Ugliest Game of 2001?

[tniem]

Originally posted by yin26
Simply: The tried and true Civ 10-year-old gameplay will NOT be enough to get me to buy Civ 3. At the very least I was hoping for the game to have a major facelift to justify my $50. So far, my money will be going somewhere else.

Agreed. I really hoped for a lot more. I was hoping that they would take some of the elevation features of SMAC and make it more realistic and more understandable for Earth.

I personally do not believe the colors they choose are that bad. In fact I kind of like them, but the screen shots are just hard to like. It may be because of the jpg formats, but I just don't like what I have seen.

Civ 3 for Ugliest Game of 2001!

Correction: Civ 3 for Ugliest Game of 2002. I just don't see it coming out this fall - two games from the same company in the same 6 week period. Not likely.

[ContradictioN]

UR, thats silly, and I'm sure you know it, there won't be any turning corners on roads!

I'll tell you my opinion on the roads. They're ugly, not because they're swirving everywhere, but because they are too big. The main road is 3 times as big as Civ2's, the rest are 1.5 times as big as Civ2's.

They are also ugly because of the colour they used, they've used a colour thats closer to a beach/desert road, rather than a dirt road.

The last reason why they are ugly is because they appear to be floating.

This is how I would fix it.

1. Make the small roads, the main roads. and make the small roads half their size now. So that they appear almost gone, but you can still see them clearly.

2. Make it a darker brown.

3. Lessen the usage of roads when getting further from the city.
So for example, all the tiles surrounding a large city, will be messy, but the next tiles won't be as messy, and so forth. This will also help to unclutter it. Otherwise making it look like pointless roads everywhere.
What I'm suggesting is, that you have control of making the main roads, but as your culture grows, so do roads around your city.

4. No indentation!, roads are not like that! But rivers need that!

5. The last thing I can think of is that the roads don't appear to be anti-aliased, I think that would greatly help lessen the appearence of an ugly road. Because if you notice the big roads, they are quite jaggy, and seem to jump out at places. This will also get rid of the floating look.

[Kevin Ar18]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Why can't they just draw a line from point A to point B without this spider web-ish quality?

I didn't want to say anything about this, but since someone else did, I will too. I agree there. I don't particularly like how the roads are done. It's just so much more confusing than the Civ2 model. In some places you have two roads right next to each other on the same tile! It get's kind of hard to tell where the tiles are that have roads because they curve sooo much, whereas in Civ 2 they were nice and straight with just the right amount of curviness.

[ContradictioN]

I don't think you actualy walk on the roads.

If there is a road on a tile, then that counts as 1/3 of your travelling distance. That's how it works, remember?

(not saying it will be 1/3 in civ3)

[Kevin Ar18]

Yeah, I know that, but that was not what I was talking about... I was talking about how they looked.

[yin26]

I could live with the basic look of an individual road, but slopped together this way, I doubt ANY road would look good. This is one of those cases where realism should take a back seat to artistic design.

[Capt Dizle]

Much ado about nothing. Click me-irate's link.
Yin is pulling a joke or something with some early rendering.

Do you folks really think Sid would let something out that bad?

LOL

[One More Turn!]

My vote would be for ugliest game of 2002.

I can live with a game without pretty graphics, but they have to clean these up if they want to compete for my $$

[loinburger]

Wutang! I was hoping that Firaxis would bring back the familiar "ugly as ****" SMAC screens!

[November Adam]

Hey! Just took a look at these shots, I don't mind the blending together, as long as they have a grid overlay (subtle mind you). The mountains look ridiculous, if I didn't know better I would think it was a phalax symbol or something. I think the artist should have popped into a plane and took some photos from a birds eye view.

Civ 2 had great irragated fields, and farmland. It was closer to how they looked. The artist should just bump up the detail.

Has anyone seen the map for Middle Earth The Card Game? That was a well drawn map.

I understand with tiles it would be hard to blend from say a mountain tile to a prarie tile, but couldn't they have created more than one tile for mountains? Say one for mountains meeting ocean, meeting forest, etc. Sure this would be a lot of work but it would create a nice map (I think). Granted I'm not sure what the memory requirements would be for this, or the programming required.

i think the color palette is very limited, it's like the picture was adjusted with a yellow filter over it or something. ECH!

[Father Beast]

I don't know what all you dogs are barking about. the screenshot looks good to me. I want to print it out and hang it in my bedroom for good feelings.

[Imran Siddiqui]

FB, I agree . I quite like the screenshots. I don't know what everyone is complaining about...

[Zylka]

The graphics look plain... hokey. The overly bright, easter like colors remind me of the onset of a psilocybin trip. Nice job with the mountains as well, I had no idea the majority of the earths rocky peaks look like north American hoodoos.

All in all, the tint is plain horrible. The overall look should be dulled down and darkened, a take on civ2's looks with more blending, countour variety (visual only), and attention to detail. Tip for firaxis when civ4 rolls around; don't hire graduates from art schools that advertise on the back of match books.

Cheers

[Zylka]

While I'm still feeling generous

...another tip. Art history is a nice place to look for creative inspiration, but not to theme an entire f*cking game on when you have pictures of "real life" to use.

No, that must be wrong. When civ4 comes out, can you please base it on van Gogh's "Stary Night?". I want to feel like I'm in an absinthe stupor whenever playing, which could get expensive...