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Diablo III Designer Defends New Look and Feel
In response to a fair amount of angry outcry at the new look and feel for Diablo III, designer Jay Wilson has critiqued some fan-altered screenshots and defended the new style. "The key thing to remember here is that this has been Photoshopped. This isn't created by the engine. Though it looks really cool, it's almost impossible to do in a 3D engine because you can't have lighting that smart and run on systems that are reasonable. If we could do that, we probably would in a few of the dungeons."
At first glance I prefer Blizzard's version.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Diablo III Designer Defends New Look and Feel
I haven't really RTFA'd, just looked at the pictures. I'm a bit torn on this story because I don't even think this designer needs to answer to people putting up screenshots that are entitled "wow gayness" when compared to their preferred screenshots. But as to whether or not he felt they had a valid point or he Blizzard just really cares for their fans, I cannot say.
... when would you have too much? For example in #1, the big white blob thing attacking blocks 1/4 the screen ... four of those and you'd be blind. There could be an army behind him and you wouldn't know it. Something to think about.
While the lighting in a few of these looks like definitely done by hand, the only other major difference I see is color and tint. In example #1 the lighting is much better in the fan screenshot but I can definitely see what the designer was talking about with it being 'smart.' My question would be (and I'm a complete idiot with vector graphics) why do they have no problem putting directional shadows behind characters but not the scenery? It seems to me that the candle light in that particular screenshot is being blocked by walls and ridges. Is this difficult with scenery? I'm guessing the levels are dynamically generated like in the first and second (a great aspect of the game, might I add), is this what causes difficulty with shadow play? I think by and large with the fan shots they use borderline too much shadow. I am guessing shadow is crucial in setting the mood but dynamically generated shadow would be difficult
Now, the rest of this stuff just seems to be color pallette and tint which seems to be artistic preference. I can't say which I like better but I've a feeling I'll appreciate color (and a change of that between levels) if I'm going to be staring at it for hours.
I'll be honest, when I first saw the game play I was very nonplussed, it was exactly Diablo II. But then I realized the great thing about II was that it was Diablo I with more features, levels, classes, monsters, etc. Ironically, I think that all that would make me happy in III is just more multiplayer options, more items, monsters, classes, etc. I can't want to play this one!
My work here is dung.
Step 1) Turn down your monitor's brightness
Step 2) Stop whining
Step 3) There is no step 3!
Honestly, IMHO, the Blizzard shots are nicer. I have to squint to make out what's going on in the fan-created screenshots.
She loves me: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 She loves me not: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688BF
I have always failed to understand what people's problem with Diablo III's graphics. The important thing is the gothic feel here. You don't need a color palette made up of shades of brown, grey, and black to achieve that... there's nothing wrong with having a colorful world, since it doesn't necessarily change the look & feel of the world at all. Hell, I by far prefer the screen shots Blizzard has produced to the "improved" stuff the fans have put out. The people doing that work may be happy with a world full of dreary colors which is hard to see any detail in, but I for one am not.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
What I don't like is the excessive amount of blue, green, and yellow on what should be plain stone tiles.
mostly what he refers to as impossible are some of the more elaborate shadows (e.g. dynamic ones from the enemies off of the spells being cast) and things like that.
This has to do with Blizzard. Ever since Warcraft 3 they have shifted their graphic design to a more cartoonish or anime style.
I'm going to have to go ahead and say regardless of anyones personal preference we have to give a lot of credit to the designer for taking the time to comment on their choices. Personally the only user created design change I like better is the last one...wow gayness.
I think it's more likely that they realize that these fan generated graphics are ugly, would probably look even worse in motion than they do in photoshopped screenshots, and wouldn't play very well because they're so muddled. But they're dealing with some obviously hardcore fans, and they're probably thrilled that there are people out there who care enough to go through all this trouble, so they don't really want to come out and call those fans untalented hack artists.
So rather than call their fanbase stupid, they call themselves stupid. At the end of the day, they'll release the game they want to make, and judging from Blizzard's track record it will be a well made game that will sell very well. These people who are spending hours photoshopping screenshots will switch to spending hours playing the game, and everyone will be happy.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Seems to me that the critics/photoshopppers just want a game that looks like it's constantly nighttime.
If they want a dark, difficult to see game, they can just adjust their monitor (brightness, saturation, etc). Let the rest of us see what we're doing.
People are always complaining about how colorful the current d3 images are. Did any of you ever play Diablo 2? Go join a hell difficulty game. Whenever you see champion/unique/superunique monsters, you almost always see an array of colors. Purples and Reds. Green auras. Even if you're running through the depths of a countess' tower, the screen is contrasted by dark colors and bright colors.
These bright colors make the game easier to play (oh that mob has one red enemy in it, that's the one I want to pop to get the better loot and more exp).
If some of the armchair game critics would go and reinstall d2, they would see that the new style is not all that different from the old! ... And now I'm back to key runs. Need to get a hellfire torch! Later!
The issue is twofold:
First, usually when you program in some 3-D API you are building a world around some point in layers. This is typically done by your video card and then sent directly to output. There is only one saved world file that doesn't differentiate on which areas are supposed to be lighted near the character or not. In fact, it is really tricky to do fancy lighting. Probably the best theory on how to do it might be something like the 3-D textures that Carmack noted (where the lighting is a dynamically created layer).
Second, as I said, most of the work is done by hardware and then sent to output. In order to do these fancy shadings, you either need to take the computed frame, modify it, and then send it back to output or you need to have your video card support an API that will allow you to code for it after the fact. But even if you do, there is no well defined way to get the correct shadings (unlike with an 3/4 down view). What do you do? Draw a circle around the characters and then drop the contrast everywhere else? The only realistic way is to load the map segment you will use. Determine the character positions. Calculate with vectors which areas will have light. Adjust the contrast of your map with this. And then load your map. To say that this would be computationally expensive is a vast understatement.
Thats a pretty mean sig you've got there.
In the article he makes clear that "impossible" is in reference to "reasonable hardware". Blizzard has always done a spectacular job making sure their fan base doesn't need to upgrade their machines to fully experience the game.
In Diablo I, the player was going down down down and it got darker as you went. This is part of the game, and as such it made sense to get darker.
In Diablo II, there are only a few zones that have a large number of levels, namely the zones leading to bosses. Much of the rest of the game is outdoors and pretty brightly lit. In the expansion, it's a snowscape which is about as bright as you can get. There's no sense of delving down so it didn't get darker. Even the hell portion of the game was itself a large flat landscape. I guess the three prime evils like to be able to see in front of themselves too.
Depending on what this game is about, it may not make sense for every indoor area to be pitch the fuck black. I agree that it's a more challenging game if you don't see infinitely in front of you, and maybe they'll address it. I hope there's some variety in the environments and how you have to navigate them, as it will make a better game. Fans requiring all the locations to be muted and gloomy are thinking short sighted.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
A lot of the D3 fans don't want D3 to look like WOW.
Designer says "Interesting (not), but thanks for the publicity" ; )
I must say i agree with most of the designers points.
It still has to be easy on the eyes and gameplay, artistic perfection
is not the main point.
And, as others have pointed out, if it's too "happy" for you, adjust the gamma, not the game.
Comma coma, must rest...
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Here's what you can do:
Problem solved. Diablo zealots are happy, blizzard is happy. Emo kids can use this approach for a host of other games too. As for me, I won't do any of that sillyness. My monitor is rectangular for a reason.
Honestly my only issue with the blizzard designs are the tf2 style "Hay look we're reusing stuff from 1998" low-res textures and that the armor seems to be less realistic (at least in its physical proportions).
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
A Diablo III representative defended design choices against 'dark & desaturated' versus 'brighter & colored'. While admiting that a single screen shot could look cooler when 'dark & destaurated', they concluded, after much playtesting, that 'brighter & colored' 1) offered greater visual playability when many creatures and players are on the screen, and 2) made the game more intersting because different game areas actually looked different.
Why is it cheesy? When it rains, there are rainbows. Also, the imagined homophobic reaction of some gamers is delightful to me.
Oh, come on, now. The point is that, two days after launch, those same fans who mostly just altered contrast in the pictures, will release a mod that alters your monitor's contrast whenever you launch Diablo 3. It's not rocket science here people.
For the record, I'm not so much concerned about the contrast changes (see previous sentence), it's the cartoonish, WoW-like graphics that may kill this game's lasting appeal for me (see the Barbarian's armor in the 30min gameplay preview. It looks just like Warcraft 3.
I may be in minority here, but one of the best parts of Diablo 2 was the ridiculous, over-the-top violence and the cold, realistic graphics.
Disclaimer: I put 3000+ hours into Diablo 2, and I consider it the greatest game of all time. Diablo 3 will not live up to my expectations no matter what the Dev team does.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
The altered screenshots have a certain grungy, gloomy richness to them, while the originals have a pale, blown-out look to them.
Oh, and I really only want a D3 for the fucking amazing graphics. The originals look like a top down WoW clone, which looked like a first/third person clone of WC3 with higher resolution models.
Yes, I am a smart ass; it's better than the alternative.
While I know the urge to show why these fans' visions simply do not work is strong, I have to ask, why bother? What's to be gained? They won't change their minds. Educating them to the reasons for decisions that are made won't change the fact that they want to bitch and moan about something - ANYTHING. Also, they want to show off. They want to play in Photoshop with the images and have their friends ooh and aah about how much better their versions look when the reality is that a vast, vast, vast majority of people feel that Blizzard makes simply stunning games. I won't even get into the fact that the fan-altered versions look like crap and are way too dark because that's beside the point - I just don't understand why he spent any time or effort responding to this sort of thing. Nothing will change for having done it other than giving the fans versions an extra 15 minutes of fame...
So, graphics are more important to you than gameplay? That's a rather shallow attitude.
I suggest you take a little trip to South Korea, where their national sport is a 10 year old 2D Blizzard game that runs at 640x480.
To be fair, graphics build atmosphere and 'feel'. His criticism felt like he found find the new atmosphere and feel disappointing compared to D2. I think that's a fair point. Really, its going to be the same with SC2. Some people are going to be turned off by the new 'feel' to it. Part of that will be gameplay changes, others will be the result of new graphics.
Graphics do more than 'look pretty'. They can effect gameplay, immersion, and feel. All this stuff about 'put gameplay/AI/story/characters before graphics' may be legit, but that doesn't mean that graphics are no longer a fair point of contention.
Absolutely not! I play the "national sport of South Korea" several times a week, and love it.
What I'm trying to say is that the style of the graphics is what sells the game (to me). It's not about pixel shaders or polygon counts, it's about showing me a monster that just jumped out of Disney, vs. one that came from Alien. The fun is in what you're doing in the game, and if you're trying to be humanity's last hope in a world of chaos and demonic monsters, fighting off hordes of Pixar baddies tends to kill the suspension of disbelief. Simple as that.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
People might remember a game called Hellgate London. A game where they decided that killing zombies in a dark subway would never get old. I think we all know how that wonderful that game turned out to be. The last paragraphs of the linked article, where Wilson talks about Diablo 2, and how it changes every 15 minutes was actually really enlightening on to why that game (Hellgate) was such trash in comparison. You never got anywhere. A person could leave you for an hour, come back, and you'd still be in the same damn subway, doing the same damn thing.
I really wish people would learn from the Blizzard ways of doing thing and learn 2 things. People want a product that functions correctly and simply, and people want a product that is complete. Most people would rather get a sandwich in an hour than get a piece of lettuce and some ketchup right now.
This has to do with Blizzard. Ever since Warcraft 3 they have shifted their graphic design to a more cartoonish or anime style.
I agree. Lost Vikings had it right, with it's ultra-gritty, gothic realism. Let's see a return to the good old days of Blizzard like that!
but honestly, this is to be some form of a dark game, this is not hello kitty meets diablo.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
I think screenshot with the pseudo graffiti font that reads, "wow gayness" pretty much reflects the stupidity and immaturity motivating these guys. I guess in their minds everything needs to be "hardcore".
All I have to say is thank goodness the fans aren't designing the game. I much prefer Blizzard's more colorful, softer feel.
The last thing I need is every little gritty detail being so prominent preventing important details like enemies, items and my own character from standing out. I also don't want Diablo 3 turning into yet another drab, monotone game like most other games out there.
Those fan-altered images look like every screenshot developers release for PS3 games desperate to impress everyone with graphics when they often don't have much else to go on.
I'm surprised that with the popularity of WoW and the Wii that so many gamers apparently are still clamoring for more gritty, realistic, and in my opinion, boring and uninspired, art. No wonder most developers keep churning out crap.
You should RTFA. Most of the designers comments were that the fan-a;tered screenshots missed the point of why D2 was fun after so much time. The spell effects in D2, for example, were *very* coloful. Also, either the background or the monsters needs to have vibrant colors: if you used desaturaed colors for both, the monsters don't "pop" out of the background, and the game becomes fatiguing to play (even if it looks better in a screenshot). They changed to what they have now because they discovered this during playtesting.
This is why Blizzard makes good games - they actually make improvements based on playtest feedback.
Also worth remembering: the reason that WoW is more successful than every other MMO put together is precisely because Blizzard ignored the conventional wisdom, and catered to casual players over the loudly-voiced requests of the hardcore fans.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I'm honestly surprised every single one of his posts doesn't get modded down as -1 Troll because of it.
I bet you can't wait for StarCraft II...
http://www.playthingofthegods.com/DianiusPetsGuide/GuardianFelhunter.jpg
http://www.blizzard.com/blizzcast/_images/episode1/zerg.jpg
Blizzard - do not let any artists work on multiple franchises! Kill off the Warcraft II style now - it's crap.
Well.. This is /. after all. It's certainly mean, but from a geek's perspective it's an obvious fake. Now if it were a brilliant link like this that would be fun and cool.
One thing that is often overlooked or forgotten is that these still shots don't do the game justice, because a game running at 24+ fps will always look better than a still frame from said game (reason why in many cases, still shots from games are usually doctored to smooth out the jaggies) and anyone who watches the D3 Demo and think the game looks "kiddie" and "Wowish" and isn't in good spirit of the original Diablo games either hasn't played them recent enough or needs to have their eyes checked. The game looks amazing, and plenty sinister without looking like Isometric Doom 3.
All I want to know is if there's gonna be a secret cow level?
Although I'm getting tired of slaying evil walking cows... Make a deal with Fox and make a secret chicken level.
Of course, we'd need to have a chicken NPC give us a bad coupon to be able to enter the secret chicken level, but I'm sure Blizzard could squeeze that somewhere in the story.
I also consider Diablo 2 one of the greatest games of all time and I can't wait for Diablo III. I hate FPS games and the adventure game genre is dead. I have no interest in MMORGs, so that leaves the Diablo!
As for your comment, wasn't Diablo 2 better than Diablo? Wasn't WC II better than WC? Wasn't StarCraft better than WC II? Why do you think that Blizzard will fail with Diablo III?
That's odd, I wasn't aware that the gradual build up in the number of players pointed to a hardcore blizzard fanbase. I always thought it meant that word of mouth spread as people heard from their friends about how good it was. Huh. Silly me.
Hmm, I'd say they should let us repackage D2/3.
That's the difference between D2, WC3, and HL
In the first, it's a total pain in the neck "we'll litigate you to death if you touch it" to mod it.
In the second, limitations on the map creation tools limited its usefulness.
On the last, there are huge amount of power available, but it's nearly as bad as writing your own game from scratch.
I say give us a D3 engine with 32 player multiplayer support, several levels of moddability (NWN style DM support - wc3ish type map/character/scripting - source module additions/changes), and an official launcher that mixes the best of BNetD and Steam that allows customs mods.
The community can take it from there just like we did with Half-Life.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
And what do you call those pygmy fetish dudes?
the only reason to fear them is because they outnumber you 20 to 1
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I hate you so much right now.
Look on the bright side. He's never gonna give you up.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
I think what you're talking about is making sure that objects occlude light originating from the other side.
This is usually done via radiosity calculations performed on the map in a process akin to compiling a program: all the shadows are painted onto the map before the game even ships. Those details never change through the course of the game, which is a huge win from an efficiency standpoint. This is typically referred to as static lighting.
For everything else, the game engine has to more or less fake a radiosity implementation in some way as to create convincing lighting, shadows occlusions, etc. This is what is under discussion here. Any such solution will never be as good as the static radiosity pass for the map, and will take a huge chunk out of your CPU/GPU/RAM budget in the process. Either you back a simple non-obtrusive hack (a blurry black circle under your avatar that is a 'shadow') or you go the full monty and impose stiff rendering restrictions somehow (cut the poly count for all models in half). Anything in the middle will be dismissed as slipshod craftsmanship (e.g. "shadows" in Quake 2).
So in short: 100% dymamic lighting is not feasible for a game like Diablo since there's too much happening at any given point. You're not going to see 100-monster brawls *and* fully accurate lighting and shading at the same time for years to come. The Diablo fanbois will have to wait until realtime ray-tracing hits the desktop.
fluffy and cuddly kitties in Diablo III. I think somebody should show Blizzard how to add cute little kitties to the game. It would be so much better.
In the older Diablos, this was sometimes the case. The dungeon would be pitch black, but there would be a circle of light right around you. You could increase the radius of this circle by equipping certain "radiant" items. I think those screenshots, along with the ones with the noise effect applied, are trying to recapture a retro Diablo feel as closely as possible.
> Sorry, the reason WOW is more successful is because it uses warcraft property
I disagree. You are close, but missed the mark. Warcraft 2 had _atmosphere_. They were able to leverage that. The toon graphics actually worked in Blizzard's favor. Everyone was sick of yet-another-pixel-shader game -- plus the importance of the ability to run on "low end" hardware can't be stressed enough.
> WoW is not god's gift to gaming. All it did was copied the best elements of prior MMO's and put them into one game (mostly), and gave it the warcraft themed graphics and universe.
MMOs and RPGs. From the 3 Talent Trees, the partial set items, the character classes, to loot-whores they basically learnt their lessons from Diablo 2.
But yeah, agree that wow is a shitty game -- but you must remember everything is relative: compared to everything else, it is WAY better. Blizzard is known for evolution, not revolution -- the constant polish of the UI makes this painfully obvious when playing others. Blizzard nailed the BASICS, and that is more important then the rest. UO focused more on breadth, but Wow focused on Depth. (When do we get our Castles, or the ability to craft furniture, damit!) Talents at level 10, new skills every 2 levels -- they slowly keeping feeding you that most people put up with the asinine grind.
> WoW is not god's gift to gaming. All it did was copied the best elements of prior MMO's and put them into one game (mostly), and gave it the warcraft themed graphics and universe.
Totally agreed. I've ranted before that Wow designers don't have a fucking clue about dead time. They SERIOUSLY need to go play some old school D&D and learn about it. Now if only the stupid mods would understand "dead time" is NOT FUN, maybe you wouldn't be downmodded.
> That's the real reason: i.e. doesn't require any kind of serious twitch skills. :-)
That's NOT a bad thing -- you gotta consider the demographic! It's not really feasible to do a MMO FPS. The RPG genre is different. The average wow age is 30+, not some punk kids. For those that DO want that twitch gameplay, CoD is quite nice, but a SLOWER paced game is what the masses want. The former doesn't require manual dexterity, the latter does. You literally are comparing apples and oranges about STYLES of GAMEPLAY. (OK, PVP throws a monkey wrench in this, but we're not talking about that.
I think the real problem with MMOs is, just because you know what you _don't_ want in a game, doesn't imply that you know what you _do_ want in a game. Allmost everyone agrees the grind is ridiculous, but there are no "good" solutions. (D&D "solved" it by limiting the "level grind" to maximum 20.) People think more is better, but it is actually worse. With 10,000 life, 70 levels, you lose the "core" of what leveling up means. Its all about perspective, and the illusion of power.
Nice to see that others aren't inhaling the warcrack though.
By that logic, WarCraft 3 would have been better than StarCraft. And it wasn't.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
So you've just multiplied both the development effort and the testing effort required.
Actually that's an excellent reason not to do it.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
I think this "WC3" style you are referring to is also known as "3D." Other than that, every game after WC3 has had their own style.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game