Would you settle for something other than FMV?

Frogacuda wrote:These guys haven't worked on a 3D games since like... the Xbox 1 days

Uh huh. And that high end Golf simulator software they've been a part of for years? I'm going to say time, budgetary and downscaling constraints prevented the project from being everything they wanted visually. If you want to criticize the art dept, it's a free country, I just don't happen to agree with your opinion.

I thought the game was excellent, and packed a walloping... whollup? It was more than I could dream of, given the almost seemingly impossible task the BF team had in getting it out so quickly. And yes, I said quickly. A game, with this budget, with everything they put into it in the time they did? Holy crap!

The whole 3D model thing -- meh. Makes the game less personal. Gets rid of a certain connection the player has with the characters who inhabit the world. The reason these games have resonated this long with me (since middle school), is because I felt like I was really a part of a real persons adventure, and knew all the characters of Chandler Avenue.

The willing suspension of disbelief only does so much, but when given a "real" place, inhabited by real people -- I feel like I don't have to suspend anything. I'm there.

"Xbox 1 days," lol. Try Commander Keen days... oh, crap, people remember Commander Keen, right? How about Duke Nukem days? You know, the little 2D scroller where he was a little pink dude with blonde hair and a giant laser blaster...?

There just ain't no love for Apogee.

They've been working in the gaming industry for years since before the "Xbox 1 Days," and after, lol. It wasn't until Microsoft took over, that they decided the Adventure Game wasn't worth the time. Big mistake. You see Adventure Games popping up all over the place now. It's good to see some of the patriarchs returning to school some b****es.

Of course I remember Commander Keen. Those lollipops, sodas, pizzas, and pogo sticks. I remember it all!

plumgas wrote:dreamfall chapters raised 1.5 million I would say there is a big difference there compared to our 600,000.

Kickstarter aside, Dreamfall Chapters total funding minus fullfillment is about $1.6 million, and Tesla Effect's is about $1 million. Not that that doesn't make a difference, but it puts them in the same league. It's not a "big budget" AAA game, it's another indie adventure using unity and a budget between 1 and 2 million.

Their art team is like 4 people instead of BFG's like 2 or 3, and their dev cycle is 24 months instead of 22. It's in the ballpark.

I don't mean to insult anyone when I bring this up, but it's just not fair to use budget as this catch-all excuse for every aspect of the game's look. Budget is going to constrain things like how many areas there are, how big they are, and how many unique props and details they're populated with, and less to do with texture resolution, polygon count, or the actual quality of the art itself.

Jen wrote:Uh huh. And that high end Golf simulator software they've been a part of for years?

Pretty comparable to an Xbox game in terms of the renderer, and thus the techniques for creating art assets.

Frogacuda wrote:

Jen wrote: and the 3rd one...well, that's just your opinion man, and a kinda harsh one if I do say so myself. I've spent time with all 3 of them and they busted a hump to get this thing out.

They certainly worked very hard, and probably at below market value for game development, and I'll love them forever just for pulling this game off. So don't get me wrong. I don't think they're lazy and I don't think they're untalented, and I'm extremely grateful for the work they've done.

But there are a lot of things in the art that are just plain rough. Objects that are massively out of scale (a business card the size of an iPad, gloves the size of dinner plates, etc), textures that are mis-aligned, objects that lack normal maps, or have improperly applied effects... These are not budget issues, or engine issues, or technical issues, they're just art issues.

These guys haven't worked on a 3D games since like... the Xbox 1 days, and I think they're used to doing things in a way that doesn't really take advantage of this engine.

Weeeelllll.... yeahhhhh... I think "below market value" is the key here. Those 3 guys are there because they actually work for TruGolf (at least some of them). Not sure what they're making for their work at BFG, or if they do both at the same time. Either way, hiring some ace graphics artist could be expensive. That guy would be asking for a lot more money, right? Money we can't afford. There are exceptions, but usually talent costs $$$.

I can't deny that there are issues with the graphics. And it's not just lack of blur and bloom on everything.
This just SUCKS.
This is weird.
This is also weird.
This is... funny, actually.

The difference is that I don't care all that much. I really did not notice the objects that were out of scale until you brought it up, Frogacuda. I'm still not bothered by it. I can accept that some objects are just representations of objects, and we can assume they're not actually meant to be so huge.

So my feeling in general is that yeah, the graphics are lackluster. But hey... whaddya want fer nuthin?

I think it scares me how superficial and competitive the entire market is. It's like everyone is using graphics as a vehicle to prove my product is better than yours and I'm sick of the food fight.

I don't really care either. The Tex games always had a bit of jank to the art, even going back to Martian Memorandum and Mean Streets. They never had polished art direction like LucasArts or Sierra games had. They were still great games, and so is Tesla Effect.

But people use the "budget" excuse over and over and it's not correct. This game did an ASTOUNDING amount with a limited budget, and I think they should really be praised for that. From a production standpoint it's a heroic achievement. Totally separate issue from the art, which is simply a little rough.

It should be mentioned that Funcom has received official government grants for video games for a couple of years now for Dreamfall Chapters, as well. Kickstarter was just... I dunno. A kickstart. They're rolling in money from the Norwegian Film Institute as well.

Comparatively speaking, of course.

-Fred

yes fred you are right, the original dreamfall was funded by a previous grant all those years ago

Oh, yes, that too. But also this new one. They've been receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars for Dreamfall Chapters as well. Over a period of years, actually.

-Fred

Fred Buer wrote:It should be mentioned that Funcom has received official government grants for video games for a couple of years now for Dreamfall Chapters, as well. Kickstarter was just... I dunno. A kickstart. They're rolling in money from the Norwegian Film Institute as well.

Comparatively speaking, of course.

-Fred

Yeah, like $200,000. Not a huge amount. But money is just salaries for team members and I think it's fair to say that Red Thread's art team can do a few things that BFG's can't in the same amount of time.

Again, I don't feel this diminishes what an achievement TE is, or the fact that it's the best adventure game in years. But if I was a reviewer, I'd certainly mention that the art is rough in places and it's perfectly fair to criticize the game for that.

Frogacuda wrote: Again, I don't feel this diminishes what an achievement TE is, or the fact that it's the best adventure game in years. But if I was a reviewer, I'd certainly mention that the art is rough in places and it's perfectly fair to criticize the game for that.

But! ...uh... Hmm. You know what? I'm going to have to agree with you.

It's true. Tesla Effect should've looked better. I can see beyond that because I'm in love, but really, there are some bits I wish had been better.

Like those. Bloody. Freakin' Sessen trees. Good friggen gravy, the more I think about them, the more they bug me.

... *sigh* But that's that.

On-Topic: Probably not. I got the first two non-FMV Tex Murphy games for free with my Kickstarter pledge but I am more likely to replay the FMV ones than the non-FMV ones due to the charm of the characters portrayed through the acting which would fall flat in 3D.

Tangent Topic:

Art Direction vs Modeling

I'm admittedly a bit clueless as to who does what but I don't necessarily think the entire 'art department' works on 3D modelling for the game engine. Reviews that took note of the quality of the 3D texture/mapping actually complimented the Art Direction. Or they stated the concept behind the environments were fascinating (which was likely down to whoever is the Concept Artist). What I think all the feedback comes back to is the design of the environments are creative and well done, just realised in a lacklustre way due to the lo-fi image quality. Like if I were to do an amazing piece of art for print but instead of 300 DPI I set it to 72 DPI, which would look awful.
Snippets from reviews:

-- Aside from the great art style, the game looks ancient.
-- The environments felt unique and interesting, but the details to objects felt like they hadn’t been touched since the 90′s.

Comparing the Visuals

I think that since they chose to push the FMV to the highest resolution possible but keep the game textures at a low resolution, its natural for players to take note of the graphics. Reviews aren't saying "I went into it expecting AAA+ title graphics and didn't get it" but "Coming from the starting FMV into the environments, gives a disappointing contrast to the visuals". Reviews aren't comparing the graphics to other mainstream games, they're comparing them to the graphics within this game. Bearing in mind the FMV included 3D modeled graphics for the environments behind the live actors.

Good examples from reviews:

-- In terms of presentation, Tesla Effect is a bit of a mixed bag. The game’s full motion video sequences look simply stunning. Presented in razor sharp 2k resolution, Tex and and the shimmering metropolis of 2040′s San Francisco are a sight to behold, straddling the line between vibrant, neon-saturated cyberpunk cityscapes and gritty film noir-inspired aesthetics, everything looks crisp and is a joy to take in. Unfortunately, this level of sharp visual clarity is jarringly contrasted by some decidedly past-gen visuals when you take control of Mr. Murphy replaced with largely barren swathes of concrete and dated, low-fi textures that are sometimes downright ugly.
-- It's a level of roughness that flies in the face of the especially good 2K FMV sequences and pre-rendered cinematics elsewhere in the game.

Supporting Lower End Computer Specifications

I think that trying to cater to the bottom line of video cards didn't work out since the 2K High Definition FMV video caused problems with various on-board graphics cards and older cards that are no longer supported with updated drivers. If the game really wanted to suit casual gamer computers, it would of had Standard Definition videos with a Youtube-supported codec and given the option to switch to 2K High Definition, as not all casual gamers may even have a HD monitor to take advantage of the high resolution. The same could of been done for the game graphics with a setting for Low Detail to High Detail for those who can handle it, and the ability to switch on/off stuff like anti-aliasing, lighting effects etc. for video cards that struggle.

Desire for Graphics - Mutually Exclusive from "Tex Fans"?

I haven't played the game yet and I'm sure I'm going to love it because I love the concept design behind Tex Murphy and his world as imagined by Aaron Conners and whoever is the creative mind behind doing concepts for areas to match his descriptive writing. But I also can't blame people for wanting a higher level of detail to truly do the design concept for the environments justice, it's not only "non-fans" who desire it as the BFG Backer forum has shown.

Cub and Rockefeller undoubtedly did a stunning job on the 3D graphics in the cutscenes as demonstrated from the high praise in the reviews. And undoubtedly a resolution boost for when you step into the shoes of Tex would blend things magnificently. Back in the 1990s it was the opposite. The FMV cutscenes were seen as low quality compared to TV/cinema (scanlines and such) but the game environments were great for their time (Tex series and Black Dahlia for example). It's understandable the team wanted to avoid those criticisms against FMV, which they've done admirably, but it's possible the other aspect lost focus in the process.

Game Engine Graphics Technicalities

I've seen many compliment the small team for doing a great job getting to grips with Unity, being new to the game engine, to build a different kind of game in the system, so people do recognise the effort and don't want to criticise too much. Still there's a number of fans on the BFG forums and elsewhere who seem to have experience with Unity and 3D modelling that have given technical feedback on how the game could be improved using different settings or Unity resources they know of. Stuff I have no clue about like "3D occlusion" etc.
http://www.bigfinishgames.com/texture-quality

They might be able to help with tweaks and boost BFG's numbers. We already had highly talented Tex fans doing work for the FMV visuals afterall Also you can see what fans have done with Skyrim as an example, these changes to the game graphics are available as optional downloadable texture packs after the game was released (click on a pic to see it fullsize):
http://imgur.com/a/2Aszu#0