Game News Gothic 4 screens spotted

[MetalCraze]

Bloom is a technique, like tonemapping that is quite essential for proper HDR, since no monitor can display such a huge dynamic range as you can see outside of your window.
It's used to simulate brigther light than your display can produce.

Overdoing it is another matter altogether, but some bloom is essential due to our display technology.

no its not.
Bloom just blooms and brightens things - which leads to eye-hurting effects when overdone - nothing else.
HDR is used to simulate brighter contrast and actually show more colours than the standard 24 bits.

as for the game I'm quite sceptic about it - really making a less boring fighting system in arpg aren't that hard I presume, but what about small things? like NPC AI, factions and c&c with them, etc. no matter what hype says I won't believe it until I'll see it.

 

[Claw]

Bloom is a technique, like tonemapping that is quite essential for proper HDR, since no monitor can display such a huge dynamic range as you can see outside of your window.
It's used to simulate brigther light than your display can produce.

As far as I know, bloom simply creates brightness and doesn't have anything to do with HDR. HDR on the other hand can dynamically darken parts of the screen to create a higher contrast with the brighter parts, like a light source.

However, I believe that bloom can also be used to create a sort of HDR-like blinding effect when directly looking at a light source, but still just by creating a haze of brightness, effectively reducing contrast and thus making it difficult to see anything. I believe that's what happens when you look directly into the sun in Gothic 3 with Bloom activated.
It's a sorf of pseudo-HDR.

My display is already capable of producing a level of brightness that forces me wear sunglasses if I allow it to do so. (...) Anything brighter than what a monitor can already produce simply BURNS.

I don't know your display, so I can't comment on its ability to produce brightness on par with the sun. It clearly isn't true for monitors in general, however. I know my display can't. I know no monitor I ever had could. I know no display of any friend or family member can, and I know several brand new CRTs and plasma screens that are all utterly incapable of creating blinding brightness.



PS:

I really like the well and the bark of the tree in the foreground in the screenshot showing a bridge.

Also, I've looked up bloom on Wikipedia, and I suppose Herbert West is basically correct.


PPS: I know what I would do with the combat system. I've always liked the concept of gesture-based combat, and I'd recreate the combat system of Gothic 1 (and 2) which I liked very much, but make the player move the mouse while keeping the mouse button pressed. That might also allow the inclusion of my dynamic "combos" rather than the automatic one in Gothic. And there could be a lunge attack.

 

[Noceur]

The weapons and shields look nice, though.

 

[Suchy]

The combat system of Gothic 4: Arcania should promote more self initiative and be more dynamic.

Ugh... even more clickfest?
Good thing they're aiming at Gothic 2 in terms of story and characters.

 

[Lurkar]

Honestly, I don't think the bloom was used badly in the sun picture there. Bloom in of itself isn't bad when used properly, and even "overuse" of bloom can look good if it's done to give a very specific intended effect.

The problem comes from the improper use of bloom done by people who use it WITHOUT a specific purpose in mind.

 

[Kraszu]

The combat system of Gothic 4: Arcania should promote more self initiative and be more dynamic.

Ugh... even more clickfest?
Good thing they're aiming at Gothic 2 in terms of story and characters.

It does not necessary mean more clicks, it can mean that you will have to dodge/change position in combat for example.

 

[Suchy]

I really hope so. What they did in G3 was almost as bad as combat in Two Worlds... Oh, and the great balancing - you could single-handedly kill a town full of orks, but die to a boar.
I really want less, but more tactical and challenging combat.

 

[indigo]

No it isn't. My display is already capable of producing a level of brightness that forces me wear sunglasses if I allow it to do so. If I needed anything brighter, I could just put a live flashbang on my desk! "Bloom" is completely unnecessary and purposeless. Everyone knows gamers are all vampires. Anything brighter than what a monitor can already produce simply BURNS.

HDR isnt just about brighteness. Is about range between dark and bright - not single monitor available can display scene composed of very dark and very bright parts simultanously. For example in LCDs you have a lamp backlighting the screen, this lamp emits white light, pixels colorize and dim it where necessery - nevertheless the brighteness difference between bright and dark pixels is quite small. Thats because lamp emits light at constant brighteness over the whole screen area.

Imagine the situation when you have a tree in foreground and very bright , sunny, sky in the background.(like on G4 screens) In reality the difference in brighteness would be huge (just go outside and try it ), on screen however we are limited to the (almost) constant brighteness - same for the tree, same for sky. We need to _simulate_ this huge gap in brighteness in order to achieve better , more real, visual effect - and thats where HDR comes into play. Is uses techniques like tonemapping, bloom, light spills from bright areas to dark areas, etc., - psychovisual tricks - to make illusion of high range (HDR = high dynamic range) of brighteness on constant brighteness display.

HDR doesnt manipulate screen brighteness - it just tricks your eyes. When displays capable of reproducing huge ranges emerge those graphics programming tricks will no longer be necessary. However now we need to simulate what normally our eyes do.

Hope you understand now.

 

[Kraszu]

I really hope so. What they did in G3 was almost as bad as combat in Two Worlds... Oh, and the great balancing - you could single-handedly kill a town full of orks, but die to a boar.
I really want less, but more tactical and challenging combat.

Yeah. I don't know if combat will suck or be good, my only point was that you can't judge it from that sentence, through it would be better if they criticize G3 combat and gave details, but I guess that it is to soon to give details on combat anyway.

 

[Ptosio]

But why is everybody so excited about this game anyway? Spellbound has never created an RPG. They produce only medicore tactical-action games. What are the chances that they'd succeed in making such a big and complex game? We should track this game, but not put too much hope in their promises. They can promise pretty much anything, but as for now there is no reason to belive it won't turn out to just another action-packed hack'n'slash with some tactics elements. I hope such won't be the case, but...

 

[Suchy]

CDProjekt has never done a RPG before either and now made The Witcher. If G4 will be anything like G2, I'm all for it.

 

[Kraszu]

Piranha Bytes didn't made an rpg before they made Gothic, as far examples goes it is hard to find a better one.

I am not hyped about G4 through I am interested in how it develop. Piranha Bytes next game has definitely better odds of being good gothic like game through.

 

[Lumpy]

CDProjekt has never done a RPG before either and now made The Witcher. If G4 will be anything like G2, I'm all for it.

CDProject were a bunch of guys who translated RPGs - including PS:T - into Polish. One day, they decided to make an RPG of their own.
Spellbound is a company who were contracted by JoWood to make a sequel to a profitable RPG series. They have neither the experience, nor the dedication a company like PB, CDP or Beth has to its own original license. Thus, Gothic 4 will likely fail.
Furthermore, JoWood were complete assholes for what they did. Bethesda's taking over the Fallout license is an act of charity compared to what JW did to Gothic.
Besides, Gothic 3 was a good game.

 

[denizsi]

Cut some slack for the bloom rage over shitty scans:

http://www.crpg.ru/modules.php?op=modlo ... &pid=11591
http://games.tiscali.cz/clanek/screen_d ... g=img5.jpg

http://www.crpg.ru/modules.php?op=modlo ... &pid=11589
http://games.tiscali.cz/clanek/screen_d ... g=img7.jpg

 

[Noceur]

Cut some slack for the bloom rage over shitty scans:

http://www.crpg.ru/modules.php?op=modlo ... &pid=11591
http://games.tiscali.cz/clanek/screen_d ... g=img5.jpg

http://www.crpg.ru/modules.php?op=modlo ... &pid=11589
http://games.tiscali.cz/clanek/screen_d ... g=img7.jpg

Isn't that distance fog, not bloom? I mean, the blue haze stuff.
EDIT: I mean, there's pretty much no bloom at all on those pics, which I suppose is your point. This was the real offender in my opinion, because it just shows the sun going all haze-crazy over the whole screen. Not very impressive, in my opinion, as it doesn't say shit about the game... it doesn't even say much about the graphics of the game. I've seen a sun before, you know. Why not show something a bit more relevant to the gameworld?

 

[Morgoth]

Looks like generic shit. The whole Gothic series was generic shit with broken gameplay. I hardly see why that should be any different with G4.

 

[Kraszu]

Looks like generic shit. The whole Gothic series was generic shit with broken gameplay. I hardly see why that should be any different with G4.

Your post is generic shit.