The Broken Hourglass - Story & First Screens @ Official Site

You couldn't draw a fair comparison between the Codex and the Watch. Our users don't have a standing competition to see who can put on the most outrageous display of cynicism and loathing. We do see a little of that, and a few people have registered for no other purpose, but as long as the level-headed posters keep a sense of proportion then I doubt it'll develop into a problem.

I think the problem lies with the light in the first two screenshots, the third one seems fine to me. The light in the first two seems to be plain white light, giving it a movie-set feel. the textures themselves seem clean and clear, no problem there, there is just a lack of atmosphere in the first two shots.

Anyway, the game sounds good to me, and I'm not going to judge a game on 3 screenshots

The more I look at the screens, the harder time I have seeing any issue … I continue to be very hopeful for a fun game here.

Regarding Spiderweb, I think their continuing success comes down to two facts:
1. (as mentioned) They release games for Mac
2. The engine hasn't been updated since the French Revolution

How hard (or costly) is it to churn out title after title after title with the same engine and no-quality graphics?

Second question: Why do we have to choose between 10 year old graphics and Oblivion? Imagine if the only two restaurants in the world were a hotdog stand and Charlie Trotter's in Chicago. Or if the only two movies you could see were 320x240 YouTube clips of Buster Keaton and Mission Impossible 3.

Originally Posted by screeg
Why do we have to choose between 10 year old graphics and Oblivion?

I don't think we do - look at games from the last couple of years:
- Seal of Evil
- MetalHeart
- Restricted Area
- Space Hack
- Neuro Hunter
- Etrom
- Kult: Heretic Kingdoms
- Gods: LoI
- NeverEnd

… there is plenty of 'middle ground' in terms of graphics.

I don't think the graphics in the screenshots from the game is that awful. It is, afaik, similar to the lauoyt and visuals, of Baldur's Gate 1. The visual presentation of Broken Hourglass could, imo, do with a little more clearness/crispness.

To me, anyway, graphics is nice & all, but it isn't the reason why I buy a cRPG or an adventure game. I buy both these genres for deep gameplay, character interaction,
deep and vivid imaginative story lines, and the graphics should be be render a representation of this. Of course, even I do not want 20 year old graphics.

Personally, I would be fine with updated graphics from the Infinity Engine. (this is just hard to do, since all backgrounds, I believe, has to be handpainted). being used in crpgs. Or just the updated visuals/graphics from the Aurora Engine. NWN 2 meets this requirement just fine.

I, too, will be looking forward to this game…

I don't think we have to choose between graphics from 10 years agpo and Oblivion.

Kult: Heretic Kingdoms ---
Neverend
Gothic 1, Gothic 2
and
Newerwinter Nights 1 and 2

and a few others…

Originally Posted by aries100
Personally, I would be fine with updated graphics from the Infinity Engine. (this is just hard to do, since all backgrounds, I believe, has to be handpainted).

Area construction is similar in Infinity and WeiNGINE--both use a flat 2D map (which you can generate however you choose--render in the 3D package of your choice or hack it up by hand in MS Paint if that turns you on), overlays for doors and animations, and markup data which indicates "this is a stone floor", "this is a solid wall", "this bit over here is a container," "there's not much light here so shade the sprites darker," etc. We store that data differently and area designers deliver the information differently (I believe--I've never seen the in-house Infinity area creation tools, but I suspect their approach was different than ours), but the principles are generally the same.

We'll be running an area-creation tutorial one of these fourth Mondays of the month down the road, in fact.

Jcompton:

Will you support widescreen resolutions like 1680x1050? I really like the Infinity engine graphics but the resolution choices - even with the community mods is pretty limited.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
Conclusion? Indie CRPGs aren't for you.

And I think you've hit on the theme for this thread.

I've played some Spiderweb games and a few other indie RPGs. The graphics for Broken Hourglass are a lot better than I'm used to… from indie games. So to me it looks great.

But even for commercial offerings, RPGs are not about graphics. They're about story, character, role-playing. I want to see polished text, good characters, good interactions, good chances to play my character in different ways. If RPGs are going to invest in something, better to invest in multiple, deep, well-done paths through the game. Don't over-invest in graphics. They only need to be servicable.

If that's a problem for a role-playing gamer, then that gamer sure doesn't belong over here in the indie discussions, and might not belong in the RPG discussions at all. Of course, that's a statement of belief, not a mandate. Any person is free to play whatever they wish. However, I'm not going to head over to a flight simulation forum and complain that there are too many switches and dials to learn. So I don't get why someone would come here and complain about games that appear to be doing exactly what RPGs should.

Graphics don't make the game for example Gothic but they have to be reasonable or it just ruins the feeling for the game. Look at this crap this is just ridiculous lol.

TBH looks very promising to me. I líke it because of it's affinity to BG. The quality of the first pictures was amazing.

But looking at the new screens, there are some things that imho don't match. At first, these buildings seem to be be rather clean, wet painted in aniline colors. That's irritating, because a rooftop is never clean and these colors don't fit. Have you seen these colorful painted antique statues in Oliver Stones' Alexander film (Examples: 1 - 2)? Same problem. The colors look unnatural, artificial. The tiers in the arena are so regular that it looks like a hypnotic pattern. Everything is so … perfect. All buildings have correct proportions, straight lines everywhere. This city looks unnatural.
My second point, the characters look very sallow and diffuse. Maybe it's because of the resolution of the screenshot.

Sure, I could use my imagination and tell myself, that this city doesn't look clean like a hospital. But if I was asked, this would be my critics. I don't ask for advanced techniques, but a little bit more realistic painting. What do you think?

Nevertheless, I'm quite interested in this game. Can't expect to hear from it's completion.

Any game that is inspired by, or has any connection to, Baldur's Gate 1 and/or 2 is worth trying.

Sure, there are things that could be improved. It does look too clean and straight but it's (presumably) still early days.

Originally Posted by ToddMcF2002
Will you support widescreen resolutions like 1680x1050? I really like the Infinity engine graphics but the resolution choices - even with the community mods is pretty limited.

Currently the engine window is freely resizeable and we am inclined to keep it that way, so you can customize the viewport to the size and shape of your monitor, your preferred playing style, with your computer's performance in mind, etc.

Originally Posted by jcompton
Currently the engine window is freely resizeable and we am inclined to keep it that way, so you can customize the viewport to the size and shape of your monitor, your preferred playing style, with your computer's performance in mind, etc.

Yes please keep it that way. 2d art in the native resolution of an LCD panel is an absolute MUST. Thanks for the reply!

Originally Posted by jcompton
we am inclined

And here, ladies and gentlemen, we see the danger of deciding to switch to the royal we halfway through composing a sentence and forgetting to proofread for all changes. Oops.

Anyway, yes, glad to please!

Originally Posted by jcompton
And here, ladies and gentlemen, we see the danger of deciding to switch to the royal we halfway through composing a sentence and forgetting to proofread for all changes. Oops.

Anyway, yes, glad to please!

So long as you don't start referring to yourself in the third person then we can forgive you