A plan for graphical tweaks?

[Ketran]

Hello all, I downloaded Ace of Spades yesterday and have been having a lot of fun blasting the blue team.

As I was playing I noticed a few changes that I think should be made. Now I know the point of Ace of Spades is to have low graphics so it can run on any computer; and I love the art style and wouldn't want to change that.

However I think there are some graphical tweaks that should be added. These features could be turned on and off of course, so that people with ancient systems can still run AOS.

Anti-aliasing: I know the appeal of of the game is blocky and low-res but it's a bit of an eyesore to see everything jagged and unappealing. All anti-aliasing would do is smooth edges while retaining the retro style of the game; it's just an idea to make the game a little easier on the eyes. When I used anti-aliasing in Minecraft I found that the aesthetics of it were much better but it still pulled off the blocky ideal.

Dynamic fog: The first thing I noticed when I joined a game was the all consuming fog. I've grown accustomed to it but I still think it could either look better, or should be extended. Of course with increasing the draw distance comes an advantage to people with better systems, they can snipe people a lot easier because they can see further. Because of that I doubt the draw distance will be increased, but I do think the way fog is rendered could be smoother and look more appealing.

Anisotropic filtering: Not as paramount as the other features but would be nice to have nonetheless. It just means further away blocks retain their detail and removes that noticeable smoothing as you approach them.

Dynamic lighting: This is where the game starts to demand more power, but like I said if it was a toggle-able feature it would be great. I get very confused by the lighting in this game, as you break blocks they grow a shade darker with each hit. However because of the lighting, I have a lot of blocks of different dark shades clustered together and I have no idea if they are strong or not. Introducing a true shadow system would make all the affected blocks be of the same shade and I'll be able to recognise whether or not they've been struck, or they're in the shade.

Sky: Not exactly a graphical feature but I think adding some kind of sky would remove a lot of the gloom in the game. Of course if you wanted to add different weather to different maps that would be great, but at the moment each map has a certain dull greyness to it.

Thanks for reading, if this has been suggested before then I apologise.

[bcoolface]

Thanks for the suggestions, I think you'll be glad to hear that anti-aliasing, extended/nicer fog, skyboxes/clouds, and possible dynamic lighting are in the agenda for 1.0.

There's not much we can do on the current engine, but OpenGL will give us a lot more freedom as we move towards 1.0