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#1 aeon

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Posted 24 February 2014 - 05:05 PM

Hello community!
 
I have been following this mod for quite some time now since its first announcement on modb till its first alpha release for rebellion.
Actually before rebellion you were the reason that made me buy entrenchment , just to try the mod. 
 
On this topic I wont talk about bugs, balance issues and the way the game works -after all i am pretty sure people with a lot more experience than mine in this mod know what they are doing-.
On this topic I want to talk about an important factor to every video game that ever existed: aesthetics and art direction.
 
I completely understand what Unikraken wrote on modb,
 

This is a WIP and could change, also note that this mod is done by us who have a certain vision, that might not be your vision of the Halo universe. Please understand this as some of our decisions and gameplay will directly reflect that. Nothing personal, it's just that we're modding it and subsequently it will have our bias. 

 
 
,and i agree with it. 
 
But some things like the aesthetics and the graphic/artistic experience of the mod are global factors as all gamers want to play visually nice games.
Please take the following notes I made as a source of constructive feedback regarding that factor and not just as "s0me th1ngs that n00b doe3sn l1ke".
Please also forgive my English as I am still trying to learn them properly :)
 
1) Everything is too dark; and that's a shame since the 3d models - ships and buildings - are literally stunning with all the detail when you zoom at them. But they look amazing only when you zoom at them, because when you play in a normal zoom you only see some dark silhouettes. You might say now that "the UNSC always had black spaceships!" but what about the covenant who have purple and in some times light purple. Currently at the mod they have a light-grey-purple colour which also happens to be desaturated. 
 
Proposed solution:
Play with the tones, add more colour.
 
Akkan.jpg
 
This Akkan Battlecruiser is 20 times more ugly than a UNSC frigate in terms of design+texture, but still look how vivid and colourful it looks while it still maintains its dark tone. Notice the searchlights, the windows, the small details that make the difference. At the current moment the dark ships of the mod are just getting absorbed by the dark background and are hard to see and admire them.
 
 
 
2) Something is wrong with the scaling. I am not judging it according the halo lore; i am just saying strictly from a gamer's view. Some covenant ships are so small that the only way to view them is through
a)their icons , B) a zoom that may cost you precious seconds from the micro-management-battles. At the current phase of the mod in terms of the unit-size the experience is not so pleasant.
 
Proposed solution: Make everything a bit bigger! We want to see ships and fleets without zooming all the time!
 
 
3) The battle effects look good, but maybe you can add more fireworks to make the battles more enjoyable even when you are losing the. I dont know how to describe it better, but if you see this video you will understand what i mean:
 

Everyone likes big explosions and capital ships that when they fall have a nice slow dramatic animation followed by a massive explosion from their reactors.

At the current phase, the covenant/unsc ships are getting destroyed with a 2 second explosion like they are made from plastic. 
 
 
 
As a conclusion of this post I want to say that so far the mod is amazing. Dont make me repeat my gratitude to the people who managed to mix succesfully our beloved haloverse with the soase universe.
The above notes are simply about the visual side of the mod and nothing more. It has nothing to do with the halo lore but with the experience of the gamers.


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#2 Demosthenes

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Posted 24 February 2014 - 05:55 PM

- I agree with what you said about lighting, and more battle effects would definitely be cool.

- I think the scaling is right where it should be though. 

- I will add that some of the smaller Covenant ships, to my knowledge, are stand-in models that will be better looking in the future.  Unfortunately the CRS is tiny.

- One more idea/suggestion: the CPV destroyer model looks great, but its color makes it stick out like a sore thumb in a fleet of CCS and CAS ships.

 

I haven't been here in a while.



#3 Fleet Admiral agigabyte

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Posted 24 February 2014 - 06:26 PM




@Aeon
1:I agree that ships can be dark, but not all Cov ships were purple *Points to CAS, H1 and 2 CCS, and reach CCS.




@ Demosthenes The CPV will be reworked, it is entirely from CaW.
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#4 Cole Protocol

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Posted 24 February 2014 - 06:30 PM

First off, Welcome to the forums! 

 

Second, those Ideas are pretty nifty! We are actually working on a few (last time I checked, anyway) but here is some more details. The rebellion shader bug is something we are attempting to work on, but it is a bit of a slow process ATM. and as far as visual effects go, we cant make it overtly, well, "gory". As it would stray a bit from cannon, and frame rate drops would be, well, unpleasant.

 

and thank you for the feed back! Warms our hearts when we hear we are getting results from our work  :)



#5 aeon

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Posted 24 February 2014 - 06:55 PM

I took some sceenshots from a failed match and edited them with some basic vibrancy and lighting. no heavy effects, not fancy stuff.

 

cove1.jpg

 

cove3.jpg

 

cove2.jpg

 

I completely understand the framerate factor but i was just wondering if maybe push those settings to their own limits, just for some extra explosions ;)



#6 Cole Protocol

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Posted 24 February 2014 - 06:58 PM

Your pictures dont seem to be workin there pal  ;)



#7 aeon

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Posted 24 February 2014 - 07:09 PM

oh! my bad!

 

maybe i can give the links then. sorry if this is a double post!

 

https://scontent-b-a...137710033_o.jpg

 

https://scontent-b-a...207347060_o.jpg

 

https://scontent-a-a...267599684_o.jpg

 

 

 

1912000_486629544782059_2137710033_o.jpg

 

1795993_486629541448726_1207347060_o.jpg

 

1669596_486629561448724_1267599684_o.jpg


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#8 Cole Protocol

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Posted 24 February 2014 - 07:12 PM

Oh. My. God. Those pictures are AMAZING. Kutos dude!



#9 CanadaMan7

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Posted 24 February 2014 - 07:31 PM

Welcome to the forums, Aeon. I'm pretty sure I've seen you lurking about Moddb.

 

To address your questions/concerns:

-The darkness of the models is a admitted problem, but it's something that's exacerbated by the Rebellion shaders and the lack of proper lighting maps on some of the older ship models that are our worst offenders.

-I need to make an official scale chart, but I think scaling is roughly pretty good. I'm not sure upscaling everything will solve any more issues than it creates. This problems is interconnected with issue 1.

-The "blandness" of battles is due to the fact that we have a limited number of weapons in Halo ship canon, which have standardized weapons and technologies. Hopefully, we can create more dynamic explosions in the future and talks are already underway about implementing wreckage.

 

Nice video, though.

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#10 sloosecannon

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Posted 24 February 2014 - 07:48 PM

I took some sceenshots from a failed match and edited them with some basic vibrancy and lighting. no heavy effects, not fancy stuff.

 

[snip]

 

 

[snip]

 

[snip]

 

I completely understand the framerate factor but i was just wondering if maybe push those settings to their own limits, just for some extra explosions ;)

Those look like Halo comic book pictures. And I don't mean that as an insult. They actually look really good...


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#11 SPECTRE

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Posted 25 February 2014 - 12:03 AM

The shaders are bad, especially when you have only one good eye.

Man of Canada, we could get dark storm to do that, he has pretty good experience with scale charts.

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#12 Zero

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Posted 25 February 2014 - 12:41 AM

Kudos dude!

FTFY ;)

 

1) Everything is too dark; and that's a shame since the 3d models - ships and buildings - are literally stunning with all the detail when you zoom at them. But they look amazing only when you zoom at them, because when you play in a normal zoom you only see some dark silhouettes. You might say now that "the UNSC always had black spaceships!" but what about the covenant who have purple and in some times light purple. Currently at the mod they have a light-grey-purple colour which also happens to be desaturated.

The issue here is that the tangent maps on the ships imported into the Sins engine are either not correct or non-existent, and has been an issue I've addressed countless times. There is also a lack of distinct specular maps for the UNSC ships which makes them appear to be dark, even in direct lighting in comparison to vanilla ships. As far as I know, there is no way to edit light sources on Sins maps and I think its pre-determined by which stars are on the map. As for the Covenant being too desaturated, when I made the textures, I made them with Halo Reach in mind and thus used a Halo Reach color palette. I wish I could make the covenant more vibrant, but different games obviously have different shaders and AFAIK Sins doesn't do
iridescence like in the Halo games. At some point in the future I may try to play with the reflective shader to make edges more vibrant and interesting, but I doubt it would have any interesting effects.


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#13 D4RKST0RM99

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Posted 25 February 2014 - 11:09 AM

The shaders are bad, especially when you have only one good eye.

Man of Canada, we could get dark storm to do that, he has pretty good experience with scale charts.

I've already started, still in the planning stages, just need to find the time to get to grips with some 3D viewing software that shows the skin as well, so they will be ingame scale instead of canon, naturally their will be some gaps as their are still ships and even factions that aren't finished yet but hopefully the finished product will show full color UNSC, Covenant and Forerunner units scaled with each other.

My original chart I guess will be the starting point to work from-

 

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HEY SOMETHINGS EATING THE SHIPS!!!


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#14 haseo yashimora

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Posted 26 February 2014 - 10:31 AM

I've already started, still in the planning stages, just need to find the time to get to grips with some 3D viewing software that shows the skin as well, so they will be ingame scale instead of canon, naturally their will be some gaps as their are still ships and even factions that aren't finished yet but hopefully the finished product will show full color UNSC, Covenant and Forerunner units scaled with each other.

My original chart I guess will be the starting point to work from-

 

Spoiler

 

HEY SOMETHINGS EATING THE SHIPS!!!

just for shits and gigles u should make a download of a boss for SOTP of the Unikraken xD


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#15 SPECTRE

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Posted 26 February 2014 - 12:44 PM

On the topic of art.

New Future UI looks great.

 

 

I'm taking the chance to re-do the UI while there's a lull in art assets. Hopefully, I can capture the Halo 3 quality eventually, but it's slow going.

Think this looks the scribblings of some sort of crippled, illiterate serf boy? Good, throw suggestions out on the forums! Your criticisms are what's going to keep this mod looking even better.
 

1617523_665537103484851_638014857_o.jpg
 


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#16 D4RKST0RM99

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Posted 27 February 2014 - 12:28 AM

just for shits and gigles u should make a download of a boss for SOTP of the Unikraken xD

I like it, could have it as a fully autonomous titan that roams the map randomly attacking the factions, it would be impervious to all forms of attack so..........................how about the only way to stop it or hurt it would be something unusual like feed it deuterium or buy it gifts, construct a massive spacestation mirror to distract it with its own vanity, lure it into the path of your enemies with tasty treats or even destroy it by blasting it with a fleet of sound speaker ships playing Rick Roll'd YT vids.


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#17 haseo yashimora

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Posted 27 February 2014 - 08:21 AM

I like it, could have it as a fully autonomous titan that roams the map randomly attacking the factions, it would be impervious to all forms of attack so..........................how about the only way to stop it or hurt it would be something unusual like feed it deuterium or buy it gifts, construct a massive spacestation mirror to distract it with its own vanity, lure it into the path of your enemies with tasty treats or even destroy it by blasting it with a fleet of sound speaker ships playing Rick Roll'd YT vids.

dont make it so it cant die, its a joke download make it have unseen amount of hit points and maybe the coding and mechanics of it can be borrowed from the "Dawn of the Reapers" mods Reaper titian? 

 

 

description of joke download

 

 

"the makers of Sins Of The Prophets and ________________(for the coding if they need credit), comes the most feared, and powerful opponent the Halo universe will ever face, THE UNIKRAKAN! a 12km giant space monster that devourers all, but you can defeat it alone, so will you put your differences aside with the other factions and take on the Unikrakan together or will it devourer entire colones in its wake as it explores the map attacking everything it sees?

 

 

 

 

Unikrakan's abilities idea

 

 

can not be captured

 

cannot colonize

 

antimatter overload- overloads all antimatter aboard the ships attacking it, dropping it to 0

 

beam weapons- shoots beam lasers from its tenticals that do massive damage to unshielded opponents

 

(use some existing Sins powers to fin in the gaps)

 

 

just idea's idk if theres even coding for those abilities, u all like?



#18 D4RKST0RM99

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Posted 27 February 2014 - 10:59 AM

dont make it so it cant die, its a joke download make it have unseen amount of hit points and maybe the coding and mechanics of it can be borrowed from the "Dawn of the Reapers" mods Reaper titian? 

 

 

description of joke download

 

 

"the makers of Sins Of The Prophets and ________________(for the coding if they need credit), comes the most feared, and powerful opponent the Halo universe will ever face, THE UNIKRAKAN! a 12km giant space monster that devourers all, but you can defeat it alone, so will you put your differences aside with the other factions and take on the Unikrakan together or will it devourer entire colones in its wake as it explores the map attacking everything it sees?

 

 

 

 

Unikrakan's abilities idea

 

 

can not be captured

 

cannot colonize

 

antimatter overload- overloads all antimatter aboard the ships attacking it, dropping it to 0

 

beam weapons- shoots beam lasers from its tenticals that do massive damage to unshielded opponents

 

(use some existing Sins powers to fin in the gaps)

 

 

just idea's idk if theres even coding for those abilities, u all like?

AH you forget, the Unikraken can not die, it simply goes back to sleeps and returns weeks later with a bad case of the starship munchies :D


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#19 WarthogRacingMan3

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Posted 27 February 2014 - 12:13 PM

AH you forget, the Unikraken can not die, it simply goes back to sleeps and returns weeks later with a bad case of the starship munchies :D

So... your saying Uni is an invincible Reaper?  


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#20 Demosthenes

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Posted 27 February 2014 - 12:37 PM

Since I suppose this could belong on an aesthetics post, aside from the already proposed new planet types such as an Ark or Halo Installation, is there any chance you guys can throw in new planet types or skins just to improve the look of the game?  Blue gas giants, terran planets with unique continents, recently glassed UNSC colonies, Insurrectionist bases, etc.  There are lots of possibilities.  I like the flood homeworld's look and I'd love to see more of that kind of thing.


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