Witcher 3 Graphics

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Said no one ever. Only massive publishers consider that a flop and only when combining three platforms, never when talking about a PC exclusive.

How nice of you to quote me out of context. Please quote the entire thing I said and realize how dumb your reply is.

And they did not say this at all.

Yes they did.

The game does have parallax mapping too, you can see it on those fort walls which made it to the final game and a ton of the clothes and armor. Are you confusing pom for simple parallax normal maps?

You're the one who's confusing the two things. The Witcher 2 has no parallex mapping, none at all. TW2 has diffuse maps, alpha maps, specular maps, normal maps and luminosity maps, but no parallax mapping.

What you are referring to are normal maps, not parallax mapping.
 
@luc0s I didn't quote you out of context, I just stated a fact. 1.2m copies sold for a PC exclusive is really good. 90% of PC only games don't sell that much.

And no, they didn't. Watch the video. They said they use them -- and they do. If you disagree you simply haven't played TW2. Parallax mapping is a method of normal mapping and many stone walls, cliff faces, ground textures, and wood textures use it.
 
It is better but I wish it had more of the depth of the first game.

I was extatic when I first saw the alternative modes for Aard and Igni, those are superb, I can't recall if they were used like that in the books but I think I recall Geralt keeping one enemy at a distance with a continuous Quen (or it might've been Igni). Now I actually use Axii and dodges.

Swordfighting though is basically from the 2nd game with less fixation on rolls and Quen.

Yes you did quote me out of context. I never said 1.2m copies for a game like The Witcher 1 is bad.

What's wrong with it? It's actually longer and better than Witcher 2. The last chapter in 2 is a joke.

P.S. I'll never understand people who are fully content with graphics in the final product posting in a thread created and populated by folks who are not 100% satisfied with the graphics.
 
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He might've said one point two million. Gotta rewatch it. But, dude, you seriously need to have your ego checked, it's bursting.

Explain to me why combat in The Witcher 2 was better and not tedious with its constant rolls?

My ego is bursting? How? Because I think TW1 is easy?

Constant rolling got tedious as well, but not as tedious as playing wack-a-mole with your mouse (pressing every time the sword-icon becomes orange) constantly from start to finish without any variation.

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What's wrong with it? It's actually longer and better than Witcher 2. The last chapter in 2 is a joke.

There is nothing inherently wrong with The Witcher 1, it's just a low-budget game build on an outdated engine, and it shows. the voice-acting is horrible and the graphics were mediocre even for 2007 standards.

For a low-budget PC-only game made in an outdated engine with cheap voice-acting, 1.2 million units sold is really good.
 
My ego is bursting? How? Because I think TW1 is easy?

Constant rolling got tedious as well, but not as tedious as playing wack-a-mole with your mouse (pressing every time the sword-icon becomes orange) constantly from start to finish without any variation.

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There is nothing inherently wrong with The Witcher 1, it's just a low-budget game build on an outdated engine, and it shows. the voice-acting is horrible and the graphics were mediocre even for 2007 standards.

For a low-budget PC-only game made in an outdated engine with cheap voice-acting, 1.2 million units sold is really good.

1) Because of a personal attack. Don't tell me what to do and I won't tell you where to go - as simple as that.

2) To each his own I guess. I prefer the combo system of the first game to those horrible rolls and Quen which was the ultimate recipe for victory.

3) I've played Witcher 1 in 2014 and get this I didn't think the graphics were that outdated, sure the models lack polygons and fancy tech but it was a 7 year old game at the time. I seriously doubt it looked that outdated in 2007 - just compare the final version with its 2004 screenshots - it's amazing what progress they've made. It doesn't look like Aurora engine at all. And both 1st and 2nd got progressively better graphics-wise, and they went a complete 360 with the 3rd one.

4) Voice-acting for main characters was top-notch. They've only kept VO actor for Geralt only and I noticed the change for Dandelion, Zoltan and Triss. Dandelion's new VO was especially noticable (Zoltan - not so much because they thought they could use any Scottsman to do the job and it's pretty good). Voice-acting from some characters in 3 is also horrible but it doesn't detract from it.
 
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I never said 1.2m copies for a game like The Witcher 1 is bad.
You said this amount of sales is a terrible flop and that never has been true.

And as I thought, you were confusing parallax occlusion mapping for simple parallax mapping. They are not the same thing.
 
You said this amount of sales is a terrible flop and that never has been true.

And as I thought, you were confusing parallax occlusion mapping for simple parallax mapping. They are not the same thing.

I said 1.2 million copies sold would be a terrible flop for TW3, which is definitely true. CDPR will not make a profit with those numbers. They need to sell a whole lot more to be profitable with TW3.

And no, I'm not confusing anything. Parallax occlusion mapping is exactly the same thing as parallax mapping, but with occlusion added to it. You are the one confusing simple normal mapping with parallax mapping.

I study game architecture & design at an university, my specialization being 3D visual art. I know my shit.

Once again, another image to show you the difference:

 
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The final version looked better though. Something that could hardly be said for TW3. In many areas it did look better, but overall, I think we know what the general consensus was :p

You make a very good point though. Things change like crazy in a year or two.
 
The Witcher 2 only uses normal mapping which you see on the right. TW2 doesn't have parallax mapping, which you see on the left.

Hell, even The Witcher 3 doesn't use parallax mapping.

Ignoring the little girl fight you guys are having.. If you can get such an effect why didn't they do it? The cost of creating the maps themselves too high? If they did all the other maps you mentioned on the previous page..

Hmmm.. so sounds like the practice difference in effect between this extreme parallax mapping and environment tesselation is going to be subtle.. or practical.. i bet you can only go so far with a texture before it looks like a stretched image.

Sorry for the dumb questions, i've never worked with a rasterizer before. The maths dammit :)
 
@luc0s
That's not what you said but I do agree with that.

And no, pom is a shader and is not your typical parallax mapping. Oblivion and Skyrim got a parallax occlusion mods but both games shipped with parallax mapped textures, no mods needed there. The first room of the first dungeon of Oblivion and The Witcher 2 have parallax walls, check for yourself. It's just a type of normal map and TW2 is filled to the brim with them.

I really doubt you "know your shit", you just said something blatantly wrong.
 
And no, I'm not confusing anything. Parallax occlusion mapping is exactly the same thing as parallax mapping, but with occlusion added to it. You are the one confusing simple normal mapping with parallax mapping.

I study game architecture & design at an university, my specialization being 3D visual art. I know my shit.

Once again, another image to show you the difference:

"The highly anticipated sequel of The Witcher has finally been released and CD Projekt RED did an exceptional work. The Witcher 2 is one of the best looking games, even though it only supports DX9. CD Projekt RED used parallax occlusion mapping to the game’s surfaces, high quality textures and created some amazing levels for it. There is no denying that The Witcher 2 looks great, and it comes with lots of graphical options to tweak. Moreover, CD Projekt RED removed its DRM and released its 2.0 version for free. The Witcher 2 is a highly optimized game and although it’s GPU bound, it takes advantage of quad-cores at some CPU heavy scenes."

there are quite few examples "Mastering" google helps :)
 
@luc0s
That's not what you said but I do agree with that.

And no, pom is a shader and is not your typical parallax mapping. Oblivion and Skyrim got a parallax occlusion mods but both games shipped with parallax mapped textures, no mods needed there. The first room of the first dungeon of Oblivion and The Witcher 2 have parallax walls, check for yourself. It's just a type of normal map and TW2 is filled to the brim with them.

I really doubt you "know your shit", you just said something blatantly wrong.

No, you're the one who's blatantly wrong. In fact you don't seem to have a single clue what you're talking about.

Yes. parallax collusion mapping is a shader technique. So is regular parallax mapping. So is regular normal mapping. So is diffuse mapping. All forms of mapping are shaders. Without shaders your 3D models would be nothing more than a bunch of points (vertexes) and lines (edges).

Parallax occlusion mapping is definitely the same thing as parallax mapping, it's just a more advanced version of it.

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"The highly anticipated sequel of The Witcher has finally been released and CD Projekt RED did an exceptional work. The Witcher 2 is one of the best looking games, even though it only supports DX9. CD Projekt RED used parallax occlusion mapping to the game’s surfaces, high quality textures and created some amazing levels for it. There is no denying that The Witcher 2 looks great, and it comes with lots of graphical options to tweak. Moreover, CD Projekt RED removed its DRM and released its 2.0 version for free. The Witcher 2 is a highly optimized game and although it’s GPU bound, it takes advantage of quad-cores at some CPU heavy scenes."

there are quite few examples "Mastering" google helps :)

That article you linked is wrong. CDPR announced that TW2 would have parallax occlusion mapping, but the final version of TW2 doesn't have it.

Parallax occlusion mapping is a very taxing shading technique. The games that have it also have the option to turn it off in the graphics settings (so that people who don't have monster PC rigs can run the game too). The Witcher 2 has no such option, because TW2 doesn't have parallax mappping. And if you pay close attention to the textures in The Witcher 2 you can clearly see there is no parallax mapping happening, only normalmapping.
 
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Ignoring the little girl fight you guys are having.. If you can get such an effect why didn't they do it? The cost of creating the maps themselves too high? If they did all the other maps you mentioned on the previous page..

Hmmm.. so sounds like the practice difference in effect between this extreme parallax mapping and environment tesselation is going to be subtle.. or practical.. i bet you can only go so far with a texture before it looks like a stretched image.

Sorry for the dumb questions, i've never worked with a rasterizer before. The maths dammit :)

The reason why none of the Witcher games have parallax mapping is because it's quite heavy to render. There are only very few games with parallax mapping and none of them are open-world (unless you count modded Skyrim).

I guess the reason why not many games use parallax mapping is because it adds very little for quite a performance hit. Though to my surprise Tomb Raider 2013 ran pretty decently on my old GTX 670 with parallax-mapping turned on.

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@luc0s It appears you're beyond help and haven't even played TW2. Okay, say what you want.

I played The Witcher 2 more often than you. I don't see how that's even an argument anyway. But whatever. You're the one who's beyond help.
 
Now he's saying it's heavy to render(it isn't even 1 fps) and that no open world games use it, what a joke. GTA V, Stalker, many MMOs, and I'm sure more games use it. Misinforming people once again.
 
That article you linked is wrong. CDPR announced that TW2 would have parallax occlusion mapping, but the final version of TW2 doesn't have it.

Parallax occlusion mapping is a very taxing shading technique. The games that have it also have the option to turn it off in the graphics settings (so that people who don't have monster PC rigs can run the game too). The Witcher 2 has no such option, because TW2 doesn't have parallax mappping. And if you pay close attention to the textures in The Witcher 2 you can clearly see there is no parallax mapping happening, only normalmapping.

Article of that announcement please if not dont bother to reply to my post have a nice day.
 
Now he's saying it's heavy to render(it isn't even 1 fps) and that no open world games use it, what a joke. GTA V, Stalker, many MMOs, and I'm sure more games use it. Misinforming people once again.

So you managed to name 2 open-world games with parallax occlusion mapping. Good job. That still doesn't make it "many games". Two isn't many.

I'm not misinforming anyone. Do you even know what parallax occlusion mapping does? It basically adds procedural-generated geometry on the spot (through tessellation) based on the normal-map and shader-settings that are provided. That shit is quite heavy.

You're the one misinforming people. And I don't even understand why. What do you have to gain from this?

You know what? Fuck it. I'm done talking to you.

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There is parallax mapping in TW3 too just not that much. It takes more time to develop good textures which costs more money so most of the time developers don't do it. Dozens of games use it though.

This is blatantly false. Textures are created at enormous resolutions and then down-sampled to either 4k, 2k or 1k size. In the game studio where I worked, making textures at 8k resolutions or higher wasn't uncommon. Working on higher resolutions doesn't take more time, lol.

Making good normal-maps (which is what's used for parallax-mapping) doesn't take much time either. Game artists like myself basically sculpt their models in Zbrush and then retopologize to a functional in-game model, with the high-resolution sculpt baked on it as a normal-map. You can then decide to add a parallax shader to the normal-map but usually that doesn't happen.

The Witcher 3 doesn't have parallax-mapping to my knowledge. I haven't seen a single occasion of parallax mapping in TW3 yet.

Don't listen to Witcherman, he's the one misinforming you.

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Article of that announcement please if not dont bother to reply to my post have a nice day.

I already linked the video were CDPR announced that. Go a few pages back.

You have a nice day too kiddo.
 
So you managed to name 2 open-world games with parallax occlusion mapping. Good job. That still doesn't make it "many games". Two isn't many.

I'm not misinforming anyone. Do you even know what parallax occlusion mapping does? It basically adds procedural-generated geometry on the spot (through tessellation) based on the normal-map and shader-settings that are provided. That shit is quite heavy.

You're the one misinforming people. And I don't even understand why. What do you have to gain from this?

You know what? Fuck it. I'm done talking to you.
Here are some more games since you're so adamant on being proven wrong.
http://www.giantbomb.com/parallax-mapping/3015-4460/games/
Notice this is only a list of old games, more and more games have used it as time passed.

It has no noticeable performance hit in any game it's in, even when you get it through injector mods with 4k resolution textures there isn't a hit, it only eats up vram. Even seventh gen consoles can do it(Crysis as an example) and you see it a lot more in this eight generation, Killzone SF had a LOT of parallax textures.

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This is blatantly false. Textures are created at enormous resolutions and then down-sampled to either 4k, 2k or 1k size. In the game studio where I worked, making textures at 8k resolutions or higher wasn't uncommon. Working on higher resolutions doesn't take more time, lol.

Making good normal-maps (which is what's used for parallax-mapping) doesn't take much time either. Game artists like myself basically sculpt their models in Zbrush and then retopologize to a functional in-game model, with the high-resolution sculpt baked on it as a normal-map. You can then decide to add a parallax shader to the normal-map but usually that doesn't happen.

The Witcher 3 doesn't have parallax-mapping to my knowledge. I haven't seen a single occasion of parallax mapping in TW3 yet.

Don't listen to Witcherman, he's the one misinforming you.
I didn't say anything about resolutions and shitty textures(what you often see in TW3) at high resolution are still shitty textures. It takes more time to make good ones, like I said. You didn't even refute that.
 
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