Sprites & Bloom, share your thoughts

**rawghi** · October 09, 2006, 04:56 AM

Hi to all,
I played the demo and I noticed that the sprites aren't good, mainly for the colour (for example, sprites for cavalry are brown, while in the units you see even white horse...) and even for animation, have you seen the same?

And another thing I wish to know, I' havent a very fast pc (as you see in my sig, mainly for the entry level videocard) so I have to deactivate shader2 (and so, the bloom lightning), do you think that bloom is necessary or the graphic is good even without it?

Thank you, I would share my first play experience with you

**Dutchpower** · October 09, 2006, 05:03 AM

I like the sprites, they are not as clean as the ones in rome thank god.

**rawghi** · October 09, 2006, 05:16 AM

Originally Posted by Dutchpower

I like the sprites, they are not as clean as the ones in rome thank god.

So you prefer the more "blurred" version of M2TW? if I have understand correctly

**Dutchpower** · October 09, 2006, 05:26 AM

Well.....yeah....

**rawghi** · October 09, 2006, 05:41 AM

Glad to see these opinion, because I'm a lot in confusion after 1 hour of play

**The_Dark_Legion** · October 09, 2006, 06:57 AM

Noob question. What are sprites and bloom?

**BMV** · October 09, 2006, 07:08 AM

Sprites are 2d images that replace your soldiers that are far away from your view and so the game doesn't lag so much.
as for bloom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_%28shader_effect%29

and i dont pay much attention to spirtes and becouse I didn't "saw" them then i gues they're fine for me.
and bloom is well just the thing that rome needed to make it look good

**rawghi** · October 09, 2006, 07:11 AM

Sprites are 2D object that is used in pc games, M2TW or RTW uses them when you zoom far away from units. Without sprites, the game engine have to calculate all 3d units you see onscreen, with sprites the game engine uses this 2d object (that resemble the 3d units) to save CPU & memory. On highest settings (on very fast pc) sprites are disabled because the system can handle all 3d models.

Bloom is a way to apply light in game, is an alternative algorithm, that improve the feelings of "real units", but it need more resources than normal lightning algorithm. For example, when I activeta bloom on my system, the game lag, so I have to use the normal lightning system. Another algorithm is the HDR, (High Dynamic Range) used for example in the pc game Oblivion, many says that this is better than Bloom (and I think in the same way) but it needs more resources than Bloom. M2TW didn't use HDR.

Excuse me for my bad english, and I hope I'll help you

**The_Dark_Legion** · October 09, 2006, 07:17 AM

thank you. anyways can you play unit details on the highest? too lagy for me.

**evya** · October 09, 2006, 07:31 AM

I have 3.0 ghz
1 GB of ram
and Radeon 9600 256 mb
and i run all graphics on the highest, AA X6 and AF x8 but with no shadows and it runs with minimal to no lag at all
i hope that in the full game with the engine improved from the demo i could at least but shadows on medium

**rawghi** · October 09, 2006, 07:32 AM

even for me, my system specs are lower than yours, I play in 1024*768 on medium setting but WITHOUT shader v.2 because it becomes laggy, so I let my soul in peace and I use shader v.1. Hoping that in the full release the code is optimized a lot (but I know that they make great optimization even sith the demo, the problem is MY videocard, good but entry-level). I also hope, but it is only a mirage, that they gave the ability to set battle resolution to 800*600 so I can use shaders 2

**HorseArcher** · October 09, 2006, 07:37 AM

It's the same deal as RTW.

The unit detail level controls when the sprites will be shown.

At low level unit detail, the sprites will show from the shortest distance (zoom out a bit) while the "high" settings will show the units as sprites from only maximum distance.

At the "highest" unit detail, there are no sprites shown whatsoever.

I don't recommend to set it to the highest detail, unless you got a monster computer.

Why the sprites look off color?

Because instead of creating sprites for each individual unit, some sprites are shared between units.

For example, the urban cohorts in RTW, used the same sprites as the town militia.

Same for the cavalry in M2TW, those cavalry sprites are probably from a similarly colored unit, maybe some other cavalry we don't have in the demo.

This can be easily fixed by modders, by re-creating sprites for every unit and the problem will go away. CA probably opted for this, to save space, since the sprites can take up quite a lot of space, if they would make them for every single unit type.

**rawghi** · October 09, 2006, 07:40 AM

Originally Posted by Archer

It's the same deal as RTW.

Why the sprites look off color?

Because instead of creating sprites for each individual unit, some sprites are shared between units.

For example, the urban cohorts in RTW, used the same sprites as the town militia.

Same for the cavalry in M2TW, those cavalry sprites are probably from a similarly colored unit, maybe some other cavalry we don't have in the demo.

This can be easily fixed by modders, by re-creating sprites for every unit and the problem will go away. CA probably opted for this, to save space, since the sprites can take up quite a lot of space, if they would make them for every single unit type.

Thank you Archer, rep immediately!

**cudakite** · October 09, 2006, 07:47 AM

As far as bloom is concerned, I opt to go without it. It just doesn't look very realistic to me. And I prefer the way reflections look with bloom turned off. At any rate, for me, it isn't worth any performance hit to have it on.

**HorseArcher** · October 09, 2006, 07:50 AM

Originally Posted by cudakite

As far as bloom is concerned, I opt to go without it. It just doesn't look very realistic to me. And I prefer the way reflections look with bloom turned off. At any rate, for me, it isn't worth any performance hit to have it on.

Indeed, i turned off bloom also. I got a better framerate and don't have that blinding reflection. The regular reflection is enough.

Hopefully we can mod it somewhat in the full game to drop down from the bloom intensity to somewhat more settle.

**cudakite** · October 09, 2006, 08:00 AM

Originally Posted by Archer

Indeed, i turned off bloom also. I got a better framerate and don't have that blinding reflection. The regular reflection is enough.

Hopefully we can mod it somewhat in the full game to drop down from the bloom intensity to somewhat more settle.

Yeah we see eye to eye on this on. I think CA was just all excited about their new effect and got carried away wanting to show it off...

**rawghi** · October 09, 2006, 07:54 AM

I'm happy to know that I'm not the only one who turned Bloom OFF! (I have to be honest, I turn it off to run the game smoothly)

**InferiorBeing** · October 09, 2006, 08:13 AM

Archer; what you just said were wholly correct. I'd just like to add something for clarity:

The detail level also affect the quality of the units' actual textures as well as how far away the units have to be in order for them to turn into sprites. At "Low", the soldiers look crap even up-close. At "Medium" they don't look much better, but at least still better than even the high-detail units in RTW. At "High", they look as good as they can get. Anything above this, ("Higher", etc), only increases the LOD distance as Archer described.

**HorseArcher** · October 09, 2006, 08:19 AM

Originally Posted by InferiorBeing

Archer; what you just said were wholly correct. I'd just like to add something for clarity:

The detail level also affect the quality of the units' actual textures as well as how far away the units have to be in order for them to turn into sprites. At "Low", the soldiers look crap even up-close. At "Medium" they don't look much better, but at least still better than even the high-detail units in RTW. At "High", they look as good as they can get. Anything above this, ("Higher", etc), only increases the LOD distance as Archer described.

That's right. Beside the point, that I'm not really fond by how the units look (some look very frankeistein-ish), the highest unit detail will remove the sprites from the game. So, even with the maximum zoom, you are still looking at 3Dmodels, which is graphically very demanding on most computers.
You have the highest unit detail (the way the units look from up close) at "high" settings. the "highest", i think is unecessary and will not make your units -up-close look- any better.

**InferiorBeing** · October 09, 2006, 08:30 AM

Exactly. I think it's rather pointless to increase it any further than "High". When you zoom in, you do it in order to look at the particular scene closest to your camera. Anything far away will automatically be blurred out by our limited human vision. You won't really see the units far away very clearly anyways.

So you could just as well have them as low-detail models or sprites. You will, from nature's side, not see much of a difference anyways, so you might just as well go with the less system-slowing option.