Some feedback on AVWW - (face melting aesthetics)

[Cyborg]

I recommend glovepie if you want to customize spell combinations. I personally couldn't do without it in a game like this.

[eRe4s3r]

An interesting mod idea would imho be to apply cel - like effect to the background objects (sky is left as is, but non-use objects become entirely black, while characters become white/grey'ish with just very few bits of color and spells become tinted complementary to that effect (without additive blending, for one)

Essentially we could reduce the game to clean contrasts and strong (few) fitting colors with a fake simple-shade cel kind of effect while toning down everything that would glow (we obviously do not want glow in that mod ,p). Not sure whether it would be playable or doable (particularly redoing the spells not to glow), but I'd guess done right it might look very nice. Obviously LIMBO inspired idea, yet it seems like it could be potentially "easy" to do.

In a sense, what I am saying is to reduce the detail down to the bare basics of colors and shapes, contrasts and strong artsy feel.

Anyone feel like mocking that up? 

By the way, since original post is about the aesthetics i feel like this discussion is drifting in a wrong way, just doing smart-blurring does not change the aesthetics as much as it changes the look. But it's still the same aesthetic when you get down to it. Hence why my idea is maybe a bit "drastic" to some, but it'd likely be very aesthetic indeed when done right ;P

I really like the visual style, actually; I think it fits together nicely. I'd call it an improvement on Tidalis.

I disagree on that, Tidalis is over all the only game so far that had an entirely COMPLETE art-style that flowed together nicely. Many of the scenes in Tidalis are even quite beautiful thanks to dynamic animation of elements everywhere. Something that particularly the grass in AVWW could benefit greatly from, it would also make the grass very distracting... ;p

[Wanderer]

Anyone feel like mocking that up? 

Isn't this basically The Deeps?

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Erk, no blur. Blurring drives me nuts in games.

Just my 2cents.

King

[The Wuggly Ump]

I'm gonna start dropping the saturation on the trees (except the snowy trees which I like). Would it be alright to upload the altered files here when I'm done?

[Quaix]

Here are the changes I made:

Saturation: -40%
Brightness: -10%
Contrast: -10%
Slight Blur

Now it looks more like a post-apocalyptic world.

Original:



Rebalanced:




If you want to try it, you can download it here.

To install:
 - Backup your AVWW\RuntimeData\Images\
 - Extract rar to AVWW\RuntimeData\Images\ overwriting everything

That's it, run the game. To uninstall restore your backup.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Tbh, it looks like a blurry mess now. But if people want it this way, by all means.

King

[khadgar]

Quaix: I would prefer if the terrain you can jump on remained unblurry. I think the key in this is taking the things that have an active gameplay purpose to the player, and allowing those to stand otu and be crisp and sharp. Things that don't have an impact on the player can sink into blurry desaturation. Terrain is pretty important, and I catch myself offput by how it isn't in focus. But it's your thing, do what you want! Just a suggestion for something to try.

[Quaix]

Well, the point was to reduce eye strain, and I think it accomplishes that. If you want to fine tune it, be my guest :). I painted it with a broad brush, so to speak, but there's over a thousand files in there.

[Bluddy]

I'm not convinced that these changes are warranted.

Also, there are mantis requests for making many background objects more foreground-like, as in you'll be able to jump on water towers and buildings and things, and the devs have been positive about this idea. So we may not want to start blurring background objects yet.

If people want to get started on improving backgrounds, why not start where the consensus is -- most of the indoor textures aside from the cottage-y wooden one are terrible.

[Bluddy]

Also, the post-processing effect that makes the game's art style unique is by definition high contrast. I think if we want to reduce the contrast, we may need to modify that effect somewhat instead, because otherwise you just lose the thing that IMO gives the game its charm. The prettiest things in the game ARE the background objects.

[The Wuggly Ump]

Here are the changes I made:

Saturation: -40%
Brightness: -10%
Contrast: -10%
Slight Blur

Now it looks more like a post-apocalyptic world.

Original:



Rebalanced:




If you want to try it, you can download it here.

To install:
 - Backup your AVWW\RuntimeData\Images\
 - Extract rar to AVWW\RuntimeData\Images\ overwriting everything

That's it, run the game. To uninstall restore your backup.

Looks like a big improvement! I think I agree with khadgar about the blur, while it helps massively with the tiled textures it feels wrong with stuff like the grass. I can always alter those textures myself, though.

[TechSY730]

Even without the blurring, I think the less-saturated background stuff looks much better.
If there is blur, it needs to be kept away from "fine" things like grass. In fact, if you don't want to lose detail, some sort of extremely subtle "conditional blurring" (where blurring is less pronounced near your character, and even far away it isn't very noticeable) would be nice to preserve detail. But that may be a bit much to implement and turn out to be jarring in practice. IDK.

However, something "regular" like the tiled background stuff I could see having a slight blur, as you aren't really missing all that much information, and, other than its presence, you don't really care about tiled, repeating background stuff.

[khadgar]

Yeah, definitely not criticizing what you've done so far. I can't do anything but MSPaint, so it's still pretty amazing to me.

[TechSY730]

Oh, and I forgot. There should also be some way to see about making caves have more visual variety (which may require new art assets). Buildings could use this treatment as well, but it isn't quite as bad. Several people have mentioned that once you get outside the "outdoor" areas and into buildings or caves, a huge portion (but not all) of region type "flavor" disappears.

(layout improvements/variety fall under room generation logic, a different issue)