Suggestion Update Textures It's 2018

Zeplin Games

Sea Legs
I love this game so much I do, but the Texture's are killing me i'm not saying redo all the textures the clean them up a bit to make it look in better shape! It's 2018 and other mmorpg games are all being updated with textures, but this game this game is special and i'm glad it's back. Also another thing is it would be cool if they add stuff that never been added to the game before like quest, swords, ships, Etc... Thanks for reading tell me what you think also should i do a youtube lets play on the game tell me what you think on this forum

If you wanna check out my youtube channel it's
Youtube.com/ZeplinGames

Let me know if the game would be good with my editing style
 
thegameisinbetathereisntmuchtimeforthedevstoreworktheENTIREgamebecausetheyarealreadyworkingonflatteningoutglitchesandproblemsplayershaveandthatismuchmoreimportatntthanupdateingthegraphicsbecausepersonallyidliketoplaythegamewithoutcrashingtheteamiscurrentlyverysmallandspendingtheirresourcesisntinthebestinterestrightnowbutmaybeinthefuturewhenthegameismorestableitcouldbedone.
 
That is a good point and I agree it's in beta and they need to work on glitches and bugs but i'm saying for the future for the final recreation.;)
 
Even though the game is over 10 years old it doesn't need a graphics update. They are already ironing out all the other glitches and adding new content to keep the game fresh. Graphics are at the bottom of their to-do list. If the ever decide to do it I am not saying the shouldn't I am saying it isn't a priority.
 
They've already been doing this actually, so far mainly in batches of clothing, tattoos, and the like. Here are a few release notes I quickly found as well as the main blogpost. I'm not sure of the resolution they upgraded to but they do look better in most cases while not being out of place. This game really doesn't need 4k textures or anything like that... If they were to do that I'd rather see an overhauled lighting system.

https://tlopo.com/news/post/174/

tlopo-rc-v1.15.0
  • Miscellaneous features:
    • Added higher resolution ground and volcano rock textures.
tlopo-rc-v1.14.0
  • Over 70 new HD hat textures have been implemented.
    • Not every hat is HD, but you should notice a significant improvement in quality for the majority of them.
tlopo-rc-v1.8.3
  • The green interact circle now has an all-new HD texture.
 
Wow!! In that case they already fixed it! I was thinking fix like the islands up cause like they still be like 144P xD but thanks for showing me this!
 
I agree, but for different reasons. (TL;DR: Just look at the pictures, there are a lot of them.)

Many of POTCO's graphics are objectively terrible for a game going into 2018. Its textures are beautiful, they're super intricate and it is very obvious very quickly that so much love went into them.

It's the models, the UVs, and poor planning that make the game look bad. Click that link above if you've never opened the phase files before -- you'll be amazed at the level of detail that the textures actually have when they're not stretched to oblivion.

It's an old game, so my standards for it aren't that high. I admire its art style, and it was a very ambitious project for its time. I have all the patience in the world for this team because I couldn't fix it myself.

My gripe is with the many technical problems that have arisen from the lack of communication between the original texture artists and the people who built the islands.

Quick facts:
- Textures for specific objects tend to be either 128 x 128 px or 256 x 256 px.
- Character textures and general object/color palettes tend to be 1024 x 1024 px.
- Some textures are grouped into palettes of related textures.

This works very well for smaller objects, like fence posts or chairs, but less so for larger objects, like towers or gates. In some cases, textures must be stretched far more than the texture was designed to, and more often than not, no effort is made to seamlessly tile the textures, or connect faces in a way that looks natural.

That's out$ourcing for ya.

When you have small objects right next to these stretched-out, bigger objects, it totally distorts the scale of the world relative to the player. Check it out below.

gSAXOlt.jpg

This is an area within Kingshead where wooden platforms, with properly applied textures, intersect a fort tower with stretched textures. The stone textures are 128 x 256 px sections. This makes the rocks seem massive, especially when a pirate is standing close to them.

SNam4lO.jpg

Some parts of this wall are noticeably more blurry/faded than others. This is because the original texture is 128 x 256 px. Some of the bricks are the size of a pirate's head. Others could fit 4 or even 5 heads in them.

hmQDpf1.jpg

This is on Kingshead. If you don't see what I mean by the distorted scale, just look at the barrel. This is an easy fix, just tile the planks at a smaller scale. This one actually confuses me because the other piers in the game look fine. This is the only one I know of where the texture is blown up to the whole width of the pier. Someone else must have made it.

2Hm4ofb.png

If you model in quadrilaterals (4-sided polygons) you can always convert them to triangles and back to quads later if you need to subdivide them further, since they form clean loops. This 3D modeler was probably told they needed the poly count as low as humanly possible. It does the job, but you can't edit this model any further without deleting the whole arch. Imho, there are less obvious places to literally cut corners.

wxqzqBv.jpg

Can someone tell me who thought making trees out of randomly placed flat planes of leaves was a good idea? Maybe it can actually look good, but it doesn't, because they neglected to put thought into the placement of the leaves. Optimally leaves should follow some sort of arch upward, downward, or layer system.

Here's the same angle without textures:

VLRcCRq.png

This tells us at least two things. One being that this is the same tree copied, pasted, and resized at least three times, and two, that the mysterious purple leaves that I thought was just me going insane, exist even in the vertex coloring, meaning they were intentional. It still looks bad though. Once you see it (in the textured version), you can't unsee it. Please, someone, fix this.

skA7h6d.png

The loading screens have always been hated for this, but we still have them, so allow me to bring them up again. Everything you see on the loading screen is stretched out, even if you don't change the window size from when it originally opens. The ocean design on the top and bottom stops right around the border of the image in the center. This is one thing I actually wouldn't mind being stretched more, so it at least covered the screen.

0MGnvFb.png

This is the same image as above, but with curves adjusted to make the difference between the tones of blue more obvious.

rUkCVKz.png

I would love to improve the texture on this skeleton but I would be concerned about it staying faithful to the current style. Of all the enemies that look bad close up, skeletons take the cake.

H7Dty0r.png
AmbLUKO.png

Lastly, please take a moment to notice how lazily made Beckett's Dock is. There are pieces of wood sticking through each other, floating platforms, and tiling issues galore. I would be happy to fix this myself if it meant it was done right. I can't imagine how half these problems got through the QA stage.

That's it for my nitpicking today. Feel free to discuss these. I hope I've opened some eyes.
 
One Solution, if you dont like playing it.. go to one of those other mmorpgs you think you "sensitive self" can deal with their graphics. It is a remake of an old game, we dont have to pay for it, so either deal with how they are doing it.. or leave. There are other issues that need to be work on then worrying bout "pleasing" a very small group of players that complain bout the graphics.
 
paraphased:

why are u always so hateful lol

its literally only u and squintz that flame threads and its all that u do
If you paraphrased what i said dont make it look like it is a quote..
Not my issue how you take what I or squintz state our opinions and dont sugar coated it for you all. It isnt flaming, as I didnt name call anyone. I stated my OPINION, and I never said his didnt matter.
Is it just me or does it seem ppl nowadays expect us to tip around and drag out our points.. so not "offend" the (imo) over sensitive ppl. We are all mostly adults..I am sure NOT everyone around you in real life will agree and hold your hand. If so, I am happy you live with rainbows c:
 
I agree, but for different reasons. (TL;DR: Just look at the pictures, there are a lot of them.)

Many of POTCO's graphics are objectively terrible for a game going into 2018. Its textures are beautiful, they're super intricate and it is very obvious very quickly that so much love went into them.

It's the models, the UVs, and poor planning that make the game look bad. Click that link above if you've never opened the phase files before -- you'll be amazed at the level of detail that the textures actually have when they're not stretched to oblivion.

It's an old game, so my standards for it aren't that high. I admire its art style, and it was a very ambitious project for its time. I have all the patience in the world for this team because I couldn't fix it myself.

My gripe is with the many technical problems that have arisen from the lack of communication between the original texture artists and the people who built the islands.

Quick facts:
- Textures for specific objects tend to be either 128 x 128 px or 256 x 256 px.
- Character textures and general object/color palettes tend to be 1024 x 1024 px.
- Some textures are grouped into palettes of related textures.

This works very well for smaller objects, like fence posts or chairs, but less so for larger objects, like towers or gates. In some cases, textures must be stretched far more than the texture was designed to, and more often than not, no effort is made to seamlessly tile the textures, or connect faces in a way that looks natural.

That's out$ourcing for ya.

When you have small objects right next to these stretched-out, bigger objects, it totally distorts the scale of the world relative to the player. Check it out below.

gSAXOlt.jpg

This is an area within Kingshead where wooden platforms, with properly applied textures, intersect a fort tower with stretched textures. The stone textures are 128 x 256 px sections. This makes the rocks seem massive, especially when a pirate is standing close to them.

SNam4lO.jpg

Some parts of this wall are noticeably more blurry/faded than others. This is because the original texture is 128 x 256 px. Some of the bricks are the size of a pirate's head. Others could fit 4 or even 5 heads in them.

hmQDpf1.jpg

This is on Kingshead. If you don't see what I mean by the distorted scale, just look at the barrel. This is an easy fix, just tile the planks at a smaller scale. This one actually confuses me because the other piers in the game look fine. This is the only one I know of where the texture is blown up to the whole width of the pier. Someone else must have made it.

2Hm4ofb.png

If you model in quadrilaterals (4-sided polygons) you can always convert them to triangles and back to quads later if you need to subdivide them further, since they form clean loops. This 3D modeler was probably told they needed the poly count as low as humanly possible. It does the job, but you can't edit this model any further without deleting the whole arch. Imho, there are less obvious places to literally cut corners.

wxqzqBv.jpg

Can someone tell me who thought making trees out of randomly placed flat planes of leaves was a good idea? Maybe it can actually look good, but it doesn't, because they neglected to put thought into the placement of the leaves. Optimally leaves should follow some sort of arch upward, downward, or layer system.

Here's the same angle without textures:

VLRcCRq.png

This tells us at least two things. One being that this is the same tree copied, pasted, and resized at least three times, and two, that the mysterious purple leaves that I thought was just me going insane, exist even in the vertex coloring, meaning they were intentional. It still looks bad though. Once you see it (in the textured version), you can't unsee it. Please, someone, fix this.

skA7h6d.png

The loading screens have always been hated for this, but we still have them, so allow me to bring them up again. Everything you see on the loading screen is stretched out, even if you don't change the window size from when it originally opens. The ocean design on the top and bottom stops right around the border of the image in the center. This is one thing I actually wouldn't mind being stretched more, so it at least covered the screen.

0MGnvFb.png

This is the same image as above, but with curves adjusted to make the difference between the tones of blue more obvious.

rUkCVKz.png

I would love to improve the texture on this skeleton but I would be concerned about it staying faithful to the current style. Of all the enemies that look bad close up, skeletons take the cake.

H7Dty0r.png
AmbLUKO.png

Lastly, please take a moment to notice how lazily made Beckett's Dock is. There are pieces of wood sticking through each other, floating platforms, and tiling issues galore. I would be happy to fix this myself if it meant it was done right. I can't imagine how half these problems got through the QA stage.

That's it for my nitpicking today. Feel free to discuss these. I hope I've opened some eyes.
If I could I'd like this post 100 times. Those purple leaves have always baffled me. I don't understand why they would have had a purple vertex color paintbrush out to accomplish that. POTCO's textures were obviously done by someone very skilled and who put a lot of time into them (its just a shame they were obviously scaled down and compressed in lossy jpg --Thanks Disney). However when it comes to model work... Either there were unskilled interns or just people who didn't care. If you bring the models into a 3d editor you see countless errors and bad practices that show people who had no idea what they were doing. Like you said: shoddy UV work, messy modeling work, seriously cutting corners with poly counts... But it gets worse.

This is english_corner_a for reference. But almost all the models suffer from many of these same issues.
Hierarchy work for the finished models are abysmal it seems that nothing is merged into single objects. Here you can see every single rail rung is an entirely separate object. Not merged or joined in an effort to clean up the final model at all.
upload_2018-9-9_15-8-7.png
There are so many instances of duplicated objects its just silly and totally negates any effort of them saving on polygon count at that point. (I moved the orange selected rung out so you could see both objects.)
upload_2018-9-9_15-13-33.png
At this point I don't even know what to say. This also totally negates polygon count "limit" because they use vertex colors in most of the game for shadows and other shading since those are not implemented in-game in realtime. However, I'm sure this could be done a lot better.
upload_2018-9-9_15-18-7.png
 
Last edited:
I agree, but for different reasons. (TL;DR: Just look at the pictures, there are a lot of them.)

Many of POTCO's graphics are objectively terrible for a game going into 2018. Its textures are beautiful, they're super intricate and it is very obvious very quickly that so much love went into them.

It's the models, the UVs, and poor planning that make the game look bad. Click that link above if you've never opened the phase files before -- you'll be amazed at the level of detail that the textures actually have when they're not stretched to oblivion.

It's an old game, so my standards for it aren't that high. I admire its art style, and it was a very ambitious project for its time. I have all the patience in the world for this team because I couldn't fix it myself.

My gripe is with the many technical problems that have arisen from the lack of communication between the original texture artists and the people who built the islands.

Quick facts:
- Textures for specific objects tend to be either 128 x 128 px or 256 x 256 px.
- Character textures and general object/color palettes tend to be 1024 x 1024 px.
- Some textures are grouped into palettes of related textures.

This works very well for smaller objects, like fence posts or chairs, but less so for larger objects, like towers or gates. In some cases, textures must be stretched far more than the texture was designed to, and more often than not, no effort is made to seamlessly tile the textures, or connect faces in a way that looks natural.

That's out$ourcing for ya.

When you have small objects right next to these stretched-out, bigger objects, it totally distorts the scale of the world relative to the player. Check it out below.

gSAXOlt.jpg

This is an area within Kingshead where wooden platforms, with properly applied textures, intersect a fort tower with stretched textures. The stone textures are 128 x 256 px sections. This makes the rocks seem massive, especially when a pirate is standing close to them.

SNam4lO.jpg

Some parts of this wall are noticeably more blurry/faded than others. This is because the original texture is 128 x 256 px. Some of the bricks are the size of a pirate's head. Others could fit 4 or even 5 heads in them.

hmQDpf1.jpg

This is on Kingshead. If you don't see what I mean by the distorted scale, just look at the barrel. This is an easy fix, just tile the planks at a smaller scale. This one actually confuses me because the other piers in the game look fine. This is the only one I know of where the texture is blown up to the whole width of the pier. Someone else must have made it.

2Hm4ofb.png

If you model in quadrilaterals (4-sided polygons) you can always convert them to triangles and back to quads later if you need to subdivide them further, since they form clean loops. This 3D modeler was probably told they needed the poly count as low as humanly possible. It does the job, but you can't edit this model any further without deleting the whole arch. Imho, there are less obvious places to literally cut corners.

wxqzqBv.jpg

Can someone tell me who thought making trees out of randomly placed flat planes of leaves was a good idea? Maybe it can actually look good, but it doesn't, because they neglected to put thought into the placement of the leaves. Optimally leaves should follow some sort of arch upward, downward, or layer system.

Here's the same angle without textures:

VLRcCRq.png

This tells us at least two things. One being that this is the same tree copied, pasted, and resized at least three times, and two, that the mysterious purple leaves that I thought was just me going insane, exist even in the vertex coloring, meaning they were intentional. It still looks bad though. Once you see it (in the textured version), you can't unsee it. Please, someone, fix this.

skA7h6d.png

The loading screens have always been hated for this, but we still have them, so allow me to bring them up again. Everything you see on the loading screen is stretched out, even if you don't change the window size from when it originally opens. The ocean design on the top and bottom stops right around the border of the image in the center. This is one thing I actually wouldn't mind being stretched more, so it at least covered the screen.

0MGnvFb.png

This is the same image as above, but with curves adjusted to make the difference between the tones of blue more obvious.

rUkCVKz.png

I would love to improve the texture on this skeleton but I would be concerned about it staying faithful to the current style. Of all the enemies that look bad close up, skeletons take the cake.

H7Dty0r.png
AmbLUKO.png

Lastly, please take a moment to notice how lazily made Beckett's Dock is. There are pieces of wood sticking through each other, floating platforms, and tiling issues galore. I would be happy to fix this myself if it meant it was done right. I can't imagine how half these problems got through the QA stage.

That's it for my nitpicking today. Feel free to discuss these. I hope I've opened some eyes.
"Once you see it (in the textured version), you can't unsee it. Please, someone, fix this."

All I can see is the purple now, I never saw it before!
 
thegameisinbetathereisntmuchtimeforthedevstoreworktheENTIREgamebecausetheyarealreadyworkingonflatteningoutglitchesandproblemsplayershaveandthatismuchmoreimportatntthanupdateingthegraphicsbecausepersonallyidliketoplaythegamewithoutcrashingtheteamiscurrentlyverysmallandspendingtheirresourcesisntinthebestinterestrightnowbutmaybeinthefuturewhenthegameismorestableitcouldbedone.
It appears the game is running in Panda default mode, a lower rez rendering api, perhaps waiting until the game is working in a stable manner before upgrading to the next tier rendering level. Some thread somewhere with cars and a landscape made with panda in high rez render, made this theory seem feasible.
 
I agree, but for different reasons. (TL;DR: Just look at the pictures, there are a lot of them.)

Many of POTCO's graphics are objectively terrible for a game going into 2018. Its textures are beautiful, they're super intricate and it is very obvious very quickly that so much love went into them.

It's the models, the UVs, and poor planning that make the game look bad. Click that link above if you've never opened the phase files before -- you'll be amazed at the level of detail that the textures actually have when they're not stretched to oblivion.

It's an old game, so my standards for it aren't that high. I admire its art style, and it was a very ambitious project for its time. I have all the patience in the world for this team because I couldn't fix it myself.

My gripe is with the many technical problems that have arisen from the lack of communication between the original texture artists and the people who built the islands.

Quick facts:
- Textures for specific objects tend to be either 128 x 128 px or 256 x 256 px.
- Character textures and general object/color palettes tend to be 1024 x 1024 px.
- Some textures are grouped into palettes of related textures.

This works very well for smaller objects, like fence posts or chairs, but less so for larger objects, like towers or gates. In some cases, textures must be stretched far more than the texture was designed to, and more often than not, no effort is made to seamlessly tile the textures, or connect faces in a way that looks natural.

That's out$ourcing for ya.

When you have small objects right next to these stretched-out, bigger objects, it totally distorts the scale of the world relative to the player. Check it out below.

gSAXOlt.jpg

This is an area within Kingshead where wooden platforms, with properly applied textures, intersect a fort tower with stretched textures. The stone textures are 128 x 256 px sections. This makes the rocks seem massive, especially when a pirate is standing close to them.

SNam4lO.jpg

Some parts of this wall are noticeably more blurry/faded than others. This is because the original texture is 128 x 256 px. Some of the bricks are the size of a pirate's head. Others could fit 4 or even 5 heads in them.

hmQDpf1.jpg

This is on Kingshead. If you don't see what I mean by the distorted scale, just look at the barrel. This is an easy fix, just tile the planks at a smaller scale. This one actually confuses me because the other piers in the game look fine. This is the only one I know of where the texture is blown up to the whole width of the pier. Someone else must have made it.

2Hm4ofb.png

If you model in quadrilaterals (4-sided polygons) you can always convert them to triangles and back to quads later if you need to subdivide them further, since they form clean loops. This 3D modeler was probably told they needed the poly count as low as humanly possible. It does the job, but you can't edit this model any further without deleting the whole arch. Imho, there are less obvious places to literally cut corners.

wxqzqBv.jpg

Can someone tell me who thought making trees out of randomly placed flat planes of leaves was a good idea? Maybe it can actually look good, but it doesn't, because they neglected to put thought into the placement of the leaves. Optimally leaves should follow some sort of arch upward, downward, or layer system.

Here's the same angle without textures:

VLRcCRq.png

This tells us at least two things. One being that this is the same tree copied, pasted, and resized at least three times, and two, that the mysterious purple leaves that I thought was just me going insane, exist even in the vertex coloring, meaning they were intentional. It still looks bad though. Once you see it (in the textured version), you can't unsee it. Please, someone, fix this.

skA7h6d.png

The loading screens have always been hated for this, but we still have them, so allow me to bring them up again. Everything you see on the loading screen is stretched out, even if you don't change the window size from when it originally opens. The ocean design on the top and bottom stops right around the border of the image in the center. This is one thing I actually wouldn't mind being stretched more, so it at least covered the screen.

0MGnvFb.png

This is the same image as above, but with curves adjusted to make the difference between the tones of blue more obvious.

rUkCVKz.png

I would love to improve the texture on this skeleton but I would be concerned about it staying faithful to the current style. Of all the enemies that look bad close up, skeletons take the cake.

H7Dty0r.png
AmbLUKO.png

Lastly, please take a moment to notice how lazily made Beckett's Dock is. There are pieces of wood sticking through each other, floating platforms, and tiling issues galore. I would be happy to fix this myself if it meant it was done right. I can't imagine how half these problems got through the QA stage.

That's it for my nitpicking today. Feel free to discuss these. I hope I've opened some eyes.
Man, that was informative. I think you even taught me how to make spoilers because the code shows up in message reply. lol
 
I agree, but for different reasons. (TL;DR: Just look at the pictures, there are a lot of them.)

Many of POTCO's graphics are objectively terrible for a game going into 2018. Its textures are beautiful, they're super intricate and it is very obvious very quickly that so much love went into them.

It's the models, the UVs, and poor planning that make the game look bad. Click that link above if you've never opened the phase files before -- you'll be amazed at the level of detail that the textures actually have when they're not stretched to oblivion.

It's an old game, so my standards for it aren't that high. I admire its art style, and it was a very ambitious project for its time. I have all the patience in the world for this team because I couldn't fix it myself.

My gripe is with the many technical problems that have arisen from the lack of communication between the original texture artists and the people who built the islands.

Quick facts:
- Textures for specific objects tend to be either 128 x 128 px or 256 x 256 px.
- Character textures and general object/color palettes tend to be 1024 x 1024 px.
- Some textures are grouped into palettes of related textures.

This works very well for smaller objects, like fence posts or chairs, but less so for larger objects, like towers or gates. In some cases, textures must be stretched far more than the texture was designed to, and more often than not, no effort is made to seamlessly tile the textures, or connect faces in a way that looks natural.

That's out$ourcing for ya.

When you have small objects right next to these stretched-out, bigger objects, it totally distorts the scale of the world relative to the player. Check it out below.

gSAXOlt.jpg

This is an area within Kingshead where wooden platforms, with properly applied textures, intersect a fort tower with stretched textures. The stone textures are 128 x 256 px sections. This makes the rocks seem massive, especially when a pirate is standing close to them.

SNam4lO.jpg

Some parts of this wall are noticeably more blurry/faded than others. This is because the original texture is 128 x 256 px. Some of the bricks are the size of a pirate's head. Others could fit 4 or even 5 heads in them.

hmQDpf1.jpg

This is on Kingshead. If you don't see what I mean by the distorted scale, just look at the barrel. This is an easy fix, just tile the planks at a smaller scale. This one actually confuses me because the other piers in the game look fine. This is the only one I know of where the texture is blown up to the whole width of the pier. Someone else must have made it.

2Hm4ofb.png

If you model in quadrilaterals (4-sided polygons) you can always convert them to triangles and back to quads later if you need to subdivide them further, since they form clean loops. This 3D modeler was probably told they needed the poly count as low as humanly possible. It does the job, but you can't edit this model any further without deleting the whole arch. Imho, there are less obvious places to literally cut corners.

wxqzqBv.jpg

Can someone tell me who thought making trees out of randomly placed flat planes of leaves was a good idea? Maybe it can actually look good, but it doesn't, because they neglected to put thought into the placement of the leaves. Optimally leaves should follow some sort of arch upward, downward, or layer system.

Here's the same angle without textures:

VLRcCRq.png

This tells us at least two things. One being that this is the same tree copied, pasted, and resized at least three times, and two, that the mysterious purple leaves that I thought was just me going insane, exist even in the vertex coloring, meaning they were intentional. It still looks bad though. Once you see it (in the textured version), you can't unsee it. Please, someone, fix this.

skA7h6d.png

The loading screens have always been hated for this, but we still have them, so allow me to bring them up again. Everything you see on the loading screen is stretched out, even if you don't change the window size from when it originally opens. The ocean design on the top and bottom stops right around the border of the image in the center. This is one thing I actually wouldn't mind being stretched more, so it at least covered the screen.

0MGnvFb.png

This is the same image as above, but with curves adjusted to make the difference between the tones of blue more obvious.

rUkCVKz.png

I would love to improve the texture on this skeleton but I would be concerned about it staying faithful to the current style. Of all the enemies that look bad close up, skeletons take the cake.

H7Dty0r.png
AmbLUKO.png

Lastly, please take a moment to notice how lazily made Beckett's Dock is. There are pieces of wood sticking through each other, floating platforms, and tiling issues galore. I would be happy to fix this myself if it meant it was done right. I can't imagine how half these problems got through the QA stage.

That's it for my nitpicking today. Feel free to discuss these. I hope I've opened some eyes.

If I could I'd like this post 100 times. Those purple leaves have always baffled me. I don't understand why they would have had a purple vertex color paintbrush out to accomplish that. POTCO's textures were obviously done by someone very skilled and who put a lot of time into them (its just a shame they were obviously scaled down and compressed in lossy jpg --Thanks Disney). However when it comes to model work... Either there were unskilled interns or just people who didn't care. If you bring the models into a 3d editor you see countless errors and bad practices that show people who had no idea what they were doing. Like you said: shoddy UV work, messy modeling work, seriously cutting corners with poly counts... But it gets worse.

This is english_corner_a for reference. But almost all the models suffer from many of these same issues.
Hierarchy work for the finished models are abysmal it seems that nothing is merged into single objects. Here you can see every single rail rung is an entirely separate object. Not merged or joined in an effort to clean up the final model at all.
There are so many instances of duplicated objects its just silly and totally negates any effort of them saving on polygon count at that point. (I moved the orange selected rung out so you could see both objects.)
At this point I don't even know what to say. This also totally negates polygon count "limit" because they use vertex colors in most of the game for shadows and other shading since those are not implemented in-game in realtime. However, I'm sure this could be done a lot better.

As someone who has worked with 3D animation and modeling programs before this just baffles me. The fact that the objects are not combined is just a basic rule when you finish modeling something. It makes the finished object much easier to work with if said objects are not going to move.

Also I had no idea the textures in this game were actually that good. I'm actually quite surprised, and amazed. The art style on those textures is phenomenal and pretty much exactly what kind of art direction I wish the game could have if it was a more recent production. I think I might save some of those textures just to look at them.

Learning how to create these things really makes you notice the small details that you would otherwise miss. When I see a character model in game I immediately notice seams and things in models now. It's really quite bad lol
 
Back
Top