Safe to assume Beamdog hasn't bothered to create new sprites?
Arsene_Lupin
Member Posts: 181
The absence of new sprites in the EEs was... unpleasant, to say the least. There's only so much you can do to make a sprite 60 pixels high look decent on modern resolutions--so when Beamdog simply uprezzed the original sprites and slapped some filters on them, we understood. We didn't like, but we understood. (Well, most of us).
BGEE, BG2EE and IWDEE were all, after all, ports.
But Siege of Dragonspear is not a port. It is a new game. And, as far as I can tell, it looks to use the same (poorly) upscaled assets. And given the fact that all of the promotional material for SoD uses fully zoomed-out screenshots--which, since they obscure the one of the key aspects that makes these EE games preferable to the originals, we can safely assume was done solely to obscure the poorly-aged art assets--and none of the interviews or previews have mentioned ANY sort of improvement or replacement of the sprites, it seems very safe to say that there has been no improvement of any form to the character sprites.
What can be overlooked in a port... cannot necessarily be overlooked in a new game. Personally, I find this very disappointing.
I can understand not wanting to re-do all of the sprites in the game. That would be... extremely time-consuming. But sprites for all of the PCs? That seems to be far more on the "necessary" side of the spectrum than the "superfluous" side.
BGEE, BG2EE and IWDEE were all, after all, ports.
But Siege of Dragonspear is not a port. It is a new game. And, as far as I can tell, it looks to use the same (poorly) upscaled assets. And given the fact that all of the promotional material for SoD uses fully zoomed-out screenshots--which, since they obscure the one of the key aspects that makes these EE games preferable to the originals, we can safely assume was done solely to obscure the poorly-aged art assets--and none of the interviews or previews have mentioned ANY sort of improvement or replacement of the sprites, it seems very safe to say that there has been no improvement of any form to the character sprites.
What can be overlooked in a port... cannot necessarily be overlooked in a new game. Personally, I find this very disappointing.
I can understand not wanting to re-do all of the sprites in the game. That would be... extremely time-consuming. But sprites for all of the PCs? That seems to be far more on the "necessary" side of the spectrum than the "superfluous" side.
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Comments
My guess for why they have not completely re-done the sprites is their budget. Their time, effort, and money has gone into making a compelling story, new maps, and bringing back the original voice actors. I for one am glad about this, I would rather have a good story than better looking sprites.
Also I think if they ever did re-do the sprites they would have to do them *all*, otherwise the PCs would look very out of place and (at least for me) would make the game annoying to play. There needs to be visual consistency across all sprites.
Since then, they have released 3 Enhanced Edition ports on both PC and mobile platforms. I don't think the "we don't have the resources" excuse really flies any more. While BG2EE and IWDEE may not have been hugely successful, BGEE certainly was.
I would also point out that assuming higher resolution sprites would somehow evolve into some new art style is a pretty ludicrous fallacy. A higher resolution sprite is just that. The old filtered sprites? They look fine against the old, filtered backgrounds. But against the new, high resolution backgrounds? Not so much.
There's a similar problem with somehow assuming that having artists do work on something somehow prevents writers, programmers, etc., from working on other things.
And that kind of... lack of polish is fine for a port. Expectations are a completely different ballpark. But this isn't a port any more, it's a new game, and I think our standards should be higher.
Especially since (presumably) Beamdog will be creating new sprites regardless for the new class. Unless they just re-use the sprites from an existing class... but that would be super lazy.
@CMK24: I can kind of tell what you mean. If they did touch up on the sprites, fantastic. The current filtered sprites look just... abysmal. But it's really too hard to tell from that video. And Beamdog's insistence on only ever distributing screenshots from the absolute maximum zoom level certainly doesn't help matters.
@Permidion_Stark: That's a completely valid point... for the ports. There's no danger of this not being BG any more because it's not BG any more. It's a new game. And, in case you didn't notice, every single Infinity Engine game introduced new sprites.
Or crowdfund it, if you're worried that demand won't meet costs. But at these resolutions the sprites are just a blurry mess basically, and nostalgia only goes so far.
I play the games despite the graphics, because the games are awesome, but I would dearly like some better looking sprites to go with it.
After years of ironing out the kinks in the engine and resurrecting some of our favorite computer games ever, I'd just as soon see Beamdog devote their time, energy and resources to producing quality gameplay rather than "fix" a thing that ain't broke.
In short it is a monumental undertaking considering all of the individual sprite iterations that would need to be reproduced.
As for general sprites I enjoy the basic ones we have already.
[spoiler]
- Monk animations are an addition of Avg. frames * Male/female * Weapon * Directions * Animation types. They don't wear armour, and only humans can be monks. They are not included in the main table due to being an exceptional case.
- I am keeping the number of unique creature sprites deliberately low for the reason stated below.
- The total number does not include required adjustments to actual equipment sprites; i.e. weapons, helmets, and shields.
Races- Human
- Elf
- Gnome/dwarf
- Halfling
Weapon- Stabbing
- Overhead
- Slashing
- Two-handed
- Bow
- Crossbow
Directions- North
- North-east
- East
- South-east
- South
- South-west
- West
- North-west
Armour sets/Unique class sprites- Fighter: unarmoured, leather, chain, plate
- Mage: unarmoured, robe, robe and cloak, hooded robe and cloak
- Thief: unarmoured (hood), leather (hood), chain (hood)
- Note: Thieves won't wear plate, so they take a separate row for Armour sets/Unique class sprites
Animation types- Idle
- Ready
- Injured
- Unconscious/sleep
- Wake
- Death
- Conjure
- Casting
Estimates number of creaturesTotal from here will be:
X = (estimated sprites * average frames * direction * animation types * average two attack types) + subtotalNote: (animation types * average two attack types) will not apply to all animations, and in some cases other animations will have more. For example, large creatures such as dragons have multiple sections made up of frames, so take both as an average in lieu of there not being a set specific number. As far as I am aware, most neutral wildlife don't even have attack animations. In the case of the deer, I'm not even sure it has a walking anything.[/spoiler]
So how about switching sprites to 3D animated models? Is it feasible or same level of complicated?
Btw, have any of you guys seen FFVI with remade graphics on iOS? That's the way to do it.
Which means what? It's possible to make new high-res 3D models and then port them into the game?