Video Update#11 Graphics

[Blacksmith]

I´m wondering, there is no topic about this…
Maybe the subject is not sexy enough?

It´s interessting to see how they are moddeling the world.
Not only Jakub, look also at the guy in the background, he is working on roads;
on roads without medial strips, but some parts are with!

For me it´s okay to have both. More variations > better!

The graphics for the storyboards are looking great.

Maybe also as a comic for the shop? With quests you can´t bring into Act 1-3?

(A quest where a guy is hanging around!)

And now the church!
Really nice, so much details! Around 150-200 hours work… for only one church.

How long will it take to build a castle? 800 hours?

Thats to long.

Solution:
Downgrade your graphic!!!

You can only succeed if your graphic sucks. You will have 10 times more hits and clicks. Look at Witcher3 and Fallout4…

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[PerroVerde]

They are all making an amazing job, designers, artists and programmers.

The graphics are beautiful, mud and poops included but if a downgrade is needed it really doesn’t matter much to me.

I think the forums will be more active after the E3. News, combat mechanics, etc will bring back people and a lot of newcomers for sure.

[TobiTobsen]

They are all making an amazing job, designers, artists and programmers

AND PR GUYS!!! The best anyway!

[213]

the graphics are being done in parallel with the other departments, it is not like they have to finish all special buildings first, and then start work on ai or quests, so there is no need to downgrade anything. and they already finished one or maybe more of the castles since they worked on it over year and a half before kick starter for the presentation to potential publishers. there will not be a hundred castles like in some fantasy rpg games, there will be from what i can see maybe 4 or 5? some smaller, some big. we know both castles in rataj are done, and we have seen talmberk castle in full glory.

why people ask for downgrade when developer don’t mention it as problem and show great enthusiasm in getting everything as accurate and authentic as possible? strange mentality.

[TheDivineInfidel]

Thats to long.

Solution: Downgrade your graphic!!!

You can only succeed if your graphic sucks. You will have 10 times more hits and clicks. Look at Witcher3 and Fallout4…

surely you was able to taste the sarcasm in that last statement

AND PR GUYS!!! The best anyway!

yea … bit slow on the updates though …

"runs for cover "

[213]

yeah it was, just the examples were odd. fallout 4 we couldn’t possibly know if it was “downgraded” or not since we didn’t see anything prior tot he trailer. and witcher 3 is actually exceptionally popular, not because of the downgrade sure, but still, strange example.

[Blacksmith]

just the examples were odd.

No, the examples are up to date, … everybody knows them.

The point is, most people discuss more about a game if the grafic is “bad” or not on the highest possible level.
If the grafic is at the best, like in KCD(!!!), people say nice and go away (take this for granted). But if it`s not the best grafic, they start a flamewar.
To many people reduce games (in general) only to the grafic. Optic is important, but not anything! I hope KCD can convice everyone, not only with it´s beauty.

[TheDuck]

Am I missing something out or are you actually telling them to downgrade the graphics?
Seems to me like you just realized that you can’t run the game and now doing this in hopes of them downgrading the graphics allowing you to play the game.

[YuusouAmazing]

That was just a joke by @Blacksmith to bring up the controversial downgrade of graphics towards the end of a game’s development. Watch Dogs had the same issue and some “modder” just re-activated some of the graphical features that were still in the code. The reason is simple: performance. If more people can technically play it, more people will buy it. Simple as that.

[Blacksmith]

Am I missing something out or are you actually telling them to downgrade the graphics?Seems to me like you just realized that you can’t run the game and now doing this in hopes of them downgrading the graphics allowing you to play the game.

@YuusouAmazing is 100% right!

My system is not the fastest, but Alpha 0.3 runs “okay”. I will upgrade my graficcard,… to run the game on max. But in the moment, it´s not really necessary. (may change with alpha 0.4 )
I enjoy the grafic of KCD!!! (Looks like, I have played more hours KCD than everyone else - outside of Warhorse)

My hope is, Warhorse can give us a good looking game for medium PCs (and Consoles), AND an amazing, breathtaking game for highend PCs.

Warhorse is always testing, if the engine can handle all the objects and NPCs.
I haven´t any actual information how good it runs on the consoles, but I think they are pushing the PC version in the moment. I guess they are developing on Nvidia hardware mostly(look at Video Update#11); there should be space for improvement/optimization on consoles (AMD hardware).

I´m NOT a fan of downgrading, but there are many backers who have consoles. They should also be able to get a playable version of the game. I hope there won´t be a gap between performance and eye candy.

Everyone should get enough performace to be happy.(Amen!!!)

[sully9088]

I don’t understand why game developers don’t aim high for graphics, and then only downgrade them for consoles as needed (but just for consoles). Why would PC take a hit when you downgrade graphics for console?? I don’t know any games on PC that don’t allow you to choose graphics settings. If you make a game that can only be run on the best PCs out there, but have options to dumb the graphics down, then can’t you run the game on all PCs? Can’t you run Crysis 3 on most PCs as long as you use medium or low settings? Or is it more than just “graphics”? My opinion about KCD is that I hope the current graphics stay the same. They are amazing right now! The forest! And the water! And… and the flowers! throws phone on ground and runs off to play the tech alpha

[213]

i think it’s pressure from microsoft and sony. i’m not sure if it’s a real tangible market dynamic, or if it’s just a general theory, but it’s known variously as “platform parity” or “graphics parity”, the justification being that microsoft and sony do not want the discrepancy between visuals to be such that console users might end up “switching” and causing them to lose sales. they want their customers to feel like they have it as good or even better than pc users. this is an illusion they are desperate to maintain due to the virtual elimination of any advantages consoles have had over the pc. the pricing issue has essentially been resolved recently as well, it’s more of a technical knowledge issue at this point, ie people still won’t know which cpu goes with which motherboard, things like that.

[Helena]

Well, I guess KCD will be a good test of that theory. Warhorse can’t use the “it wouldn’t run” excuse because thousands of alpha and beta testers will have already seen that it does. They can’t say “this build wouldn’t work on consoles, so we had to change it” because they already know the console specs, and are presumably developing for all systems simultaneously. So if the PC version undergoes a mysterious unexplained downgrade just before release, that will be a good indication that MS and Sony had something to do with it. Conversely, if the PC graphics are better than the console versions, that would suggest that ‘platform parity’ is a myth and graphical downgrades happen for other reasons.

[213]

Conversely, if the PC graphics are better than the console versions, that would suggest that ‘platform parity’ is a myth and graphical downgrades happen for other reasons.

logical error. if one reason doesn’t apply for one case, it does not make it invalid or untrue for other cases.

[Earl_Thorn]

if the PC graphics are better than the console versions

Which they should be, one would hope… just based on pure capability, there’s no reason why a PC (assuming it’s spec’d accordingly) shouldn’t be able to experience the game in it’s best form through video and postprocessing customisation of settings…

‘platform parity’

Platform parity is certainly a myth. Especially when referring to mainstream consoles comparatively to PC… And graphical downgrades *or ‘optimizations’ well they happen for any number of reasons. Not solely due to platform capability. I agree that surely there’s political elements thrown in there at times as well

[213]

a myth is something that is not true.

however as an influencing factor in game development, the general concept of platform parity has been observed for a long time already.

30 fps across the board, needllessly hardcoded in pc games is a good example.

i think the only real defense against this is to work from the top-down, as in pc version primary, as the cost and scheduling issues are diminished. easier and faster in most cases to downgrade than upgrade.

also, not being ubisoft helps a lot. watchdogs is proof of this practice in triple a productions. lots of graphical features on pc needlessly removed so the game would look closer to its console counterpart.

[Earl_Thorn]

a myth is something that is not true.

however as an influencing factor in game development, the general concept of platform parity has been observed for a long time already.

Completely agree.

My point is that it shouldn’t… parity for the sake of making poorly spec’d consoles appear to maintain a level of equality with PC hardware that’s leaps and bounds ahead in terms of technical capability, is purely a political power play on Sony / Microsoft’s part. And studios / devs wanting to maximise their returns through market exposure, can’t very well discount those platforms… doing so might in fact make a particular project financially unviable

So what we end up with is, and what we’ve seen most recently (from the likes of Ubisoft as you mentioned) is studios and developers essentially making detrimental changes to the graphical fidelity to ensure both console and PC variants of their games remain as similar as possible… and it’s bs

It really sh1ts me off I blame Sony and Microsoft for putting out weak interim / transitional gen consoles.

[Helena]

[quote=“213, post:14, topic:23324”]
logical error. if one reason doesn’t apply for one case, it does not make it invalid or untrue for other cases.[/quote]
This is true, which is why I said ‘suggest’ rather than ‘prove’, but why would MS/Sony insist on parity in some cases but not others? My personal feeling is that it’s less to do with anti-PC conspiracies, and more to do with it being easier to create a ‘lowest common denominator’ version for all platforms, with some half-assed modifications for PC. For instance, I can’t recall the last time I played a multiplatform game with a proper PC interface (though I’m hoping KCD will be an exception here).

However, I’ll admit this doesn’t really explain cases like Witcher 3, where these features were in the game at a late stage in development (see gameplay trailers etc.) but were apparently ripped out before the final release version.

[quote=“Earl_Thorn, post:15, topic:23324”]
Which they should be, one would hope… just based on pure capability, there’s no reason why a PC (assuming it’s spec’d accordingly) shouldn’t be able to experience the game in it’s best form through video and postprocessing customisation of settings…[/quote]
I agree. I was using ‘parity’ in the same sense that 213 was using it, i.e. ‘deliberately hobbling the PC version to make it look the same as consoles’.

[sully9088]

Yeah but we don’t have proof that they truly do this… do we? How could they get a developer to do this? They would have to pay big bucks, or give huge incentives such as free advertising or something to the developers (free advertisements actually seems like the kind of incentive I would jump on to be honest). I don’t even think these big corporations make that much money with consoles though… so why do they care? Maybe its a status thing?? Or maybe having the best console opens up the market to their other products?? The conspiracy theory deepens!!

[Earl_Thorn]

We know nothing… Jon Snow