Slashdot Mirror
New Diablo 3 Images; Design Wins Over Darkness
KingofGnG writes "The new Diablo III screenshots highlight the strong chromatic variations existing between the dungeons and the various stages ... It appears obvious, however, that all those details enriching the scenes, the crumbling parapets of the paths within the dungeons, the plants and the ragged drapes lightened by candles, would lose the best part of their raison d'etre if put in monochrome palettes inclined to black."
I am all about games having dark and brooding atmospheres, and maybe even a bit scary. But I am more about a game being a damn fun and well designed one because the developers had a vision and weren't playing appease-the-fanboys during the development process. Plus the gritty, dark, angsty look has been done to death. I like color.
It's absurd such a small outcry has gotten this much press already.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
Just release the damn game so I can play it!
Artsy discussions about screenshots aren't something I care about.
There are, as I see it, two possibilities, either the game sucks, or it doesn't.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
I'm glad Blizzard is sticking to their guns.
I first found out about this when that video was released a week or two ago in which a fan tweaked the official video to show what the game "should" look like instead of the "colorful" look that Blizzard is going with.
I watched the video and thought only one thing: it was ugly. Look, I understand this game is supposed to take place in dungeons and such, but you are allowed to have SOME color. It really pointed out that argument I've seen a few times over the last few years about the recent consoles. They are so powerful and push so many polygons, but they only seem to work when you disable any non-yellow, brown, or grey color.
I've got to say, I really like the look of the Diablo III video and screens Blizzard has made. There are colors. You can tell what's going on. Enemies stand out, the art stands out. It all looks quite good. But at the same time, they didn't go overboard making it look too cartoony. I mean, it doesn't look happy.
I'm glad Blizzard is sticking to their guns despite what some group of hardcore fans says. I'm actually interested in Diablo III. I've never played the previous games, but I'd like to give it a try.
But if it had been that nearly black-and-white mockup a fan made, I'd avoid it. I don't have such a nice computer so I can only view dimly lit colorless environments with very little visible detail.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Diablo III Designer Defends New Look and Feel http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/04/1858250 Personally, after spending way too much time on Diablo 2, I must say I now prefer darkness --accompanied with sleeping
The game shouldn't be so dark its hard to see. It should be slightly shadowy in some areas, but otherwise alright as far as seeing goes. Torches/lights should overbright the area a little, rather than making it normally lit. If it were real, you'd be pretty used to the dark, but torches would damn ear blind you.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Coral cache. But it's insanely slow for me there, too.
Crafty little site... who went to take some pictures and artworks from the official site, added his watermark on it, submitted a news item and got slashdotted. Bravissimo! It's grand to see Arthur from Ghouls'N Ghosts announcing Diablo III.
http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/media/screenshots.xml
Skip the middleman. The first four are the "new" screenshots... which look exactly like the old screenshots. Which is to say... nothing has changed
Really... a slashdot story on Blizzard releasing another 4 screenshots? Will we get a story for every new screenshot they release or only in intervals of 4 or greater?
'It's like, how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black.' -This is Spinal Tap
Here Here. How about a Mod redirect the link to a functioning server that's not just reposting official materials.
This is nothing more than an extremely thinly vailed attempt at getting some ad hits.
The current art style give it that weird World of Warcraft cartoonish look. Doesn't quite suit what I am used to from the other Diablo games and not really what I expected. But overall I don't care as long as it comes out soon.
I don't need no more diablo images in my head, if you insist, I'll just wear tinfoil and the cross. Now go away, let me ponder that female elf. Thank you, thank you, don't let your horns damage my door. Thank you, bye.
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
I fail to see why they couldn't add a toggle to activate a desaturating filter. That would shut up the art-school dropouts, and frankly I think it would be interesting to switch between the bright/colorful and dark modes.
Is it that difficult to implement brightness/contrast/gamma ? I'm thinking of Far Cry, which offered different rendering modes, some of them cold and bluish, others hyper-saturated and cartoony. It was a unique feature at the time, so why can't Blizzard just copy that ?
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I quit gaming a few years ago because I was tired of pour my life energy into the bottomless pit of interactive illusions, but it hasn't stopped me from appreciating a nice bit of design.
--I really like the isometric approach; it allows the design team to use artwork generated by actual painters and illustrators rather than 3D engine-workers. It'll be a neat day when you can create in 3D the same kind of evocative visual character in a tree stump or a bit of masonry as an artist can do with a pencil and few tubes of gauche, but that day hasn't arrived yet. And so, Diablo III is going to look oh-so-much prettier than any 3D game can at the moment.
-FL
The elephant in the room is that the Blizzard guys probably would have preferred staying true to the dark and brooding atmosphere, but it's no longer possible with todays technology. On panels black is really gray... often not even a dark gray, and then there's the trade-off most panels make in giving up a few bits per colour channel for speed. "Dark and brooding" looks pretty awful on your average modern rig.
This came up weeks ago.
The article on the comparison between Diablo III design and fan "improved" colours:
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/08/04/diablo-iii-designer-turns-tables
and Penny-Arcade's take on the "protest":
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/8/6/
You know, I've been playing doom lately, and that's quite a colorful game... Then I saw some people playing diablo 2 it is actually very colorful as well, I am glad blizz didn't waste their time pleasing a bunch of people that just remember diablo being darker than it really was...
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
the plants and the ragged drapes lightened by candles
Lightened by candles? Lightened by candles? That's it, KingofGnG will never be my Dungeon Master.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Is it just me, or has there been too much argument over the brightness of Diablo III? I would think everyone's individual monitor setting preferences account for more difference to the levels in the game than the fine tuning done on the development end.
I browsed the screenshots and was happy to see, not the brightness -- or the contrast or the bleed or gamut or the bloody candle-power, but the artistic design of the creatures and the scenery. I'd much rather have attention to detail in the area of creativity and originality of visual style, than attention to the brightness of colours I can simply adjust on my screen. Take Heroes IV and Disciples II (click here if you're not familiar with Disciples), as examples; I found Heroes IV really uninspired and boring, whereas Disciples II, although very similar had such incredible artistic design that it was much more enjoyable to play.
In the land of the blind, the one eyed man still has no depth perception.
... is really about atmosphere. I admit that I never personally had any interest and didn't care either way for such things. But I know that lighting really does have an effect on atmosphere. Doom 3 had great atmosphere because of how the lighting was, even the original Diablo was dark and grey, it had some levels that were really bright, but it also compensated by levels that were really dark (as you go into the last dungeon to fight diablo in teh first one).
One of the cool things about the original diablo (for it's time) was lighting effects from spells/arrows, etc across floors and whatnot and going 'oh shit oh shit oh shit' when monsters were coming or were firing your way and you were trying to make an escape.
I want my Duke Nukem Forever!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
It's about the art direction overall. Diablo was gritty and realistic. They could make the whole game black and white, but you've still got characters running around in cutscenes and combat that look like they came from Warcraft.
This http://www.diii.net/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=871&size=big&cat=563 and this http://www.diii.net/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=703&cat=565 are much more in the style of Warcraft, which aside from the bright and happy palette is the primary reason a lot of folks were surprised when D3 was unveiled.
I know I personally also wanted contrast to Blizzards other work, because that existed before now. Blizzard has amazing artists and they're going to make an amazing looking game, but when all your franchises start looking the same, they become kind of redundant from one another. I think most Diablo fans wanted something hellish, and dark, and corrupt. Gritty and realistic. While the game will look, and most likely play, just fine, the atmosphere is what will be different due to the changes in the look.
I dunno... Something like this http://www.worldart.com.au/images/kris-kuksi-sculpture-surreal-deadly-sins1.jpg
Right now the game looks like it was Disney's take on Diablo, rather than Geiger's.
I think the game is resembling Warcraft simply because Blizzard designers are learning a lot from the game mechanics specifically behind World of Warcraft.
They're expanding the color palette most likely to assist with the pacing of the game, and that constantly shifting contrast ("first you're in a really bright desert, then you're inside a really dark pyramid") propel that sense of progress that players have as they move through the game.
It's one thing to have that gritty, dirty visual style in a dungeon instance that's supposed to last for an hour or two, it's another to have that exact same gritty visual style for the entire several hundred hours that you'll be playing the game.
One of the ways that playability is enhanced, and monotony is prevented is by having that really extreme sense of contrast, as well as the bright color palette.
Furthermore, I understand that most Diablo players don't want a color palette that looks like it was extracted from a Night Elf starting zone, but by the same token I feel like Blizzard wants to reach out to the millions of folks in the WoW contingency that might want to start playing Diablo for the first time if it looks and feels like something they are already very familiar with.
Go outdoors, on a moonlight night. Look to see what color cast the moonlight gives everything. It's bluish, just like that dungeon shot. And if you look at that shot, you'll see there's a HUGE window. That's why it's blue.
These screenshots look nothing like a Mario style color scheme. They're quite in keeping with traditional fantasy artwork, probably moreso than the original Diablo was. Elmore, Easley, Caldwell, Wood. go take a look at them.
Oh really? Please do enlighten me exactly what do frog demons look like IRL (since we're talking _realism_), or what is the real incantation for casting chain lightning IRL, or exactly how much mana does a level 5 wizard have IRL, how much of it is used by a chain lightning, and how fast it would regen for you. IRL.
Also, hey, let's make the game realistic. Let's see:
It's the middle ages. Chances are you're a peasant. (Some 80% of the population was, after all, so sheer probabilities point that way.) work dawn to dusk just to feed your family, but you're still badly malnourished since last year's war saw most of your crop looted. Half the village just died of plague, and the survivors are screaming in agony all night. Some of them are throwing themselves off houses and bridges just to end the excruciating pain already. You sneezed this morning. You're still scared shitless, because that's the first symptom of the plague. Please God let it be hayfever or a cold, is what goes through your head as you mindlessly walk behing the plough like a zombie. You'll likely always be a peasant. You'd have to buy yourself off serfdom before you can go do anything else, at all. Three of your five kids so far died before even reaching their first birthday. Which is just as well, since you wouldn't have enough food to feed all 5. And if demons attacked your church, you'd get drafted by your lord into hauling rocks to repair it.
Oh, sorry, that's not much fun... let's try again:
You're a grizzled mercenary. You've seen half your unit die of dysentery in the last war. In fact, in the last battle, you fought without pants so you can shit yourself on the move. The peasants in this village hate your fucking guts, because it was your unit that looted them in between employment as mercenaries. Your old commander got himself a promotion for volunteering your unit to Forlorn Hope. Actually meaning "lost troop", as that's the first wave to assault the walls. If he survives, the commander gets an automatic promotion, but you just got to burry your horribly mutilated mates and got kicked out of the army as soon as peace was signed. That old scar didn't make you tougher, it just got infected and that was a fun year of suffering. All the wounds and bad food and shitting your guts out on campaigns, have shortened your life expectancy a lot, and make you feel like you're 20 years older already.
In all probability, a single hit by any demon under the church will likely kill or disable you. It doesn't take much destroyed tissue to make anybody collapse in shock. You don't get -5 hp from the hit and to wait 10 seconds for it to regen. You'll probably just get killed, or disabled long enough for the rest of the demons to eat you alive. If you survived at half health, you'll just bleed to death. Or maybe the infection will kill you. Even if you're so elite as to dodge or parry 99% of the attacks (which is unrealistic already), in all probability, by the 20'th demon one will land that disabling blow right through your defenses.
And if you don't die there, chances are you'll end up crippled. And get to beg from those same villagers, who'll roll their eyes and pretend to not even see you.
Won't that realism be fun?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.