Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs Discussion Topic Part 1

[Googolplex]

That's why Black Plague's enemy system is the best. You can't kill them and they don't disappear.

Maybe the enemy system, but to have a hammer or a pickaxe will make the game more complex.

It was fantastic to use "weapons" to solve puzzles. They never killed the immersion or feeling of helpless.
On the contrary, I felt most immersed in Penumbra Overture. Of course, the Infected are scarier than the dogs, but Overture was by far more plausible and real compared to Black Plague. BP was too much "fantasy" and a couple of strange minds. That was annoying for the atmosphere. I liked the mental realm part, because it was so creepy. But BP has less complexity compared to Overture and one of the main reasons is to have no weapons. I mean, a combat system would ruin BP, that seems not fitted for a game like that. I also said, to lose weapons will let you feel more helpless than if you never had weapons before. The feeling that you lose something will enhance the horror.
This is why Penumbra (as a collection) is good as it is. You have weapons, but only for the first part. It's better if you never would have weapons.
But Penumbra (as an own game) there was Overture with the best of story, atmosphere, immersion, puzzles and gameplay. The combat system also was a nice feature to improve the "danger" of potential enemies.
It's a difference whether you get a shotgun or an old rusty pickaxe (used mainly as a tool).

In general I think a combat system will destroy the immersion, ruin the atmosphere and is wrong in a horror game. But when you have a unhandly and sluggish combat system in Overture where the goal never is to fight (you have just the option), is the best result for a good game that will also enhance puzzle ideas and complexity.

A horror game never should be made for fight back. And Overture is not made for fight. You can fight, but that's not the meaning of the game. And the combat system is not really a "combat system" it's just the feature to swing a hammer or a pickaxe. And it's also intentionally sluggish and hard to control - a good idea to make weapons "weak" and ineffective.
You need 6 hits to kill a dog, and there is almost no chance to kill the spiders. So it's better when you hide and run away instead trying to fight back.
That's what most people not understand.

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I catch up on that. Surely you can make a better diffuse maps. But you will never achieve truly satisfying results with normal maps without baking them from a high-poly models. And those normals that are in the Amnesia are baked (most of them) and that's noticeable. And I do not know how you're going to make textures better than they're in the Amnesia without building high-poly models for your "real surfaces". Not baked normals are truly sucks in comparison with baked. I am not even mentioning height maps, what you gonna do with them to achieve good looking parallax? Anyway, I would love to see how you will make a better textures (diffuse, normal, specular and height maps) than they're now in Amnesia.

No trolling. I am really curious how u are gonna achieve the result u are talkin bout... I think u can't. But maybe I am very very wrong. And I do not mind to be wrong.

I understand what you mean. The gravel can't be parallaxed in this game because it's not possible to change the normal map texture. But for the other textures, I also created normal maps. Notice I have no professional tools, I only used GIMP and CrazyBump. Maybe I could enhance the intensity of a normal map, but then the diffuse will lose details. The parallax effect doesn't look automatically good, it also could blur the surface. And the diffuse map is the most important base texture for a surface.

For this brick wall I used a decent normal map, only 30% parallax effect.
When I would use 100% parallax, it would blur the surface and that doesn't look realistic. This perhaps could be because of the engine. Every engine is different and every texture will look different in an other game.
Here's a test of a brick wall:
http://s1.directupload.net/images/121201/cjkb53pj.jpg

[maarten12100]

That's why Black Plague's enemy system is the best. You can't kill them and they don't disappear.

A horror game never should be made for fight back. And Overture is not made for fight. You can fight, but that's not the meaning of the game. And the combat system is not really a "combat system" it's just the feature to swing a hammer or a pickaxe. And it's also intentionally sluggish and hard to control - a good idea to make weapons "weak" and ineffective.
You need 6 hits to kill a dog, and there is almost no chance to kill the spiders. So it's better when you hide and run away instead trying to fight back.
That's what most people not understand.

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I found BP extremely scary as you start out in a room you partner went ahead knowing you're not alone you start to find dead human bodys.
Next thing you have to find yourself some alcohol and a syringe kill the power Boom first encounter.

As for Overture the controlls were extremely hard especially the not being able to use rotating objects while solving puzzels not as smooth as Amnesia would become.
I liked killing the dogs as they were not just one but were many how can they expect me to walk trough a gigantic labyrinth which contains 5 dogs.
Killing spiders can be done by ducking and then smashing twice after having them grouped.

BP only had 2 enemys at a time exept where they rush the door but that is just in the end with play trough on repeat.(the fantasy world about the mind)

[pinkribbonscars]

I think Amnesia: The Dark Descent's beauty is blinding.

Me too. I loved TDDs visual style, despite it's flaws. I thought the texture work was pretty good for a fairly low budget indie game. Sure there wasn't alot of texture variation, but the textures themselves looked great, and the use of them to create Brennenburg Castle was amazing, due to the great level design. Brennenburg Castle was far more believable than most super duper graphical games, imo. That said, AMFP seems to have alot more texture and enviroment variety.

[Alex Ros]

...Brennenburg Castle...

Just could not walk by... Sorry. But "burg" in German is already a "castle", so what you've said is like "Brennen Castle Castle" Please, do not be offended. Really. It's not about to offend anyone. It's just a funny and quite common funny mistake

[Deep One]

Oh my god...

[GoldenFalcon101]

Why can't you focus on the story instead of the graphics? You're hardly going to be chased by a monster and suddenly stop to say: 'Hey! That table texture doesn't look all that realistic!'
Think of RPG's. The graphics are terrible and that can put some people off, but if you play it, most of them turn out to have the best storyline ever.
Also most of the time you'd be too busy wanting to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible to pay much attention to the textures, so they probably made them repetitive so they didn't waste their time on something nobody would see :3

[Bridge]

Am I the only one who thinks Amnesia has good textures? I am certain Googolplex only thinks they're bad because he has inspected them up close in an editor and he has given them too much thought. I was actually very impressed with the textures while playing (subconsciously of course); especially the use of colors which Frictional have always had a knack for. Who the hell cares if the bricks follow a certain pattern? Generally in masonry that's what you're supposed to be going for, also there are plenty of real life places that have "boring and uniform textures". I think you guys that hate the textures have your standards set too high. I personally think games like Half-Life, Morrowind, MGS and Thief also have great textures, and those are considered by most to be low-res and "ugly" textures. The way they blend together, especially through the brilliant use of colors, is why they are so great in my opinion, and the same applies for Amnesia. I don't give a shit if a game uses "real surfaces" and has super high quality textures if it's just all brown, lifeless and boring.

[pinkribbonscars]

...Brennenburg Castle...

Just could not walk by... Sorry. But "burg" in German is already a "castle", so what you've said is like "Brennen Castle Castle" Please, do not be offended. Really. It's not about to offend anyone. It's just a funny and quite common funny mistake

Woops, my bad, I didn't know that.

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Am I the only one who thinks Amnesia has good textures? I am certain Googolplex only thinks they're bad because he has inspected them up close in an editor and he has given them too much thought. I was actually very impressed with the textures while playing (subconsciously of course); especially the use of colors which Frictional have always had a knack for. Who the hell cares if the bricks follow a certain pattern? Generally in masonry that's what you're supposed to be going for, also there are plenty of real life places that have "boring and uniform textures". I think you guys that hate the textures have your standards set too high. I personally think games like Half-Life, Morrowind, MGS and Thief also have great textures, and those are considered by most to be low-res and "ugly" textures. The way they blend together, especially through the brilliant use of colors, is why they are so great in my opinion, and the same applies for Amnesia. I don't give a shit if a game uses "real surfaces" and has super high quality textures if it's just all brown, lifeless and boring.

Yeah the textures are gorgeously designed. Everything "jumps out" at you. It's a beautiful looking game imo. I just wish it had more textures. While the rooms were different in design and geometry, they still looked similar due to the textures. That's my only complaint with the game, visually.

[MyRedNeptune]

Bridge hit the nail on the head there. I've been following this discussion since it started, but I was too lazy to write my own reply.

My opinion is that graphics, in the wide sense of the word, should be built from the bottom up, with general visual style, composition and color balance (what I like to call "bias", for convenience' sake) coming before technical quality, and that consistency should not be sacrificed in favor of a more realistic or high-res texture.

With that in mind, I will dare point out that I don't see a particular appeal in what Googolplex presented in his screenshots as compared to Amnesia's graphics. The scenes lack visual integrity.

[Alex Ros]

In truth, technically, Amnesia textures aren't bad in any way. Technically all of them (nearly most of them) were made absolutely properly. I mean in terms of the modern techniques of the textures production. And objectively when anyone is complaining on textures in particularly, he complaining about visual style of the game. No less, no more. Objectively there's NO technical problems. Everything's fine with textures, it's just a quite unique style. The problem is if someone personally doesn't like the visual style of the game. And in many ways it's not realistic style.

So you, anyone can't just make textures better. More realistic or whatever. It's not about better or worse. It's not that simple. It's about changing the WHOLE VISUAL STYLE of the game.

If I am wrong then please try to argue constructively.

P.S. The only real technical problems with HPL2 engine is that it's not optimized for dynamic lighting. Even if there's only 2 shadow-casting sources directly in the player's frustum - already it heavily lows framerate. That's the weakest point of the Amnesia and HPL2 engine itself.Of course there's some other weak spots of the HPL2, but I think it's a self-contained theme for discussion in a independent thread, not here...