Official Soldat Forums
Soldat Talk => General Discussions => Topic started by: Adam on January 07, 2013, 08:13:33 pm
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pic is self explanatory
(http://i47.tinypic.com/2co35sj.jpg)
BASICALLY,the only reason soldat is rated low is because of Graphics(sad isnt it?). The rest such as gameplay,lifespan, and value is rated high
just saying how soldat is neglected because of its graphics
and yea...gameplay is rated 9 out of 10
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Mhm, I do agree with that there needs to be graphics modifications. Doesn't necessarily need to make it pretty like all the AAA games, just modify the current images so that it doesn't look like puke on the screen.
It is actually rather unplayable because of looks without mods...
I think increasing it from x480 would be too big of a step to get done any time soon.
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We have to keep in mind there are a lot of soldat players on old pcs/laptops including me and graphic modification might not end well in that case. Majority of players who play this game nowadays do not care about the graphics, its more about gameplay. On the other hand I'd love to see some HD mockups of soldat just out of curiosity.
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I think graphucs can improve visually without them being resource consuming. Soldat's simplicity should remain in gameplay as well as graphics, but even though they should be simple they can still improve in style
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grapics is mostly map related ,having ugly and empty maps as defaults is at fault
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We have to keep in mind there are a lot of soldat players on old pcs/laptops including me and graphic modification might not end well in that case. Majority of players who play this game nowadays do not care about the graphics, its more about gameplay. On the other hand I'd love to see some HD mockups of soldat just out of curiosity.
I dont think there are that many systems around that actually dont meet soldat's requirements, a small graphic upgrade wouldn't be such big impact on the requirements either, after all the game stays 2d.
Also if your system is really that poor, I suggest to upgrade it sometime? you must have a really poor and most likely 10+ years old computer/laptop if u cant meet such requirements :X
also on topic: there aren't many 2d games around like soldat nowadays, but for a 2d game i'd say the graphics should be rated higher.
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Any graphic update may bring new FPS issues which could be devastating when it comes to soldat because of how fast it is.
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Performance issues won't be a problem when the devs begin to improve the performance of Soldat. Like rendering, etc.
It will give new space for upgrades like graphics. :)
But: It's all about time ;)
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The easiest way to improve graphics without affecting performance would be to make another mod default. I assume there are some awesome mods that are somewhat faithful to the existing style (so no rainbow bullets or mech warriors) and doesn't infringe on any copyrights.
It's too late to make it for 1.6.4, but I would like to have some improvements for the version after that. Anyone know any such mods?
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The easiest way to improve graphics without affecting performance would be to make another mod default. I assume there are some awesome mods that are somewhat faithful to the existing style (so no rainbow bullets or mech warriors) and doesn't infringe on any copyrights.
It's too late to make it for 1.6.4, but I would like to have some improvements for the version after that. Anyone know any such mods?
Well, I made a modpack sometime ago, "easy and perfect" for grenade explosion and also sfx, SK cell shaded for gostek, weapon gfx and most of the scenery, "warm texture pack" (found form syvax, not sure who made them) for warmer more pleasant textures, and then I've made some modifications myself. Though, the sfx I think is from CS, and I put in q3 chaingun hit sound as hit sound and also jump sounds... So you'd probably need to either skip them. Chainsaw gfx would need resize, but that's quite easy to fix...
http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=41845.msg505574#msg505574
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Those dark, simple and clear outlines like in cell-shaded mods and the one ginn just linked to look really nice. I think they should be included in most, if not all default maps. They look nice AND they help separate polygons from scenery.
Soldat Enhanced (http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=12266.0) has really nice weapon graphics (both for weapon-gfx and weapon menu) and fits perfectly into "close to original, but higher quality" category. Default interface is also a bit nicer, though crosshair is harder to see. There's other nice bits here and there, like the glow around the flags which now has a more interesting shape as opposed to just circle, and nice explosion and smoke particles.
Also, I suggest that we look into the sounds too, because in many reviews I've seen sound was another thing that didn't receive much praise. Personally, I really liked Ruger, Spas and LAW sounds in Soldat Enhanced, and M79 sound has some nice touches. Though I don't know if there's any copyrights behind the sounds. :S
I'll try to do some more work on some of my inf map remakes, and hopefully they'll finally be accepted as defaults.
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Something the graphics need is a somewhat coherent style. Currently the game is just a mess of styles that have nothing to do with each other. That's also why I think combining something as detailed as the mentioned Soldat Enhanced with cartoon-ish, cell-shaded gosteks.
Soldat is a simple game and there's no point making the graphics overly complicated either. One can make very pretty things with fairly simple graphics, see Super Meat Boy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snaionoxjos) or even Team Fortress 2 for example. Personally I think pursuing realism regarding the graphics is the wrong way to go and many of the modern maps with realistic sceneries and textures look really out of place.
Soldat feels rather cheap and flimsy whereas SMB for example feels solid and well constructed - that's something that Soldat should aim for aswell.
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another one worth checking out: http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=30826.0
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Something the graphics need is a somewhat coherent style. Currently the game is just a mess of styles that have nothing to do with each other. That's also why I think combining something as detailed as the mentioned Soldat Enhanced with cartoon-ish, cell-shaded gosteks.
Soldat is a simple game and there's no point making the graphics overly complicated either. One can make very pretty things with fairly simple graphics, see Super Meat Boy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snaionoxjos) or even Team Fortress 2 for example. Personally I think pursuing realism regarding the graphics is the wrong way to go and many of the modern maps with realistic sceneries and textures look really out of place.
Soldat feels rather cheap and flimsy whereas SMB for example feels solid and well constructed - that's something that Soldat should aim for aswell.
I wouldn't call "Soldat Enhanced" detailed and realistic. They're more detailed and realistic than vanilla icons (which are just bad, not "stylish"), but overall they're still varied and colorful enough to not appear too realistic and "serious".
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I wouldn't call "Soldat Enhanced" detailed and realistic. They're more detailed and realistic than vanilla icons (which are just bad, not "stylish"), but overall they're still varied and colorful enough to not appear too realistic and "serious".
Can't really argue on this cause it's such a subjective issue.
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Something the graphics need is a somewhat coherent style. Currently the game is just a mess of styles that have nothing to do with each other. That's also why I think combining something as detailed as the mentioned Soldat Enhanced with cartoon-ish, cell-shaded gosteks.
Soldat is a simple game and there's no point making the graphics overly complicated either. One can make very pretty things with fairly simple graphics, see Super Meat Boy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snaionoxjos) or even Team Fortress 2 for example. Personally I think pursuing realism regarding the graphics is the wrong way to go and many of the modern maps with realistic sceneries and textures look really out of place.
Soldat feels rather cheap and flimsy whereas SMB for example feels solid and well constructed - that's something that Soldat should aim for aswell.
This.
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Worth mentioning is that with current DX8, soldat can't really achieve any "bells and whistles" in terms of graphics. We really need to find something lightweight and fitting into it. I felt that those mods with cartoonish style fitted soldat most. I'm speaking here about simplified textures like in cell shaded mod. (I think it was that, though I'm not sure.)
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If we're gonna update the visuals, we might aswell get some new sounds to go with that.
I tried this modern sounds: http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=40111.msg492743#msg492743
My thoughts are that it sounds good, but it doesn't match what I see. We need to upgrade the looks of soldat before we can put modern soundeffects on top of it. Or at the same time.
I think it will be difficult to find a perfect look and sound for soldat, but how many do we have to choose from?
Maybe someone who has experience with moddong both sound and visuals can make an overview of our options?
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Those dark, simple and clear outlines like in cell-shaded mods and the one ginn just linked to look really nice. I think they should be included in most, if not all default maps. They look nice AND they help separate polygons from scenery.
Soldat Enhanced (http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=12266.0) has really nice weapon graphics (both for weapon-gfx and weapon menu) and fits perfectly into "close to original, but higher quality" category. Default interface is also a bit nicer, though crosshair is harder to see. There's other nice bits here and there, like the glow around the flags which now has a more interesting shape as opposed to just circle, and nice explosion and smoke particles.
Also, I suggest that we look into the sounds too, because in many reviews I've seen sound was another thing that didn't receive much praise. Personally, I really liked Ruger, Spas and LAW sounds in Soldat Enhanced, and M79 sound has some nice touches. Though I don't know if there's any copyrights behind the sounds. :S
I'll try to do some more work on some of my inf map remakes, and hopefully they'll finally be accepted as defaults.
+1
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lets all just buy a intel i7 processor with a nice ssd drive and a hd 7970 graphics card and we will all be happy until the end of time
Why dont you just stop spamming? jeez...
We have to keep in mind there are a lot of soldat players on old pcs/laptops including me and graphic modification might not end well in that case. Majority of players who play this game nowadays do not care about the graphics, its more about gameplay. On the other hand I'd love to see some HD mockups of soldat just out of curiosity.
If your system can play a medium quality video then HD Soldat graphics will be smooth. Or if you can run Half Life 1, then you can easily do HD Soldat. This is my opinion anyway. When I first played Soldat in 2002, I was running Windows 98SE on a Celeron 386 system with 64mb ram and like an 8mb integrated video card. I'm sure the majority of players have computers at least 6x as powerful (cpu-wise) with over 1gb of ram at absolute minimum.
This is exactly what I meant with my previous post! very well explained!
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I think the graphics should be updated, but Soldat should stay usable at full speed to a broad range of users, desktops up to 8 years old, laptops for however long they can last, linux or mac users through wine(I'd like to note weather effects currently lag in this case), etc.
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I think we need to make sure Soldat works well with higher resolutions.
I was thinking about how to make Soldat future proof (gfx wise) and I'm not sure if there is another option than Vector style gfx.
The question is if that is a style which fits Soldat.
About fps: I think soldat isn't really optimized (we didn't look a lot into the rendering code - its ugly). Newer DX versions could help (or a general cleanup of the code).
I have a 4+ year old laptop which I don't plan to replace soon so if it will work on a core2duo 2.2 ghz (because it's my dev computer).
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Give the Soldat engine Vector GFX and you can have my babies.
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The biggest part of visuals are the maps. Improve the maps, improve the visuals.