GalCiv III visuals

from JoeUser Forums

So yesterday the art team gave me a tour of the new rendering technology being used for GalCIv III.  If you’ve been with us for many years, you know that I’m not a graphics guy.  I drew the original OS/2 version “art” myself with the built in OS/2 icon editor.  As you can imagine, that means I have only a little understanding of all the cool stuff they’re doing.

To me, I thought the GalCiv II ships looked pretty good. But the art team cringes when I say that.  I am intimately familiar with DirectX, Mantle, OpenGL and the other technical side of things. But I’m a lot less familiar with how different features affect the beautification of a game. So I’m just going to tell you some of the stuff in the engine and you tell me (And other clueless people like me) whether it’s cool or not…

GalCiv III 3D engine features

First off, the game will require DirectX 10 minimum.  Ships are made of many different types of materials which the player can control in the ship designer. The materials affect how light interacts with them.  The lighting in much truer in GalCiv III than in GalCiv II making the ships look more real (not real as in photo realistic but less like computer graphics, GalCiv III still has its own surreal art style).

The Ship Designer is expected to export your ship designs as FBX files which should pave the way for lots of interesting things being done to them outside of GalCiv.

The ships reflect what is around them.  So for instance, you can see the reflection of nebula and such on reflective surfaces.  They are also in the process of implementing diffused point lights which should result in ships “popping”  more on the screen because the light affects the ship much more realistically than traditional harsh directional lighting. 

Now, how much of this gets in by the Alpha remains to be seen.  Currently, my opinion is that the ships look better than GalCiv II but not spectacularly so but we have over a year to go on that aspect so by the time we ship, they should look amazing.

Was anyone here in the GalCiv II beta? Remember how sad the game looked? The alpha of GC3 will look far far better.

188,030 views 80 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I thought they looked great already. Excited to see more screenshots!

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Funny thing, some years ago I didn't really care that much about graphics in a game as long as concept was good and the UI was efficient. Now that I'm older (a little too old) and have less wish to play (too little time) games, I have started to care more about graphics. UI is still my pet complaint on everything, but I do tend to skip games with average looking graphics and clumsy looking UI's. With some exceptions. In the end I don't really care if a game costs 10, 20 or 50 euros for whatever hours of gameplay, as long as the hours I have are enjoyment to my eyes and pleasurable to play... little like with women at my youth :).

Nice to hear GalCiv III graphics will match todays AAA-standards ;).

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from LittleTinyFrogs Forums Top

Yea, I feel the same way on UI.   It's one area we take a lot more seriously than we used to.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I do remember the betas for both GC1 and GC2. When we got our first download of GC2 I was concerned that there was too much emphasis on eye candy. I know that it is important that the graphics look good, but I felt that game play and performance were of equal if not higher importance. And, at the time, as pretty as they were, the cut scenes didn't play well on the PC I had at the time -- they tended to jerk and spasm a lot.

This time, as luck would have it, I bought a new PC in August with gaming in mind -- with a four core I7  and a GT 640. And this time I am keeping the drivers current.

 

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Wow!Changing what the ship's made of?That's awesome!And for the people(mainly me)who don't know much about files,what's an FBX file,and what is it used for?

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

This reminds me of a question: NVidia has a program called GeForce Experience. It looks like (perhaps I am misunderstand this) they are teaming up with game producers to optimize their driver and the game's graphics settings for each user's PC. Anyone know more about this?

 

Edit: and will StarDock be participating in this with NVidea?

Reply #7 from LittleTinyFrogs Forums Top

Beta 1 of GalCiv II screenshot:

 

Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top

Looks to me like the final product. Though Beta versions tend to feel nearly complete in many aspects.

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Flamescreen, reply 8

Looks to me like the final product. Though Beta versions tend to feel nearly complete in many aspects.

Beta 1 was the first build of the beta. And I see a few changes (details) between this picture and the release level in the lower left corner. Do you see them?

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

i dont remember that domination rank counter in the UI aside from that a few things were moved around

Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Lucky, reply 6

This reminds me of a question: NVidia has a program called GeForce Experience. It looks like (perhaps I am misunderstand this) they are teaming up with game producers to optimize their driver and the game's graphics settings for each user's PC. Anyone know more about this?

 

Note that the GeForce Experience is not similar to AMD's Mantle API.

 

The GeForce Experience is just an agent Nvidia uses to

1) Automate driver updates/installs

2) Automate some 'optimal' settings for games depending on your detected video card

3) Automate connecting an Nvidia Shield to Steam

So far Nvidia has nothing comparable to AMD's Mantle API and given the lack of news to counter Mantle,  it's likely not even something they're even working on.

Reply #12 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

FBX support seems to indicate we would be able to create and import our own custom ship models and animations? Or am I reading that wrong?

The DX10 requirement isn't surprising. I mean it's not like you were going to support XP 64-bit :P

The use of materials and reflections is interesting. But that woudl mean the lighting and particle systems to be pretty dynamic on teh main map as well.

In any case sounds exciting :)

Reply #13 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I obviously don't mind hands off combat. That is not the question, but the 2d combat viewer I didn't like. I would rather a 3d looking combat viewer. Not to mention spore and sins of a solar empire had better looking planets. I would like better looking star bases. I would like to ability to draw or import my races. Paint is a good tool for this since it is there anyway ie windows. Can't you modify the new ship designer to make factions to. Besides this I would also be able to modify specific features like greatest heavyweights or boxing legends of the ring from sega.

 

Reply #14 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I can't say I'm old guard of Stardock fans, but I'm still not graphic-centered person. For me graphic is just a tool, supplementing gameplay and, if necessary, storyline, hense extending "suspense of disbelief" and/or "immersion", if we talk about story-oriented games, where graphic could (actually should) work in way, similar to illustrations in books. Of course I'm not going to criticize game should it have good graphic, but if it's the only thing it have...

Reply #15 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Too me GalCiv2 still looks fantastic today. Will be exciting to see what these new artists come up with to improve upon it. :)

Reply #16 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Galciv 2 ships looked pretty good, so I am confident they will look great in GC3. What should the graphics guys work more on are the weapon effects and ship explosions, those were average at best. And beams is GC2 sometimes appeared misaligned or offset from the ships they were firing from.

Reply #17 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting NorsemanViking, reply 15

Too me GalCiv2 still looks fantastic today.

Precisely. :)

Reply #18 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Why not dx11? (i think its ~4 years old). Im not a programmer, dont know anything about pros and cons dx11/10, but i checked the steam survery stats. Theres ~55% users of dx11 gpu+os, so it gives us about 30mln users ready to play dx11 games.. so why not dx11?

Reply #19 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I'd really find cool to have some visual action on the ships - like blinking position lights, maybe some engine flarings or somethins like that, giving the scenery more live... the gc2 ships were nice but a bit statix. like plastic models. In additon to reflecting the ambience, this would look really good.

 

Reply #20 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Morghul, reply 18

Why not dx11? (i think its ~4 years old). Im not a programmer, dont know anything about pros and cons dx11/10, but i checked the steam survery stats. Theres ~55% users of dx11 gpu+os, so it gives us about 30mln users ready to play dx11 games.. so why not dx11?

DX11 would more or less force users into Windows 7 or Window 8. And would require users to have an Nvidia GTS450 or AMD HD5000 or higher.

This doesn't "Sound" bad right?

Go to the Call of Duty:Ghosts Discussion Hub on Steam. Feel free to bathe in the LITANY OF HATE because Ghost had the audacity to be the first game to ever force DX11 and 64-bit onto users. It's shocking to see people whine about not having 64-bit. Whining that their GTX8800 should run the game. Etc. Then in the same breath say that the game is a 'console port'.

One of the first games that would actually benefit from being 64-bit and DX11 only, something that would make the game stand out from the console counterparts, and their user base HATED THE REQUIREMENT.

Reply #21 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Im not sure that cod is good expample, that game its a bad port and looks bad, so people could be shocked about its requirements.

btw. 85% steam users have win7 or 8.

Reply #22 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting satoru1, reply 20
Feel free to bathe in the LITANY OF HATE because Ghost had the audacity to be the first game to ever force DX11 and 64-bit onto users.

Litany of hate is well-deserved, because CoD, in its heart, is an old Call of Duty, which in turn are just Quake 3. No need to tell me how much upgraded it is, I'll believe in upgrades CD Project Red made to Aurora (NWN1 engine), turning it into beauty, that runs in the heart of Witcher 1. CoD:G has absolutely nothing to have system extortions like that for quality, and possibilities it offers. Bethesda at least tried to offer some improvements for their Gamebryo's successor (can't say it's that much better - compare it with Witcher 2 engine), and system requirements are more modest - they don't try to sell old-gen multiplatform as gen-after-next-gen one.

So yeah, pour more hate for the hate throne.

Reply #23 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Morghul, reply 21

Im not sure that cod is good expample, that game its a bad port and looks bad, so people could be shocked about its requirements.
.

And agian the differnce between DX10/11 is not "OMG this looks so god damn amazing" it adds things like tessilation, which makes organic things look better, and adds other organic elements like water/fire. And a bunch fo pipeline benefits. But there's nothign fuctionally about DX11 that makes a game 'look amazing' from the entirely simplistic visual point of view. It has benefits but they're entirely under the hood or utterly poorly understood by people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MARHtzy-_qU

Watch this demo. What do you think?

I can tell you unequivocavly that this demo does more complex things and is a technical marvel that does more than BF4 and Witcher2 combined. Yet that's almost impossible to convey to most people who can't understand why this demo is absolutely incredible from a technical standpoint.

Reply #24 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Where's the beef?

Reply #25 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

... I was expecting some new screenshots... *.* 

 

but this whets the appetite...

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