Ingame looks...

[Aztral]

I dont know if this has been issued before but.. Anyways.

From what I have seen so far, I think (this is my opninion) that this game is too "light".

It looks great, but I get the feeling I had when I was 6 and was watching childrens tv. And I must say, that everything looks so very nice, and neat and happy, glorious etc etc. The sky is blue, the goddamn ugly (sorry for that) coulds are flying across.. Doesnt look Dark and light to me more Light and Light.. Maybe with some rain and some storms now and them, some more vicious looking clouds, and a more despairing environment, it would look more perfect.. At least to me. It should be more wary and dark looking..

[Edited on 16/2/2003 by Aztral]

[Dessoye]

Weather is planned to be part of the game:

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Extract from News->Technology

"The 3D engine also manages the atmospheric effects (snow, rain, wind etc…) and spatial conjunctions"
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[Terevanincu]

Yeah you will be able to see bad weather in the game and hopefully it will have some kind of effect on the characters (see other post about weather somewhere in this forum ).

Also i think you have a point though and i believe it would be cool to see how terrains owned by Dark or Light magic can be influenced by it .. For example if a forteress is taken by Darks ( won't happen often :P ) there should some kind of esthetic and visual signs for the lights to know when they see the castle and its surroundings that its owned by a Dark Lord .

For example i liked in Warcraft 3 how the Necromancers modified terrain while constructing their Cities ...

[BearD]

Maybe some areas will be gloomy and dark, like petrified forests and stuff. Like the guy said about the neocromancers in WCIII:RoC, when a county is taken over by Darks the whole county could be cast into darkness - or when Lights take over the county is restored back to its everyday "happy happy".

this would take a LOT of time to do thought, as the game dev would literally have to create the whole land over again. One texture for a tree would be Dark (maybe no leaves and looks dead/burned) and one Light (all summer bloom). they'd have to do this for allmost everything though :(

Would be cool if they could, but...it'll take too long.

[Aztral]

I guess they do have quite alot of time to refine the game... But .. well.

As I mentioned, the clouds and blue sky makes it look all neat and happy.. Something a medevil MMO really doesnt need if you ask me.. ;)

But also, the colours and shadows and such.. They are too bright, way to bright, creating this "teletubbies" environment.. Even though it looks very nice, I believe I would go insane after a short while. It should be more dirty and sinister..

[Mene]

The game or the devs never actually say that DArk is evil and light is good. It's just like Romeo and Julliete. It's an on going rivallry but you can't say one family was better then the other!

[unicornbliss]

I agree w/Mene, its never been officialy stated that light is good and dark is evil. And you have to remeber, the game is still in testing, the storms and despairing environment are probably in testing and just haven't been perfected yet. You have to think, its would be harder to make a thunderstorm than to have a peaceful meadow.

[Aztral]

The game or the devs never actually say that DArk is evil and light is good. It's just like Romeo and Julliete. It's an on going rivallry but you can't say one family was better then the other!

True, but still, having two opposite sides, one called the light and the other called the dark. And should the dark side then be all neat, nice, happy, teletubby.. I think someone seriously miunderstood the word "Dark" and it should therefore be renamed or it would simply look ridiculues. And I would say that someone thinking of the dark side of not evil whatsoever would be naive.. "Dark magic" I think it it used for not so good things.. Where "not so good" can be defined as "a harmful doing towards an innocent with the lack om empathy".

But this wasnt really what I meant. What I was refering that was that I (me, what others think I dont know) thought it was too nice looking to be a medevil game, aswell as its colours being to sharp its looking fore like a farie world than a world in conflict..

[Dessoye]

I agree with you that the DnL land must not look like a field of bubllegum or other candies, but as the release is not really for now, the dev team have the time to finish their graphical engine and start to add some nice dust/dark effect on the world.

For the Dark and Light, it refers to the broken Moon, a shaded one and a brightened one. Sure it has l a lot of connotation, but don't think it's related in this world.

[Aztral]

Ya, good its in an early stage.. Its in an early stage isnt it? Looks promosing I think though.

[Terevanincu]

I also think that in their screenshots they just wanted to show the diversaity of the sceneries and how vast the world of DnL is. How the world evolves is another thing i guess..

[unicornbliss]

yeah, this is a pretty early stage

[Anarroia]

I doubt that by Aztral saying the world should be more dark, it meant more evil. I agree, it should be darker, BUT it should be very varied as to where in the DnL world you are. The closer you are to the Dark kingdoms, the weather would change into a more scary and sinister atmosphere, as it should by the Light kingdoms. And of course, there should be rain, snow etc. or else it would be 'weather'.

Would be fun if the developers could perhaps do something so that when fighting on enemy battleground (as in a kingdom of the opposite alignment) you would perhaps get some kind of minute penalty, or that the player FROM that kingdom/alignment would get a minor bonus when fighting. Perhaps (or even best) be it a magical penalty/bonus, I dunno. I think it could be an interesting touch, but it shouldn't be made into a significant difference between players, that would ruin some of the pleasure of managing to destroy an enemy of your own level, knowing that it wasn't the huge advantage of the area-specified bonus/penalty.

Don't know if this would work well or something. Perhaps, perhaps not.Just an idea. The thing about the weather is dire tho, having the same poppish, pink motha-ugly candyland scenery wont be good. Have you any idea how a Dark aligned player would stick out?? They'd be able to see him/her for miles and miles away!

[Terevanincu]

/agrees with Corax Annaroia ;)

[Aztral]

Corax is right I meant more dark looking, but evil is goo aswell.. ;)

However, I do hope that it will be possible to affect the terrain.. Like a large ballista could possibly make a crater or some mark in the landspace that doesnt dissapear. COncidering it is a very large world, this wont mess it all up either but give it a more relaistic feeling. Imagine a destroyed city.. lying in ruins rather than dissapear..

[Stickman900]

Having something like a weapon altering terrain would be an extremely difficult thing to do. If it's going to be 3d non-tiled terrain then the whole terrain would have to be re-rendered (if it's all in one big lump I'm just guessing how they're doing it here) with a big dent in that impact area and possibly for a realistic effect a texture would be added to the indent and remember of course this is all done by the coding.
Or maybe I just missed the point entirely (as usual)
Damn that would be cool though wudn't it?

[Terevanincu]

Maybe we are hoping to much from the devs :P

[Aztral]

IN shadowbane, when you select a place to build a city, the terrain becomes all flat and cleared for all objects.. It can be done.

Also, I hope they intend to allow player made cities.. If not they surely cant compete with whats comming.. SWG, shadowbane, dragon empires..Not even with many fortresses to conquer, it still wont be the same as making your own city.