Updated graphic for EC / kingdom reborn graphic set?
I came across the below. Apparently many of the kingdom reborn graphics appear to be quite improved vs. the EC graphics. Any chances these can be officially released?
The hydra actually looks quite scary and very detailed. First one is quite dead, apparently. Second one appears to show good sizing if the client is zoomed out.
The hydra actually looks quite scary and very detailed. First one is quite dead, apparently. Second one appears to show good sizing if the client is zoomed out.
Comments
Going from memory now, but I believe the KR art was all done in 4k, or slightly higher resolutions, and 8 FPS, double the CC's 4 FPS. However, much of the art was never finished or optimized for use, as KR was pushed out in a, let's face it, completely unready state.
When the next team put together the EC, they downscaled all the art to more closely match the CC (I think that was the reason, but...memory...). I believe the original intent was to put in the CC matching low res art, then put in higher res versions, allowing the player to scale the art to the players choice, and thereby solve some of the performance issues.
For those who remember him, GrimmOmen, who was the most public facing of the art team for both KR and the EC, posted on Stratics a bit after he left the team. One of those posts lamented the fact that it all came down to money and they just ran out of the needed money to make the art scalable with the EC.
Again, all that is from memory and so might not be accurate in detail, but the gist should be about correct.
The team has since moved away from that KR art standard. It looks like all the newer stuff is much lower res, probably as close to the CC's 800x600? or whatever as they can get. Anyway, the result is (to my understanding at least) that if they did put in the high res KR stuff, the need for some of it to be finished and/or optimized would still be there, all the art since would look low res in comparison, and the client would be even more graphically disjointed. Also, some players would probably suffer performance issues, a graphical scaling system would be probably required, people would demand that all the art be "good" (high res), so the team might have to rework a bunch of the art since KR, etc. etc. You get the idea.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to see the high res KR art in the game. I'd actually like to skip the 2D pictures of the posed 3D models and just see the full high res 3D models in the game, but that would create even greater distance between the two clients, not to mention huge amounts of work for the team maintaining two wildly different art standards.
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But yes, your original observation is correct. The original high res KR art, which is downscaled to produce the current EC blurriness, was really detailed. Yes, it would be nice to be able to use it in game.
Pinco hosts a copy of the original KR stuff, you should check it out. Some of it is really, really, good. I believe that what Pinco is hosting is the lower resolution client side version of the images of the posed 3D models, not the higher resolution dev side 3D models themselves.