Beauty is really something that distinguished even the early Anno titles (Anno 1602 and Anno 1503) from other similar games like "The Settlers" or even "Age of Empires". I remember that playing these games was just so nice... lush green landscapes, beautiful cities full of half-timbered and renaissance houses, palaces, ships in full sail on a blue ocean. It was also the first time I really came into contact with classical music as a kid.
The 'feel' of a game can't be understated. I get the same vibes from KCD 2, where just walking through the environment is in itself a joy.
The thing I didn't like about Age of Empires compared to Settlers was that warfare is the main point of the game; I wish AoE had a plain city / society building mode. Actually it probably does via mods or custom maps, or there's other games that tick the AoE and city builder boxes. Settlers has war as well but I always felt it was secondary, definitely not something large scale.
Not sure if this is nostalgia: What I don't get with modern games, at least on the most likely device I could be using for gaming - the iPad - is how ugly they are.
Even AoE and Settlers (both preferably in the second edition) look soooo much better to me than most of the games I can find, they look just strange, both the remakes from "brand name" studios and a lot of the smaller games like you'd find on Apple Arcade.
Interesting how you are absolutely right but I didn't notice it at all. I understood exactly what they were telling me even though the description that I was reading was completely wrong.
The fact that I found the animations descriptive and very pretty to look at is probably to thank for that.
This also happens in real life on the equator when the sun is at just the right point in the sky ordinary objects look like bad rendered cgi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahaina_Noon
In my own personal 3D game project I did the same thing, and then thought it seemed strange so I changed it back. Now I wonder if I have experienced this many times before in games and just never noticed it, and it only seemed strange in my own project because I was hyper-aware of it.
I actually thought this was a "bug" with the renderer, feel silly now realising it's a feature, a great one at that, now it's been pointed out! very cool. Anyone wondering if worth some play time, it definately is!
It definitely feels like a bug to me, and would be the first thing I'd turn off. I mean, I get that from that one angle it looks flat -- but the sun moving with my camera would be way, way worse for me.
Hmm I feel this might just be nostalgia at play. I've not played any Anno games, but comparing the two side-by-side and 1800 looks leaps & bounds better to me. 1602 looks like it was drawn in MS Paint.
Can you expand on that please? (I recently prototyped a maze editor in isometric view and would love to hear more about the alternatives and what makes the isometric projection interesting.)
I hate the "3D" in many video games, in particular in strategy games. Beauty is appreciated everywhere, but for me the most important part is the gameplay loop/mechanics, however you call it. In a (real) strategy game that's decision making. You're reading the map of sorts, and come up with a strategy based on what you see. This 'parsing' of the map is a crucial element, and in particular an element I don't want to be challenging. That is, I'm not a fan of "find hidden objects" genre. I want the map to be very clear, with important elements easy to spot. Well, all elements involved in game mechanics easy to spot, as it should be me who decides which is important.
And here comes the problem with 3D: The more advanced a 3D engine, the more varying looks of the same object (e.g. metamerism): The object can be occluded (happens in 2D to a very limited degree), it can be lit at various angle by Sun (various angle if the Sun moves) and other light sources, it may have reflections, there may be a perpective distortion, and maybe some more.
All this means that a particular element can't be easily recognized, because there's no particular look that your mind may look for. It's just less readable. Imagine a strategy game, where you don't control your mouse cursor directly, but it's attached to a string to the real cursor, and swings all around as you try to click things. Interesting gameplay? Maybe, but not what I'm looking for when playing strategy games.
I would play the whole Anno series, but they’re Ubisoft games and incorporate a rootkit. There are too many good games that have a modicum of respect for their customers for me to pay money to be rootkited.
lqet|1 year ago
https://store.ubisoft.com/on/demandware.static/-/Sites-maste...
https://www.gamesaktuell.de/screenshots/1280x/2002/10/adel.j...
Cthulhu_|1 year ago
The thing I didn't like about Age of Empires compared to Settlers was that warfare is the main point of the game; I wish AoE had a plain city / society building mode. Actually it probably does via mods or custom maps, or there's other games that tick the AoE and city builder boxes. Settlers has war as well but I always felt it was secondary, definitely not something large scale.
harha|1 year ago
Even AoE and Settlers (both preferably in the second edition) look soooo much better to me than most of the games I can find, they look just strange, both the remakes from "brand name" studios and a lot of the smaller games like you'd find on Apple Arcade.
blueflow|1 year ago
> The sun keeps a position relative to the camera and thus the shadows always fall from left to right:
The video shows shadows fall from right to left.
> One can get into the unfortunate situation where the camera is positioned so that the sun casts shadows behind the camera.
The video shows no shadows because they are behind the things that are casting the shadow. There would be no shadows behind the camera.
Is this seemingly reversed notion of "casting" common?
RamRodification|1 year ago
The fact that I found the animations descriptive and very pretty to look at is probably to thank for that.
raphael_l|1 year ago
aequitas|1 year ago
hackcasual|1 year ago
From a game perspective it can seem pretty simplistic at first but there are a lot of interesting systems with hidden depth
NamTaf|1 year ago
This game is an incredible time sink; I can lose entire days to it because there’s always “just one more thing” to do.
nkrisc|1 year ago
PcChip|1 year ago
Trigg3r|1 year ago
epaga|1 year ago
PedroBatista|1 year ago
But the original Anno 1602 still wins in the looks and style department. As most 2.5D isometric games do..
kthartic|1 year ago
tasuki|1 year ago
Can you expand on that please? (I recently prototyped a maze editor in isometric view and would love to hear more about the alternatives and what makes the isometric projection interesting.)
Etherlord87|1 year ago
And here comes the problem with 3D: The more advanced a 3D engine, the more varying looks of the same object (e.g. metamerism): The object can be occluded (happens in 2D to a very limited degree), it can be lit at various angle by Sun (various angle if the Sun moves) and other light sources, it may have reflections, there may be a perpective distortion, and maybe some more.
All this means that a particular element can't be easily recognized, because there's no particular look that your mind may look for. It's just less readable. Imagine a strategy game, where you don't control your mouse cursor directly, but it's attached to a string to the real cursor, and swings all around as you try to click things. Interesting gameplay? Maybe, but not what I'm looking for when playing strategy games.
rs_rs_rs_rs_rs|1 year ago
zargon|1 year ago
hackcasual|1 year ago
Winsaucerer|1 year ago
mvdtnz|1 year ago
qw|1 year ago
pjc50|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
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