Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2394

DirectX 12 and Ashes of the Singularity

Screenshots are hard. What looks good in motion doesn’t necessarily look good standing still.

So what is the hype about Ashes of the Singularity about? These are just giant land ships right?

What the big deal isn’t the detail you can have on a single unit. Homeworld was doing that years ago. What DirectX 12 makes really practical is that you can have thousands of these units in this detail.

Let’s take a look at these two screenshots:

This is the Hyperion zoomed in. I could zoom in further but you will get pixilation at some point since DirectX 12 doesn’t make texture size disappear. Smile

The point of this screenshot (click on the thumbnail to see a bigger version) is to look at how the light is affecting the unit and its parts. This unit has a series of guns, each with its own firing solution, it has its own personal line of sight. But let’s focus on the lighting of it. This image hasn’t been photoshopped. It’s just a print screen. You get the detail without the noise and you can have thousands of these.

Now, let’s zoom out:

You’ll want to click on this to see more what I mean. But notice how clean the unit remains zoomed out. It’s not noisy. It’s still crisp, distinct. There’s no such thing as full-screen antialiasing in this game because it’s not doing deferred rendering. It’s rendered much the same way a movie CGI scene would be.

Not to be confused with the art style or art quality

Now, someone might say they don’t think these shots look good. That’s an artistic call. The rendering system won’t save a game from bad art or just bad taste. It has nothing to do with realism. What it does mean is that your objects are rendered like physical objects and not like scenes in a video game.

Ashes of the Singularity’s Alpha will be going onto Steam early access next week for those who are really really brave and have high end hardware.

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zychrias

Join Date 04/2008

Looking great! I love what DX12 is giving us!

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"This unit has a series of guns, each with its own firing solution, it has its own personal line of sight."

In that picture I see 4 tiny twin turrets down each side and one giant quad one in the middle. (plus maybe some I missed?) Does this mean all 9? turrets independently target for every one of these units in the field of play?

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2394

Yes. They'll attack multiple targets simultaneously.

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ASADDF

Join Date 02/2008

+50

Nice! so you are still in Alpha, how much better will the Hyperion unit and other units will change? are you guys still working on the look of the Units?

The Hyperion look really nice, but will it look better in beta build or V1 release?

What about the ground/landscape? right now it looks really bad, will you guys make it look much better?

And last question are we getting some kind of interaction between the units and the ground/landscape?
like if the Hyperion move on top of trees, will the trees get destroyed? and things like that.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2394

Am I understanding that your issue is that the end of the barrel isn't colored black?

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2394

What about the ground/landscape? right now it looks really bad, will you guys make it look much better?

Compared to what?

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ASADDF

Join Date 02/2008

+50

I am talking about the trees and rocks on the Ground.

If you look at them they look very pixelated, or have very low pixels or quality, sorry i am not sure how to call it.... i compare it to TA! lol, the units interact with trees and i think that nice to have something.

And Frogboy the Hyperion looks really amazing never mind tatsujb. i don't see anything get out of focus. or let him explain what does he mean with that.

I asked that because the game still in Alpha, and its looking amazing so far about the units, I was just asking if you guys are still working on them to make them look even more awesome!

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The unit looks great, the ground looks tolerable by itself, but together there's a huge detail mismatch that looks jarring. You have this crisp clear unit sitting on top of this muddy ground texture. It makes either the ship or the ground look out of place vs the other.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2394

The detail on the ground vs. the units is an interesting and controversial topic.

There's a reason why this is done: You want the units to pop. You'll see this in a lot of games where the background is muted or even has a desaturated color palette. If the ground were the same level of detail as the units, you'd have more trouble distinguishing what matters and what's background.

Even if it was desirable to have more such detail, DirectX 12 doesn't change the laws of video memory. You want big maps or do you want tiny detailed maps?

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Out of focus on extreme zoom is a depth of field effect from the Temporal AA system. The black (or lack thereof) on the guns is a choice of the artists not to paint that spot.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2394

Tat, you would do so much better if you quit trying to act like you are speaking for some unknown majority.

As for temporal anti-aliasing, you can turn it off in options. For me, I like it. It makes the game look better and it helps, at glance, to tell what's near and what's far because that's how the real world works.

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I have to agree that the units don't fit the terrain. I think the units would still "pop" with better terrain. And too much pop is not a good thing. There feels like enough separation already by way of the units all floating. If you make the separation even greater it isn't a good look.

If we are talking about graphics I also think the smoke effects look a bit washed out and not substantial enough.

Sorry, not trying to sound ultra critical but I feel these two things have been issues from the beginning.

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im abit concerned about the whole direct X 12 thing. Will the game still use direck X 11 for those who dont want to be forced to upgrade to windows 10?

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Quoting megas64,

reply 18

im abit concerned about the whole direct X 12 thing. Will the game still use direck X 11 for those who dont want to be forced to upgrade to windows 10?

game uses both

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good to know i just wish the douchebags at microsoft would stop trying to force people to upgrade to windows (spy on you forever) 10

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gonna have to agree on the terrain looking pretty bad/blurry. there has to be a better way to make units pop than making the terrain look like its from 2005

seems like a very odd design choice.

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 11

The detail on the ground vs. the units is an interesting and controversial topic.

There's a reason why this is done: You want the units to pop. You'll see this in a lot of games where the background is muted or even has a desaturated color palette. If the ground were the same level of detail as the units, you'd have more trouble distinguishing what matters and what's background.

Even if it was desirable to have more such detail, DirectX 12 doesn't change the laws of video memory. You want big maps or do you want tiny detailed maps?

Sorry, I don't mean to sound like I want the ground and units to have equal detail. It's more that the mixing of any two different aesthetics come with its own set of rules to help them mesh. Both aesthetics look fine independently, it's just when I look at them together something seems to be missing to smooth the transition.

An example for me is League of Legends with its incredibly low graphic detail budget. The (new) map is this somewhat blurry, painted style while the characters themselves have a relatively crisp cartoon style. It didn't look quite right when they initially showed it but after a few revisions they got the character shadow, outline and map saturation right that made the two styles click together.

Sadly I know nothing about graphic theory so I can't offer proper constructive criticism, all I can say is "something looks wrong" and point vaguely in the area.

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In regards to the comment I made about smoke. Just had a quick game and the smoke from projectiles and general explosions is looking more solid/dense than it was so thanks for that nice change. Not sure if it came in today's patch or the one from a few days ago.

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I didn't initially notice the barrels weren't black. Now that I know they aren't...I still don't care. How long do I admire the look of a unit while playing a game? 0 seconds. How long do I admire the look of the terrain while playing a game? 0 seconds.

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Quoting eviator,

reply 25

To be frank, I'd rather the devs focus on gameplay than graphics, if they have limited time and have to choose where to allocate man-hours. Graphics will catch peoples eyes for a few seconds, but gameplay will keep people playing for years (or not).

I didn't initially notice the barrels weren't black. Now that I know they aren't...I still don't care. How long do I admire the look of a unit while playing a game? 0 seconds. How long do I admire the look of the terrain while playing a game? 0 seconds.

yeah i'm with you, i initially look at the looks and stuff when i first get the game..but afterwards i am so busy with micro or macro that the looks of doesn't matter anymore..all thou the look of something getting destroyed makes me happy or angry if its me lol

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Gameplay IS more important but graphics do help and dismissing them would be a mistake. Besides, art and gfx guys are going to do art and gfx; design and sound guys are gonna do design and sound, etc. So gotta suggest things for the art guys something to do with some feedback right? That is what forums like this are for.

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Quoting Ticktoc,

reply 28

That is what forums like this are for.

Yes, indeed. Don't dismiss graphics, I'm just saying the game looks darn good now. Terrain might be an area where manpower for graphics and gameplay might intersect. If they beef up the terrain graphics, it could degrade overall performance, forcing them to spend unnecessary effort optimizing the game for the new graphics instead of making progress on the gameplay.

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ASADDF

Join Date 02/2008

+50

Gameplay, UI, & graphics should be very important in a RTS game. why not have the 3 of them? its 100% possible to do, yes it may need some more work, but it can be done.

Aren't we here to help build the best RTS game of 2016? at least by giving some feedback, ideas, opinions.

I did read somewhere a while ago about the difference between DX11 and DX12, and they said that with DX11 they had to build smaller tactical RTS games with awesome graphics because DX11 could not handle more, and that why DX12 was created to do so much more using the latest tech, having awesome graphics with big maps and hundreds of units at the same time, if anyone can help me find that info again, and i think Stardock said that.

Again I fell in love with this game and DX12, what it can do with old hardware and new ones, and I really want to see that happening with AOTS, for me having nice looking units, nice looking maps, and awesome gameplay is very important, and a must for a next gen RTS game using DX12.

Oxide and Stardock are doing awesome job so far with AOTS, but of course still need much more work and they know that and still working on it and they will be working on it to make it better for many and many years to come.

Zoomed out you will not notice anything bad with the ground, the problem that i see is when you zoom in , that where you start seeing the lower quality of the ground, rocks, trees, etc.

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At this point I do not care anymore. Frogboy mentioned something about video memory limiting terrain detail, and I'm here to say I'm happy with the terrain now, so I personally don't see a need to spend extra development resources on it unless people at Oxide/Stardock are just sitting around bored. If they do, fine. If they don't, fine. Same with barrels. My primary hope for this game is amazing game mechanics. Then AI. Then multiplayer. Then campaign/story/lore. Then mods/DLC. Somewhere beneath all these things is amazing graphics. I'm only speaking for myself, though I doubt I'm alone. Most people are going to have to end up playing the game on Medium anyway for a couple years, not reaping the benefit of the amazing graphics until they can buy new hardware.

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ASADDF

Join Date 02/2008

+50

Quoting eviator,

reply 31

Most people are going to have to end up playing the game on Medium anyway for a couple years, not reaping the benefit of the amazing graphics until they can buy new hardware.

Your wrong here, many old cards support DX12 already, and you do see a lot more FPS and better graphics compared to DX11, maybe not a full DX12 support but its there.

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