Ts4EVER Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 The graphics of Combat mission are outdated, which in itself isn't much of a problem. If you look at games like minecraft, they might be outdated, but have a unique artistic style that makes it work for their purposes. This is not always the case with Combat Mission. Now for the record, I think Combat Mission 3d models are very good. Tanks, infantry, guns etc. are very detailed for a strategy game and well done. But there are some other aspects that clash with them and impair graphical quality: - Animations: This is a big problem and sadly not one easily fixed, since I doubt battlefront has the resources for motion capture or generally the time to spend on this. Animations of infantry are atrocious right now. They are repetetive, often look awkward and do not do the 3d models justice. - Terrain textures: While war movie mode somewhat fixes this, they still look quite bad and I think here improvement could be possible without too much effort. It doesn't even necessarily have to be a higher resolution, just better looking colours for grass etc as well as better low detail textures for when you are zoomed out. I mapped for Battlefield 2 quite a bit (in itself outdated by now since it came out in 2005) and there you had a detail texture and a low detail texture, which was automatically generated and was shown over long ranges. That way the colour texture didn't look like painted on or just a plane of colour. - Effects: These too clash with the model quality. I'm sorry, but explosions do not look good right now. I don't even expect Michael Bay type fiery explosions, which would be stupid, but I can't believe that something better isn't possible on CMx3. Even with very simple 2d sprites you can make better looking dirt fountains etc. As an example, look at this clip of Age of Mythology: http://youtu.be/q2MxK5co2X4?t=37s In my opinion these explosions (fantasy as they may be) look better than what you have in Combat Mission right now, and they just use 2d sprites (I don't even think they use any particles in these). I think these are the three main "construction sites" in terms of graphical improvement. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 I pretty much disagree with everything you said. The point is that there are plenty of game out there with great graphics, but their gameplay is superficial (or just plain silly). What makes BF unique amongst game developers is that they have focused on realistic gameplay first, and graphics second. Your example of the explosions in AOM may look "good" as in "Hollywood" movie explosions, but if you look at documentaries, the vast majority of RL explosions don't look like that at all. And you would have to pay me to play AOM. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Canadian Cat Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 LOL this reminds me of a recurring conversation I had with a friend when I was 16. I would have completed a new miniature "the body is green and the tires are black, I put on some basic decals - I am good to go and ready to play" and he would respond with "no I am not ready yet, the mud on the fenders is not quite right, and I want to make the MGs look a little better". 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flanker15 Posted February 21, 2014 Author Share Posted February 21, 2014 So now you want boats, too? Only if they explode nice! Stuff -Yeah Animations are too hard to do without a major undertaking. -Textures are open to modding so the terrain can and has been modded to look allot better, check out the mod repository. -Effects can only be swapped from one bitmap sheet for another, no scripting or adding more bitmaps allowed so it can't be modded into something way better. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 Unfortunately the special effects are the most difficult, most time consuming, aspects of the graphical environment. Worse, the better we make them the less people are able to play the game at a comfortable framerate. Which means there's a point of diminishing returns from a bunch of different compounding factors. That said, we are already in the process of improving the special effects. But as some have noted, the perception of how they SHOULD look vs. how they ACTUALLY look are often dramatically far apart. It's like anything artistic... never consensus on what "good" looks like. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baneman Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 Considering the quite incredible work many modders do and have done for Combat Mission, I can't see the point of getting BFC to do more on their end. They provide the basics and if you want more/better, it will only take you a few minutes to improve the basics : flames, tracers etc. HD Terrain may be a larger download, but nothing compared to the skins for each vehicle and/or uniforms. But if you go to the trouble of getting all those, it looks pretty cinematic to me - check out some of the really top screenshots in the screenies thread... Animations could maybe be better, but again, it's a diminishing return - BFC could add 3 or 4 new animations and chances are, it would be several games before you even noticed. And, for me, 3 little Lego-esque guys was good enough in CM1, so CM2 is all gravy 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gryphonne Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 My biggest wish over all the special fx is simply the "far away" texture tiles for the terrain. These look just so incredibly outdated nowadays, even CMBB did a far far superior job here as the terrain at long distance was smoother out somehow to make things far less obvious. But the tiny repetitive tiles really break the game's feel in light of all the close range high res graphics. I still enjoy CMx2 and I will love Red Thunder (because I love the East Front) but fixing the ugly little tiles (and no - no terrain mod has come close to fixing this yet) will be a huge step forward. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sequoia Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 I for one am happy about the introduction of tree size variation. I'm hesitant to mention it however as we were recently reminded not to get Steve started about trees! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfhand Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 Considering the quite incredible work many modders do and have done for Combat Mission, I can't see the point of getting BFC to do more on their end. They provide the basics and if you want more/better, it will only take you a few minutes to improve the basics : flames, tracers etc. HD Terrain may be a larger download, but nothing compared to the skins for each vehicle and/or uniforms. But if you go to the trouble of getting all those, it looks pretty cinematic to me - check out some of the really top screenshots in the screenies thread... Animations could maybe be better, but again, it's a diminishing return - BFC could add 3 or 4 new animations and chances are, it would be several games before you even noticed. And, for me, 3 little Lego-esque guys was good enough in CM1, so CM2 is all gravy This right here... I just discovered a game (different genre) with graphics directly ported from consoles (inferior IMHO) but with stellar game play. I'll take stellar game play every time over graphics, which means, e.g., I'll take beta flame throwers over no flame throwers, I'll take above ground foxholes over FOW destroying fox holes or no fox holes at all, and I'll take infrastructure improvements that allow our great modding community greater flexibility over BF having to do all the art all the time. Maybe I should look into graphical mods for the effects and environment, right now I'm stock. For a while I was using Rambler's tree and bocage mod in CMBN but I never put it back after installing a patch/upgrade. But the bottom line for me is I'm very pleased with the game as it came out of the box. My personal preference for actual graphical changes would be to allow different color tracers (one of those infrastructure changes I think). By this point it should be clear that I'm a function over form guy (which is one reason I think decals are an excellent improvement). So thanks BF, in my eyes we all win! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew H. Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 Oh so many issues with this sort of thinking. First, here is what 3D games looked like in 1995: 1. I would love to have this POV for my SMG squads!. 2. In 1985, I was using little bits of cotton ball on my miniatures to show that that tank was knocked out, so I think graphics have improved a bit. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gryphonne Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 200 years ago, I was using candles to light my miniature table top because we didn't have light bulbs yet; really, these arguments are pointless. The entire idea about a new game in a series of games is to see improvements in different areas, thus also graphical. Personally, now that you have models with thousands of polygons, I don't want to be stuck with graphics that are still from the early 2000s in other areas (I'm looking at you distant terrain). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dadekster Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 The graphics do the job for me and I find them immersive enough that they do not detract from the gameplay. What kills the immersion for me is watching the soldiers animation/stuttering; however, overall I think the game does a great job for what it is trying to do. Like others said I can easily live with no AAA effects as long as gameplay is solid which we know it is. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sburke Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 200 years ago, I was using candles to light my miniature table top because we didn't have light bulbs yet; really, these arguments are pointless. The entire idea about a new game in a series of games is to see improvements in different areas, thus also graphical. Personally, now that you have models with thousands of polygons, I don't want to be stuck with graphics that are still from the early 2000s in other areas (I'm looking at you distant terrain). You had candles?!!! Why in my day we had to light our friend's hair up. Candles, we WISH we had candles!!! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crender Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 I'm really looking forward to being able to complain about the hit decals 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JTorgersson Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 You had candles?!!! Why in my day we had to light our friend's hair up. Candles, we WISH we had candles!!! You were LUCKY! I had to put my own hair on fire.... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Destraex1 Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 They could invest the time in multi thread which would fix real time and enable better everything ? But tbh i am happy now with wego. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pnzrldr Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 Gents, I too would love for this game to be a graphic, dazzling, eye-candy feast. But if I want to see something really cool, I can go oogle the high-end circus-maximus 1st person shooters, or perhaps the "Wargame" series or something. But as a military professional, this "game" is the only one I have found that justifies my time investment not for looking cool, but for realistic challenging tactical problems with plausible outcomes. Nothing else I have run into makes me want to grab all my subordinate combat leaders and MAKE them play it. Given the plethora of ridiculous Hollywood combat nonsense games versus the stark landscape of really well thought out, deep-content tactical simulations, I will accept the visuals the way they are now, while I continue to applaud the incremental improvements the development team continues achieving. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cymru Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 You had candles?!!! Why in my day we had to light our friend's hair up. Candles, we WISH we had candles!!! Again, a tip of the hat to Monty Python. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BLSTK Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 You had candles?!!! Why in my day we had to light our friend's hair up. Candles, we WISH we had candles!!! You had hair? Must be nice! And where did you get the matches from, Burkey? I don't even remember fire having been invented yet. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhilM Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 I'm really looking forward to being able to complain about the hit decals If you have to wait to see them before you complain about them, you're not really trying hard enough .... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baneman Posted February 21, 2014 Share Posted February 21, 2014 You had hair? Must be nice! And where did you get the matches from, Burkey? I don't even remember fire having been invented yet. Where were you ? My granddad invented fire ! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mace Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 In 1985, I was using little bits of cotton ball on my miniatures to show that that tank was knocked out, so I think graphics have improved a bit. You could always paint them to improve the graphic representation. Personally I think the quality of graphics released with each CM is of a suitable level of detail and I certainly wouldn't want the Battlefront team getting too hung up on improving graphics further when they could be better focusing on AI etc. Besides I wait for the modders to push out their excellent material to push up the quality of the CM eye candy. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Destraex1 Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 The terrain is what always bugged me. It's so unclean that its hard to see any undulations and any other features clearly. This is because the terrain tyles and folliage are so messy. But I can deal with it. It's nice enough not to stop me playing. Again most computers these days have at least two cores and this game would get a huge boost from multi-thread. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeyD Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 I do wonder what camera height you're playing at. I often joke that players have a tendency to raise their cameras up just to the point where they lose all detail - then stay there (just look at all the on-line game videos for that). Granted, when I'm 20 feet up and 20 feet back I have difficulty spotting fine-grained terrain features too. Heck, in the real world you'd have similar difficulties from that height! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LukeFF Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 Outside of things like flames on knocked-out vehicles and some small arms weapons looking too new and unused, I think the graphics are looking pretty good at this stage of CMx2's development. I do agree with those who say the terrain textures could use a bit of love - perhaps some of those handy-dandy shaders that have really made the rest of the textures and models come to life? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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