Which is why it looks weird. Realistic lighting is honestly pretty cool looking. I see no reason leaving any lingering magical light anywhere, especially in Diablo. I have never anywhere in DI or DII saw it before, and see no reason why it should exist in the universe, in such a way.
It's just lazy "let's stick a light object here" lighting. I'm saying if you actually use real objects in the game world that emit the light, you will be forced to be less lazy with it, and it would generate a better effect.
That, and it's very diffused. Each area should have its own atmosphere, that includes lighting. If every area has green spots due to lingering magic that kinda ruins it.
Realistic approach to lighting is pretty effective.
Some areas you have firepits, torches, candelabres, etc. Some areas, gas lamps and stuff. Some areas you have magical fires. It would make every area look different just due to the lighting. Wall glow can be there as well but not in every enclosed area.
Right now outdoor environments in DIII look much better than the indoor ones due to the lighting issue.
At most you can add a general light to the area that will make it brighter (e.g., so that you do not walk in pitch black) but that light needs to be white, not green, not blue, not frekking purple.
I actually think that's just the way the torchlight interacts with the stones of the dungeon floor. The stones are greyish, probably with some moss etc, which results in a greenish shine. In any way, it doesn't bother me much.
Or maybe it's just that they need a way to provide vision to the player in an area which is not lit by any actual light source. It's just the way they represent how your character sees in the dark.
those that are touched or aware of the intricate link of magic in the world of sanctuary, see the green magical haze everywhere - in the lore it mentions it alot
I'm talking about the games (screenshot or gtfo. DI could be said to have a color tint to a level but it wasn't a lighting thing). The lore is less important than the aesthetic quality of these green hazes. Which is what we're discussing here.
As for light radius, I prefer bright games to dark games so...
I think that, since the first announcement of D3, Blizz evolved the game graphics further towards the core of Diablo art style. We now have more gore and blood than ever before, and the characters look very good in action and the overall visual effects. There's still sound, but it's harder to evaluate it over video demos...
Anyway, I always like to say that Diablo, even if they wanted to make it suck, it would be very hard. The genre created by Blizard North many years ago make this franchise unique.
BUT, what really worries everyone, is that the TEXTURES SUCK! And that's a fact.
Take recent games for example, say Fallout 3. It's an action RPG and the textures are awesome. There's an entire world, nearly free of load times, with wonderful textures. Of course, if you have crappy PC, go minimum, average PC, go medium textures. Logically, if you care to spend cash on PCs instead of liquor (or anything else...) you go for the full texture size and enjoy great visuals. Another good example, The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Set it to full and you'll be amazed.
Bottom line, textures in D3 ARE A BLURED THING! IMO, all is great, but the sucking walls and floors with crappy blured textures.
It can, but then you force everyone to buy an entirely new rig just to run a game. So it's not worth their while on a business end.
And furthermore:
GRAPHICS DO NOT MAKE A GAME.
GAMEPLAY.
MAKES.
A GAME.
I'm so tired of people bitching and whining about visuals. You want the best graphics? TAKE A FUCKING WALK OUTSIDE!
Actually, you know what really bugs me? People aren;t even bitching about the graphics, they're bitching about the colour palette pretty much. You guys are asking for a game with a Sepia filter. That's it. Brown and grey is what you're asking for.
Now look around you. Go outside, take a walk, come back and tell me this:
When the fuck was the last time that the worlds known colour scheme consisted solely of various tones of black and brown?
Yes I took a walk... to my personal underground dungeon. It was all black down there. Until I lighted up some torchs. And then it was all grey and brown.
Seriously, it a matter of art direction. When you're watching a suspense movie or a war movie. I really don't see an clear sky and small animals running around rainbows. It has nothing to do with reality, it's only a matter of change how the spectator (player) feels in that enviorment. Small animals only wonder around like retardeds when there no predators or danger around, so they represent safaty. Rainbows usually appear after a storms, wich means some kind of tranquility.
Just take a couple of pictures and go out asking people on the streets what they feel about seeing places. Pick some pictures of europe in WW1/WW2, some pictures of a torture chamber in some random place in the world and ask what they feel. Now then take a picture of some tropical paradises and japoneses rice farms in a sunny day, and ask again what they feel.
Now just ask yourself what kind of feeling you should have when playing D3.
Seriously. I was there in the very moment D3 official site got online. My first contact with D3 was a picture of a barbarian in outdoor area. The first thing I thought was "SWEET! A Heaven's act!". Seriosuly, i don't want feel like i'm in heaven when i'm actually soppose to survives in a chaotic demon apocalypse.
To OP:
I love how D3 looks at the moment. Also, an increased level of detail in the environment like you see on that screenshot means less monsters and action on screen at once. Sure, D3 could look even better, but I'm not sure the trade-off is worth it. Imagine the complaints D3 would receive if there were only 4-5 monsters on screen at a time.
And if it's just the blood and grit you're after, I'm sure D3 has it's fair share.
And about the green haze:
If you're familiar with color theories, you'll know that blue-green, like the one used in the haze, is the coldest color. In this case, the cold blue-green color represents the darkness without making it completely dark. Making it completely dark would make the characters and enemies less readable. Readability of characters and enemies in the environment is something the guys over at Blizzard put a lot of weight on, from what I've gathered, and I would do the same.
Using cold colors for the darkness increases the sense of cool air you'll find in, for instance, a ruined cathedral. And the character brings in warm colors using spell/skill/item effects. Red-orange and blue-green is the most effective contrast you'll find in colors. It's both a complementary contrast and a warm-cold contrast, and the fact that they use it only means that they know what they're doing. Most people's brains are wired to like it.
Also, an increased level of detail in the environment like you see on that screenshot means less monsters and action on screen at once.
Really? You're heavily overestimating how taxing that actually is.
SII has significantly heavier graphics than DIII (designed for a closer, sometimes even upfront, camera), SII can support hordes of monsters on the screen (20+ or so, DII hardly had more) pretty well, and SII is made by German developers who don't know how to optimize - it still runs fine on my kinda meh laptop, on max settings (yes, there are some issues. See German developers). It's also fully 3D vs what DIII is going to be (one camera angle), and you're telling me Blizzard can't add sharper textures considering they have less stuff to draw, they have low poly models, low-level texture management (no special mapping techniques and stuff), and much better programmers + much more time??? The only potentially heavy thing they have in there is physics and textures are fundamental to that.
Don't give me that shit. It's really not as heavy as you and everybody else seem to think it is. How about you let developers worry about how taxing it is?
Games have been developed for ages yet people were able to make them look good despite limited graphical resources. It's not our problem. If it looks bad (or not as good as it could be), it looks bad.
Problem is, textures are not exactly a performance problem, either. I've seen some old games with crisp textures, it's the manner in which they draw them. Currently, DIII textures are made in WoW's style which is blurry (not because of quality, it's just blurry by itself), as opposed to basically gritty where the edges are sharper and colors slightly less saturated and balanced.
Note the brown-yellow wall brick texture in WoW and how it's drawn. Then note the black-gray floor brick texture in DSII/DSI and how it's drawn. DSII (let alone DSI) probably has lower system requirements than WoW does for all I know. Their texture is low-rez. The WoW texture is high rez. Please note how much softer/blurrier the WoW texture looks, regardless. That's what DIII has right now. http://img374.imageshack.us/i/diablo3screengy4.jpg/
Their management of models has the same after effect, as well.
Lighting certainly doesn't help but right now it looks a lot like TL and I played that game long enough to know those graphics are not bad (nor are DIII's graphics), but I don't necessarily like the mood those kinds of graphics create, and TL didn't even have the lighting problem.
I'm not bringing up this to say DSII looks better than either of the two games or something but I want to make it clear that DIII is currently carrying WoW's texture (and model) management and it's not a performance issue. It's a "we do it the same way for all our 3D games" issue. I don't know if DIII actually has any WoW 3D modelers/texturers but it sure feels like it, same goes for SCII tbh, which is released for all of us to see it hasn't changed.
If you're familiar with color theories, you'll know that blue-green, like the one used in the haze, is the coldest color.
I'm not familiar with any theories and this sounds like bullshit, and I don't agree with it.
If you don't want it to be completely dark don't make it so. Give it a light source OMG. Did you ever play ANYTHING besides Diablo II? Diablo II is horribly lit. Most games out there (aside form the recent FPS spew) are not. They don't use any green-blue haze crap, either.
Using cold colors for the darkness increases the sense of cool air you'll find in, for instance, a ruined cathedral.
Funny, these "cold colors" are all over WoW and the last feeling I get from it is that of cool air.
You're grossly oversimplifying the effect of color on the eye. It's not as simple as "put color here". Blizzard's inability to deliver whatever it is they're trying to deliver is precisely what we're discussing here. Now, that's a matter of opinion. You have yours, you like it, that's fine, but don't try to imply it has anything to do with color theory, it doesn't. It has everything to do with whether we like it or not.
And the character brings in warm colors using spell/skill/item effects. Red-orange and blue-green is the most effective contrast you'll find in colors.
Funny, I never felt that way. I drive at night a lot. I love the night lights. It's just the black road and i get the red and yellow lights above (in front) me. It's quite beautiful. Any green or blue haze would ruin the... cleaniness of it all. It would make it muddy. And with muddy it's not 'cold'. It's muddy.
When I said increased level of detail, I wasn't talking about just the textures.
Anyway, when talking about Sacred 2, you're not taking into account how much that game reuses textures compared to what D3 seems to be doing. Reusing textures, and by doing so reducing the number of draw calls the graphics card has to do, can reduce how taxing the graphics are by a fair bit. But as we can see in Sacred 2, it also makes the environment look a lot more bland and boring, whereas the environment in D3 seems to have a wider range of textures in each area, which gives it a more varied and interesting look. The extra draw calls then need to be made up for by, for instance, having lower resolution textures on certain objects.
This is where the choice of texture art style comes in. The artists working on D3 has chosen an art style that not only keeps the game from looking messy and unreadable, but also works decently on low resolution textures. It maintains a unified visual appearance on textures by making the differences between low resolution textures used on large and small surfaces seem less evident, which is a big deal, at least in my opinion. The difference between high and low resolution textures is also less obvious.
So the reasons for their choice of art style isn't as simple as going for the "sort-of-like-WoW" style because they like it. I'm sure that's some of the reason, but as you can see, there are practical reasons for it as well.
Keep in mind though that my reasoning here is based on educated guesses. I'm only speaking from what I've seen in the games, and not what I know to be true about their choices and reasoning.
Also, in reply to your second post, I can only say that I've been studying art for about seven years now, so I'd appreciate it if you give me some credit and don't simply disregard what I say as nonsense.
If you'd like to know more about color theory, read up on Johannes Itten.
Anyway, when talking about Sacred 2, you're not taking into account how much that game reuses textures compared to what D3 seems to be doing.
If you don't think DIII is reusing textures, I got news for you... tbh I don't see how SII reuses them more than DIII does, I really don't. SII has blandification of areas but that is entirely unrelated to performance and has more to do with the fact that SII is HUGE which is why they are bound to have slightly less detail overall, but any specific area I do not notice this reusal you're referring to. Some areas, both indoors and outdoors, are pretty detailed. Reusing barrels and the like across the world does not improve performance, that's just reusing models due to time constrains during development (something DIII doesn't have to do since it was in development for 8 years).
The artists working on D3 has chosen an art style that not only keeps the game from looking messy and unreadable, but also works decently on low resolution textures.
Well, this thread is devoted to whether or not does it indeed look good. So it's simply a matter of opinion here. And my belief is if you have to use very unpleasant textures to allow for higher texture variation, you can as well decrease the variation. What's the point of variation if it all looks ugly as hell? This is a matter of opinion and I am very picky on textures, they're pretty much my #1 concern graphics wise in any game.
Or I could say they should go a step lower in terms of texture size and polygons, thing is, they already did. The gap between polygon count and texture size of SII and DIII is not a decent gap, or a small gap, it's a HUGE gap, for which SII's reused textures will never compensate (lol), there's a HUGE performance leeway there and I am just not buying it that DIII's textures have anything whatsoever to do with performance.
So the reasons for their choice of art style isn't as simple as going for the "sort-of-like-WoW" style because they like it. I'm sure that's some of the reason, but as you can see, there are practical reasons for it as well.
I disagree. WoW's style of textures is a style first performance issue later. There are older, OLDER games that don't look like WoW. You don't have to look like WoW to apply the same principles that you have just stated.
Also, in reply to your second post, I can only say that I've been studying art for about seven years now, so I'd appreciate it if you give me some credit and don't simply disregard what I say as nonsense.
There are two kinds of people out there. Those who study art, and those who understand it. One can help another, but if you do not understand art as it is, studying it is not going to help you.
I don't care about art theory because art is bad subject for theory. If you have 0 artistic feel theory is good, but otherwise it's a weak replacement for the real thing made to prevent people from designing absolutely abysmal websites that hurt everyone's eyes. But it's like copying a work of art using the squares method, you know.
Somewhere, sometime, there was a guy, who invented this art theory, and that guy didn't have art theory to rely on, because he fucking invented it, and he invented it because he understood art on a core level. If you're actually going to try to argue that there's a "correct" way to do art according to theory, you really missed the point of what art theory is actually for. You're trying to appeal to authority here and all I have to tell you is I believe art students have 0, if not less, of authority than any normal person on the street.
Ugh, if only I wasn't so notoriously bad at putting my thoughts into words, I'd try to explain more thoroughly what I mean, heh. For now, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
And about the green haze:
If you're familiar with color theories, you'll know that blue-green, like the one used in the haze, is the coldest color. In this case, the cold blue-green color represents the darkness without making it completely dark. Making it completely dark would make the characters and enemies less readable. Readability of characters and enemies in the environment is something the guys over at Blizzard put a lot of weight on, from what I've gathered, and I would do the same.
Using cold colors for the darkness increases the sense of cool air you'll find in, for instance, a ruined cathedral. And the character brings in warm colors using spell/skill/item effects. Red-orange and blue-green is the most effective contrast you'll find in colors. It's both a complementary contrast and a warm-cold contrast, and the fact that they use it only means that they know what they're doing. Most people's brains are wired to like it.
Ugh, if only I wasn't so notoriously bad at putting my thoughts into words, I'd try to explain more thoroughly what I mean, heh. For now, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
It's hard to come to an agreement on internet forums - or anywhere for that matter. People just like to stick to their initial opinion.
I like it that you're actually bringing some expertise to this discussion though. You provided some theory behind what people like me felt all along.
I don't think the impact of color on people's moods can be overestimated. That's also why the walls in hospitals have certain colors because, without people realizing, they are soothing (even though they are ugly).
Part of the discussion also comes forth from the fact that people are overanalizing motionless screenshots. When you're actually running around in the dungeons, you don't think as much about the scenery, but let it do its job of influencing your feelings subconciously.
Also, an increased level of detail in the environment like you see on that screenshot means less monsters and action on screen at once.
Really? You're heavily overestimating how taxing that actually is.
SII has significantly heavier graphics than DIII (designed for a closer, sometimes even upfront, camera), SII can support hordes of monsters on the screen (20+ or so, DII hardly had more) pretty well, and SII is made by German developers who don't know how to optimize - it still runs fine on my kinda meh laptop, on max settings (yes, there are some issues. See German developers). It's also fully 3D vs what DIII is going to be (one camera angle), and you're telling me Blizzard can't add sharper textures considering they have less stuff to draw, they have low poly models, low-level texture management (no special mapping techniques and stuff), and much better programmers + much more time??? The only potentially heavy thing they have in there is physics and textures are fundamental to that.
Don't give me that shit. It's really not as heavy as you and everybody else seem to think it is. How about you let developers worry about how taxing it is?
Games have been developed for ages yet people were able to make them look good despite limited graphical resources. It's not our problem. If it looks bad (or not as good as it could be), it looks bad.
Problem is, textures are not exactly a performance problem, either. I've seen some old games with crisp textures, it's the manner in which they draw them. Currently, DIII textures are made in WoW's style which is blurry (not because of quality, it's just blurry by itself), as opposed to basically gritty where the edges are sharper and colors slightly less saturated and balanced.
Note the brown-yellow wall brick texture in WoW and how it's drawn. Then note the black-gray floor brick texture in DSII/DSI and how it's drawn. DSII (let alone DSI) probably has lower system requirements than WoW does for all I know. Their texture is low-rez. The WoW texture is high rez. Please note how much softer/blurrier the WoW texture looks, regardless. That's what DIII has right now. http://img374.imageshack.us/i/diablo3screengy4.jpg/
Their management of models has the same after effect, as well.
Lighting certainly doesn't help but right now it looks a lot like TL and I played that game long enough to know those graphics are not bad (nor are DIII's graphics), but I don't necessarily like the mood those kinds of graphics create, and TL didn't even have the lighting problem.
I'm not bringing up this to say DSII looks better than either of the two games or something but I want to make it clear that DIII is currently carrying WoW's texture (and model) management and it's not a performance issue. It's a "we do it the same way for all our 3D games" issue. I don't know if DIII actually has any WoW 3D modelers/texturers but it sure feels like it, same goes for SCII tbh, which is released for all of us to see it hasn't changed.
Man. I guess we're bound to get blurry graphics aaaaall the way. :down:
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Diablo thanks God for creating obesity and ugliness.
It's just lazy "let's stick a light object here" lighting. I'm saying if you actually use real objects in the game world that emit the light, you will be forced to be less lazy with it, and it would generate a better effect.
That, and it's very diffused. Each area should have its own atmosphere, that includes lighting. If every area has green spots due to lingering magic that kinda ruins it.
Realistic approach to lighting is pretty effective.
Some areas you have firepits, torches, candelabres, etc. Some areas, gas lamps and stuff. Some areas you have magical fires. It would make every area look different just due to the lighting. Wall glow can be there as well but not in every enclosed area.
Right now outdoor environments in DIII look much better than the indoor ones due to the lighting issue.
At most you can add a general light to the area that will make it brighter (e.g., so that you do not walk in pitch black) but that light needs to be white, not green, not blue, not frekking purple.
This.
Like that.
Or maybe it's just that they need a way to provide vision to the player in an area which is not lit by any actual light source. It's just the way they represent how your character sees in the dark.
As for light radius, I prefer bright games to dark games so...
Anyway, I always like to say that Diablo, even if they wanted to make it suck, it would be very hard. The genre created by Blizard North many years ago make this franchise unique.
BUT, what really worries everyone, is that the TEXTURES SUCK! And that's a fact.
Take recent games for example, say Fallout 3. It's an action RPG and the textures are awesome. There's an entire world, nearly free of load times, with wonderful textures. Of course, if you have crappy PC, go minimum, average PC, go medium textures. Logically, if you care to spend cash on PCs instead of liquor (or anything else...) you go for the full texture size and enjoy great visuals. Another good example, The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Set it to full and you'll be amazed.
Bottom line, textures in D3 ARE A BLURED THING! IMO, all is great, but the sucking walls and floors with crappy blured textures.
That's it, cheers to all.
Yes I took a walk... to my personal underground dungeon. It was all black down there. Until I lighted up some torchs. And then it was all grey and brown.
Seriously, it a matter of art direction. When you're watching a suspense movie or a war movie. I really don't see an clear sky and small animals running around rainbows. It has nothing to do with reality, it's only a matter of change how the spectator (player) feels in that enviorment. Small animals only wonder around like retardeds when there no predators or danger around, so they represent safaty. Rainbows usually appear after a storms, wich means some kind of tranquility.
Just take a couple of pictures and go out asking people on the streets what they feel about seeing places. Pick some pictures of europe in WW1/WW2, some pictures of a torture chamber in some random place in the world and ask what they feel. Now then take a picture of some tropical paradises and japoneses rice farms in a sunny day, and ask again what they feel.
Now just ask yourself what kind of feeling you should have when playing D3.
Seriously. I was there in the very moment D3 official site got online. My first contact with D3 was a picture of a barbarian in outdoor area. The first thing I thought was "SWEET! A Heaven's act!". Seriosuly, i don't want feel like i'm in heaven when i'm actually soppose to survives in a chaotic demon apocalypse.
I love how D3 looks at the moment. Also, an increased level of detail in the environment like you see on that screenshot means less monsters and action on screen at once. Sure, D3 could look even better, but I'm not sure the trade-off is worth it. Imagine the complaints D3 would receive if there were only 4-5 monsters on screen at a time.
And if it's just the blood and grit you're after, I'm sure D3 has it's fair share.
And about the green haze:
If you're familiar with color theories, you'll know that blue-green, like the one used in the haze, is the coldest color. In this case, the cold blue-green color represents the darkness without making it completely dark. Making it completely dark would make the characters and enemies less readable. Readability of characters and enemies in the environment is something the guys over at Blizzard put a lot of weight on, from what I've gathered, and I would do the same.
Using cold colors for the darkness increases the sense of cool air you'll find in, for instance, a ruined cathedral. And the character brings in warm colors using spell/skill/item effects. Red-orange and blue-green is the most effective contrast you'll find in colors. It's both a complementary contrast and a warm-cold contrast, and the fact that they use it only means that they know what they're doing. Most people's brains are wired to like it.
SII has significantly heavier graphics than DIII (designed for a closer, sometimes even upfront, camera), SII can support hordes of monsters on the screen (20+ or so, DII hardly had more) pretty well, and SII is made by German developers who don't know how to optimize - it still runs fine on my kinda meh laptop, on max settings (yes, there are some issues. See German developers). It's also fully 3D vs what DIII is going to be (one camera angle), and you're telling me Blizzard can't add sharper textures considering they have less stuff to draw, they have low poly models, low-level texture management (no special mapping techniques and stuff), and much better programmers + much more time??? The only potentially heavy thing they have in there is physics and textures are fundamental to that.
Don't give me that shit. It's really not as heavy as you and everybody else seem to think it is. How about you let developers worry about how taxing it is?
Games have been developed for ages yet people were able to make them look good despite limited graphical resources. It's not our problem. If it looks bad (or not as good as it could be), it looks bad.
Problem is, textures are not exactly a performance problem, either. I've seen some old games with crisp textures, it's the manner in which they draw them. Currently, DIII textures are made in WoW's style which is blurry (not because of quality, it's just blurry by itself), as opposed to basically gritty where the edges are sharper and colors slightly less saturated and balanced.
Compare:
WoW: http://www.stuffwelike.com/stuffwelike/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/world-of-warcraft-a.jpg
DSII: http://pcmedia.ign.com/pc/image/article/641/641300/dungeon-siege-ii-20050811071804606_640w.jpg
DSI: http://games.softpedia.com/screenshots/The-Dungeon-Siege-Legends-of-Aranna_4.jpg
Note the brown-yellow wall brick texture in WoW and how it's drawn. Then note the black-gray floor brick texture in DSII/DSI and how it's drawn. DSII (let alone DSI) probably has lower system requirements than WoW does for all I know. Their texture is low-rez. The WoW texture is high rez. Please note how much softer/blurrier the WoW texture looks, regardless. That's what DIII has right now. http://img374.imageshack.us/i/diablo3screengy4.jpg/
Their management of models has the same after effect, as well.
Lighting certainly doesn't help but right now it looks a lot like TL and I played that game long enough to know those graphics are not bad (nor are DIII's graphics), but I don't necessarily like the mood those kinds of graphics create, and TL didn't even have the lighting problem.
I'm not bringing up this to say DSII looks better than either of the two games or something but I want to make it clear that DIII is currently carrying WoW's texture (and model) management and it's not a performance issue. It's a "we do it the same way for all our 3D games" issue. I don't know if DIII actually has any WoW 3D modelers/texturers but it sure feels like it, same goes for SCII tbh, which is released for all of us to see it hasn't changed.
If you don't want it to be completely dark don't make it so. Give it a light source OMG. Did you ever play ANYTHING besides Diablo II? Diablo II is horribly lit. Most games out there (aside form the recent FPS spew) are not. They don't use any green-blue haze crap, either.
Funny, these "cold colors" are all over WoW and the last feeling I get from it is that of cool air.
You're grossly oversimplifying the effect of color on the eye. It's not as simple as "put color here". Blizzard's inability to deliver whatever it is they're trying to deliver is precisely what we're discussing here. Now, that's a matter of opinion. You have yours, you like it, that's fine, but don't try to imply it has anything to do with color theory, it doesn't. It has everything to do with whether we like it or not.
Funny, I never felt that way. I drive at night a lot. I love the night lights. It's just the black road and i get the red and yellow lights above (in front) me. It's quite beautiful. Any green or blue haze would ruin the... cleaniness of it all. It would make it muddy. And with muddy it's not 'cold'. It's muddy.
Well, mine sure as hell aren't.
Anyway, when talking about Sacred 2, you're not taking into account how much that game reuses textures compared to what D3 seems to be doing. Reusing textures, and by doing so reducing the number of draw calls the graphics card has to do, can reduce how taxing the graphics are by a fair bit. But as we can see in Sacred 2, it also makes the environment look a lot more bland and boring, whereas the environment in D3 seems to have a wider range of textures in each area, which gives it a more varied and interesting look. The extra draw calls then need to be made up for by, for instance, having lower resolution textures on certain objects.
This is where the choice of texture art style comes in. The artists working on D3 has chosen an art style that not only keeps the game from looking messy and unreadable, but also works decently on low resolution textures. It maintains a unified visual appearance on textures by making the differences between low resolution textures used on large and small surfaces seem less evident, which is a big deal, at least in my opinion. The difference between high and low resolution textures is also less obvious.
So the reasons for their choice of art style isn't as simple as going for the "sort-of-like-WoW" style because they like it. I'm sure that's some of the reason, but as you can see, there are practical reasons for it as well.
Keep in mind though that my reasoning here is based on educated guesses. I'm only speaking from what I've seen in the games, and not what I know to be true about their choices and reasoning.
Also, in reply to your second post, I can only say that I've been studying art for about seven years now, so I'd appreciate it if you give me some credit and don't simply disregard what I say as nonsense.
If you'd like to know more about color theory, read up on Johannes Itten.
Well, this thread is devoted to whether or not does it indeed look good. So it's simply a matter of opinion here. And my belief is if you have to use very unpleasant textures to allow for higher texture variation, you can as well decrease the variation. What's the point of variation if it all looks ugly as hell? This is a matter of opinion and I am very picky on textures, they're pretty much my #1 concern graphics wise in any game.
Or I could say they should go a step lower in terms of texture size and polygons, thing is, they already did. The gap between polygon count and texture size of SII and DIII is not a decent gap, or a small gap, it's a HUGE gap, for which SII's reused textures will never compensate (lol), there's a HUGE performance leeway there and I am just not buying it that DIII's textures have anything whatsoever to do with performance.
I disagree. WoW's style of textures is a style first performance issue later. There are older, OLDER games that don't look like WoW. You don't have to look like WoW to apply the same principles that you have just stated.
There are two kinds of people out there. Those who study art, and those who understand it. One can help another, but if you do not understand art as it is, studying it is not going to help you.
I don't care about art theory because art is bad subject for theory. If you have 0 artistic feel theory is good, but otherwise it's a weak replacement for the real thing made to prevent people from designing absolutely abysmal websites that hurt everyone's eyes. But it's like copying a work of art using the squares method, you know.
Somewhere, sometime, there was a guy, who invented this art theory, and that guy didn't have art theory to rely on, because he fucking invented it, and he invented it because he understood art on a core level. If you're actually going to try to argue that there's a "correct" way to do art according to theory, you really missed the point of what art theory is actually for. You're trying to appeal to authority here and all I have to tell you is I believe art students have 0, if not less, of authority than any normal person on the street.
Ugh, if only I wasn't so notoriously bad at putting my thoughts into words, I'd try to explain more thoroughly what I mean, heh. For now, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
+1 my good sir.
I like it that you're actually bringing some expertise to this discussion though. You provided some theory behind what people like me felt all along.
I don't think the impact of color on people's moods can be overestimated. That's also why the walls in hospitals have certain colors because, without people realizing, they are soothing (even though they are ugly).
Part of the discussion also comes forth from the fact that people are overanalizing motionless screenshots. When you're actually running around in the dungeons, you don't think as much about the scenery, but let it do its job of influencing your feelings subconciously.
Man. I guess we're bound to get blurry graphics aaaaall the way. :down: