Why don't they just make 2d in hi-res?

[arkiu]

I brought this up during the last M&G - Bleak mentioned there would be some sort of performance trade off that comes with high resolution.... But I'm gonna go ahead and say that this game desperately needs a high resolution classic client to stay relevant. I recently bought two rather large 24" 1900 x 1200 monitors and while the game is certainly playable, the game window only takes up less than a third of the screen! I can't imagine how this game would look on a 4k monitor! And 4k's are gradually becoming more and more affordable, so who knows what the norm will be in just 5 years. This game really needs a resolution boost! Really hope Bleak can make this happen!

And I might add that there is just no way I'll ever be using the EC... no way... No client compares to the original artistic aesthetic of UO. And not to throw in a cheap shot or anything to the devs but I really hope they stop introducing new artwork into the game until they get their perspectives and angles down. I just saw the new tiger pelt carpet thing from the newest patch notes (pub 92 pt 2) and almost threw up in my mouth. Not necessarily saying its bad artwork but things like that just flat out don't belong in the CC. I just wish they could be more consistent with the original work.

I agree with Smoot and Goodman - this topic really needs to be kept alive, otherwise in 5-10 years when there are 10k monitors UO's game window is going to look the size of a Gameboy screen.

 

[Aran]

Actually what it needs is to leave the classic client alone, aside from stripping the hideous newer assets out, and focus on being UO, not "being relevant"

 

[arkiu]

Maybe 'relevant' wasn't the best choice of words on my end. But common I'm not talking a classic client revamp with new UI features or anything. I'm merely suggesting increasing the screen resolution such that the game window isn't so tiny. I really can't imagine why anyone wouldn't be in favor of this....

 

[arkiu]

Or at least having the option to increase the screen resolution, without affecting the preexisting game window configuration

 

[Uvtha]

Or at least having the option to increase the screen resolution, without affecting the preexisting game window configuration

Yeah I got a new gaming laptop a year ago, and I really can't play UO on it without changing the display size. Otherwise the play window is just a tad larger than 1/4 of the screen, which is just too small.

 

[JC the Builder]

Even if you took the existing art and blew it up 1.5x or 2x it still looks good. Yeah, you can see more pixels but it isn't like the game turns into Minecraft. I do it all the time for my videos and you can't say the game looks bad in HD.


Original Image Size



Upscale to 1080p

 

[Ender]

The terrain texture looks pretty bad.

Then again I think it's pretty ugly regardless.

 

[Uvtha]

Even if you took the existing art and blew it up 1.5x or 2x it still looks good. Yeah, you can see more pixels but it isn't like the game turns into Minecraft. I do it all the time for my videos and you can't say the game looks bad in HD.


Original Image Size

View attachment 43365

Upscale to 1080p

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Maybe allow people the option, so they don't have to tweak their monitors every time they want to play?

 

[Dot_Warner]

Aside from the ground/mountains/water and 99% of the mobs, the EC IS the CC's art scaled up 1.5x, and look how many people whine, pancake and moan about that...

To upscale the art properly, they'd literally have to go over every tile and frame of animation by hand to keep it from looking like a steaming pixelated pile. It would be extremely labor intensive, so they've said no to that at least 3 times in the last two years.

 

[Hannes Erich]

But... but...

What if we say please, with sad eyes?

 

[JC the Builder]

To upscale the art properly, they'd literally have to go over every tile and frame of animation by hand to keep it from looking like a steaming pixelated pile. It would be extremely labor intensive, so they've said no to that at least 3 times in the last two years.

They don't have to do that. It would certainly be nice, but the quality is not a terrible drop with a straight resizing of the existing art. Plus they already upscale the original item art in the EC client.

For some reason they have always been dead set against doing it with the original creature art.

 

[WootSauce]

2009 folks.. Two Thousand and Nine...

 

[arkiu]

Dot_warner - I just hope they can increase the game window resolution, not necessarily increase pixel density of the artwork. While it would be cool to have a high res (not zoomed) greater dragon taking up half my screen, its not exactly what I was thinking. Is this what you were thinking? I think a wider field of view would be beneficial, and I believe there is some third party app that does this with mixed results. Not sure though. Sorry if I wasn't clear on what I was hoping for.

JC the Builder - did you somehow get the original MIDIs playing in game or is that just some editing work?

 

[JC the Builder]

JC the Builder - did you somehow get the original MIDIs playing in game or is that just some editing work?

If you are referring to my videos, the music is all added after.

If you wanted the original MIDI music you could convert them into MP3 and replace the newer files.

 

[Dot_Warner]

They don't have to do that. It would certainly be nice, but the quality is not a terrible drop with a straight resizing of the existing art. Plus they already upscale the original item art in the EC client.

For some reason they have always been dead set against doing it with the original creature art.

Yes, yes they would. People complain about the EC's looks. They have since 2009 when that dev team rashly shoehorned in poorly upscaled CC world art inplace of KR's high(er)res world art - making the EC the Frankenstein's ******* that it is.

Do you honestly think the same OMG-THE-NOSTALGIA!-GASMING luddites are going to tolerate the CC becoming a (more)pixelated, blurry mess? They'll raise holy hell, threaten to quit, wax hyperbolic about UO's storied past, and bully yet another dev team into inaction.

Round and round the ZOMG-the-mongbat-looks-slightly-different-MY-CHILDHOOD-IS-RUINED!!!! will go, and we'll be right back where we started. SSDD.

Saphireena's way would have worked, but Calvin Crowner bungled that opportunity completely.

---

@arkiu That's not what this thread is about though. A larger CC gameplay window would have been awesome 10 years ago, though the devs then said the same things the devs now say: there's a nasty performance hit. The performance hit may be worse now. Modern videocards aren't designed for 90's era sprites, they're designed for high poly counts and flashy SFX. This is part of why the EC is a massive resource hog, its hundreds of sprites pasted on hundreds of invisible polygons. Wasteful.

 

[JC the Builder]

A larger CC gameplay window would have been awesome 10 years ago, though the devs then said the same things the devs now say: there's a nasty performance hit. The performance hit may be worse now. Modern videocards aren't designed for 90's era sprites, they're designed for high poly counts and flashy SFX. This is part of why the EC is a massive resource hog, its hundreds of sprites pasted on hundreds of invisible polygons. Wasteful.

Sprites are not some outdated technology that needs to be discarded. They are used everywhere: in the operating system, on the web and even in modern games. Just look at the classic client, it runs better than it ever has.

I'm pretty sure the Enhanced Client still has poorer performance with all its polygons compared to the Classic Client. The original Kingdom Reborn client was like a slideshow. At an IDOC someone asked me to stop casting fields because it was lagging then out.

For fun, I'll use the EC at the next Atlantic event to see if this has changed. I guess that means no opening corpses though because that causes crashing I heard.

 

[DJAd]

Wow this thread started in 2009. I guess that means they must be almost done with the new graphics by now right? I'd be very sad to hear that they have taken 7 years just to do the runebook!

 

[Hannes Erich]

As usual, Dot doesn't mince her words, but she's right. What's more, I suspect there's a nostalgic vocal minority of players (i.e. the Stratics community) that would raise hell even if a high-res update were given all the necessary passes for quality; and even if it were provided as a graphical option that needn't affect their settings. They would raise hell by claiming that resources were recklessly spent on changing a client that (by their estimation) doesn't need changing.

I think the majority of players out there pretty much just quietly log in and play the game and think "Ooh, neat", whenever something new comes along, and they'd certainly enjoy the option of quality high-res CC graphics. But they wouldn't prevent Stratics from creating the typical PR disaster around the release of new content. While I'm proud of Stratics' new overlords, I don't entirely envy the bundle of joy they've purchased, and I don't blame Broadsword for putting distance between itself and Stratics.

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On an unrelated note, @arkiu, I've tested an unapproved third-party program which allows classic UO to be played in a 1024x768 play window (or any other size, for that matter). I experienced no extra lag while playing in a 1024x768 window! I'll leave the ramifications of my "discovery" to others to debate. Obviously, I can't tell anyone which program it was that I tested (no PMs, please), as it would be breaking the TOS.

When I set it to sizes above 1024x768, I did see increasing lag. Also, beyond about 1024x768, it revealed black space around the corners of the classic client, unfortunately. The view distance in the CC seems to have a cut-off point. Only a dev team member could possibly tell us whether that problem could be easily solved. But this suggests there may be issues with any play window larger than 1024x768. (Which I doubt we'll see in any case, maybe for the reasons above, or maybe because it's technologically not feasible.)

 

[Giggles]

While I am sure this could turn into a interesting conversation, I don't think bringing it up in a very large, 7 year old thread, is the best place to have it.
Many of the original participants of this conversation are no longer active. Any many things have already changed in the lands of UO. I encourage this discussion to be brought to a fresh thread so we can share new ideas =)