PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

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IzPrebuilt said:
Honestly when it comes to them adding new art assets, my brain just thinks "polishing a turd" the game started development in 2013ish and it was massively behind graphically speaking. It has not really gotten much better. You can increase the resolution of the stuff in the game, it won't make it look like any better than like Skyrim from 2011.
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For me 7D2D is similar to Valheim as in it is beautiful in a certain chunky way. For 7D2D game play is king visuals are second.

 
Jost Amman said:
Does 7D2D look way better than when it first started in 2013? Absolutely!
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I would agree,

but these two pictures you selected as proof actually look as they might be from the same alpha, maybe with slightly different screen resolutions or detail quality. 

Lighting and shadows even look slightly better in the first shot.

And that ambulance from A20 even doesn't look like a 3D model but just like a textured cardboard stand-up.

How in the world did you manage to take such an ugly screenshot?

You did run A20 on your Nokia 3310 cellphone right? 

😃

 
Fanatical_Meat said:
For me 7D2D is similar to Valheim as in it is beautiful in a certain chunky way. For 7D2D game play is king visuals are second.
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Agree, I legitimately don't care that it looks bad. Although I think Valheim is an art style choice to keep the file size really small which is nice.

Jost Amman said:
Unbelievable! With this statement, you lost any credibility, sir.

Is 7D2D up to par with the latest graphical improvements in other more recent games? No

Does 7D2D look way better than when it first started in 2013? Absolutely!
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First of all, what credibility? who put you in charge of the credibility? can i exchange my limited retained credibility for something useful like staples or dried bugs? Why are you talking to me like an Oblivion NPC i just stole from? Are you from a PS3 game like the graphics in this game? Is this the reason for your offense? Have i offended an entire era of gaming?

blow-into-bag-yes.gif

Second of all you have just shown my point.
It's made about 3-4 years of graphical improvement in a decade. It's never going to look good.

So YES, it has NOT gotten MUCH BETTER. Precisely what I said.

It's not even the fault of the devs at this point, it'd be impossible to make it look good without restarting.

meilodasreh said:
I would agree,

but these two pictures you selected as proof actually look as they might be from the same alpha, maybe with slightly different screen resolutions or detail quality. 

Lighting and shadows even look slightly better in the first shot.

And that ambulance from A20 even doesn't look like a 3D model but just like a textured cardboard stand-up.

How in the world did you manage to take such an ugly screenshot?

You did run A20 on your Nokia 3310 cellphone right? 

😃
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Those ugly screenshots are official marketing for the game. Probably the worst looking one out of them all but still lol

image.png

 
So we back for the 1000th time about graphics again. So someone please tell me, what 100% voxel game has great graphics? I mean I don't know every game out but I don't know any. So for what the game is the graphic are really not that horrible. I'm not convinced that even if the game started development today it would look much better. Maybe a little sure but it be at the same level as comparing the first alpha to now. So yeah would look better but by how much? ..... Also yes 2013 in development so what? AAA companies with millions dollar budgets and a lot more employees take more then 5 years to develop. Example right now starfield was announced in 2018. I 100% can tell you it just didn't start the development process that year. We still don't have it yet. Point is why are we still comparing this and that to a game not fully developed yet? If you seen starfield development or gta development during the process would you quickly jump the gun on why they look like this or that and why it taking so long? 

Maybe I misreading things and ranted for nothing but these things have been discussed over and over already even during this alpha so still valid points. 🙃

 
didn't know you ranted until you said so.

But yes, you did it for nothing.

Do I think the graphics of this game is meh compared to many other games today? Yes.

Did I recently pass over a 1000h in 7D2D? Yes.

Do I have over 1000h in any other non-voxel super blinky blinky fancy AAA hyper realistic graphics game? No. Not. Even. Close.

See how much I care about graphics.

 
Developers create games for the players but they also create games with their industry peers and critics in mind. 
 

Players typically disregard technical limitations and simply compare all games on the surface without even thinking or caring about why. All they do is judge good/bad graphics on a very superficial basis…as we’ve seen many times here. 
 

Industry peers are extremely cognizant of all contributing and limiting factors surrounding the final product and so are quite impressed and give high critical praise when they see a high level of accomplishment. 
 

So a player can be dumbfounded at the time and effort the developers take to increase the technical and graphical level of this game since it will never reach the level of current games that have static worlds and mostly non interactive background art—while peers of the developers are amazed that a fully voxel world with every building, tree, mountain, and ground for dozens of meters below can look so good. 
 

So it may not be super impressive to some of you when the developers improve technical aspects of the game when compared to just adding additional content but try to remember that you are not the only type of audience they are trying to impress.

 
BTW, when the developers first began, their goal was to create a full voxel world with the graphical equivalency of Quake because that was what they felt was possible. That they were able to improve that goal to a full voxel world with the graphical equivalency of Skyrim is amazing. One might make that second comparison out of derision but I think the devs would take it as high praise and those in the industry would be similarly impressed. 

 
IzPrebuilt said:
Agree, I legitimately don't care that it looks bad. Although I think Valheim is an art style choice to keep the file size really small which is nice.

First of all, what credibility? who put you in charge of the credibility? can i exchange my limited retained credibility for something useful like staples or dried bugs? Why are you talking to me like an Oblivion NPC i just stole from? Are you from a PS3 game like the graphics in this game? Is this the reason for your offense? Have i offended an entire era of gaming?

View attachment 27013

Second of all you have just shown my point.
It's made about 3-4 years of graphical improvement in a decade. It's never going to look good.

So YES, it has NOT gotten MUCH BETTER. Precisely what I said.

It's not even the fault of the devs at this point, it'd be impossible to make it look good without restarting.

Those ugly screenshots are official marketing for the game. Probably the worst looking one out of them all but still lol

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Haha reminds me that I wanted to suggest the pimps update their steam page with current visuals.

 
me personally i would prefer more game features over graphical overhauls for assets but at the end of the day this is their game and they chose what gets worked on and what doesnt, besides that if they work on graphics it will modernise it lets say we eventually egt something like combo moves not saying we will but wouldnt it feel out of place if we could do all these unique things but then it would look like play dough? imagine 7 days now with the graphics it had back in 2013 i dont mind graphics but i appreciate the work they do on them.

 
Callum123456789 said:
me personally i would prefer more game features over graphical overhauls for assets but at the end of the day this is their game and they chose what gets worked on and what doesnt, besides that if they work on graphics it will modernise it lets say we eventually egt something like combo moves not saying we will but wouldnt it feel out of place if we could do all these unique things but then it would look like play dough? imagine 7 days now with the graphics it had back in 2013 i dont mind graphics but i appreciate the work they do on them.
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Well, I can tell you this: TFP wouldn't be at the level of Bethesda Game Studios in terms of depth of Lore, mainly because BGS is based on a wide knowledge of history from their writers (Dark elves:  a bit of Mesopotamian and Japanese culture, Empire: Roman empire, Nords: Vikings, LOTR: Dwarves, magic, several sci fi and fantasy influences... and a wide etc). I know, I know, It's a zombie game, but it compares directly to Fallout, which has a huge lore and coherent world within its madness, like The Elder Scrolls have.

While Madmole has stated before, he didn't really thought about history growing up, and it's in his core believes that technical sciences are the way forward, both personally and in general, which is objectively half truth, as we need a written database of mistakes to keep going forward too.

What does that have to do with the game? Well, the core believes of the creators themselves will result in great gameplay, a great deal of emergent gameplay/quests, unbelievably amazing level design and a story that, while lacking vs BGS titles, can always improve as they study and achieve that long due knowledge for their own purposes. They are both young and strong still, lol.

Even if not at Gold, there is always the DLCs after.

 
funny fact is that no one ever said that the graphics are "too bad" or "should be better" or else alike.

The only thing that came up is that the game doesn't have the same graphics quality as other "today's/modern" games,

but no one demanded it should have.

And btw naming the technical limitations of a voxel engine running on today's hardware doesn't make it magically look better,

no matter how much one can appreciate the effort in improving there because he knows about the technical background.

But TFP should really follow the suggestion of @Fanatical_Meat and update these marketing "screenshots".

Especially this one that was picked by @Jost Amman doesn't reflect actual ingame graphics quality very well.

I really thought it was a screenshot he made himself, with just really low settings.

Now that I know and see that it is a photoshopped marketing shot (truck and Zeds "glued" flat ontop the background), I can only say that's a fail.

In general these shots are postprocessed to the excess and I assume everybody is more or less used to

"hey the actual game does not look anywhere near as good as in these advertises".

So just in case anyone new to the forum checks by, I can tell you this:

Hey buy and try it, you will be surprised how much better it looks compared to the official screenshots.

...sorry this all came out as a much bigger wall of text as I indended.

 
Callum123456789 said:
me personally i would prefer more game features over graphical overhauls for assets
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You can have both. Most features are worked on by different devs than the ones who work on graphics assets.

meilodasreh said:
funny fact is that no one ever said that the graphics are "too bad" or "should be better" or else alike.
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No, and neither did I make it my point in my post.

I was just saying that it's unfair to state that the graphics improvements from 2013 to now are "meh".

Anyone saying that is either nearsighted or biased IMO.

 
meilodasreh said:
The only thing that came up is that the game doesn't have the same graphics quality as other "today's/modern" games,
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Exactly. This is the superficial comparison by typical gamers I was talking about. It’s what leads them to then wonder why TFP bothers to spend so much time working on graphics. 
 

meilodasreh said:
And btw naming the technical limitations of a voxel engine running on today's hardware doesn't make it magically look better,

no matter how much one can appreciate the effort in improving there because he knows about the technical background.
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True. But understanding all of that brings appreciation instead of dismissiveness. From those who understand, you hear comments like, “It is amazing what TFP has accomplished. For a full world voxel game this game is technically and graphically brilliant”. 
 

From those who don’t understand you get comments like, “This game is just a turd graphically and trying to improve it is simply polishing a turd”

 
Ah...turds...the good old times.

Can we all now agree that we don't love this game for its bling but for its bang, and go on with another topic.

Maybe a new riddle about some new stuff.

Now know the last one was last year, which is a looong time ago.😀

 
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