It's time to stop.

[Andriushka]

I agree, but its strange that the same art style did not hit the popularity of Gears of war.

I read at this forum somewhere - this forum confirmed that the overall UT3 art concept was developed before the first WoG announcement/presentation. In fact, many people can easily say that this style is directly related to Unreal/UT and especially Unreal Championship II: The Liandri Conflict armor design. By colors, textures, general style, there are some similarity with GoW only with proportions/datails, everything else is very different, even the animation and camera position is not at all similar. The atmosphere of the both games is also certainly different.

I also agree that console and shooter games are not compatible. But even with consoles you can find a positive impact - consoles force developers to put in the game a maximum of detail-interactions with less pressure on the buttons, which affects the interface and overall structure of the gameplay. Take the most necessary and put it in sight, without clogging the superfluous screen and control. But this ofcourse does not justify the cons that consoles bring.

[Crotale]

The first Gears game was heavily desaturated, which is where much of UT3’s overall aesthetic seemed to be derived. It was a design choice, an artistic style if you will. Gears 2 was much more colorful. Too bad the damage of UT3 was already done and the game never really had a fighting chance, even after Epic spent spent serious resources to “update” the game to version 2.

[Mitch Mitchell]

Unreal Tournament 2003 was when we first started to really pay attention to visual clutter issues. We wanted super detailed environments, but we weren’t careful about what we wished for... in no time we realized the difficulty in perceiving enemies or other important gameplay elements against intricate backgrounds. With Gears we started finding a balance, but it's almost entirely up to the judgement and restraint of the level designer to facilitate this. It's very easy to go overboard on mesh details in your world; you have to resist that urge. It's getting to the point where you can place as much meshwork as you want in a map for free; but what you're not suffering from on performance, you're paying for in playability. Here are some general tips.

-Use clearly different textures to contrast floor surfaces and walls, so a player can see a "floor plan" as they look around. Ideally cover should be textured to contrast as well.

-Use depth fog to help clarify the level's depth complexity (even an unlit level can be navigated with fog alone).

-Normal mapped simple flat surfaces still look fantastic. It's OK for a wall to just be a wall sometimes. Every surface doesn't have to be slathered in pipes, rubble, or random visual noise.

-Use lighting to guide players through your map. When you have an area with a specific exit like a door or arch, move to the far side of the room, squint at the screen and ask yourself if you can tell where the exit is. If the screen is a grey sea of muddy noise, use a contrasting light source in the exit to catch the player's eye. Contrary to that, if something catches your eye that isn't an exit or important feature, tone it back so as not to misdirect the player.

-When actively editing your map, place dummy character models around the map to use as a scale reference as well as a guide to see how the characters "pop" in your areas, and see how the light is affecting them. Place character-only lights in areas where enemies could use more clarity.

-Be careful with overly stylized post-processing settings. While they do a fantastic job of tying your scene together and uniting it visually, they can create a real challenge for the player as they try to distinguish friend from foe.

-Again, avoid placing any ancillary meshwork that might be confused as "fuzzy cover".

citation

[Crotale]

Even in earlier games, being UT2003 and UT2004, there were design implementations that provided rather unbalanced gameplay between two or more players. More seasoned veterans online tended to turn off distance fog and foliage. I can't tell you how many times I got nailed from an opponent hidden by foliage for me, but he had no occlusion to my position, all because he turned off foliage and I had left it on by default.

One of the things I wanted to see implemented into any new version of UT is that serverside setting for such things as foliage, fog and other environmental factors would override the client.

[Andriushka]

One of the things I wanted to see implemented into any new version of UT is that serverside setting for such things as foliage, fog and other environmental factors would override the client.

I agree, such things should be the default, people can not talk about any "competition" if the players see a very different scene in game. Somebody in Dark walker/Goliath on Avalanche map may see only 1/3 of all path with all epic looking settings, while a player with disabled settings see 100% of scene and can hit vehicle. Maybe player can change only level of quality of such effects, but do not clean the effects themselves. Ofcourse all that works good with console version, it would be nice to have a similar for the PC, if possible. Maybe UE3+++ and max settings by default for modern PC is a good combination, everyone sees almost the same scene, the number of settings in the game is also decreases.

About graphics, I dont like GoW colors, but it seems to me that UT3 colors are pretty good, 2.1 map pack colors even better/perfect with current UT3 2.1 design. Do not put cell shading (?), do not need to increase the brightness, lightness, just rework this assets under high-end 2.1 "color" with previous design. And the second big challenge is to expand the world (not necessarily the size of the maps), increase the possibilities in the game. Art designer have UT3 graphics as example - he can work with it.

[Carbon]

One of the things I wanted to see implemented into any new version of UT is that serverside setting for such things as foliage, fog and other environmental factors would override the client.

Or you could just let people play their game looking how they want it to look.

[Crotale]

Of course they play it how they want but I feel the default should go with serverside settings. If a client wants to override and see all the "cool" stuff then they can do so, that is, if they don't care that others on the server have a gameplay advantage in some maps.

[N_Paganini]

I read through some of this. Marketing is the answer to why it happens. The company has to pursue whatever project gives a salary. If you were part of a company and were given the choice between some new game that was making money and keeping your wife around, or giving into a small community of genuine people and not being able to pay rent, you might find it hard. Musicians go through the same thing. People who want to make a living have to obey the demands of the market. That's the world, a big ****. If you pursue what you love and is genuine, the audience is small, which means less cash, and a harder time getting the needs met in life.

[Sir_Brizz]

Why do we still have people trying to blame the community here? Let's be honest, Epic didn't really make changes the community asked for, so how can it be the community's fault that the game didn't turn out amazing? I won't even say if that was the right or wrong move by Epic, it's just how things happened.

[Crotale]

Brizz, not that I am squabbling over terminology, but the current UT is not even a game. It is a prototype that never matured into any form of a deliverable product. Even if the community could not find consensus on game play mechanics, Epic could have made a choice to press on with development. They made a different choice and left the rest of us with the reality that the Unreal Tournament franchise is done.

[Bobba_Novis]

One of the things I wanted to see implemented into any new version of UT is that serverside setting for such things as foliage, fog and other environmental factors would override the client.

IMO, this is much more complicated than it sounds and may ruin the experience for many players. Let me go back to the UT3 release.

There were tons of complaints when UT3 first came out. The one that hit hard on many players from UT1 and UT2, was that the hardware requirements to play the game was high. One could play UT1 and UT2 on almost anything, including a P1 or PII with crappy onboard graphics. UT3 required a duel core cpu and decent video card.

UT3 min requirements were much higher than the prior UT releases. But the min requirements did not deliver playable FPS for most players, I am not talking about playing the game at 20-30 fps of which was touted as playable by EPIC.

There were many folks who decided they would not play UT3 due to the hardware requirements. They did not want to buy a new PC and video card in order to play UT3.The UT3 video requirements were too high at launch to be like UT1 or UT2 in popularity. Folks are not going to play the game if they only het 20-30 fps in game. That said, what could be one result of having a serverside setting to control the client side viseo settings? Well, one result may be an empty server.

Most of the video settings available in the final version of UT3 were not there when the game first came out. So, if you did not have state of the art PC and graphics, your performance sucked. The solution was to allow adjusting, lowering, video settings to improve performance.

EPIC made lots of mistakes with UT3. A big one, was they missed what the e-sports aspect of UT3 could have been, while at the same time reducing the size of player base, all due to hardware requirements that were just too high at the time.

In order to be successful, a game has to at least bring back the "base" as well as appeal to new players. EPIC was too focused on MAX graphics, instead of a game that was playable on lower end hardware. If folks can't play the game with the hardware they have, why would they spend a ton of money on a better setup to play it better?

So, just how do you overide the client settings without ruining the experience for those with lower end hardware?

Perhaps, a new thread concerning how to bring the player base back to UT is in order? One can never bring everyone back, but, in some aspects, that may be a good thing. You need to bring back the competitive base as well as bring in new players. Just how to accomplish such a thing should a primary focus of development. Not making the game noob friendly in the pre-alpha stage of development. Just my 2 cents opinion

[Sir_Brizz]

Crotale, I get it but it's a distinction without purpose anyway. I just don't really see any value for blaming the community that the project didn't continue. It wasn't financially worth it for Epic for a lot of reasons, and the community wasn't trusted enough to actually help for a variety of reasons. Ultimately that just means that the game is dead, not a great conclusion for any of us.

[Carbon]

As I said before, the entirety of the blame can't fall on the community, but some of it should and to say otherwise is just denial. Honestly, less community involvement would have been more productive and I really wish Epic had done as Id is doing with Quake right now: listening, but doing what they feel is best in the end.

Yes, I bring up that game again because I have been spending some time lately with that community and I see almost exactly the same phenomenon occurring there; really, it's odd how these old legacy franchises have such similar fans who echo very similar complaints. The difference is as I said before, Id simply ignore most of the old-school bitterness (and that's definitely where it comes from mainly) and focus on what they think is best. Those guys want Q3 remade, while here the cries for UT99 are the same.

Make no mistake: it's really a harsh environment for devs to work in if they try to care about pleasing everyone and again, I wish Epic had paid less attention to the community and just gone ahead with their own ideas. At least that way, it might have gotten done (though the whole inception of this project would have needed to be revisited and more commitment shown toward completion) and the fans could have modded the heck out of it to suit their tastes.

A severe lack of empathy around this place...always was. A bunch of die-hard "I know how UT should be more than anyone" types really stalled progression on many occasions and made things hard to move at any consistent pace. They should have ignored us more from the start, made the project more in-house from the outset and as such, gotten it done faster. To see where QC is right now is a bit heartbreaking: UT could have been in there first and it could have been truly amazing.

[Crotale]

Bobby_Novis, these effects could be turned off serverside, which is my point. I have no issue with letting players chose for themselves, but there are new players who are not yet aware that these cool looking elements can hamper gameplay if others have them turned off.

Brizz, agreed. I just wanted to highlight the distinction because I think it is highly telling that Epic never moved towards an alpha version.

Carbon, in my mind Epic is the one that set down the rules, that the community would be offered up a chance to get in on the game's development as an augmentation and possibly at a later time, provide sustenance for the game. Epic is the one who controls whether the game's development is allowed to proceed or die on the vine...they opted for the latter. The community has had no say because they have no intellectual ownership in the franchise. I don't think it is mean-spirited to acknowledge this.

[Carbon]

Carbon, in my mind Epic is the one that set down the rules, that the community would be offered up a chance to get in on the game's development as an augmentation and possibly at a later time, provide sustenance for the game. Epic is the one who controls whether the game's development is allowed to proceed or die on the vine...they opted for the latter. The community has had no say because they have no intellectual ownership in the franchise. I don't think it is mean-spirited to acknowledge this.

I agree, but none of what you wrote has anything to do with the content of my post. To be clear, from the start it was to be co-developed and to claim that this wasn't true is again an attempt to abdicate our responsibility. Epic did ultimately hold the keys, but so what? How does that have any bearing on the community's behavior? As far as we know, the game is on hold and yes, Epic did walk away first but the question being discussed is why.

I say that the project was ill-conceived from the start; Epic took a risk and it didn't work out. Part of why is that other projects took priority, part of it was that I believe the small team were given a short leash and budget on which to operate (Epic were prepared to write the whole thing off from the start essentially) and finally, development got bogged down at every turn and I say that the community had a big part in that.

I am not saying the situation isn't bad and that Epic are free from responsibility: they will at some point have to come back and clean this whole thing up somehow. I am simply saying that this community didn't make the process rewarding or easy for Epic, we slowed it to a crawl so many times over the smallest things that over time it became increasingly clear that this just wasn't going to get done and now here we are. And we have the nerve to claim innocence for the current situation? Absolutely ridiculous.

@Brizz: your dedication to past games is very clear and in many ways unsurpassed, but the irony in your trying to avoid taking some responsibility for all of this is just a further sign of the problem with this community.