[Request]: Foliage Reaction

[Deithwen]

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I just feel like you completly misunderstand me and barely try to even read me, and this point I'm starting to think you're doing it on purpose.

I am not dismissing your friends' work at all. I am not saying they do nothing. What do you imagine here ? Don't jump to conclusions.
I am saying switching to developing higher res textures from the start, and all the ones used in new content, wouldn't cost additional dev time. I thought that was clear as I had to repeat it several times. I hope you will get it right this time.

Your example about textures loading is flawed. FF14 doesn't work like BDO, where everything is streamed. We have zones and loading screens in between, which are used to ... load the area. So slower computers might have longer loading times indeed, but no fps impact nor textures popping.


I'm quite irritated by your assumptions and how quick you are to judge a person without understanding a bit.

[Shougun]

If they use this then they've got to abuse the system in a boss fight, because It'd be very cool :P. It would be neat to see objects react to us more, it's always pleasing even if its so primal and basic... Like a bird or cat knocking things off the shelf because why not lol.

Interesting if the highest setting would have particle physics, and more particularly leaves be given physics (medium would be just grass moving from some spells and stuff). If they're adding such things I wonder if they'd be able to add a noodle hair physics /options/, like ones you may see in Skyrim mods (adds a weak anti-clipping feature and makes hair move well, usually - sometimes very not lol).

[kikix12]

I won't bother citing myself, just a hint for you : read the post just above yours.

You're the one that should read the post I made again, I'll get to "why" in a moment.

Dont tell me this can not be improved easily.

Easily =/= "free". As I said a resolution, as far as workload goes, is as easy as changing values for the program. But that is NOT RELEVANT for a business. That's because "drawing" the textures is only part of the work necessary. Further parts are far more demanding depending on resolution chosen, and that means that they cost very real money and development time. Because the computers that are busy working cannot be used for additional work...It's scary that I need to remind you of such a simple fact. Either they would need to buy extra computers or the development process would take longer, and longer development process means paying extra costs, no matter how you cut it.

I was talking strictly about resolution.

No, you were not.

"It wouldn't cost anything to the dev team to make all new textures at high quality", by that I mean the new content, not the existing one. They could just retexture the important characters, like Hien or Raubahn on whom the lower quality is clearly visible. Read more carefully.

As I said, resolution is part of the quality, but quality is NOT part of resolution. These two are NOT SYNONYMS.

Quality of an image can be affected without the change of resolution, while resolution can be changed with minimal effect on quality (if any). Simple proof of concept is upscaling which doesn't in itself affect the quality in any significant manner.


I'm not saying that you don't think of only resolution, but you most certainly don't talk only about resolution. First learn the difference between resolution and image quality and then think about discussing more technical aspects of that. Clearly you lack any idea about the process and definitions used in it.

[Deithwen]

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I don't know what point you are trying to make. Trying to teach me things I already know ? Assuming / interpreting things because you believe I know nothing about development ?

You don't need to remind me that it costs resources to create any asset in a game. I've already said countless times that only the newer, meaning not already existing textures should be made at higher quality. I have also specified at multiple occasions that I was talking about high res textures. I not asking about tesselation / bump mapping or whatever shaders. And as you said, resolution can be included inside the grand texture quality topic. At this point texture quality can be subjective.

I don't need you to remind me the difference between texture quality and resolution.

Anyway, you are assuming I am some kind of idiot who doesn't know a thing about what I am talking about. You also completly miss the point I have been trying to explain, and completly dismiss any incoherence you make that I point out.
You don't want to discuss, you want to be right, while aiming to make me look like a fool for some reason I ignore.


This is a sterile discussion here, acting so condescending is not how to make an interesting conversation.

[Astarotha]

a more immediate issue would be that every object altered as such adds another active hitbox to the area youre in, and while that could pose a server traffic issue it more likely could cause problems with multiple people hitting the same trigger or standing in a shake trigger for a long time bogs down other people, if its solely client side and nobody else triggers this box (ie doors in gpose ignore other people going in and out in the main game) thats still upwards of 100 extra objects in each area actively checking if the player is within its boundaries

[Vahlnir]

Anyway, you are assuming I am some kind of idiot who doesn't know a thing about what I am talking about. You also completly miss the point I have been trying to explain, and completly dismiss any incoherence you make that I point out.
You don't want to discuss, you want to be right, while aiming to make me look like a fool for some reason I ignore.

This is a sterile discussion here, acting so condescending is not how to make an interesting conversation.

You may know a bit, sure, but it's not really black and white. It's also probably not enough knowledge to give an opinion on a professional level. You yourself are going off of more than a few assumptions as well, so...yeah. People were mostly just trying to point out where you're wrong and you got all defensive. Being wrong sucks sometimes, but it's better to hear it.

[kikix12]

I don't know what point you are trying to make.

The point I'm trying to make is simply this.

What you are asking WILL cost Square Enix development time AND money by extension. And they have already chosen NOT to pursue high video quality overall (resolution and all the rest) for financial reasons. Likelihood of them changing the opinion now without actually being ready to make a complete overhaul is close to zero. From a business perspective that is utterly illogical.

Trying to teach me things I already know ?

Trying to teach you things that you claim to know, but consistently seem to write about in a way that is simply untrue. If you know these things, show that in your arguments, not empty claims of knowing them.

I've already said countless times that only the newer, meaning not already existing textures should be made at higher quality. I have also specified at multiple occasions that I was talking about high res textures.

...Again, do not use the word quality if you mean ONLY resolution. That is always, ALWAYS wrong. It's the equivalent of saying "give me some water" when you want ice to cool down your drink. Ice is always water, but water is not always ice. If you're asking for water, technically you are asking for whichever of the three...ice, liquid water or water vapor. And yes, I know that in practice asking for water is virtually always going to be asking for liquid water. That doesn't matter here.

And on the note of the first part...it is COMPLETELY irrelevant whether it will be done only for the new ones or not. What I am arguing is that you are wrong that higher resolution textures are effectively "free" for developers. Whether they are making them from scratch (new textures) or remaking what they have, making higher resolution textures (and then downscaling them...NOT downgrading as you wrote, because, again, downgrading includes EVERYTHING that is part of 'quality', not only resolution), they will still have to pay significantly higher amount of money for the development process and delay the release of content (or pay even more money to avoid that).

And as you said, resolution can be included inside the grand texture quality topic. At this point texture quality can be subjective.

No. Resolution cannot be included since it cannot be excluded in the first place. Resolution IS part of it. Along with all the other fancy terms. You cannot say 'quality' without talking about resolution and all those other terms unless you specify focusing on just that aspect (at which point using 'quality' is just unforgivable as it should be 'parts of quality'). Granted the flow of posts it should be specified at least once in every post, because people can pop-in and read it mid-way through. You only specified it in response to me (although still continued to use the wrong terms all the same), which already means that me writing about general quality in the first post was very valid. In your other posts where you talked specifically about resolution (because yes, there were those two), you never denied talking about other parts that form 'image quality', thus it implied you focused on resolution, not that it is the only thing you are talking about.

[Tiraelina]

resolution is part of the quality, but quality is NOT part of resolution

Simple proof of concept is upscaling which doesn't in itself affect the quality in any significant manner.

I didn't know we were talking about 4k skyrim mods and not a business with all the source assets.

Starting from a higher resolution is generally easier to work with the pipelines being used. This is why a lot of older games ended up with addons to increase texture resolution, they already had them at their higher, native size. You can always go down, never higher. While SE may have the sculpts, how they handled the diffuse and masks is another matter.

Everything else is getting so far off the mark its ridiculous. The nitpicking between quality and resolution, you are either using the extra resolution or you're not. If you aren't then it doesn't matter and you're just wasting memory. The end.

I really have no idea what part you are getting at that more work is needed after except normal maps. Which out of everything are as simple as changing the output resolution. Normal maps aren't the problem to warrant rebaking, which doesn't take that long regardless.

Other aspects? They're not doing enough with shader math for it to even start being considered a factor.

a more immediate issue would be that every object altered as such adds another active hitbox to the area youre in, and while that could pose a server traffic issue it more likely could cause problems with multiple people hitting the same trigger or standing in a shake trigger for a long time bogs down other people, if its solely client side and nobody else triggers this box (ie doors in gpose ignore other people going in and out in the main game) thats still upwards of 100 extra objects in each area actively checking if the player is within its boundaries

Cosmetic effects like these would only ever be client side. It's a lot simpler than you might imagine and mostly a vertex shader, no extra objects needed.

[kikix12]

Starting from a higher resolution is generally easier to work with the pipelines being used.

1) They DO NOT HAVE the higher resolution textures! They already said that to save money they were preparing ALL the assets at low resolution!
2) IT'S NOT ABOUT 'EASY' OR 'HARD'. It never was.

I really have no idea what part you are getting at that more work is needed after except normal maps.

I keep saying time and time and time again. THIS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH DIFFICULTY!!! It's all about the time and money!

They chose to not cater to high-end computers to save money, because 1.0 doing that ended up putting the whole company in financial troubles (on top of it being simply a bad game). And they decided that if they're going to aim for the low-end PC's with A Realm Reborn, making high-res textures is just a waste of money. It is not hard, but it costs extra. It does not fit their business model.


I have no idea how on earth there are people that STILL cannot understand this after three large posts trying to explain it. The only thing to argue here is whether they made a good business decision to save money by not working on high-res textures and whether they should stop doing that in the future. That's all. BUT YOU DIDN'T EVEN SAY A WORD ABOUT THAT!!!

And yes. At this point I'm quite irked, to say the least, so I'll be taking my way out of here. It's not worth the time and nerves to deal with ya beyond that.

[Astarotha]

Cosmetic effects like these would only ever be client side. It's a lot simpler than you might imagine and mostly a vertex shader, no extra objects needed.

youd still need some kind of trigger to tell the client "hey theres somebody (you) standing in the shake zone, shake the bush" hence the last part of my statement. it could be done through altering object properties in the model files for foliage yes, but again think about how many bushes are in an area and how many extra triggers/listeners that adds to every area in the game