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The Visual Look of Star Trek Online

Posted by Zonk on from the corridor-after-corridor dept.

Gamasutra has a piece on the development of the visual look of Star Trek Online. From the article: "We set out to reproduce the interior of a starship from the television show, so we began by examining shots of the sets. Looking over the images, we made a few observations. There are many light sources. The lighting is diffuse. Shadows are soft. There are several types of material with different reflectivity and specularity. These were the features we wanted to reproduce in game. We thought they were the key to the look."

7 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Why are they focused on the look? by Random+Utinni · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Forget replicating the look of the TV show... focus on building a decent game. It's not like if they get the lighting in the game world 'just so', they'll have a smash hit that people want to play... or these days, maybe they will.

    1. Re:Why are they focused on the look? by tfinniga · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Meh. I'm sure the gameplay people are focused on gameplay. The developers are focused on development. But this article was written by the artists, which are focused on the art.

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    2. Re:Why are they focused on the look? by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'll be happy no matter what it looks like as long as I don't have to grind for 3 days just to get Academy approval to set my phaser on "2 shots to kill a rat" from the original "5 shots to kill a rat".

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  2. Looks great. by Nightspark · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While the two screenshots they showed might look relatively simple, they definitely look like the Enterprise D -- and that may be the most important thing.

  3. Looking good! by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Star Trek is one property where the look and feel might possibly outshine the actual gameplay. There are many fans out there who would gladly subscribe to just hang out on a virtual Federation Starship, never mnd the actual play mechanics.

    If they can put together even a mediocre playing experience, this will take off like, well, a starship.

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  4. Re:ObNitpick by Triv · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Those shots captioned "ready room" are actually of the observation lounge, not the ready room.

    the thing is, I don't want the people who are designing this game to make those kinds of mistakes - keeping the thing consistent with the Star Trek universe is what's gonna make or break this, and goofs like this are really going to irritate people.

  5. Big Booty by Supurcell · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Did anyone else notice how big the ass of that crewman was in the ready room demo pic at the bottom? I'd hate to see female characters forced into the same stereotype that all MMORPGS seem to be doing. I wouldn't be surprised if they change the female Starfleet uniform to a string bikini.