Life is Feudal Official Forum

[Cian]

This is an mmo not warband. There were times in Darkfall where we routinely had 200 v 200 or even 500 v 500 battles. Sometimes they lagged badly, sometimes they didn't.

There will likely be realms large enough to contain several hundred people. The servers should be able to hold at least 75% of the maximum size of two realms fighting each other in a single battle.

[SirWinston]

I want to see the performance with 200 vs 200 battles before anyone talks any graphics upgrades. The game is designed around Realm vs Realm. If the GFX can't support massive battles it makes little sense to upgrade them.

Is that even realistic? 200 in total sounds like a pretty big number. Warband starts lagging at 150+ players.

If they can manage it on planetside 2 with tanks and planes and bombs and laser canons and all those shiny special effects, then it should be possible on LiF.

[MrZeppo]

But then again, planetside is a laggy mess.

[Siegbert]

PlanetSide is not lagging for me, at all. But I can't say I've seen 400-500 players in one battle. Hard to tell, though. It might be around 200 in a larger battle.

However Planetside has a way higher budget than LiF and it took them quite some time to optimize everything so you could get a solid performance (fps wise).

Being an MMO doesn't mean you magically eliminate every problem that comes with many players on one spot. Especially when combat is reaction based as it should be the case in LiF.

I never played DarkFall, but seriously? 500 vs 500?
That sounds really exaggerated

[Thokan]

It's all in the netcode. Warband starts latency-lagging at 150+ because the original netcode was knocked for 120 man servers at tops.

Planetside 2s cause of lag is mostly bad optimizing joined with too many things on your screen. I believe the netcode is pretty guud.

Difference.

[Siegbert]

Well, lag usually refers to delayed data packages and things like warping. Haven't experienced any of that in PlanetSide2, ever.

Back in beta I did have bad performance in terms of low fps though, if that is what you're talking about.

[Thokan]

Well, lag usually refers to delayed data packages and things like warping. Haven't experienced any of that in PlanetSide2, ever.

Back in beta I did have bad performance in terms of low fps though, if that is what you're talking about.

Precisely. My point exactly.

I usually differentiate lag from latency lag.

[SirWinston]

I don't get any lag either on Planetside 2, but I heard they had quite a few issues at launch that's true.

I never played DarkFall, but seriously? 500 vs 500?
That sounds really exaggerated

I don't think there was ever a battle involving a thousand players in Darkfall, but definatly over 500 which is already a huge number.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI42k0J99GE
hint: There's a lot more people than you can actually see on screen.

[Thokan]

I cant play the game at all. But that is totally cause of optimization. It ran perfectly smooth through beta and launch up until some patch where it went to shites.

They crashed the area server node when they tried fighting with thousands of people

[Siegbert]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI42k0J99GE
hint: There's a lot more people than you can actually see on screen.

Want that for Lif!

Man, imagine such a zerg with realistic non-shitty optic. bad ass

[AceTheFlame]

It depends on what you mean by graphics. It's common for that word to be grouped with aesthetics. I prefer more emphasis put into the details. How everything interacts and "blend" is key to making a believable and interesting world(this includes animations).

If you mean high resolution, then that can take a back seat. LiF already looks reasonable enough, for a seamless MMO aiming for large scale battles. If you guys were a AAA company then sure, but your resources could be better spent elsewhere(like the sand in the box).

[Siegbert]

Textures are pretty decently resoluted already. Lower LOD models could blend a bit better though, like trees in the distance.

[Hoshiqua]

Saw the graphics today water, the forests.. it was really beautiful ! Far away terrain is really good. On the other hand, closer things weren't that great, but more than good enough, so PLEASE, PLEASE don't waste time upgrading the graphics, and focus on gameplay !!

[Bobik]

Textures are pretty decently resoluted already. Lower LOD models could blend a bit better though, like trees in the distance.

Ye, our trees are ugly - we're aware of that. And expecially their LODs

[Saxxon]

Ye, our trees are ugly - we're aware of that. And expecially their LODs

The game is beautiful already and the trees just need a little love and the rest is great.

Gameplay and performance hopefully will always trump pretty stuff.

[Methelina]

Saw the graphics today water, the forests.. it was really beautiful ! Far away terrain is really good. On the other hand, closer things weren't that great, but more than good enough, so PLEASE, PLEASE don't waste time upgrading the graphics, and focus on gameplay !!

It will be mistake to think that we stayed on the choice what to do: graphics or a gameplay Graphics and Gameplay developed in parallel in two separate groups of developers team and do not interfere with each other. So the progress of the graphics did not depend from the development of the Gameplay

[Proximo]

Saw the graphics today water, the forests.. it was really beautiful ! Far away terrain is really good. On the other hand, closer things weren't that great, but more than good enough, so PLEASE, PLEASE don't waste time upgrading the graphics, and focus on gameplay !!

It will be mistake to think that we stayed on the choice what to do: graphics or a gameplay Graphics and Gameplay developed in parallel in two separate groups of developers team and do not interfere with each other. So the progress of the graphics did not depend from the development of the Gameplay

Yay

[Jezbelle]

I think the graphics of the world are excellent. (as well as the rest of the game).

On the other hand, the "character models" really need help IMO. Me and my friends' first impressions of the character models/animations were not good. Animations are clunky, and the models look like thin skins, also jagged and unrefined.

I think this needs to be addressed first and foremost in the "graphics" category.

[Gladius]

I think graphics are OK (it's not Unreal engine 4 or Cryengine after all), but the character models could receive some beautification.

Also, will it be possible later, to change the characters appearance at character creation?

[Siegbert]

I'm quite okay with how the character models look but animations will need some rework at some point to make it look more natural and fluid. I guess that's something for a later stage of development.

[Thokan]

The character models and animations are obviously going to be worked on.

[Bunce]

Its prealpha...

[Jezbelle]

Yes, but the environment is proportionally much better in quality than the characters themselves. This is what worried me.

And while yes its in pre-alpha, many things don't change as much as you'd think. Now is the time to drive home the things we find most offensive so that they have time to change them.

[Siegbert]

I don't think characters are very likely to be redone completely until release. There are some minor things I really find "offensive" like you can look through your neck with normal clothes and some animations look really weird.

Apart from that I think we will have to live with the current quality which is still better than Mount&Blade's models.

[Gladius]

Apart from that I think we will have to live with the current quality which is still better than Mount&Blade's models.

Yes, it looks better, but M&B, while still good, is like 100 years old

[Siegbert]

Yea, I have low expectations when it comes to graphics. As long as it looks better than M&B I would consider it "okay". Unlike Wurm which I find not okay and therefore wouldn't play.

[Gladius]

I agree. I like Wurms' concept, but could never get past its' terrible interface, general laggynes and bad graphics.

[Jezbelle]

Too funny.

Personally I would prefer M&Bs character models. They just seem SOLID, and HEAVY. Compared to what I feel is an empty, paper-thin model in pre-alpha.

I could care less about the graphic quality it seems.

[Proximo]

All the clips i've seen of fully armoured people looked great. All we've seen is rags and no character customization. So long as my guys head isn't a cube I'm happy.

[Siegbert]

Yeah, fully armored models do look solid, I'd say. Some look a bit dumb like this horn-helmeted full chain armor. But nevertheless, had the animations been fixed to not make them look so stiff anymore it could easily be among the better crafted indie titles.

Mount&Blade character models supposedly have about 2/3 of the polycount if not less and badly rendered normal maps. I'm not sure if they're baked at all or just converted from textures whereas in LiF you can tell there have been highpolygon models before.