Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2412

Playing Fallen Enchantress Pre-Beta 4 at 1024 x 768

It’s tough to make a modern game look good at “low” resolution. But we try our best.

Here are a few screenshots of a work in progress build running at 1024x768.

I’ve also posted a video on Tumblr. Visit http://draginol.tumblr.com. That’s where I’ll be posting “rougher” stuff that marketing wouldn’t generally want to be widely disseminated but lets those really interested in the game see what we’re up to.

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looking good, WHEN can WE play with this?

harpo

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2412

Soon.

I'm going to start posting more stuff to my Tumbler page that I'm playing around with:

http://draginol.tumblr.com/

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Oooo, new cloth map rivers!

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Kazriko

Join Date 07/2004

+10

That's not too terribly low of resolution when you compare it to other contemporary non-PC games. Console games run at 1280x720 for the most part, for instance.

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The cloth map looks great with more color and detail.

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The clothmap looks good, I'm just a little sceptical about the river. The river has almost the same colour as the surrounding rocks. Are there others that think the same? Maybe a more fibrand blue would help?

P.S. Thanks for the upload

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Beta 4 download or it didn't happen.

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It looks great for being lower res, and i will start stalking you on tumbler now!

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Quoting Alfdaur,

reply 7

I'm just a little sceptical about the river. The river has almost the same colour as the surrounding rocks. Are there others that think the same? Maybe a more fibrand blue would help?

boy, that's a hard call. Initially I thought maybe a leaning towards green teal color, but perhaps this would be better for swamps/heavier veg areas or might conflict with woodland areas too much

edit: or possibly darken the grey on tha mountains?

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So I saw the video... and I do like it. Nice to see some of the polish (synchronized attacks and dodging in combat, etc).

I went back to GalCivII during this lull from .915 to beta 4.... now THAT is a polished game. Lots of fun.

Thanks

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Still not a fan of the circle tiles (signalling caverns??). They look out of place with the rest of the really nice upgrades to mountains and forests (and rivers). Other than that, loving the new cloth map.

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Looks really good/improved- hopefully we get this on time to play around with it in mid- August. I hope Drox holds me until then

(and it's a big reason why I haven't even spent $10 on the Steam sale this year)

It's funny how I've spent more time this year enjoying pre-released games than actual finished games.

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Anything above 640x800 will always be high resolution to me.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2412

It's funny how I've spent more time this year enjoying pre-released games than actual finished games.

IMO, A beta game like Minecraft or in this case Fallen Enchantress is totally the way to go. You get to see all kinds of different ideas tried out.

Most betas are annoying though. They're just marketing exercises where you have no real chance of seeing change. Each beta (I hope) feels like a "different" game.

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I know things like the animations and movements may seem like a small thing, and in the grand scheme they are, I just wanted to say they new ones look great. This is a fun, quality of life improvement that I am looking forward to quite a bit.

Great job!

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I like the transparency and the rounded edges. It's a great use of a small screen. How well would the interface scale to a bigger screen then?

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 15

It's funny how I've spent more time this year enjoying pre-released games than actual finished games.

IMO, A beta game like Minecraft or in this case Fallen Enchantress is totally the way to go. You get to see all kinds of different ideas tried out.

Most betas are annoying though. They're just marketing exercises where you have no real chance of seeing change. Each beta (I hope) feels like a "different" game.

Interesting angle.. Haven't thought about this, although I much rather prefer working games to beta (its why I am mostly waiting for beta 4 ). But I do like to let off huge walls of ideas Hmm... dangerous thoughts coming up...

PS. I am a huge supporter of all the small graphical upgrades, it really is one of the best things you can add to a game!

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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The only downside to this is that sometimes you get disappointed when the game is released- I kinda felt that way about Twilight, I played it more pre-release than post-release, though I still easily got my money's worth. I think it's just more fun when you get things one at a time gradually instead of all at once- provided you know the content isn't being held back.

There's a reason the thing I often want most on the pre-release patches are what I call "new toys".

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Ahhhh, that little movie is looking excellent. Love the graphic touches you came up with between beta 3 and 4. Please show us more to kill time waiting for beta 4 to arrive.

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new animation and graphics look great. keep up the good work.

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.. hey.. i use 1280x800 on my screen.

default res of 1680x1050 just have the text look too small, especially when the screen is a fair bit away from my face by default. (22" screen?)

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Quoting alaknebs,

reply 22

.. hey.. i use 1280x800 on my screen.

default res of 1680x1050 just have the text look too small, especially when the screen is a fair bit away from my face by default. (22" screen?)

Ehmm, maybe you should consider getting glasses. I'm using 1920x1080 (native resolution of my screen) whenever I can. Lowering the resulotion washes out the graphics.

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if it's small, it's small. glasses doesn't help any (i'm wearing glasses anyway) ... magnifying glasses might help though...

yes.. a bigger screen will help if you sit a metre away from the screen

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Well Alaknebs have a point that it would help players if they could have the game magnify the text size to they're own liking.
Its pretty common to have poor eyes, or just want to read bigger letters, I can even do that in my browser by magnifying the whole site I am looking at.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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The problem is that scaling the UI is a bit harder than scaling the 3D graphics. Scaling the 3D graphics is generally 1 line of code. Changing the UI requires planning and extra work to look good and preserve functionality at various different sizes.

Your browser example doesn't really work since most websites are smaller than your native resolution and also there are scrollbars for when things go off the page.

I can't think of any games that had this feature, and I am a game developer, so unless I am missing some obvious counter-examples, I think those points are the reason why.

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