Terrain looks really bad!

#1 If you don't mind me asking: what specifically about the terrain did you not like?

#2 Are we looking at the same game? The Tribes 2 terrain is the best terrain I have ever seen in a game. I'm running it on a Radeon card which isn't the card it looks best on.

I guess different strokes for different folks.

Jeff Tunnell GG

#3 Completely disappointed? Wow, I thought it was looking pretty good. Maybe some more details would help me understand.

Do you perceive it as technical or artistic problem?
What video card are you using?
What were you expecting?
Which product(s) you feel have a good terrain system?

Yes the terrain system is a class. It would be easy to replace. There have been many discussions about implementing large streaming terrain systems on these boards.

--Rick

#4 I'd see it as being a combination of detail and textures that could leave someone disappointed. Obviously the terrain can't be as detailed as reality - the game needs to be able to keep a reasonably fast framerate, so somewhat lower detail is completely understandable.

The textures, however, are somewhat lackluster. Patterns are easily spotted when viewing large areas of terrain, and the detail leaves something to be desired.

The only game I can think of with a terrain system that's even comparable is Unreal2 - it isn't out yet, we don't know how fast it runs - so that isn't a fair comparison. However, from the available screenshots, the Unreal2 terrain system seems to allow more detail, has better textures and looks quite a bit sharper than the terrain in Tribes2. Really, in general Unreal2 just looks sharper. Of course, for all we know it could be running at 12fps with everything they have going on in the screenshots.

Can we license the Unreal2 engine for $100? No, we can't. And if you don't like the Tribes2 terrain system, write a new one. You can't really complain w/ a deal like Garagegames has going.

- Nick Robalik
www.digital-soapbox.com

#5 It's just the overall look of the terrain.My problem is prolly artistic,but haven't you noticed that the terrain looks a little too...triangly? I mean lots of sharp edges and the texture mapping looked like it was just tiled or something.I can't really explain it.

I'm running tribes2 on a GeForce2 card with all the details set to max.I get a good frame rate but,like I said, it didn't impress me too much :(

There are 2 games that come to mind with great looking terrain: Motocross Madness 2 from Microsoft and Black & White from Lionhead Studios.Those terrains looked kick ass!

Nick: I didn't mean to offend anyone.GG did a great job bringing us the engine,but I'm complaining from the point of the consumer.I bought Tribes2 so I can have fun (which I am) and to see how well the V12 engine performs.And now I did.Everything else rocked but the terrian,like you said,looks bland and didn't have enough detail to it.(CryTek's XIsle also had a kick ass terrain now that I think about it.)

Well,if the terrain class can easily be replaced,then I suggest we might as well update on it or completely remove it.Besides,you'll prolly want to accomodate pixel/vertex shaders into the terrain portion of the engine anyway.

#6 PS My card is the GeForce2 GTS (and not the MX) with 32MB DDR RAM and all the bells and whistles.

#7 I couldn't stand the terrain in Black & White. Awesome game, but the terrain engine was nausiating with it's drastic changes in texture and geometric LOD. Ugly in every case except up close.

#8 I'm not quite sure I see what you're seeing. The terrain in Tribes 2 looks great. Maybe some maps are more jaggy then others, but even in those, I see no indication of what you described.

The terrain also has incredibly detailed textures as well as plants, trees rocks...water is great...I don't see anything like what you are talking about.

#9 Can you give us some examples of existing real-time terrains that look better so maybe we could make a comparison. It might help us understand better how you are seeing this.

#10 Too be honest, I was kinda expecting to be blown away by the graphics when I fired the game up. It's definately fun, but graphically it was average or slightly above average.

IMO, there's nothing wrong per se with the terrain... it looked fine. The view distance limit was kind of a bummer (even with all the details cranked up; I've got a fairly new machine), but I can live with that.

Overall, I think the graphical let-down was the texture detail. For example: even with all graphics options maxed out, the skins on the characters seemed significantly lower rez then say, Q3A or UT.

Q3A still reigns supreme in the looks department; but V12 no doubt has a much better architecture - which I always have much more fun with than graphics anyways. :-)

#11 This terrain competes and exceeds all the others I have worked with.

Real-time rendering of the terrain is incredible, and the control you have over the appearance is, IMHO unprecedented.

If you start with a good terrain datasource, you can create compelling and realistic vistas. Frankly, with enough detail to be worthwhile to an academic.

That's just what I intend to do with my V12 license, rapidly processed visualizations of terrain data ;)

Guess I should have a look at Black and White ;)

#12 If you search some of the Tribes2 pages/forums then you can find directions on how to enable the high resolution player model textures. I think there is a zip file oyu can extract into some directory that will do it for you. When I get a chance I will try to find what I'm talking baout for you.

#13 I *think* this is what I had read about a while back:
www.tribes2hq.com/files/utilities.html

I seem to remember a way you can extract these files from somewhere in the data yourself but I haven't found the directions yet... still looking...

#14 Sweet! Can't wait until I get home to play with it. :-)

Thanks for the tip.

#15

Quote:
I threw this batch file together to make it easy to set up the hi-res skins included with Tribes 2. There isn't any point to downloading a 20 meg program since you already have all the files you need on your computer when you install Tribes 2!

To get this to work you MUST PLACE ALL INCLUDED FILES into your TRIBES2 directory. Then run SKINS.BAT, either from Windows Explorer or from the command line (Start -> Run -> Command).

When it's finished, you can delete these files:

SKINS.BAT
SKINS.TXT
WZUNZIP.EXE
SKINS README.TXT

If you decide you don't want the hi-res skins for any reason, delete the SKINS folder under Tribes2\gamedata\base\textures. If you've downloaded other skins they'll be deleted, so you can sort the files by date and manually delete all files with the Modified date of 1/1/2000.



Typical disclaimers apply.

- Ken Adams

Tribes 2 Hi-Res Skins Batch Extractor

#16 And for those who don't want to download the 20 Mb file and the batch file doesn't work- here are the directions on how to do it yourself:

Quote:
Taeralis here. I just thought I'd tell you all how to use the high-resolution (512x512) skins already on your computer. Important note: I don't think anything in the Voodoo series below a Voodoo5 will allow using skins over 256x256... try if you want though. :) Anyway, to the instructions:

1. Open Tribes2\GameData\base\skins.vl2 with WinZip or WinRAR or whatever you use with zip files, since the VL2's are actually ZIP's with a different extension.
2. Extract all the files (it's easy to do it this way) to some temporary folder on your computer, or maybe to a folder such as Dynamix\Extracted or something like that. Anyway, extract the files somewhere.
3. Open the Windows Find dialog (WindowsKey+F or Start->Find->Files and Folders, I think that's what it is in Win95/98/other non-Me versions, or in the case that you have Windows Me, it's under Start->Search->For Files and Folders...)
4. In the "file name" field, type the entire path(hardDrive:\whereverEverTheFolderIs) to the folder where you extracted those skins in step 2 and type "*512*png" (without the quotes).
5. Highlight all the files and copy them (while they're highlighted, press Ctrl+C and then when you open up the folder where you want to put them, press Ctrl+V) to your Tribes2\GameData\base\textures\skins folder.
6. Next, you have to rename the files. Here is a list of their original filenames(you should have found 35 files) and what they need to be changed to (originalName.png -> newName.png):

a.hbioderm_512.png -> base.hbioderm.png
a.hrobot_512.png -> base.hrobot.png
a.lbioderm_512.png -> base.lbioderm.png
a.lrobot_512.png -> base.lrobot.png
a.mbioderm_512.png -> base.mbioderm.png
a.mrobot_512.png -> base.mrobot.png
b.hbioderm_512.png -> baseb.hbioderm.png
b.hrobot_512.png -> baseb.hrobot.png
b.lbioderm_512.png -> baseb.lbioderm.png
b.lrobot_512.png -> baseb.lrobot.png
b.mbioderm_512.png -> baseb.mbioderm.png
b.mrobot_512.png -> baseb.mrobot.png
base.hbioderm_512.png -> horde.hbioderm.png
base.lbioderm_512.png -> horde.lbioderm.png
base.mbioderm_512.png -> horde.mbioderm.png
beagle.hmale_512.png -> beagle.hmale.png
beagle.lfemale_512.png -> beagle.lfemale.png
beagle.lmale_512.png -> beagle.lmale.png
beagle.mfemale_512.png -> beagle.mfemale.png
beagle.mmale_512.png -> beagle.mmale.png
cotp_hmale_512.png -> cotp.hmale.png
cotp_lfemale_512.png -> cotp.lfemale.png
cotp_lmale_512.png -> cotp.lmale.png
cotp_mfemale_512.png -> cotp.mfemale.png
cotp_mmale_512.png -> cotp.mmale.png
ds.hmale_512.png -> dsword.hmale.png
ds.lfemale_512.png -> dsword.lfemale.png
ds.lmale_512.png -> dsword.lmale.png
ds.mfemale_512.png -> dsword.mfemale.png
ds.mmale_512.png -> dsword.mmale.png
swolf_hmale_512.png -> swolf.hmale.png
swolf_lfemale_512.png -> swolf.lfemale.png
swolf_lmale_512.png -> swolf.lmale.png
swolf_mfemale_512.png -> swolf.mfemale.png
swolf_mmale_512.png -> swolf.mmale.png
Well, that's it, open Tribes 2, and if everything went right, enjoy!

#17 Matthew,

Thanks for that batch file link, I really didn't want to type in all those file names myself, so I've been waiting for someone to do this :) I've been looking for a link but I couldn't find one. Didn't even think of the fact that I could cut and paste the filename list and convert it easily into a batch file. Oh well...

#18 Well,like I said,take a look at Motocross Madness2 and you'll know what I'm getting at in terms of terrain detail and quality.

Thanx Mat for the info on the batch file! Maybe those high res textures will make things look alot prettier now :)

#19 I've seen Motorcross Madness, and it doesn't hold a match to the detail in Tribes 2.

#20 LOL!

My impression of Motocross Madness 2 was that just about all it did render was terrain. :-)