Nowake
06-30-2003, 15:19
The french words are Braudel's, who tried to describe the principal demand required to a historian. By this thread I surely don't try to teach the developers how to use their creative skills, it's more of a personal opinion (however, shared by many). Btw, I posted tihs at .com some time ago, but thought that the .org forumers that don't frequent the official forums should have the chance to state their opinion about this also.
But lets get to the point: the unit design As we saw from the trailers, and esspecially from the in-game footage, like the one presented by .ign, the units seem ... cartoonish The unit detail is pretty high, they fight in quite a decent manner, but ... all those people are so coloured OF course, the colour is the one of the faction mainly, and with good reasons: CA made its point: the player has to be able to observe the overall situation on the battlefield just by watching the level of involment for his units, to be able to visualize the outcome of a hand-to-hand combat.
We ( I ) fully understand this. The problem is that all the effort put by CA in developing the animations and overall graphic aspect will be, most probably, much reduced by the perception the player will have when visualising his units.
Lets remember Shogun Total War Maybe a detail that wasn't noticed by many: all the units had the same aspect, no matter the faction. The sashimono was the one making the whole difference. The units were "coloured" mostly in black, grey, white, maroon, red (no-dachi) etc. All these colours were realistic from the historical point of view, the japanesse warriors were probably looking much in the same way (of course, if seen from far away http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif) In Medieval Total War, all this changed: the colour of the clothes is the one making the whole difference, and of course, this was the solution found by the developers because of the historical situation: the people rarely wore distinctive marks, an exception were the knights, of course. But this lead in my opinion to a profound change in the player's perception (try not to be amused, the detail is very important in historical games) If in Shogun Total
War we had the strong feeling of leading our pack of warriors into the battle, in Medieval this is much diminished, and an important factor is the way the units look. The player can't imagine a battlefield where light blue archers fight orange heavy infantry or green cavalry. It's like a tiring reminder of the fact that they are looking at units, not troops, that they see sprites, not men.
I always hoped that the next Total War will do better when handling this aestethic aspect. But we saw blue legionaires, yellow barbarians, hoplites (I guess) wearing green tunics and other colourfull surprises. It really produces a big eyesore (I hope this is the corect term http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif), in my opinion.
Solutions are not very hard to find, as I think that the actual unit design in Rome Total War is following the traditional way we saw in Medieval because the problem was not studied, and not because solutions would be hard to find. I allow myself to make some sugestions: the main issue is the unrealistic coloured aspect of the units, so we have to see how can we differentiate units without
leaving common sense behind. First, this is much more easier than in Medieval, as we have completely different factions with completely different troops. You can't confuse a barbarian with a legionaire. But, of course, we are going to have three different roman factions ... wouldn't it be easier to colour just the shields with blue, red and green, instead of the whole man? This is quite
accurate, as before the battle it is more than possible for the soldiers to mark their shields in order to differentiate the enemyes more easily; in case of the battles fought in the civil wars, this is not just possible, it's probable Also, I suppose another "hard to solve" problem will appear when dealing with barbarian factions that look very much alike, like gauls, germans, britons, or lets say that with factions that usual players are not so familiar with in order to make a difference. We saw woad warriors: so the colour of the woad should be different, and not the whole aspect (in this case, probably pants http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif) The main ideea is to try to keep the overall aspect as realistic as possible, using colours that do not disturb the eye in a historical game: black would not be inaccurate, maroon or beige (depicting leather) silver (armour) white, red (as usuall colours) and grey should mainly be used for clothes etc. Other sugestions are beyond my grasp, as we know very little of the game.
Hope this will be seen as a good point by Creative Assembly, and that they will take it into consideration http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
My 2 cents http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif
But lets get to the point: the unit design As we saw from the trailers, and esspecially from the in-game footage, like the one presented by .ign, the units seem ... cartoonish The unit detail is pretty high, they fight in quite a decent manner, but ... all those people are so coloured OF course, the colour is the one of the faction mainly, and with good reasons: CA made its point: the player has to be able to observe the overall situation on the battlefield just by watching the level of involment for his units, to be able to visualize the outcome of a hand-to-hand combat.
We ( I ) fully understand this. The problem is that all the effort put by CA in developing the animations and overall graphic aspect will be, most probably, much reduced by the perception the player will have when visualising his units.
Lets remember Shogun Total War Maybe a detail that wasn't noticed by many: all the units had the same aspect, no matter the faction. The sashimono was the one making the whole difference. The units were "coloured" mostly in black, grey, white, maroon, red (no-dachi) etc. All these colours were realistic from the historical point of view, the japanesse warriors were probably looking much in the same way (of course, if seen from far away http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif) In Medieval Total War, all this changed: the colour of the clothes is the one making the whole difference, and of course, this was the solution found by the developers because of the historical situation: the people rarely wore distinctive marks, an exception were the knights, of course. But this lead in my opinion to a profound change in the player's perception (try not to be amused, the detail is very important in historical games) If in Shogun Total
War we had the strong feeling of leading our pack of warriors into the battle, in Medieval this is much diminished, and an important factor is the way the units look. The player can't imagine a battlefield where light blue archers fight orange heavy infantry or green cavalry. It's like a tiring reminder of the fact that they are looking at units, not troops, that they see sprites, not men.
I always hoped that the next Total War will do better when handling this aestethic aspect. But we saw blue legionaires, yellow barbarians, hoplites (I guess) wearing green tunics and other colourfull surprises. It really produces a big eyesore (I hope this is the corect term http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif), in my opinion.
Solutions are not very hard to find, as I think that the actual unit design in Rome Total War is following the traditional way we saw in Medieval because the problem was not studied, and not because solutions would be hard to find. I allow myself to make some sugestions: the main issue is the unrealistic coloured aspect of the units, so we have to see how can we differentiate units without
leaving common sense behind. First, this is much more easier than in Medieval, as we have completely different factions with completely different troops. You can't confuse a barbarian with a legionaire. But, of course, we are going to have three different roman factions ... wouldn't it be easier to colour just the shields with blue, red and green, instead of the whole man? This is quite
accurate, as before the battle it is more than possible for the soldiers to mark their shields in order to differentiate the enemyes more easily; in case of the battles fought in the civil wars, this is not just possible, it's probable Also, I suppose another "hard to solve" problem will appear when dealing with barbarian factions that look very much alike, like gauls, germans, britons, or lets say that with factions that usual players are not so familiar with in order to make a difference. We saw woad warriors: so the colour of the woad should be different, and not the whole aspect (in this case, probably pants http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif) The main ideea is to try to keep the overall aspect as realistic as possible, using colours that do not disturb the eye in a historical game: black would not be inaccurate, maroon or beige (depicting leather) silver (armour) white, red (as usuall colours) and grey should mainly be used for clothes etc. Other sugestions are beyond my grasp, as we know very little of the game.
Hope this will be seen as a good point by Creative Assembly, and that they will take it into consideration http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
My 2 cents http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif