Raging Tiger graphics
- Thread starter amrcg
- Start date
Pat Proctor
President, ProSim Company
This question might be better answered by Curt, but I will take a stab...
It really is just a matter of cosmetic preference. I, generally, prefered the side view because it made it easier to tell who were the bad guys. In ATF, we used the "blue for enemy" method, which I did not like because it was kind of unrealistic.
In addition, it is a bit easier to tell what vehicle type you are looking at in the side view.
Ultimately, this is not the final word on ProSIM releases. Curt's team decided on this style, but, as far as I know, War in Afghanistan and The Falkland War will both revert to the top down representation.
I would be interested to hear anyone elses opinion on this. I am curious how this will be received.
It really is just a matter of cosmetic preference. I, generally, prefered the side view because it made it easier to tell who were the bad guys. In ATF, we used the "blue for enemy" method, which I did not like because it was kind of unrealistic.
In addition, it is a bit easier to tell what vehicle type you are looking at in the side view.
Ultimately, this is not the final word on ProSIM releases. Curt's team decided on this style, but, as far as I know, War in Afghanistan and The Falkland War will both revert to the top down representation.
I would be interested to hear anyone elses opinion on this. I am curious how this will be received.
I don't like either the top down or side views, I think mostly because I have grown up through boardgaming and PC's using NATO and NTDS style icons, more than anything. I never played ATF with anything but "Contour Map" and NATO icons selected.
Also, at closer zoom levels, the colour maps and unit pictures tend to "disintegrate," as they are bitmap files.
Also, at closer zoom levels, the colour maps and unit pictures tend to "disintegrate," as they are bitmap files.
kbluck
Member
Well, you probably already know my opinion, but I'll give it anyway so that others can argue with it.
I think the "realistic" picture icons are a waste of development effort, and make the game look unpolished and amateurish. At the scale allowed by the game map display, they're never going to look really nice --- there's just not enough pixels to go around. Especially given the often busy map brushes in use, "realistic" icons tend to recede into the background. RT has this very problem --- the realistically camouflaged images actually do blend in with the rather chaotic wooded terrain background, just like it's designed to do.
The ATF pictures suffer from the worst of both worlds --- they're too small to have any attractive detail, but they're too big to fit together on the map without stacking all over each other. The dismounts in particular look cartoonish, since it is almost impossible to offer any real detail and they have no animation.
It doesn't help that in the Options dialog, the default "100%" position of the slider is actually "50%". It is already difficult enough to optimize the tiny images; once those images are stretch-blitted down to half their original size, as will almost always be the case with most player's settings, they look even worse.
The top down "realistic" view worked in Close Combat, because the scale was so much larger. You didn't have tanks stepping all over each other. As I recall, an entire battle map might not be 1000 meters on a side. Even so, they had to scale up the pictures some, because even at that tight focus properly scaled images wouldn't look good. Nor did they allow the player to bung up their careful work by rescaling everything arbitrarily. Also, they had extensive animation and obviously spent a lot of effort on the antialiasing to maximize the appearance. Quite frankly, it is apparent that a professional graphic designer has not worked on any of the ATF art, and the graphics engine is rather primitive by modern standards.
Eye candy is often more distracting than useful in a non-shooter wargame anyway. Why try to make half-baked animation that is just going to look pathetic to modern gamers with visual expectations formed by 3D shooters and C&C-type strategy games? Its not going to impress anybody. Quite the contrary. Keep the graphics abstract, and impress them with your simulation instead.
If one insists on "pictorial" icons, believing that players just can't figure out operational graphics, then TacOps does it better. The silhouettes are recognizably distinctive and show at least the approximate class of vehicle, while making no pretense at an unachievable standard of "photo-realism". Even so, Major H sticks them on a square "counter" background, because he knows that the icons by themselves would get lost too easily in the map clutter --- exactly the problem the smaller ATF icons like dismounts have.
On a practical gameplay level, in addition to being easily lost in cluttered terrain, the pictures make it difficult to tell exactly where on the map the unit really is. Given that a typical picture will sprawl over several hundred square meters of map, it is a matter of some experimentation to find exactly where the center might be, such as when targetting artillery.
Lastly, from a content development point of view, developing the pictures is a huge time sink for any database author, and probably serves to completely stymie otherwise worthy contributors who simply don't know how to work with bitmaps, and therefore they self-exclude. I can say that while I do have a clue how to use Photoshop, even so I'm not satisfied with what output I've made, and the images have easily taken 10 times longer than the rest of the vehicle data to produce.
In short, my advice would be to dump the "realistic" pictures altogether in favor of very abstract TacOps-style side-view silhouette counters, while retaining the op graphics symbols. If I was going to develop an ATF game, that would be my strategy.
--- Kevin
I think the "realistic" picture icons are a waste of development effort, and make the game look unpolished and amateurish. At the scale allowed by the game map display, they're never going to look really nice --- there's just not enough pixels to go around. Especially given the often busy map brushes in use, "realistic" icons tend to recede into the background. RT has this very problem --- the realistically camouflaged images actually do blend in with the rather chaotic wooded terrain background, just like it's designed to do.
The ATF pictures suffer from the worst of both worlds --- they're too small to have any attractive detail, but they're too big to fit together on the map without stacking all over each other. The dismounts in particular look cartoonish, since it is almost impossible to offer any real detail and they have no animation.
It doesn't help that in the Options dialog, the default "100%" position of the slider is actually "50%". It is already difficult enough to optimize the tiny images; once those images are stretch-blitted down to half their original size, as will almost always be the case with most player's settings, they look even worse.
The top down "realistic" view worked in Close Combat, because the scale was so much larger. You didn't have tanks stepping all over each other. As I recall, an entire battle map might not be 1000 meters on a side. Even so, they had to scale up the pictures some, because even at that tight focus properly scaled images wouldn't look good. Nor did they allow the player to bung up their careful work by rescaling everything arbitrarily. Also, they had extensive animation and obviously spent a lot of effort on the antialiasing to maximize the appearance. Quite frankly, it is apparent that a professional graphic designer has not worked on any of the ATF art, and the graphics engine is rather primitive by modern standards.
Eye candy is often more distracting than useful in a non-shooter wargame anyway. Why try to make half-baked animation that is just going to look pathetic to modern gamers with visual expectations formed by 3D shooters and C&C-type strategy games? Its not going to impress anybody. Quite the contrary. Keep the graphics abstract, and impress them with your simulation instead.
If one insists on "pictorial" icons, believing that players just can't figure out operational graphics, then TacOps does it better. The silhouettes are recognizably distinctive and show at least the approximate class of vehicle, while making no pretense at an unachievable standard of "photo-realism". Even so, Major H sticks them on a square "counter" background, because he knows that the icons by themselves would get lost too easily in the map clutter --- exactly the problem the smaller ATF icons like dismounts have.
On a practical gameplay level, in addition to being easily lost in cluttered terrain, the pictures make it difficult to tell exactly where on the map the unit really is. Given that a typical picture will sprawl over several hundred square meters of map, it is a matter of some experimentation to find exactly where the center might be, such as when targetting artillery.
Lastly, from a content development point of view, developing the pictures is a huge time sink for any database author, and probably serves to completely stymie otherwise worthy contributors who simply don't know how to work with bitmaps, and therefore they self-exclude. I can say that while I do have a clue how to use Photoshop, even so I'm not satisfied with what output I've made, and the images have easily taken 10 times longer than the rest of the vehicle data to produce.
In short, my advice would be to dump the "realistic" pictures altogether in favor of very abstract TacOps-style side-view silhouette counters, while retaining the op graphics symbols. If I was going to develop an ATF game, that would be my strategy.
--- Kevin
CPangracs
Member
I think people prefer what they know. It's very difficult for the average human to delve outside of their comfort zone. I decided to go far away from other ATF titles to make Raging Tiger my own. I did this because people will be paying a price to see something more than what someone can do over a weekend using the editor, and for something different than what everyone else is doing.
I also wanted every unit to, for the most part, look unique and be easily identifiable when using the picture icons. Intelligent use of the map viewing options at each zoom level render any problems with artillery targeting or "losing" a unit in a terrain feature almost moot.
As for the time it took to create the icons, it was considerably less than it takes to create the top-down views and takes-up a great deal less CPU overhead to move them around the map. We are talking about a reduction from over 100k or more to less than 3k in most instances for a unit icon.
All I can say, for the 1200th time, is that you can't please everyone. We received no complaints about the icons from the beta testers other than one not being able to select aircraft off of the LHD Wasp in Beach Party II. As with ANY scenario, using the hierarchy tree to select or find a unit on the map is the preferred method, whether or not you use picture or operational icons! Some initially didn't like the icons, but after playing with them on for a while, they started to enjoy it, and now that's the only way they play. You can also stick with the Operational Icons, if you desire. Heck, you can even import all the graphics from ATF and reassign them to Raging Tiger's vehicles, create new ones, whatever you desire. Again, the greatest thing about this engine is its flexibility.
I wanted to create a game that I would play over and over again. I think I did exactly that with Raging Tiger. I think others may well agree with me when the public demo is released. I'm sure others will have heartburn with things,...but that is the nature with wargames, and computer wargames more stridently than others.
One other thing I might mention,...Pat Proctor is always looking to create new games. If anyone has great ideas, some skills in graphics, scenario design, and military topics in general, and believes in what they are doing, I suggest you contact him and make a proposal to do your own game. Sometimes the best way to do things is to do them yourself.
I also wanted every unit to, for the most part, look unique and be easily identifiable when using the picture icons. Intelligent use of the map viewing options at each zoom level render any problems with artillery targeting or "losing" a unit in a terrain feature almost moot.
As for the time it took to create the icons, it was considerably less than it takes to create the top-down views and takes-up a great deal less CPU overhead to move them around the map. We are talking about a reduction from over 100k or more to less than 3k in most instances for a unit icon.
All I can say, for the 1200th time, is that you can't please everyone. We received no complaints about the icons from the beta testers other than one not being able to select aircraft off of the LHD Wasp in Beach Party II. As with ANY scenario, using the hierarchy tree to select or find a unit on the map is the preferred method, whether or not you use picture or operational icons! Some initially didn't like the icons, but after playing with them on for a while, they started to enjoy it, and now that's the only way they play. You can also stick with the Operational Icons, if you desire. Heck, you can even import all the graphics from ATF and reassign them to Raging Tiger's vehicles, create new ones, whatever you desire. Again, the greatest thing about this engine is its flexibility.
I wanted to create a game that I would play over and over again. I think I did exactly that with Raging Tiger. I think others may well agree with me when the public demo is released. I'm sure others will have heartburn with things,...but that is the nature with wargames, and computer wargames more stridently than others.
One other thing I might mention,...Pat Proctor is always looking to create new games. If anyone has great ideas, some skills in graphics, scenario design, and military topics in general, and believes in what they are doing, I suggest you contact him and make a proposal to do your own game. Sometimes the best way to do things is to do them yourself.
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CPangracs
Member
With the vehicle arrows and turret arrows on, it's very easy to see exactly what's going on.amrcg said:
kbluck
Member
Indeed.CPangracs said:
But those same devices, in combination with the dozen or so other "status" icons potentially overlaying the picture, step all over the "pretty" images, thus largely destroying any aesthetic virtues they might have. There's really no way to avoid this, since the images are of such varying size and proportion that the best option for consistency is to drop them on the center of the picture. This effect is particularly noticeable with the small dismount icons, which are frequently quite "smothered" by the arrows and whatnot.
Here's an exercise for anybody with the demo installed: Turn the display options to "Color" map and "Picture" units, "turret arrows" and "direction arrows" turned off. This seems to be the default anyway.
Start a scenario (Beach Party is good) and drag some dismounts into a forest. Leave some of them overlapping, which is not uncommon in dismount ops. Look away for a few seconds. Now, come back to them and imagine trying to identify and count those units quickly under pressure. I'm betting most people will find themselves squinting at the screen. It's like playing "Where's Waldo?" Take a look at the M198s while you're at it. Even on clear terrain, those are hard to see.
Turning the arrows back on makes everything easier to see, but not identify; now the arrow is more often than not blotting out half the picture. Zooming up the magnification makes them easier to ID but also increases the overlap confusion.
Now, turn on "operational graphics". Bam! All the units pop right out at you, no missing them now. You might not understand the symbology, but at least you can now clearly see something is there, even with a cursory glance.
A more abstract silhouette icon on a colored background could be made much smaller overall while retaining better (IMO) clarity and reduced eyestrain. I think it would look neater and less "muddy", to boot. What is more, they could be made to a standard size, thus allowing you to fashion the arrow overlays to not obscure the silhouettes themselves. And, of course, smaller icons reduce the stacking problem.
I doubt anybody really expects you to change RT so significantly at this late date. (At least I don't.) I'm mainly arguing for the attention of designers still in the process.
--- Kevin
CPangracs
Member
This almost exactly reflects a conversation Pat and I had during the early stages of development. We had looked at the possibility of an "outline" around each piece, red for enemy and blue for friendly. Not sure why it was nixed, but it was. It wouldn't be that difficult to do, and it is something which could be done in a patch IF it is something seen as a major contribution to the game. I actually could have done it before release if there had been any gripes about the graphics from the beta testers.kbluck said:
I think a great deal of it comes down to style of gameplay people prefer. I use my hierarchy tree almost exclusively, I know where my forces are at all times, and I can quickly click & drag around an area to select a unit or group of units. For me, I can play either way becuase deal with about 6 different commercial games on a routine basis, each with a different interface. I may be a bit jaded by it all!
Well, I like flexibility. One should be able to choose whether to use operational graphics or silhouettes. I accept Court's argument. If one is really deeply unsatisfied with the silhouettes, one can always bother to change to top-down graphics. It's fair.kbluck said:
Antonio
GlockMaster
Recruit
They actually liked it, didn´t they ?CPangracs said:
Hmm... for me personally, i like the new graphics.
It´s nothing that i would complain about, but i can understand the point that people have with the icons.
For me, it´s interesting that i know some people who would never touch a title with a somewhat "specialized" gfx like in ATF (don´t bash me for that, i love
ATF) but are willing to take a look at RT because "it looks as if *normal* (non-military) folks could have fun with it". If it makes the "getting-to-play-wargames" easier then i think it´s quite ok.
just my 2 cents