2D Isometric Graphics (Warning: Large Pictures)

[Tuco Benedicto]

Haven't they already stated this will be using 2D backdrops (that were originally 3D renders) and with 3D (exactly like the IE Engine Games)?

if I'm not missing anything, i think they stated the intent to use 2D backdrops and 3D characters, essentially like Temple of the Elemental Evil did.

And if they could *at least* match ToEE in terms of models and animations I would be totally fine with it.

Edited September 22, 2012 by Tuco Benedicto

[sesobebo]

What I'm far more concerned about -especially considering Obsidian's track record (sorry guys! )- is how well they are going to nail characters's models, creatures and all their animations.

help Yourself to a Dungeon Siege 3 Demo.

[descalabro]

I'm glad no one is advocating a return of tile-based backgrounds... Loaded up Arcanum last night and it hasn't aged well, yet BG2 is beautiful, as are most of these screens.

 

BG2's graphics have aged quite well. Granted, the sprites are less than beautiful, but the towns and the landscapes look much better to me now than many older games with 3D graphics. I think the "painted" look may end up being a little more durable than attempts at photorealism.

 

Honestly, I feel like the IE games hold up better than games from two years ago. 2D art simply never becomes obsolete. I'd prefer it if this game went more in the direction of the original IE games than a lot of what I'm seeing suggested / expected. Flat, simple pictures of fantasy realms are more than good enough for me.

 

I love pre-rendered isometric settings, but "Flat, simple pictures" is what I hope NOT to find in this game. Even IE games had some animated elements and an abundant use of dynamic lighting so I hope this game will be a step forward from that. Anyway, the images and videos on this topic show just how much of this is possible even with a small budget.

[Tuco Benedicto]

Help Yourself to a Dungeon Siege 3 Demo.

Yeeeeah, given how proudly you suggested it to me, I'm guessing you don't really want to hear my opinion of that game.

But on the other hand i never liked the previous two, neither.

 

Anyway, let's just say what's relevant here: no, I really don't like how DS3 looks.

[Umberlin]

There is videos, I did mention that, I'll post them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRylpn1sqxk

 

Lovely. Just plain lovely. Thank you for posting those. The animations of the character and the backgrounds it's on, the shadow and light work, the colors, the texture of the rocks and ground and ground cover everything is gorgeous. The plants and grass are even lovely, as well as the shadow play over them. The character, and its animations, blend astoundingly well with the world.

Edited September 22, 2012 by Umberlin

[Oerwinde]

That STASIS gameplay demo is how Fallout 3 should have looked.

[Zeckul]

No, I don't want to see 2D backgrounds. The use of 2D backgrounds:

- restricts the camera to a pre-defined plane

- precludes graceful scaling depending on resolution, as the only option to maintain scale is to zoom in and out of pictures using imperfect filtering algorithms: this is what makes IE games look either blurry or tiny on today's displays

- makes it nearly impossible to achieve dynamic lighting and shadows

- makes it much harder to animate anything in the backgrounds, leading to unnaturaly static scenes

- is entirely unnecessary to achieve the level of detail seen in Baldur's Gate, IWD2, etc.; today's hardware is more powerful and more capable, in real-time, than the pre-renderers used then.

Edited September 22, 2012 by Zeckul

[Oerwinde]

No, I don't want to see 2D backgrounds. The use of 2D backgrounds:

- restricts the camera to a pre-defined plane

- precludes graceful scaling depending on resolution, as the only option to maintain scale is to zoom in and out of pictures using imperfect filtering algorithms: this is what makes IE games look either blurry or tiny on today's displays

- makes it nearly impossible to achieve dynamic lighting and shadows

- makes it much harder to animate anything in the backgrounds, leading to unnaturaly static scenes

- is entirely unnecessary to achieve the level of detail seen in Baldur's Gate, IWD2, etc.; today's hardware is more powerful and more capable, in real-time, than the pre-renderers used then.

• Its already settled that its isometric. Hence camera is already restricted, whether they use real-time rendered 3d backgrounds, or pre-rendered 2d backgrounds.
  
• This is only an issue playing it 10 years from now on holographic screens. Since it will be optimized for todays screen.
  
• Dynamic shadows and lighting would be easy enough using invisible meshes. They aren't rendered so they don't use up too many resources, but they cast shadows. Effects and such would also interact, so smoke and particles would bounce off them as well.
  
• If they can have 3d character models, they can have 3d props too.
  
• No matter how good 3d tech is, in a year something will blow it out of the water. The only way we can have backgrounds detailed and beautiful as the IWD and BG backgrounds to todays standards and have it run in real-time 3d, is to have a $1000 video card.
  

[Pangur]

There is videos, I did mention that, I'll post them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRylpn1sqxk

Wow, I wish Wasteland 2 looked this way. It really fits their concept art.

[Gyges]

Those are beautiful and definitely trumps a rotating camera, but as already mentioned technicalities such as animation must take precedent. Hopefully they can be mixed well.

[Karranthain]

Wyrm's Tooth from Icewind Dale :

Make sure to see it enlarged, the level of detail is quite amazing.

 

[Sabin Stargem]

Personally, I would prefer 3D graphics that use a isometric camera angle. This would give the developers more flexibility when it comes to graphics, cutscenes, and so forth. I am hoping that they go with a cel-shaded style, since realistic aesthetics tend to become dated pretty quickly.

[Oerwinde]

Personally, I would prefer 3D graphics that use a isometric camera angle. This would give the developers more flexibility when it comes to graphics, cutscenes, and so forth. I am hoping that they go with a cel-shaded style, since realistic aesthetics tend to become dated pretty quickly.

 

Ugh, cel-shaded looks terrible. Maybe 10% of cel-shaded ANYTHING has looked good.

[Umberlin]

No, I don't want to see 2D backgrounds. The use of 2D backgrounds:

- restricts the camera to a pre-defined plane

 

Like it already is?

 

- precludes graceful scaling depending on resolution, as the only option to maintain scale is to zoom in and out of pictures using imperfect filtering algorithms: this is what makes IE games look either blurry or tiny on today's displays

 

Funny, I thinkt hey look rather good,

 

- makes it nearly impossible to achieve dynamic lighting and shadows

 

Not necessarily entirely wrong, but also not really important if the artisty is exceptional.

 

- makes it much harder to animate anything in the backgrounds, leading to unnaturaly static scenes

 

Given most of the games I go back and replay, still to this day, are 2D with static backgrounds that don't bother me in the least, that I in fact adore, I am not bothered by this in the least.

 

- is entirely unnecessary to achieve the level of detail seen in Baldur's Gate, IWD2, etc.; today's hardware is more powerful and more capable, in real-time, than the pre-renderers used then.

 

Nevermind that countless 2D games (and mixtures of 2D and 3D elements for that matter) exist, many fine, even exceptional, in their own right, and not just old ones but more recent examples as well.

[Sabin Stargem]

Personally, I would prefer 3D graphics that use a isometric camera angle. This would give the developers more flexibility when it comes to graphics, cutscenes, and so forth. I am hoping that they go with a cel-shaded style, since realistic aesthetics tend to become dated pretty quickly.

 

Ugh, cel-shaded looks terrible. Maybe 10% of cel-shaded ANYTHING has looked good.

 

I don't know which examples of cel-shading you dislike. I come from a background based on anime and animation, so that colors my preferences - but then, everyone has preferences, so no suprise there. Here are games that I have played and enjoyed cel-shading for:

 

*Okami

*Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

*Persona 3 & 4

*Paper Mario: The 1,000 Year Door

 

A rather short list, but to be honest I haven't gotten the chance to extensively play most modern examples of the style. I am hoping to get a crack at Valkyria Chronicles someday.

[sesobebo]

Help Yourself to a Dungeon Siege 3 Demo.

Yeeeeah, given how proudly you suggested it to me, I'm guessing you don't really want to hear my opinion of that game.

But on the other hand i never liked the previous two, neither.

 

Anyway, let's just say what's relevant here: no, I really don't like how DS3 looks.

and by "looks" do You mean animations and modeling craftsmanship? because i thought that that was relevant, and that's what the example was meant to point out.

[descalabro]

No, I don't want to see 2D backgrounds. The use of 2D backgrounds:

- restricts the camera to a pre-defined plane

- precludes graceful scaling depending on resolution, as the only option to maintain scale is to zoom in and out of pictures using imperfect filtering algorithms: this is what makes IE games look either blurry or tiny on today's displays

- makes it nearly impossible to achieve dynamic lighting and shadows

- makes it much harder to animate anything in the backgrounds, leading to unnaturaly static scenes

- is entirely unnecessary to achieve the level of detail seen in Baldur's Gate, IWD2, etc.; today's hardware is more powerful and more capable, in real-time, than the pre-renderers used then.

 

Having the camera restricted to a defined plane is still the best way to manage tactical combat.

 

I think the lighting was pretty good in IE games, specially the later games. I was always amazed by how PCs and NPCs responded to the light around them. But I do agree that the shadows did not correspond.

 

I too am in favour of animations to enhance atmosphere, and the STASIS and the noir game video seem to prove blending animations isn't as much of a problem as it was back then. And if there's any doubts just play Commandos 2 and 3. Those games are almost 10 years old and they had perfectly implemented animations in the scenery.

 

And isometric graphics are a style of video game art, an aesthetic flavour most of us enjoy. People should stop comparing them to 3D on the basis that they're less advanced. That's not the point.

[descalabro]

The creator of STASIS also created his own view of Wasteland 2, check them here:

 

http://www.stasisgame.com/wasteland-ideas/ (be sure to zoom them!)

 

One commenter said:

"Man you should send them to Brian Fargo and collaborate with his team. Those “ideas” are ****ing awesome."

 

Chris, the author, answered:

"I have had the pleasure of speaking to Brian Fargo, aswell as the members of his art team-and I have no doubt that what they are doing will blow us out of the rad-infested water!"

 

 

I think he's just being nice. Wasteland 2 looks nice, but this looks fantastic.

[Zeckul]

Its already settled that its isometric. Hence camera is already restricted, whether they use real-time rendered 3d backgrounds, or pre-rendered 2d backgrounds.

An isometric projection doesn't imply or require the use of 2D backgrounds. The problem with 2D backgrounds is that the camera is forever locked to a certain orientation and plane. A 3D game that uses an isometric projection could allow rotating the camera, allowing the player to see all sides of a building for instance. It could also simply default to that projection but also allow arbitrary camera movement for cutscenes or just observing the scenery as one pleases.

 

This is only an issue playing it 10 years from now on holographic screens. Since it will be optimized for todays screen.

This is an issue now because today's screens have widely varying resolutions and PPIs. To give the game roughly the same scale on all screens will require zooming in and out of pre-generated bitmaps which is inherently imperfect and worse than generating the picture at the correct resolution natively from 3D model data.

 

Dynamic shadows and lighting would be easy enough using invisible meshes. They aren't rendered so they don't use up too many resources, but they cast shadows. Effects and such would also interact, so smoke and particles would bounce off them as well.

So if you will take the time to build 3D meshes of your environment to simulate dynamic shadows and lighting, why not use these to do the actual rendering.

 

If they can have 3d character models, they can have 3d props too.

3d-on-2d (beyond divinity, rise of nations) has always looked off because of the differences in lighting and resolution: you can easily tell what's being rendered in real-time and what's not. A full 3d render doesn't suffer from such inconsistensies. Sure, the developers could go to great lengths to produce this highly refined hybrid technology that manages to hide the seams perfectly, but why all this complexity when you could just do everything in 3d in the first place.

 

No matter how good 3d tech is, in a year something will blow it out of the water. The only way we can have backgrounds detailed and beautiful as the IWD and BG backgrounds to todays standards and have it run in real-time 3d, is to have a $1000 video card.

Well that's simply wrong. We can do something that looks much better than the IWD and BG backgrounds in real-time 3D today, on hardware that most gamers already have. The Xbox 360 which is hardware from 2005 currently does high-detail, fantasy artwork that is higher resolution than anything seen in IE games:

 

(Trine 2)

 

Or in a more realistic style:

 

(The Witcher 2)

 

These are technically superior in every conceivable way to the 2d backgrounds we've seen in IE titles. They may not have the same style, because that's not what the artists were aiming for, but there's no question that the same style cannot be achieved, and in much greater detail, using real-time rendering today with cheap and widely available hardware. Don't mix style and technology.

 

People also tend to ignore that IE's static backgrounds had several shortcomings:

- They could not represent depth convincingly at all - it was a stretch of the imagination to picture yourself moving up or down in space even in areas that attempted to depict mountains

- They were generally terrible at representing any dynamic surfaces - the "flowing lava" in Icewind Dale and IWD2 was jarringly static for instance, water was always another issue. Icewind Dale was a good setting for the technology precisely because everything was frozen...

- The lighting was not convincing at all

[Piccolo]

Zeckul - show me just one example of a 3D CRPG or strategy game in top down / isometric perspective that looks as good (let alone better) than some of the best looking 2D examples.

[TCJ]

I like the isometric 2D painted backgrounds. The art in the BG games (I don't have IWD) was superb and made the game that much more fun. In comparison, I never had as much fun looking at a 3D map (CoD, NWN2, MoH to name a few) as I have with exploring the BG maps. The latter tends to lose its appeal quickly (in my case) while the former retains its appeal for years and years.

 

I do like that screenshot from the Witcher, but it still doesn't have the same appeal!

Edited September 22, 2012 by TCJ

[Amused]

There is videos, I did mention that, I'll post them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRylpn1sqxk

 

Lovely. Just plain lovely. Thank you for posting those. The animations of the character and the backgrounds it's on, the shadow and light work, the colors, the texture of the rocks and ground and ground cover everything is gorgeous. The plants and grass are even lovely, as well as the shadow play over them. The character, and its animations, blend astoundingly well with the world.

 

 

I would support his kickstarter.

[rjshae]

Gorgeous pics; love the artwork posted here.

Edited September 22, 2012 by rjshae

[Zeckul]

Zeckul - show me just one example of a 3D CRPG or strategy game in top down / isometric perspective that looks as good (let alone better) than some of the best looking 2D examples.

RTS: Anno 1404:

 

(Anno 2070 looks even better but it's not medieval):

 

TBS: Civilization 5

 

 

RPG: the best-looking RPGs (Gothic IV, The Witcher 2) lock the camera to a close third-person perspective, but it's not hard to imagine what the games would look like with the camera slightly more zoomed out. That is, way better than any 2D RPG I've seen.

 

 

Edited September 22, 2012 by Zeckul

[descalabro]

Its already settled that its isometric. Hence camera is already restricted, whether they use real-time rendered 3d backgrounds, or pre-rendered 2d backgrounds.

An isometric projection doesn't imply or require the use of 2D backgrounds. The problem with 2D backgrounds is that the camera is forever locked to a certain orientation and plane. A 3D game that uses an isometric projection could allow rotating the camera, allowing the player to see all sides of a building for instance. It could also simply default to that projection but also allow arbitrary camera movement for cutscenes or just observing the scenery as one pleases.

 

This is only an issue playing it 10 years from now on holographic screens. Since it will be optimized for todays screen.

This is an issue now because today's screens have widely varying resolutions and PPIs. To give the game roughly the same scale on all screens will require zooming in and out of pre-generated bitmaps which is inherently imperfect and worse than generating the picture at the correct resolution natively from 3D model data.

 

Dynamic shadows and lighting would be easy enough using invisible meshes. They aren't rendered so they don't use up too many resources, but they cast shadows. Effects and such would also interact, so smoke and particles would bounce off them as well.

So if you will take the time to build 3D meshes of your environment to simulate dynamic shadows and lighting, why not use these to do the actual rendering.

 

If they can have 3d character models, they can have 3d props too.

3d-on-2d (beyond divinity, rise of nations) has always looked off because of the differences in lighting and resolution: you can easily tell what's being rendered in real-time and what's not. A full 3d render doesn't suffer from such inconsistensies. Sure, the developers could go to great lengths to produce this highly refined hybrid technology that manages to hide the seams perfectly, but why all this complexity when you could just do everything in 3d in the first place.

 

No matter how good 3d tech is, in a year something will blow it out of the water. The only way we can have backgrounds detailed and beautiful as the IWD and BG backgrounds to todays standards and have it run in real-time 3d, is to have a $1000 video card.

Well that's simply wrong. We can do something that looks much better than the IWD and BG backgrounds in real-time 3D today, on hardware that most gamers already have. The Xbox 360 which is hardware from 2005 currently does high-detail, fantasy artwork that is higher resolution than anything seen in IE games:

 

(Trine 2)

 

Or in a more realistic style:

 

(The Witcher 2)

 

These are technically superior in every conceivable way to the 2d backgrounds we've seen in IE titles. They may not have the same style, because that's not what the artists were aiming for, but there's no question that the same style cannot be achieved, and in much greater detail, using real-time rendering today with cheap and widely available hardware. Don't mix style and technology.

 

People also tend to ignore that IE's static backgrounds had several shortcomings:

- They could not represent depth convincingly at all - it was a stretch of the imagination to picture yourself moving up or down in space even in areas that attempted to depict mountains

- They were generally terrible at representing any dynamic surfaces - the "flowing lava" in Icewind Dale and IWD2 was jarringly static for instance, water was always another issue. Icewind Dale was a good setting for the technology precisely because everything was frozen...

- The lighting was not convincing at all

 

The first image you have there feels bulky, the second one is great, and both of them require a lot more hardware power than the way Obsidian is planing to do it (unless the programming is terribly bad).

 

The Witcher 2 Recommended Specs:

• Processor: Intel Quad Core or AMD equivalent
  
• Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce 260, 1 GB memory / Radeon HD 4850 with 1 GB memory
  
• Memory: 3 GB for Windows XP / 4 GB for Windows Vista and Windows 7
  
• Hard Disk: At least 16 GB of free space
  

I can't play this, and I'm not buying/upgrading my computer. No one here will, because that's not the point in Project Eternity. Besides, you can't compare a console to a computer in terms of gaming.

 

I agree with you about the lava in IWD and IWD2, very often I wished it wasn't static (and they animated it in one small place inside Dorn's Deep), but (again) it's 10 years later, games like Commandos 2 and 3 don't have any problems with animations and they look great. Even STASIS, the one-man-self-funded game looks good enough and has great animations. But that's not the point anyway, the point is people like me and other users here enjoy locked isometric view because it's a style on its own, it's a way of looking into the game world, it's a video game art form and aesthetic current in videogaming, the same way 3D is. I think this is what you're missing.