/svidya/ - Strict /v/

Because you need glasses.
It appears that your vision has been on the decline since the release of that game.

>>13387
Stellar world design, texture work and lighting.

At least the era of blurry 720p is behind us, but the brown and washed out is here to stay. With particle effects up the ass, though.

I am a retard it's been >Initial release date: November 12, 2008

SEVEN years god.
>>13396
Besides say 'the witcher 2' what other games look as good?

>>13404

Transistor is an odd one for me. I liked it while playing it, but thinking about it afterwards made it seem cringier and cringier. The art style is original, but it doesn't feel like anything was really done with it. Or to be more precise, when you get past the original confusion trying to understand the game it's wasted, because there's no substance to the plot apart from the one you end up imagining because of the mystery.

>>13387

Excellent use of static lightmaps and coloured environments.

>>13404
>pseudo-retro 8 bit thing
The problem is they don't use what they have to their advantage - they use the callback as an excuse to have shitty art. The majority of the time it looks worse than old sprite art and you can't tell what the fuck is what. Good sprite artists are expensive but I wish they would get some work.
I'm willing to forgive poor sprite art if the gameplay is good and it's one guy doing his best in his basement or whatever.

The issue with going full realism is that it'll very quickly look outdated or easily get stuck in the uncanny valley. The best way to save it is to have a little bit of style, just enough to get it out of that issue, unfortunately not all games are suited for that sort of style.
Then again I find the block-head realism of older games rather endearing.

Personally I never really liked Mirror's Edge's art style. Not my cup of tea.

>>13407
It's a video game! The medium's strengths and weaknesses are still being worked out, including in the department of storytelling. The thing that makes Transistor's story impressive is less the plot and more the modes of storytelling used throughout the game.

Personally, I thought the Camerata were pretty cool, and that the plot was enough to be worthwhile. The Camerata understood the ultimate futility of holding your breath for any kind of universal anamoly; that is, they knew that anything other than pure heat death will never, ever last. That's why they thought it was ethical to overwrite the virtual city as random 1's and 0's- the white block shit was supposed to be junk filler data, the enemies were supposed to represent the literal process of erasing a hard drive. They knew that in the end, it was their right as the cream of the crop to take control in that way. I thought it was cool how they would go and kidnap-recruit anyone who they thought could be useful to them. It was a fantastic contextualization for the powers being people, in my opinion.

Like, you say there's no substance to the plot. I disagree! Well, sort of. Not really. It's a skimpy plot, but a relatively well-thought-out one, save for the Transistor I guess it was supposed to be administrator/root access to the virtual city but what it was said to literally just be pulled from thin air which kind of makes sense but feels a little cheap. But okay, now I'm getting to my point! My point is that the storytelling is the strength of Transistor's story, not the plot.

I'll refresh all y'all's memory:
1. There's light dialogue- a highly traditional method of telling stories, basically film.

2. There are terminals, which cleverly distribute the key "headline" point of the plot in a concise, well, headline if you don't care that much, but that will give you more info if you keep on clickin'. The Metroid Prime scanner method. One of the coolest things about that is that if you explore the plot, you're rewarded with extra combat scenarios. There's also the terminals where you can "vote", which was an awesome little touch but not "actually" meaningful.

3. The souls (I forgot what they were really called) of all of the citizens which are condensed into powers. I thought this was mad freakin' cool: you learn more about the character's history by familiarizing them with their soul trapped in the Transistor! This is super cool because it conveys a sense that Red is just sort of naturally absorbing this understanding, again, by familiarizing herself with the person's soul, but it's also super cool because it provides extra incentive to use powers in slots you wouldn't use them in otherwise. It was also really cool how the character's actions in life would affect which power they represented; the first example that comes to mind is Sybil functioning as a literal lap dog.

4. You can also learn about the different kinds of processes through limiters, which I thought was a nice touch, but it's basically the same mode of storytelling as with Functions.

So, yeah, I actually think story and visual design are the game's two strengths! It was quite fantastic in those regards- even if you don't like the plot (and I did,) there's no denying that the approach(es) they took to telling the story were innovative- I'd say successfully so! It was pretty freakin' impressive while I was playin' it.

The game gets a lot of praise for its gameplay and OST, but… I wasn't impressed. I was massively disappointed when so many Function combinations turned out to be not much different from the original Function. Jaunt is also mad game-breaking and makes the game free as all fuck in your first playthrough (I still haven't done new game+.) It seems like the basic systems have mad potential but that I think we'll get better games in the future that were inspired by Transistor if you liked the actual gameplay (which, by the way, I did- the core gameplay is actually fantastic, it's just ruined by how easy and shallow it is.) Backstabs and especially combos are pretty cool systems but the game needs more room for optimization than just those two. As it is, I really might as well spam Spark with Jaunt attached constantly and win.

The vocal OST did very little for me and I think that the apparently angelic singing of whatever gal they got to do the soundtrack is actually cringeworthy and overall painful to listen to.

>>13387
Thats because cod was gritty realism and so are its clones, aaa devs have to make what the publishers want. That naturally leads to gritty brown realism because thats what made the most money.

>>13440
>square patches of grass
>generic background of dirt
>no wave forming where water collides with objects
>water is repeated mirror deformation
>can see mesh on tree branches
>no shadow from rocks
>perfectly flat ground on other side of stream
>perfectly trimmed pine on other side
>no grass on grass texture
>grass sprites
>grass sprites reversed to not look identical
>perfectly uniform fog effect dependent only on z value
>shore is made of perfect stone wall
>tree is growing on the stone wall -no root support
>moss on rocks in integral part of texture
>skybox content not correlated to amount of sun exposure of scene
>no sun rays although fog in distance implemented
>no shadows on water
shall i continue literally destroying you? (y/n)

>>13455
If you're saying it looks ugly to you then I'm sorry for your eyes. OP's picture must be literal shit in that case.

>>13457
I have perfect eyes, the thing is mirror edge was designed with high quality textures in mind since they new you would spend 90% of time with your face stuck to walls and pipes.
Everything i posted regarding that shitshow of a screenshot is true. If you ever consider sticking your head out of your ass you would see it too.

>>13459
Mind showing something better? Mirrors edge is blur smoothing the game.

they *knew
not new

>>13460
Not to mention how much fun you could tell they had with the saturation slider.

>>13466
no you fucking idiot, i love stylized games, mirror edge is also stylized.
ALSO HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU ARGUMENT ABOUT THUMBNAILS AND THAN RANT THAT RESOLUTION MATTERS?????
the fuck is wrong with you?

>>13466
>Your opinions shit mine's better stop being a faggot
>You're triggered
>"Uh huh, good one"
I would argue this constitutes shitposting. No actual discussion is occurring other than "Lol fuck you man, I'm better". To be fair the other poster is doing the same but I'd say he got baited into it and you threw out the line.

>>13468
Maybe because the visual style is complete garbage, especially in that second one. I can make about as much detail from it as a youtube screenshot, it looks like a generic halo copy.

Mirrors edge is stylized if you love colour saturation and chrome.

>>13468
also, it's 2 am I'm drunk as fuck and still making better agrument than you, you wanted prettier screenshots than some bullshit out of skyrim (not even that good, there are better mods), you moved the goalpost to some bullshit about resolution and whatnot, and then projected you own incompetence about style over substance and decide to use SJW lingo (triggered)
>>13470
Oh, so you don't even know the paris demo of U4 ? Yeah no point wasting my time on someone as uneducated as you, anyone in /v/ or /svidya/ should recognize those tech demos immediately instead of spewing garbage about "not recognizing visual style"

My point still stands , you can objectively pinpoint the faults of >>13440

Mirror Edge is stylized and does it's job perfectly. OP is right.
Weird since most OP's are fags

Mirrors edge isn't even particularly memorable or special, I don't see why it's singled out. Metro was much nicer.

>>13474
Are you shitposting?

Mirror's edge is a textbook example of "graphics will be outdated, art design is forever"

Now if only they didn't decide to take away the awesome open sky parkour and stick you in buildings. Honestly what the fuck.

Because the environments were the only thing that Mirror's Edge had going for it, also Wipeout HD for best looking game

Simple:

UE3 is a capable engine in the right hands.
Attention to detail and excellent textures.
Aesthetic design and color values
Color coordination and compliment

It's a gud game. Solid 8/10.

>>13483
Does Factorio actually render the models in-game or are they just pre-rendered snapshots?

>>13498
They're sprites, that's a sprite sheet

>>13499
So the latter? How do they achieve all the lighting effects then? The game has a fair number of graphics settings. Do they do a snapshot for every setting possible?

>>13404
How is it anyways? I loved Bastion but heard the combat in Transistor was more convoluted.

The only issue with Mirror's Edge is everything is too colorful. It looks gorgeous but then I end just thinking why is this building covered in yellows, reds, and blues. It doesn't need to be brown and bloom and boring but it shouldn't feel afraid to be a bit dirty in some sections. Even the sewer section felt too clean and colorful despite the low lighting.

>>13500
Factorio's lighting is really basic, a black rectangle is rendered over everything (except the UI) and it changes opacity based on the time. The player's cone of vision is just a .png of a white cone that is subtracted from the rectangle. I suspect the glow effect uses the same principle with the exception of being rendered programmatically.

>>13501
Combat's better but it never really gets a chance to shine outside of NG+, the overall pacing of the game is completely fucked and drags the whole thing down.

Mirror's Edge has some of the best art direction in video game history. When you pair stellar art direction with a powerful engine and competent level designers, you get a new benchmark for graphical achievement. If the developers hadn't been so particular about the colors and the framing in the game, we wouldn't be discussing it here five years later.

>>13501
Soundtrack
-Bastion has a solid gold throughout
-Transistor had a lot of copper and silvers with a few platinums

Visual style
-Bastions worked a lot more, transistor just felt too static and generic

Gameplay
-Transistors had more potential but in reality turned into "wombo combo, run like a bitch, recharge and repeat"
-Bastions was more simplistic, but the feedback and arpg of it had a much more satisfying feel when you were using it

Story
-Bastions was nicely contained, gave you insight to the world and what happened, and wrapped itself up nicely
-Transistor fell apart after the first (fantastic) boss fight, you could tell that there was cut content and two potential boss fights killed themselves.

>>13483
>Nowadays it seems if you need a complicated sprite sheet, you just make a low-resolution render of a 3-d model and call it a day.

Wasn't that how it was always done?

>>13529
>you could tell that there was cut content and two potential boss fights killed themselves.
I think they tried to subvert player expectations in the vein of mgs2, which is why Sybil is basically dead anyway, the gay duo kill themselves, the entire world falls apart.

>>13440
Boy howdy I sure love how trees are still fucking twigs with shitty low res leaf textures nailed on.

>>13440
Jesus it's so hard to do natural looking vegetation with polygons, or even discrete pixles. Too much round shit and contours.

>>13553
I felt they were trying to do that too, but fuck it was a letdown after spending all that time working my way up that tower

>>13483
Guilty Gear? I don't follow the series but I remember hearing that they do it cheaper by making 3D models and then go over those as 2D sprites. I think the next KOF is ditching sprites because it cost too much - which is a shame because it the last one looked good. Also there were stories of them treating the sprite artists like shit.

>five years and the Mirror's Edge hipsters haven't found something new to hipster about
OH MAN EVERYTHING'S WHITE AND THE ONLY COLOR IS READ SUCH GREAT ART DIRECTION CAN'T STOP MASTURBATING ETC ETC
>>13531
Exactly. You can fucking count the polygons in ancient 2D games like Planescape Torment and Age of Empires. Hand-drawn sprites were always a rarity. /v/ just has circlejerked itself into its own reality in many regards, this among them.

>>13407
>>13413

There were two spots in writing that caught my notice. The first were the descriptions of the Cloud City elite in the skill flavor text. The second is the description of the regular nobodies through the environment, such as terminal functionality and text. The divide they tried to show is what motivates the Camerata. And the love between you and the talking sword (who seems to be a nobody) is a counterpoint to this.

The problem is that the immediate concerns in the plot (monsters are attacking! the city is dying! royce's engineering plot dump zzz) and the gameplay (turn. breachbreachbreach. end turn. jauntjauntjauntjauntjaunt) upstages those themes that are introduced in a more subdued manner. So in the end, you have an action story that lacks backing and a background that doesn't lead into anything

Bastion handles this better. The weapon handling is a firsthand taste of the history and culture you lost and are trying to fix in the present. Your present adventures in the wilderness and ruin environments echo the troubles that Caelondia's imperialism went through when they expanded into the frontier.

>>13924
>limits on polygon count
>in 2015
The only way that's true is when looking up close to things, like a weapon barrel, which would only happen in games that can't be made 2D anyway.
Pillars of Eternity looks exactly like it would with real-time rendering, only the background becomes pixelated when zooming in. Dragon Age Origins in its isometric view looked about as good, if not better.

>>13800
Playmore is a bunch of cunts and the Neo Geo licenses are wasted with them.
It's a wonder they managed to actually release a good game every decade or so.

You don't know pain as well as Neo Geo fans do.
What's that? A new Samurai Shodown is coming out? Finally! Oh, nevermind it's a fucking pachinco machine. Again!

>>14025
That's true, guess that leaves the only potential advantage I can see being that 2d sprites are much cheaper to render en masse, which is only useful to RTS games

>>13440
game of the month october 2014

>>14028
I would think if someone were a Neo Geo fan they would know that Playmore pretty much is SNK and wouldn't try to pretend they're some ebil outside influence or something. Whatever has been wrong with SNK the last several years is SNK's fault.

I just want fucking Metal Slug 8 already. 7 was so damn good, it'd be such a shame to squander the talent that created it.