BG:EE graphics enhancements - do they measure up?
Lemernis
Member, Moderator Posts: 4,318
So... the graphics improvements to the action within gameplay window:
It had been a very long time since I had played prior to BG:EE's release. I was playing BGT then. But it does seem to me that the graphics are noticeably improved. It looks pretty gorgeous, actually. And the zoom feature is very neat--I like it a lot. As to the overall quality of the graphics I'm just not sure if I'm wearing rose colored glasses, though. What say you all?
Native support for high resolutions.in your experience, are they noticeably better than BG1 via Tutu or BGT?
BG:EE natively supports high resolutions in 4:3, 16:9 and 16:10 format up to 2880x1800. All original art assets, including sprites and background art, will be upscaled in real time to adapt to the chosen screen resolution without incurring visual artifacts (e.g. shrinking, stretching, etc.). Cutmull-Rom Bicubic filtering will be used to ensure that all supported resolutions display sharp graphics.
Dynamic zoom in/out feature.
It will be possible to zoom in and out of the battlefield dynamically during gameplay by scrolling the mouse wheel up and down, within generous limits. Since the art in the game is rendered from the source, it is possible to get a 1:1 pixel ratio when zooming out. Although new art and old art are treated in the same way on the engine level, the new stuff might have a better color range and be a little clearer.
Flipbook animation transparency and Alpha blending.
As per this thread, BG:EE will feature flipbook animation transparency and alpha blending for BAM files. However, this is only going to happen post-ship as it requires the creation of a new subsystem and tools (and probably a new BAM format) to enable the devs to work with the images and keep them 32 bit through the asset pipeline. Currently, spells are upconverted to 32 bit at load time to feature one-layer alpha blending (as a result of the mod 1PP having been integrated).
Full 24-bit tiled rendering for new area art.
While the original game rendered 64x64 pixel tiles with a maximum of 256 colors (8 bit), new area art has no limitation in terms of colors per tile. Hence, each tile will display the full 24-bit spectrum of 16,8 million colors. However, due to the vast array of hardware on the PC and the risk of breaking older cards which may not support the feature, this won't be brought to the PC for launch; instead, it will likely come post-ship as the developers want to be sure people can continue to enjoy BG:EE on the PC without having to upgrade to the latest hardware.
It had been a very long time since I had played prior to BG:EE's release. I was playing BGT then. But it does seem to me that the graphics are noticeably improved. It looks pretty gorgeous, actually. And the zoom feature is very neat--I like it a lot. As to the overall quality of the graphics I'm just not sure if I'm wearing rose colored glasses, though. What say you all?
Post edited by Lemernis on
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I've also noticed that some spell-effects are improved, compared to BG2. That's always something good.
The game, UI barred, does not look better or worse. It couldn't look better or worse anyway.
It looks the same, except some spell effects which look a bit better.
For now.
If the game sold and sells well, and they decide to enhance the graphics more, either with new animations or something else, the game will look better obviously.
Anyway, the zoom is better, the ui is more readable in higher resolutions, and you can cut the scaling from the ui if you want to have the "sharp" feeling of widescreen mod.
That's about it.
I don't think anyone that knew about the graphic changes expected anything more, or the game to look different, except the ui and the zoom.
Now, if you wanna talk about, are people happy with what happened with the graphics, and if they wanted more, it's a different subject, and we could argue about it till BG2:EE comes out.
P.S. Of course, since you talk about graphics, you give me the chance to say that, BG:EE does not have the ability to allow you usage of BG1 original sprites/animations, while a modded version of BWP or BG1 vanilla do. Since this affects graphics and what you see, some people, me included, believe it makes BG:EE look worse.
Also colorful feet circles, lovely.
BG:EE also heavily uses BG1 sounds, as in combat hit sounds, spell casting effects (but not sounds, the phrases the casters speak when casting is BG2) and all sound effects are purely BG1. Like item picking up or dropping, opening up a container, even the sounds the characters do when walking in leather, chain or plate mail all are from BG1. Those little details make it more original sounding than BGT who uses BG2 sounds.
What I would really appreciate would be better sprites at least for NPCs. There was talking about source assets being lost and about graphical inconsistency, but I don´t thing that would be problem. There was always inconsistency in BG (compare Commoner with Amnish Guard in BG2). Actually NPC sprites are more pixelated than the background, so if they would just slightly improve these sprites, it would be great.
About new areas, I have seen just Adoy´s Enclave, which is pretty nice. Environment textures are a bit blurry, but looks nice, have nice transition between each other, while objects are more detailed, keeping it more distinct. It has a lot nicer shadows. Also, I like the design of mountains. In vanilla BG, mountain areas were the least attractive to me, being flat with canyon like ledges. These mountains however looks a lot better and more natural.
The zoom is great!
Maybe I'll experience a difference by contrast when playing regular BG2 again, but I kind of doubt it.
That's all I have to say. BGEE may not have "improved" the visuals of the game, but it's really the ONLY way to play Baldur's Gate at a high resolution without the game looking like ass.
Did you miss how my statement was qualified with, "at a high resolution?" You shouldn't have--you quoted my whole post. 640x480 is not a high resolution, not even close. It wasn't even a high resolution back when Shadows of Amn.
So, let me state this again, unequivocally. Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition is the only--the ONLY--way to play Baldur's Gate at higher resolutions without the game being displayed improperly, ruining most aspects of play.
And it's also worth pointing out that, in my personal experience across three PCs and five monitors, I have never been able to get the widescreen mod to properly display an IE game at any resolution less than 1440x900.
Personally I usually put the widescreen mod to 1280x720, as I found it hit the sweet spot between game world visibility and animation/UI size, and it definitely displayed properly.
But guys, seriously, the game( action screen) doesn't look any better, no matter how hard you're trying to see.
It's the same thing. It was meant to be the same thing.
It's just much more convenient to adjust basically the resolution to whatever you want via zoom, and watch small details, while at the same time, the ui makes it easier to do anything and it looks better.
So from that aspect, it looks way more convenient. But if you want to compare it side by side with the widescreen mod, if i used the same ui on both games, you wouldn't be able to spot the difference.
http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/9684/bgcomparison.png
That's the game as it appears, natively, at 1080p. Take care to notice the diameter of the viewable area and fog-of-war with respect to the total area of the screen. Now, compare the original game at 1080p to the Enhanced Edition, also at 1080p, with the camera zoomed out all of the way.
http://img.gamefaqs.net/screens/d/c/7/gfs_254229_2_1.jpg
(GameFAQs re-sized the image, because that's what they do, so don't get hung up on its resolution--focus on the visual elements).
As you can see, in BGT, the circular, the viewable circle around the player character takes up about 1/3 the game screen, whereas in BGEE the viewable circle around the player takes up about 1/2 the game screen.
This is because the assets of BGEE are not simply upscaled, they exist at a higher resolution than the original assets. This means that (and I'm sorry to say this three times in a row) @Shin was wrong. Zooming out in BGEE still yields some use, as the zoomed out view can display everything at their proper resolution without zooming out near so far as BGT.
As a gamer with a 1080p monitor, and as a gamer who has never been able to get the widescreen mod to function properly at lower resolutions, I'm very, very happy with how BGEE implemented everything. The camera zoomed in allows us to play the game in a close approximation to the original as possible, and we're even allowed to zoom out--and, most importantly of all, zooming the camera out all of the way yields a far less disconcerting game image than happens with the widescreen mod applied.
If you compare how much of the game world is covered by the LOS circle though, you'll see that it covers the same amount in both shots - roughly from the tutor to the wagon. Heck, if you look at the zoomed in BG:EE screen the LOS circle covers more than the entire visible game world, but it still has the same relative size.
Widescreen puts the perspective further away, removing the blurriness that upscaling and zooming brings, but if you ask me if i can play in 1080p Widescreen, i wouldn't like to indeed.
Anyway, there are some graphical touches that i like, zoom, colored circles, spell effects, all very nice. I would have liked of course animations to accompany all these nicer graphical things, but it is impossible as it seems.
Other than that, peace :]
1) When zoom level is remembered
2) When a 'hybrid' UI scheme is available with unscaled gameworld + UI bars, and scaled inventory/journal/all else.
This will allow us to play with as much or as little of the game screen occupied by giant GUI elements as we want, and keep the inventory / journal experience from being a pain in the ass when playing at or above 1080
However the zoom feature is much more handy to me as a relief to these tired eyes. Spells do look better as per 1PP. But I wonder what else can be improved this way. Not much that I can tell. Still, this is the improvement I was the least expectant about. I personally couldn't care less to graphics improvements. I'm a bit confused by this one. Contrary to what is said in the original post from where this was taken, I believe new areas already have this enhancement. I certainly can notice a huge colordepth improvement on the new Neera's quest area for instance, unless my eyes are deceiving me.
But this is a conundrum to me. For one, I can only imagine what would have been possible had Overhaul reworked all areas. The new areas are amazing to me. But on the other hand they are completely different from the rest of the game and provide no artwork consistency... something I tend to dislike. But what else could Overhaul do? New areas need new artwork.
Conclusion:
I'm deeply satisfied with the work on the art department of the game, considering the limitations imposed on the development team. I think that they too contributed to the Enhanced subtitle. I'm especially pleased with what I consider a vastly superior approach to widescreen support than that offered by the previous mod. This one alone trumps anything I may find less good about the enhanced edition.
As a personal challenge I may one day try to see if I can play BG+TotSC (patched, unmodded save for the ddrawfix GoG installs, since I'd rather not drag the CDs out again) all the way through again. The only time I beat BG1 was with a patched, unmodded disc install of BG+TotSC, and this well after I'd been living the high life repeatedly playing through BG2 with all manner of mods, so the challenge would be to see if I could still stand it knowing the bugs hiding in the shadows, as it were, not to mentioned denying myself the Es of the EE.
One thing I'd be perfectly fine with is the good ol' 640x480 display. The old UI? *shrug*