[Request]: Foliage Reaction

[SturmChurro]

It needs to be an all or nothing thing.

Consider how jarring it is to have some of the newest higher resolution gear/mounts/items in WoW paired with earlier zones and such - it honestly looks terrible.

Yeah, I never got too much into WoW, but when I did play that was for sure really jarring. Moreso zones and stuff, it's really weird.

[Sylve]

Armchair developer, sure.

I'm not asking them to retexture everything, as I clearly said : " 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.

Also for your information, textures are loaded in the Ram of your GPU. Increased resolution for textures only won't result in FPS drops, unless your card is out of Vram, then the textures are loaded in the RAM directly, which is slower and will impact (greatly) your FPS.

Computers now are much more powerfull than when 1.0 was realeased, and the bad performances at the time where not due to textures quality, but the crazy amount of polygons on certain assets (the famous flower pot) among other things, and the bad choice of the cristal tool engine (originally used for FF13) for a MMO which needs to display many more assets and characters (+open world, hence the long corridors to hide the loadings).

Texture quality is not expected to be improved in shadowbringers, as Yoshiad said during the Fanfest.

Minimum specs exist and I don't see how a "enable high res textures" option would impact that. This would affect the recommended settings.

I called you an armchair developer because you are demonstrating a clear lack of knowledge about how development works.
When they create zones, they use previously created assets unless they need something they did not already have. The rocks, trees and even the NPCs and monsters. Everything is reused when making new zones and content. You are actually asking them to create brand new textures for those older assets that they're using to create the new zones.
During the story when we get the revamped appearances for the Scions, that wasn't merely a story element, That was the developers creating new assets for existing characters at higher quality than their originals. This is most clearly seen with the Twins.
This is what I mean when I said you were asking them to retexture the whole game.

And I take particular umbrage at this line:

" It wouldn't cost anything to the dev team to make all new textures at high quality"

As I have friends who are graphics designers and you are essentially flipping off the work they and others with their artwork related roles do as being zero effort and 'free'. You seem to be forgetting that textures and models are created by real people who put real hours into those pieces. That work takes them away from creating new things.

Also, Sure. Textures get loaded into the vRAM to be used. But it kinda has to be loaded from the vRAM so you can see it. Higher resolutions are larger sizes, requiring not just RAM capacity but speed. So yes, using higher resolution textures does impact FPS. The speed at which textures are loaded from memory and displayed to you is part of the engines optimization, but the RAM speed plays a role too. When the resolutions are too high, you get issues like walls and characters having no textures for a second or two as the RAM desperately tries to load what you need for that scene. Ironically, BDO once again is the best example. Even when using their lowest presets possible, it still takes a second for faces to load when talking to quest givers. Often appearing as a shapeless mass until the game catches up.

I never said it shouldn't or couldn't be done. I'm irritated at your complete lack of understanding regarding textures and how they're made and used.

[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.

[kikix12]

In gaming, textures are usually created at high resolution (top quality) then downgraded (which is an automated process).

Too bad, they already said that the game textures are made in low quality. It was a choice they specifically made to save money and most likely will continue to do so, as that's where their priorities lie.

It wouldn't cost anything to the dev team to make all new textures at high quality, and offer a preset in the options. It's almost a zero effort improvement.

And the above gives you the idea as to why you are wrong on this part. I don't know where you get the idea that creating something in higher quality is "free", but it's simply wrong.

At BEST, creating something in a higher resolution is low-effort. It's just a matter of changing the setting for resolution in whatever program you use and voila. That line you drew?! Instead of being made from 8 pixels it's made from 32.

However, you are gravely mistaken if you think that have no actual costs associated with it. Textures need to actually be rendered in the studio as part of their making process. The higher the resolution the longer it takes. The longer it takes the more electricity is used and the less OTHER textures you can render in the same time frame. The less textures you can make in a given time frame, the later you can sell the product.

And this is just for resolution, it's not even "quality", just a small part of it. So small, in fact, that most people won't see the difference between Ultra HD and 4K, many people won't see the difference between HD and 4K and some people won't even see the difference between older standards of resolution and 4K (but yes, those people have very poor eyesight).

Resolution is just part of the equation. Details, shading, lighting, coloring...these are just few parts far more important where "quality" is concerned. A lower resolution image with superior details, better colored, shaded etc will look way better than a higher resolution with other aspects being mediocre. No matter how good of an eyesight you have. Don't believe me?! Go and look for whatever fan art you're interested in. You'll find tons of low quality images with ~1920X1080 resolution that look meh, with tons of high quality images with, let's say, ~1366X768 resolution. But that quality came at the cost of work (and skills). Making higher quality images is very much costly. Otherwise EVERYONE would make highest quality textures possible and give automatically down-scaled textures as an option for lower-end computers.

[Deithwen]

Yup if you read my posts properly instead of nitpicking a few sentences here and there you might have avoided missing my point.

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

Also about textures :





Dont tell me this can not be improved easily.

I'm not talking about ultra HD vs 4k difference. You're clearly off topic here.
I'm not talking about shaders, not coloring etc.
I was talking strictly about resolution.


Is it that hard to understand what I'm talking about ?

[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.

[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.

[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).

[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