GameGuru MAX - Request - Considerations for Outdoor Visuals

[MonkeyFrogStudio]

Outdoor visuals for MAX are currently only ... okay ... in my opinion. I think they could be a lot better and believe that The WickedEngine is capable of more (and, thus, so is MAX). I recently acquired the game The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Redux on Epic and started to play it. The Redux version was released in 2015, so it's about 8 years old. Please keep that in mind when I share the screen shots in a moment. When I walk through the woods in The Vanishing, this is what I would want to see in MAX:

Notice the shading in the grass and other areas. Is this SSAO? If so, it makes a huge difference. Notice the grass and ground vegetation variance in height. It's not all tall grasses and flowers. It helps to make it look more authentic. Notice that in many places the grasses are in tufts here and there and not just evenly dispersed. Notice that the bioms have rocks that protrude from the ground in places. I think that would be a welcome addition to the auto-terrain generation system you have in place already.

Lighting doesn't have to be that subdued. That's up to the developer. But I think there's a lot to learn from the visuals of this game ... a game that was originally released in 2014 (Unreal v3) and had a redux in 2015 (Unreal v4). I personally think that MAX's graphics should at least match that of a game that was released almost a decade ago.

I hope these screen shots serve as an inspiration and that a way can be found to bring MAX to a place where this level of graphic fidelity.

[Mt-Chiliad-UFO]

Take some of that expansive portions of entropy subjected by the map procedures and give some controls to the user. For example fog can be very entropic but a more immersive and natural effect would enfold the entropy to user input. I would like to see the same for those other features you mention.

[Ghost-l0l]

@ArgentArts "When I walk through the woods in The Vanishing, this is what I would want to see in MAX" - hehe, and I would like to see destructible environments like in Bad Company 2. Now you tell me who got more "important" request and why you XD

OK OK I'm just joking but look:

I agree that Max visuals could be better, but comparisons like that are very unfair because:

1. Both Unreal engine 3 and 4 are technologies developed for decades, by huge teams of very experienced programmers. We talking about decades of research and development with many iterations inbetween, supported by years of cooperation and feedback from different AAA game studios using unreal 3 and 4 and budgets of houndreads of milions $. From what I know TGC isn't a huge team, don't have comparable (to Epic) budget or manpower at hand, and they're started to use Wicked relatively short time ago.

2. Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a game (yep - not game-engine and more on that later) created by team of industry veterans. The Astronauts might be an indie team, but it was founded by the same people who founded "People can fly" before. And "People can fly" was a studio that made Painkiller in 2004 on their own engine, and then started to work for Epic (yep this Epic from Unreal Engine). First they did pc port of Gears of War, then Bulletstorm and then another Gears of War (all of that on Unreal 3). Again - decades of experience; they know Unreal inside-out and know how to squeeze every best thing form it.

3. Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a visual-novel focused directly on looking good. It was carefully hand-crafted by (as i mentioned before) team of industry veterans, using photogrammery to create these environments. From technological point of view this game is focused on 1 thing and 1 thing only - looking good.

4. You're comparing a game-engine to a game. Thats 2 different things. When you're making a game - especially as focused on 1 thing as this one - you can let yourself to do a lot more, because you're focused on very narrow set of goals. In a game you can craft and optimize every piece of environment, every asset on every part of every level. With game-engine it's different, you can't focus just on 1 thing or 1 style; TGC tries to do something for "everybody" which is near impossible task; You see good looks as a priority, other customer might see something else as more important; You might like visual-novels, somebody else might prefer "boomer shooters" (which don't need many visual features at all, but need a lot of other things). And Max is supposed to appeal to both sides of that spectrum, while still being easy to use and beginner friendly. And all that on a budget that Epic spends on burgers and pizza for their staff ;p

Doing comparisions like that, you can just as well buy yourself an rc-drone, and then ask its producer why It's not taking you to the moon because NASA did that decades ago ;p Man, it will never take you to the moon, but you can still have a lot of fun with it (and you don't need to dedicate your whole life, like NASA engineers, or Epic's devs, or Vanishing's devs to this 1 thing to have that fun) ;)

[MonkeyFrogStudio]

@Ghost-l0l So, I take it you looked at the title and screen shots, but didn't actually read what I'd written, because what I'd written had little to do with anything you'd said above. In what I'd written I'd mentioned WHY I'd posted those screen shots from a game made almost a DECADE ago:

1 - SSAO helped to make things like the ground vegetation look much better, so adding SSAO would help MAX (something that many of us have been requesting and something that The WickedEngine has had for some time).

2 - Variance in ground vegetation height instead of ground vegetation being all the same height as it currently is in MAX. This is something that it looks like they are currently working on, btw, as I see sliders for this in the latest experimental release (though non-functioning at the moment).

3 - Ground vegetation is not all evenly dispersed, but there are "tufts" of grasses here and there, adding to realism.

4 - Rock protruding from the ground in places adding to the realism of the biom for the wooded area.

Now, tell me, what do ANY OF THESE have to do with Unreal 3 or 4, large development teams, novel-based story telling, or any of the other things that you wrote a novel about above? The screen shots served to show how the things I'd written about looked instead of just words alone. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter served as inspiration for those words.

Even so, regardless, the visuals for MAX's outdoor scenes could well be a lot better. They do not compare to the visuals to a game made close to a decade ago for a variety of reasons. Many of those reasons have NOTHING to do with ANY of the reasons you gave. Many of the reasons are simple aesthetics (lack of variance in ground plants, for example) and missing features that MAX should have (SSAO, for example).

So, if you're going to fault me for what I've said, at least fault me for what I actually SAID and not for what you ASSUMED I was talking about. ;)

[Mt-Chiliad-UFO]

"You're comparing a game-engine to a game. Thats 2 different things." ? Though I feel where you are headed with that, the end does not meet the intention - that of engine features and (what could be). Because even if one is little and immature and the other big and mature- comparing the output of two different game engines- isn't that comparing two different game engines? Regardless of the comparisons, suggesting designs to expand the procedural/ or user biome system is that not a considerate thought?

[Ghost-l0l]

@ArgentArts Ok, so at least we both agree that max could look better than right now :) But: I'm not assuming anything - I literally quoted what you said in the first line of my message, do you even read before you answer?
You said: " When I walk through the woods in The Vanishing, this is what I would want to see in MAX:" And then you show bunch of screenshots from Vanishing. It looks more like letter to santa claus than anything constructive so thats why I reacted like that.

I put together whole argument (or "novel" if you prefer to call it that) on why Max won't get close to that kind of visual quality anytime soon. And of course things like budget and size of dev team got whole lot to do with visual quality of final product.

I never said anything about "novel-based story telling" - you twisted my words there. The term I used was "visual-novel" - because we're talking about visuals here and this visual-novel that you put as example of what you "would want to see in MAX" is focused on visual-quality first and foremost, while Max is game-engine with lots of features, it will never be as focused on visuals as Vanishing. That's just 2 very different products, with whole different ideas behind them, targeting different customer etc.

You make 4 suggestions:

1. SSAO
2. Variance in ground vegetation height instead of ground vegetation being all the same height
3. Ground vegetation is not all evenly dispersed, but there are "tufts" of grasses here and there, adding to realism

4. Rock protruding from the ground in places adding to the realism of the biom for the wooded area.

   • In my whole message I never once neglected any of these. You're the one making assumptions here. And I never said that "ANY OF THESE have to do with Unreal 3 or 4, large development teams, novel-based story telling" etc... - here you asking me to explain something that I never said.

     All these features you mentioning probably will be added to max at some point, but it still won't let you get close to visual quality from Vanishing - because you're 1 person and they have a team, because they can spend millions of $ on 1 project and you probably not, because you don't have such high quality assets crafted and optimized with that 1 particular project in mind and they do, because they can modify engine to fit that 1 particular project they're working on and you can post suggestions to add modifications here ... etc etc.. thats just different leauge, different level, different game. Thats why directly comparing these 2 without mentioning all that stuff that Im talking about here is missing the point, can you see where im coming from now?

[MonkeyFrogStudio]

@Ghost-l0l _ I honestly think the only reason you want to respond here is to argue. I've made my point. The screen grabs were inspiration for my points - SSAO, variance of ground vegetation, tufts of ground vegetation, and rock protrusions. It's simple. My inspirations were drawn from seeing these images. Period. If you can't see past that, then I am sorry. Please do not continue to cloud my feature request with your lengthy posts.

I am NOT attempting to make a game like The Vanishing.

I am NOT attempting to get GameGuru MAX to exactly match the visuals of those made by a team using photogrammetry to do so.

I see where you're coming from. I also see that absolutely NONE of what you've said, originally or in your last post needed to have been said at all here.

Thank you and have a great day creating games as you please. :)

[Ghost-l0l]

Ok so let it be the end :) I wish you well in your projects too!

[Kitakazi]

@Ghost-l0l I made this video/map with Unity with an outdated nature pack, from like 2018. I'm one person and it took me like 2 days. It doesn't even look very good but(especially the rain) but I dont think its possible to make Max looks as good at the moment. The video was to showcase the audio too not really focused on the look.

https://youtu.be/q1UIkfhgnhI?t=1

[MonkeyFrogStudio]

There are individuals using Unreal these days, creating better scenes than The Vanishing of Ethan Carter in only a few hours, thanks to the Megascans library. These creation videos are all over YouTube to be seen. So, it's certainly possible for individuals, with the right tools, to equal, or even surpass, the visual quality of The Vanishing. Even so, that wasn't what I was after, as I hope was apparent. I was seeking ways to improve what MAX has so that all of us could have tools to make better looking outdoor levels in MAX. Adding just a few things in MAX, not a great deal of things, and not greatly advance things, would actually go a long way toward achieving that, imo.

[Kitakazi]

Yes sorry I don't mean to derail your post. I agree with your original points as well. All those things would be a welcome addition.

[MonkeyFrogStudio]

@Kitakazi I didn't think you did derail it at all. I appreciated the support, in fact. ;) I was actually surprised I had gotten the original pushback, actually. ;)

[Ghost-l0l]

@ArgentArts Hey, just wanted to say - when I read now what I've written 2 days ago, I really can't understand why I responded to you with so much negativity, probably I had a bad day. It was unnecessary to say the least, some of what I wrote was also kinda rude; Just want you to know that I can see that now, I hope you wouldn't make your mind about me just from this silly rant I wrote :)

@Kitakazi Thats a really nice looking forest! Especially for something done in just 2 days!

[MonkeyFrogStudio]

@Ghost-l0l - Thanks! I truly appreciate it. No worries and definitely no hard feelings. I've done the same myself (especially before I've had my coffee!). Thanks again and, again, truly not a worry on my end. :)

[LeeBamberTGC]

@Ghost-l0l @ArgentArts Dudes, you guys totally represent the community right now. Passionate about your craft, but very froody and cool. For my pennies worth, you both do amazing work!!

[MonkeyFrogStudio]

@LeeBamberTGC Thank you, Zaphod Beeblebrox! :P

(Just referencing the "froody and cool" part ... :) )