Art style

[konjad]

I would rather have the game dark and realistic in terms of graphics than comicbookish, no matter other aspect of the game

F3 did that, and it all ended up just being dreary, and not that atmospheric at all. Personally I don't want a game that's brown all the time

Fallout 3 didn't look very serious, realistic or dark because the game itself was just stupid and that look didn't fit it. New Vegas does it great. You get there ever horror-like locations and it is natural and perfect in the game.

[Smejki]

I would rather have the game dark and realistic in terms of graphics than comicbookish, no matter other aspect of the game

F3 did that, and it all ended up just being dreary, and not that atmospheric at all. Personally I don't want a game that's brown all the time

well, I dont want the game to be mono-colorish. wide color pallete will be appreciated.

[hiptanaka]

Cell shading wouldn't be my first choice. It often comes with a "caricature tone" I wouldn't want here.

But maybe if they didn't use any of the disproportional and exaggerated body shape stuff.

[Alaseur]

Cell shading wouldn't be my first choice. It often comes with a "caricature tone" I wouldn't want here.

But maybe if they didn't use any of the disproportional and exaggerated body shape stuff.

That's the kind of stuff I don't like. Any disproportional body parts bug's me to no end.

[hiptanaka]

Cell shading wouldn't be my first choice. It often comes with a "caricature tone" I wouldn't want here.

But maybe if they didn't use any of the disproportional and exaggerated body shape stuff.

That's the kind of stuff I don't like. Any disproportional body parts bug's me to no end.

Yeah. That's the reason I haven't touched Torchlight, even though I really like Diablo 1.

[HarryTheBunnyMaster]

First of all, creating a game with the 3D art of Fallout 3 or New Vegas is going to be prohibitively expensive - just buying or making the technology required would use up most of the million dollars. I'd rather all the money be spent in content not eye candy.

Second, I think it would be a tragedy if the original 2D tile artwork is abandoned. In terms of art in video games, it's on a spectrum between a book and a film. Games fall somewhere in between, somewhat closer to film these days. The good thing about games of yore with their (much) simpler graphics is that it was left up the player's imagination to fill in the blanks - and nothing is so powerful.

Going down the 3D route will never achieve the fidelity that we'd need. Instead, my vote is for high-res 2D tile sets where maps and content can be pumped out - concentrate on the content not the art - please!! THAT's what made WL great.

[Oesophagus]

That's the kind of stuff I don't like. Any disproportional body parts bug's me to no end.

Yeah. That's the reason I haven't touched Torchlight, even though I really like Diablo 1.

That's the reason why I played torchlight for 3 hours and just sort of stopped and never came back.

Second, I think it would be a tragedy if the original 2D tile artwork is abandoned. In terms of art in video games, it's on a spectrum between a book and a film. Games fall somewhere in between, somewhat closer to film these days. The good thing about games of yore with their (much) simpler graphics is that it was left up the player's imagination to fill in the blanks - and nothing is so powerful

Okay, but you gotta remember that W1's graphics were a result of limitations. I do agree that content > presentation, but in this day and age, it's not really that difficult to have decent 3d graphics, or a combination of 2D and 3D. If W2 ends up looking like ToEE, I'm not complaining.
Though I still kinda like the idea of cell shaded graphics (or the thing that borderlands did), I think they work quite well. But that may be because I'm tired of the piss filter and massive amounts of blur in every new game...

[Psilos]

I would personally prefer a more realistic approach rather than cell-shading which gives a more cartoon and less serious feel to the game, but it really all depends on the art direction, . Fallout 3 was very limited by it's engine and the art direction was not good enough to make up for it, but for games like Portal 2 for example, even though the source engine isn't as powerful as say the Unreal Engine or Cry Engine, it was extremely beautiful thanks to an excellent art direction.
Deus Ex : Human Revolution as well made up for it's less powerful game engine thanks to a great art direction.
As far as cell Shading goes, Team Fortress 2 is a great example of it done right with a very consistent art style ( that is until they started adding hats).
Rage that came out recently is more realistic than borderlands, but it still has that hand drawn feel to it.

Even comparing games like Call of Duty And Battlefield, Battlefield was greatly superior graphically not only because of it's more powerful engine but also thanks to it's better art direction that involved a few more colours than brown and grey.
Mirror's Edge and Bioshock are other examples of great art direction.

My point is that the art direction in itself is much more important than the technology used to achieve it, Cell Shading will not systematically make your game look more 2D and if badly done it can definitely make it look like a piece of shit, and a realistic game still needs good art direction if it's going to look good.

[Hiver]

I would personally prefer a more realistic approach rather than cell-shading which gives a more cartoon and less serious feel to the game, but it really all depends on the art direction.
/
My point is that the art direction in itself is much more important than the technology used to achieve it, Cell Shading will not systematically make your game look more 2D and if badly done it can definitely make it look like a piece of shit, and a realistic game still needs good art direction if it's going to look good.

My initial premise was that how good the game looks depends largely on art direction, not on the engine.
I just found cel shading to be a good technique that had potential to show that 3D doeasnt have to mean loss of visual fidelity of best 2D games a lot of people like very much still. including me. I repeatedly stated that i have no interest in Wasteland2 looking anything like games i listed as example.

But nice to see someone gets the difference anyway.

First of all, creating a game with the 3D art of Fallout 3 or New Vegas is going to be prohibitively expensive -

http://unigine.com/products/unigine/ 30,000 kabush - starting price etc.

Games fall somewhere in between, somewhat closer to film these days.

Whose fault is that? movies eh? i think youve been playing to many bad games recently.
Or seen too much bad implementation that intentionally aims for that kind of effect.

Going down the 3D route will never achieve the fidelity that we'd need.

Oh, I so disagree.

Cell shading wouldn't be my first choice. It often comes with a "caricature tone" I wouldn't want here.

But maybe if they didn't use any of the disproportional and exaggerated body shape stuff.

Please, none of that has anything to do with the tech or art direction/style and eventual design someone chooses.

[Akira28]

Some of the folks were mentioning Gamma World as an artistic influence on the original game. And if you notice, it's post apocalyptic without being too unrealistic, no Wasteland super heroes with muscles popping. Varied use of colors, even if slightly washed out, everything doesn't look like it's covered in 2 inches of sand and dust. I think it's important to have a nice palette range with plenty of color. Fallout as an example of too many browns and rusty reds. The original Wasteland had plenty of green, plenty of water, a fair amount of radioactive desert browns and reds, lots of nuclear yellows, colored buildings, all of that. Street signs and billboard ads, in color, post-apocalyptic nature still trying to bloom. People in various colorful costumes and styles. Let all of that be represented, because we can, plus because it'd be more realistic. People who find their clothes from a 20th century junkyard wouldn't be stuck with leather browns and tans, they'd be wearing old basketball jerseys, ripped bluejeans, mismatched cowboy or army surplus boots, etc. Someone would have a mohawk. Let that unique style be represented as well. 80s rad-punks mixed in with nuclear rednecks from hell.


(i love her "No Nukes" shirt!)


And have varied terrain, some totally desert dry, some oasis like, some ruined modern architecture with shattered glass, bent steel, overgrown with green vines, etc. Mix it up, but make it full color. Mix up the character portraits too. The portraits from Wasteland were so varied and interesting, so we should have that here.

[Psilos]

Personally I do not find cell shading to give off a very 2D game style, IMO it gives more of a cartoon/animation movie effect. I also do not really see the point of wanting 3D to look like 2D, I'm not saying it can't be done or that it won't look good, and I do believe some video games already do it quite well, but do you want it to look like 2D just for the sake of Nostalgia or because 2D looks better than 3D ?

Personally I simply want a great art direction that sparks my imagination and that is pleasant to the eye, and I don't think it is necessary for the artists to make it look 2D to achieve that, I just want them to capture the essence of the world and give us a memorable art style that fits in with the rest of the game.

[kurosawa]

i have seen some posts about the "talking heads" from fallout. it would be great to see them in wasteland 2. i would prefer paintings like you can see here

http://www.conceptart.org/

easy and cheap to produce, leaves space for your imagination. no need for voice acting.
you also could use some fullscreen-paintings (speedpainting) to introduce special locations


edit1: i just read that Andrée Wallin is the concept artist for the game. best preconditions


http://www.thetripatorium.com/images/up ... Wallin.jpg

http://www.thetripatorium.com/images/si ... 00x403.jpg

[eastc]

I would rather have the game dark and realistic in terms of graphics than comicbookish, no matter other aspect of the game

F3 did that, and it all ended up just being dreary, and not that atmospheric at all. Personally I don't want a game that's brown all the time

Yes, please enough with the brown on brown and grey on grey games. My aging eyes just can't handle it!

Wasteland had plenty of colors. Visual clarity helps gameplay. It doesn't need to be rainbow bright but it doesn't need to different shades of brown either.

[HarryTheBunnyMaster]

First of all, creating a game with the 3D art of Fallout 3 or New Vegas is going to be prohibitively expensive -

http://unigine.com/products/unigine/ 30,000 kabush - starting price etc.

For comparison, what other games are using that engine?

Even by some miracle if there were an inexpensive engine capable of rendering at the quality of FO3, the art team alone would be ridiculous for a world the size of WL.

Anyway, my point is that for the budget I think a lot of people will be disappointed in the final graphical quality if a 3D world is attempted. My understanding from the material that has been released is that it will be true to the original, and I reckon that's a good thing.

Going down the 3D route will never achieve the fidelity that we'd need.

Oh, I so disagree.

Well, I'd agree with you if the budget was 30 million rather than 1. But we're talking about an 18 month project - that's a team less than 10 people - and that's split between designers, programmers, artists, and other roles. Everything is going to need to be done with a bunch of prefabs. In 3D that invariably looks dull (think about all the locations made up from the same models...). In 2D tiles, a lot more art can be pumped out faster. We need to be realistic about our expectations is all.

[GROUNDZERO]

The game should have a dark 80´s look, i think.

[pedobeer]

Well, if they could manage to give us post-apocalyptic feel(not necessarily dark, the Fallout 1/2 and especially Wasteland for example weren't really grim) with 3d and cell-shading, than I could only agree. Otherwise 2d it is.

[kurosawa]

Well, if they could manage to give us post-apocalyptic feel(not necessarily dark, the Fallout 1/2 and especially Wasteland for example weren't really grim) with 3d and cell-shading, than I could only agree. Otherwise 2d it is.

...sorry, for me celshading wouldnt work. too cartoonish, would take away the mature tone. i would have no problem with prerendered backrounds, raeltime rendered characters and 2d paintings for the "talking heads", special charakters.

[Psilos]

Well, I'd agree with you if the budget was 30 million rather than 1. But we're talking about an 18 month project - that's a team less than 10 people - and that's split between designers, programmers, artists, and other roles. Everything is going to need to be done with a bunch of prefabs. In 3D that invariably looks dull (think about all the locations made up from the same models...). In 2D tiles, a lot more art can be pumped out faster. We need to be realistic about our expectations is all.

On what do you base all this ? This is 2012 and 3D technology has evolved quite a lot in the last decade and it is possible to produce a great deal of models in a relatively short amount of time, modular 3D along with decals and small props to break things up, with proper rendering in engine and art direction will look just as good as any 2D tiles if not better and can be produced just as fast if not faster, 3D objects can be rotated to avoid repetition while in 2D every view has to be drawn separately, 3D animation is much more efficient than having to make frame by frame, which is why in Fallout they rendered the sprites from 3D models, also almost all the item Icons were made from 3D models. 3D allows all of the equipment to be displayed on character without any additional sprites.

Any modern 3D engine can be adapted for Isometric view and allow all kinds of fancy effects to make the game look better, also for an Isometric/top down game the assets don't need to be nearly as detailed as for a FPS, I'm quite confident that a team of skilled artist can produce a very decent looking game without needing to use 2D.

I am not against a 2D game, but I do believe that in this day and age, 3D is the way to go.

[kurosawa]

Well, I'd agree with you if the budget was 30 million rather than 1. But we're talking about an 18 month project - that's a team less than 10 people - and that's split between designers, programmers, artists, and other roles. Everything is going to need to be done with a bunch of prefabs. In 3D that invariably looks dull (think about all the locations made up from the same models...). In 2D tiles, a lot more art can be pumped out faster. We need to be realistic about our expectations is all.

On what do you base all this ? This is 2012 and 3D technology has evolved quite a lot in the last decade and it is possible to produce a great deal of models in a relatively short amount of time, modular 3D along with decals and small props to break things up, with proper rendering in engine and art direction will look just as good as any 2D tiles if not better and can be produced just as fast if not faster, 3D objects can be rotated to avoid repetition while in 2D every view has to be drawn separately, 3D animation is much more efficient than having to make frame by frame, which is why in Fallout they rendered the sprites from 3D models, also almost all the item Icons were made from 3D models. 3D allows all of the equipment to be displayed on character without any additional sprites.

Any modern 3D engine can be adapted for Isometric view and allow all kinds of fancy effects to make the game look better, also for an Isometric/top down game the assets don't need to be nearly as detailed as for a FPS, I'm quite confident that a team of skilled artist can produce a very decent looking game without needing to use 2D.

I am not against a 2D game, but I do believe that in this day and age, 3D is the way to go.

... i think you are right. but only for the characters. to render the gameworld in realtime and in high detail you would need a very fast computer. i believe it would be better (for the detail) to prerender the backrounds. i never had a problem with the static backrounds of fallout 1-2. no need to rotate the camera, for me...

[Psilos]

My computer is built for gaming so that is no problem for me but I can completely understand that you are concerned about the game using up too much resource. However, as I already said Isometric uses much less detailed environment as we see them from farther away and with proper optimization such games can run on old hardware just fine, I think Torchlight on it's lowest settings could run just fine on weak machines and still look half decent.

I also prefer a static camera view, so I wouldn't mind a pre-rendered background, but then I am no game developer so I wouldn't exactly know which would be the most viable option. I do however believe that stuff like animated backgounds ( moving river, bushes/trees affected by wind) or weather effect (rain, sandstorm etc..) , dynamic lightning ( for example when lighting matches in caves) could add a whole new dimension to the game without affecting performances too much, and these could be deactivated for lower end PCs.

It all depends on the kind of graphic power they are going to expect from their customer.