Bard's Tale The Bard's Tale IV Pre-Release Thread [RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Russia is over. The end.]

were wooden paths

That looked like this:

Trees were split into 2-3 long pieces with an axe.

 

[Sacred82]

so what you're saying is those boards are above average quality as far as footholds go


you sure are a connoisseur

 

[Zombra]

If it's not 100% historically accurate, it's not good fantasy!

 

[The Fish]

I like that the houses are made of stones. Britain in that age loved their stones. But how do they make the house walls look so flat? Maybe it's the lighting, or something is wrong with the normal maps, I don't know, but it just looks like some 2005 game where the there were only the color maps, an no normal maps existed. The walls made of stone that look flat in 2017? It looks incompetent and indie af.

I'm no graphics whore by no means, but if there is a possibility to make it look good, how is it acceptable to make it look so bad? Brian started out when the graphics were 8 bit something. I now realize he has no idea how to appraise if something looks good by modern standards.

The textures are really... weird (bad?)

The textures look old fashioned because they have too much contrast in them. The old way of making textures was to make a picture of a stone wall then slap it on a flat surface. The modern way of doing things would be to have a good roughness map, geometry, and normal map with the colour itself being relatively flat, not much contrast and unsaturated; whether it looks good would be largely dependant on the lighting. You generally don't want to bake loads of lighting detail into a texture as it won't fit the surroundings when in game. If I recall correctly models made by photogrammetry go through a shadow removal stage in order to take out the lighting information in the texture.

Those dark shadows between the stones don't look like lighting is causing them but, rather, it looks like they're baked into the texture itself, which is why they look ugly and artificial. The walls are effectively "pillow shaded".

 

[DosBuster]

I like that the houses are made of stones. Britain in that age loved their stones. But how do they make the house walls look so flat? Maybe it's the lighting, or something is wrong with the normal maps, I don't know, but it just looks like some 2005 game where the there were only the color maps, an no normal maps existed. The walls made of stone that look flat in 2017? It looks incompetent and indie af.

I'm no graphics whore by no means, but if there is a possibility to make it look good, how is it acceptable to make it look so bad? Brian started out when the graphics were 8 bit something. I now realize he has no idea how to appraise if something looks good by modern standards.

They don't even need normal maps, just a material that has tessellation in it. The image itself is too small for me to actually see but something does look off about the house texture/material.

 

[Morkar Left]

Wow, you guys have issues...

 

[theSavant]

Finally a sign of life... and looks great tbh. The fidelity is really nice.

 

[santino27]

You do know this world has magic and as such can have better technology through use of magic?

Single-fence magic technology? Sweet! :D

 

[V_K]

You do know this world has magic and as such can have better technology through use of magic?

Single-fence magic technology? Sweet! :D

Well, if Alias' cleavage in Azure Bonds can have an invisible protective field over it, why can't a single magical fence project an invisible anti-sheep barrier?

 

[ArchAngel]

You do know this world has magic and as such can have better technology through use of magic?

Single-fence magic technology? Sweet! :D

More like use of magic in production of better tools and materials. And with those tools they can produce better planks amongst other things.

 

[FeelTheRads]

They don't even need normal maps, just a material that has tessellation in it.

Yes, tessellation is magic, it does not require maps.

 

[santino27]

You do know this world has magic and as such can have better technology through use of magic?

Single-fence magic technology? Sweet! :D

Well, if Alias' cleavage in Azure Bonds can have an invisible protective field over it, why can't a single magical fence project an invisible anti-sheep barrier?

Why bother with a fence? Why not just a single pole? What sort of lame-ass magic is this?

 

[Hirato]

I like that the houses are made of stones. Britain in that age loved their stones. But how do they make the house walls look so flat? Maybe it's the lighting, or something is wrong with the normal maps, I don't know, but it just looks like some 2005 game where the there were only the color maps, an no normal maps existed. The walls made of stone that look flat in 2017? It looks incompetent and indie af.

I'm no graphics whore by no means, but if there is a possibility to make it look good, how is it acceptable to make it look so bad? Brian started out when the graphics were 8 bit something. I now realize he has no idea how to appraise if something looks good by modern standards.

They don't even need normal maps, just a material that has tessellation in it. The image itself is too small for me to actually see but something does look off about the house texture/material.

Except you do need normal maps.
A normal map is generally built from a higher polygon mesh that has a lot of little details in it.

For example a crate, the ingame model might just be a cube with some textures slapped on.
But the high poly version of the model might have the corners extruded, and various little imperfections on the sides, or if it's a wooden one, individual height levels of each plank, etc.
The normal map will reflect these details, which is used to produce shading and lighting that appears to have some actual depth.

Tesselation at its most basic level is the process of going backwards; combining the low-poly mesh with the normal map to create an object that resembles the original high-poly model to whatever level of detail the user's PC can handle.
You can still do tesselation without the normal map though, but you'll be limiting yourself to smoothing out the objects, unless you calculate one on the fly.

 

[Infinitron]

Just noticed that inXile appear to have soft-launched BT4's CrowdOx site last week:



If you're a Kickstarter backer and enter your email, they'll send you a survey.

 

[aweigh]

how do you guys think this game will compare to THE DEVIL'S WHISKEY, i.e. tru-Bard's Tale continuation?

 

[Zombra]

how do you guys think this game will compare to THE DEVIL'S WHISKEY, i.e. tru-Bard's Tale continuation?

I'll take that bait!

I don't think it's controversial at this point to predict that BT4 will be almost unrecognizable as a relative of 1-3. Small party; fewer classes; voice acting for PCs; Scotland Scotland Scotland; weird new PC races; scripted combats only; Hearthstone-inspired, visually tactical battle system; heavy emphasis on graphics and "immersion"; Scottish folk soundtrack; casual-friendly unlimited save mechanics; fights with up to 8 enemies maximum. That's off the top of my head.

 

[aweigh]

wait, trolling aside, what is this "scripted combats only" thing? is it what it sounds like? that shit can't be real, can it?

 

[Zombra]

wait, trolling aside, what is this "scripted combats only" thing? is it what it sounds like? that shit can't be real, can it?

Not confirmed, but the previews we've seen sure make it look like the monsters are just sitting there waiting for you, and once you kill them, they're gone. Wasteland 2 did the same thing, with random encounters only appearing on the world map (and I don't think BT4 has a world map).

 

[aweigh]

that's not necessarily a bad thing, but... does not bode well. does not bode well at all.

 

[Zombra]

that's not necessarily a bad thing

I think it is. Being able to "clear cut" the maps made Wasteland 2 way less interesting to traverse than the original. I want to be just as scared of fighting my way out of a dungeon as I was going in. But technically this is all supposition about BT4 at this point. Maybe stuff will respawn, maybe there'll even be a random chart of what spawns. Yeah - maybe.

Still, despite all the differences, even because of a couple of them, I honestly look forward to playing BT4. I think if nothing else the Wiz8-style personalities should be fun to tease out, assuming they have more than 4 voice actors to pick from.

 

[theSavant]

Oh man... can't wait for a new update...

...as long as it's not like this:

Y0 folks, BREAKING UPDATE for Bard's Tale 4:

- Backer Site is finally up!
- Bard's Tale 2005 ported to console
- Shoutout to other projects

/Update End

Spoiler

 

[Infinitron]

scripted combats only

What the heck does that mean, "scripted". They're enemies who aren't randomly spawned. Some of them are supposed to patrol around corridors and stuff. "Scripted" makes it sound like they're cinematic cutscenes that only happen at linear narrative beats.

 

[V_K]

What the heck does that mean, "scripted". They're enemies who aren't randomly spawned. Some of them are supposed to patrol around corridors and stuff. "Scripted" makes it sound like they're cinematic cutscenes that only happen at linear narrative beats.

Well, that one battle they showed sure looked scripted, with tougher enemies showing up once you cleared the first wave.

 

[theSavant]

I agree, that was totally scripted. First the creature appearing in the background - goblins reacting to it - later appearing again and smashing the last goblin... meh... totally staged.

"Evolving" battles make sense for things like 99 berserkers in a wardrobe, but this wouldn't require any of these "events". Just wave after wave coming.

So let's hope this happens only for a small amount of battles...

 

[Reinhardt]

99 berserkers

99 berserkers, 99 berserkers and 99 berserkers

in a wardrobe