it's the glass..

[cRAGGLE]

Hello ladies and gents, I've noticed a few remarks regarding the colouring/filtering of the game over recent days and couldn't help but notice something else.

It's the glass:

This was taken from the most recent video and I think it reveals the issue most have with the look of the game. The glass is all coloured the same and just looks very plain and non reflective. The glass on the vehicles is also the same.

Here I think is a nice example of what glass should look like during the day with the different varieties of glass colouring / reflectiveness:

Opinions?

 

[MysticMTL]

Maybe it's a visual option? Or if not, I'm sure the modders can get to work on creating reflective type surfaces.
I know everyone keeps hearing this, but as long as the base game is solid, we can complete the eye candy to our tastes with mods.

 

[APW]

I am affraid it is a consequence of design decision to paint everything in toy-like manner. Save the citizens, CXL looks better (my private opinion of course). Nevertheless I hope that C:S (C:SL, CSL?) will be more hm... playable overall.

 

[KyleJ]

I agree this is something they could look at post-launch; adding some reflective effects to glass, also adding some subtle color tone differences in the windows - removing that bland solid look in the modern glass buildings.

 

[ali.usman]

Thank you . I have been nagging about this for months now. I also pointed out in Dev diaries that we want to build awesome looking city with at least a little realistic look instead of building a cartoon city of "The family guy". I was told that we could change the lighting options in game , how will that help, well frankly speaking I don't trust this anymore. Also keep looking for red, blue, yellow and pink cars. People might say there is nothing wrong with this but whole city is driving the same car.

Well its too late now, when devs be stubborn and don't give a crap about your opinion than its better to shut up.

On the other hand it is pretty straight that they wanted to get this out to make some money and leave improvements for future or for other people such a modders to make their game better for free, not a bad idea right?

Well USD 29 game is easily AUD 45 so basically we pay a lot more than US gamers. $39 " deluxe pack" will obviously hit $60+ for us.

There is no day\night cycle, which is OK but its not OK to make 24 hours (in game) equal to 3-5 seconds real time.

Well as I said its better to shut up when you know no one listens, you will just waste your time and energy.

 

[Hannodb]

ALthough I prefer more realism, I don't think this will bother me too much. Since the gameplay itself is very realistic and engaging, I'm sure my imagination will fill in the gaps.

I've always taken issue with modern games, prioritizing superior graphics over game play, and for one, a game was made that doesn't do that.

If the game is fun to play, then graphics become a secondary consideration.

 

[Jeruntje]

Yep, It should be much darker. a building would only be this kind of color if it only 100% reflected the sky. If it reflects the colors of buildings surrounding it it would have different tones of blue. But more importantly is when a building doesn't reflect 100% of the light hitting it (which is mostly the case in any kind of building made out of glass.) Then the inside of the building should be visable and when you look in to a room from outside it is always darker during the day. So if you change the color from this light blue to a darker blue it should made a lot of difference.

 

[Inge Jones]

Well there are ways to "hint" at a texture being reflective without actually processing reflections, and CO have chosen not to use these. It must be their conscious artstyle choice. The cartoony look seems to be fashionable right now, and has caused me disappointment with my usual favorite game The Sims.

 

[cRAGGLE]

Well there are ways to "hint" at a texture being reflective without actually processing reflections, and CO have chosen not to do so. I must be their conscious artstyle choice. The cartoony look seems to be fashionable right now, and has caused me disappointment with my usual favorite game The Sims.

I'm ok with most of the style I've seen used. But the glass makes the windows look like concrete. The buildings almost look like solid concrete pylons. If the glass textures were changed it would make for a much nicer looking game.

 

[charlesnew]

Well, that's a shame. Hopefully this gets changed soon after launch.

 

[GrauPanther]

The glass buildings do look unrealistic and bland, with hardly any texturing at all. Glass may look blueish when you're looking up at a building, but not when you're looking down on it as will be the case most of the time while playing.

Making them truly reflective would probably impact on performance too much, so having more varied, realistic and darker textures would be a better solution.

Will it be possible to replace the textures on default buildings?

This is one thing that looked really great in SC2013, but, perhaps, at the cost of allowing larger maps (among other things).

 

[Inge Jones]

Will it be possible to replace the textures on default buildings?

I am willing to bet that is possible - that sort of thing is usually accessible. But if they intended a flat texture all along, they have probably not separated out the mapping for the glass areas, which means it's going to be a very tedious job changing the appearance of the glass without painting each and every pane area by hand.

 

[Jeruntje]

I am willing to bet that is possible - that sort of thing is usually accessible. But if they intended a flat texture all along, they have probably not separated out the mapping for the glass areas, which means it's going to be a very tedious job changing the appearance of the glass without painting each and every pane area by hand.

It will be the first mod I download. and if we all step in to do a building or two it shouldn't be that much of work

 

[stumason]

Meh, not that bothered by it to be honest - for flashy graphics I have games like FarCry4, or Dragon Age, or Battlefield 4 etc. This is the sort of game I am more interested in the simulation side of it.

That said, if the dev's (at some point) want to add some reflective glass window's, I wouldn't be complaining either.

 

[Inge Jones]

That said, if the dev's (at some point) want to add some reflective glass window's, I wouldn't be complaining either.

I am pretty sure that would be impractical for such a scaleable game with potentially so much glass. But there was more that could have been done to the windows that would give the visual hint to them being glass. We used to have to do that in The Sims 1, which was paint sort of graduated streaks down the glass to look like they were catching light and reflecting it. Or you could have a generic streaky filter processed by the shaders to only display on parts of the screen that are displaying reflective surfaces - little more graphically expensive than the normal graphic filters. But that would have required dividing the meshes into glass and non-glass so that a different shader could be allocated to different parts, which would then make the meshes more expensive to render!

 

[GrauPanther]

Agreed that the simulation aspects are the most important, and C:SL looks very promising in that regard.

But if it were possible to improve these buildings by texture replacements, so much the better. Even some desaturation in blue and a bit of contrast enhancement in the tall building textures would make them look less bland I think.

edit: the lack of a day/night cycle makes this even more easy.

 

[Greygor69]

This probably points out why I play Cities XL (With it's many flaws and bugs) and will play Cities: Skylines. With one I get pretty looking buildings where they are very detailed looking (IMO) and the other I'm going to get (I Hope) a really good city simulation game.

Now what modder's do for C:SL in the future I have no idea, maybe one will replace the other, but for now there's a place in my library for both.

 

[Inge Jones]

edit: the lack of a day/night cycle makes this even more easy.

In fact, it has finally sunk in why day/night cycle really would be a massive amount of work for the devs to add. Without seperating the meshgroups or mapping for window areas, you'd have to edit every single texture by hand to create a night version of it, with lit windows. Otherwise you'd simply have three texturemapped areas or meshgroups - one for solid, one for glass to be lit at night and one for glass to be unlit at night (it looks more realistic to only have lights in some windows).

 

[BadPeanut]

Thank you . I have been nagging about this for months now. I also pointed out in Dev diaries that we want to build awesome looking city with at least a little realistic look instead of building a cartoon city of "The family guy". I was told that we could change the lighting options in game , how will that help, well frankly speaking I don't trust this anymore. Also keep looking for red, blue, yellow and pink cars. People might say there is nothing wrong with this but whole city is driving the same car.

Well its too late now, when devs be stubborn and don't give a crap about your opinion than its better to shut up.

On the other hand it is pretty straight that they wanted to get this out to make some money and leave improvements for future or for other people such a modders to make their game better for free, not a bad idea right?

Well USD 29 game is easily AUD 45 so basically we pay a lot more than US gamers. $39 " deluxe pack" will obviously hit $60+ for us.

There is no day\night cycle, which is OK but its not OK to make 24 hours (in game) equal to 3-5 seconds real time.

Well as I said its better to shut up when you know no one listens, you will just waste your time and energy.

You underestimate the Australian Dollar. I pre ordered standard edition last night for just under $40 AUD. So slight exaggeration there....

 

[Greygor69]

You underestimate the Australian Dollar. I pre ordered standard edition last night for just under $40 AUD. So slight exaggeration there....

I think he's assuming the usual "Australia Tax"