New water shaders and terrain textures

[Cornered Rats]

The production team has been busy to help improve the visual appeal of WWII Online, and today we're going to show you a couple of before and after (work in progress) screenshots. We think the Air Force guys are going to be pretty pleased to see the updated water shaders as it will add depth perception while flying over all waterways. PITTPETE has been working diligently on the improved textures of all ground terrain textures. Leave your feedback in the comments section.

View the full article on battlegroundeurope.com

[xanthus]

The new textures look great, only quibble would be to tone down the saturation on the grass texture just a bit (though I don't know if I'm in the minority or not on that); the only reason is that I feel like grasses further from town should just be just a tiny bit darker in color...and since you can't single out texture tiles based on town proximity (AFAIK), might as well just make them all a little darker. But maybe not. I'm open-minded about it, can't wait to see it in-game.

 

But BTW...........

 

I DID A DOUBLE-TAKE WHEN I SAW THIS. NEW BUILDINGS ALONG THE ROAD TO TOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I WAS ASKING FOR THIS OVER 15 YEARS AGO!!!!!!!!! THIS WAS A HUGE DREAM OF MINE TO SEE THIS IN THE GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm on the verge of tears, this is amazing.....

I used to post forum threads about ideas like this to enhance *feel*, realism, and tactics. I called for adding residential buildings along roads, additional houses and farms between towns, filling up terrain tiles with more buildings and such. This is a HUGE part of what I was daydreaming about many years ago.

Thank you Rats!

<S>

 

EDIT:
fwiw, another thing I called for was *backyards* that would've been super, super simple to put together; just a tiny little fence surrounding a rectangular tile (they wouldn't even have to be adjacent to buildings to feel realistic). Another was clotheslines that could just use simple flat, 2D textures for some sheets on a line. I also recommended using unlicensed, royalty-free media artwork (posters, ads, magazine covers, etc); you could as far back as the 19th century and it would still feel authentic. I remember I posted a mock-up in the forums in the early 2000s using an old unlicensed soda ad from Belgium.

Edited June 20, 2020 by xanthus

[jwilly]

New water look is a good improvement.

Now if the game could just have dynamic wave action that affected vessel attitude, and included waves breaking on shorelines... 

Agreed with Xanthus on the new ground cover being too bright a palette of greens at distant LODs. Looks less real to me than the old colorations. Real vegetation colorations become much less saturated with distance, as the microshadow blacks visually mix with the sunlit leaf surfaces and the air humidity and dust non-transparence comes into play. But the associated work is definitely an improvement.