Quote:
Originally Posted by BHunterSEAL
Yes, there are bugs. There are performance problems. The graphics represent only a marginal improvement over its late-1990s predecessor from Jane's; the animations and effects are actually a step back in a lot of cases, notably ordnance firing and impact.
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I'm guessing you haven't played Jane's Fleet Command in a very, very long time? I know I was thinking something similar at first, but since I have it in my Steam library (with NWP installed), I fired it up and...
...Holy Crap, NW:AC is *LIGHT YEARS* ahead of it.
I assure you, you are suffering from nostalgia bias and nothing more.
I mean, forget the fact that I lose half my screen with JFC (it does not support modern LCD widescreen displays, NW:AC does), but it also has awful 16-bit color banding on ANY color transition (JFC uses a 16-bit render pipeline, while NW:AC is obviously 32-bit).
And let's not even talk about model polygons...NW:AC is generally about twice as many polys per model, sometimes much more. And the textures are a LOT higher resolution.
I'll grant the animations are definitely somewhat limited in NW:AC compared to JFC, but...eh...it's not as big a deal to me. Would be nice, to be sure. But how often are you looking at the 3d window fullscreen? In both JFC and NW:AC, it's just there for scenery/effect, so the fact that NW:AC actually can fit my monitor and the map doesn't have horrible color banding (since that is the primary interface to the game) is MUCH more important.
Oh, and on my current system, with both games installed, I can start from my desktop and be running a mission 18.6 seconds (timed it on the iPhone) in NW:AC, and it takes me 40.1 seconds to do the same in JFC. It not only looks worse, but it's poorly coded!
(Now, all that said, your points on the gameplay are dead on. If we could have JFC gameplay with NW:AC's graphics, I'd be a very happy camper, indeed! Although the UI elements of NW:AC are definitely a bit...well, more than a bit...easier to use, too, so...let's keep that, as well...)