How feasible are graphics like these? Link to aoe2 digital painting

[Centurion]

These graphics are awesome. I want to know if graphics of this quality are feasible with 0 a.d. If not what about other games?

http://jonasjensenart.deviantart.com/art/Age-of-Empires-Town-Center-255469105

In order of personal priority

Backgrounds - like Campaigns with voice overs, as Aoe2 had before every mission sketches and drawings

Gameplay - if actually in a Random Map, would this place big limits on the processor, number of units, path finding, Gpu? I'm not a programmer, but I know a little about computers - I've been taking them apart since I wa a kid

Record playback: if actual gameplay could not handle it, would said renderer be able to render recorded games in this quality?

Age of Empires II HD was a big disappointment graphics wise, and caused me to sit on the fence.

Edited February 25, 2015 by Centurion

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I think AOEO followed that "painterly" style, but the design work was too cartoony. I can see the AOEO engine being retrofit with the art styleof your link and would work well.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Graffic style like these would be great:

[wraitii]

That's still a few years away, sadly

[Stan`]

Needs some coding too

[Centurion]

I'd play an empire sim like that as long as I didn't have to control military. My dad doesn't like the people dieing thing

[historic_bruno]

These graphics are awesome. I want to know if graphics of this quality are feasible with 0 a.d. If not what about other games?

What exactly are we referring to, extremely detailed graphics, or the painted aspect of those graphics? I imagine some artsy effects could be produced by shaders though I have no examples in mind.

Backgrounds - like Campaigns with voice overs, as Aoe2 had before every mission sketches and drawings

Drawings and voice overs aren't really technically challenging, the only thing there is needing artists to do the work (oh, and we would need campaigns implemented )

Gameplay - if actually in a Random Map, would this place big limits on the processor, number of units, path finding, Gpu?

Do you mean background images derived from gameplay scenes? In fact, I would like to see something similar in at least one case: an actual rendered scene of the game for the graphics settings menu (to see how adjusting things affects quality) For that it might be handy to have a way to "export" a scene in 0 A.D. for later viewing with all the correct meshes, textures, materials, etc.

Age of Empires II HD was a big disappointment graphics wise, and caused me to sit on the fence.

Considering that series started in the 90s, it's not fair to expect "modern" level of graphics in those games, is it? By the way, you can get most of the changes in the HD edition for free, but by no means did they rewrite the whole game for modern hardware which would be required to even reach 0 A.D.'s level.

[Zeta1127]

The problem is, unlike the Stronghold HD patches for Stronghold and Crusader, AoE2 HD is a rerelease not patches to the existing game, which fragments the AoE2 community. And don't get me started on tying The Forgotten to AoE2 HD.

Edited February 26, 2015 by Zeta1127

[Stan`]

The problem is, unlike the Stronghold HD patches for Stronghold and Crusader, AoE2 HD is a rerelease not patches to the existing game, which fragments the AoE2 community. And don't get me started on tying The Forgotten to AoE2 HD.

Your post doesn't make sense to me X)

[Andrettin]

The problem is, unlike the Stronghold HD patches for Stronghold and Crusader, AoE2 HD is a rerelease not patches to the existing game, which fragments the AoE2 community. And don't get me started on tying The Forgotten to AoE2 HD.

What's wrong with The Forgotten?

[auron2401]

It makes sense to me, I haven't bought aoe2hd or aomhd. I refuse to pay so much for what is literally just a poor upgrade in textures.
if the forgotten came WITH Aoe2hd.. maybe..

However, i recently shelled out for Homeworld remastered, that is a HD Remake done right, it's not "give us alot of money for a resolution upgrade", they did much more than that, thus is much less dishonourable.

I mean, seriously, 8/9 GB vs less than 1 gig? Not all of that is textures.

Edited February 27, 2015 by auron2401

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Do you have legit copy or did you pirate AOE2? For most people aoe2 was unavailable with legal means. aoe2 hd brought aoe2 back to a new generation of player. Steam support was also nice addition. "fragmenting" an online "community" of software pirates is not within Valve's concern.

[niektb]

I suppose a lot of people had somehow access to legal copies. AOE2 had a few redistributions with gold editions (I bought one of these). And if anything I think people would pirate the HD version since it is ridiculous to ask 20 bucks for something that userpatches also brought (with the exception of some retexturing en steam support).

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I suppose a lot of people had somehow access to legal copies. AOE2 had a few redistributions with gold editions (I bought one of these). And if anything I think people would pirate the HD version since it is ridiculous to ask 20 bucks for something that userpatches also brought (with the exception of some retexturing en steam support).

20 bucks is not a lot of money for an adult to pay to support the deveopment of a game that they have spent probably 1000s of hours playing. If you already have the game, then don't buy it. Some people didn;'t have the game, so they buy it.

Edited February 27, 2015 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[niektb]

And that exactly results into a fragmented community...

[Zeta1127]

I already have AoE2 legally, since I never pirate anything, which I only got a few years ago, and I am pretty sure AoE2 can generally still be obtained from Wal-Mart or Target for $10. Unfortunately, it isn't both AoE and AoE2 with their expansions, which is what I got a few years ago in the form of AoE:CE, but it is at least still available. The problem is, if one wants to get The Forgotten, then they have to get AoE2 HD, which is disrespectful to fans who have support the franchise over the years and fragments the community since plenty of fans still have AoE2.

Edited February 27, 2015 by Zeta1127

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

And that exactly results into a fragmented community...

The community who has gotten 1000s of hours of entertainment from the franchise could pay the 20 dollar and stay unfragmented.

[Wijitmaker]

Factoid... The Forgotten uses art from the mod "Rome at War" made by Wildfire Studios back in 2001, later turned into Wildfire Games.

I'm not sure if people can even still install this mod... http://wildfiregames.com/raw/

[Zeta1127]

I have been to scared that I would break one of my installs of AoE2 to give RaW a try.

Why would anyone want to buy something when they can basically obtain similar results with unofficial patches? Which makes AoE2 HD come across as little more than a cash grab.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I have been to scared that I would break one of my installs of AoE2 to give RaW a try.

Why would anyone want to buy something when they can basically obtain similar results with unofficial patches? Which makes AoE2 HD come across as little more than a cash grab.

Some people would want official patches. Not everyone is modder.

[Zeta1127]

Well, of course official patches are preferrable. My point is, AoE2 HD doesn't do nearly enough to merit being an HD remake. AoE2 HD is more consistent with what the Stronghold and Crusader HD patches did than say Homeworld Remastered or the Anniversary editions of Halo and Halo 2, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection.

[Centurion]

I am nervous to buy aoe2. Yes I have' pirated 'it, because I don't have cd drive anymore and my discs are old - last time a few years ago I tried to install,I'm lost my gold (the collectors edition, I believe) edition of the conquerors so I was trying to install it but.. Well, my two old conquerors disc that I did still have left was missing files, so I had to alternate the discs. All scratched up and stuff, took almost an hour and a few restarts before I succeeded

I can still buy it in stores for ten bucks but money is really tighter and more debts now than it used to. Food is a hurdle because we try to live like we always do in every other way but prices are going up across the board. Also Ame and dad gave bought it AT LEAST 3 times, possibly more. and we got AOE like four or five times - don't get the collectors edition version, that does not have the redbook audio tracks. Thing is back then you could pop the disc in and play. Now everyone has to WORK to get the game to work. Hours of work and technical issues to make it play and yet they still sell that in stores. Moreover, considering both the store and the STEAM version, it doesn't come with the nice box or manual anymore - and I do miss them. That reduces the value of the purchase

Edited March 1, 2015 by Centurion

[Kicking_Bird]

That's still a few years away, sadly

What exactly are we referring to, extremely detailed graphics, or the painted aspect of those graphics? I imagine some artsy effects could be produced by shaders though I have no examples in mind.

55-60% of that graphic level is achievable now, besides the depth rendered water and shore waves.

1. Firstly I previously stated in my color theory thread, you will never have these graphics until colour theory and colour harmony is applied across this game. That painting or render is artwork. Do you see any loud noisy textures? All the colors and textures complement each other, everything is within the right value range - there are no overexposed, underexposed, oversaturated, underaturated or high contrast out of place textures or colors or values.

2. You have to stop pixel painting in highlights on textures, you make a base diffuse map with some ambient occlusion, the specular map will control how much light bounces off the surface. You never need to paint in highlights unless its a cartoon game.

3. Secondly those models/objects are a lot more detailed, as I stated you need a LOD system or at least a toggle that can switch high/low models.

4. There is lots of ambient occlusion going on in that scene, you already have a baked ambient occlusion overlay UV2 shader, all you need to do implement is the second method which is vertex ambient occlusion:

antongerdelan.net/opengl/vertexbuffers.html - I don't know if this will help or not but essentially you need to access and enable vertex colors and by enabling them they should overlay/multiply on top of the texture mapped on the faces.

Vertex AO also takes no memory up and doesn't use texture space like local lightmaps, both of them combined will give convincing soft shadows

So that covers 60% of the overall quality, these are additional shaders that will probably take longer to figure out and script and are more "next gen".

5. Fresnel lighting will massively increase the games graphic quality because it will have more realistic effect on shading, it should be used on rocks, stone, metal, buildings and units could use it aswell but a very low power of it.

www.roxlu.com/2014/037/opengl-rim-shader - here is link I found on it for opengl.

6. Nearing the end, you would need a simple sub surface scattering shader for foliage, since light passes through leaves and leaves are not solid bricks they have different lighting properties:

7. Lastly we have image based lighting:

I cannot begin to imagine what kind of math goes into this, sorry for the long posts. It's pretty cool stuff though.

Well that was pretty much all the shaders and tools we need to make graphics like the one in the painting/render, (I think its a render because the ambient occlusion under the main stone building is way to dark and there is tiling on the dock roof).

So there are all the examples you need Bruno

Edited March 10, 2015 by Kicking_Bird

[wraitii]

It's obviously a high-quality 3D render. The wave foam is the worst thing on that screenshot.

Replicating the effect is still basically impossible on current GPUs, except maybe for technical demos on very-high-end GPUS and using a ton of work beforehand (for light maps and so on).