Hi guys, i came from the russian forum to show you my conceptual dark space works. And also i want to ask you, what kind of space would you prefer: space as we have it, or the dark and mystery one?
And the screenshots:
The Guardian-17 station
The Terramorphing station
The Smugglers hideout
P.S. sorry, if the screenshots has low quality or if there are not enough of them. Due to laggy computer procession takes really a lot of time, and final touches are almostly impossible.
P.P.S please, share this topic if possible.
upd1. Added a poll.
upd2. Parararam-pam-pam: the black space video is HERE! (if the video doesn’t open, delete “s” from “https” in your browser adress line)
Hi guys, i came from the russian forum to show you my conceptual dark space works. And also i want to ask you, what kind of space would you preffer: space as we have it, or the dark and mystery one?
And the screenshots:
The Guardian-17 station
The Terramorphing station
The Smugglers hideout
P.S. sorry, if the screenshots has low quality or if there are not enough of them. Due to laggy computer procession takes really a lot of time, and final touches are almostly impossible.
The visuals are better, definitely more spacey. But would they be practical? I.e. would you be able to see enemy ships in dark colours?
Well, it would be. This is only an example and you can see that if developers would truly sharpen the background and add some more details, it would look 10 times better than this.
This is how you should feel like in Space. Now you got a feeling that you’re strolling somewhere in the open, not even in Space.
Imo, we have only one problem in dark locations - when the screen goes dark right after missile (or mine) hit. This problem has heavy character on the old Barrier location, but, as i think, the location was pretty awesome, except this problem.
Black painted LRFs would be impossible to see… Like on some maps already. Therefore I do not think that black backgrounds are optimal for PVP, where visibility is required.
However, they could be very nice in PVE and especially in Invasion. I absolutely love the Guardian-17 concept! It just looks so much more “spacey”. The ones we have now look like they are located in the Earth’s atmosphere because of all the blue.
Imo, we have only one problem in dark locations - when the screen goes dark right after missile (or mine) hit. This problem has heavy character on the old Barrier location, but, as i think, the location was pretty awesome, except this problem.
This is a different matter. It can also be noticed on light maps, not just dark ones.
In any pvp game, first thing any expirienced player does is pump brightness to eliminate contrast dark and light areas, because that makes reaction times slower and simply stress your eyes. The old dark treshold map looked cool to look at but was terrible as PvP location, worse than a laggy pipe map we have atm. For PvE with not much action - sure w/e, but as PvP location a big no-no, maybe a bit darker than what we have atm but no where near the “tru dark space”
I feel maybe the enviroments should be more “far off” rather than have “deep space jericho” be in the same orbit as Jupiter’s moons, Fed station in orbit with earth and Empire station in orbit over god-knows-where, while every (or almost every) warp location PvP zone or not is still in orbit over or near some planet that is the same or similar to the zone’s faction’s station.
[Edit]: okay, so maybe empire is near a terraformed Mars. Or Fed is over a terraformed Mars and Empire is near Earth. Who knows. It all looks local to me (within the solar system, not following with the story that jericho originated in deep space, then empire took over solar system… kicked out feds and jericho outside of said system, jericho finds new home near a (twin star?) system which SHOULD BE quite far from EARTH.)
hm, darker skyboxes would not be that bad, since you can still work with lightsources / ambient light to get a space effect, which is still similarly visible as our maps atm. also, we all have the hud, in reality, most people only shoot circles next to red carets; shadows in our current maps often make me crash into it already; so it’s often contrast - which for the space feeling is positive, since you expect more contrast in space (no sky to make the light diffuse)
but this map is really a tidbit too dark in the video for actual pvp, but it would be an awesome pve map.
generally, i think, dark maps do work in pvp in an abstract way, at least, i had no problems making pvp in star citizen, which definitely uses darker maps.
@solar system / background: while firefly / serenity was an awesome show playing in a single solar system, and had its flair, i do think, the warpgates can do interstellar transportation the same as only jumping in the system, so there is nothing wrong with having multiple solar systems in the background story; however, one thing is mentioned in the background texts: earth, and with it the sol system, is part of empire space; the federation planet seen is not earth; it is probably new eden, or an undisclosed name, if in fact new eden is only the name of the station.
given that the latest research suggests, that it is very unlikely, that other planets supporting life even exist in the universe, while once we believed it were about thousands of such planets, having a waste network of warpgates connecting only a few systems with habitable planets isn’t very unrealistic either; and probably jericho lives not on planets, but on space stations or similar? but that’s more a topic for the writing threads.
Having played space games with mostly dark backgrounds, it works fine, just add proper lighting so ships may still be seen. I think there should maybe be one darker map, most people probably like the “day time” feel of other maps though as this is an arcade game. A couple of well built darker maps would be a nice addition.
The dark screenies and the video are awesome! But i would hate to have that in PVP mode. Invasion ,instead, looks really cool with a “realistic” space color scheme.
very true, +1; however alien invasion already creates a very foggy version of a map, too.
but as i said, this is dark skybox + dark level. usually you do not go both, except you want the player to experience night-time and use his nvgs, or force them to carry light sources, like horror games with aliens or sth, zombie survival games, realistic fantasy/medieval mmos, or fps night levels.
our skyboxes are light, some are fog-like, and the game objects itself are light + high contrast shadows. so the whole thing isn’t just “black” or “white”, there are a lot of things you have to consider. when it comes to level design, there is even a lot to talk about colormaps, since you cant just use any color with each other and hope it works, either; and i myself only know very basic stuff about this;
i do believe, pvp levels with a dark/black skybox showing stars and stuff, could work, and feel spacy, while the actual map you play in has visible objects and much light. but the level has to be designed for that to work.
IN space I want the darkness. What other point to having paint customization is there? (EDIT: Color customization, I know, it can also be simple fun to make your ships look cool. Don’t worry, I know.) I want to make my ships hard to see and colored in a way that makes the hard to spot so I can get the jump on players, it adds a new dynamic to the combat. The systems right now are entirely too bright (I purposely lower my brightness as much as I can while being able to see the text on the interface.
Oh, and honestly, why does the “visual contact issue” even come up here? We have radar and targeting brackets for crying out loud. Sniper mode highlights all ships in their team colors as well, so no excuses. =P
So, why are you all afraid of the dark?
(Note: Just teasing, not trying to be an xxxx, and I think it could add a whole new dynamic feeling to the game if the lighting was more like space actually is. It could potentially attract many more players as well.)
Can’t say that this is how everything should look like in game but as art at the pics and different vision of game this looks fantaaaaaastic!!! Thank u!
