It doesn’t matter whether they love you or hate you, as long as they’re not ignoring you.
-- some smart person whose name fails me at the moment
Thanks for the responses throughout this thread, but especially the recent ones from Nielk1 and Shadow Knight. I believe those are the most detailed responses I’ve ever received from anything I’ve posted on the internet. And SK, while I disagree with most of it, that was the most cogent defense of “vanilla” I’ve ever read. Seriously, well done.
Now here I go with my longwinded *general* response to a number of comments and concerns.
First off, keep in mind that these screenshots are of a work in progress, and that static images are never going to give the viewer as accurate of a view as much as the real thing – which hasn’t been released yet.
On the lighting –
BZII + the 1.365 patach comes with bumpmaps, specular highlights, four different lighting settings, and a0 glow textures. Because I want to at least maintain what BZII has in terms of options, I’ve made it a big point to maintain all of these things. Therefore, while building and testing each model, I’ve kept bumpmaps on, specular highlights on, all lights on, and am using rebuilt a0 textures. This is a big part of where the shininess and neon comes from that some have had (a personally unexpected) negative reaction to.
On a sidenote, yes, yes, yes I know, I’ve known ever since BZII came out that it has poor bumpmaps. The tech was new when this game was developed, and for that reason or some other, Pandi couldn’t quite get it right. But that’s not a reason for me not to attempt my own. Yeah, they don’t look like bumpmaps are “supposed to look,” but on a number of the things in my mod, they make for nice highlights.
But keep in mind, you as the player have the ability to turn bumps on or off, turn spec highlight on or off, turn the lights on, off, or in-between, and raise or lower the overall brightness. How this mod will appear on your computer, should you choose to try it, is going to in some part, be up to you and your preferences – which may differ from mine and others.
Alas, (Alas? Who writes like that?) I’m one guy, and don’t have a social media consultant or a screenshot taker. Nor do I have time to constantly reset settings, or guess at what people are going to like the most, and then setup the perfect in-game image, so my screens may not do justice to the graphical options available.
On aesthetics/design/color –
BZII looked awesome in 1999. It looks dated in 2015. My hope is to at least get it up to between 2005-2010 visual quality. Actually, I semi-started this mod in 2005 with my initial version of the 1024px textures. After finishing the main isdf/scion textures, I filed them away and moved on to other things. Then last fall after a multi-year absence I came back to the game b/c I had gotten an itch to play it. I installed the latest patch, fired it up and …
… oh my God, this game is ugly!
Baby, what happened? You were once hot and sexy, and now look at you. You’re all … all … wait it can’t be this bad. Here, let me turn on your bumps and specular-- oh my … I think I’m going to vomit …
While I can still see the uniqueness and creativity behind many of the base shapes/designs (and to those who made the game, you really did an awesome job at the time) they’re just too blocky, too low-poly, too blurry, and too dull-colored for my tastes today. So, rather than complain to myself - or on the internet - I decided to do something about it. First was my pass through all the textures. Which resulted in the hi-res texture mod back in Jan. But I still wasn’t satisfied with a new layer of makeup. Nope, this was going to require a complete make-over. Some nipping, tucking, filling-out, taking-in, some time spent in the gym … I mean 3dsMax.
My guiding question all along has been:
If the guys at Pandi were building this game now, what would they have done differently assuming they had more polys, time, and testing to work with the visuals?
Now they were/are professionals with great ability, and I’m not. I’m just a self-taught modeler, and ex-graphic designer, who’s developed a short-term obsessive-compulsive disorder to update the game’s appearance. Part of that update is to round-off objects that were clearly intended to be rounded, but couldn’t because of poly-limits, make both armies more consistent in their aesthetic style and coloring, which they are not, and to take the time to reconfigure some things that just never looked right to me such as the cockpits that are too small to fit even the misshapen pilot models and the low-poly, empty, black canopies.
Another one of the things I liked best about BZ1 and was happy to see carried over into BZII were all the vehicle animations. It helped give each vehicle a little personality – which was/is important since they are the characters of the game. The Sabre tank was the first model I worked on because it had no animations – why not? So I gave it some. I also carried over that same animated concept/design to the buildings. The stock buildings are just very simple, static shapes. Fine for 1999, dull for 2015. So I’ve added animations, and effects to most of them.
I’ve also added bumps and specular highlights, and completely new textures over modified versions of the meshes. At least one response in this thread to this was a criticism/critique of trying too hard to say “LOOK AT ME.”
In response …
“Yes,
LOOK AT ME! Don’t drive by on the way to something else. I’m an effing tech center with spinning radar dishes, a new paintjob, sleek curves and windows. Not some 15-year old set of low-poly, octagonal blocks, in dull, dark, grey-and-pumpkin-orange, with fuzzy, barely noticeable texture details. LOOK AT ME!”
So yeah, I want the buildings to be noticeable. Building, using, and destroying them is one of the main points of the game’s existence. They’re characters just as much as the vehicles are. And I want colors that stand out. Step away from your computer. Go outside (assuming it’s daytime). Look around. The real world (natural, urban, and man-made) is full of so many colors and shades, and there are lots of things that reflect light, even with cloud cover. Honestly, I just don’t understand why so many people these days want everything to be in dark drab tones, or to have their visual entertainment so color-coded (dark).
And for goodness sakes, we’re playing a game about flying orange tanks, and flying tanks with decorative yellow wedges that transform into a different tank, and pumping biological-metal out of the ground(!) to build an instant army. But my optional, free, and still unreleased mod with its higher-pixel textures and object remodeling with higher polycounts is the problem?
Really?
Folks, some of you don’t realize that you are not playing the game you think you are.
Which goes to the real core of the concerns, critiques, and criticisms. This game’s been out long enough that a lot of its appeal is nostalgia – even for those who still continuously play, and especially since there’s never been another game like it. And woe to he (Really, can’t he just write regular English?) who suggests you try something different with it. I get that. But I would still say, relax.
None of the issues brought up are nearly as bad as you think they are just by looking at screenshots. I should know, I’ve spent over eight months(!) and counting with the original models and textures, and with the new. Possibly some of the problem is that it’s a bit jarring to see this so quickly where as I have been building up from that first ivtank xsi I imported into Max to now over 300 rebuilt/modified .msh files, and 800+ textures. But I suspect most people’s worries will be put to rest after they spend a little time with the mod once it comes out.
In closing (Thank God, what a windbag this Coxxon guy is) … I can’t make the game look either like my or your idea of perfect. I have my limitations, and the game has its. But I firmly believe the visuals need a mod like mine, just as much as the gameplay and code have needed the patches. And since it didn’t look like anyone was going to do it for me (or anyone else), I decided to do it myself. If you don’t like what you’ve seen, do better. No really, do what I did and try your hand at it. Try to raise the bar for all of us who mod and love this game. That’s the attitude that I took, and for the hundreds of hours I’ve spent on this I’ve had a great time and will consider it a success even if no one else does. Though granted, all of you will have to judge for yourselves whether or not an overall improvement has occurred.
But it’s not finished yet, so if you’ll excuse me, I have get back to reworking the a0 textures so there’s actually some color to units in multiplayer – and when I take screenshots I’ll try to remember to turn off some of the graphical features so it doesn’t freak people out so bad.
Ps - At the risk of rubbing it in, which I’m really not trying to do … more screenshots. This time ‘a before and after’ with spec highlights on and bumpmaps off.
Before Original
After Remodeled
I gotta say, I really like the after.
Pps - I don’t know if the below will help or not, but it tries to show some of the differences between old and new with different graphical settings.
Full size version available here:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6O8f ... mIyRlNJZUk