for the most part.

I know that Brian Chung was working on something like this for NWN - some sort of "ultimate 2das" or somesuch. I wonder whatever became of that project?

[Zwerkules]

I just wanted to say that while I critizied Chico's work, I respect what he has done. It was a lot of work to add roofs to so many tilesets.
I can't help it but say bad things about his textures because I really think a lot of them look awful which is mainly because of the pseudo-bumpmaps. The two pictures OTR posted show very well what I mean.
However this doesn't mean that I don't like everything he's done.
And though Chico doesn't seem to be around any more, he was a good member of the community when he was still active. He wouldn't just download stuff from the vault but also always vote and leave a comment. And that is more than most people do.
Feedback is very important to CC creators.

[_six]

Never underestimate the power of different.

As far as textures go, NWN's base content is on the whole pretty good. The colour pallette is often rather dull (something which NWNCQ does address), and some of them are a bit vague on details (which... lets not go into what NWNCQ does on this point). But on the whole, pretty good. So why are overrides so popular? 'Cos they change things up and give you a different style to play with. That style can be grimmer, like my undead (which aren't massively more detailed than the base undead). Or it can be... whatever NWNCQ is meant to do.

I probably don't need to explain at this point that I don't like the look of NWNCQ. But my point of reference for judging the art is custom tilesets. Considering how many servers have traditionally used custom tilesets extensively, most players' is the base game. And even just by being different, NWNCQ alleviates the inevitable visual boredom you get when looking at the same content for over a decade. Add to that a more vibrant colour scheme, and the finer details don't matter so much. Nobody expects NWN to look like Crysis 3.

Similarly, I suspect much of the reason my Wildlands tileset was well liked was its' very different approach to the textures. 'Cos in isolation I don't think it's particularly appealing.

Plus, as mentioned, Chico seemed rather a nice guy.

Modifié par _six, 27 février 2013 - 05:45 .

[painofdungeoneternal]

WebShaman wrote...

If there was a thing like a Community Override Project or somesuch, that took the best content (graphically speaking) and modified things without any work, I rather suspect that the NWN Community (Playerwise) would go bonkers with it. Include the new, cool characterizations, VFXs, etc, and perhaps an injector (for obviously I doubt that merely an override will work here) that basically solves things for Players, and one will soon see the best graphical content everywhere.

Much like the DA compiler - it takes packages that improve the game, graphically, and makes them compatible with one another, for the most part.

What you are describing, it hits the nail on the head. It is the core problem in NWN, and worse in NWN2, which makes things outside the scope of the casual gamer who does not want to know how the magic works, he just wants to hop in and use it. ( That is the problem I am trying to solve with Never Launcher )

[Frith5]

OTR, I believe part of the reason for popularity is actually suspension of disbelief. Yeah, that's right. See, with more detailed (higher res) textures, we move closer and closer to an 'uncanny valley' syndrome. When you're driving down the road, how much of the grain do you notice in those light poles? How many courses of mortar can you count on your walk through town? Now, I am red/green color blind, so please excuse me, but I can see how the less detailed image of the two you posted above could actually be considered MORE realistic. More, because the viewer's mind doesn't have to try to justify as much. We can't see individual bricks and joints, so our minds don't try to ignore that they aren't real, but are only lines (and even less that that, actually). Sometimes less IS more.
Just a theory. I love the great new work being done by the community. But truthfully it is best appreciated standing still and staring, like a visitor to a museum might do. Works of fine art (and I mean that as a great thing).

I also want to add my voice to those who are pointing out all the work Chico did, and made a gift of to everyone, with no restrictions. That is attractive, too.

JFK

[OldTimeRadio]

Hunh.  Well, I just went over and carefully re-read all the comments (thank you, everyone) and I'm thinking my impression of what makes NWNCQ so popular maybe wasn't necessarily what actually makes it so popular.  Which I'm puzzled by.  The other factors that people have brought up do make sense, I'd just attached a much higher level of importance on the textures themselves and assumed most others had, as well.

Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 28 février 2013 - 09:35 .

[Von Stalhein]

I think the general assessment of NWNCQ's plug-and-play-ability as the source of its popularity is fairly accurate. I think there's one further point as well though, which is to do with the visual style - as OTR perhaps originally thought. Note that a fair number of NWNCQ's screenshots are taken with NWShader active. Why is that important? Because Chico wrote his own bloom shader for use with NWShader (a Monet bloom filter it was called, if I remember correctly). The bloom on it is fairly heavy. The result was what I call "the Oblivion effect." I remember one reviewer of Oblivion (the Elder Scrolls title) commenting that when he walked up to a sheep, it was like a nuclear explosion had gone off: that's how white the sheep's fur was - all thanks to the super-heavy bloom.

My theory is that NWNCQ's "marketing materials" are not unduly reminiscent of Oblivion(-era) graphics thanks to that bloom. The combination of Chico's textures and the heavy shader gives you a look that perhaps struck a chord with a lot of viewers. It said: "NWN upgraded a game-graphics-generation; now looks like Oblivion."

I imagine ease-of-installation was the key selling point though, as has otherwise been concluded. Nevertheless I think this particular aspect of the graphical style - i.e. its similarity to a certain generation of game engines' output - perhaps had an impact too.

[Nissa_Red]

Just a final thought (I think) on the question from my part. It's true that I have also been enjoying nwnCQ thanks to peachykeen's shader.

While I am not big fan of the bloom (I significantly toned it down in the shader shipped with nwnCQ), I really really like the DoF effect it provides. Bioware's textures are NOT bad in themselves, they're even pretty good. With the DoF, they mechanically appear as less crisp and sharp (at some distance) however, and the overall effect is very pleasant to me.

I can't speak for Chico, but maybe his intent was to create "blurry" textures in the perspective of people using his creation with peachykeen's Shader all along. This is only theory on my side, and I of course respect anyone else's opinion on the question. If they don't like, they don't like, I can understand that.

About the geometry "swallowing" items on the ground, I checked yesterday evening, and I found a "light" override version of nwnCQ on my hard drive that doesn't add as much geometry as the other ("complete" ?) version I usually use. The trade-off using the "light" version is that the ground geometry is pretty much back to the usual and boring Biowarian "flatness", somewhat altered but not by that much. I don't know if it still can be found on the Vault, but maybe would it better suit some players.

Modifié par Nissa_Red, 01 mars 2013 - 02:48 .

[DM_Vecna]

I use this package without the shader. What interests me is the roofs with new textures. I got tired at looking at the old ones and was happy to switch it up. However the blurry effect has bothered me, and if someone released new higher res textures I would replace them in a snap.

[OldTimeRadio]

@Nissa_Red - IIRC, NWNCQ had been up on the Vault for about four months before Peachykeen broached the subject in the Bioware forums and it was still a while before stable builds started coming out.  I looked at some of the earliest screenshots from NWNCQ here and while Chico400 made changes as he went along, I wouldn't say they're all that materially different from the later work which had NWShader in mind.  Somewhere in the Vault comments for NWNCQ, I recall that Chico400 seemed to indicate that the fake bumpmap and bloom filters were tied together as one process and he didn't have much control over tweaking or removing one without removing the other. (shrug)

I agree about the DoF shader, BTW.

Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 01 mars 2013 - 06:51 .

[NWN_baba yaga]

very late to the party but anyway my 2 cents.

chico440 did put a lot of work in his project and "was" very dedicated at the time he spend time on it. My guess is he only had this project in mind combined with the ongoing development of NWshader back then which was an amazing thing but turned out ...well disapointing when you imagine what could have been done by the guy.

But i think the textures in general suck and that many things are plain copy and paste w/o to much thinking where some objects were placed... crypts come to mind. Some walls are useless now due to his many pillars. Also the whole look seems way off compared to any other nwn material so you´re always distracted by these contrasts.

Technically uhm... dont know really. He may have some knowledge for modern games but for nwn it is just not fitting.

I personally prefer smaller projects that looks like nwn and would vote that any time higher then these kind of things which are great in the sense of uniqueness but useless combined with the games material itself. So i can only advice anyone to do smaller things that has this nwn feel!

So my final word is i definately credit his dedication and how friendly he was but consider the content low.

Modifié par NWN_baba yaga, 07 mars 2013 - 08:13 .

[werelynx]

My opinion as a player: It did its job until I found out it obscured the view like put boulders where they shouldn't be etc.
Then I deleted it.