Graphics Poll

Andrew Lonon · #1 February 17th, 2005, 11:51 PM

Hello Everyone:

I received the email below from a highly knowledgeable person who works with the history and recreation of the ships from the age of sail. He is quite concerned that Salvo is not accurate enough in the depiction of ships. I am not arguing with him on that, there is defiantly room for improvement. Hence: I would like to know how strong the general sentiment is.

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Dear Andrew London
I saw your game 'Salvo' mentioned on 3D games and was initially very interested, But I see from the screen shots that your ships have a 'couse' (lower sail) on the mizzen and no driver.
This glaring inaccuracy ruins the entire look of a game that has obviously had a great deal of time and money spent on it. I would think that a game of this type has something of a niche market and would mainly appeal to people already interested in the period, like myself.
I feel sure they would be put off buying such a game, because if something as basic as the look of the ships is wrong, then we might expect that there are other inaccuracies with in the games programming that we can not see.
I understand that I may just be an old Anorak, but I have been making models of Napoleonic ships professionally for the past 12 years and have been looking forward to such a game being released, after the fiasco that was Age of Sail 2.
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RickAllen · #2 February 19th, 2005, 01:16 PM

Andrew, I'm affraid he's right, but I would not say the graphics are unacceptable.

Rick

Alex777 · #3 February 21st, 2005, 09:54 AM

Andrew, I think much depends on the advertising. If Shrapnel's ads portray Salvo! as a fun, playable, beer & pretzels-type game, then the graphics are fine. If you present the game as "realistic", then details of this sort are significant. There is a lot published on the period, and many wargamers are quite knowledgable about it.

Many of us have been hoping for a realistic simulation of naval combat in a 3D evironment. Age of Sail 2 and its many patches & sequels promised this but failed (miserably) to deliver. It would be nice to think that Salvo! will fill the gap. However, I don't read the current ads as making any particular claim to realism.

Ed Kolis · #4 February 24th, 2005, 02:49 AM

I'm actually curious about the graphics for a different reason - all the screenshots seem to portray extremely dithered graphics, as if the game were running in 256 color mode. Is this really the case, or did you just compress the graphics to save bandwidth?

Andrew Lonon · #5 March 2nd, 2005, 12:13 AM

Ed Kolis:

The screenshots are actual (to the best of my knowledge) pixel for pixel representations of what you would see on the Salvo screen at any one time/frame. However, the screen is animated so some of the effect that you may be seeing is augmented by the sampling effect of continuous updates.

This could be optimized for a single resolution, but Salvo works at many resolutions. The Screenshots are at 800 x 600 but I will post some other screen shots as a reply to this not at higher resolutions so you can see the difference. <Gotta go make them � so check back in a few days.>

>>>>>>SCREENSHOT ADDED

Combat Wombat · #6 March 3rd, 2005, 12:18 AM

I voted Not Acceptable because I have to agree with the person that emailed you. A fair ammount of accuracy for the ships is something that I would look for in a game like this.

Also a question if I used forced Anti-Aliasing or Anisotropic Filtering would that help smooth out the graphics, or even better does the game itself support them?

RickAllen · #7 March 16th, 2005, 11:54 AM

Andrew, check out the ships in Imperial Glory. Their bow sprits looks a little more realistic than Salvo's.

Rick

PDF · #8 March 16th, 2005, 10:50 AM

This games looks promising, and I expect it to ba at least historically "acceptable". I'm far from a naval specialist but I agree that the ship models have wrong-looking sails... Is it that difficult to correct them ?

As for the graphics quality, the 3D looks Ok, but the bitmap images of captains (?) are so-so.. And indeed they look like 256-color pics - are higher settings supported ?

Edit : the ships'reflections in the water looked sometimes a little weird ... I checked some images, and indeed they are NOT reflections, but pictures some other ship !

Look at this, it's obvious :
http://www.spruegames.com/images/salvo/big/xebec.jpg

Surely it's a detail, but a rather too much seeable one ...

comefromaway · #9 October 14th, 2005, 10:36 AM

That error doesn't surprise me at all. They can't even spell correctly. See my post regarding same.
It would be great if a more professional group of game developers, like the folks who did 'Medal of Honor' for example, could by the game or concept and do something with it.

Ready, aye!

David

Andrew Lonon · #10 October 17th, 2005, 10:40 PM

David:

Thank you for signing your note, that�s a nice touch. I have replied to your note in your �spelling errors� post. I am intrigued by your idea of a larger company (larger than my staff of 9 <Jeannie Babberini passed away in April>) acquiring the game and turning it into a first person shooter. That would be great $$.

Oh � also�
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/bf...s_6086627.html
Check out...
�Fixed a few spelling errors�