The "clean" looking graphics?

[Broadsword56]

As long as this stuff is moddable (at least somewhat), I'm sure you graphics gurus will find a way to make CM:BN even more awesome. I just hope that the ability to mod it for dirt, atmosphere, etc., will exist (has Battlefront assured us that it will be?), and that we don't have to resort to immersion-killing abstractions like terrain gridlines.

[MarkEzra]

A part of the Combat Mission long-time experience is making and collecting of improving graphical mods for the game.

Couldn't agree more. I like my game clean and fresh, I like my game dark and dirty, I like my game a hazy blend of both. Thank the stars that the CM Community has so many talented Modders. I'll also look forward to a nice little program to store and select my mod collection. Hint, hint to the man who can fight or can build.

[Chops]

Couldn't agree more. I like my game clean and fresh, I like my game dark and dirty, I like my game a hazy blend of both. Thank the stars that the CM Community has so many talented Modders. I'll also look forward to a nice little program to store and select my mod collection. Hint, hint to the man who can fight or can build.

Sounds like the Fightin' Seabee has a new zBee mod manager in the works. Great!

Some beautiful screenshots in the new AAR at Rock, Paper, Shotgun... doesn't look clean and fresh to me!

[MarkEzra]

Sounds like the Fightin' Seabee has a new zBee mod manager in the works. Great!

Some beautiful screenshots in the new AAR at Rock, Paper, Shotgun... doesn't look clean and fresh to me!

Hold on there... The "Hint, Hint" to an un-named guy was for said un-named guy and not to you hungry, in the dark gamers But I sure hope he does...

Sorry for the confusion... I didn't make myself very clear.

[ChrisND]

The vehicles actually do have some wear and tear and dust on them, if it isn't obvious from the compressed JPEG screenshots. The new Rock Paper Shotgun AAR shows some Sherman dust. The key factor is that unlike certain CMx1 mods, the effects aren't over-done.

[GhostRider3/3]

The vehicles actually do have some wear and tear and dust on them, if it isn't obvious from the compressed JPEG screenshots. The new Rock Paper Shotgun AAR shows some Sherman dust. The key factor is that unlike certain CMx1 mods, the effects aren't over-done.

I agree with NormalDude here... its nice to see a variety of even the Pz IVH. if you notice some have a grey bucket in the back, and others do not. Not to mention the wear and tear on each is not exactly the same. Sort of what maybe Empire Total war did with the peoples heads.. some diff, from others.

What I would like to see happen with the Battlefront Series is a way to get rid of having a million different mods you have to download from different people and areas... some work, some dont, some work with others and some conflict.. BLAH!!!

I would also like to see an option for when you are creating your own Custom Scenario, or QB... Tactcial markings option. They did this sort of with "IL2"

The Tactical marking for which division you would like to deploy would be applied to the Armored Vehicle etc.... sort of like with a drop down menu or something you could pick either 3rd Armd, 1st etc... Deploy a TD company from the "....." TD Btn with correct tactical markings.

Alot more detail, but consumers will always want more, but just a suggestion. The Battlefront Team has really done a supurb job with Normandy, and even though it may not have the correct Tac markings for what scenerio I want to create... Im still pre-ordering.

[Michael Emrys]

Don't forget that the higher polygon count for the models in the game are also needed to do the damage calculations. It's just not more pretty graphics.

Wot 'e said.

Michael

[Peregrine]

The more natural the graphics the better.

The number one problem I have with their graphics is that until you get down to views 1 and 2 it can be difficult to make out terrain elevations.

I would prefer to operate from view 3 all the time and having to drop down to 2 and 1 to when giving orders frequently makes the interface feel a bit clunky and that I am having to overly micromanage to avoid doing something stupid.

[Vanir Ausf B]

The number one problem I have with their graphics is that until you get down to views 1 and 2 it can be difficult to make out terrain elevations.

Exactly. That's why I'm hoping someone does grid terrain mods for CMBN.

[Peregrine]

Exactly. That's why I'm hoping someone does grid terrain mods for CMBN.

I am hoping the stock standard game is good enough and not need to be modded as I want the environment looking natural and a grid is anything but.

This may not be a fixable problem and is common to most computer games.

View 3 gives a nice view of the overall battle and distance but the difficulty of picking elevations gets a little tricky.

View 1 and 2 makes elevation perfectly clear and even though the game is modelled in 3D you are still looking at a 2D image so depth perception (judging distances) becomes very tricky at this level.

Again this may not be fixable with a 2D image. I am not a golf fan but I am sure we have all seen shots of the pro golfs greens on TV that look pretty flat until actually zoom down to ground level.

I would like to be operate from level 3 all the time but can't do it currently because of the difficulty in elevation perception. At level 2 it is too hard to judge distance without using the LOS equivalent constantly.

[Battlefront.com]

The number one problem is the low resolution of computer monitors. When you're up in the air there is literally not enough pixels to show subtle terrain features. When you zoom in close you can see all kinds of stuff because the pixel count for a given area is now massively increased.

The second problem is home computers aren't powerful enough to keep all the terrain in 100% high resolution everywhere at the same time. "LODs" kick in and the resolution decreases, which means you don't see as much detail.

Third problem is most video cards don't handle complex shadowing very well, especially when mixed in with the above two problems.

On the plus side, while these problems are not going away any time soon the graphical look (overall) keeps improving over time. Looking at CM:BN compared to CMBO is really fun

Steve

[Michael Emrys]

View 3 gives a nice view of the overall battle and distance but the difficulty of picking elevations gets a little tricky.

View 1 and 2 makes elevation perfectly clear and even though the game is modelled in 3D you are still looking at a 2D image so depth perception (judging distances) becomes very tricky at this level.

I would like to be operate from level 3 all the time but can't do it currently because of the difficulty in elevation perception. At level 2 it is too hard to judge distance without using the LOS equivalent constantly.

Unless the UI has changed, I recall from CMx1 that switching between views 1, 2, and 3, etc. was not a big deal. I did it all the time.

Michael

[MikeyD]

There's an old rule of thumb called 'the Peter Principle', that says a corporate executive will rise in a company to the point where he's incompetent at his job then he'll stay in that post. A CM gameplay version of this principle seem to be that a player will keep going up in elevation until he starts having trouble seeing ground details. Then he'll stop there and play from that height.

[Earl Grey]

I like it that CMBN comes with 'sub-optimal' textures. I see CM as a virtual supersession of a basement hobby-room for wargaming. Part of wargaming fun is figurine-painting. A part of the Combat Mission long-time experience is making and collecting of improving graphical mods for the game. If CM would look like ToW there would be no real point in this.

I just pretend that I didn't read this. Posts like these make me REALLY angry. I wonder why I have given up so much of my spare time I could have spent with my wife trying to make the textures look good (a big part of the US tank weathering was done by me, by the way!) when just the next [CENSORED!] [CENSORED!] [CENSORED!] comes around teh corner to tell me it looks crap, but that modders will take care of it.

Tell you what - I AM a modder. Tell you something else - I did help with textures to have the game look less "sub-optimal". Well, thank you very much for your statement. It's people like you that show how much our work is really appreciated out there.

[ChrisND]

I just pretend that I didn't read this. Posts like these make me REALLY angry. I wonder why I have given up so much of my spare time I could have spent with my wife trying to make the textures look good (a big part of the US tank weathering was done by me, by the way!) when just the next [CENSORED!] [CENSORED!] [CENSORED!] comes around teh corner to tell me it looks crap, but that modders will take care of it.

Tell you what - I AM a modder. Tell you something else - I did help with textures to have the game look less "sub-optimal". Well, thank you very much for your statement. It's people like you that show how much our work is really appreciated out there.

Well obviously your stuff sucks because there isn't ten gallons of mud and the dust on them.

Oh, you need to turn in your modder gun and badge, cause you work for the "the man" now.

[Marco Bergman]

Go easy, dude. He might have had a bad day, but he's probably not joking.

People will have a better idea of how clean or dirty the vehicles are once they have the game in hand. They might be surprised.

Oh, you need to turn in your modder gun and badge, cause you work for the "the man" now.

No, we work with the man, not for him. We ain't on the payroll. It makes a difference.

[ChrisND]

No, we work with the man, not for him. We ain't on the payroll. It makes a difference.

Er, yeah, I know this. Taking it just a tad too literally.

[Wiggum]

I think many guys that posted screenshots (even the official ones) are not with max. setting + AF + AA.

Im 100% sure that i can play this game with the highest setting in 1920x1080.

Look at the screenshots from rockpapershotgun.com for example:

Looks dirty enough for me, everything else can be modded.

[Peregrine]

Unless the UI has changed, I recall from CMx1 that switching between views 1, 2, and 3, etc. was not a big deal. I did it all the time.

Michael

For CMx1 it was not a big deal. I often played massive scenarios and operations so slow gameplay and looking at a lot of units once every minute this sort of deficiency of the view was never really felt. CMSF the view is nearly identical except I think you have the "wide" view as well. Nothing else jumps to mind as different.

But playing CMSF realtime (even with pausing) sometimes it takes a little too long to give orders if you need to focus on a single unit. When you zoom down to 1 or 2 in realtime to grasp what the unit is seeing the likelihood of you missing something very important elsewhere increases unless you are perpetually pausing zooming out etc.

Having nice clear elevations from 3 would definitely simplify the realtime forms of the game for me.

But as Battlefront said somewhere above (and I can appreciate the obvious) increasing the viewing elevation and maintaining clear contour definitions is not simple. I would just really like 3 to have a better perspective of elevation.

[LJFHutch]

Hey I appreciate your work, the textures look great, having done a bit of texture work myself I know first hand that it's not an easy task.

[Michael Emrys]

Tell you what - I AM a modder. Tell you something else - I did help with textures to have the game look less "sub-optimal". Well, thank you very much for your statement. It's people like you that show how much our work is really appreciated out there.

Artists always wear their hearts on their sleeves. Be nice to them.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Looks dirty enough for me...

I agree. Bil's pics, excellent as they were otherwise, didn't show this so plainly. In this shot, it's all I reasonably could hope for.

Michael

[Destraex1]

I like the graphics in CMSF and CMBN. For some reason their is a lot more immersion and detail than other games.

[nik mond]

IMO a few of the replies here have hit it on the money. A certain other game nearby has great muddy textures on the uniform lower pants cuffs boots. BUT as you pull back the camera, and typically we all play with the camera back to a level where we can control more than one individual, textures start to be dominated by the browns and wash out completely.

I prefer a crisp clean look because at a distance the units apear as how I expect them to look.

[Lt Bull]

People will have a better idea of how clean or dirty the vehicles are once they have the game in hand. They might be surprised..

Hi Marco. Long time since I heard your name, back in the glory days of CMBO, one of the best modders there was!

When I first titled and started this thread, I guess I wasn't exactly able to put my finger on exactly what it is about the CMBN graphics that kind of annoyed me. I did use the phrase "clean" looking graphics, and yes some of the textures do look a bit too clean (as in not dusty/dirty). I also used the word "clean" to refer to the clean sharp edges to everything, in particular the shadows.

But I realise now that any "clean" looking textures aren't really at the core of what gives CMBN a look and feel that is really not to far removed from what we had in CMx1 (and far removed from other modern games).

The core of the issue (and what really causes the "clean" look I originally referred to) has to do with the LIGHTING in the game and the way it makes everything look sharp, less featured and whitewashed. This is what makes even dirty textures look "clean" or even highly detailed 3D models look simple and flat and their edges and shadows razor sharp, because that is what basic simple direct lighting does. It's like an infinitely large halogen floodlight drenching the battlefield, whitewashing textures on detailed 3D objects so that both subtle colour and shade differences in the textures and fine detailed shapes in the 3D model become indistinguishable, all the time casting harsh sharp shadows. It essentially makes the environment look overexposed, flat and clean, less 3D and more 2D.

The bottom line is that had more effort gone in to the lighting/rendering system employed in CMBN (at the expense of highly detailed 3D models and even fancy textures (modders would attack the textures anyway)), I am sure the whole look and feel of the game would be completely different, in a better way.

Regardless of what 3D models you use or what textures you put on them, the most critical element to how a 3D game/environment/scene looks ultimately is the lighting/rendering system used.