FASA doesn't want unified lighting. Characters need to fit in & stand out

[Brimstone]

Really intresting blog entry by Shadowruns graphics lead. The article is dead on about a topic that is very important in my opinion. The ability to identify other character models while playing an online game. The reason why Counter-Strike became so popular imho in part stems from the map Dust and how easy it is recognize other player models. The color of the texture maps and how the level is lit really makes playing Counter-Strike on Dust more fun. This aspect is normaly overlooked.

When playing online, I don't really notice texture detail that much, but concentrate on identifying enemy targets. A game should be fun to play, not a struggle to figure who the enemy is. In part this is why I really despise darkly lit maps. It's is so pointless and people just go out of their way to crank up the gama or display brightness so they can see into the dark spots on a map. It's no coincidence that the most popular maps in Counter-Strike are all brightly lit.

Anyway the blog post brings up some intresting things like how they use special lighting on the character models to help make them stand out.

Another huge component of how characters look is lighting. I happen to think that the lighting in “Shadowrun†is top notch – level lighting has a complexity to it that you don’t see often in computer games. Many times unified lighting, where all items in a game engine are lit the same way, is considered a universally desired engine feature. In “Shadowrun†we don’t want unified lighting. We want the lighting on the characters to make them fit in, but also stand out.


Up close these lighting effects make the characters look great. The detail really shines through. However, in the distance they aren’t as effective; Once again when you only have ten pixels you don’t have details. But this also plays to our advantage. If we go over the top with our character lighting effects up close we can easily destroy the character look, flatten it and wash it out. But in the distance detail isn’t a concern, and we can go as over the top as we want. So the last piece is lighting. As characters move into the distance we smoothly adjust the lighting rig to highlight the characters more and more. This really helps give them the extra contrast we are looking for to pop them off the screen.

http://blogs.ign.com/FASA_Studio/2007/02/01/45437/

According to Dean Takahashi's blog, Shadowrun is over 100 people strong and consists of both the Mechwarrior and Crimson Skies development teams working together. I don't think Counter-Strike ever looked mind blowing from screenshots, but when you played it, the look and feel was just right. Hopefully this will occur in Shadowrun as well.

 

[aaaaa00]

Or you go with what GRAW does and just paint red diamonds over all enemies.

 

[archie4oz]

Meh, I'm still annoyed that they turned a great RPG into a goddamn shooter... That's twice now that Microsoft has done this...

 

[superNoid]

Meh, I'm still annoyed that they turned a great RPG into a goddamn shooter... That's twice now that Microsoft has done this...

This arguement was used up, old trash by mid summer.

Havn't you read every hands on review that states this game is amazingly fun ? I played Shadowrun for an hour back at E3 and it was one of the most fun games at the expo. Let me ask you.. what does your petty bitchin going to do to change things ?

 

[AlNom]

Translation: We don't know how to do unified lighting (well)!

j/k He does raise an interesting point, and I do agree with him. It's not exactly a game like UT3 where you can just have these lights all over the characters' bodies. He wants the modelling to make sense from a "story" point of view. That said... It sounds like they're just using "old" lighting techniques, so the framerate should benefit (even if the heads take up 1/3rd of the poly-budget ).

I find it interesting they haven't really shown the trolls. They've only had the humans and elves (where are teh womenz!?) in the screenshots.

This arguement was used up, old trash by mid summer.

Havn't you read every hands on review that states this game is amazingly fun ? I played Shadowrun for an hour back at E3 and it was one of the most fun games at the expo. Let me ask you.. what does your petty bitchin going to do to change things ?

Venting anger!


As much as I do want to complain, you're right. The time for it is past. Time to move on if it's still bugging you (any of you!).

 

[Acert93]

Translation: We don't know how to do unified lighting (well)!

j/k

Why are you joking? Did you see the screenshots on the blog They are bragging up over 100 people working on the title and the graphics engine and world detail is just... wow. And I mean that in the Iwata, "When you see Wii graphics you will say WOW" sort of way, not the, "I just played Gears of War for the first time WOW" way. I mean, seriously, a game called Shadowrun could use, well, you know... some killer shadows?

I know making games is very difficult, and a next gen game even more so. And while graphics don't make a game good, they do help and can be a hurdle to a game reaching its goals (both in user impact as well as sales). I guess I expect more from a 1st party game, especially in a genre that has proven that graphics can be done with intricate gameplay and actually improve the experience.

 

[AlNom]

Why are you joking? Did you see the screenshots on the blog They are bragging up over 100 people working on the title and the graphics engine and world detail is just... wow. And I mean that in the Iwata, "When you see Wii graphics you will say WOW" sort of way, not the, "I just played Gears of War for the first time WOW" way. I mean, seriously, a game called Shadowrun could use, well, you know... some killer shadows?

I know making games is very difficult, and a next gen game even more so. And while graphics don't make a game good, they do help and can be a hurdle to a game reaching its goals (both in user impact as well as sales). I guess I expect more from a 1st party game, especially in a genre that has proven that graphics can be done with intricate gameplay and actually improve the experience.

Uh oh.... Old.... Shadowrun... 2006 ...opinions... resurfacing.

This whole project is a joke! MS has been handling FASA in a rather poor way. An RPG would have been too big budget and it seems they didn't want to risk it. After all, they have Lionhead for Fable. I guess they're still not learning after what happened with MechAssault or even worse, the sequel. It apparently doesn't matter that it's first party and should be a glimmering light amongst development houses. Instead they're using the FASA IPs to fill-in their games line-up so they'll have something in between Halo games. And that's the feeling I get everytime I see the screenshots. It's cartoony, and hence has this "mass-market, low-budget, acceptance" appeal. It's not stylized according to the name; think Gears of War and look at the art style and how well the name goes with it.

And yes! You get it! Shadowrun is about running around doing illegal jobs in the shadows (at the most basic and fundamental of linguistics...). Nevermind the gametype, it doesn't make any sense for the Lineage group to make runs against RNA when there's still light out. This is a game where people would applaud the use of the Doom 3 engine.

[/ rant thanks to Acert93]

 

[TheChefO]

I mean, seriously, a game called Shadowrun could use, well, you know... some killer shadows?

Or run away from the shadows.

100 people working on this game ....seriously? ....

 

[scooby_dooby]

Instead they're using the FASA IPs to fill-in their games line-up so they'll have something in between Halo games. And that's the feeling I get everytime I see the screenshots. It's cartoony, and hence has this "mass-market, low-budget, acceptance" appeal. It's not stylized according to the name; think Gears of War and look at the art style and how well the name goes with it.

I don't really think that's the case at all, Shadowrun is not high profile enough to fill in any large gaps in the 360's lineup, and they already have multiple franchises filling this role.

What they needed was an exclusive title to highlight Windows Vista and the Live Anywhere initiative, it had to appeal to both console and PC gamers, allow them to play eachother, and be fairly quick and dirty, i.e. had to be ready for both console and PC early 2007 to coincide with Vista launch.

It's a large waste of a great franchise, we can only hope that MS is smart enough to develop an RPG out of this franchise as well, which should have been started a long time ago. In MS's defence, they have a load of RPG's coming down the pipe's, so it's hard to complain imo.

 

[blakjedi]

Shadowrun is a prime IP and in many ways SHOULD have been a AAA title for MS in terms production values, technology, marketing, etc.

Who knows if people will or wont buy into bioshock, mass effect etc. But there is a built in level of interest that occurs worldwide related to the shadowrun ip that exceeds that of anything exceed madden, zelda and mario...

hopefully it wont go to waste. ms has surprised us before...

 

[assen]

Who knows if people will or wont buy into bioshock, mass effect etc. But there is a built in level of interest that occurs worldwide related to the shadowrun ip that exceeds that of anything exceed madden, zelda and mario...

hopefully it wont go to waste. ms has surprised us before...

I don't think it's serious to compare madden (tens of millions of footbal fans), zelda and mario (tens of millions of Nintendo customers since the days of NES and SNES) to the favorite passtime of a maybe several hundred thousand pen-and-paper RPG geeks... a bunch of illustrated books backstory books does not make a "prime IP".

 

[Brimstone]

I know making games is very difficult, and a next gen game even more so. And while graphics don't make a game good, they do help and can be a hurdle to a game reaching its goals (both in user impact as well as sales). I guess I expect more from a 1st party game, especially in a genre that has proven that graphics can be done with intricate gameplay and actually improve the experience.

Shadowrun is going to have more action going on than most games. Gears of War in paticular is only 4 v 4 online. Shadowrun is double that, and once play begins it doubles that again by allowing for user summoned creatures and objects to appear on the map.

Then there is the physics going on. You can cast "gust" to blow back a grenade, or knockdown a sniper from a perch.

As a result of players summoning creatures onto the map, that creates a layer of ambient warfare similar to what the Warhawk developers were proudly talking about.



IMHO, FASA is creating what I'll call the protean FPS. Just as Grand Theft Auto defined the expectations of a sandbox style game, Shadowrun is going to help define the future of protean FPS's. When you consider how mature the FPS genre is, and the countless hordes of FPS games released year after year, I think this is a remarkable achievment. And they're doing it by evolving the mechanics of Counter-Strike, which is one of the most popular online shooters ever.


Shadowrun, the protean online shooter, is probably going to make a lasting impression on game design.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

I have zero faith in this title and I'm in the camp that hated the change from RPG to shooter.

 

[blakjedi]

I don't think it's serious to compare madden (tens of millions of footbal fans), zelda and mario (tens of millions of Nintendo customers since the days of NES and SNES) to the favorite passtime of a maybe several hundred thousand pen-and-paper RPG geeks... a bunch of illustrated books backstory books does not make a "prime IP".

i think there are very many more than several hundred thousand shadowrun fans... annually there are several million madden fans (like 3 million at most)... dont overstate your point

 

[AlNom]

Not to degenerate the thread further..(sorry)... but there's that Shadowrun-Online group that was trying to put an MMO RPG together even before the announcement of this. Oddly enough, they appear to be continuing work (albeit slowly). I'd have thought MS would just shut them down.

 

[assen]

i think there are very many more than several hundred thousand shadowrun fans... annually there are several million madden fans (like 3 million at most)... dont overstate your point

I can't really judge the number of pen-and-paper RPG players, but there should be much, much more than 3 million people in the USA with at least a passing interest in football... all of them are potential Madden buyers. Just yesterday I read an article about how the entire country stops dead during the Super Bowl - even ambulances and doctors in intensive care units have much less work.

 

[AlNom]

It only matters if it sells well enough to warrant the RPG sequel (as one of the devs mentioned was the plan in a podcast)! The gameplay... well, give me a demo first. Despite seeing gameplay footage online and at CES, it still looks like an enhanced CS mod.

 

[Brimstone]

It only matters if it sells well enough to warrant the RPG sequel (as one of the devs mentioned was the plan in a podcast)! The gameplay... well, give me a demo first. Despite seeing gameplay footage online and at CES, it still looks like an enhanced CS mod.

Here are some photos from some session at FASA studios that were taken last year posted on a blog. The graphics are going to end up looking fine. I'm guessing the graphic engine design is probably closer to Valves Source engine in philosophy: letting the artists have a lot of control of the way the scene is lit.

As far as gameplay goes, there a lot improvements over Counter-Strike.


For instance the sniper rifle can only be fired when zoomed. If you have the sniper rifle in your hands and no zoom on, only a melee strike occurs when you attack. You can't try for some random lucky shot once some closes in on you. You either switch to another weapon or go for melee strikes.

The money/scoring system blows Counter-Strikes out of the water. You get cash reward for all the damage you deal, not from just dealing a death blow. Then you also get rewarded for different things like when you cast 'Tree of Life' and every point of damage it heals earns you money.


Also Counter-Strike doesn't have a true melee system like Shadowrun. When you take out the Katana, your view shifts to 3rd person and the enemies end up with either a "?" or "!" above their heads to tell you if they are aware of you are not. Sort of like what goes on in Metal Gear Solid. If you katana strike a person with a "!" above their head, they will immediatley begin to bleed out. So their health begins to drop rapidly and the only thing that can stop them from dying is a tree of life. At least thats they way I understand it.

 

[AlNom]

Here are some photos from some session at FASA studios that were taken last year posted on a blog. The graphics are going to end up looking fine. I'm guessing the graphic engine design is probably closer to Valves Source engine in philosophy: letting the artists have a lot of control of the way the scene is lit.

Well, nevermind the graphics quality. I and a couple others are referring to the point of the maps taking place during the day and not during the night as the name Shadowrun would normally imply.

As far as gameplay goes, there a lot improvements over Counter-Strike.
...

Thanks for the explanation.

 

[NovemberMike]

As far as I know, "Shadow" refers to Shadow creatures like trolls, elves and dwarves, not the absence of light.