Battling lighting

What are you talking about both screens are good looking  

I do admit the second is better but still

Keep up the good work!

Rubbing the UGLY CLOTH MAP in our faces again, eh?

Can't see anything awful in either pic. The first one has a sandy beach so the brighter lighting seems fitting. The second one is a bit darker and fits the mood of the forest (especially with the Ogre).

Which one is the bad one? 

Both pictures look nice enough to me.

Lets make it a game, shall cast your vote? 1 or 2. Though the truth is tht these two pictures are quite differant compostions, so its not really a apples to apples comparision.

1 no wait 2 or 1 and 2 so 3 3 it is

I like 2 quite a bit, save for the thatch roofs they are too bright.

I'd like to see the exact same scene with and without lighting changes.

To be honest, I can't tell much of a difference since they both look good.  The second one looks a bit better, but the scene is different and seems to have better graphics generally.

Lighting is certainly a tricky subject.   How difficult is it to switch between these lighting settings?

2 is superior, but they both look fine and eminently playable.

I too am confused, both look fine to me unless he is talking about the roofs in #2

While 2 looks great as, say, a picture, I'm not sure it works for a game.  The units and elements you need to see on the game board don't pop.

FWIW, I think it would be cool to have lighting vary from clear, bright areas to misty, dark ones dependent on the magics and evilyness that are prominent in them.

The first one has a 'softer' look to it. It looks like a watercolour painting which is quite nice.

The second one looks darker and unfortunately duller. The darker lighting means the soft quality of the coloring causes things to 'fade' out and attention drawn to the wrong things. Example, the roundish trees with the whitish tops. The whitish/greyish tops now stands out more than its olive green color making me think of mushrooms rather trees.

I think thats also the reason why the roofs now looks too bright? The whites now stands out more in the darker lighting giving me the impression of it 'glowing'.

While i really like the soft coloring, i guess once lighting comes in, the color pallete needs to be changed slightly to give it some livelier colors and more contrast so that the details don't get lost in the shadows.

Just my 2 cents.

As long as this doesn't look like yet another "Dark and Gritty" game, and reading what I have about Elemental that doesn't seem the case, I'll be happy. As we have the ability to be evil, so to speak, a complimentary lighting system - sort of like the way Black and White works - might be the way to go?

Why is it so pretty? Damn you, Stardock, you tease!

Also, I can't tell the difference between the two pictures. iruncultured?

I vote 2nd. In my mind, it looks alot better! Cool looking troll too!

In all honesty neither particularly grabs me. I've never been a fan of the "artistic" look over the "realistic" look, especially these days, but it doesn't matter much as graphics are about 5% of the reason I buy a game. It's also pretty clear that this is an experimental stage of the engine (the lighting effects remind me of playing around with direct3d myself years ago) and I'll be quite interested to see how much improved the final product is.

I loved Vanguard's attempt to go for the "realistic" look but understand the technical cost was gigantic (the unstable and inefficient engine ultimately sank the game in my opinion) compared to the cartoony "stylised" look everyone else goes for

cheers,

Kul

When lighting turns trees into water or vice versa, something's definitely wrong.

I vote 2nd although thats possibly because i'm baised against deserts.

whats with the trees? they look like turds on sticks.

I like the first one because of the person wading in the water, does mean we can take our royal families to the beach?   But both look good to me in a lighting aspect

1 looks best to me. 2 is way too dark, unless that is a nighttime screenshot.

I cannot imagine that elemental will have a day and night cycle (which would be amzing!), but would it not be possible to have different lighting on different parts of the map? Then are Dark forest could be dark, and their would be even more differce between each area, or maybe differnt ligting for the different factions. You could do some really cool thing with differnt lighting. Thanks for showing us.