PC Zone: 10 Screenshots, 7 Videos - Page 2

July 11, 2001, 17:45

Why do you hate the roads Yin?

yin26 · July 11, 2001, 17:50

Well, actually, we all seem to agree that the mountain/road combo could use some work. But in general, doesn't it look like that basic, snake-like look we already saw in Civ 2? It looks like somebody just took a brown marker and went nuts. Also, do most roads twist and turn so much like that? It just looks messy. I've seen some of your artwork, Contra, and I think you could re-do those roads to look much better.

Seeker · July 11, 2001, 19:55

Anyone else having problems with this 'streaming' video using Windows Media Player?!

Jeje2 · July 11, 2001, 22:53

I do agree that rivers and mountains needs more work, it just looks silly right now.

Yin: Have you seen real countryroads?
At least here in Finland a countryroad is just one big curve to the right and to the left, but never straight ahead. So what I see isn't so bad.

I would like to see the countryside with railroads in it.

Oh, take a look at the tank attack avi-file. When the tank moves something (3 vrtical bares) remains still at wheelheight. Lokks somewhat funny to me. Is it correct?

TechWins · July 11, 2001, 23:03

Quote:

Anyone else having problems with this 'streaming' video using Windows Media Player?!

Yeah, I am too. I asked this "What player do you have to have to play the videos?" but nobody answered my question.

yin26 · July 11, 2001, 23:12

Quote:

Yin: Have you seen real countryroads?

Not since my Idaho cow-tipping days...but I see your point. I guess there is "straight" unnaturalness and "curvy" unnaturalness. I'm not really sure how you'd made the roads look more natural...maybe they should be set into the ground a tiny bit...evolve natural road side features through the ages (start with tiny rocks randomly on the side, moving up to road-signs, etc.). Then, perhaps, it will look too cluttered?

I don't know. I suppose there's no silver bullet to making roads in this kind of game look nice, but surely more could be done than what we've got here. Perhaps the country road / urban road difference is one place to start?

Henrik · July 11, 2001, 23:20

Quote:

Anyone else having problems with this 'streaming' video using Windows Media Player?!

It works fine whit Quicktime for me.

Jeje2 · July 11, 2001, 23:30

Yin: Yes, I do agree. More could be done...

But, IMHO worest in those pictures are the colors of citynames.
Blue is unreadable, please make them all in black and separate the nations some other way..

Oh, and the article is skeptic about an october releasedate for Civ3, that has to be good news... (Please oh please let it be Q1 or Q2/02, with good betatesting before)

TechWins · July 11, 2001, 23:43

Quote:

But, IMHO worest in those pictures are the colors of citynames. Blue is unreadable, please make them all in black and separate the nations some other way..

Maybe by changing the pop. size number of the city to the color of the civ. Then keeping the name of the city in black.

I wish they would have made the energy bar on the side of a unit bigger.

Quote:

Perhaps the country road / urban road difference is one place to start?

That would be nice. The urban road would be all the roads in a city radius and the country side roads would be all the non city radius roads. The color for urban roads could be black and for the country roads it could be brown.

Ralf · July 12, 2001, 00:46

Quote:

Originally posted by yin26
Well, actually, we all seem to agree that the mountain/road combo could use some work.

Both the mountain/road- and mountain/River combo looks horrible. Why must roads go directly over the peaks? Its better if they meander near the mountain-bases, instead.

Quote:

It looks like somebody just took a brown marker and went nuts. [...] It just looks messy.

Polypheus had some viewpoints about it in his thread called Infinite Road & Railroad Sprawl. The road/railroad-sprawl phenomenon lays in the fact that building roads and railroads on every improved tile is ONLY beneficial. It shoudnt be. It should be a mixed blessing:

No roads through irrigated tiles means that the max increased food-output can be maintained. Building roads through irrigated tiles means only half food-increase, but you get instead the increased trade-benefit.

Railroads should now ONLY boost shield-output from mined hills & special resource-tiles.
No benefits on other tile-types; neither trade, food or shield ones. The increased movement-benefit is worthwhile enough in order to encourage the player to RR-connect all his cities, plus perhaps adding some strategical shortcuts & RR-knots as well, for more effective war mobilisations and more secure domestic resource-trade. Once ALL of your cities have been RR-connected you perhaps get some reward or trade-bonus as well.

Ralf · July 12, 2001, 01:38

Quote:

Originally posted by Eli
I hate those mountains...

Perhaps downsized CTP-2 style mountains would look better afterall. Compare with this CTP-2 SCREENSHOT. If they cant fix the road/mountain combo to something better, they should downsize the mountains.

About the roads: I would prefer thin brown lines as in above screenshot instead. I never liked the thick blurry road-look in SMAC, it doesnt look that good in Civ-3, either.

Alex 14 · July 12, 2001, 01:54

Quote:

Originally posted by TechWins

Yeah, I am too. I asked this "What player do you have to have to play the videos?" but nobody answered my question.

I used realplayer & the pikeman clip worked for me, but the others didn't.

Provost Harrison · July 12, 2001, 02:15

Yeah, I think those things under Berlin and Munich are some sort of special resource. They could be vases, in which case they could be a resource like clay/porcelain or something like that. Alternatively they could be some sort of cannister. Perhaps it is aluminium or something, although I would expect that would only become available on the advent of electricity. This looks too early...

Provost Harrison · July 12, 2001, 02:22

Oh yeah, I forgot. Roads. I think they look fine, I mean notice how the roads running inbetween cities are actually wider and more major than other random roads in the wilderness. But my major concern lies with the mountains and roads. Either they will have to modify the code for laying roads to weave around the mountains and through valleys in mountain ranges, or modify the mountain terrain to look flatter so that the roads look fine. But I think the 3d look of the mountains is fine if they would implement it correctly...it really does spoil the image when it just seems to hover overhead without going around. I am sure this will have to be a visual image they address.

I suppose the anchor would suggest that there is a ship anchored in port, or that would be my reckoning.

I actually notice that the rivers seem to run inbetween squares which is interesting. I wonder what the implications of this will be...

And the fonts below the city need sorting out.

However from this point of view, they should only be minor gripes, ones which could be sorted out with a bit of application, one which professional designers such as Firaxis should have no problem sorting out for the final release. Little touches like this mean a lot...

Provost Harrison · July 12, 2001, 02:26

And I would also like to add that some of the difficulty with some of the text, eg, the word Miletos is not because that the contrast would be too hard, but it is to due with the nature of lossy JPEG compression of the image. There is some distortion in compression and I think this is what is happening to the finer text making it difficult to read. I doubt this would actually be a problem on the real thing.

My gripe about the graphics is to sort out the roads on hills, and to make sure the grid goes around it. A lot of it would be sorted out by drawing the thing square by square rather than drawing the whole lot and plonking terrain improvements down on top of the drawn terrain. Also some way to make the roads weave through valleys in hills and mountains; that is a must...

LaRusso · July 12, 2001, 02:28

the whole thing looks really disappointing. i feel like 'yinism' is starting to grip me, too. roads are minor problem in comparison with the overall feel which is that of unsaturated colours, grim landscapes of monotonous masses. they have allegedly built a terrain that really has a 'feel' to it. what i see are cloned mountain caps, uniformly planted woods, swamp-like irrigation, pond-like seas. insectoid units, uninteligible city symbols. trash cans

this really does not look any better than the screenshots a couple of months ago when everyone still thought it was too early to started cursing the designers (although some people already did).
many of you did not like ctp and ctp 2 graphics. in comparison with this, ctp graphics are pure sex for the eyes. unless there is a constant incredible graphics degradation every time they are making screenshots for previews (so that the quality is somehow lost) we are looking at the biggest eyesore since 'space invaders' by atari....

yin26 · July 12, 2001, 02:47

Quote:

'yinism'

QUICK! Go have a check-up while it can be cured!

Well, I hate to agree with agreeing with me, but the first time I saw SMAC I thought: "Hmmm, 3D terrain. Interesting step forward. But the colors!" Now I find myself thinking with Civ 3: "Hmmm, NO 3D terrain. Also interesting, though a step back? But the colors!" It's dejavu, I'm tellin' ya....

I will give the eye-candy award to CtP. By the way, hasn't Firaxis publically stated that Civ3 would put an end to complaints about the graphics? I wonder who got that memo...?

Provost Harrison · July 12, 2001, 03:06

Oh yes, and I noticed that Hiawatha is the leader of the Iroquois. Not really a surprise, we already speculated this...

Rollo_CH · July 12, 2001, 03:08

Quote:

Originally posted by Jeje2
At least here in Finland a countryroad is just one big curve to the right and to the left, but never straight ahead. So what I see isn't so bad.

Aha! thats why your rally drivers are so darn good!

About the roads:
http://www.pczone.co.uk/guest/newnew...-16-2225.pjpeg

Please say this is not the way it would look! And besides...only the Swiss would know how to build roads over mountain-peaks!

The cities look fairly decent, at least the Chinese...but those French ones....have "the Borg" occupied France? So dark...and dull...

AroSch · July 12, 2001, 03:13

Quote:

in comparison with this, ctp graphics are pure sex for the eyes.

Hmmh, is sex such a bad thing for you

? Well, the road thing is something that needs work, the rivers and some others too, but it looks much more better then CtP2, in my opinion. You may find CtP2 looking better.
However, I think (hope?) they are just working on it. Look at this screenshot; how nice the border goes over the hills between Heliopolis and Miletos. The same way they could do it with roads, but I don´t know how easy or how hard it is, to change that for use in a scenario...

Provost Harrison · July 12, 2001, 03:26

Yeah, AroSch, they have implemented the borders going over and around hills and mountains and stuff like that. Obviously they are thinking about it, so at the moment with roads and probably railroads as well, they are just working on it I would expect. I'm sure they will get there...

It would be nice if the gridlines were worked on similarly. However this may not be necessary as the gridlines are only really there as a guidance of where to put your city...

Provost Harrison · July 12, 2001, 03:28

I'm sure, looking at that, that the road must only be stopgap. Also the special resources should be visible above the road, and irrigation/mines as well. They really must get that seen to. It would be good to have an official line from Firaxis on this at some point...

Footie Mad · July 12, 2001, 04:42

Aside from the road issue, are you satisfied with the graphics so far? There are a few things that disturb me, like the strange glowing green things in every square , but overall im happy.

Zanzin · July 12, 2001, 05:07

WHAT IM NOT HAPPY ABOUT -

i) Echoing the sentiments of others here.....the roads over the mountains look absolutely stupid. The should wind around.
Also, roads that go "behind" mountains don't....they too are pasted over the top of the peak, which looks so rediculous its pathetic, and makes you wonder if Firaxis really do have monkeys working in the art department.

ii) Where's the farmland? Is the irrigation tiles that make the continent look flooded all wer're going to get?

iii) Hmm....the entire ocean is exactly 3 feet deep...seriously, it looks like a kiddy's pool.

iv) The mountains - they're all red at the peak (maybe these are graphic assets left over from AC that Firaxis thought they'd recycle just for in-jokes), and most of them pop up out of nowhere....at the very least, they should be surrounded by foothills on most sides, right?

v) As someone mentioned in a different thread, all we seem to have is a reflection of southern-california and mediteranian type terrain.....what about the rest of the world?

vi) If I don't see any Himalya mountain ranges and what not, I'm going to be very perplexed. Has noone from Firaxis ever been skiing...or do they think the world begins and ends in Hunt Valley?

wotan321 · July 12, 2001, 08:35

I hope I don't offend anyone.... but after all the *****ing about "no updates, Firaxis hates us, the web-master is a bum", we finally get some more info. And massive amounts of complaining begins.

The game is not finished, but WOW! It is impressive, and a HUGE improvement from Civ2. The graphics may not be as bright and perky as other games, but they all fit together and they look good. I look forward to seeing the graphics in the game, as opposed to screen-shots of the game, perhaps some resolution was lost in transition.

The gameplay issues described in the PC Zone article really sound fantastic, and that's the real issue. Diplomacy, trade, culture and combat need to be right, the graphics we can edit if we want to. I was very glad to get more information, and I hope it is released in October.

Firaxis is doing a great job on this one.

Provost Harrison · July 12, 2001, 08:51

As I have already said, there is a certain amount of image quality loss due to JPEG compression, which will not be a problem (eg, with people grumbling about the fonts and that). They also seem to have sorted out the borders crossing hills and folding behind mountains, so I doubt the roads are going to be a problem. Also I don't think the irrigation looks too bad at all...farmland will probably look different...

Ralf · July 12, 2001, 08:53

Quote:

Originally posted by Zanzin
ii) Where's the farmland? Is the irrigation tiles that make the continent look flooded all wer're going to get?

Since irrigated tiles is so commonly available on mid/late-game maps its extra-important that they look right. Below I have already said in another thread, but I re-emphazize it here so the Firaxians cant miss it:

"the player should be able spot the difference between naturally looking basic terrain-types and artificially looking tile-improvements.

And thats the problem with those irrigated tiles - unless I didnt knew it before, I could have sweared that those tiles where infact some kind of basic terrain-type marshes."

LaRusso · July 12, 2001, 09:35

Quote:

Originally posted by wotan321
I hope I don't offend anyone.... but after all the *****ing about "no updates, Firaxis hates us, the web-master is a bum", we finally get some more info. And massive amounts of complaining begins.

The game is not finished, but WOW! It is impressive, and a HUGE improvement from Civ2. The graphics may not be as bright and perky as other games, but they all fit together and they look good. I look forward to seeing the graphics in the game, as opposed to screen-shots of the game, perhaps some resolution was lost in transition.

The gameplay issues described in the PC Zone article really sound fantastic, and that's the real issue. Diplomacy, trade, culture and combat need to be right, the graphics we can edit if we want to. I was very glad to get more information, and I hope it is released in October.

Firaxis is doing a great job on this one.

Dear Wotan,
Can you really look at the pictures and say that you see screens of the game you will like to look at. We all used to play pong and space invaders but it's 2001, game has been 2 years in development and I guess it's time to move on.
True, screenshots at official site have nicer colour gama. Not much, though. It really looks flat and unsaturated.
As for our complaining - this is not a real, official update. That aside, why oh why was it a problem to add these couple of pathetic screens to the official (and soon to be defunct) civ 3 site at firaxis. why did we have to have snapcase dig it out of nowhere? this is the kind of stuff that really should appear first on the official site.
Back to graphics. Cities look bleak, it is very hard to make out the terrain type. I guess those glowing green things are the fertility symbols and the white dots next to them might be quarries (that is, former shields).
Roads look like varricose veins.
I really want October release, I really like Civ, I really respect whatever work they have put but I really do hope that these are some leftover alpha screens.

Adm.Naismith · July 12, 2001, 09:39

Quote:

Originally posted by yin26
By the way, hasn't Firaxis publically stated that Civ3 would put an end to complaints about the graphics? I wonder who got that memo...?

Someone who left the company just to join BHG?

Back to terrain opinion, I must note that for first time I'm thinking that playing without an overlayed grid will be the standard option for me.
At least the missing grid can't do any worse to a terrain looking that was already sub-standard few years ago

I don't understand: wasn't showed months ago a screenshot scanned from a magazine, with cultivated fields instead of irrigated tiles? City was more a placeholder, a mockup, but the full result was really better, IMHO.

I have one copy in my HD but I can't copy&past here (no available ftp site where to download it). I'll browse on old post to find the relevant link...

Provost Harrison · July 12, 2001, 09:50

I think the grid detracts a bit from the overall appearance, but I reckon it will be fine. It is really just the roads that need tightening up. It would be nice to have some different mountain types, but I am not that concerned, I think the present mountains looks fine, very 'sugarloaf'