PC Gamer review

[Alchenar]

Also bear in mind that if you are a committed fan then you've spent almost five years grappling with the CMx2 interface. Of course it isn't that bad to use now.

[sburke]

And what would you have us provide in order to meet this criteria?

Preferably something you can never meet so I can keep pushing for modules and family's instead of time on the UI

Seriously though, I get there is likely no real indicator out there, I simply object to characterizations that make it sound like we do know what most people want when I don't think we actually have any idea.

Many people have already given their own personal opinions (at first blush, the "it's horrible" group seems to outnumber the "it's fine" group).

I would agree with that though whether it is because you represent a vocal minority or a silent majority is anyone's guess. I certainly do not know and wouldn't suggest otherwise. I would however say it doesn't represent my opinion and that is about all I can claim to know with any certainty.

Other people (including me) have offered up anecdotal evidence that people we've introduced to the game think the UI is horrible. Then we have reviews from gaming sites, most of which complain about the UI. At some point you have to admit that despite scientific analysis, perhaps there is something to what we're saying and that maybe your opinion is actually the minority.

I am willing to say that might be true, but not that it is true. I will however concede that at a certain point it doesn't matter. If folks either don't care enough to speak up or are ambivalent about the current UI as a drain on resources that might be devoted to something else, then by default I would agree. Those folks who feel strongly about it are going to be legitimately arguing for the most desired item for BFC to address. And frankly if BFC does decide this is where they feel they need to devote resources (and apparently Steve at least for sure does) then I will shut the hell up and live with that.

How do you define "quite well"? Did it sell better than CMSF? Yup. Steve has said as much. Did it sell as many copies as Modern Warfare 2? Nope. There's a big middle ground in-between and we're talking about a niche product, so that makes it even more difficult to judge. Is it designed the way it is because it's a niche product? Is it a niche product because of the way it is designed? If it had a better UI would it appeal to a wider audience and cease to be such a niche product? Does it sell as well as it does simply because there's very little competition in this space? There's a lot more to this than just "it sold pretty well compared to their last game, so the UI must be fine".

I don't define it, BFC does. I will not try to define their business plan or the community they should or shouldn't cater to. With someone with no financial stake in their success, I feel that is not my place to even suggest interfering. All I am saying is the argument seems to be that the UI is undermining their success and I don't see anything to support that. Not saying it is not true or somehow changing the UI wouldn't help sales. I am just very very wary of claims based on such a small pool of available info. Look at it this way. Suppose BFC did everything you'd asked and then sales didn't change one iota. Who is going to bear the financial burden of that? Are you willing to compensate them for the costs? I don't say that to be facetious, I wouldn't expect you to as it is their business and their decision. However I think that is the mindset we have to have when arguing for something. If it were a cost you might have to incur would you be willing to bet your livelihood on it? What I have at stake is the survival of a company that produces my single favorite game out there. A company that has successfully negotiated their business through some hard economic times in a very tough business and actually managed to grow a little. I have a lot of faith that they know exactly who they are catering to and how to optimize their chances of continuing to produce a product they take a lot of justifiable pride in. Would I have thought to produce CMSF? Hardly, and yet from BFCs experience they feel with all the struggle they went through it in fact was a successful move.

So sum it up to say I am probably having a knee jerk reaction to hearing people say "BFC you need to do X because not doing so is hurting your business." If you were simply expressing your opinion that you don't like it, I honestly would not respond so much. As I'd noted I actually do like some of the ideas thrown out there, I am just not convinced that 1. The UI is so bad as to make the game unplayable or 2 that changing the UI is going to have this dramatic impact on their sales numbers.

[PLM2]

I don't really see how you can argue the point that the lack of a decent tutorial and a super simplified interface isn't drifting a lot of players away. It is. There's no way to argue it. The demo has the tutorial right? It's been about 6 months since I played the demo but it was overly confusing. And I'm a vet of CMx1. People don't read out of a manual unless they already like a game. Sad, but things change. I have fond memories of reading through game manuals front to back for insights.

There's almost no strategy games like CM that don't have a tutorial. The only decent one I can think of is Hearts of Iron but IIRC the new one even has a decent tutorial. It certainly has text in pop up windows to help you along.

I'm not unhappy with the game. TBH I'm a little disappointed just in terms of the multiplayer. WeGo or a pause button is sorely needed.

An ideal scenerio IMO which would open up this game to new / not necessary niche players would be:

-An interactive tutorial to help players get used to UI.

-In-game multiplayer matching system

-Simplified UI

All of these obviously showing for the demo. Even a multiplayer matching system for battle included with the demo... BF2 had playable multiplayer in the demo for one map and it very much made the game more excitable. If it matters that BF2 is the example, I'm using then you have a problem. They're both games, the concept works and makes people want more content. Every consecutive version of CM that comes out, the player base isn't going to get much bigger if you're making a game from the past which only 40 year old authors want to play.

I like the game, even with the clunky UI. I'm worried that the player base is never going to expand and just move on to new things. Whose gonna make anything else like CM? Then there won't even be a realistic war game I can play out there. That'd really suck. That's why it disappoints me. You can't tell me you can't simplify the UI. I know BF seems to be concerned mainly about gameplay. But guess what... it's not all there is to a game. It comes across as a little disconcerting that BF could take some lessons from a crap game like CoH in terms of simplicity. Nobody expects that much simplicity, but the more the better without compromising gameplay and options.

You should reasonably be able to do limited hotkeys and switches to other panels to get something done. Personally I think half the people who claim it doesn't matter around here prefer this to be a niche game and keep all the common ruffians away. Because this is about the most sophisticated game community I've ever encountered by far. But the same type of people who love this game now... 10 years from now those type of 40 year old authors and sophisticated people are gonna cringe at this type of game if continues to avoid advancing other things besides the game engine. Because they'll have never played anything that was so overly complicated to get into.

Summary: They don't have hand cranks on car's anymore for a reason. I'm sure some people resented those changes too.

[BletchleyGeek]

It was a lovely game - I think more so now that some of the innovations have become by comparison with modern standards less insane. It would be a prime indie title in today's market, I think. Though the Germans would probably have to be zombies, or someone's long-lost relatives or something.

Yes, re-doing Patton Strikes Back for the iOS could certainly become a minor hit on the Apple Store. Regarding the appeal: wait for 2014, that will make 70th Anniversary of Bulge Well, that, or borrowing the premise of this bizarre Norwegian horror flick:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1278340/

A ski vacation turns horrific for a group of medical students, as they find themselves confronted by an unimaginable menace: Nazi zombies

I loved it to bits back when I played it, though. It caught me in a way that other games didn't - it was like someone had captured the way I thought about large operations and projected it onto a computer screen.

Precisely. I've seen so many games failing at capturing the quite unique ebb and flow of the German offensive and Allied counteroffensive... until Command Ops, that is.

And Chris Crawford looks uncomfortably like one of my uncles, so that B&W shot of him in a German uniform was actually rather disturbing.

Yes, this would be useful. I don't want to send you off on a wild goose chase, though. If it existed we might make use of it, but my guess is the really good and feasible ideas have already been cherry-picked.

I realized the same after doing a few searches. Apart from Niessuh and Clark's proposals, I have failed anything close to that level of concretion.

[Wreck]

Regarding a simplified interface to CMBN: I do believe it could be done, and relatively easily. Does a newbie need to know how to target and cause his men to fire? No. TacAI does that for you, reasonably well. Does the newbie need to know how to split squads, pop smoke, or any other menu on Admin? No.

What commands does the newbie need to know to play a game of CMBN? Just one command: how to move. And indeed, he doesn't need to know any of the move commands except one: Quick. The others are, IMO, useful only in special situations.

Obviously, it is controlling the display which is the main problem for the newb. I don't have much to say about that. Mostly, it's just going to be a problem. Controlling a camera in 3-space (4 counting zoom) is inherently complicated.

I do think the current paradigm could be improved. As I have previously noted, splitting the functions of any screen edge is an immense UI no-no. I think this is true for users of any level, experts or not. But it surely must be true for a newbie. (I still am not too clear on the exact divider where it happens, because when I am trying to mouse around the battlefield I do not look at the cursor! The whole point of using the infinitely deep edge of the screen to control a UI is you can easily swipe the mouse to the edge without looking at it.) The screen edges should have just one function, and it ought to be rotation, as in CMBO. But it should be mappable, including allowing people who have become accustomed to the way things are to get it the split-edge effect.

One other minor tweak I would like is that the speed at which the camera translates relative to the ground should vary with the height of the camera. When at '1', the camera should move very slowly. Way up at '8', it should move fast. As things are, my impression at ground level is movement is way too fast; it's almost impossible to place the camera exactly. Whereas up high, the reverse, although the mismatch is less than at ground level.

I agree with others in this thread that an in-game tutorial would be nice. However! There is a big downside here, unlike tweaking the UI: putting in a tutorial mode involves serious programming. Changing the UI controls is pretty much trivial from a programming standpoint: a few minutes of work for the sort of tweaks to the mouse-camera-control changes I suggest above. (Considerably more to make the mouse mappable.) But putting in a scripting layer that channels a player, allowing only certain inputs, triggering events based on in-game occurances, showing dialogs of some sort, etc. -- that is serious work.

All in all, I do not think that requiring players to read the manual and play along with a tutorial is a terrifically bad thing. So I disagree with those here who want such a thing. Sure, let the big game mags downrate us by 10% or whatever for lack of tutorial. Big deal. I think the existing training missions are adequate, if not quite as simple as they might be.

[Bil Hardenberger]

Hey Wreck, it's good to see you around these parts again. Playing any multiplayer these days?

[sfhand]

Reading this thread has made me aware of the seemingly common perception that UI design is easily done. Some have said that solutions rather than criticism should be offered. I am going to be brief: my wife has, for decades, been very well paid to be a user interface designer for products ranging from software to automobiles. A large part of her time is spent in research, observing a large number of users as they interact with the product and interviewing them about their use of the products, testing assumptions and theories, brainstorming, and applying sound design theory.

Successful UI design isn't as simple as some would like to believe...

[Wreck]

Bil, I have not played multiplayer, but I plan on it. Right now I still need to master the interface better before I waste another person's time. Email would be OK, I guess, but I always preferred TCP/IP. Can you suggest a multliplayer club? Is any of them better known for old grey CMBO vets?

[Pak40]

Reading this thread has made me aware of the seemingly common perception that UI design is easily done. Some have said that solutions rather than criticism should be offered. I am going to be brief: my wife has, for decades, been very well paid to be a user interface designer for products ranging from software to automobiles. A large part of her time is spent in research, observing a large number of users as they interact with the product and interviewing them about their use of the products, testing assumptions and theories, brainstorming, and applying sound design theory.

Successful UI design isn't as simple as some would like to believe...

You're right. I think "successful" or efficient UI is what we're hoping will happen to CMx2. At this point I think it's an "adequate" UI.

I have done UI design for database programs. I'm not a programmer but had to learn some programming in order to do UI design. While I would never call it easy I can go out on a limb and say UI design is a lot easier than programming the other components of CM, the complexities of which I can only imagine.

[Bil Hardenberger]

Bil, I have not played multiplayer, but I plan on it. Right now I still need to master the interface better before I waste another person's time. Email would be OK, I guess, but I always preferred TCP/IP. Can you suggest a multliplayer club? Is any of them better known for old grey CMBO vets?

I don't play in any clubs so can't answer that question sorry. I prefer my small group of active or prior military guys... games are much more relaxed with these guys.

Shoot me a line when you are ready for a game.. but I never play TCP/IP.. only PBEM, sorry.

Bil

[ClarkWGriswold]

Successful UI design isn't as simple as some would like to believe...

I agree with you - to a point. Designing an elegant, fluid UI is not a simple task. Companies like Apple spend billions of dollars in that pursuit. However, there are portions of UI design that are simple, and it's often quite easy to see problem areas if you just look (watching user interactions often makes these issues jump out). Having the "stop replay" and "end turn" actions being exactly the same is an example. This comes up time and again and it would have been quite simple to change the Big Red Button during development. Slight changes in color, shape, position, etc. go a long way towards reducing confusion and simplifying UI without much extra time in the design phase. Obviously, this isn't akin to designing a good UI from scratch or fixing more deep seated issues, but it's also not rocket science.

[Lt Bull]

Couldn't find it anywhere so I wasn't sure if you guys were aware: PC Gamer magazine has reviewed CMBN--I quote their verdict:

"CMBN is a very good tactical wargame saddled with pre-alpha looks & controls. You really have to want it."

Rating: 73%

I thought it deserved better, but there it is.

For a game released in 2011, CMBN might even consider itself lucky to be given that score.

Compared to the benchmark of games out there, yes the game does look saddled with pre-alpha looks and controls.

The problem I see is that CMBN was designed as if the the designers live in their own little bubble and have no idea about/are oblivious to the advances/ technology/techniques/conventions being used by their peers to design games and their interfaces. CMBN certainly doesn't seem like a game that draws upon or brings together any of the sound/proven design principles/conventions you find familiar and are comfortable with in other games. It's like they reinvent everything about the game from scratch and in isolation (and consequently get so much wrong unnecessarily), rather than draw upon proven things that work well in so many other games out there and leverage the work of others. The UI/controls is a classic example of this. BFC just don't seem to be in touch with what makes a good and bad UI, or appreciate the importance of a good UI, or at least are incapable of delivering a good one. This ignorance of what other are doing and doing well is to their own detriment.

Until BFC realise that they are terrible at UI design and start being more open-minded about looking around them for examples of GOOD UI design as sources of inspiration, the CM UI will always look and function as if they are pre-alpha, alienating any new players in the process.

[Audgisil]

Lt Bull, please don't take this as any kind of hositle or snide comment. It's not meant that way at all. It is rather genuine curiosity.

You mention that CMBN doesn't follow proven design principles or conventions. Can you provide examples, ones that appear in more than one video game and, ideally, from different developers?

The UI does actually contain a number of common conventions such as...

shift click for selecting multiple items

shif drag to create a selection area

WASD for camera movement (Although I find the holding the right mouse button down to move the camera super convenient, very precise and an innovative idea for camera control. I miss this feature a lot every time I play any Total War game).

What are the particular UI design flaws that you find so grating?

I cerainly don't mean to imply that the UI cannot be improved, but I don't see it as being that fundamentally flawed either.

[beatmasta]

It's quite interesting to see how muvh people get annoyed by this and that thing. Personally I think that the BN is the way far best game there is available at the moment. I don't play that much games anymore and usually I can keep interested on one game for few weeks, maybe couple of months at a time. But since I heard about BN (End of 2010) I started to play (again) SF and now BN and have not played any game after that and the game still keeps me fascinated by the level of challenge it gives. Yes, there is some flaws and room for improvement, but none of them are ruining my experience. And now when I have started to play mostly PBEM games the experience is getting better and better.

[Lt Bull]

What are the particular UI design flaws that you find so grating?

Right clicking - one of the most used/efficient/elegant functions in software design that allows users to easily interact with objects they just selected with a left mouse click. It's so commonly used now it really is second nature. How is the potential of this feature utilised in CMBN? Well it isn't. It does the opposite of what you would expect...it deselects what you just selected. :/

The floating unit tags - the concept is OK, it's used in many games. but the actual implementation of it in CMBN is terrible and poorly considered and unlike what you might see in any other game that has the same "icon" idea. I've posted about it before. Essentially the icon scaling, the icon heights above the unit, they way they randomly bobble round each other when they are about to overlap...its just a mess. I still have no idea why they decided that friendly and spotted enemy unit icons must FLOAT but unspotted "?" icons don't. Making all icons NOT float will go some way to fixing the problem (or at least closer to the actual spot on the ground where the unit actually is). Please just make a bloody option at least.

The general choice and presentation/layout of information on the screen- There was a recent thread somewhere by some guy who seemed to be so frustrated by the UI that he presented screenshot of "re-worked" UI and explained the reasons behind it all. It is evident that to an average user, the CMBN interface really has lots of misses.

Maybe I will add more details, but picking basic/simple things out that are just so annoying and explaining them in detail in threads is so draining and depressing. I know doing so won't change a thing, but somehow I feel that by staying silent on things I see as deficient might be taken by BFC and others as "customer approval", and I certainly wouldn't wan't to risk that.

Personally I think that the BN is the way far best game there is available at the moment.r.

I really would like to know what games you know of and what you are comparing to CMBN. BTW, my discussion was not about "the game" that is CMBN, as in what the game is about. It's about it's presentation to/interaction with the user.

[TheVulture]

What are the particular UI design flaws that you find so grating?

I'm not Lt. Bull obviously but the main complaint I have about violation of good UI design is that some irreversible actions are easy to do by accident. The most frequently mentioned is that it is very easy to lose track of whether you are in replay or orders phase in WeGo, and the big red button doesn't give you any clue or demand confirmation. The number of times I've watched a replay, clicked the button to end the replay, spend a while thinking about the next move, forgotten I'm now in orders phase, and click the red button with the intention of going in to orders pahse but actually starting the next turn's action without having given or changed any orders.... (sorry for the clumsy sentence there). At best it wastes a turn of time. At worst it means replaying from you last save (if you have one) because you didn't respond to some obvious threat and things went pear shaped.

Good UI design would note that the action "finish the replay and go to the next orders phase" and "orders are complete - time to process and show the results" are different, and ideally would have buttons in different locations, or at least several clear visual indications of what the action of that button would be (change its colour, have other visual identifiers around the place to indicate whether you are in orders mode or replay mode). Irreversible actions should also as a rule require a confirmation via a separate method or location (e.g. an "are you sure?" dialog in the middle of the screen).

Another irreversible action issue is the 'bail out' command with the default hotkeys (no longer an issue for me since I don't use the default keys). Before I changed the keys I had occasion to curse the fact that I ordered a crew to bail out of a vehicle while trying to do something else (such as place a movement waypoint). The tab system with default keys generally is prone to nudging players into mistakes, since the action of a key depends on which tab you are on, and the current tab is not immediately apparent if you are looking at the play area. (And expecting the player to check the tab area in the bottom right to confirm which tab they are on so they know what a hotkey does is unhelpful UI and kind of defeats the point of hotkeys to be honest).

At least that can be sidestepped by editing the hotkeys.

Further streamlining is possible by noting which commands are frequently used and which aren't. I'd wager that most players issue many, many more movement commands than they do "split off assault team" commands (or "bail out" or "acquire ammo" for that matter). The movement commands should be accessible with a single action (which they are with edited hotkeys). Acquire ammo can for example require more actions (switch tab, select "acquire", select ammo to get) since it isn't done so often - although sometimes I do issue a batch of those at the start of a mission in a campaign to restock on ammunition for my infantry.

A conceivable streamlining could be achieved by e.g. combining the movement and firing tabs together so that all the basic movement waypoint orders, target, target light and cover arc and all put on the same tab. Changing to another tab to give a different order would be valid for one order (so change tab, issue split team command, and then the UI defaults back to the movement tab). So the common commands are kept accessible with a minimum of use actions, at the expense of extra actions if you want to issue a bunch of 'alternative' commands in one go.

One further quibble - it never hurts to provide more accessible feedback on your unit status, in a variety of ways. In an ideal world, different states are indicated by changes in colour and shape (and by sound, depending on what kind of program you are talking about). And important information should be presented to the user in the area they spend the most time looking at, or flagged up in some hard to ignore way (movement, flashing can be good tools). How many people have complained about losing vehicles and never even noticing until they come to give the vehicle an order some time later? In the curent game UI, keeping up to date with the status of all your units is a time consuming business involving many clicks. You'd want status information to be much more easily accessible (yeah, designing a good system for this is the tricky part), and toggleable to get it all out of the way to let yuo enjoy the cinematic experience when you want it.

[c3k]

Another irreversible action: ACQUIRE.

[beatmasta]

I really would like to know what games you know of and what you are comparing to CMBN. BTW, my discussion was not about "the game" that is CMBN, as in what the game is about. It's about it's presentation to/interaction with the user.

Well, I'm not comparing it to anything. As I said, very few games are so interesting that I bother to play them as long as I have played BN (and SF while waiting for the BN). I just get bored to the games at certain speed, but it has not happened yet with BN. Most likely it will eventually happen. If the game keeps enjoying me, then I consider it a good game regardles of's it UI or other features.

[Lt Bull]

I'm not Lt. Bull obviously...

Lucky for you!

but the main complaint I have about violation of good UI design is that some irreversible actions are easy to do by accident....

I also consider all those points you mention as evidence of a poorly considered interface. Thanks for listing them. I have fallen for the "clicked the red button before giving orders" trap several times for exactly those reasons you state.

Well, I'm not comparing it to anything. As I said, very few games are so interesting that I bother to play them as long as I have played BN (and SF while waiting for the BN).....

OK but comparing things to similar things already out there is part of making a well informed judgement on something. You might not have to like a game to admire it's UI for example.

If the game keeps enjoying me, then I consider it a good game regardles of it's UI or other features.

Lets say you like the game of chess as much as you do CMBN. Does that mean that you would enjoy any and every version of a PC adaptation of the game regardless of how good or bad the UI was? This is teh distinction I am trying to make between evaluating "the game" and evaluating the UI.

[PLM2]

All in all, I do not think that requiring players to read the manual and play along with a tutorial is a terrifically bad thing. So I disagree with those here who want such a thing. Sure, let the big game mags downrate us by 10% or whatever for lack of tutorial. Big deal. I think the existing training missions are adequate, if not quite as simple as they might be.

Yeah its adequate... if you have the manual right in front of you. The way game distribution is going, most people are gonna play off the digital copy long before they get the hard copy in the mail. From what I understand the manual numbers are only avail why supplies lasts???? When I was doing the tutorial I had to keep minimizing to go to my PDF manual. An in-game manual ... think of Civilization's Civopedia would be very helpful.

Right clicking - one of the most used/efficient/elegant functions in software design that allows users to easily interact with objects they just selected with a left mouse click. It's so commonly used now it really is second nature. How is the potential of this feature utilised in CMBN? Well it isn't. It does the opposite of what you would expect...it deselects what you just selected. :/

This

Bil, I have not played multiplayer, but I plan on it. Right now I still need to master the interface better before I waste another person's time. Email would be OK, I guess, but I always preferred TCP/IP. Can you suggest a multliplayer club? Is any of them better known for old grey CMBO vets?

Another illustration of a clear lack of Battlefront-sponsored multiplayer.

I don't play that much games anymore and usually I can keep interested on one game for few weeks, maybe couple of months at a time. But since I heard about BN (End of 2010) I started to play (again) SF and now BN and have not played any game after that and the game still keeps me fascinated by the level of challenge it gives.

Well just catering to players like you is going to leave CM futureless.

Nobody my age or younger will Play by e-mail. Its not going to happen. Probably a tenth of a percent would even consider the concept. Most people my age don't even use e-mail. Play by facebook? Well you might have something there in all seriousness. I'm guessing this game doesn't even have a Facebook page.

I think its outstanding that this game has as many dedicated fans as it does... but the same type of people who were drawn to this game in the last 10 years are not going to be drawn to this game in the future no matter where their interests lie. You can improve this game with every new release but eventually time is going to pass it by if it requires a player really want to have the experience the game offers. A great game design brings new players, it doesn't just cater to the old guard who put their time in already. Nobody wants the gameplay altered, I don't understand why people would fight to keep this game in a lower tier just over some shoddy UI decisions. A lot of people appreciate the ultra realism and challenge of facing opponents in realistic circumstances.... the same type of people aren't going to be attracted to a game that makes this hard to do outside of the already challenging gameplay.

Another indie company, Mad Minute Games, made some Civil War strategy games where you could turn on/off an AI that would help you with manage up to entire Divisions and give them generalized orders to help with the madness Naturally nobody who wants to win would leave such things up to the AI but that could really help new players and also make large battles a reality again if WeGo isnt going to be avail for IP play again.

[Erwin]

And what happened to Mad Minute Games is a serious lesson.

[PLM2]

Games fail for a variety of reasons and success and failure I think have less to do with what people assume they do. Look at Minecraft, horrible graphics but innovative gameplay. I used to be a big Civil War buff and Mad Minute's Bull Run game was excellent. Little things like hearing water running and cicadas or crickets when zoomed in can make the terrain seem less bland. BF could take lessons from the ambient noise just in the terrain from it. It was along the lines of Sid Meier's Gettysburg but a little more visually appealing.

[A Canadian Cat]

Your observations about the same action, button or key doing different things being frustrating is spot on. However, adding confirmation dialog or actions is the wrong thing to do. In the GUI design business we refer to that as "stopping the proceedings with idiocy". Fixing the true problem - confusing button meaning or overlapping key meaning - is the way forward.

I also liked your suggestion of combining the movement and combat menus. I often find issuing combinations of movement and combat commands and switching tabs so often is annoying and distracting. I do not find that I combine commands from the other tabs a much (except for deploy).

[Lt Bull]

Look at Minecraft, horrible graphics but innovative gameplay.

I really do not see how you can call Minecraft graphics "horrible". Simplistic looking yes, horrible? Definitely not. In fact, in many ways (some would even argue in the ways that matter) that the visual 3D world of Minecraft actually is BETTER than what you see in CMBN.

How can that be? Isn't Minecraft full of big blocks?

The fundamental reason behind this is because the actual lightning/rendering in the game is VASTLY superior to the primitive/as basic as it gets form of lighting/shadows you see in CMBN. The fact that you get much more colour grades/depth/shading is just one of the reasons. Everything just looks smooth and natural. Simple 3D models and great lighting ALWAYS trumps detailed 3D models in crappy lighting.

[Guest]

The Minecraft graphics were pretty horrible back when Notch started selling the alpha (I was an early adopter). Since then they've improved... largely through mods which he's incorporated, interestingly. Most of the performance improvements he's gotten originated in mods as well. Hmm.

Anyway, I agree that with the new lighting model Minecraft looks very good, considering what you're looking at.