View Full Version : Safehouse Exclusive: Vanguard Beta0 Screenshots
See the album, with slideshow option here (http://www.thesafehouse.org/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album08). There are three image sizes for each shot. One thumbnail, one larger image and then the full size image. Click on the middle sized image to see the largest one.
Per Brad McQuaid:
These are from the second kobold cave in Brennan's stead, approximately for groups levels 5-10.
http://www.thesafehouse.org/gallery/albums/album08/beta0_2.thumb.jpg
/drool
First thing I thought of was the illustrations in the old AD&D manuals. Obviously not a coincidence. Looks amazing, and not cartoonish at all. The interface is pretty sleek as well.
Kassiah
07-26-05, 10:37 PM
Wooooo! Thanks Safehouse! We were all anxiously awaiting the appearance of new Beta 0 screenies on your site as soon as Mr. McQuaid announced they had been sent :)
This girl can now happily grab a few hours sleep before work. I am not afraid of no clowns!! Thanks again :D
Clerisy
07-26-05, 10:39 PM
We can all grab a bit of sleep knowing the world is safe with a few more beta 0 screenshots.
New dungeon and new combat views. Gotta love it! Thanks Sigil! :applaud
You're welcome Kassiah and Clerisy. I'm actually not afraid of clowns but sometimes I can't resist a good one liner ;)
And yep, big thanks to Brad, keep 'em coming, sir. Next time I'll get them up sooner because I won't be on dial up.
Velvetrose
07-27-05, 06:36 AM
I hate clowns. Always have but even more so after reading the book "It"
Marenie
07-27-05, 08:13 AM
what's the "It"?
Xantium
07-27-05, 08:16 AM
Some book written by that hack Steven King. I think they made some movie out of it that no one ever saw.
Lenilya
07-27-05, 03:08 PM
Looks like more of a sequel to EQ than EQ2 was.
Insanity Infusion
07-27-05, 04:22 PM
Thank you for posting those!
Fantastic! :heart
Here's the link to my mobile blog (http://www.flickr.com/photos/e3fricka/) of events at Fangaurd Beta.
How high do the levels go? If this is level 5-10, does that mean we can expect low levels to last longer?
How high do the levels go? If this is level 5-10, does that mean we can expect low levels to last longer?
There was no "official" level cap for release stated. They did say, however, that whatever the level cap on release may be, the game has the capability for alot higher level caps and has been designed that way for long term life of the game.
Hiya Eelyen!
I heard levels may go up to 100. This was not confirmed though and when I heard that it was several months ago.
I'm putting the finishing touches on my fangaurd article. I'll have pictures and a sound bit too.
Hiya Eelyen!
I heard levels may go up to 100. This was not confirmed though and when I heard that it was several months ago.
I'm putting the finishing touches on my fangaurd article. I'll have pictures and a sound bit too.
Heya Fricka :)
Please tell me that audio doesn't include any of my "rabid fanboi" rambling :P
Napolleon
08-05-05, 07:31 AM
...or anythign i said :banghead
Oh lord, these screenshots look way too much like EQ2 style of graphics. Honestly, I will take WOW's vibrant colors and stylization over this kind of crappy attempt to reproduce RL looking gameplay. It doesnt look good at all to me :(
To be honest, while I was beta testing WoW the visuals were one of the things that prevented me from emmersing myself into the world; I never did like WoW's visuals (though I wasn't surprised that they took that route since it's based on the Warcraft games). I'd take Vanguard's visuals over WoW's visuals any day of the week.
I don't think there was ever any doubt that Sigil was going to go the way of a 'realistic' looking avatar over an exaggerated, cartoony avatar. With regards to colour, all our screenshots are from inside a cave - of course they're not going to be 'vibrant'. Here (http://www.vanguardsagaofheroes.com/screenshots/rogue_1024.jpg), here (http://www.vanguardsagaofheroes.com/screenshots/rindolfield_1024.jpg), and here (http://www.vanguardsagaofheroes.com/screenshots/newtargonorview_1024.jpg) are a range of exterior screenshots from the Vanguard screenshots page (http://www.vanguardsagaofheroes.com/screenshots.php). Geeze, going through the Vanguard website it almost seems like they're keeping the best looking screens all for themselves. :lol
Also to note, in our beta screenshots the shadows are turned off. I've found that shadows seem to have a very dramatic effect on the visual quality of a game. These beta screens we were given seem more for the purpose of showing the user interface, not Vanguard's high quality visuals (you'll have to go to the Vanguard screenshots page for those).
JookaWoo
08-24-05, 11:07 AM
do you think you will actually be able to run shadows once you play on a popular server around town etc etc? 40-50 ppl on the screen? Possible even more on raids + special effects + mobs ? I sorta doubt it. I personally do not like the eq2/vanguard look so much. It can look good at times and horrendous at others. So far my main complaints arent the world but the models, same with eq2. hopefully the gameplay will be what makes it good. Not that the rogue interview left me thinking thats cool what so ever.
Actually, yes I do think I'll be able to run shadows in a town (at least character shadows, anyway), and for the majority of gameplay. By the time Vanguard is released I expect to have a relatively decent gaming system (for 2006 specs). Nothing bleeding edge, but I expect it to provide the most bang for my gaming buck.
Essentially, all player characters and many of the humanoid NPC models are really the same model and then are morphed in real time using bone scaling and some other fairly cutting edge tech. So, sitting in memory is the core model and then the data that we apply to that model to turn it into a human or a dwarf, etc.
In addition to memory savings, this also allows us to do the same with clothing/armor/etc. The advantage there again is memory savings, but also that a particular suit of armor, for example, looks the same when worn by two different races (unlike, say, EQ 1, where the same item of leather armor looked different depending on what race was wearing it and actually refered to multiple models and texture sets).
Not only does this make things more consistent and realistic, but it also gives us room to have a lot more different types of clothing and armor because we don't have to store X number of leather armors in memory (where X is the number of player characters), we just have to store the 1 and it morphs and fits everyone we want it to. So now we can have a bunch of different types of, say, leather armor that are not only represented as different items in your inventory, but also look different in-game on the actual character.
This ability to scale and morph in real time then not only allows us to change a base character model into both a human and a dwarf, but it also allows us to scale and morph the figure after it's already been turned into, say, a dwarf.
So whereas the difference between a dwarf and a human are significant, we can also make smaller changes, allowing us to change a dwarf's facial or body to make players look more unique. This has been done to some extent in other MMOGs (for example, SW:G and EQ 2), but we can take it much farther because virtually every aspect of the model is scalable/morphable. And by being able to make more significant changes in appearance, you can easily make, say, two elves look very different, even at a distance (whereas older games you often couldn't discern the differences unless you got really close). And, again, this applies not only to facial features, but also the body, e.g. you can have fat and skinny player characters.
So, if this all works out, and it looks like it will (we were almost ready to show it completely at E3, but missed by a week or two -- ah well), everyone can pretty much look unique. And this also applies to humanoid NPCs. As you walk through a city or village, the guards should have different faces and body types, etc.
The above quote was from Brad on the Vanguard forum, and while it plays up the character customization aspect, it shows that compared to today's games Vanguard's characters will take up less of a computer's graphics power, especially when there are many characters/NPCs on the screen.
Say there's an adventure group of a dozen different races. Four each are wearing plate, chain, and cloth armour. Instead of having 12 character models, 4 plate models, 4 chain models, and 4 cloth models sitting in the graphics card memory, for Vanguard's system there would be 1 character model, 1 plate model, 1 chain model, and 1 cloth model stored in memory, and they're simply adjusted on the fly to match each player/NPC. That's a huge savings when you put 40 to 50 people in the same area.