Eidos and Funcom released this video showing the various graphical abilities of the engine developed for Age Of Conan. Of course it's all about the PC version, and nothing indicates whether eveything will still be in the 360 version of not.
Looks pretty good but some of that stuff was kinda funny. The whole 'dynamic waterfalls' for example, now I know they don't have actual 'flowing' water yet, so by their definition if the waterfalls weren't dynamic maybe the water effect would make it look suspended in mid air?
Also, Everquest 2 did a lot of that already, and EQ2's water is still the best in any MMO I've seen.
Sadly this MMO (nor any others) seems to stand a real chance against WoW.
So if I may compare it with Oblivion. Way better framerate, much more lively, better looking and better moving characters. That's perfect for me. But.. my 360 is so dusty!
Why even compare it to oblivion? MMORPGs always look crappier than single player games. For an MMO this looks really sweet. I'll agree to that it's nothing mind blowing like that, but for it's genre it's a good effort.
Jigen: Why drag EQ2 in to this? I've never played it, so i don't know any thing about the gameplay, but EQ2 looks like ass compared to AoC ;)
Commented on 2008-01-21 11:17:52 In reply to Megido
Posted by Megido
Jigen: Why drag EQ2 in to this? I've never played it, so i don't know any thing about the gameplay, but EQ2 looks like ass compared to AoC ;)
Well there you go, you've never played it. EQ2 is quite a unique game. Even a 7800GT can't play it acceptably (to my tastes), yet it was entirely coded for pixel shader 1.1 and nothing higher (they've added higher PS support, but it didn't drastically help performance). The water effects in EQ2 are inferior only to a handful of games. Entire game is normal mapped, highest texture setting is made for 512MB! of texture RAM (the number of games that have that high of a setting is still very very low). Many of the enemy models were quite great, say for example, the sea turtles and sharks...
Commented on 2008-01-21 11:45:42 In reply to Jigen
Jigen: so basically they are just bad programmers then? The game looks like it should run fine on pretty low-spec computers from what I've seen. Just because the game demands a high-end computer that doesn't mean it's good. I do remember it looking pretty nice when it was announced but who cares, that was ages ago.
Like said, i'm not going to criticize the gameplay, because i know nothing of it, but the graphic are not impressive in any way. And the design is just plain horrible to me.
Posted by Jigen
Also, Everquest 2 did a lot of that already.
Yeah, and Tomb Raider from 96 did polygons and textures. Is that a valid argument against EQ 2 then? I mean, polys and textures are way behind!
Commented on 2008-01-21 11:47:36 In reply to twoism
Posted by twoism
Awesome graphics. Of course, none of us will actually be able to run it with those max details when the game ships I bet.
I may not max everything out since i' refuse to install vista and thus have no DX10 support, but i should get it looking as pretty as possible on xp at least.
Commented on 2008-01-21 12:21:58 In reply to Megido
Posted by Megido
Jigen: so basically they are just bad programmers then? The game looks like it should run fine on pretty low-spec computers from what I've seen. Just because the game demands a high-end computer that doesn't mean it's good. I do remember it looking pretty nice when it was announced but who cares, that was ages ago.
Like said, i'm not going to criticize the gameplay, because i know nothing of it, but the graphic are not impressive in any way. And the design is just plain horrible to me.
Yeah, and Tomb Raider from 96 did polygons and textures. Is that a valid argument against EQ 2 then? I mean, polys and textures are way behind!
Once again, you haven't played it. They also designed the graphics at the wrong time, PS2.0 cards were just coming out, and it would have been hard to design a game for cards that they knew little about (some games were designed that way and run way too slow).
The game doesn't look as great as it once did, but it's still one of the better looking MMOs easily, for the reasons I've mentioned.
Obviously you haven't seen enough of the graphics of the game to judge that either, trust me, it's a stunning game.
It's quite possible to compare EQ2's graphics to more modern games because the assets and effects are EQUAL to those other games. You might compare Tomb Raider to a poor looking game released later, but Tomb Raider lacks the lighting effects, shaders, geometry, post processing, and so on to even come close to compare to most modern games.
Like I said before, just as an example, but there's a setting for 512MB of textures, which would take up the entire memory of PS3 or 360, no room for game code or sound effects, and still the vast majority of PC gamers don't have cards with that much texture memory.
Jigen: Look, you said that some of the stuff in AoC was already done in EQ2 and i just don't understand how that's relevant at all. Everything you see in games builds upon previous steps taken. Further more i'm not impressed by the fact that EQ2 is obviously so flawed in it's programming that even computers today, 4 years after release, still have problems running the game to a satisfactory level. But if you think that's cool and awesome, be my guest.
And the 512 megs of textures sure seems like a load of bull to me, or rather it sounds like shitty programming as well. Now i assume that EQ2 has, like all other MMOs, a huge world with very few times loading, and as such textures would present a problem if not properly streamed in and out of memory, not to talk about compression techniques. But let's face the facts, those numbers mean nothing. Doom 3 required 512 megs of ram for textures too but as far as i know, games like Gears of War still look a shitload hotter than that texture wise.
And as far as MMOs that has satisfactory graphics and has done a good job of standing the test of time go, look at Lineage 2. Admittedly not the hottest GFX, but it looks good and you can run it on almost any computer. Actually i'm impressed with what they churned out of the Unreal 2 engine.
Dynamiic day and night, look wicked, also the vegetation seems liike a definite upgrade from previous games like oblivion, lots more grass :)
And the water looks amazing, fast moving rivers etc are great looking
Now if they can make the gameplay fun, i mean to me oblivion lacked the fluidity, not to mention if they could get the talking sequences from oblivion to mass effect's level... cause oblivions dialog the people looked fake as hell
The official site lists nothing about this coming to the 360 and that video was showcasing DX10 effects that the 360 can not do.
EDIT: I found on some sites that the game is coming to the 360 in September. That is 6 months after it's PC release. Don't expect it to look like this when the 360 vids come around.
Commented on 2008-01-21 17:16:56 In reply to SPBTooL
Posted by SPBTooL
The official site lists nothing about this coming to the 360 and that video was showcasing DX10 effects that the 360 can not do.
Then again i've heard that several developers claim that basically anything done in DX10 can indeed be done in DX9 with some extra haxxorzising. Not that it really matters.
Jigen: i'm downloading the trial version of EQ2 now, so i'll be back in a couple of hours with opinions, haha.
Commented on 2008-01-21 20:59:21 In reply to SPBTooL
Posted by SPBTooL
The official site lists nothing about this coming to the 360 and that video was showcasing DX10 effects that the 360 can not do.
EDIT: I found on some sites that the game is coming to the 360 in September. That is 6 months after it's PC release. Don't expect it to look like this when the 360 vids come around.
Yea, but the 360 is the equivalent to DX 9.5 and because its a closed system there is always hacks and work rounds.
It's not going to look as good for the simple fact of less memory and shader power but im sure it will still look half decent.
Commented on 2008-01-22 00:16:31 In reply to Megido
Posted by Megido
Jigen: Look, you said that some of the stuff in AoC was already done in EQ2 and i just don't understand how that's relevant at all. Everything you see in games builds upon previous steps taken. Further more i'm not impressed by the fact that EQ2 is obviously so flawed in it's programming that even computers today, 4 years after release, still have problems running the game to a satisfactory level. But if you think that's cool and awesome, be my guest.
And the 512 megs of textures sure seems like a load of bull to me, or rather it sounds like shitty programming as well. Now i assume that EQ2 has, like all other MMOs, a huge world with very few times loading, and as such textures would present a problem if not properly streamed in and out of memory, not to talk about compression techniques. But let's face the facts, those numbers mean nothing. Doom 3 required 512 megs of ram for textures too but as far as i know, games like Gears of War still look a shitload hotter than that texture wise.
And as far as MMOs that has satisfactory graphics and has done a good job of standing the test of time go, look at Lineage 2. Admittedly not the hottest GFX, but it looks good and you can run it on almost any computer. Actually i'm impressed with what they churned out of the Unreal 2 engine.
I don't know why you have a problem with EQ2 being equal to this game graphically, do you work for AoC's PR dept? You also keep commenting on it when you admit you've never played it, and have probably not even seen decent screenshots or videos of it...
The 512MB of textures is a setting, and not bull. It's hard to mess up 512MB of textures on the programming side. The textures are all sharp and normal mapped. Doom3 did NOT require 512MB of texture memory, and you obviously know very little. Gears easily has higher resolution textures, when you consider the streaming, however it completely lacks the dynamic lighting system of Doom 3, so it'd be possible to argue that Doom 3 looked better (a matter of opinion).
Well Lineage 2 doesn't come close to EQ2 or this game, but hey, if you just want performance, look at WoW...
Personally I don't think this is all that special it has some nice effects I suppose, but art style is really boring which kind of takes away from the wow factor.
Would like to see a next gen WoW engine to be honest, its about time Blizzard updated that game or made a new one.
Jigen: it's because no matter how much media i compare they are NOT equal in any way. Perhaps EQ2 was the most incredible MMO in terms of graphics before, but compared to AoC i just can't say it looks very good. EQ2 suffers from empty and boxy environments, much lower polycounts in characters and mobs, complete lack of decent vegetation, crappy use of bump/normal maps and the lighting sure does look much more boring and flat in EQ2. I just don't understand why you have such a hard time admitting that EQ2 is the obvious inferior game in terms of graphics. At least on the technical side, if you like the design of EQ then that's your opinion.
And Doom 3 DID required 512 megs for textures on the highest setting. The game even throws a little warning message box in your face about it.
Jolli: like said, it's an MMORPG, they are always a bit uglier than the games that aren't designed to keep track of one hojillion players at the same time ^^
Commented on 2008-01-22 14:43:05 In reply to Megido
Posted by Megido
Jigen: it's because no matter how much media i compare they are NOT equal in any way. Perhaps EQ2 was the most incredible MMO in terms of graphics before, but compared to AoC i just can't say it looks very good. EQ2 suffers from empty and boxy environments, much lower polycounts in characters and mobs, complete lack of decent vegetation, crappy use of bump/normal maps and the lighting sure does look much more boring and flat in EQ2. I just don't understand why you have such a hard time admitting that EQ2 is the obvious inferior game in terms of graphics. At least on the technical side, if you like the design of EQ then that's your opinion.
And Doom 3 DID required 512 megs for textures on the highest setting. The game even throws a little warning message box in your face about it.
Jolli: like said, it's an MMORPG, they are always a bit uglier than the games that aren't designed to keep track of one hojillion players at the same time ^^
You just need to stop commenting on EQ2. You haven't played it, and you obviously haven't seen enough of it to have any kind of informed opinion of it. Nothing you've said means anything because you're just talking out of ignorance. Why should *I* who have actually played the game (and by the way, have invested considerable time in both 3d graphics applications and game level design AND deeply understand current graphics architecture) while you simply have not.
Ahh, I see what you're saying about Doom 3, but you've still gotten something wrong. In Doom 3 when you turn it to 'ultra' all it does is waste videocard memory and bandwidth by turning off all texture compression. It might add a slight visual gain, but the textures are no higher resolution.
Hey, I'll admit AoC is probably a SMALL step above EQ2 overall, the water graphics are certainly quite inferior to EQ2's, but there's certainly more 'vegetation' in AoC...
Commented on 2008-01-22 18:51:01 In reply to Megido
Posted by Megido
Jolli: like said, it's an MMORPG, they are always a bit uglier than the games that aren't designed to keep track of one hojillion players at the same time ^^
Yea but as far as MMO's go I expect more from a next gen one, this looks half way between the 2 gens, polygon count seems very low if you ask me, I hope SE's next MMO will look a bit better than this.
To be quite honest, the game looked worse when playing than in the screenshots i looked at before downloading it. The water was cool, but otherwise i'm still not particularly impressed. Sure there are some sharp textures in there but it just doesn't live up to what AoC has shown so far. Of course i haven't played conan, but i have seen demonstrations of gameplay and to me it looks a hell of a lot sweeter. I guess that our opinions on this matter is just different.
And i do know my way around applications like 3dsmax, maya and zbrush/mudbox just so you know. While i'm not a genious when it comes to programming and different APIs like DX or GL, i do know a little bit about it.
(terribly sorry about the horrible compression on the EQ snaps, the game did that all on it's own)
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All comments (38)
Commented on 2008-01-21 09:36:33Also, Everquest 2 did a lot of that already, and EQ2's water is still the best in any MMO I've seen.
Sadly this MMO (nor any others) seems to stand a real chance against WoW.
Commented on 2008-01-21 10:13:39
Commented on 2008-01-21 10:16:45
Commented on 2008-01-21 10:18:27
Commented on 2008-01-21 10:39:25Jigen: Why drag EQ2 in to this? I've never played it, so i don't know any thing about the gameplay, but EQ2 looks like ass compared to AoC ;)
Commented on 2008-01-21 11:04:40
Commented on 2008-01-21 11:11:32
Commented on 2008-01-21 11:17:52 In reply to Megido
Commented on 2008-01-21 11:45:42 In reply to JigenLike said, i'm not going to criticize the gameplay, because i know nothing of it, but the graphic are not impressive in any way. And the design is just plain horrible to me.
Commented on 2008-01-21 11:47:36 In reply to twoism
Commented on 2008-01-21 12:21:58 In reply to MegidoLike said, i'm not going to criticize the gameplay, because i know nothing of it, but the graphic are not impressive in any way. And the design is just plain horrible to me.
Yeah, and Tomb Raider from 96 did polygons and textures. Is that a valid argument against EQ 2 then? I mean, polys and textures are way behind!
The game doesn't look as great as it once did, but it's still one of the better looking MMOs easily, for the reasons I've mentioned.
Obviously you haven't seen enough of the graphics of the game to judge that either, trust me, it's a stunning game.
It's quite possible to compare EQ2's graphics to more modern games because the assets and effects are EQUAL to those other games. You might compare Tomb Raider to a poor looking game released later, but Tomb Raider lacks the lighting effects, shaders, geometry, post processing, and so on to even come close to compare to most modern games.
Like I said before, just as an example, but there's a setting for 512MB of textures, which would take up the entire memory of PS3 or 360, no room for game code or sound effects, and still the vast majority of PC gamers don't have cards with that much texture memory.
Commented on 2008-01-21 12:40:47And the 512 megs of textures sure seems like a load of bull to me, or rather it sounds like shitty programming as well. Now i assume that EQ2 has, like all other MMOs, a huge world with very few times loading, and as such textures would present a problem if not properly streamed in and out of memory, not to talk about compression techniques. But let's face the facts, those numbers mean nothing. Doom 3 required 512 megs of ram for textures too but as far as i know, games like Gears of War still look a shitload hotter than that texture wise.
And as far as MMOs that has satisfactory graphics and has done a good job of standing the test of time go, look at Lineage 2. Admittedly not the hottest GFX, but it looks good and you can run it on almost any computer. Actually i'm impressed with what they churned out of the Unreal 2 engine.
Commented on 2008-01-21 13:41:52Dynamiic day and night, look wicked, also the vegetation seems liike a definite upgrade from previous games like oblivion, lots more grass :)
And the water looks amazing, fast moving rivers etc are great looking
Now if they can make the gameplay fun, i mean to me oblivion lacked the fluidity, not to mention if they could get the talking sequences from oblivion to mass effect's level... cause oblivions dialog the people looked fake as hell
Commented on 2008-01-21 15:12:56 In reply to Xerx3s
Commented on 2008-01-21 15:45:06And yes, the graphics are rather impressive for an MMO.
Commented on 2008-01-21 17:14:32EDIT: I found on some sites that the game is coming to the 360 in September. That is 6 months after it's PC release. Don't expect it to look like this when the 360 vids come around.
Commented on 2008-01-21 17:16:56 In reply to SPBTooLJigen: i'm downloading the trial version of EQ2 now, so i'll be back in a couple of hours with opinions, haha.
Commented on 2008-01-21 18:47:07
Commented on 2008-01-21 20:59:21 In reply to SPBTooLEDIT: I found on some sites that the game is coming to the 360 in September. That is 6 months after it's PC release. Don't expect it to look like this when the 360 vids come around.
It's not going to look as good for the simple fact of less memory and shader power but im sure it will still look half decent.
Commented on 2008-01-22 00:16:31 In reply to MegidoAnd the 512 megs of textures sure seems like a load of bull to me, or rather it sounds like shitty programming as well. Now i assume that EQ2 has, like all other MMOs, a huge world with very few times loading, and as such textures would present a problem if not properly streamed in and out of memory, not to talk about compression techniques. But let's face the facts, those numbers mean nothing. Doom 3 required 512 megs of ram for textures too but as far as i know, games like Gears of War still look a shitload hotter than that texture wise.
And as far as MMOs that has satisfactory graphics and has done a good job of standing the test of time go, look at Lineage 2. Admittedly not the hottest GFX, but it looks good and you can run it on almost any computer. Actually i'm impressed with what they churned out of the Unreal 2 engine.
The 512MB of textures is a setting, and not bull. It's hard to mess up 512MB of textures on the programming side. The textures are all sharp and normal mapped. Doom3 did NOT require 512MB of texture memory, and you obviously know very little. Gears easily has higher resolution textures, when you consider the streaming, however it completely lacks the dynamic lighting system of Doom 3, so it'd be possible to argue that Doom 3 looked better (a matter of opinion).
Well Lineage 2 doesn't come close to EQ2 or this game, but hey, if you just want performance, look at WoW...
Commented on 2008-01-22 00:45:42Would like to see a next gen WoW engine to be honest, its about time Blizzard updated that game or made a new one.
Commented on 2008-01-22 12:13:51And Doom 3 DID required 512 megs for textures on the highest setting. The game even throws a little warning message box in your face about it.
Jolli: like said, it's an MMORPG, they are always a bit uglier than the games that aren't designed to keep track of one hojillion players at the same time ^^
Commented on 2008-01-22 14:43:05 In reply to MegidoAnd Doom 3 DID required 512 megs for textures on the highest setting. The game even throws a little warning message box in your face about it.
Jolli: like said, it's an MMORPG, they are always a bit uglier than the games that aren't designed to keep track of one hojillion players at the same time ^^
Ahh, I see what you're saying about Doom 3, but you've still gotten something wrong. In Doom 3 when you turn it to 'ultra' all it does is waste videocard memory and bandwidth by turning off all texture compression. It might add a slight visual gain, but the textures are no higher resolution.
Hey, I'll admit AoC is probably a SMALL step above EQ2 overall, the water graphics are certainly quite inferior to EQ2's, but there's certainly more 'vegetation' in AoC...
Commented on 2008-01-22 18:51:01 In reply to Megido
Commented on 2008-01-22 20:05:52http://static.pici.se/pictures/VDDsmvict.jpg
http://pici.se/pictures/AXmkimdSo.jpg
is comparable to this? (okay, this is clearly bullshot but i couldn't find any in-game snaps of AOC and from what i've seen demoed it shouldn't be too far from the truth)
http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2007/347/revi...
http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2007/336/9275...
To be quite honest, the game looked worse when playing than in the screenshots i looked at before downloading it. The water was cool, but otherwise i'm still not particularly impressed. Sure there are some sharp textures in there but it just doesn't live up to what AoC has shown so far. Of course i haven't played conan, but i have seen demonstrations of gameplay and to me it looks a hell of a lot sweeter. I guess that our opinions on this matter is just different.
And i do know my way around applications like 3dsmax, maya and zbrush/mudbox just so you know. While i'm not a genious when it comes to programming and different APIs like DX or GL, i do know a little bit about it.
(terribly sorry about the horrible compression on the EQ snaps, the game did that all on it's own)