Pretty graphics, YAY or NAY?
 

So just curious, what if SH4 had SH2 graphics?

Would it have been the same to you or worse game?

To me, after you soak in all the visuals, it is time for simulation play. It was a very hard toss up between 'no way keep your damn oldie' and 'I would have brought it anyway but like the 2007 graphics". This is a hard one because I have already been spoiled with the 2007 graphics engine. :D

Remember, we're talking about the same crap/great SH4, with the sole difference being in the graphics.

I like the new graphics, but I also like the gameplay post-mods so I went with the middle option.

I think that graphics always add to the atmosphere, the great thing you guys did with the control room was to make the 3d functional rather than indeed just graphics. This is graphics put to it's best use to make things more real. Although I think gameplay is the paramount issue this is a simulation after all and the more realistic the graphics the more convincing the environment & atmosphere.

It's interesting to note that some players here actually stated they preferred the 2d panels of the original "Silent Hunter" to the 3D of SH3 in terms of functionality. I think they could access panels and switches etc more quickly and things were sharper on screen.

On gameplay vs graphics one of the best games I (and probably many others here) ever played was Microprose "Red Storm Rising" which had very little in the way of graphics and yet it was a fantastic experience full of tension & atmosphere. But I think for you to sell that game today to a mass market you would have to give it great graphics although the Defcon game which is essentially a map with symbols is hugely popular, it's all a question of balance.

The real issue with SH2/DC was not the graphics but the very poor AI and static nature of the campaign along with bugs such as the sonar not working consistently in DC. I suspect that as in SH4's case too short a time was given to the developers to finish the job.

I think if we were talkng about adding extra new screens into the game eg engine room,torpedo room etc I suspect that many here might be willing forgo a full 3D representation of additional compartments to gain the benefit of extra functionallity/gameplay.

I prefer gameplay over graphics. I chose the middle button.

Even though I went with number 2, I would sacrifice "some" graphics quality IF I got an equal amount (or more) "returned" in gameplay and strategy. I don't think SH2 graphics would cut it, but something like Sonarman mentioned, "flat" instrument panels and the like would work... For myself, I'm not crazy about the external camera stuff as I prefer to play "in situ" from the bridge or control room anyway.
I was a HUGE fan of the original SIlent Hunter, 2D and all...

Graphics are important. When this game was first released we were looking at low-rez screens and it looked awful on widescreen LCD's.

I think the first patch addresed this and even though I still would have played this game, it became far more enjoyable once it got good looking.

Since i never played Sh2, i can't give a fair answer on this one. But, i do know enough about SH2 to know that it had a rendered interior.

In my personal opinion, graphics has been emphasized too much. And understandably so, this day and age, big graphics are nearly a must.

But i think its a matter of only having so much in resources in the way of manhours and time to build something. By emphasizing one item, you might not have the time to work on another in equal measure. In the end, the "other half" of the submarine simulation , i feel is being neglected to some degree.

In sum, i think compromise has to be reached so that one portion doesnt go neglected or overemphaised.

I know this will make my very unpopular, but I have often thoguht of how much trouble and work, one would possibly save themselves, by simply not creating an external view, and instead emphasizing the first person point of view as oriented to "life onboard a submarine". For example You would make waves and such render perfectly from the bridge view, and not have to worry about silly things like "sub on rails" or, "my propellers are turning backwards". The time saved from having to deal with those aspects, could then be spent to better flesh out the submarine itself.

By allowing an external view, you open a whole plethora of problems that must be addressed, while other aspects of the sim such as the internal modeling of the submarine, and various switches, controls, and functionality, dont get the same attention.

Of course i realize that the eternal view and eyecandy go hand in hand. Its one aspect that i think sells games. In the end, i think the trick would be to find the right compromise on where and how one divides their efforts overall.

Well, I played SH2 on a Gateway PIII with a some old ATI card in it. I'd be pretty bummed if 6 years later, on a dual-AMD 64-bit machine with an NVidia 8800 graphics card with 512MB VRAM if the sim didn't look substantially better!

Seriously, would you be happy now if your desktop graphics in XP or Vista looked no better then a Windows 3 desktop in 640x480 display?

I expect that as the hardware improves to allow for more, that the whole package will improve - game play and graphics. What's the point of a nice big wide screen LCD display if it's filled with drab old VGA graphics? What's the point of GPU's that have more computing power and potential then your main cpu did back in 2001 if you are just going to have them idling 99% of the time?

I want it ALL, dangnabit!


P.S. I mean, companies are using NVidia 8800 series cards and NVidia CUDA tools to run Monte-Carlo simulations for research, and MATLAB has a CUDA plug-in to leverage NVIdia GPUs for parallel computations. At the least, I want mine rendering a decent ocean physics model :D

Graphics: yes, gameplay: yes. I wouldnt bought a game with truly crap graphics, no. But below branch-shooting-1fps-Crysis-graphics are okay. Theatre of War is a great game, despite its graphical drawbacks, for instance.

Most games are crap these days, if you ask me. Only racing sim makers, Creative Assembly, Ubisoft Romania and some select independent developers put out good games.


I went and bought Rainbow Six: Vegas because of the title some time ago. Holy crap, even if the disk was rewritable it wouldnt have been worth a penny.

That's a simple question with a simple answer.

I would not have bought it.
However, not due to the lack of 'eye-candy' but rather a lack of realism/simulation/immersion.

Personally, realism & immersion sells me when it comes to this genre, without it you are playing a computerised board game, move here, sink this, move back...

So, if SH4 was as historically accurate as humanly possible but had sh*te graphics, I would be sold.

Without deviating from your original question, I can't see an option in the poll that I can answer.

For me the cloud/weather rendering engine in SH2/DC is simple more flexible and better. The old Janus-engine supported more than just two cloud textures. It uses for each cloud formations (Cirrus, Cumulus, etc.) 5-6 TGA's , a similar concept as the MS Flight Simulator.

These textures could be combined for a mission into complex weather fronts via a simple script code. There ware weather mods available, which let in the course of the mission two weather fronts collide. You are sailed still in the sun and saw already the bad weather on the horizon, or saw it raise over the mountains in the landscape, it all looked fantastic and realistic.

This approach would have been great if it were used with today's shader technology in SH4 instead of these unrealistic and to quickly morphing clouds in the game, even the clouds rendering in SH3 looks better to me.

I don't wish to imagine what modder would create today with such a flexible weather system.:yep:

I think if you were asking the question prior to the release of SH4, Dan, and that the gameplay could have been made better and less buggy with a trade off in graphics, you would have seen a different set of responses.

But now that SH4 looks as good as it does, especially with the ROW mods, expectations are very high for both graphics and gameplay.

Well don't take it too far. Like I said, i'm no fan of annoying stuff like "quick render more dirt under the first officer's finger nails!" which then results in half assed gameplay. But I also wasn't a big fan of soap box ships being tossed around the detailess blanket ocean like a raft like in DC. :)