275 réponses à ce sujet

[Dann-J]

I wasn't trolling, NWN1 looks rubbish and the character models and monsters do too. When I play a game I want to be entertained visually as well as mentally and these days old style graphics just don't interest me at all. I do like the camera angles as I said before and Deekin but I'm not too keen on the inventory.

 

The graphics of a lot of older games looked good at the time they were released, no doubt due to a combination of less expectations from the player and the resolution of computer monitors at the time. Fuzzy old monitors hid a multitude of graphics sins.

 

NWN made the old fixed-camera 2D orthographic games look bad. NWN2 made NWN look bad. The Witcher made NWN2 look bad. And now "The Vanishing of Ethan Carter" makes The Witcher look bad. We get used to the latest graphics innovations so quickly that we soon take them for granted, and wonder how we ever managed to enjoy older games at all.

[Tchos]

I have to disagree about NWN1 (or any 3D game from that transitional period) making Baldur's Gate look bad.  Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and the like look great to me, and that's with eyes that only started seeing them 3 years ago.  I was playing mostly 2D games during that horrible transitional period, and I hated the fact that 2D games were being shoved aside in favor of these ugly, blocky, blurry and too-dark 3D games.  Those never looked good to me.  Most publishers stopped publishing 2D games entirely, at least 5 years too early as far as I'm concerned.

[Loki_999]

Agreed, i wouldn't let quality of graphics by itself sway my decision on which game to play.

 

Hell, i still now and again enjoy playing Chaos....

 

[Tchos]

I'm a fan of 8-bit and 16-bit games, myself.

[Gruftlord]

it's funny, because for me, i can nowadays see the early 2000ish 3d games with rose tinted glasses, while i think the early normal mapped games look wrong. i don't know why, maybe it's because the shading was too soft often. the old games only had hard edges and lights. nowadays we have more refined shadows/lights again thanks to SSAO. the 205 era on the other hand had excessive bloom and specular.

 

lets all do an unbiased experiment shall we?

which look do you prefer? Morrowind or Oblivion?

[Tchos]

Early normal mapped games, including Thief 3 and NWN2's OC have poorly-made normal maps, and badly-designed lighting with either no fill lights or inappropriately-placed fill lights, creating inappropriate shadows.  That's what looked bad about them to me at the time, and now.  The way I see it, with each new technology, there are some games that implement it poorly before every studio has someone on their team that can do a good job with it.

 

A good question, since I've spent at least 100 hours on both Morrowind and Oblivion.  I played Oblivion first, and later, after being convinced to give it a chance despite its graphics, I played Morrowind.  If we're talking vanilla for each, and speaking only of their technical graphics ability, then I strongly prefer Oblivion.  If we're talking about gameplay and vanilla content, I prefer Morrowind.  If we're talking about modded content, I think they're approximately equivalent.

[rjshae]

Aye, but it sure was purdy for its time...

 

Morrowind came out two years before Neverwinter Nights 2.

[ShinsFortress]

I liked both.  I found NWN1 community a bit more "self-contained".  I think what player base is lefty has an increasing rate of decline.  I no longer play either.  A broken auto-patcher and MP lobby service that is now shut down (and still was last time I checked some weeks ago) are largely why I no longer play.  Updating NWN2 I found especially tedious when I last installed it onto a machine.

[MagicalMaster]

A broken auto-patcher and MP lobby service that is now shut down (and still was last time I checked some weeks ago) are largely why I no longer play.

 

If this is referring to NWN1 then there's been a replacement made for a long time and just updated recently.  And all you have to do patch wise is download and run the 1.69 critical rebuild.

 

NWN1 looks rubbish and the character models and monsters do too.

 

NWN falls into my "looks good enough" category.

 

Does something like this

 

 

or this

 

 

really look that awful to you?

 

In general, though, I just couldn't stand NWN2 when I first tried it (and this was back before I had gotten into the CC stuff at all, didn't even realize it existed).  The game ran terribly performance wise and I couldn't stand the camera controls.  I literally just said "screw this" and quit within like 20-30 minutes of starting.  And it's not being fixated on NWN's camera control or something -- at that time I had played everything from many C&C games to WC/SC games to Lords of Magic (looking solely at third person games with overheadish controls) and I had no issues with any of those.

 

Then later on when I got into CC (it literally got me started in computer programming) I just never saw a good reason to switch.  Even disregarding the problems I had with NWN2 initially, the combat engine/rules seemed less appealing to me, I didn't want to have to paint terrain, and there's a lot less CC available for it, especially when you take into account things like NWNX.

 

Losing all of that for slightly improved graphics just didn't seem worth it for me.

[Tchos]

MM, is there something I would use NWNX for as a single-player modder and player, or is for PWs?

[rjshae]

 

NWN falls into my "looks good enough" category.

 

Does something like this

 

 

or this

 

 

really look that awful to you?

 

Graphics-wise, no not they aren't horrible. But they definitely aren't up to the NWN2 graphical standards, and presumably you have all the settings on max. The shadows are inadequate, making everything look a little flat. The trees don't look very natural and the wierd wood-stone bridge with the huge tree rings isn't helping. Sorry, bro.

 

Every model or tileset that I've ported from NWN looks significantly improved in the NWN2 engine, and I enjoy the new look.

 

Here's an example:

 

In NWN:

 

In NWN2:

[Tchos]

I'm afraid that may not be the best comparison example, with the choice of floor texture (which I always found ugly and immediately replaced) and the lighting.  The stone textures on the NWN1 image are significantly more appealing than that wood, as is the lighting despite the lack of shadows.

[rjshae]

I'm afraid that may not be the best comparison example, with the choice of floor texture (which I always found ugly and immediately replaced) and the lighting.  The stone textures on the NWN1 image are significantly more appealing than that wood, as is the lighting despite the lack of shadows.

 

No it's not the best comparison example, but then again it doesn't need to be. I'm not trying to compare the best NWN2 graphics to the worst in NWN; just that the look of the cloak is improved. That's been a consistent experience for me.

[Tchos]

I understand the cloak is the focus, but when the topic is a comparison between games, I know that when I look at a NWN1 screenshot, I'm judging everything in it, not just whatever object is being highlighted.  I have to assume that a great number of NWN1-players in this thread don't necessarily know what the NWN2 tilesets look like, or that there are better looking ones than the one on display, and can assume that they're all like this.  Same with the lighting.  Does it look like this because lighting wasn't important for the picture, or because NWN2 isn't capable of good lighting?  See what I mean?

[rjshae]

Yes, well if you want to set up a "best of" gallery to help sell the game to modders, be my guest...

[Tchos]

The screenshots for my module should suffice for that, at least for the lighting.

[ShinsFortress]

I was referring to NWN2.

 

I liked both games, but saw the beginning of the end when SoZ came out.  I liked that game/expansion a lot.  But the amount and type of bugs in it were a bad sign.  It's one of few games where I used an editor to fix what very basic QA/QC should have caught.

[Tchos]

MP lobby service that is now shut down (and still was last time I checked some weeks ago) are largely why I no longer play. 

 

If this is referring to NWN1 then there's been a replacement made for a long time and just updated recently. 

 

I was referring to NWN2.

 

In that case, a replacement has been available for a long time.

[Gruftlord]

The screenshots for my module should suffice for that, at least for the lighting.

 

honestly, i still stand by my oppinion, the the lighting is too soft. the night shots are great, and i really love the atmosphere on the harbor shots in the evening/morning (http://neverwinterva...09-42-09-09.jpg). but during the day, i can not say what it is.... the light is too flat (http://neverwintervault.org/sites/neverwintervault.org/files/project/3262/images/nwn2main2012-07-0114-44-49-69.jpg), although it's much better in interiors (http://neverwintervault.org/sites/neverwintervault.org/files/project/3262/images/nwn2main2014-07-2112-05-49-37.jpg) . and to bloomy. and looking at it for a while i think the green is too green. there is too much green in daylight and night (http://neverwintervault.org/sites/neverwintervault.org/files/project/3262/images/bcoccsuneout.jpg http://neverwinterva...s/bcoccsoil.jpg http://neverwinterva...12-00-26-51.jpg (and i'm not talking about all the areas, where green distance fog was chosen)

[Thorsson64]

The screenshots for my module should suffice for that, at least for the lighting.

 

Indeed; look at the water in the last shot and compare it to the water in the NWN shot posted by MagicalMaster. The difference is even more noticeable if you're in game.

[Gruftlord]

that is the old "shiny water" shader in NWN. nobody uses that (except MM it seems), no really, it looks like a ****** mirror. with it disabled, the water just looks green, semi transparent and has a few ripples. bearable.

 

and if we are talking blocky models:

http://www.nexusmods...ter/Images/14/?

 

i'm not claiming they aren't, but just for reference, this is what they look like in my current SoU playthrough. it gets the job done with the amount of zoom you regularly play at.

and in comparison, the NWN2 devs made the stupid design decision, to make EVERY piece of equipment look TOO round. well, aside from the shoulder pieces. but really, the rest underneath is just one smooth jumpsuit. maybe NWN2 had technically better graphics, but the design makes it visually unpleasing for me. is there a piece of armor (custom made or vanilla), that resembles a decent knight armor, or something shown in mmy screenshot? just so i'm not comparing a modded NWN to some outdated screenshots of NWN2 i found online.

 

iirc Obsidian didn't like the NWN "make your own armor" style with it's disconnected subparts, because the system was not fit for higher poly models (the junctions intersect, and that looks too stupid on higher poly models). they didn't manage to implement a modern body system however, but instead relied on what is basically the robe slot in NWN. it's a "jumpsuit" slot, that lets you disable the sectioned armor parts, and replace it with a single unified mesh. and sadly, this is what the armors look like, once you know that fact.

 

so all in all, NWN2 has clearly the improved visuals, not the least technically. but there are a few visual things, that are offputting.

 

edit: regarding the other comparison shots posted above: yes, the bridge looks bad. and so does the cloak-stand in nwn. they both got flat and boring textures (and the bridge-wood is also off scale). an evenly colored texture looks much better, when processed ingame using normal mapping. NWN 1 however without it's normal mapping needs more aggressive textures. looks how the ground below the cloak stand (and in the prison fight scene from MM) looks more alive, because the ground is a bit "freckled". that's what you need to do, you need to burn in a fake normal mapping/shadowing onto the texture to get the best visuals in NWNs old engine. both models (bridge and armor stand) look custom made, and the authors simply lacked the experience to work with older engines. also: jeesh, don't you all play with anisotropic filtering on?

 

edit 2: watched a few LPs. zoomed out from a more BG isometric few (which is what you will most often play at i guess) NWN 2shines. it's beautiful, and does not show it's graphical shortcomings.