Game graphics.....

Probably because they've been spoiled or something. It doesn't have all the "bells and whistles" they're expecting, so they get upset. Thing is, a lot of those "bells and whistles" only really work for planetary atmospheres and the like -- hard to work them into this game.

The 1.1 patch is supposed to add a higher resolution graphics option as well.

IMO, Company of Heroes, Supreme Commander, and other modern RTS's have shown that a lot of detail can be put into a game.

Sins is missing a lot of these minor details. The ships look nice, and so do the planets/space. The problem lies in the details on the ships. Turrets dont move, missiles just appear, and ships just explode.

Compared to SC, which is also known for huge armies, the details are missing. Compared to COH, the game looks flat out boring.

I'm not comparing gameplay or anything like that. Just graphics. Take a Panther model from COH and stack it next to a Kol. The Kol looks nice, but doesnt do anything special. The Panther moves realistically, adds effects with upgrades, and leaves a hulk when it dies.

IMO a lot should/could have been added with upgrades. Kols could have different lay outs for the flak/gauss upgrade (Why have the gun if you never use it?). A lot of animations could be added to make each of the ships seem more alive. A lot of these effects could also be turned off for people with slower machines.

I'm big on graphics too, but overall I'm happy with Sins' visual presentation. Like AntiCommie said above, Sins is missing a lot of the minor details that games like Company of Heroes has, but the fact that we're comparing Sins to games like Company of Heroes and Supreme Commander hardly makes it "subpar."

Of course, this is coming from a guy who thinks Homeworld 2 still looks good.

Also, I tried Bailknight's Graphic Mod (https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/301418) and was very impressed. A lot of visual effects are given a lot of extra "oomph" and it makes up for some of the less impactful effects Sins shipped with.

Finally, although I'd love to see more details on the ships, the fact that Sins is one of the most scalable games in recent memory is really something to consider when talking about graphics.

SC was probably the most visually bland and uninspired game I've seen on any platform in the past 5-10 years. On top of that, the engine runs like shit.

So yea, I've compared. Sins is the clear winner in that comparison.

As for CoH... quite nice looking, but we're talking a small fraction of the units displayed.

I'm a self proclaimed graphics whore as well and I think Sins looks just fine. How often do you have enough free time inside the game to watch a zoomed battle anyway? Only when I am extremely confident I'm well on the path to victory do I even have a chance to think about watching a battle at that range.

World in Conflict anyone?

looks nice, doesn't run that great all the time but it looks really good

Now COH in a 4x format where you had to hold ground and conquer areas like SINS and not just individual skirmishes and one 'board', would be pretty awesome.
BTW SINS has plenty of small thing moments:
Colony ship actualy releases drop ships.
Planet traffic.
Planet bombardment is 3d with nukes seen rising above planet below.

Opinions will vary, of course, but whether or not you appreciate the style, the detail 'was' there. Turrets moved, energy-guns charged, barrels smoked, firebombs burned...

The graphics in Sins are certainly passable and it wouldn't bother me if they were unchanged (last I heard, however, they are getting an update so that's also good in my book) but it's fair to note that other games, especially SC, held up better in the detail department.

I almost freaked out here when I thought you were talking about Starcraft...

Anyway, yes Supreme Commander is a nightmare to actually play with any real fidelity. My real concern with the game when it came out was that it probably won't actually even scale very well. There's this high peak barrier it's sitting on because of the... well, stupid engine design decisions among other things. Neverwinter Nights 2, anyone?

CoH looks fantastic and has a very distinctive art direction by contrast. It also has sane hardware requirements. I've never felt the need in any game to see 1000's of units on the screen like SupCom tries to do, but I can see that being a cool feature of a game. Valiant effort, but massive fail on the actual implementation as far as I'm concerned.

And by the way, Sins looks quite good overall, though I think some minor improvements could be made in several areas. It runs on ridiculously (by today's 'standards') low-end hardware, and that is a great accomplishment in any game.

I don't care what it looks like if the game is better than anything else on the market. Make it pretty, but make it fun first. That should be the priority.

This just needed to be said again for extra emphasis. There's a big gaming market out there running on 3-5 yr old hardware. Hand-me-downs, school computers, job computers. They haven't suddenly disappeared to make way for modern hardware, they've only spread out to a wider audience.

Supcom looks very bad when it's set to low settings. But it doesn't matter, since the game engine is so severely crippled that you can't run anything decent with less than a dual core. The scaling is so bad it can't even run DEFAULT options, because the main engine has already hit the single threaded ceiling, and that isn't going up anytime soon. Add Multiple CPU whore AIs, and the game speed goes down by 5x or worse. Not only that, they're looking at making the next version 64bit, because they're going to run the game past the 4GB ceiling! They're absolutely clueless about making a game function within modern tolerable specs, never mind making it future proof.

The graphics are good and I even lag quite a bit in 200 vs 200 battles when viewing them in close with maxed graphics settings. I have a good system ddr 3 1333 ram core 2 3.0 ghz 8800gt 512 etc. So the graphics arent too bad.

I think some bloom effects and maybe HDR could help it look better?

There is always room for better graphics, but I think Ironclad was just making sure that the game could be played by older computers at the lower end of the graphic's scale, however I too would like to see more detailed on the ships such as moving turrets and missiles firing from actual missile tubes, ships of course would have to turn to aim but hey you got to keep it real. My rig is pretty new so if Ironclad wants to really beef up the graphics then go ahead, MAKE MY DAY! I just hope that any new ships comming out of Tech ship yards will have that Warlock look from the Babylon 5 series.

Sins's graphics is actually quite good.I dont mind that the turrets cant more but the models itself are great.I always find myself zooming up to a Koi to see it's design.

Thread's OP :




Well ... I'm a graphics's whore too.

That's why I don't mind if the Heroes of Might & Magic 5 A.I. is mediocre :

It's such a gorgeous game, if you have the videocard to handle it in its full beauty.

If I want a killer A.I., I'll play Heroes of Might & Magic 1.

You people need to get out more and try some other games like O.R.B. and Genesis Rising. ORB is a lot older, but has some nice elements, while genesis rising has some great battles.

Ie. Genesis Rising

Ships in Sins are not what they can be, there could be a lot more outstanding textures. I assume they are trying to reduce workload on gpus when battles get hectic. Even so, planets are really subpar, among other things.

The only way 'make it work on crap computers' works as an excuse for average graphics is development time. Sins could look better, and since it's got these funny things called 'video options' that wouldn't impact lower-end systems. They probably just didn't have the time to devote to improvements they felt a small part of the market would see, preferring to work on other elements.

I would suggest the expansion is the place for further graphics development. A game doesn't get a fixed amount of video flexibility: the UT games are really scalable AND have excellent highend settings.

: shakes head : man the things you people find to bitch about with such a well done game just boggles the mind.

Space battles look great zoomed in, unless you nitpick.

That's a fact, but some of you just can't be happy unless you find some fault to complain about.

Be happy this game looks great, plays great, is fundamentally bug free and feature complete at release. Along with that it has constant updates and attention from the developers that actually talk to you IN PERSON.

In this day and age, this game is an extreme rarity.

It's not a matter of time necessarily, it's a matter of development resources, which consist of time, money, and other things.

Take a look at Crysis sales to see how well (poorly) thing go when you market towards the graphics whores. Don't get me wrong, I have a top of the line system because I lurve me some sweet graphics, but I also understand that it's not a very intelligent market to sink your limited development resources into.

Brad laid it out real nice and clear in that last essay of his. Given how well Sins runs on a mediocre computer, the graphics are quite impressive. I've seen games with far worse graphics run much, much more sluggishly, with just a fraction of the units.

Implementing the really good stuff (I.E. rotating turrets) for some guys and not others, would really be weird and not really work in large games, but yeah, higher res textures would be fun for those of us who like playing with 5 square feet of monitor. Still, it was a deliberate decision to not pound on cpus any more than necessary with added turrets. While a core 2 can pull the workload, I don't want to be playing at 3 fps because some poor bastard wants to play with his P4 and he has to have rotating turrets or we both get toasted with desynchronization issues. Textures and that kind of thing are good for ignoring on lower end computers, like UT is. All the scalable effects are just effects, while most of the effects that could be put in sins have gameplay ramifications.

because homeworld 2 does still look great!!!!

if you want great visuals WIC is a good game but in the gameplay its lacking allot
that and the story is dumb i dont see the russians invading in cargo ships i see thousands and thousands of acronoplanes and more T-72 less T-90 more blackjack less whatever the bomber is and less tac nukes much less tac nukes more daisy cutters mabye mabye thermobaric bombs stuff like that but much less tac nukes

and i have a 2 year old card and can run cysis fine on med/high settings
the online is fun the single player could use some work but it runs well over all no lag except with weather but that can be turned off.

sins still looks good compared to most games like it which to me is no games like it and its fun the graphics shouldnt matter and im happy to be playing against friends with really old cards online its something i couldnt do with supcom or other rts's

I don't care if they add graphics options. Like you said: "a small part of the market".

How much detail do those individual units have compared to the individual units in Sins?

Do you really think that a Supreme Commander unit has as much detail as a Kol battle cruiser?

I think they're talking about animation. I love the graphics on Sins, but is a Monkeylord more detailed than a Kol? From a complexity standpoint, yes, definitely. The units in Supcom are animated, and the units in Sins are not. It seems cut and dry to me.

Like I said, though, I love the graphics on Sins, and although Supcom is a more visceral game, Sins looks pretty great -- and runs even better.