HAK texture feedbacks

[Xerah]

I'm just kind of shocked by a number of the reactions here. To see someone say "oh this line here is obvious, and this one is duplicated, etc. etc." is quite surprising. I'm certainly not the target of this update because I would have never noticed any of these things that people are lambasting about ruining their Arelith experience. I've never played this game for the flawless graphics and always turn them down to the lowest and hide the 2nd stories (though I've actually got them turned up and 2nd stories on for now).

Despite all of that, I still haven't found something I'd legitimately complain about. I'm sure the team will deal with the things that are issues in time, however, but tossing out everything? Come on, you can't be serious. Because, the problem is, and it is typical with gamers, is extreme overreactions.

[Flashish]

I'm having trouble getting anything but walls to render on Android. I've been in rural areas so I haven't played much in the last month. Embedding isn't my friend, so here's a link. I haven't tried to troubleshoot yet, but if anyone has ideas I would love to hear them.

https://m.imgur.com/a/RE2xOj3

[Peppermint]

Puzzling.

I've seen a lot of posts here, some from players that usually range from ambivalent to positive about virtually everything. Some from players that post maybe once every few months. Many with screenshots demonstrating broken animations, mismatched colors, and so on.

It's one thing to determine that the issues don't bother you. Maybe, to you, they're small--and that's fine. But it's another thing altogether to dismiss the server's playerbase as an overrreactive conspiracy. When coming from a contributor, it seems pretty rude, too.

[Xerah]

There are ways to discuss your issues with these changes without being passive aggressive or flat out rude.

Do things need to get fixed, sure. Suggesting that the entire thing needs to be tossed out is an overreaction.

[Subutai]

I've never played this game for the flawless graphics and always turn them down to the lowest and hide the 2nd stories (though I've actually got them turned up and 2nd stories on for now).

I think this is the key difference. If you turn your graphics down to lowest and hide second stories because you don't care about graphics, that's totally fine, but also explains why the graphical issues that are bothering so many players don't bother you. Those players certainly consider graphics to be more important to them than you consider them to be to you. Of course it's going to be a bigger issue to them than to you, because it's something they care about that you don't care about.

[Xerah]

I've never played this game for the flawless graphics and always turn them down to the lowest and hide the 2nd stories (though I've actually got them turned up and 2nd stories on for now).

I think this is the key difference. If you turn your graphics down to lowest and hide second stories because you don't care about graphics, that's totally fine, but also explains why the graphical issues that are bothering so many players don't bother you. Those players certainly consider graphics to be more important to them than you consider them to be to you. Of course it's going to be a bigger issue to them than to you, because it's something they care about that you don't care about.

I know that. That is exactly what I said. I don't have them on so I'm not the target which is why it is strange to me to see so many complaints. But that also doesn't mean the solution is to toss everything out the window.

[Kuma]

Despite having to turn off second story tiles (which I dislike doing, but I get stuck with staring at ceilings otherwise now), I will say that the interior of the Logjam looks delightful.

And some of these clipping or tile positioning issues are part of the base game regardless and not a texture issue per se (though could be fixed but likely necesities wide-reaching area redesign and/or tileset adjustments), it's just always been the way and only being noticed now because people are looking at them with a closer eye. We're plopping a fresh coat of paint on something that wasn't fully evaluated beforehand, so it's understandable.

What is also understandable is why some people might be a bit "change it back!" about it, since wasn't this why it took us so long to move towards haks in the first place? I thought the team were evaluating and comparing content so this sort of thing didn't happen. Maybe I misread over the years.

[Flashish]

I don't think the above post was referring to me, but by way of clarification, in general I like HAK packs. Sinfar is gorgeous, or at least as gorgeous as could be expected from a 20 year old game, but virtually empty of interactive content. You can run around for two hours and not see an enemy or player if you're outside of the main hub, and it's a bit too much like Second Life. Plus the... let's say adult elements are a little off-putting to me.

The furniture loading issue happened intermittently before, but a quick reload always fixed it. I'll check with the other five Android users I know and see if they are having issues. It's also possible that some of the HAKs from other servers are crossing wires with the Arelith packages. And I get that some of you are probably thinking "just play on desktop" but the convenience of being able to play on a train or in an airport or in a bar is just too much to give up if you spend as much time on the road as I have to.

[Subutai]

I've never played this game for the flawless graphics and always turn them down to the lowest and hide the 2nd stories (though I've actually got them turned up and 2nd stories on for now).

I think this is the key difference. If you turn your graphics down to lowest and hide second stories because you don't care about graphics, that's totally fine, but also explains why the graphical issues that are bothering so many players don't bother you. Those players certainly consider graphics to be more important to them than you consider them to be to you. Of course it's going to be a bigger issue to them than to you, because it's something they care about that you don't care about.

I know that. That is exactly what I said. I don't have them on so I'm not the target which is why it is strange to me to see so many complaints. But that also doesn't mean the solution is to toss everything out the window.

Ah, sorry about that. I misunderstood your post, I think.

I agree that throwing out all the changes is excessive, but I can see where it comes from. I haven't seen all the new changes. I'm neutral to the Crow's Nest, and outside of that, I've only seen Cordor and the caves/mines, both of which I feel are significantly worse than the old ones. If player's who have experienced more of the changes than I have are experiencing similar 2/3 negative, 1/3 neutral, the strong reaction certainly makes sense.

Like I said, throwing out all the changes is certainly excessive. What I'd really like to see here is a discussion/listing of all the texture changes that people feel are worse, without judgement on either the players or the devs one way or another. It's a struggle on both sides to stay neutral, I know. For players, it can feel like the world they love has been tainted and harmed and is less enjoyable for them, so it's easy to get upset. For devs, it can feel like players not liking their changes is an attack on them and their hard work. We all need to be careful of how we present our arguments, and realize that we all want the same thing: A beautiful server that we can all enjoy and have fun with, players and devs alike. If our opinions differ, it's not that the other people are bad, we just have a different opinion than them on what would make the server more enjoyable. The only way to figure it out is to discuss, which I hope we can do here without anyone feeling any feelings of "Us vs. Them".

[Xerah]

Well, I know that the art team + Irongron are super appreciative of feedback on poor textures and graphically things that need to be fixed, so keep doing that.

[Sockss]

I'm just kind of shocked by a number of the reactions here. To see someone say "oh this line here is obvious, and this one is duplicated, etc. etc." is quite surprising. I'm certainly not the target of this update because I would have never noticed any of these things that people are lambasting about ruining their Arelith experience. I've never played this game for the flawless graphics and always turn them down to the lowest and hide the 2nd stories (though I've actually got them turned up and 2nd stories on for now).

Despite all of that, I still haven't found something I'd legitimately complain about. I'm sure the team will deal with the things that are issues in time, however, but tossing out everything? Come on, you can't be serious. Because, the problem is, and it is typical with gamers, is extreme overreactions.

I think I think the problem lies in a few parts.

The haks have taken quite a while, but this was always put down to the high quality requirement and the rigorous testing that would have to go into them. Which, I mean, fair enough! However it doesn't really look like this has happened and what we've actually got is some old overrides merged into a hak. So, that's pretty disappointing and we're all fresh off the back of EE disappointment, so it's a double hit for the community.

Despite the various issues, which I'm sure will be fixed, the art direction is very gloomy and fallout-esque. Everything's dirty and grey and dull. Arelith hasn't been that at all and it's quite a shock to people to see it in this very run down state. (Hence why I suggested an override to turn off the hak updates, in the form of an override, for the people that don't like the aesthetic.)

We're also being told that we can't have some easy low-hanging customisation options because they're not good enough, that they weren't up to whatever the bar for Arelith is, while simultaneously having the current haks which aren't the best quality. Which makes dev responses seem really arbitrary and insincere.

The most horrible thing is that people that just don't like, or report problems with these things, are being treated really poorly. I don't think it's an over reaction for people to disparage something that's been talked up a lot but has actually made things worse. You're right in that no one plays for the graphics, but they don't want a downgrade of anything - and people certainly don't want to be attacked on whatever level because they disagree with something.

[monkeywithstick]

There is testing and there is testing.
With an update the size of the one that has just occured, unless you want the design team to spend several months combing over each and every area after the hak is coded, honestly, loading it to the module and collecting the "this doesn't look great in this locations" is pretty much par for the course, if not best practice from a time economy perspective. I've seen similar from AAA developers.

Testing things like clothes and heads in isolation is far more doable, seeing as loading the phenotypes (thin/fat, male/female, elf/dwarf/human/etc) is actually feasible in much shorter order than updating wooden flooring and then manually checking each and every instance of wooden floor present in the module in case it clashes with one of the neighbouring tiles (or even another updated one which may or may not be loaded at the time you check because there are multiple people working on this).

I think some people have some pretty exacting and unrealistic expectations of what can be done with a small volunteer dev staff in its free time.

[Kuma]

This chest has a weird shooting angle texture (invisible from the back) firing off it. The one next to the peddler (Martha Edwards) near the shops in the Crow's Nest exterior, but probably all other placeables with this texture.

[Cortex]

I'm one of those people who would never rely on Beamdog for anything, so what I'm about to say will come off weirdly.

Isn't Beamdog working on a renderer? I don't know the details of how that will apply, but using area overrides (most of which are at best a visual replacement instead of an upgrade) could clash with that. I feel that addition of things over the reskin of existing materials to be far more productive.

I tend to have a soft spot for the "low poly quality" meme and I don't mind majority of the added models (except the frog, that thing is anything but the "professional standard" that keeps being thrown about), and even retextures in general, but I really do not see the point of using an OVERRIDE in Arelith to an official scale. What has it added to people that value graphics? Personally, I used this override at one point and I eventually removed it because I didn't consider it an upgrade.

edit: unrelated

Because, the problem is, and it is typical with gamers, is extreme overreactions.

gamers rise up

[Irongron]

I'm having trouble getting anything but walls to render on Android. I've been in rural areas so I haven't played much in the last month. Embedding isn't my friend, so here's a link. I haven't tried to troubleshoot yet, but if anyone has ideas I would love to hear them.

https://m.imgur.com/a/RE2xOj3

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=24944

[Irongron]

Double post because night-time just hit and the lack of proper looping on the new ground tiles used in Cordor is a lot more noticeable during nighttime:

I might be wrong but this looks like another tile lighting issue, something commonly seen in NWN when one tile doesn't have lighting to match another. With the exact location I can fix this.

Like the fountain issue this is based upon the improved textures highlighting a known issue with certain NWN models. This happened before, but with near blank tiles wasn't so noticeable.

[Irongron]

This chest has a weird shooting angle texture (invisible from the back) firing off it. The one next to the peddler (Martha Edwards) near the shops in the Crow's Nest exterior, but probably all other placeables with this texture.

This chest was actually placed open, and looks fine in the toolset. A good spot, as there must be an animation issue with this particular model. I can fix it for now simply by having it closed, but it is likely we'll see this again when the same chest models are opened and closed.

[Irongron]

I'm one of those people who would never rely on Beamdog for anything, so what I'm about to say will come off weirdly.

Isn't Beamdog working on a renderer? I don't know the details of how that will apply, but using area overrides (most of which are at best a visual replacement instead of an upgrade) could clash with that. I feel that addition of things over the reskin of existing materials to be far more productive.

I tend to have a soft spot for the "low poly quality" meme and I don't mind majority of the added models (except the frog, that thing is anything but the "professional standard" that keeps being thrown about), and even retextures in general, but I really do not see the point of using an OVERRIDE in Arelith to an official scale. What has it added to people that value graphics? Personally, I used this override at one point and I eventually removed it because I didn't consider it an upgrade.

Beamdog are working on a renderer yes, and having seen it in action I can say it is huge upgrade, and one well looking forward to, but it doesn't replace textures.

As for this being an override, in actual fact it isn't. The maker was against it being placed on the workshop as an override, because it didn't render properly, and was intended to be used as a HAK. With the override, for instance, only a fraction of the city changes show.

The HAK also introduces many new tiles, which we'll begin to see as new content is made with the tilesets here (such as the windows and furnishings in the new houses), and will be startlingly clear in the both the forest and winter tileset.

It is an improvement, in that the textures are much more detailed, and much crisper. There are issues, of course, and this feedback does help.

[Flashish]

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=24944

Thanks!

[Irongron]

Okay, having responded to many of these posts and concerns, it is time for a longer post, as I often do in these cases.

First off, we have 3 different things going on in this thread.

First are bug reports, these are crucial to us. There is the broken gangplank at the docks (fixed), the walkmesh in the cave override (being worked on) and the chest (still a bit of a mystery to me) that is, in fact all.

Then there are things entirely unrelated to the facelift, and a lot of them have been posted here. Added creatures, for instance, most of which are fantastic (myconid's scorpions, many of the devils, bison, the violet fungus, the maur, illthids etc), some of which are terrible. Toad (I added because it is absolutely tiny and can be used for crafting) and Owlbear, which while I personally really dislike poor texture and animations, is a staple of D&D was added in due to that beloved status. But creatures themselves, are an entirely separate thing to the facelift, and should be in their own thread. We also had someone complaining about a stonekin vfx on a placeable (neither of which changed by the facelift) the floor in City 2 tileset (also entirely untouched by the update), and tile lighting issues, (granted while this is a NWN issue it is made more visible by improved textures.

Thirdly we have taste, and here input is also extremely valuable. A lof of comments about how players don't like the darker hue in many places, or certain objects (the couch). Knowing what players like or dislike allow us to decide which models to change. Of course while some things are simply a matter of taste, and thus far the feedback from players has been far more positive than negative, I nevertheless find myself agreeing with some of it.

We are absolutely not going to revert this (unless the Android issue cannot be overcome), but can make changes based upon polite and reasoned feedback.

So lets take this apart, and look at these facelifts one by one, with my opinion for each.

City Exterior

I guess this is the one that baffles me most when people complain. With the improved windows, crisper lines and vastly superior textures it is something that not only brings the game forward many years, but will both lower the discrepancy between Cordor and the new city, but also gels far better with the existing castle/rural tileset, which frankly felt terrible mismatched when one travelled from outskirts/farmlands into city interior.

Issues: Tile Lighting (The square above) Solution: Ensure lighting matches across tiles

Rural, Rural Winter, Tropical

While rural winter isn't in, these three, as in the original game are basically the same. The building/fence model improvements are great, but the first two contain those trees, sticking out of raised terrain, and above the grassy trees. As I stated in the original update post, I personally am not, and have never been a fan of these (and in that respect agree with those on that side of the debate above), and one of my first instructions to the art team has been to remove the majority of them.

In Winter Rural those trees make it seem like a winter wonderland, and I expect to clash with the atmosphere of Skaljard. In general though, I am undecided, the trees have grown on me a little, and many players and staff alike have said they like them. I'm still considering whether to leave them as they are, reduce them, or remove them entirely.

Issues: Docks (fixed)

Caves

This is another one that has torn people, because while the textures are simply so much better, the dark, dirty feeling does not fit everywhere.

In the many new tilesets we are about to introduce we have a number of differently themed versions of this tileset, 'fire caves' where all is a redish hue with lakes of lava, earthen caves,desert caves and different shades of stone.

I think as the one to use to replace all existing Arelith caves we have chosen the right one, BUT we should likely include the original as a new tileset, and use it to revert locations like the Radiant Heart caves, and use some of the other new ones to replace locations like those in Sibayad. Thankfully it is relatively easy to to transfer existing areas from one to the other, so once the other tilesets are in it should be easy to revert or change some of the locations mentioned above.

Issues: The walkmesh (currently being fixed)

City Interior 1

Now this one is tricky, because it has THAT celing, and THOSE walls. For those don't know this tileset is far reaching, used for shops, homes, taverns and much else.

Later in NWN development a City Interior 2 was added, which contains (mostly) the same models, but with improved textures. As such, anything made after 2006 on Arelith tends to made with it, and not City Interior 1.

Aside from a couple of exceptions (The Longhouse), you'll be seeing this only in older locations, such as the Mercantile building, and some homes in Cordor.

The facelift is excellent, and has this amazing added windows feature, different shaped walls, and for me, most crucially, allows areas to made without stuff 'fixed' into it, 'looms' etc.

The mesh across the ceiling can be irritating for some players I think, as one really has to zoom in order to play. In this case, however, I belong the group who prefer the ceiling, but I totally get why others do not. Thankfully we have City Interior 2 (without ceilings) and that is FAR more common on Arelith, so I don't think the naysayers have too much to compain about.

One my major problems with this tileset, before the facelift, were the stone corridors, and with the new one we now have plastered walls, and that has been another major dividing point among players.

The various groups in this tileset are just straight better, in my opinion, other than living room/corridor, where these walls are present. Plastered walls of this kind are not anachronistic, as some have suggested, but while many are saying they do like them, I personally agree with those who do not. If we can replace them with something a little less quaint, and more generic.

Overall this tileset is great though, as those who have seen the two new houses in the Crow's Nest will be able to see (as they alone have the new features)

Issues: None

Placeable Facelift

The placeable facelift is what we're seeing the most of. This replaces all (or almost all) vanilla placeables. Many are simply fantastic, and solve some of the uglest objects in NWN. The lamposts, the beds, the wells, the crates, chests, the signpost with actual writing, the statues, are just SO much better,

Many though dislike the darker hue of many of the messageboards/placards, and the couch and altars are deeply unpopular. With the couch I also really dislike the original, so we're working on a better version than both. With altars I also agree the dark stone is unpleasant, so have asked we replace these with an actual marble texture, which we can likely use for alternate versions of the statues also.

Known Issues: The chest animation.

In summary then, and overall, with an update this side, I find the quality outstanding, and the bugs really are very few, which we will try to fix, just as we will try to find some compromise in those who do not like certain models and their colours.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with voicing one's displeasure, but I'd ask that we also keep in mind the things we do like, and that fixing things cannot always be done befor the fact. We're not a professional game with armies of playtester,s and many things only come to light as we introduce them to the game. We are one community, and wherever it is possible to allay player concerns we shall.

Oh, and put creature complaints on a different thread, or hey, even be nice about the ones you do like?

Oh, and maybe talk about clothes in another thead too? Preferably suggestions with actual examples taken from the vault.

[Subutai]

I really like the format of listing out the various tilesets, so I'm going to keep that going and just add a few of the issues I have that Irongron didn't address in his post.

City Exterior

My issue with this one (and I believe a few others have had the same issue) isn't the textures themselves, but the colors. The tileset is very gray and dark, which makes the whole city look much gloomier than it used to look. This, combined with the extremely prevalent wrought iron spikey fences everywhere and the glass windows makes Cordor look to me like something more out of a Gothic romance than out of something roughly 14th-15th century. I much preferred the former brightness of Cordor (and would have liked to see more colors even then, actually). The new tileset might be more inline with the newer castle tileset that the outskirts use, but to be honest, I always found that tileset to be darker and glommier than I like. Colors are nice.

Caves

I mentioned this before, but I really do not like the ceilings on the cave tileset. They look great in screenshots, but playing with the camera zoomed in so close, and so far down, really makes the game more difficult to play. It's tedious to have to manually swivel the camera all over the place to keep track of enemies and friends, or to have the camera blocked by some other mob that surrounds you. I'd love it if we could at least get an override to replace the caves with something without a ceiling.

City Interior 1

My major issue with this (other than not being a fan of the walls) is the floors. I don't know if it's a lighting issue, or what, but the floors in the Mercantile are an absolute mess. The wood is at least 3 different colors in different sections, and doesn't seem to go together well at all.

[Irongron]

I really like the format of listing out the various tilesets, so I'm going to keep that going and just add a few of the issues I have that Irongron didn't address in his post.

City Exterior

My issue with this one (and I believe a few others have had the same issue) isn't the textures themselves, but the colors. The tileset is very gray and dark, which makes the whole city look much gloomier than it used to look. This, combined with the extremely prevalent wrought iron spikey fences everywhere and the glass windows makes Cordor look to me like something more out of a Gothic romance than out of something roughly 14th-15th century. I much preferred the former brightness of Cordor (and would have liked to see more colors even then, actually). The new tileset might be more inline with the newer castle tileset that the outskirts use, but to be honest, I always found that tileset to be darker and glommier than I like. Colors are nice.

This one really does come down to taste. We could maybe try brightening up the colours a little though.

Caves

I mentioned this before, but I really do not like the ceilings on the cave tileset. They look great in screenshots, but playing with the camera zoomed in so close, and so far down, really makes the game more difficult to play. It's tedious to have to manually swivel the camera all over the place to keep track of enemies and friends, or to have the camera blocked by some other mob that surrounds you. I'd love it if we could at least get an override to replace the caves with something without a ceiling.

I've actually asked exactly the same thing, about the possibilty of an option to turn off ceilings. The thing is, I mentioned there are lots of other cave tilesets, they all have ceilings. In fact it is the absolute standard in HAK interiors that ceilings are included. If we decided we didn't want them, we'd have no options.

In making the new city I've become used to zooming in though (that place will really require it) and I've come to enjoy that playstyle. I've been referring to the new city as a rogue's paradise, for in addition to being able to climb through windows, its easy to hide in corners and within walls. It has a much more 'first person' feel that I've come to enjoy over the top-down experience.

Definitely takes some getting used to though, and if anyone comes up with a ceiling toggle override I'd be happy to link it on the website and forums.

City Interior 1

My major issue with this (other than not being a fan of the walls) is the floors. I don't know if it's a lighting issue, or what, but the floors in the Mercantile are an absolute mess. The wood is at least 3 different colors in different sections, and doesn't seem to go together well at all.

The Mercantile is made in an odd way, so as to give it that effect of 'storefronts', basically it is a lot of intersecting corridors. In normal City 1 houses the issue you mention wouldn't be obvious, as those floors would be limited to different rooms.

We could perhaps use tilemagic to give it all the same floor.

[Kalopsia]

First of all a big thanks to everyone working on this update. I’m very happy about the majority of visual changes, especially the new cave tileset. The walkmesh issue is a thing, sure, but when that’s fixed the result will be very atmospheric! :)
I’d actually like to see the entire UD use a similar tileset, even more open areas like the Drider peninsula (though perhaps without the ceiling, in that case).

I’ve noticed much lower frame rates in Cordor though, even with an RTX 2070 graphics card.
If a mid-to-high-end GPU can’t fully handle these changes (I’m talking about ~15 FPS here), I’m concerned other people’s computers, and especially mobile devices might struggle even more. Perhaps some performance optimization is necessary here.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to all the new tilesets and the new areas Irongron mentioned. It’s really an exciting time for Arelith! :)

[Subutai]

I’ve noticed much lower frame rates in Cordor though, even with an RTX 2070 graphics card.
If a mid-to-high-end GPU can’t fully handle these changes (I’m talking about ~15 FPS here), I’m concerned other people’s computers, and especially mobile devices might struggle even more. Perhaps some performance optimization is necessary here.

I'm having this exact issue, with the an overclocked Radeon Vega 64. If I'm getting an FPS hit with that, and they're getting one with an RTX 2070, that only leaves a small handful (RX 5700s, RTX 2080s, and possibly still GTX 1080 Ti's) of very top of the line cards that are better that may not be getting FPS hits.

[Vrass]

Need to add all the stuff from Tyrants of the Moon-Sea... the tile-sets are especially good with the winter ones being real gems.