Northern Ireland 1983: Crits please?

[JQuigley]

Minor bump, has anyone got any suggestions on how any of the work, or premise of the game even, could be improved? Would be interesting to hear some professional opinion.

[musashidan]

This is a great setting for a game.It's funny that everywhere else in the world war is called war, but here in Ireland we call it "The Troubles". :D

I'm not trying to be controversial(or biased) but i believe the premise for the game would be alot better if you got to play on the other 'team'.

on a sidenote: South Armagh(bandit country) was like an IRA stronghold.They had checkpoints all over the county.Even the roadsigns had a picture of a sniper on them with "sniper at work" written on them(fact) Armalyte equipped Ra snipers and RPG teams where hidden in nests all over the county.

An older guy i worked with a number of years back lived in South Armagh all his life and he told me some great tales.In the town he lived in near Crossmaglen(the most infamous town in Sth Armagh) there are five roads in and out.The Provos had each road rigged with explosives and there were 24 hour lookouts posted to deter British armoured vehicles. One morning a Saracen APC entered the town and was blown to pieces leaving bodyparts of the soldiers within scattered all over the road. He actually saw the aftermath.
In his local pub,IRA soldiers openly carried their weapons with them.And there is a famous story of a British double agent who used to enter the pub and converse with the men until he completely vanished one night(the bogs of Sth Armagh are littered with undiscovered corpses) NI was awash with 007 type characters.Some of the stories are incredible.
You wouldn't believe the depth of British Government collusion and involvement in NI. And people think that the CIA are state sponsored terrorists. :) :)

Anywho,i'll get off my soapbox now.

The only reason i'm writing all this is to give you a few ideas that you won't find in the history books.

[JQuigley]

Well, this is the thing - I would love to involve an IRA side, problem is, development time gets increased. And the last thing we need is a Halo 2 style game. *shudder*

Hmm, interesting - wasn't aware of that incident. Think that double-agent would be Robert Niarac, wouldn't it? Very iffy that one, mainly as he was directly involved with the Loyalist units in the area, if I remember rightly...?

And oh yeah, have to agree. The SIS are nasty buggers. The CIA have nothing on our lot... :twisted:

[mister3d]

Hi. great work! A lot of efforts was put into it, though I have some heavy critics, so be prepared for a cold professional shower. :twisted:

It's pity you need to register to see the forum.
The most important thing graphically perhaps will be levels, not weapon or characters. What I would like to see in levels is:
-lighting: more colorful lighting. Now it's all white. It's never like this in real life, and yet looks lifeless. Colors create mood. Place some weird shadows to break-down the look. Make it scary, hopeful, beckoning, whatever, just make me feel something. I want to explore, so make me want to explore. Also some lights seem not having the inverse-square falloff, they light too uniformly and to too big distances.
-Atmosphere: skies could use more color also. In general you desaturated colors too much. -There were enough of wargames with desaturated colors, not surprising anymore. You'd better make it with interesting color setups and sky patterns. It takes half of the screen, so it’s important.
-avoid plain surfaces either with fog, sky or whatever. It looks not interesting, you'd better use anything to breakdown the monotnous look. More complex skies, more lighting effects like burning barrels and swaying lamps. More contrasty skies. Not like in real life? Whatever. Opt for originality and artistic attractiveness, not being like everybody.
-avoid completely black shadows. Make them at least little bit more transparent. Also avoid too dark surfaces. Make them more visible.
More dirt, scratches on surfaces, like weapon, more mold, cracks, streaks on the ground, and concrete. More aging. Dirt is pretty.

There is too much obsession with “realism”, which leads to heavy desaturation. This is already too common to use imo. People want emotions. Saturated colors are perfectly possible in realistic graphics. Just watch movies, how much color is there. I would say don’t make it so common and boring. I’m blunt, but I’m honest. I would never play in such a lifeless-loooking game. Only something with a more appealing image. To me such a plain palette says “a 3-rd class pc shooter, one of hundreds similar-looking clones”
The same with characters: make them bad, funny, whatever, just making some emotions. Not just like beautiful positive guys, which are not memorable. Be different.
http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/2387/26590041.th.jpg (http://img441.imageshack.us/i/26590041.jpg/)

[ThermidorInteractive]

I actually agree with Mr3d up above. The models are good and everything looks like it's coming along nicely (particularly the weapon models), but the excessive use of desaturation has always been an annoyance for me. It worked well in Max Payne, but that was intentionally nior.

As Mr3d demonstrated, you can actually have a fair bit of colour in the scenes but still show an unrelentingly grim vision of a game, it just involves the use of a lot of blues and slightly unnatural colours. Endlessly grey environments though, make the game an unrelentingly grim experience, which probably isn't exactly what you're going for. It's really the job of the level designer and to a lesser extent the composer to set tone of the scene, whereas desaturating everything just comes across as amaeturish/lazy these days, because everyone seems to be doing it.

Just my two cents, though, so take it as you will. Looks like you guys are doing well so far, so all the best for the future!

[JQuigley]

Hi. great work! A lot of efforts was put into it, though I have some heavy critics, so be prepared for a cold professional shower. :twisted:


Excellent - it gets irritating constantly getting "Wow, this is teh leetz!111!!", especcially if it doesn't happen to be something that good. :p


It's pity you need to register to see the forum.


Yeah, been having a few problems with spam bots.. Like 3-4 registering per day, and posting how much free animal viagra we could all get. Hence, no public areas, til we can figure out a way to remove them permantly. Unfortunately the bots generally use G-mail, which some of the team use, so I can't do a blanket block on the buggers using it.


The most important thing graphically perhaps will be levels, not weapon or characters. What I would like to see in levels is:
-lighting: more colorful lighting. Now it's all white. It's never like this in real life, and yet looks lifeless. Colors create mood. Place some weird shadows to break-down the look. Make it scary, hopeful, beckoning, whatever, just make me feel something. I want to explore, so make me want to explore. Also some lights seem not having the inverse-square falloff, they light too uniformly and to too big distances.
-Atmosphere: skies could use more color also. In general you desaturated colors too much. -There were enough of wargames with desaturated colors, not surprising anymore. You'd better make it with interesting color setups and sky patterns. It takes half of the screen, so it’s important.
-avoid plain surfaces either with fog, sky or whatever. It looks not interesting, you'd better use anything to breakdown the monotnous look. More complex skies, more lighting effects like burning barrels and swaying lamps. More contrasty skies. Not like in real life? Whatever. Opt for originality and artistic attractiveness, not being like everybody.
-avoid completely black shadows. Make them at least little bit more transparent. Also avoid too dark surfaces. Make them more visible.
More dirt, scratches on surfaces, like weapon, more mold, cracks, streaks on the ground, and concrete. More aging. Dirt is pretty.


All very good points, all of which we're gonna be acting on as a result, or have already fiddled with since the update! In fact, "The Darkness" is getting considerably reworked by Sensman - main things being the Time of Day, along with the environment. What we got so far for that level in fact, is these two:

Shot 1 (http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=00107tnpk.jpg)
Shot 2 (http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=001198b2j.jpg)

Bare in mind, still in progress, and we're hoping to see whether we can use POM textures to add some level of detail to the textures - the ground ain't completely flat anywhere for starters in real life, lets be honest!


There is too much obsession with “realism”, which leads to heavy desaturation. This is already too common to use imo. People want emotions. Saturated colors are perfectly possible in realistic graphics. Just watch movies, how much color is there. I would say don’t make it so common and boring. I’m blunt, but I’m honest. I would never play in such a lifeless-loooking game. Only something with a more appealing image. To me such a plain palette says “a 3-rd class pc shooter, one of hundreds similar-looking clones”
The same with characters: make them bad, funny, whatever, just making some emotions. Not just like beautiful positive guys, which are not memorable. Be different.

Now, this is the thing. When the industry says realism, this springs to mind:

VG Cats mockery (http://www.vgcats.com/comics/images/070119.jpg)

Though, thats not really what we're after in regards to realism - we're more looking at the game mechanics, than the graphics - those come secondary to the gameplay experience.

Emotions are going to be playing a major part - I really don't want this to be a complete Rambo fest shooting up half of Europe, but to actually have some level of depth in regards to plot and characters - the characters, all have their own personality, and accents; for instance the theiving scouser, the abusive smoking scotsman... Perhaps sterotypes for those two, but they work well for what we need.

In fact, we're attempting to show the effects of PTSD on one of the main NPCs - which is going to be probably the hardest bit of writing for the entire game to do, and is gonna require quite a bit of research to get it right, and not upset servicemen who have suffered from it. But, I wouldn't have it any other way.

At any rate, don't worry, we're not going for pretty boys - thats just the concept, I'll make sure the actual models for them are nice and gritty, and realistic in regards to the faces.

Still, thanks for the comments, much appreciated mate. :D Will definitely help us improve our work.

[mister3d]

Glad I was useful. I will keep an eye on the project.

[JQuigley]

Glad I was useful. I will keep an eye on the project.

Thanks, much appreciated. Welllll, you could help even more, but that might be a bit cheeky about asking about that helli. :blush:

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