Ugliest Game of 2001?

[yin26]

I'd like to put in the first vote. "But it's the GAMEPLAY, Yin!" Puke. "You must NOT be a real TBSer, Yin!" Puke puke gag! "Yin, you are an annoying, moronic, whanker!" O.K. Sure. But look at this damn screenshot! C'mon, even if you hate me and all I stand for (see my avatar), you HAVE to agree this is just sad:

[Rasputin]

damn these work computers !!! they cant see images stored at htpp://apolyton.net only at http://www.apolyton.net

[yin26]

You probably already saw it, but here's the direct link: http://www.fgnonline.com/media/pc/news/busy.jpg. Frightening, ain't it?

[Rasputin]

ahhh even worse a gaming site.... the Net Nanny tpye software is too clever for that

[Alex 14]

[Kautilya]

Good grief! I hadn't realized the true hideousness of the graphics before seeing this screenshot.

I am not one to worry too much about graphics but these screenshots are well below the level of CTP2. I would almost prefer the old Civ 2 graphics especially considering the unspeakable greens and blues here.

Hopefully the optimists are right and these are just preliminary shots but why release them then? I am begining to fear the worst.

[KrazyHorse]

I'll agree that the pink is awful. The only other problem is those damn mountains.

[MarkG]

hey yin, you just got elected! you dont need to remind people why you're the best man for the job!

[yin26]

LOL! True. I'll just sit back and enjoy my new avatar for a while until something new gets revealed.

[Footie Mad]

As I mentioned in my civ coulors thread I dont think i'll be able to take those pink knights seriously....they just remind me of some
foam candy I ate once.

[Stefu]

What a truly nauseating pink color. And those roads don't fit in well with mountains. In fact, now I'm starting to see that those roads are pretty bad. And those oceans, too, need changing. Otherwise, I'm not as pessimistic as Yin26. Worst graphics of the year? Hardly.

[LaRusso]

the whole scenery looks very psychodelic. are firaxis team using some very powerful hallucinogenic or is it that they are colour blind.
i agree, this looks as ugly as yin's avatar

[Slax]

Originally posted by Stefu
Worst graphics of the year? Hardly.

I think it would be hard to find a recent, professionally made game with worse graphics.

Irrigated land looks brutal (or is it swamp with some straight waterways?). There is no elevation change between land and sea, and then huge odd-looking mountains pop out of the flatness.

I had hoped they would come up with a smart method of reducing the "spaghetti effect" of roads (ie there does not have to be a road in every direction out of a tile if the surrounding tiles are looked at intelligently).

[To_Serve_Man]

mmm... an interesting screenshot... since i have a low connection modem, i usually only load up one or two screenshots. So I have never seen this one. You can hardly make any of those units out... its a shame Firaxis had to be so close minded on the graphics... its also kinda wierd how they did it, choosing one painting to go off of.

But what I find the most repulsing are those stupid floating heads!! Ugh! Come on... 3d/Computer created people never look like real people... and having heads just floating around is just so bad. I'd would wrather see a menu/clickable button for the advisors and have the advisor some little cutesy thing (Microsoft Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Etc comes to mind) than have these horrably animated computer drawn people.

And should your borders really go over water? I mean, is that really needed? It looks just as bad as the roads floating over mountians, and the mushy swampy irrigated tiles.

I think everyone is aware of the horrable road job thats done here... i guess the days of endless rail/road on every tile isn't over? Also the units do the same thing roads do over mountains... the units are kinda standing on top of the city.. not with in it, or near it, or something, but directly over it.

Its as if Firaxis wants us to dislike their game or something by giving out these screenshots.

[MarkG]

has anyone considered that what we see is distorted by the jpeg compression? guess not....

I would really like to see the game now, however after looking at these screenshots maybe they better wait until Feb or Mar of next year. Right now CTP graphic are a lot better than this.

Firaxis if you are reading this please. If the Civs color are going to used on Units, forget it. Use a flag instead. Those units are way to dark and look really bad. The Cities are so dark, please change them. Change the roads to. Go back and look at Civ 2 graphic.

[Nemo]

well, now i can actually see that they are knights (sort of). The first fairy knights allignment!
ok, i have a geforece2 gts and 21" sony trinitron monitor, and until now, i honestly had no idea what the pink things where, i thought the knights were pink beetles...for real. I looked at them for a minute, the first time i saw this screen shot, and gave up trying to figure them out after about 2 minuts.
The more i see of the graphics, the less i want to buy the game. I mean if they cant even get the graphics right, how do we KNOW the game play is all that?
If they cant get the graphics right, how are they going to sell this 2d game sitting on a shelf next to something like empire earth, to NEW customers? -hell, i am even thinking about buying empire earth before civ III, and i dont even like RTS
I think civilization fans are the only people going to get it. it's been 7 years siince civ II was released, i am sure that many civ fans have lost interest. so, firaxis will be stuck with little new customers, and even lost a few fans on the way. Not Good!
They need to:
1) push back the release date
2) revamp the graphics (the florecent colors are REALLY harsh on the eyes!!!)

the more screen shots i see, the less i care if i buy the game. i know graphics aren't the only thing in the game. but civ I/II was a great game with bad graphics. and firaxis did say that they would keep the good and improve the bad. is this the extent on how they improved the bad??? not looking good firaxis, not good at all.

[me_irate]

The roads are just pitiful. I could make better using a brown small pin thing in paintbrush. It really looks like the roads were drawn on, they are even over top of the mines. it should be terain, then roads then the improvements, cows and other things on top of that. But hopefully the roads are just preliminary. However i believe the terain, is unchangeable. Maybe they can adjust the color or something but basically its too late.

also is this a recent screenshot? it looks dated, simply because of the trees they look like bushes. On some of the more recent shots the trees were better, had trunks on the trees, and were less blury.

I wish Brian Reynolds was still there

[Buck Birdseed]

Am I the only one who likes the graphical direction Civ3 is taking? The garish colours, the turqoise seas, the candyfloss mountains, the sharply defined roads, I think they make an absolutely enchanting whole. I mean, comparisons with CtP2 verge on the ridiculous:- these are the best graphics of any civ game ever, as far as I am concerned.

[Slax]

Ha Ha Ha! Good one!

[DarkCloud]

Overall... I like the game's look. However, they should make some of the scenery 'more solid'

I am glad that they did not make it dark like in AlphaCentauri. And the info on what the city is producing is ingenious!

One complaint: The farms look too insubstantial... and frankly they look ***ppy.

agree on the cities are too dark
auto-levels fixes that easy, consider it firaxis


what image are you talking about me-irate? can you link to it? I'm not sure i've seen it..

I get the feeling they want Civ3 to die.

[Crouchback]

So the French are pink? Interesting.

I assume there is a river somewhere amidst all that frightening irrigation (does it slow movement do you think?), and it took me a while to spot the mine buried underneath all those roads. Those mountains could never form a realistic range like the Alps or Rockies.

I wanted something that would look like Earth, which CTP vaguely does if you play with the map setup, but this screenshot makes SMAC seem professional and user friendly (almost).

David.

oh and uh, I like the pink

I think it gives the civilization character! I just know they will be referred to as the 'Pink Guys'. And they will always be lethal and tough to beat

[Kevin Ar18]

Originally posted by DarkCloud
One complaint: The farms look too insubstantial...

What farms?

And, BTW, what is with those anchors on the cities. I wouldn't exactly say they look good.
I suspect they are probably there to indicate a naval base is there. But can't we find a better way? Say a harbor actually sticking out across the ocean water?

Oh, and one thing about all these screenshots is that they seem like they are still in development because there are still things missing. IE, no railroads, fortresses, airports, farms, ice type terrain, or rain forest type.
So, there's still hope. And about the roads, they are probably there as preliminary art as they begin to get the game working which they'll refine later.

[CyberbugFredrik]

The landscape looks like crap quite honestly, especially in that screenshot. I really, REALLY think they should release the game a couple of months later if that would mean they would have the time to fix this joke for a modern civilization map. I mean, the designers at Firaxis should be working 24/7 right now fixing this.
That's what they SHOULD do, but probably not what they ARE doing. They are probably working on some unit or character animations, which too are very nice to have in the game but simply not at all as important as the landscape which you will spend 90% of your playing time looking at.

If enough people respond to this and other related threads, we can only hope that Firaxis will understand the level of disappointment we share in their map graphics.

[Kevin Ar18]

I honestly think that the issue with roads being over mines will be fixed (at least to the level of Civ 2).

However, what I hate most is how the colors are so obviously bland and out of place.
I remember for Civ 2 starting out my first game.... I was on an island with grasslands, forest, and some jungle and swamp.

Well, later in the game I discovered a desert area on another island. I was so pleasantly surprised by this. I mean it looked so much different and it was cool to find such a different terrain.

However, with this puke green scheme, (that is based off that Tower of Babel painting) every piece of terrain has the same bland, uninteresting color scheme. Boring....

Let's get some real colors in there with deep greens for forests and grasslands.... And some deep blues and light blues for oceans (without the puke green mixed in the blue).
Oh, and make them deserts really look like deserts.
What would be really cool is to put sand dunes in large desert areas (do this on tiles that are all surrounded by other desert tiles kind of like mountains adjust based on surrounding tiles)

[CyberbugFredrik]

I mean, just look at this screenshot from Call to power! It looks better than the graphics in the released screenshots from Civ III!

Sad - isn't it?

[Grim Leaper]

Originally posted by Slax


I think it would be hard to find a recent, professionally made game with worse graphics.

Has anyone seen Merchant Prince2? The uninstaller has better grphics than the game.

Anyway i don't care much for the graphics in civ games. Sure i like to be able to see what is happening, but it looks to me like that map will get very messy and i will need to scan each tile one by one just to see whats been irragated

Those CTP graphics may look good, but they don't feel good, and thats what will make a world of difference.

I understand what people mean when you say gameplay is more important than graphics, but you're contradicting yourself.

The trick is with graphics, is that if you do it right, you can make the gameplay great. CTP's graphics appear great, but they are actualy the reason why the game got low gameplay scores.

Drawing graphics doesn't mean the more realistic, the better it will be, or the more animations, the better it will be.

Explaining the trick is difficult, you would have to be an experienced artist to understand, but basicaly, the artist, has to think 'how will the player feel when they look at this image?'. If they get the right response they want, then they're on the right track with the style they used.

A few good examples are adventure games, you will notice in some adventure games that the background images are slightly warped out of place, that gives off the feeling that everything in this game is just a joke and like a cartoon. And it successfuly achieves that - by looking good at the same time.

I'm not sure why the artists have chosen these looks, maybe it they give off the right feeling when the game is being played. To be honest, I don't agree with it - but I could be very wrong.

I still think the graphic I drew earlier on in my previous thread, that the feeling was a lot better, closer to the feeling that people would prefer to get when creating a Civilization.

I think the feelings the graphics need to give off are:

1. Power
2. Succession
3. Earths Beauty, Earths ruggedness.
4. Large Variety
5. Weather

I think thats all the feelings a player needs when looking at the terrain.