Ign - Peek Of The Week #14

[Gowel]

Compliments of developer Razorwax, we continue our virtual tour of Agon by visiting the Ork village of Taloroth.

http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/441/441903p1.html


And below are the direct links to the screenshots.

http://vaultmedia.ign.com/rpgvault/image/d...kfall112401.jpg (http://vaultmedia.ign.com/rpgvault/image/darkfall112401.jpg)

http://vaultmedia.ign.com/rpgvault/image/d...kfall112402.jpg (http://vaultmedia.ign.com/rpgvault/image/darkfall112402.jpg)

http://vaultmedia.ign.com/rpgvault/image/d...kfall112403.jpg (http://vaultmedia.ign.com/rpgvault/image/darkfall112403.jpg)

http://vaultmedia.ign.com/rpgvault/image/d...kfall112404.jpg (http://vaultmedia.ign.com/rpgvault/image/darkfall112404.jpg)

[Gowel]

I'd just like to say that seeing training dummies again in a MMORPG is just great and they have archery targets too! We don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure that the developers, having played and enjoyed alot of things in UO, wouldn't just stick these types of things in as props. I'm very hopeful and willing to wager that these items are fully functional and not just for looks. I'm not sure if I should think the same thing about the mugs and the plates(and cheese) we've seen in other screenshots. I really hope that type of stuff is interactive and movable, but there's a chance they could just be props for immersion, which is fine in my opinion.

Some other observations. Lots of creepy one-horned steer-looking skulls and giant spikey things on the buildings. I'd really like to see that there is some monster or monsters, in the game that looks as though all this stuff could have came from them, preferably in the Ork regions, to explain the abundance. I mention this, because I noticed in the World of Warcraft screenshots that they have some amazingly gigantic "tusks" that looked as though they must have came from an animal that was the size of a mountain. Somehow I doubt players in that game will ever see an animal like that(seriously they were enormous). It's just nice to have an unmentioned explaination for small things like that. You're out hunting as an Ork and you run across a monster and chuckle to yourself "oh, that's where those skulls came from!".

Also, I didn't mention this in the last set of screenshots, but there was an Ork statue that was really cool. Not just because it was a statue, but because it wasn't very good looking. It was just a crudely chissled and pretty much, ugly, statue. That just fits in so well with the whole look of the Ork areas and speaks alot for the roughness and sort of tribal feel of their race.

And lastly, something I'm not happy with, but I'm very confident that it'll be fixed/changed; the water. With a sky as dark as the ones in the Fire Run & other Orkish area screenshots, you'd expect to see a very dark grey water, rather than a bright blue water. Obviously it's a case of these being early beta shots and not the final product. I only mention it, not as a complaint, but as an observation on something that the devs surely realize, to maybe will keep others from pointing it out as a bad thing.

Overall, I'm loving these Orkish areas and I can't wait to see all the other races lands, oh and to read the accompanying article for these shots.

[Jax]

totally agree about the water. It just doesnt fit with the rest of the environment.

[Decius]

Are those Artok skulls in the first screenshot? The one fastened to that pole in the practice yard. If so, those things must be huge!

[Gowel]

Originally posted by Decius@Nov 24 2003, 03:19 AM
Are those Artok skulls in the first screenshot? The one fastened to that pole in the practice yard. If so, those things must be huge!
Good point, they could be!

[Surly]

Oh hey... more...... scenery. Ok.

[Viranth]

The screenshots are great, I think they captured the "orkish" feel very well.
Interesting about those dummies though, maybe you can get some skills by practicing on those.
Anyhoo, good stuff as always.

[Gaintlord]

The picture do give a good feel for the ork kingdom. Its all dark anf glommy.

Maybe week 15 will be something other then scenery or a town. I would like to see some monsters or some NPC.

The pictures as always are good so keep up the good work devs. Just like to see something new is all

[Enemy]

good stuff, needs monsters and players now =p

[Andonis]

the screenshots seem to be geting much better every week :)
very impressive work cant wait to see next weeks peek!
keep up the good work devs :ph34r:

[Blade]

Originally posted by Andonis@Nov 24 2003, 09:29 AM
the screenshots seem to be geting much better every week :)
very impressive work cant wait to see next weeks peek!
keep up the good work devs  :ph34r:
You are right Andonis, I noticed the same thing. Every shot ive seen has gotten better than the ones before! The feel those stones in the distance in shot 2 give is just awesome! Completelly gloomy and shadowy. Great shots Devs, thnx! :)

[Darkmatter]

Nice pictures! Thanks for update Rw!

[AkielVonStrife]

This (http://vaultmedia.ign.com/rpgvault/image/darkfall112403.jpg) is without a doubt the best screen shot ever. Why? Because it appears to have function...

Imagine Orks taking a quick break to get a bite to eat around the camp fire, share stories, group up, and plan for their next attack. Perhaps they even have contests of strength in the center?

Two design thoughts to point out now, rather than later...

If it's beneficial to sit at those tables or be in the center of a village, allow players to either buy time slots, or stand in line (a queue ala planetside vehicle terminals). No one wants to wait for some schumck to finish doing whatever they're doing. If a place at the table is important in some way, players must have access to it with out much of a wait.

Also, think about chair stealers...table movers...cup keepers. Players that will manipulate the environment just because they can.

Just my thoughts on what I assume is an attempt at getting players to socialize a bit between their gankage. :)

[Gunther TheBlack]

Originally posted by AkielVonStrife@Nov 24 2003, 01:29 PM
Also, think about chair stealers...table movers...cup keepers. Players that will manipulate the environment just because they can.

Such players will meet my mighty war hammer with +150 damage on lame people. Unless there are too many guards :D

[malarkie]

imo these are by far the best town-type pics :)

[Nitzel]

Like most others im loving these screenshots, the darkness and gloomy feel they give cant wait to get in and womp on some of those dummy targets hope some will have live prey strapped to them :) Mmm Lizard on a stick ill take 2 please

[Exmortis]

AkielVonStrife,

I sincerely hope all the scenarios you mentioned on the first page of this thread are indeed possible, without any of the fixes you proposed. I do not want to see queues or time limits forcing people to get up from their spots at the tables. That's quite far from the Darkfall philosophy of game design my friend. If you want your fellow ork to move from that spot, move him. Not paging a GM or waiting for his artificial timer to move him for you. There shouldn't be any reason I'd have to leave my position until I either A.) want to or B.) am made to.

[AkielVonStrife]

Originally posted by Exmortis@Nov 24 2003, 06:35 PM
AkielVonStrife,

I sincerely hope all the scenarios you mentioned on the first page of this thread are indeed possible, without any of the fixes you proposed. I do not want to see queues or time limits forcing people to get up from their spots at the tables. That's quite far from the Darkfall philosophy of game design my friend. If you want your fellow ork to move from that spot, move him. Not paging a GM or waiting for his artificial timer to move him for you. There shouldn't be any reason I'd have to leave my position until I either A.) want to or B.) am made to.
Make no mistake...I'm all for player skill, and might making right in THIS SITUATION. However, I'm thinking more about the alignment system...you're telling me that if we both have a good alignment in the same race that you'll be able to just move me out of that chair? I doubt it. If that's the case, then we're going to have a much larger problem on our hands.

[soy]

I'll be honest, I'm not that impressed. But it's nice to see things atleast making progress.

I really felt kinda stupid telling people about darkfall when the only media I had to show off was those lame old dwarf screenshots.

These aren't much in my book, but atleast it shows that the game is really being worked on.

[AkielVonStrife]

Originally posted by soy@Nov 25 2003, 12:01 AM
I really felt kinda stupid telling people about darkfall when the only media I had to show off was those lame old dwarf screenshots.
I really like the Darkfall graphics. The in-game character models we've seen (the models, not the renderings - those look fantastic) thus far look on par or a little better than DAOC to me (much better than Shaodwbane). The buildings are probably a strong 7 or low 8 out of 10, they kind of have a Morrowind feel to them.

Wow graphics are cartoony, but I like them. Lineage II graphics look great (probably the best character models I've seen). SWG, AC2, EQ2...pretty. Of course, I won't be playing any of these whack-a-mole games, so I don't care.

I wouldn't be surprised if the DF graphics got better than they are. The devs seem happy to point out that they haven't put all their sparkly effects in yet. But it's all about gameplay, and to tell you the truth, I don't care if DF looks like 3D pong as long as it's fun to play and I don't have to treadmill my life away. Plus graphics are outdated 10 minutes after you put a screen shot up.

This is just my opinion, and I realize I'm in the minority here. Maybe the graphics get better, maybe we've seen the best there is to see. Again, it's not a big deal to me.

Anyway...to each his/her own.

[Darkmatter]

soy, yeah I experienced the same thing. friends didn't catch any interest by looking at those old ones, but i think if i show them the last batch of pictures they'll react somewhat different. I'd like to see a picture with player models to see and compare how far they've gotten with the graphics compared to those old dwarf ones.

[soy]

Yeah I kinda like how the graphics are taking shape. Especially with all the different objects and stuff. I was particularly impressed by the hanging bundles of heads and torso's. Hopefully these are items that players can create ;)

[Isha]

Originally posted by soy@Nov 25 2003, 04:01 AM
I really felt kinda stupid telling people about darkfall when the only media I had to show off was those lame old dwarf screenshots.


Yea, have it exactly like that, most of my friends want to play WoW, but i`m trying to convert them.
I really love the 3rd screenshot, can`t wait to get some ale in those mugs :) and the atmosphere is great.
I think most of us would like to see some more character models.

[Porthios]

Allow me to put it simply. The amount of detail that went in to the items and buildings, and their placement seems immense, but the graphics suck. Okay, maybe bit too harsh. But just looking at that dark atmosphere just pisses me off. Look at how fake that god damn sky looks. I could never get tricked into thinking that it is real. Is land REALLY that dark? I suppose it could be, but it just seems fake in those picks. It is some sort of psuedo darkness. It looks more like I am watching the computer screen through a tinted car window. Another thing is that the clouds are too freaking bright in some spots, and too dark in others. Over cast days don't look like that. Most overcast days have clouds that are for the most part the same color. All the devs would have had to do to figure this out is walk outside of their effing building and looked up. Why they decided to go this way? I couldn't tell you?


And what the hell is up with that water in the distance in the 4th pic? It doesn't even look dark for Christ's sake! You'd think that a dark game like DF would have moved away from blue water, and at least gone with Morrowind-like water, or preferably UT 2003 water.

DF is ahead on ideas, but way way behind on graphics from what I have seen.

[Porthios]

Now that I have thought about it, I think the source of all the problems that I have (minus the water) comes form the sorry excuse for a realistic sky.

[AkielVonStrife]

Originally posted by Porthios@Nov 25 2003, 10:57 PM
Now that I have thought about it, I think the source of all the problems that I have (minus the water) comes form the sorry excuse for a realistic sky.
I actually went back and looked at the sky a second time. I think I see what you mean...it looks a lot like a water painting (a good one, but a water painting nonetheless).

This doesn't bother me, at all. I guess there are two major reasons I'm so uneffected. 1) We're talking about a realistic sky for the Orks here. Last I checked, Orks don't really exist. 2) We're talking about a psuedo "believable" sky for a game setting. Although I think I see your point, that it could be more immerssive, I don't really find the DF sky to be any less immerssive than any other sky in the genre.

Maybe it will grow on you. Or maybe you will always look at the DF sky like I look at the Ork Females hair (it's like a solid block of playdough). :)

Either way, I'm not concerned enough to cause a fuss. The graphics look pretty good to me.

[Porthios]

Originally posted by AkielVonStrife@Nov 25 2003, 07:11 PM
Last I checked, Orks don't really exist.
Of all the people on these boards, you, AkielVonStrife, are the last person that I would expect to use this arguement in the attempt to defend DF. Enough said. I need not explain myself because I am sure you know why I will comletely disregard your statement. I have already given my reasons, which I am sure you have read, when others have used the same type of statement.

[quote][b]2)

[Afgar]

I dunno. Screenshots look pretty great for me, but they're all a bit too similar.

Anyone play Shadowbane? You could run for hours seeing the same trees and hills over and over again...I really hope DF has it more interesting (don't get me wrong, I think FP will help 10-fold)

[Gowel]

In my opinion, the Darkfall sky looks much better than any other MMORPG's sky that I've seen. It looks realistic and I don't know how anyone can say that it looks like just a pasted on texture. That's what the OTHER MMORPGs have. Just a single bitmap or whatever that just continously scrolls past, single clouds or not, it's ALWAYS the same thing.

I'm not trying to pick a fight, but do you even know what having a dynamic sky means? It means that the sky in Darkfall is going to be ever-changing. Sometimes it's going to have lots of clouds all bunched together, other times it's going to have just a few clouds here and there, at other times it may have no clouds at all. You're also going to see it change as new cloud formations form as rain and storms comes near. But I understand that those types of things are hard to display in a still shot.

I also realize that we've only see a cloudy sky in the recent shots, but that doesn't mean it'll always look like that. If you look at the older shots, that we can see the sky in, particularly the one with the human on the warhorse mount, you can see that the sky has no clouds at all in it. Some may assume that this was because they hadn't added the dynamic sky yet when that shot was taken, but we've seen even older shots that had clouds in them. So I think it's more of a case of that just happening to be a clear and sunny day and the newer shots being cloudier days. It could also be that after the good feedback that the clouds had gotten in the very first IGN screenshots we saw, that the devs decided to keep them turned on fully for all the following week's shots so that people wouldn't complain "where'd the cool sky go!?".

Aside from all that, it's almost a certainty that they aren't completely finished with the sky yet. Personally, I'm more interested in if clouds are going to cast shadows and if the water is going to relfect the clouds.

[AkielVonStrife]

Originally posted by Porthios@Nov 26 2003, 01:21 AM
this is the shittiest sky I have seen for a game in a long long time.

Well, to each his own. I wasn't trying to say you were wrong, just that you had your own opinion. The thing about the Orks wasn't so much an arguement as much as it was "the way I see things." Obviously, this is where we disagree, or see things differently. No problem. :)

[Porthios]

Originally posted by Gowel@Nov 25 2003, 10:08 PM
In my opinion, the Darkfall sky looks much better than any other MMORPG's sky that I've seen. It looks realistic and I don't know how anyone can say that it looks like just a pasted on texture. That's what the OTHER MMORPGs have. Just a single bitmap or whatever that just continously scrolls past, single clouds or not, it's ALWAYS the same thing.
Must have never played AC 1, which is ancient as hell and the graphics are way worse in that than they are in DF.

I'm not trying to pick a fight, but do you even know what having a dynamic sky means? It means that the sky in Darkfall is going to be ever-changing. Sometimes it's going to have lots of clouds all bunched together, other times it's going to have just a few clouds here and there, at other times it may have no clouds at all. You're also going to see it change as new cloud formations form as rain and storms comes near. But I understand that those types of things are hard to display in a still shot.

Great! This is exactly what I would expect from what the devs told us. They claimed that their sky was excellent. You know what I have seen so far? Pasted on clouds. Ever notice how the clouds do a dive bomb into the horizon? Ever notice how that isn't the normal behavior of real life clouds? One of the biggest problem with the clouds is that they have absolutely no depth whatsoever.

You can argue all you want, but I won't budge on this one. I have stared at those damn screenies for hours trying with all my will to find something positive about the sky, and I honestly haven't been able to.

[Porthios]

Originally posted by AkielVonStrife+Nov 25 2003, 10:29 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (AkielVonStrife @ Nov 25 2003, 10:29 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin--Porthios@Nov 26 2003, 01:21 AM
this is the shittiest sky I have seen for a game in a long long time.

Well, to each his own. I wasn't trying to say you were wrong, just that you had your own opinion. The thing about the Orks wasn't so much an arguement as much as it was "the way I see things." Obviously, this is where we disagree, or see things differently. No problem. :) [/b][/quote]
Last time I checked, orcs were in the fantasy genre, and fake looking skies weren't.

[Blade]

Porthios, i think we will not be able to make a sound decision based on the still screenshots. From what the devs said the movement and constant diversity of the clouds and sky is what makes DF sky a great experience.
So I think we should wait at least for a movie to see this effect before we start bashind the game, or the grafix, or the devs, right?

Personally, ive never played AC and havent seen that sky, but from SS ive seen the whole game looks to have crappy grafix, so i cant believe that the sky is so much different or better than other ongoing games. Comparing the screenshots with DAoC, I think DF

[Enemy]

Originally posted by Blade@Nov 26 2003, 11:31 AM
Porthios, i think we will not be able to make a sound decision based on the still screenshots. From what the devs said the movement and constant diversity of the clouds and sky is what makes DF sky a great experience.
So I think we should wait at least for a movie to see this effect before we start bashind the game, or the grafix, or the devs, right?
Amen. And for the record devs, I LOVE your skies and I think they have all been perfect so far!

[Porthios]

[quote]Originally posted by Blade@Nov 26 2003, 09:31 AM
[b] Porthios, i think we will not be able to make a sound decision based on the still screenshots. From what the devs said the movement and constant diversity of the clouds and sky is what makes DF sky a great experience.
So I think we should wait at least for a movie to see this effect before we start bashind the game, or the grafix, or the devs, right?

Personally, ive never played AC and havent seen that sky, but from SS ive seen the whole game looks to have crappy grafix, so i cant believe that the sky is so much different or better than other ongoing games. Comparing the screenshots with DAoC, I think DF

[Kendrael]

I've said it before and i'll say it again, texture, texture, texture! The basic ideas of the graphics are outstanding, but incredibly un-polished. It looks like the graphics are on the thrid stage of a five stage building project. The graphics also look a little blocky to as far as the things that have a basic square or rectaungualr shape to them. Just look at the mugs on the table, their freiking squares, not even an ork drinks from a square mug. Take your time and slow down on the graphics on the graphics. Also be careful with the haze in the back round. It looks more like a powered painting rather then a far away place, kind of like a movie set with a bad poster backround. Don't rush these things becuase you want to have the "largest mmorpg world ever." These screenshots remind me of AO and that's just plain yucky. If a non-knowing person looks at a screen shot from DnL or WoW, then at one of DF, they'd probably think that AC just came out with an amzaing new patch. However, the graphics are IMO can be saved if you guys just spend more time in them, or you'll have to make up with a great gameplay which is the key to all great mmorpg's, but that's still no reason to create un-realistic graphics.

P.S. the sky itself in AC wasn;t that great, but the moons just totally kicked ass.