Back when I was playing around with the new client before I thought it looked bad. People said with a better video card it looks great. Well I've been running a 5970 with a Dell 3008WFP and decided to try UO again. All my other games look great but sadly the EC UO client still looks like abstract art. I set it to the max resolution and set it to full screen. What else can I set? Am I missing something?
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Have you tried zooming out to a 1:1 aspect ratio? Post a screen shot, so we can see what you are seeing. 
S
Sturdy
Guest
You have about the best gear possible- you just dont like the way it looks.
F
Fink
Guest
Unfortunately it's low resolution sprite-based graphics, ie: Classic-style fat pixels. No amount of modern hardware is going to improve the way it looks. You can only tweak settings (zoom 1:1) and admire the particles.
The mobile graphics are always going to look substandard until they increase the resolution, sort out the layering, and redraw the avatar set entirely. Some of the Stygian Abyss art would be truly gorgeous if they let the detail shine through.
The environment tiles are just a rehash of Classic, so either you'll love them or hate them. Having been briefly treated to the Kingdom Reborn world, I find the Enhanced Client [sic] tile art a massive step backwards.
The mobile graphics are always going to look substandard until they increase the resolution, sort out the layering, and redraw the avatar set entirely. Some of the Stygian Abyss art would be truly gorgeous if they let the detail shine through.
The environment tiles are just a rehash of Classic, so either you'll love them or hate them. Having been briefly treated to the Kingdom Reborn world, I find the Enhanced Client [sic] tile art a massive step backwards.
Having been subjected to the ugliness of the KR art..... I'm glad to NOT have to look at it. Now.... IF they had done KR with real art.... not that 2nd grade crayola stuff.... Yes we'd all be happy..... but that didn't happen did it? I'm not going back to the swayback mule treasure chests and the walls sticking through my floors and the rich detail of the lattice wood going from rich looking cherry finish to looking like something out of a worn down abandoned shack....
I've not forgotten my loathing there..... oh and ferns going from looking like a fern to looking like some sort of sick stick drawing.... completely NOT resembling any known plant. Save something perhaps that had been eaten by scores of insects beyond any normal reconning.
Am I being harsh enough? Cause I don't think so.
No... what UO needs is someone who CAN do graphics... in high detail. And a bit of consistency would go a very, very long way.
You talk about how wonderful KR was with detail????? Just look at what they did to my Hiryu...... and I'm still stuck with it... went from having feathers to looking like a plucked turkey... No... It's not good..... not acceptable... hideous infact. Don't tell me about how awesome and wonderful it is.... I'm still disgusted. And my paperdoll.... *sighs*
Since it sounds like they are going to keep 2d around why wouldn't they boost the resolution on the EC client? Most games today require high end hardware for them to run, at least with UO they would always have the 2d option for people that can't or don't want to invest in better hardware.
F
Fink
Guest
The developers decided that as UO is a texture-heavy game that reducing the quality of the textures was a safe strategy for better performance. ie: reduce the art overhead rather than improve the code efficiency. Graphics cards (EC uses GPU, CC uses CPU) can handle thousands of polygons now, but don't support masses of texture information. Most games tend to have more geometry and less texture.
UO, at least the way they've done the EC, requires more textures, less geometry. The only 3D object in the new client is a single a polygon onto which all the textures are applied, hence UO's heavy reliance on texture information. There is one such polygon for every object, so the geometric information is virtually negligible while textures are through the roof. Still, the EC textures we have now look somehow worse than the CC ones that were poached, yet CC runs its texture requirement just fine. This is what I meant by a backward step.
In any case, I had fewer issues running KR with its fabled Texture Apocalypse than I did with the Enhanced Client. I wasn't able to play EC on my KR-friendly computer, but fortunately it was due for replacement soon after.
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You misquote me. In that instance I was speaking only of the world/environment tiles, not mobiles, items, or paperdolls. Even so, overall there is a distinct drop in image resolution & art quality from KR's uniquely created assets to EC's scaled-up-legacy rehash. It's not opinion, it's a mathematical fact.
Please, there's no need to dictate what I can and can't "tell" you, irony notwithstanding. I wasn't attacking your aesthetic, although it seems you have that impression. I was addressing silent's question.
One word..... "Lazy". Instead of enhancing say a group of tiles at a time..... all they do is complain about how much time and effort it would take to do the whole thing....
Yet if they had worked one section at a time they would have a very nice looking client by now.
Just saying.
Yet if they had worked one section at a time they would have a very nice looking client by now.
Just saying.
B
Beer_Cayse
Guest
So if I read you correctly, if the EC went to less texture and more geometry, the graphics might "magically" become a bit more pleasing to the eye? And I realize that there will be no pleasing 100% of the player base.
I also assume that's why my eyes have no problem admiring graphics in games like Warhammer, WOW, etc? I don't play them but I browse sites and look at the worlds that exist outside UO and read up on them.
In almost every instance of these and other areas, I could easily find myself playing because the graphics look so much better. I don't because I believe UO is the best ... or I wouldn't have played it for so many years. <shrug>
T
Tukaram
Guest
The biggest problem I have with the EC is that it seems they tried to make it look as much like the horrid 2D; especially the background and avatar.
I'd like to have the old 3D art with the EC client.
I'd like to have the old 3D art with the EC client.
..... I will NOT have my character looking like he's all of 12.
still waiting patiently on the screen pic
still waiting patiently on the screen pic
Actually I gave up on the EC client for now, even the classic client looks terrible full screen on my 30". For now I'm just running the classic client on my laptop.
F
Fink
Guest
As a performance concession they gave us fewer pixels. Fewer pixels in a pixel-based game is almost always going to look "worse", relatively speaking, at least from a technical standpoint.
From an aesthetic standpoint I found the level of detail in some of the KR art to be its strength. The treatment and style were both very uneven. Once the resolution was removed, I think it lost a principle feature that was in its favour.
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In terms of texture vs geometry, I think they could have struck a happy medium if they approached it a little differently. For example, I think the sprite-based avatar system could be done better as a 3D system, if a quality approach was taken and scrupulously maintained.
Additions and tweaks only require a geometric or texture patch. For sprites you need to render 5 directions for every frame of every animation for every piece of equipment in the game. And, as we've seen with CC, you're locked into a certain resolution as computer performance and screen sizes outgrow your art set.
They would need to intelligently plot out the layering of clothing to match CC, though. That's actually another thing that's botched as the system stands; many costumes are ruined in translation. Also you could allow a certain amount of parametric scaling for different height, weight, body shape, and face.
Basically I feel the current avatars don't look any better than low-poly models of the 1990s. It only becomes obvious that they're not polygons when you either zoom in or move, and see the limitation of pixels or frames.