Update #49: Water, Trees, Day/Night, Lighting... All That Jazz

[Bootsy81]

 

 know there's still a lot of work to be done, but I'd like to make a small suggestion. The 'smoke' or mist from the waterfall is a little too 'grey'. I'm thinking it should be a bit lighter with rainbow colors/color spectrum, especially when sunlight (at dawn?) is bright. It might liven it up more?

 

Thoughts anyone?

 

Yeah, I agree Charezon. That's kind of what I was meaning in my post just above yours as well. The mist seems a bit too solid to me and not quite a subtle enough effect. If it was just a tad more misty it would be perfect! A rainbow lighting effect would be amazing if they could pull it off somehow. Might be a bit difficult on this budget but given what they've done so far anything's possible!

Edited April 10, 2013 by Bootsy81

[Frisk]

I had pretty high expectations, but this demo even exceeds what I expected at this point in time.

 

Really nice work - well done!

[L'invité]

Gorgeous!!! 

I'd like to know how you do that! (Do you generate a normal map which is giving you the surface information for lightning effect and all?)

 

Just a little criticism : the shadow should turn with the day/night cycle. 

[Shaz]

It's...

Ah! Aahhh..

um, wow.

I... I... oh my..

<silence>

...

I lack the words. That is not something I often find myself saying, as I tend to fall more on the 'exceedingly verbose' end of the spectrum.

That is truly a thing of beauty you are creating.

[vorgoeth]

Damnit, we were warned to pressurise the room. "Your head could explode", he said, and thought I: "Publicity."

 

But then dusk fell.

[Monte Carlo]

Those character models have a ToEE vibe about them, which is good because I really liked those. And long scimitar / sabre style swords!

 

I was especially impressed with the scale, it looks like the maps will be big. That warrior looks tiny at the foot of the giant temple.

[Notso]

I can't even begin to imagine the sorts of technical tomfoolery you guys used to make the scene look as good as it does, and during what is essentially a pre-alpha phase of the game's development too. I'm so glad I backed this game.

 

I've decided to reinstall BG:T with a ton of the big expansion mods to pass at least some of the time until P:E is released. I simply cannot wait.

[raquo]

Holy cow, that was indeed awesome. My brains now fails to process the fact that I need to wait a looong time before I get to play this...

[amarok]

Wow, this is exaclty what i wos hoping for.

Besides the technological aspects i really love the style of art. Especially nature often looks kinda.. sterile in games, IMO. P:E seems to do it right. The bushes and that river in the demo scene there much more.. natural than any Skyrims or Witchers i know of.

[ImRhoven]

This looks great.

 

If this is the way the entire game is going to look I'll be more than satisfied.

 

Some observations however:

-The moving foliage and bushes look a bit off when you pay close attention to it. It doesn't look really windblown to me. It's too random with bushes next to each other doing opposite things. It's also a wee bit jerky.

- Dynamic shadows would be great if it is possible to implement those. Especially the tree's shadow next to the campfire looks a bit weird, being static.

- That bridge looked a lot better in the screenshots. With the moss and textures. Was that an intentional change? It looks so shiny and colorless now.

Edited April 10, 2013 by ImRhoven

[sirlach]

PANTS HAVE EXPLODED. That is all.

[DaWu]

This is a dream becoming true. I have tears in my eyes. I have been wanting something like this for over 10 years! This looks BRILLIANT!!!

[Helm]

Fantastic Obsidian! The prerendered background supplemented with 3D characters and effects looks great!

 

Think something else just blew up....

 

DON'T follow the 2D rendered LIGHT!!!!

 

soooooo can we have the game this year? :D

2D rendered light. hehehe

 

It's a 3D effect dude.

Edited April 10, 2013 by Helm

[Gecimen]

I was impressed by WL2 game play demo. But this is a totally new level. First off it looks better than anything 3D as of 2013. Secondly the lighting and water level in 2D, blew my mind. Thirdly, the environment, water, trees, grass etc. looks live enough.

 

I don't know about the rest of the game but aesthetically speaking, this is my thing.

[hideo kuze]

 

 

 

 

 

   <- me looking at the video

 

 

 

 

The above pretty much sums it up.
This looks beautiful :]

Congratulations to the team.
I really need to buy a new display (from my 15'' laptop) that can make justice to this imagery.

 

Happy I backed.

Edited April 10, 2013 by hideo kuze

[samm]

Top notch, esp. impressed by the character's shadow on the stones and the dynamic light floating around, kudos to your engine programmer! And the rest of the team of course :D

 

Criticism:

comparatively major:

When the character walks down the slope towards the water, he is jittering

Grass texture (the static parts) looks ugly, sorry....

Trees' / bushes' movement is jerky

The bridge isn't as nicely touched up as it was in the demo rendering

 

comparatively minor:

cascade's water fog looks like smoke

shadows don't move with "sun" during daylight-changes

mentioning IWD2 as quality-bar: There were some pretty horrid aliasing issues, washed out environments and off contrasts in there.

Edited April 10, 2013 by samm

[Helm]

Fantastic work - this is easily the most fantastic technical display of pre-rendered 3D that I've ever seen.

 

If it's possible to share (and any of the artists ever read this), I would love to know if the dynamic lighting was created by using height maps/z-depth renders of the 3D versions of the assets, and then storing them along with the tiles.  If you can't say, I understand, but lighting for 2D games has always been a pretty terrible experience for me, and I've love to have at least a hint that my guess is headed in the right direction

It is mapped, there is a 3D layer (without textures) on top of the 2D layer. The dynamic lighting is a 3D effect. Obsidian pulled it off very nicely.

[Sistergoldring]

Holy crap - that was absolutely breathtaking.  You guys are gods!

 

Give me the damn game already. 

[mstark]

I came, I saw, I drooled.

 

Any chance to get a 1080p video?

[mstark]

(Note that unlike Obsidian's waterfall screenshot, these were not created through months of pre-production, they were created more or less spontaneously in only a few days near the end of the kickstarter campaign. So keep that in mind when comparing the quality.)

Note that the animated environments from Torment were created at the same time as the Eternity one, using the same engine, with the same people working together. InXile are cooperating with Obsidian, they didn't have to do any of the pre-production, they're simply leveraging the work that Obsidian has already done.

 

Because of this, both games are going to have pretty much exactly the same graphical quality (it's down to the artists of either team when creating the areas, since they are using the same tools).

 

And that is awesome.

[Helm]

shadows don't move with "sun" during daylight-changes

I don't like this either.

 

There is absolutely no dynamic shadowing. None. Zero. Zilch.

 

The shadows from trees, bushes, etc. never move.

Edited April 10, 2013 by Helm

[Jajo]

So, it looks like this is actually going to be in 2D? I had always been under the impression that the idea was to have 3D rendered from an isometric perspective - after all, I think what most would agree they want is the IE gameplay experience, not 2D in and of itself.

 

I guess I'm curious as to what drove that decision, as it seems like something that adds a fair amount of extra work for no real gain.

 

Pre-rendered 2D has always been what they were aiming for in P:E. This is made by creating an area as a 3D model, render it from the desired perspective and then place it as a 2D background. IE games were made with the same process and decision to go 2D pre-rendered has been made clear during the kickstarter campaign.

 

The thing about 3D is, it has a very wide spectrum of final look. This, unfortunately,  greatly depends on the amount of resources and effort spent on the engine.

2D has a performance advantaga over 3D, because with pre-rendered backgrounds one does not have to worry about frame rate of the area model. With 3D, compromises have to be made between performace and richness of visual effects.

Another advantage of 2D is also, that an artist can ammend the results of rendering engine on a scale of individual pixels. Such ammends are always easily done on a 2D image, but can be quite hard to do with real-time 3D effects.

So, if 3D can look the same (or better) than what we've seen in this update, it doesn't mean, that it will come at the same cost.

 

Going 2D can add extra work overall, but there are also considerable advantages to it.

Edited April 10, 2013 by Jajo

[oneda]

Hey Obsidian, I really liked that video. That was just cool.

 

And I love how you go for a more realistic style like in the infinity engine games or diablo 1 and 2. Not this cartnooish warcraft style that apparently most rpgs nowadays go for.

 

Really cool. And the Atmosphere and background music was just awesome.

 

Please just follow this direction. I love it.

[cyanidhogg]

Is purdy. Want.

[Nordicus]

Infinity Engine, we need to talk...

 

I've found a new love and her name is Unity. I'm sorry. Me and you, we had fun but, I think it's time for both of us to move on.

Edited April 10, 2013 by Nordicus