[Lepanto]

Janos:

Sorry if my question wasn't phrased properly. Of course, we all want the community and FSO's graphics to keep getting better. My only real question, to be specific, is how high of a graphical standard you want to see in individual campaigns that you want to play, vis-a-vis effort invested into other areas of the campaign.

Droid:

To clarify, if a one-man team previewed or released a new campaign of theirs today, what is the minimum standard of graphics that you would judge to be acceptable for their project?

[Flipside]

As far as I'm aware, the minimum standard of Graphics would be Vanilla FS2, because that's where we started, as it were, but then, if the game worked at a lower level then that's good too. Take, for example, if the Starfox mod had chosen to emulate the original Nintendo graphics and just used coloured polygons. It would have changed the visual experience, but not ruined it because those graphics would, theoretically, have worked in that situation (To clarify, I'm not saying they should have done that, the mod looks awesome, but it would have been an option in that specific case).

To be honest, taking any part of a Campaign in isolation and analyzing it is difficult, because a campaign is, at the very least, the sum of its parts.

[Droid803]

As far as I'm aware, the minimum standard of Graphics would be Vanilla FS2, because that's where we started.

That's not where I started.
I can very confidently say that I wouldn't be playing this game/be part of this community if the graphics were vanilla FS2-level were the minimum standard, or were at the time that I found out about it. Wouldn't have given it a second thought.

It's been, how many years? Having 15-year old graphics being "acceptable" is setting an awfully low bar.

To clarify, if a one-man team previewed or released a new campaign of theirs today, what is the minimum standard of graphics that you would judge to be acceptable for their project?

Depends. For example, if it uses MediaVPs assets, their custom assets better be similar/match up in quality to at least the older MediaVPs models/textures.
If they're doing something original/different they could probably get away with a bit less as long as it's done coherently.

[Lepanto]

Let's just agree to disagree, I suppose.

For the record, though, one-man newb projects will probably have a hard time either: A: recruiting good modellers; or B: learning modelling/texturing AND building quality HTL fleetpacks. Building high-quality HTL assets is hard and takes a while (for those of us who are not Oddgrim), and it's hard to learn the required skills (as I can testify from personal experience). The higher the community's graphical bar is for campaigns, especially for newbs' first projects, the harder it is for newbs to get into FS modding, and the less new blood we'll have making campaigns. Therefore, I think the community should cut them some slack, compared to the megaprojects with good modellers.

[Flipside]

Well, I suppose the position I take is that people like Blaize Russel wrote campaigns using Vanilla FS2 assets that are still excellent, playing with the improved graphics may make the experience more aesthetically pleasing, but it doesn't change the fact that the campaign made the mod, not the graphics.

The thing is, this is the whole reason we HAVE the Media VP's which replace Vanilla assets, we all love the shiny, but if people are relying on the shiny to carry the campaign then, to put it simply, they are doing it wrong. So the Media VP's are optional, depending on the ability of the computer you can tailor them to suit you.

I still play games with worse graphics than Vanilla FS2, and they are still good games.

e: Anyone else find it strange how the Vanilla FS2 graphics have changed from 'The best graphics I've ever seen' to 'I wouldn't play a campaign with graphics that bad!'...

[Droid803]

They've never been "the best graphics I've ever seen' to me, since by the time I first heard of FS2 it was 2008.

For the record, though, one-man newb projects will probably have a hard time either: A: recruiting good modellers; or B: learning modelling/texturing AND building quality HTL fleetpacks. Building high-quality HTL assets is hard and takes a while (for those of us who are not Oddgrim), and it's hard to learn the required skills (as I can testify from personal experience). The higher the community's graphical bar is for campaigns, especially for newbs' first projects, the harder it is for newbs to get into FS modding, and the less new blood we'll have making campaigns. Therefore, I think the community should cut them some slack, compared to the megaprojects with good modellers.

Inherent is this is a giant misconception. Why does your "newb project" need unique custom assets?
There are plenty of freely-released high quality assets, in addition to the MediaVPs, which all have high graphical quality, and if they're incapable of including these, well, their project is pretty much doomed to begin with.

You do not need to build high quality assets to have high graphical quality in your campaign.

If you're going to insist on having/building unique assets, well, then I damn well expect you to do it well, because that's something of a "luxury", not a requirement.

[Janos]

Janos:

Sorry if my question wasn't phrased properly. Of course, we all want the community and FSO's graphics to keep getting better. My only real question, to be specific, is how high of a graphical standard you want to see in individual campaigns that you want to play, vis-a-vis effort invested into other areas of the campaign.

If such a trade-off exists - like in the case of huge fleetpacks, which usually die in constructive destruction - then yes, the actual assembling and releasing the product should be a priority, because only the released assets are important to the public. Some fleetpacks have just said "**** it" and dumped all their assets into public use.

However: do such trade-offs exist? Do teams play some zero-sum game where 10 people are FREDding and 1 people is HTLing, and the completion date is completely linearly dependent on the manpower allocated to whatever task requires more effort? Does a completely novel campaign even require a huge load of unique assets? If it does, is it a one-man project where the zero-sum labour allocation actually works?

I think you mean "if the team gets completely bogged down and is constantly lagging behind current dev cycle because they are oddly focused on one single aspect of the game, leading to an ever-increasing gap since voluntary specialist manpower only gets so far - in that case, should the team prefer release the "unfinished" product, or should they keep truckin' on"? In that case I would say yes, the release of the product is paramount.

But all these scenarios rely on quite a few ifs to make them viable. Generally the number of freely available assets and the labour specialization minimize the chances of such trade-offs occurring, and make the particular question (finished gameplay vs. unique supergraphics) very specific and not always very relevant.

[+ Rennie Ash +]

I think the graphics are quite ok at the moment but there are some things that can effect my immersion - namely ships suddenly appearing in nebulae then realising they are meant to be obscured by fog, and the hard edge disappearing of ships in subspace warp. Also sometimes explosions look weird esp at juggernaught size levels where they really just look like "blown up" explosion ani's (hehe)

That said I will play campaigns with crappy graphics if the story is good, or if the graphics are so bad they are funny ;p

[AC_Black]

~S~

It is not just about the fights, excitement of the battle and getting it right the first time, (meaning I am learning lol)   BUT it is the views of what could be in the voids of space that I find most appealing.     Here in this game, we can sit in our ship and dream, the views are amazing sometimes I just let all of the days BS drift away.   This is the best time of all.....     BUT the other side of the coin is bring them on for I can just hit restart ehhehe

When you can see what the game has to offer   It is all worth the effort of getting it right.

[Wobble73]

This is how important graphics are to me, I played Diaspora on a laptop with Intelgrated grapics chip, I had to dial the settings all the way down for some missions, and even then they still lagged, but I persevered to get to the end..... for the story.

I now have a shiny new laptop with and AMD/ATI graphics chip and I am playing through it again and WOW! the graphics really are stunning! But I played it first with the setting turned now on my old laptop FOR THE STORY!

[Mobius]

Considering that I spent the last few months playing old games of the PSX era, I would say that as long as the graphics are decent, I'm fine with them. I don't pretend any super uber effects.

[Lorric]

I think the poll could have done with at least a couple more options, sandwiched between the top 3 options. I chose "Somewhat important; I like seeing kewl new graphics in my campaigns, but there are other things that are more important to me in campaigns." but I would have been more comfortable with an option between that and the one below it.

Gameplay and replayability completely trump graphics and everything else for me, and story also trumps graphics. Good graphics can be a sign that the overall quality is also good, and I would guess that would hold true more for FSO, since nobody's getting paid, than for games outside of FSO, where graphics are the easiest thing to show off when you're working with a 20 second television commercial, and trying to inspire people into a purchase. Graphics are the first thing you see and evaluate before you're able to evaluate anything else. I've seen far too many games where graphics are good, but the rest pales in comparison.

So in general, I carry my view on graphics from outside of FSO into FSO. Great graphics can really improve a gaming experience for me, but not as much as great gameplay, great replayability or a great story can.

[arjuna 1]

Graphics are important in a game like Freespace as it helps the player to immerse with the virtual reality.  But the sound and story are also very important.

[General Battuta]

We were all pretty immersed in '99. I'm not convinced that graphicking more deferred tesselations into Phong specularity is actually doing much for our subjective experience of games.

[Govenator]

Graphics are important but gameplay/story are the most important. 

The whole reason I got started on Freespace 13 years after it came out is I am low on $$$ and figured I could play some older games with older graphics but had amazing stories/gameplay.  Then when I found out about the SCP I was very happy and it got even better when I realized that the graphics have been updated and improved.  That being said I was most excited that there was much more to the Freespace world that I had never known about(like all these new wonderful campaigns).

That being said there are so many new games out there with better graphics, but I'd never play them due to gameplay/story cannot match what freespace offers.

To conclude story and gameplay will make or break a game.  Graphics can only take a game higher (from good to great).

[Swifty]

We were all pretty immersed in '99. I'm not convinced that graphicking more deferred tesselations into Phong specularity is actually doing much for our subjective experience of games.

Yeah, I just work on that stuff because it pads my resume and portfolio. (I'm serious)

[Kie99]

Not arsed, my favourite campaigns use very few graphical upgrades.  Having amazing graphics, it's great for screenshots and it looks cool to begin with, but it doesn't really last, equally ****ty graphics are a bit annoying, but you get used to them.

[Spoon]

Yeah, I just work on that stuff because it pads my resume and portfolio. (I'm serious)

Would work on multilock pad your resume?