But there are (and were) hundreds of "settings" (variables) ... Can't put all of them into a interface, nor are they all equally important. Most of this we never want to change or know it could be changed, but for those things who bug us we request a ui toggle for maximum comfort to change it once in an install time?
Personally I love the outlines and smoothing. Yes it changes the look but it feels more updated to me.
I play with it turned on and the outlines are a huge help when zoomed out. It makes following characters much easier as they stand out against the background a bit more. My eyes don't have to strain as much now.
Hate the outlines, but I just booted up BG on my tablet and realised that we always remember things to be better than what they really were. I do prefer the new models.
I have an old pc. Part of the charm of the bg games were they were old school and did not require monster machines. They used to work well on my old pc. But beta's highlighted outlines cause massive frame rate drop in my system. I can turn it off luckily, which solves the problem. I haven't the chance to play for long to compare if it actually looks better, however I doubt it. Even without the performance issue it looks too cartoonish for my tastes. With the performance issue it is a big no-go. Thankfully it is toggleable from the options or else the game will be totally unplayable on old systems.
I already stated that I do not like new scaling filter. I can understand that someone prefers something else, but for me it is a deal breaker.
I do not know if people remember that original BG was in 640x480 resolution. Although I am playing now on much higher resolution, I still like to play the game with high zoom in level. At this zoom level new scaling does not look good. If you zoom out all the way than it is off course not noticeable and all the people that stated that new scaling is better for them also said they play it with zoomed out. Also people that like new models seems mostly to play with tablets.
I think beamdog should preserve original look and let all the new features be separately selected by players. This is what beamdog did so far and I have no doubt they will do it in the future.
If they decide to not give original scaling filter to be available to select, I can always save this version of bg1 and bg2 to play and have only SoD to play with new scaling.
Here's a comparison of v1.3 (left with v2.00 (right). Don't zoom the images in your web browser if you want an accurate demonstration of the difference (Web browsers tend to not use a smoothing upscaler when upscaling/zooming images which ruins the comparison)
To me the Player Character looks slightly better in v1.3 (The green guy looks bad in both images).
I have a feeling I screwed up this image comparison. I think I scaled up the v1.3 image to match the size of the v2.0 image, which ruined the comparison. I'll get a proper comparison soon and ensure I do it correctly this time.
Here's a comparison of v1.3 (left with v2.00 (right). Don't zoom the images in your web browser if you want an accurate demonstration of the difference (Web browsers tend to not use a smoothing upscaler when upscaling/zooming images which ruins the comparison)
To me the Player Character looks slightly better in v1.3 (The green guy looks bad in both images).
I have a feeling I screwed up this image comparison. I think I scaled up the v1.3 image to match the size of the v2.0 image, which ruined the comparison. I'll get a proper comparison soon and ensure I do it correctly this time.
Gotta say I don't see much difference between the two. The face of charname seems to be smudged in the same way on both examples. I can sort of see a little difference in the tutors robe, but it's pretty subtle.
In-game the difference is more pronounced, I have a feeling I need to take PNG screenshots to accurately portray the difference (Previously I used the Steam Overlay which creates JPEG images). I might repeat the comparison and use Fraps for the screenshots.
In-game the difference is more pronounced, I have a feeling I need to take PNG screenshots to accurately portray the difference (Previously I used the Steam Overlay which creates JPEG images). I might repeat the comparison and use Fraps for the screenshots.
If you use the "print screen" key in game BG takes a screenshot in .BMP format and places it in your "Documents/Baldur's Gate - Enhanced Edition/ScrnShot/" folder, no need for Fraps.
Here you are, a perfect comparison in PNG format (Source material for both images were in BMP format). The left is v1.3, the right is v2.0.610, the sprite outlines were disabled in the v2.0.61.0 image to provide a more accurate comparison between the Nearest Neighbour graphics scaler that v1.3 uses and the Linear graphics scaler that v2.0.61.0 uses.
For me the characters on the left are more refined and detailed and the characters on the right are slightly out of focus. The difference is fairly subtle, but definitely visible. Also the classic selection circles are wrong in the new version of the game, they aren't round like they are in v1.3, instead their distinctly like a hexagon shape or something similar. I can kinda see that it might be the same in v1.3 but the aliasing/low resolution of it greatly aids in masking it.
See, between those, I have a very strong preference for the ones on the right, because they look out-of-focus rather than pixelated. But I can see a marked difference now, and I acknowledge that preferences on this sort of thing are inherently subjective.
Again, to me, I see no significant difference. On both, there are several dark pixels where the sword crosses his thigh. Both charnames look like Peter Gabriel on the cover of his "Melt" album. There are some subtle differences between the two, but I really have to stare to find them. They both look like pixelated low-res sprites. The only thing that looks even close to hi-res is the foot circle on 2.0.
The left may be more pixelated but it is definitely more refined and detailed than the one on the right which is a blurry smudge. For someone who works on optimizing focus, the right one has the biggest flaw.
The zoom level is a bit off, but to me the characters on the left are slightly better than the right, which feels more "blobby" in some areas like the green robe but more angular in others. For instance, the fighters upper left leg seems like a perfectly straight line on the right side picture, but on the left it seems a little rounded and more natural.
However, the ground on the left is much better than the ground on the right. The right seems kind of washed over and out. Noticeably different, the first thing my wife noticed when I called her over.
This comparison (screenshot) is just does not giving the right impression. You will have to play it to see that the difference is quite substantial. I am not someone who would pick some small change and troll in forums about non-important change.
This is something that changes original game look. For someone it is better for someone it is not. Beamdog stated even in the latest twitch stream that if we want a 1998 look we can have it. It is their intention. They just need to put switch in graphics options for scaling method.
It saddens me, that such major change did get in the game without option to turn if off. And I'm not talking about character sprite outline... New filtering certainly have its ugly effect on background art, see the difference:
It saddens me, that such major change did get in the game without option to turn if off. And I'm not talking about character sprite outline... New filtering certainly have its ugly effect on background art, see the difference:
It saddens me, that such major change did get in the game without option to turn if off. And I'm not talking about character sprite outline... New filtering certainly have its ugly effect on background art, see the difference:
The loss of detail and lacking crispness is truly depressing.
P.S. @Dee, can you ask if there is a way to edit glsl shaders manually and put them in the override folder?
Are you speaking specifically of Imoen? because in v2.0 of Baldur's Gate 2 she starts off casting a spell that changes her appearance. This spell casting doesn't occur in v1.3. So your image comparison is not the greatest.
No, I'm talking specifically about environment sprites. If you look closer you will notice that background art (floor, walls, cages, doors, etc) is a bit blurred. It maybe fine for some people, but you can see that it lost some punch/details.
Yeah I see it now. The problem really is fairly subtle in example work, but it is easily detectable when you're paying a lot of attention to the graphics, like when actually playing the game.
Comments
I play with it turned on and the outlines are a huge help when zoomed out. It makes following characters much easier as they stand out against the background a bit more. My eyes don't have to strain as much now.
It makes the game feel fresher
I do not know if people remember that original BG was in 640x480 resolution. Although I am playing now on much higher resolution, I still like to play the game with high zoom in level. At this zoom level new scaling does not look good. If you zoom out all the way than it is off course not noticeable and all the people that stated that new scaling is better for them also said they play it with zoomed out. Also people that like new models seems mostly to play with tablets.
I think beamdog should preserve original look and let all the new features be separately selected by players. This is what beamdog did so far and I have no doubt they will do it in the future.
If they decide to not give original scaling filter to be available to select, I can always save this version of bg1 and bg2 to play and have only SoD to play with new scaling.
I have a feeling I screwed up this image comparison. I think I scaled up the v1.3 image to match the size of the v2.0 image, which ruined the comparison. I'll get a proper comparison soon and ensure I do it correctly this time.
Edit: Corrected comparison, v1.3 is on the left and v2.0.61.00 is on the right: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/727239/#Comment_727239
Gotta say I don't see much difference between the two. The face of charname seems to be smudged in the same way on both examples. I can sort of see a little difference in the tutors robe, but it's pretty subtle.
If you use the "print screen" key in game BG takes a screenshot in .BMP format and places it in your "Documents/Baldur's Gate - Enhanced Edition/ScrnShot/" folder, no need for Fraps.
Here you are, a perfect comparison in PNG format (Source material for both images were in BMP format). The left is v1.3, the right is v2.0.610, the sprite outlines were disabled in the v2.0.61.0 image to provide a more accurate comparison between the Nearest Neighbour graphics scaler that v1.3 uses and the Linear graphics scaler that v2.0.61.0 uses.
For me the characters on the left are more refined and detailed and the characters on the right are slightly out of focus. The difference is fairly subtle, but definitely visible. Also the classic selection circles are wrong in the new version of the game, they aren't round like they are in v1.3, instead their distinctly like a hexagon shape or something similar. I can kinda see that it might be the same in v1.3 but the aliasing/low resolution of it greatly aids in masking it.
However, the ground on the left is much better than the ground on the right. The right seems kind of washed over and out. Noticeably different, the first thing my wife noticed when I called her over.
This is something that changes original game look. For someone it is better for someone it is not. Beamdog stated even in the latest twitch stream that if we want a 1998 look we can have it. It is their intention. They just need to put switch in graphics options for scaling method.
I still had the beta installed so it wasn't out of the way to take a new screenshot at the correct zoom level.
The less jagged pixels the better imo.
imgur.com/a/1UDUs
The loss of detail and lacking crispness is truly depressing.
P.S. @Dee, can you ask if there is a way to edit glsl shaders manually and put them in the override folder?
I'll make some GIFs for comparison...
You can even see a seam thats definitely is not present in 1.3 version. Maybe I'm the only one that bothered by this, i diunno.