3d battle scenes are looking horrible! :(

licker · #1 September 22nd, 2003, 07:27 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Nerfix:
And AoW is generic on the top of all other things!
Dwarwes, Elves(URGH!) and Orcs... Blargh...
Dominions has creative, pseudo-historical nations, i realy like the idea and perhaps thats why Dominions "hit me so hard". And no alignment system! For gods sake, i HATE it when alignment system gets mixed in strategy games!

Hmm, perhaps AoW is generic in terms of the names of the races, but within the races are interesting units with interesting abilities. Unfortunately many of those units are not worth building, and many of the abilities don't quite work the way they should...

If you ask me Dom is also very 'generic', but the gameplay does a better job perhaps at covering that up. There is simply 'more' in Dom though, but realistically HI from one nation (or independant) isn't always *that* much different from HI from another source. The same for most units and commanders. Granted each nation has some unique units or commanders, but for the most part, I don't feel any greater attachment to them than I did to unique units in AoW (the Glutton is just a wicked cool creature, though somewhat underpowered for its level).

Well either you like one or the other better, or you try not to get too hung up on the outer shell and really enjoy the game play.

Heh, I had a looooong debate over on the AoW forums about this type of topic. It was more about how much immersion and suspention of disbelief mattered in playing a computer game. Obviously thats a personal matter, but for the sake of that discussion we were talking about game elements, and one side was trying to attack them using realism arguments. I just don't think that it makes sense to attack a game element you don't like simply because it 'isn't realistic'. Better to address how the game mechanic effects gameplay, rather than any individuals ability to rationalize its inclusion in the game in the first place

LordArioch · #2 September 22nd, 2003, 09:59 PM

The problem is I find most of the aow abilities not interesting. Most of the decent units have no useful abilities except for the druid and entangle which is just WRONG. Entangle is far too powerful.

licker · #3 September 22nd, 2003, 10:59 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by LordArioch:
The problem is I find most of the aow abilities not interesting. Most of the decent units have no useful abilities except for the druid and entangle which is just WRONG. Entangle is far too powerful.

Are you talking about entange in AoW2 or in AoWSM? In 2 it is overpowered, in SM its not nearly so bad, mostly becasue the druids are more fragile.

Abilities that are interesting...
Swallow Whole
Strangle
Web
Grasp
Round Attack (though its a bit underpowered)
Whirlwind (only on one unit though

)
Seduce/Dominate/Possess (and drain will by extention)
...

I dunno, there are some broken abilities, the resistances and immunities. Willpower is a bit funky as it pertains to surrender (depending on your point of view). Flyers are still wicked tough, if you know how to use them, but they've been significantly toned down from AoW 2. Overall AoW SM is much better balanced than AoW SM, and has added alot of new content (not all of it good maybe). I can agree that Dom is more satisfing on many levels than AoW is, but AoW is hardly devoid of 'intersting' abilities. The problem is more that only units with 'interesting' abilities are worth building, and even then some units are still a waste of resources. Thats an issue with the game design though, and to change it they'd have to fundamentally change how you go about creating your forces, something I wish they would add, but I doubt we'd see.

Daynarr · #4 September 22nd, 2003, 11:52 PM

Can't help but notice that this thread has turned into AOW2 thread.

Mortifer · #5 September 23rd, 2003, 10:51 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Daynarr:
Can't help but notice that this thread has turned into AOW2 thread.

Yeah.

PDF · #6 September 24th, 2003, 02:00 PM

Back to putting the thread on its tracks

Looking again at the D2 screenshots, IMHO the problem with the graphics come from the units sprites : they look pixellated even from somewhat afar, as if the bitmaps were quite (too) small...

To get a better aspect they should be doubled in pixel size...But this involves redoing the 500+ units sprites

!
Unless the gfx are moddable (in external common format files) to allow fans to do them I don't expect Illwinter to be able to do it quickly ... but maybe I'm wrong (who am I to doubt

) ?

Kristoffer O · #7 September 24th, 2003, 05:14 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by PDF:
Back to putting the thread on its tracks

Looking again at the D2 screenshots, IMHO the problem with the graphics come from the units sprites : they look pixellated even from somewhat afar, as if the bitmaps were quite (too) small...

To get a better aspect they should be doubled in pixel size...But this involves redoing the 500+ units sprites !
Unless the gfx are moddable (in external common format files) to allow fans to do them I don't expect Illwinter to be able to do it quickly ... but maybe I'm wrong (who am I to doubt ) ?

2000 sprites.