Before And After Screenshots Of AVWW With The Recent Visual Improvements

[x4000]

Oriignal: http://christophermpark.blogspot.com/2012/02/before-and-after-screenshots-of-avww.html

Since the game has gone through so many graphical improvements in the last few weeks -- first GUI, then the skies, and now the HUD -- I thought I'd post some before and after screenshots.

Here's the first pair:

This one I managed to get pretty close between the two versions:  both in grasslands areas, although the top shot is actually grasslands with groves; and both even show the same spell in use and the sun in a similar position, and the same building on the screen.

Note how much more colorful and vibrant the skies are since we moved away from the old style of "dynamic and static" split skies and into one unified animated sky system.  Also note how crazy much better the HUD looks, if I do say so myself.  All in all these screens do a really good job of showing how much more cohesive the art style has become as we move toward 1.0.

Now the next (and last) pair of screens to show you:

These two versions of the main menu obviously aren't as close as the first screenshots were.  But since we already had a pair of shots of the grasslands above, I didn't just want to repeat that here.

So now you see the desert -- and again, note how much more vibrant and personal the sky is compared to before.  All the skies before tended to look very similar, just with some color variations between areas.  Here the clouds and everything actually look different, and the animations are really different in each one.

Also of note is the awesome new GUI that Phil did fo the game a while back, and which finally made it into the game a month or so ago.  And then this also really shows off the difference between the older style Unity text and our newer sprite text, as well: we're able to do colors and borders with ease, and everything looks more polished and easier to read in the new fashion.

Even the logo has been updated to look more stylized!

Anyway, we're hitting the home stretch now as we moved toward a version 1.0 hopefully hitting in March, and I wanted to do a post that showed off just how much has changed graphically about the game.

[Penumbra]

Everything looks so great, but the lava especially! I love it. It looks really, um, Sci-Fi?

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Wow, that is quite the change, though I had noticed the menu/logo changes more than I had noticed the in-game stuff before this post .

Keep up the great work!

King

[Castruccio]

The new HUD is really a big step up.

[x4000]

Thanks, guys!  My favorite bit is the new HUD, too.

[Souls-Stream]

Totally AWESOME !!! I think I follow he game since september and it's amazing how much work was already done !

Everything has changed and everything gets even better at each update !

I won't hesitate to talk about it to poeple for them to buy ! I never saw a more dedicated studio than arcen games the team is fantastic and listen so much to players to make the best game possible... This studio should be more knowned than any other

[Gallant Dragon]

I saw the new hud and my jaw literally dropped.  That's the only time I can remember that happening in recent memory, so congrats!  Excellent work, Arcen Games!

[orzelek]

Old menu graphics looked better
New one looks less alive - that scroll-like look was nice.

New HUD is neat tho

[KDR_11k]

I think drop shadows from ceilings would improve the graphics as well, currently the divide between walls and backgrounds feels a bit flat.

[x4000]

I think drop shadows from ceilings would improve the graphics as well, currently the divide between walls and backgrounds feels a bit flat.

You know, that's a good idea!

[Penumbra]

One of the few graphical parts that I find disconcerting is the windows inside. The little ones on the bottom and sides could look a little strange. Just boxes of a solid color sometimes, since they aren't large enough to see what is outside.

I really like the rooms that have a large amount of "window" in the middle, like a large destroyed wall. Especially with the new limitation on not being able to put platforms there. They make for very interesting boss fights.

Maybe curtains or a window frame, just to make them seem part of the building, instead of outside of it. And more broken wall sections in the background of non-uniform shapes would be fun as well.

[zebramatt]

Old menu graphics looked better
New one looks less alive - that scroll-like look was nice.

The old one's were less drab, I agree!

On the whole, graphically the game's looking greatly improved though.

[Bluddy]

The old one's were less drab, I agree!

On the whole, graphically the game's looking greatly improved though.

Yep I third that. I made the comment when the new gui came out -- it doesn't suit the tone of the game as much as the old gui. The old gui suggested finding a fascinating, beautiful hidden world. The new gui fits more in a Diablo -- dark, scary and extremely dangerous.

[x4000]

The new GUI is darker for a couple of solid reasons, and I definitely could never stand to go back to the old one (which I've grown to hate).  The reasons:

1. The new GUI is darker, which means that items, text, and similar on it "pops" compared to before.  When reading text from characters, for instance, it's vastly more legible and the text looks inviting and bright.

2. This also works as a contrast point to the rest of the game, too.  The menus themselves are dark, making them the negative space from an artistic standpoint.  You aren't meant to be focusing on the menus; your eye is meant to be drawn to the world behind them!  Of course when you need to navigate the menu you need to look at them, that's not what I mean -- but when you look at a picture that includes a menu, you shouldn't be going "look at that menu!" but instead going "look at that view!"  Having the menus brighter than the world makes the world seem duller, or having them equal brightness just makes the menu get lost in the background more.

3. Also, speaking as a backdrop, for things like spell graphics, it's downright required in order to be able to see them clearly.  Even when we had the old menus, we had to use darker menus for those kinds of screens.  And so then we wound up with a really inconsistent set of menu graphics, where sometimes they would have a dark background (they had to), and where sometimes they had the inviting bright background (because it's nice and inviting).  This was bad bad bad for a lot of reasons.


TLDR: It's not about the menus themselves, it's about how they fit into the overall aesthetic of the game, and what effect they have on your perception of the rest of what's going on with the screen.  Taken on their own, I too probably prefer the old ones -- they do look cool and inviting.  But actually in the game?  I hate the old ones, in no uncertain terms.

[Bluddy]

I don't know how much it's worth going into since it's all aesthetic and it might not be worth spending time on, but if we're already delving into it... (On the other hand, if we're going into aesthetics, that's a really good sign about the other elements of the game So I'm gonna put on my critic hat and...

If you load up a game and open the menu, what do you see? Well, the gui is beautiful. I mean really really pretty. Does it matter that it attracts attention? No, because the ornate lines, the color scheme of the spell frames together with the chain on top of them, the curvy lines... just marvelous work there. It's fun to look at and just follow those lines.

Then you look at the menu, and it's a complete mismatch in terms of quality. The background color is wood-like but not quite wooden, the buttons have a weird texturing that's supposed to be... stitching? I'm not sure what it's supposed to be but it looks a little like jpg artifacts. The colors don't match the frames of the spells which are SO pretty. And you focus on those 4 thingies at the corners -- they look like little rams or horned devils or something -- not really matching the look of the game. Then there's the background of the text blocks with the character info. I understand it needs to be dark to do the white text, but it's yet another shade of brown.

In terms of negative space, the menu's not visible in the game usually, so it's not much of a factor (IMO). When you want your info though, or your crafting interface you're looking a lot at the menu, and the menu isn't impressive. It's not horrendous, but it's not very nice either, and IMO the previous gui was nicer. The menu kind of makes you not want to spend time in it, which is unfortunate given the fact that you need to do so.

A perfect gui IMO would take the color scheme/look from the spell frames, and use the same swirls that are above the spells, or alternatively mix the spell frames with the planning button stony look -- the planning button looks like it should match the gui anyway.