PSO2 Closed Beta Survey

[Krisan]

Hmmmm does this mean it would be possible to have a fan-made high res texture pack/patch?

Technically, yes this would be possible. As of the Closed Beta though, the container format for most of the games resources was updated, making it a bit more of a pain in the butt to extract.. Creating new containers is also not exactly user-friendly at the moment either.

Still though, it's possible yes.
You could even change how much of an outfit is color-enabled by altering the appropriate map:

Spoiler!

i would like this, but I'm worried SEGA might have a way of detecting this in the future+^_^+

It wouldn't be a bannable offense, since it's a client modification and no one else could see it. It's no worse than the fan-translation we've used. They might make it harder for us to modify this kind of thing, but eh..

[Peejay]

If you want to get technical, an outfit is already completely enabled, you just need the colour ticket to change sub-colours.

[Krisan]

If you want to get technical, an outfit is already completely enabled, you just need the colour ticket to change sub-colours.

That's not what I meant at all. I was referring to the ability to change the color maps so other parts of the outfit could be colorized. The color-ticket doesn't allow you to do that, it just gives you a full RGB range to use on the same area as usual.

[RocSage]

It's not. I've extracted most of the textures and models from the game myself, and the underwear is not a separate map from the rest of the outfit. It only looks better in that screenshot due to the very minor effect lighting is having on it.. The rest of the textures look worse than they need to because of how heavily apparent the normal and specular maps are that close up and being exposed to that particular lighting.

You can see the texture map I extracted here for yourself:

Spoiler!

Much of what people are calling higher resolution seems to be that they are mixing up is what actually is higher and lower resolution and what makes what look better. The panties in that picture look better largely because of an illusion of a 3d surface on a flat surface. rather than an illusion of 3d on several flat surfaces.

Light looks different on a surface that is formed like this...
/`\ /`\ than a surface that is a surface that is like this: _
lighting and things are drawn on the second in a different style than the first thus allowing for a different appearance of resolution for the two.

[RocSage]

That's not what I meant at all. I was referring to the ability to change the color maps so other parts of the outfit could be colorized. The color-ticket doesn't allow you to do that, it just gives you a full RGB range to use on the same area as usual.

For those that don't know, the texture map that you provided has that purple color on it. The purple color represents a "variable" that can be replaced by the user. Because of this if you have access to those files you can just turn the whole file that color and then make it all one variable. They can also add in other colors that represent variables as well, but most games keep these colors to a minimum.

CoH allows you to mess with these files unofficially and while it is fun for a short while i find it pretty boring.

[ShadowDragon28]

They're always looking for people, and if you read more, you would see that most of the job postings are contract based.

Now once again, why is it so hard for people to understand the concept of what's common in the US is not in Japan/Asia. Things we take for granted in western games is not something Japanese industry accepts as standard.

Artist that only do Shaders in that regions industry do not exist. Everyone there does multi roles. When they are streamlining a game which is common practice over there unlike here in the US(which is nice if they actually did it for more than just one system). They actually will remove things from the engine that will cause a performance hit of any sort.

Now looking at the base Japanese PC. What can be run off of that without sacrificing performance, remember unlike us, they do not just go out and do a full PC upgrade for one game. Maintaining what's there, what we saw in CBT is the best optimization of the game to run on as many PCs as possible.

How many people here were able to run the game with max graphics? or even just having shaders on?

If we were to take that poll you would see maybe half were able to run with shaders. This is why they released a PSO2 specific Benchmarking tool. Which is very detailed and tells you what settings should be set to play at the recommended FPS.

With the adjustments that are being discussed, if the engine has not been coded to only use certain shaders and lighting effects on certain surfaces/textures. Would put an increase strain on not only the CPU for all the particle effects taking place, but also on the GPU which has to deal with the high res textures and shaders.

On top of it all we also have to include the fact there is no option to turn off Vsync, Which also puts a strain on the system. Anti-Aliasing, which has no specific setting except of on and off, also adds to that strain. Top it all off with the fact they also added motion blur and atmospheric effects. Yeah.....

You guys are disregarding simple engine resource allocation. Let's compare to Tera which is highly graphically extensive and a MMO. If you notice certain effects that are present in PSO2 are not present in Tera. I bet you guys can figure out which ones I'm talking about without me saying anything.

For the intended purpose of adding those little things you mentioning, they would need to remove half of the other effects that in the game atm, just cause guys think the environment is not good enough? I must say you guys have not played many Multiplayer games, or least not payed attention to game itself in detail.

With everything that has been mentioned, putting in the man hours for coders to edit the engine for the artist to add the higher res stuff and better lighting and shaders. Your talking about a good amount of work and time.

As we all know, Time is money. With a deadline that must be met, guess what? not going to happen. Delays cost companies money, alot of money. I don't know if you guys have heard the horror stories about the higher echilons going beserk because someone mentioned a delay. Or how much hell they are put through to meet deadlines.

You guys seem to know alot about the art aspect of game making, but you don't seem to know anything about work constraints and deadlines. Hell I bet you guys don't even know that most projects, your locked on specific version of the software that you use until the project is done. Perhaps the latest version allows them to do something that the version they're using can't do, oh well, your stuck with the tools you are given.

QFT.
I think the game's enviroments and models look fantastic with full shaders on. Unfortunately due to my graphics card limitations I have to run the game on "low shaders" or whatever that setting is.