[WIP] Battle-scene Enhancement

[dragowulf]

Post the background image for the scene for me please.

 

[Millenia]

 

[obesebear]

Pyrozen, I think the desolate background looks really good.  I have no gripes besides matching it to the foreground a little better.

Millenia, just awesome dude.

 

[Nightmarish]

Again, it looks to me that the ground might have a bit too much lightning/not worn enough.

It looks like:

 

[halkun]

was gonna say, the floors a little high-contrasty for me. You think maybe you need to turn the brightness up on your monitor?

 

[Opine]

gorgeous picture

That looks beautiful.

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

was gonna say, the floors a little high-contrasty for me.

I'm finding this to be a general problem with the battle backgrounds; they're all great and very well made, but the high contrast causes them to overwhelm the foreground and divert attention away from it. It needs to be remembered that the foreground should stick out from the background rather than the other way around.

Of course, the situation might be different when the new character and enemy models are done, since at the moment we have untextured models on high-res textured backgrounds...

 

[pyrozen]

Pyrozen, I think the desolate background looks really good.  I have no gripes besides matching it to the foreground a little better.

Im going to do this and see how it looks. If i do add mountains, they will be very far off in the distance. This battleground appears in quite a few places on the world map, and not all of them have mountains immedietly nearby. The original background looks ridiculous, like your fighting IN the mountains.

Still haven't messed with the grass yet, it's easy enough to fix, the background is the more difficult(though not very difficult either). I'll try and get to it tonight once im done working on my house.

lee

 

[Bosola]

was gonna say, the floors a little high-contrasty for me.

I'm finding this to be a general problem with the battle backgrounds; they're all great and very well made, but the high contrast causes them to overwhelm the foreground and divert attention away from it. It needs to be remembered that the foreground should stick out from the background rather than the other way around.

Of course, the situation might be different when the new character and enemy models are done, since at the moment we have untextured models on high-res textured backgrounds...

Absolutely. Battle scenes must be designed with context in mind. Too many are far too 'noisy', bright or distracting. This is unacceptable in all but the simplest of fights.

I would assume (I'm no image wizard) that there's some value relating to the average or mode chroma of an image. If we could find the usual 'average chroma / brightness / contrast' for battle models, we could design our battle scenes to match them. Anyone know of such a figure and how we'd easily derive it?

 

[pyrozen]

changed the background and got a really close match, it looks good to me. I may add some mountains, but that is other people influancing me and not my opinion. I really like the desolate look :lol:
 
Im also in between grass textures. The floor grass texture is new one, the one on the side is the old pixilated one. The new one i created is nice, and i may replace the entire WMRP grass with it.  Im a glutton for punishment

lee

 

[sl1982]

I like it, i dont really see a need for mountains. Was there originally one? That may be why people are carping.

 

[Nightmarish]

Looks good pyrozen, although i would aim for a gradient from the ground texture to the background texture so they would fit better.
Anyway, i also don't see the need for the mountains.

Btw, can someone post a picture of the original battle scene from the ground Milena did? I don't remember yellow floors in the bombing mission.

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

I may add some mountains, but that is other people influancing me and not my opinion. I really like the desolate look :lol:

Awww, can't you think of it as the original designs influencing you?

Or the fact that the FF7 world map is filled with huge mountains that would be extremely visible. Unless the right side of the battle screen is always pointing out to sea, but I won't accept that! ;D

 

[sl1982]

I may add some mountains, but that is other people influancing me and not my opinion. I really like the desolate look :lol:

Awww, can't you think of it as the original designs influencing you?

Or the fact that the FF7 world map is filled with huge mountains that would be extremely visible. Unless the right side of the battle screen is always pointing out to sea, but I won't accept that! ;D

It was tough to make the camera act like that, but he managed to do it

 

[pyrozen]

I like it, i dont really see a need for mountains. Was there originally one? That may be why people are carping.

the original had these horrendous blobs that were meant to look like giant hills. Get into a battle near Junon to see what i mean. The hills dont make sense, because they are so large! This look makes sense in 90% of situations, so im going to stick with it.
 
I will try mountains and see what i think about it, but they will be farrrrrr off into the distance if i do add them, not in your face like the original.
 
Also, i do need to create the gradient from floor to background, right now it's just a placeholder i stuck in there. This scene is nearly finished.

lee

 

[jeffdamann]

I think there may need to be 1 or 2 mountainous looking things even if it were FAAARRR back, that just looks like Im driving through new mexico with grass lol.

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

The mountains/hills in the original weren't that intrusive.

There aren't any large areas of grassland in FF7 either; no matter where you are in the grassy areas, there are mountains fairly nearby. The desolate look implies that there are hundreds of kilometres of flat, open grassland with no distinguishing features, and there is nothing like that in FF7.

It also makes scenes look a little boring when the background is just flat.

 

[jeffdamann]

I agree kudistos, and pyrozen is that line in the middle of the battlefield because you didnt seam it good or FF7?

 

[pyrozen]

here's the fixed grass, i did a gradiant but you cant see it because its on the backside of the hill. It looks a litte noisy in the pictures, but ingame it looks great.

and FINE, ill put some damned mountains in the background! You foolish people and your logical thinking...sheesh

 

[Armorvil]

I love this scene without mountains. It's beautiful. And besides, I've always seen the world map in RPGs like a a symbolic representation of the world. The game strongly hints at things this way by the way (character as big as a city, small mountain, random battles, ...). When you think of Cloud on the world map as just a piece that you move on a paper map, Pyrozen's battle scene is perfect. Because to walk from Kalm to the Chocobo Farm in reality (for example), it doesn't take 5 minutes, but weeks. There is no doubts the party met people on the way, visited unimportant settlements, and the random battles show the rare times the party couldn't resolve a problem without using brute force.

With this logic in mind, it makes sense that the mountains are so far away you can't see them, since walking up to them actually takes days.

And [off-topic] this kind of symbolism is what I think is missing from most games today. By going the realistic route, everything ends up feeling narrow. With the details allowed today, developpers work on the infinitely small, instead of working on the infinitely grand. But enough of my rant [/off-topic].