Is pushing new dark graphics to its limits worth it?

downwinder on 19/12/2014 at 03:27

he is am example why doing massive graphics are not worth it,the new mission the farm has some rows of corn that lag the mission a lot,in the first part,but the question i have is did that cornfield make the mission better in anyway?even people with better systems also had a problem with it,just watch part one of the farm done by that one youtuber fen

what happen to the days where game play was more important then graphics,my personal opinion is the new generation is at fault for that ,hence why game consoles only pump out games that look good but game play is shit over all,that is why 100% of all new graphically intense games fade out in less then a year and you never hear about them again

a good example of this is the halo series,nothing more then unreal tournament 1999 with better graphics and perks,i am tired of people worried about graphics when the game it self has zero replay,i would rather see stock graphics and more game content.

but in the end i think it comes down to new school gamers vs old school gamers

i am 40 years old now and i think graphics are not that important if the game is shit in game play,that is why console systems are close to dead,we got Nintendo which makes games for kids now,play station and x box are pretty much multi player games,that are just rehashes of older games,nothing original,all we got left is pc and that is starting to turn to shit cause everyone is worried about graphics,and not game play,that is why thief 3 and 4 failed they worried to much about graphic and not game play ,i am kinda shocked to see people even ask this question after seeing what it did to thief,it should be common sense that graphic are not the way to go in a game

downwinder on 19/12/2014 at 03:32

NewDark has the primary advantage of being well suited to large open spaces, big cityscapes, etc. It still runs into issues where lots of
detail is packed into a scene and especially seems to run afoul of performance when texture data is heavy (HD Mods are probably making
some missions seem heavier than they would be using vanilla assets.) Skacky is an author who capitalizes NewDark's strengths...
So I guess if you're asking "should mappers produce smaller maps so that the HD mod will run smooth?" I would say no to that. Graphic cards
continue to have more memory on-board and grown in bandwidth quite quickly. I've got a cheap $60 GPU that runs faster than
an 8800GS high-end card from a few years back. If people want HD textures, they should get better video cards not ask mappers to reduce
their mission polys to 1999 levels :)

but you forgot one thing,its the 1999 thief and thief 2 and early fan missions is why we fell in love with thief,not thief 3 or 4

Renault on 19/12/2014 at 04:18

The original question was whether better graphics (via New Dark) in Thief FMs are worth it (I assume this meant in relation to what type of PC is required to run it). The OP never said anything about sacrificing gameplay. They didn't say anything about Thief 3 or 4 either.

Given that, I would say the answer is yes. I'm guessing the majority of people have upgraded their PCs since 1998 - most have probably done it multiple times. Sure, there will be a few stragglers that haven't, but it's going to be a very small percentage. To restrict the quality of graphics just to appease this tiny portion of the fan base doesn't make any sense. The game should always be evolving, at least a little bit. Otherwise, we'd all still just be playing pong.

Random_Taffer on 19/12/2014 at 14:37

Quote Posted by downwinder

I thought it was a weird choice since it's winter time and the corn would probably all be chopped down and harvested. But then I also didn't get very far and the place looks abandoned- so maybe there's a story explanation to that. I wouldn't really say the mission was an example of "massive graphics." Those corn models seem to cause framerate issues in general. They were causing frame rate issues in the mission I'm working on (I only had 6-8 of them), so I opted to just remove them. At least the author warned that there may be stuttering in some areas and at least you didn't have to dodge around AI in that area or something.

Quote Posted by downwinder

what happen to the days where game play was more important then graphics,my personal opinion is the new generation is at fault for that ,hence why game consoles only pump out games that look good but game play is shit over all,that is why 100% of all new graphically intense games fade out in less then a year and you never hear about them again

I think 100% is way too high, but I can see that you're mostly venting and I understand your frustrations. I imagine most of the people here do since we're all fans of T1/2. I think the reason many non-multiplayer games with great graphics fade out in a year or less is because they're short, linear, and the fancy third person kill animations become tedious and gimmicky after a while.

Quote Posted by downwinder

a good example of this is the halo series,nothing more then unreal tournament 1999 with better graphics and perks,i am tired of people worried about graphics when the game it self has zero replay,i would rather see stock graphics and more game content.

I wouldn't say it has 0 replayability. I'm not a Halo fan, but it is what it is- An FPS where you shoot everything. People who play Halo generally stick around for the multiplayer, not the single player campaign over and over again. I assume by stock graphics in this instance you're referring back to Thief fan missions.

Quote Posted by downwinder

but in the end i think it comes down to new school gamers vs old school gamers

Come on, don't be that guy.

Quote Posted by downwinder

i am 40 years old now and i think graphics are not that important if the game is shit in game play,that is why console systems are close to dead,we got Nintendo which makes games for kids now,play station and x box are pretty much multi player games,that are just rehashes of older games,nothing original,all we got left is pc and that is starting to turn to shit cause everyone is worried about graphics,and not game play,that is why thief 3 and 4 failed they worried to much about graphic and not game play ,i am kinda shocked to see people even ask this question after seeing what it did to thief,it should be common sense that graphic are not the way to go in a game

What do you mean console systems are close to dead? Do you mean in your view?
Nintendo has always made games for kids. Since the very beginning. Are you too mature to enjoy a Mario or Zelda game? Super Smash Brothers is incredibly fun for all ages.
I don't consider Thief 3 a failure, unless you mean financially. It was a good game. Not great, but good. Focus on graphics is not why Thief 4 failed. Or perhaps, not the only or major reason and I think you know that.

Quote Posted by downwinder

but you forgot one thing,its the 1999 thief and thief 2 and early fan missions is why we fell in love with thief,not thief 3 or 4

So therefore, always keep them as close to stock as possible? Some early fan missions were not that great. They got a lot of praise that they didn't deserve mostly because we were all floored that they existed at all.

Quote Posted by Xorak

I think I'm going to make two versions of every mission I make from now on, one with the newer graphics allowed by NewDark and one done in the old Dromed style with older objects and texture quality, and then see which gets more love.

Don't waste your time. I can tell you right now that the higher quality textured mission will get more love, but not because the other is bad. So long as the better quality doesn't make Thief look like a power point presentation, it'll win easily.

Quote Posted by fortuni

As for missions with gameplay / puzzles / atmosphere, i really do get the impression you have not played any recent releases, namely Morteus Liber, Exile: Being Thief 2, The Unknown Treasure....and so many other great missions, yes some missions do not have that special magic touch that makes them great, but that was just as true back in the early days of Thief as it is today, not every game has that special elusive superb quality to it....that's down to the authorship, the writing, the plot, the extra little twists put in the game by the author, the ambiance, the background music....etc and has nothing to do with graphic ND or Non ND, but obviously they can add to the ambiance in a massive way

so to dismiss all recent releases as rubbish as you seem to do is is.....erm...rubbish IMHO, but more importantly offensive to all authors who strive to produce the very best missions that they can, superb ND graphics or not

Indeed. Though he didn't mention any recent mission except for The Farm, I'd be curious about what newer missions he's "found to be shit."

Quote Posted by nbohr1more

3) Are you doing something suited to the engine?
For example, are you bogging down a map with scripting events to make AI behave more intelligently when you could instead build
your mission on The Dark Mod where the AI are more intelligent by default and the source is openly available to add new features to
the core project.

I've never seen heavily scripted intelligent AI cause any kind of slow down even in Old Dark. Ever.

baeuchlein on 19/12/2014 at 15:55

I also selected "It depends". Graphics may visually enhance gameplay, sometimes even a lot (think of, e.g., "A Night in Rocksbourg 3"), but for me, they're not the main reason for playing Thief. Pushing graphics to the max just because someone wants to doesn't make any sense for me. Doing it to create a visually stunning and fitting place may be worth it, on the other hand. However, I won't upgrade my (not so powerful) computers just because FMs get more and more demanding for hardware. While playing "Death's Turbid Veil", I had to look down onto the ground in some areas to avoid a slideshow. I can do that occasionally, but I won't do it on a regular basis if every new mission turns out to have such areas in store.

As someone stated before: If the improved graphics are very important or even essential for the mission, go ahead and use them. If they just add a bit of eye candy and nothing else, however, they won't impress me much.

Concerning videos in NewDark, well - one should be careful with these. For some reason, NewDark has problems on at least one of my machines even when just playing the original DEATH.AVI. That one didn't even give an ancient Pentium-II (350 MHz, ancient ATI pre-Radeon video card) any trouble with Thief 2 v1.18, but with NewDark, even an Athlon XP (1,7 GHz, Radeon 9550) will display it only with occasional stuttering. The higher the resolution of the movies is, the more stuttering will appear. Sometimes, even a fairly new Core i3 (2,3 GHz) based notebook with onboard Intel HD 3000 graphics produces only a slideshow with newer movies (e.g., the ones from "Island of Sorrow").