Game News First Wasteland 2 LA screenshot revealed

[Roguey]

Not at all.

And again, there's a massive difference between "graphix, bro!" and "bad art direction, poorly implemented".

"Don't spend any extra money on the graphics" includes "save money by buying crap from the Unity asset store instead of making assets with a consistent look."

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Not at all.

Oh. Well, because that looked eerily similar to my sentiments before my spirit was broken and I know how you like to...ehrm....keep track of things.

"Don't spend any extra money on the graphics" includes "save money by buying crap from the Unity asset store instead of making assets with a consistent look."

Sure, but with great artistic direction one should be able to make something appear deliberate, professional and compelling. They have not. Everything so far (including the gameplay) looks like it was put together with what was left laying around in the garage after the previous tenants moved out with no foresight on what the end result might be.

 

[shihonage]

I'm not going to judge until it's feature and content complete, and they have two more months of crunch time to make all kinds of drastic changes.

I remember thinking the same thing after trying the beta of Hellgate: London.

 

[Shevek]

I have to admit that the graphics of W2 do seem somewhat "pieced together." Still, who cares? Its not as noticeable as, say, Neverwinter Nights. Also, Fallout 1/2 was made with tilesets. Most of its locales were rather drab and bland looking. I don't recall tons of enemy or car models or whatever. It still managed to draw me in and immerse me with great gameplay, characters, music, etc.

 

[shihonage]

In games using 2D sprites, they usually have several varieties of the same sprite, touched up to look a bit different.

This was especially prominent in Fallout: Tactics, which had a rich library of superbly classified sprites (~28000 of them), with many variations on the same thing but looking different.

 

[Morality Games]

Tags: InXile Entertainment; Wasteland 2

I don't mind normally make newsposts just for screenshots, but since this is the first time we've ever seen one of Wasteland 2's California areas, I figured I'd make an exception. From the game's official Tumblr (click to enlarge):

The LA area of Wasteland 2 will have a markedly different look than that of Arizona. A sneak peek.
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Pretty! You remember those hermit crabs they talked about way back when? I guess this is what they've become.

Oh, not another one of these. I'm a little tired today, so . . .

(use-your-imagination-fill-in-the-blanks generic shitty comment about how much Wasteland 2 sucks)

In seriousness (in response to the car comments), during the first pass its best to approach the production of art as less how you can make it perfect and more about how many flaws you can get away with while getting across its value. This is especially true during the first pass, where you have to learn through the structural weaknesses inherent to your technique while still creating something marketable. That way you can prove that you did learn from your mistakes.

Eh, maybe it's disappointing, but I'm sure next time it will go better.

It's good to see that somebody has been maintaining the water supply to Los Angeles despite a nuclear war. LA is a desert. I don't believe there would be vast forests and jungles covering the ruins of the city. The reality would be sun baked desert with very little vegetation. Closer to the boneyard of Fallout 1 then what were seeing here.

That must be the million they spent on scientific realism.

The only thing that makes L.A. occasionally green are the canals. When they broke down along with irrigation systems Los Angeles would look the exact opposite of that screenshot.

Well, sure, but:

(1) LA in the Fallout universe is a blasted ruin, so Wasteland has to be different

(2) people complained that there were too many desert tones in the game's landscapes

... I'm sure there will be a suitable lore explanation for why LA's climate contradicts what one would expect from the ecology pre and post nuclear war.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

Not at all.

And again, there's a massive difference between "graphix, bro!" and "bad art direction, poorly implemented".

"Don't spend any extra money on the graphics" includes "save money by buying crap from the Unity asset store instead of making assets with a consistent look."

This is why I bought a lot of post-processing tools from the Unity Asset store. Those assets are not good out of the box. I bought tools that actually age textures, find edges to add corrosion and rust to and overlay patterns that made them look worn. This can take a brand new looking asset and put it through a dramatic transformation where it looks like an artist hand painted the texture on it to make it look much older. If you bake in light mapping after that and add occlusion shading it can really look like it was an AAA customised asset designed to look post-apocalyptic. I guessed from looking at these screenshots that the WASTELAND team is not doing any of this, much less having artists post-process their items.

 

[norolim]

Looks nice, but those walls. The technology used to build them must have been incredibly advanced. Probably the same magic they used for the arches in PoE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforced_concrete

I was joking, mate, not trying to start a conversation about the characteristics of concrete walls, but if you insist...that is not how reinforced concrete walls collapse. This is what happens:

The wall gets deformed and twisted, the concrete cracks and chips away, revealing the steel bars. The picture, you posted shows an extremely unusual event. It looks like there was a problem with the foundations and the building probably collapsed rather slowly. Still, if you look closely, you'll see most of the effects I described. It's not a perfectly straight and smooth wall. And I'm pretty sure it would look much worse if they left it there for a century (as in case of the W2 walls) for the environmental conditions to work on it a little. Besides, walls like the one on the screenshot, if made of concrete, are usually built from several prefabricated elements. The joints between the elements are the weakest points, and if you apply lateral force to them, they will give way. That makes the image on the screenshot even less likely.

I'm not saying it bothers me, though. It's a game, it's a simplified representation and it's OK.

 

[FeelTheRads]

And some people have problems with these discussions. Tell me, on what other game forums can you learn about stuff like this?
That's why here we wear monocles and over there they still marvel at toilet paper.

 

[Roguey]

I'm not going to judge until it's feature and content complete, and they have two more months of crunch time to make all kinds of drastic changes.

I remember thinking the same thing after trying the beta of Hellgate: London.

That game was garbage. It looks to me like Wasteland 2 is mediocre. Mediocrity can be polished into good. There are some people who claim Hellgate was polished into mediocre after all the patches but I'm not going to find out for myself.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

I know it's really not important but it's Sunday and I just woke up so oh what the heck...

I have to admit that the graphics of W2 do seem somewhat "pieced together." Still, who cares? Its not as noticeable as, say, Neverwinter Nights. Also, Fallout 1/2 was made with tilesets. Most of its locales were rather drab and bland looking. I don't recall tons of enemy or car models or whatever. It still managed to draw me in and immerse me with great gameplay, characters, music, etc.

Just popping in to say "I really hope you're not responding to me because that would mean you either: skimmed my previous posts, aren't paying attention, have a comprehension disability or are making an incredible oversight and subsequently simplifying my problem with this game so far."

But hopefully none of the above and all is good in the world!

 

[shihonage]

I'm not going to judge until it's feature and content complete, and they have two more months of crunch time to make all kinds of drastic changes.

I remember thinking the same thing after trying the beta of Hellgate: London.

That game was garbage. It looks to me like Wasteland 2 is mediocre. Mediocrity can be polished into good.

Not in this timeframe. And generally, no it can't, and I've never seen it happen with a game. Bug fixes and enhancements, yes. Drastically altering the very nature of a game... no.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Not really. Pretty much all clothing in all earlier / low spec games is made like that.

clothing already looks mostly the same and has color as the most distinct difference between clothing pieces, especially when viewed from a distance. this is a sorta high res 3d model of a car. one that is immediately recognizable as a distinct manufacturer model due to its shape and is furthermore contrasted by the distinctly differently shaped wrecks on the street. recoloring would make that stand out even more. without recolors it's just one model for the same enemy and that's perfectly ok, so either go all the way and give them model variations along with recolors, or don't bother at all.

diverse models > recolors > clones

Even though palette swaps are boring to look at, it's less boing than copypasted enemies. Plus we're used to see several cars with the same model but painted in different colors, so it wouldn't stand out as much as having, say, a group of bandits sharing the same appearance.

 

[Infinitron]

Please note that I never said they would just recolor them. Buying additional car models on the Unity Asset Store (or using ones they already have) and rigging them to fit a crab should be pretty easy

 

[SuicideBunny]

diverse models > recolors > clones

mebbe it's just me, but i don't think so. if we're talking environment, then sure, but enemy recolors for the very same enemy type (as opposed to palette switch recolors for different enemy types) always look worse to me than clones when talking non-human enemies. most games just clone and use recolors to mark differences between enemy types or variants, so i naturally expect recolors to be somewhat different in terms of abilities.