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Leachman
Village Dweller
Joined: 11 Dec 2002
Posts: 5
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Couple questions...
In the screenshots here on RPGdot, it looks like the character models have no fingers. Is this correct? Do characters not have articulating fingers?
Please don't tell me I have to watch NPCs point deformed stub-hands at me instead of fingers.
Also, the shots I Ihave seen have pretty blocky terrain geometry.... like a hill is a blocky cluster of 6 polygons, rather than having any sort of roundness to it. Is this correct as well?
It's not a big deal really, since there are many more important things than geometry, but I can't help but wonder why in the shots that I have seen, they are using five-year-old type technology.
Leachman |
Wed Dec 11, 2002 7:19 pm |
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Erb Duchenne
Slayer
Joined: 08 Jun 2002
Posts: 987
Location: malaysia |
Which screenshot?
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Erb Duchenne |
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Wed Dec 11, 2002 7:57 pm |
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Leachman
Village Dweller
Joined: 11 Dec 2002
Posts: 5
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Any screenshot showing character or NPC hands, or any showing outdoor countryside terrain. I noticed the same thing in the shots at gamespot. |
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Wed Dec 11, 2002 8:24 pm |
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Ovädershimmel
Village Dweller
Joined: 19 Oct 2002
Posts: 9
Location: Sweden |
Nope, no modelled fingers.
The graphics is just the same as Gothic I but with added vegitation and sky/water effects. It's a low poly game yes, but i prefer that over constant loading times and choppy gameplay like in Morrowind, that truly takes away the atmosphere of being "there". I really love the new vegitation . |
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Wed Dec 11, 2002 9:02 pm |
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Gorath
Mostly Harmless
Joined: 03 Sep 2001
Posts: 6327
Location: NRW, Germany |
quote:
Originally posted by Leachman
Also, the shots I Ihave seen have pretty blocky terrain geometry.... like a hill is a blocky cluster of 6 polygons, rather than having any sort of roundness to it. Is this correct as well?
Yes and no. 
Gothic II uses the same engine as Gothic 1 (release: March 2001). This engine (a) is 3D (b) is optimized for masses of NPCs with lots of AI (c) is optimized for incredibly long viewing distance (d) loads the complete(!) world (except dungeons, and 'Old World' in G2) at startup. Every single screenshots shows the compromises Piranha Bytes had to make to keep the performance on an acceptable level on today´s PCs.
Both Gothics look much better in motion than on stills because you do not recognise the sometimes 'blocky' elements when the world around you is alive and you can look 3 km. When G1 was released it had by far the best graphics of all RPGs available. G2 is slightly improved and uses a higher texture resolution, so the graphics is still pretty good for this genre. The price are the hardware requirements.
G1 had, IMHO, the best landscape design of all games in all genres.
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Webmaster GothicDot |
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Wed Dec 11, 2002 9:04 pm |
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AnimalMother
Head Merchant
Joined: 08 Dec 2002
Posts: 56
Location: UK |
I agree, imo gothic had the best graphics of any RPG when it came out and would still hold it's own now.
Gothic 2's graphics are better in many ways, as i can testify from the demo, and believe me u won't notice whether the npc have articulating fingers when they're chasing u for killing their wife 
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A good man may be stupid and still be good, but a bad man must have brains. |
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Wed Dec 11, 2002 10:19 pm |
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Leachman
Village Dweller
Joined: 11 Dec 2002
Posts: 5
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Fair enough responses.
I just finished Arx Fatalis and noticed that many people on Jowood's boards also recommended checking Gothic out. Right now I'm playing th Demo for Gothic 1, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
I don't really have an appreciation of why compromises were necessary because I haven't played the retail game to find out. The space I can travel to is limited in the demo, and I haven't played much so I can't comment on the AI. Graphics aren't paramount to me anyways.
I should have enough time to finish gothic by the time Gothic II is available. It should be cheap by now! 
Leachman |
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Thu Dec 12, 2002 4:39 pm |
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Gorath
Mostly Harmless
Joined: 03 Sep 2001
Posts: 6327
Location: NRW, Germany |
All Gothic cheats work in the demo. You can easily explore more territory.
And you can ramp up the graphics some more if you have a relatively fast machine.
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Webmaster GothicDot |
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Thu Dec 12, 2002 7:37 pm |
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Srikandi
Noble Knight
Joined: 04 Dec 2001
Posts: 222
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I did a detailed review of the graphics in the G2 demo in the "first impressions" thread. To me the graphics seem notably improved over G1, not so much in the area of polygons (which are still used with great restraint ), but in the use of foliage and ambient plant (and animal) life... the world seems a lot fuller. For instance, on the farm there are fields of waist-high grain... they're modelled using flat planes with transparency maps, but you can see the workers actually in the grain rather than on it. The effect works well, and most games don't bother with that sort of thing. |
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Fri Dec 13, 2002 12:56 am |
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werpu
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 21 Jul 2002
Posts: 27
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Unfortunately the screenshots cant do the game justice. I was rather dissapointed by the released screenshots and then I installed G2 and basically was awed for 10 full hours. Yes G2 is a game of compromise in the graphics area. Since you cant stress modern hardware more than G2 does. But if you look at the full game you will see that there is a huge difference in the graphics between the game and the screenies. The difference simply is, movement and lively detail as well as textures which for a strange reason always look worse on the screenies than in real life.
I will give an example for this: Go into a farmers field, there you can see the crop in the stills you only see a bunch of (around a few hundred I guess) crop plants standing out. If you look at the scren you can see every single of this plant moving in the wind slightly. The same goes for the sky and the ocean which both use several semi transparent layers of huge textures with a different transparency level moving into different directions at the same time to simulate wave layers and clound layers.
As for the textures, believe me it makes a huge difference to see a 640x480 screeny and then standing in front of a huge mountain which has a front made up of around 3 textures being bigger than the average screeny of the game and using a huge detail level. |
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Fri Dec 13, 2002 2:19 am |
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Erb Duchenne
Slayer
Joined: 08 Jun 2002
Posts: 987
Location: malaysia |
quote:
Originally posted by Leachman
...In the screenshots here on RPGdot, it looks like the character models have no fingers. Is this correct? Do characters not have articulating fingers?
 I had thought this was the norm. You mean there actually are games where the characters have ten fingers each and each of them articulates? Which one/s? I gotta see. 
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Erb Duchenne |
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Fri Dec 13, 2002 6:43 pm |
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