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| Thread: Heroes V should remember of Heroes II |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
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Morglum
Tavern Dweller
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posted February 02, 2003 03:17 PM |
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Heroes V should remember of Heroes II
Please take time to read the whole post before flaming me.
I mean, Heroes V should have hand-made, per-pixel-edited, 2D bitmap graphics, like in Heroes II, and not pre-rendered 3D graphics.
I've played to Heroes 2,3,4. Heroes 3 was the worst-looking one (the graphics were fuzzy, as if they had been resized). Heroes 4 was much better, especially in 1280x1024. But even then, many models looked as if they were plastic figurines (typically : elves, unicorns, minotaurs...). They had not as much life in them as had the naïve graphics of heroes 2.
Remember of the phoenix ! Ok, he's fine in heroes 4, but in heroes 2 he was really marvellous. Remember of the Hydra, it had its own 'style'. Now it's just another big monster... Also remember of the Crusader, the swordsman, the dwarf, the troll, the elementals ! and the list goes on! More than half of the creatures had their own subtle personnality.
Only heroes2 players can understand what I'm talking about. Only them can remember how wonderful their first heroes2 game was. Ok, the gameplay is much better in heroes3 and 4, but the graphics have lost their soul (they have only partly recovered it in heroes 4).
It's a very difficult thing, to talk about artistic value, and it's a very unusual one on a videogame forum. But technical achievement is not artistic achievement. Hence 99% of the good videogames are not artistic. One could even wonder whether any game can pretend to be art. I feel that heroes2 had got an early, primitive form of interactive art.
To me, some thing gets artistic value as soon as it's inhabited by some rare, interesting spirit. This criterion applies very well to music, for example, but also to painting, architecture, litterature, well, any former existi ng artistic domain.
There is no reason that videogames should forever be deprived of it. In fact they are not. Heroes2 is a good example. When I was playing to it, I had some sensation of depth I couldn't describe, but I'm sure that many people had the same one, and that's why they loved this game so much.
I hope that other people understand the importance of the Heroes series and why it shouldn't be spoiled by sanitized graphics. Let me make myself clear : I'm not an enemy of technology. I'm a 3D OpenGL game programmer. Sanitizing is not inherent to 3D. But nowadays there's no equivalent in 3D to the good old pencil feeling of the 2D drawer. It's still possible to achieve something interesting in 3D, but at the price of spending considerably more time. So today, 3D pre-rendered graphics are'nt interresting... unless you are happy with 'filler' graphics (like, I think, are the graphics of 99,9% of all videogames, including heroes3 and most of heroes4, but only half of heroes2). Maybe in 10 years, but not now. In the meantime I hope that we won't forget that drawing is not only about technology.
I have seen that some people of this forum were worrying much more about the nature of creatures and the rules of the game than about technology itself. That lets me hope i'll find interesting feedback from the community.
Feedback would be useless if it was only about preserving the spirit : one could simply copy-paste from heroes2. But I'm not conservative. Heroes can be taken much further than that. Its spirit can be even much more deeper, there is no limit. So the question is :
what do we really love in the heroes series ?
This is a complicated question because when we like something, at the beginning, we just feel we like it. That's not intellectual, and discussing it might look unnatural. But it's necessary : or else the game's spirit will be dissolved by the influence of other videogames (thinking about real-time strategy games). I'm sorry not to be able to give a more precise answer than I have. Take your time to think about it, there's no hurry, but in the end, if no-one replies, it will have been useless.
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Celfious
Promising
Legendary Hero
From earth
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posted February 02, 2003 03:32 PM |
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Duder, I agree about Homm4 graphix being bland, but I say Homm 3 graphics is good.
Homm4s is workable, but we wouldn't see alot of gamers buying Homm5 if the graphics was like 10 years old.
I mean, a kids gonna buy Zelda 64 way before Zelda 1.
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What are you up to
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Lord_Woock
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Daddy Cool with a $90 smile
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posted February 02, 2003 03:46 PM |
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The H3 graphics isn't that bad, but on the rest - I agree!
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Yolk and God bless.
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My buddy's doing a webcomic and would certainly appreciate it if you checked it out!
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Morglum
Tavern Dweller
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posted February 02, 2003 04:03 PM |
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2D graphics are not necessarily looking 10 years old ! They can be in 32-bit colors, 1280x1024 resolution like in heroes 4, which sure makes a huge difference from heroes2's 640x480, 256 colors. The computers being at least 100x faster than 1996's computers for graphics, one could expect fine smoothing, blending, and even color operations... there are the programmable shaders... You can have a 2D game and still use much of the modern hardware's features, especially for magic spells, weather effects. Some effects (like lightning) could be achieved in real-time 3D.
So the only difference with pre-rendered 3D is that it wouldn't have the 'Toy Story look'. But I'm not sure it's a prerequisite for modernity. By the way, i'm sure there will always be a room for non-photorealistic rendering. It fits much better in a mythical environnment like heroes's. The fact that yesterday's graphics were nonphotorealistic 2D does not imply that nonphotorealistic 2D is stuck into the past.
Btw, Celfious, are you a coder of Heroes ? If yes, can you tell me whether heroes3's graphics have been resized?
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Celfious
Promising
Legendary Hero
From earth
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posted February 02, 2003 04:32 PM |
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I'm no coder of anything, unfortunatly..
You seem to know what your talking about- by the way you spoke of resolutions and other things.
Whatever the case is, I see it that Homm2 graphics is bland. There's alot of toyish apearance.
Homm4s graphics was bland too :/
There is absolutly no toy apearance, and its somwhat dry.
I feel Homm3s approach to the somewhat realistic real (colors) and keeping a toy look to things is good.
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What are you up to
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IYY
Responsible
Supreme Hero
REDACTED
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posted February 02, 2003 04:43 PM |
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After reading your post I can do nothing but agree with you, and I had the same idea before. Heroes 2 was the best. It was artistic, and it had the right style. The rest just couldn't compare with the best in the field of graphics.
And this doesn't only apply to the heroes series! Remember those adventure games with the cartoonish style that had a good resolution and great graphics without any trace of 3D? I am talking about Discworld 1&2, Monkey Island 3 and a few more games that were released in the short period between the introduction of high resolutions and other tools and 3D becoming popular.
I say: bring he 2D back, and fast!
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Morglum
Tavern Dweller
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posted February 02, 2003 09:20 PM |
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Celfious,
I see what you mean by 'Toyish'. This is what I had called 'naïve'. But there are many ways of being naïve. Heroes4 is naïve in the sense of having what I've called the 'Toy Story Look'. That is, poor modelisation, mapping and lighting making the whole thing look like a toy in a department store. Heroes3 had the same problem, though : take for example the skeleton. Perhaps it was less evident because of the fuzziness.
But Heroes2 had not the same kind of naïvety. I'd say the creatures looked like greek pottery, or medieval tapestry. The adventure screen looked like a medieval map. This is a matter of taste, but personnally I find those things much less bland than the sterilised, hollywoodian style of most modern 3D games.
IYY,
that pleases me to see that you share my point of view ! To put it clear : 2D is not necessarily lesser than 3D, can take advantage of modern and future hardware, and lets the artists express themselves much better given the same time.
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Lord_Woock
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Daddy Cool with a $90 smile
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posted February 02, 2003 09:36 PM |
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Quote:
Remember those adventure games with the cartoonish style that had a good resolution and great graphics without any trace of 3D? I am talking about Discworld 1&2, Monkey Island 3
They still make games like that! Take a look at Tony Tough or Gilbert Goodmate for example.
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Yolk and God bless.
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My buddy's doing a webcomic and would certainly appreciate it if you checked it out!
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Xenophanes
Promising
Famous Hero
Chief Consul to Queen Mutare
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posted February 02, 2003 10:01 PM |
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First of all, I want to say that I like the idea of 3D rendering for graphics in Heroes V (although, bare in mind that 3D rendering does not mean 3D; the graphics in Heroes IV were 3D rendered and then turned into 2D sprites). True, you might call them "toyish" in Heroes IV, but I believe this could be fixed in Heroes V. They just need to spend more time and effort into the rendering process to make the creatures look more realistic.
For example, in Heroes II, although the graphics were limited to 256 colors and did not have very high resolutions, they looked realistic in that a creature's various appendages would be in realistic proportions. Heroes III had too much of a dark look to the graphics. Heroes IV brought back the color, but the graphics were no longer in the correct proportions.
So, for the most part, I agree that the graphics in Heroes V must resemble those of Heroes II; I liked the way that the Adventure Map resembled a medieval map as well. The graphics just need a little "face lift" if you will, which 3D rendering, if done properly and with care, could provide.
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<Dragons rule, Titans drool!>
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Lord_Woock
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Daddy Cool with a $90 smile
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posted February 02, 2003 10:59 PM |
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There's one thing I hope they'll fix. It's the giants. The name suggests they are a lot bigger than e.g. swordsmen. But they never were as big as the name suggests. I hope they'll change that too.
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Yolk and God bless.
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My buddy's doing a webcomic and would certainly appreciate it if you checked it out!
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Morglum
Tavern Dweller
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posted February 03, 2003 10:58 AM |
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Quote:
So, for the most part, I agree that the graphics in Heroes V must resemble those of Heroes II; I liked the way that the Adventure Map resembled a medieval map as well. The graphics just need a little "face lift" if you will, which 3D rendering, if done properly and with care, could provide.
Making 3D prerendered models look like a medieval map ? But you know very well that 3D aims toward photorealism. The artists are used to be asked that, and the modelling softs are designed to allow that. When rendering, you specify the physical properties of the light, to make it look real.
But to obtain a naïve medieval map, what kind of lighting are you going to use ? The fact is that, in heroes 2, the lighting is unnatural. You can't tell from where the light comes. And take the modelisation. How are you going to design heroes2's phoenix in 3D ? This would be so difficult that in the meantime you could draw an even much more beautiful phoenix than in heroes2.
I mean, if you like the medieval style, 3D prerendered graphics are a waste of time. This is even much more true than at the time of heroes3 because the 2D drawing software (like photoshop) and hardware (tablets) have been improved.
I 100% agree with the necessity of a "face lift" but, as I've said above, it doesn't require pre-rendered 3D graphics. To say it does, would imply that 2D drawing is stuck in the level of achievement of heroes 2; but why should that be true ? And as I've pointed out, you can use most of the graphics hardware in a 2D game.
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shaowei
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 03, 2003 12:07 PM |
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No 3D rendering sounds good. One thing that I absolutely hated in HOMM4 was graphics. Although I may differ from the originator of the thread - I think HOMM3 graphics were realy good. The creatures in there did not have the toy-look (which in HOMM4 ruins the atmosphere totally).
The reason why 3D rendered sprites (or 3D in that case) look like toys is because toys are exactly that - a 3D model. And HOMM4 "toys" are all plastic. They have smooth textures, although some should be furry, hairy, feathery etc. That kills realism, and adds the "plastic toys" look to everything.
HOMM4 tried to add the medieval look with the user interface (parchment colour and simple skill icons) - but that was inconsistent with the game's look...
I hope that HOMM5 comes in great 2D, with a medieval look to it. Medieval (not isometric view) map with creatures "laid on the side", and a side-view battle field for both aesthetical and practical purposes (hex grid comeback).
What they have to do is keep consistent at least. Why have greatly realistic pictures for humans and then sub-par graphics for unicorns (with rainbow coloured mane)?
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Grythandril
Famous Hero
who is a Chaotic Wizard
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posted February 03, 2003 12:20 PM |
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The grid hex map was the best in combat but the graphics were dated. Heroes IV graphics is the next step up in the Evolution.
Yes some of the graphics were a little dodgy but hopefully by the time Heroes V is out the graphics will improve. (I wish and I hope.)
Each new heroes game tried to improve the graphics.
Heroes II graphics were better than Heroes I.
Heroes III graphics tried to be more on the realism side even though they looked a little blurred. But were slighty better than Heroes II.
Heroes IV has got more a 3D lok than Heroes III and yes some look like toys or a little odd.
So By the time Heroes V comes it might totally blow Heroes IV graphics in terms of content and style.
To go back to flat graphics may be an error. We have got used to the 3Dish look and that is the way to follow. Maybe in a five or more year technology might gives us Pure 3D graphics for Heroes but this is pure spectualtion and might become true.
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Morglum
Tavern Dweller
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posted February 03, 2003 12:35 PM |
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IMHO the graphics of Heroes3, aside of being blurred, were too realistic. They were not mythical. I think that realistical models are incompatible with a genuine medieval feel. And I think that 3D prerendered models will almost necessarily look too realistic. That's why I prefer 2D graphics for heroes 5 - which will probably be available in much less than 5 years.
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shaowei
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 03, 2003 12:43 PM |
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HOMMs 2 and 3 had pretty long development times, while HOMM5 doesn't seem to have it at all... So I hope they can come up with something acceptable. I wouldn't mind flat (but good) graphics, and would like to reinstate the original thought in this thread, that 2D doesn't have to mean "dated", or a step backwards. It can be much better than the HOMM4 looks anyway.
Btw. I am not "used to HOMM4 looks" - I played it for two weeks and then went to play other games, this one could not hold me to it, unlike HOMMs 2 and 3.
What was great in HOMM2 graphics and is not that clear in HOMM4 that were trying to recreate the HOMM2 feeling is the humor touch in the series. The mummy (how they die), the vampire (how they look, attack, move - everything), the troll (how they walk), the golem (attack and sounds) - all were clearly of the same style, and had some traits, especially in the animation, that made people laugh. In HOMM4, they were trying for realism, and even the vampire, although sporting the same costume as in HOMM2, looked pretty serious. So HOMM4 battle looks like some "transformer toys" battle to me more than anything ) Serious-looking toys battling it out...
I say drop the serious looks, or drop the nice colours. HOMM3 was closest to being serious and had dark colours, and this consistency was felt. HOMM2 was colourful and funny, and there was great consistency there. HOMM4 is colourful, plastic and glittery, and trying to look serious - no consistency. Very synthetic. I don't like that.
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Morglum
Tavern Dweller
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posted February 03, 2003 04:06 PM |
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Thanks Shaowei for this piece of insight. I agree with the 'kitsch' touch of heroes2, which is the same as in Might and Magic (the role-playing game), say versions 6,7.
However there's also a trap there : by wanting to look funny, some other videogames have trashed their depth, I mean, being consistent is not enough if there's only fun. Think about Sacrifice or MDK. They were funny, consistent, but nevertheless boring. If there's only a joke, well, it's fun at the beginning, but after a while it's like the game's repeating the same joke dozens of time, see? For example, in Heroes4, the wolves have ridiculous voices, the satyres have ridiculous kungfu moves; you laugh at the beginning, but later it just prevents you from liking them (which is important). So being 'fun' is not obvious; but I agree with you that Heroes2 was succesful in respect to this.
How I see the graphics of Heroes V: all 2D, looking flat, as if seen from aside, very colourful, non-physically-based lighting, a bunch of tiny details... it should be reminiscent of medieval stained-glass windows in the churchs (ie, very bright, deep colours).
Btw, and this has nothing to do with the topic, I think that the gargoyles in old churches are a good source of inspiration of monsters. It's amazing that they have had so far very few influence on Heroes (only 1 monster, probably drawn by somebody having seen gargoyles only through the 'Gremlins' movie). By the way, if you want to see true gargoyles, go here : (okay, they are from the 19th century, but they've instantly be accepted as genuine) :
[url]http://ndparis.free.fr/notredamedeparis/menus/paris_notredame_gargouilles.html[/url]
in particular there's the famous 'stryge' which is another good example of integration of creatures from other civilisations.
The sources of inspiration that should be given more importance than today for H5:
* Heroes2
* Genuine medieval stuff (stained-glass windows, maps, gargoyles, tapestries, visions of Hell in the books)
* Funny medieval texts, which are often gore (like those of Rabelais (Gargantua...) Gargantua could be a good source of inspiration for Ogres/Giants)
* Genuine antique stuff (potteries, mosaïques)
* Some stuff from other civilizations that either fit well into the story, or add a funny touch (genies...).
The sources of inspiration that should be given less importance than today for H5:
* Hollywoodian aesthetics (sanitized, smooth, polished, simplist, willing to please the broadest public to increase sales)
* Other video games, especially 3D realtime games like warcraft3.
* Wishy-washy medieval stuff (Camelot...). The life/castle army should less 'good' and more human, as it was in heroes2 (before crusaders were replaced by angels).
* Too serious medieval stuff (Tristan&isolde). I'm afraid Tolkien falls into this category. I like very much his books, but they're so full of sorrow (in fact they're also very conservative) that it'll be hard to make good fun from them.
* Some things from other civs that break the consistency. Example : Nagas. I like the idea not to be closed on ourselves, but that's no excuse to wreck the unity. Other things fit much better (genies, nomads, dragons as seen from asia, lions...).
but that takes us far away from the original subject of the thread. Nevertheless I think it was useful to mention because it shows how far away 3D smooth prerendered models are from my conception of Heroes.
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Katharyne
Tavern Dweller
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posted February 10, 2003 04:02 PM |
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Quote:
Celfious,
I'd say the creatures looked like greek pottery, or medieval tapestry. The adventure screen looked like a medieval map. Quote:
I think the medieval look is the best one of this game, I mean the game has dragons and knights in it for pitys sake
Ok so thats a bit silly, but I do think thats its lost its atmosphere some how graphically over the last 2, although I do really like 3 in a lot of respects.
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Gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted April 18, 2003 05:09 PM |
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IMHO the graphics of Heroes3, aside of being blurred, were too realistic. They were not mythical. I think that realistical models are incompatible with a genuine medieval feel. And I think that 3D prerendered models will almost necessarily look too realistic. That's why I prefer 2D graphics for heroes 5 - which will probably be available in much less than 5 years.
well, yeah, a very well worded statement imho. and the rest of this thread was nice to read, either.
medieval style, i guess late gothic or early renaissance, would most likely be expected in the homm context imho. down with photo-realism, lets look at genuine medieval paintings with consistently absurdly painted buildings and creatures, and wish nwc will not be so much influenced by evil game-makers, resulting in creation of such photo-unrealistic bone dragons (http://heroes.net.ru/ssmon4-06.shtml) without opening a medieval book on anatomy (or even a modern encyclopedia would do, if nothing medieval was available).
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what is the safest way to pass your time? heroes community -- your posts won't affect almost anything
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insaneroach
Tavern Dweller
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posted April 20, 2003 01:58 AM |
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Graphics are vastly overrated
Graphics matter very little. Gameplay is absolutely crucial.
HoMM2 was the best game in the series, overall. HoMM3 could have been even better, but its maps sucked. Im generalizing here.
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grunancross
Famous Hero
King of the Underdark
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posted April 20, 2003 02:03 AM |
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homm3 graf was good long time ago but now they are not we dont want 3d grafs....they will slow down gameplay...and thas what homm is all bout GAMEPLAY....nothing more!
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