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The one thing that really bothers me about SWBF2 is how fake everything looks in comparison to other games. I was blown away by the graphics of Half-Life 2, which was released in 2004, prior to even BF1.

Some comparison pics:
Some obvious differences in BF:

• Low poly count - The Mygeeto buildings look like mushrooms rather than models.
• No advanced lighting - look how in half life the lighting and shadows are all "baked" onto the model, battlefront doesn't even come close to this feature.
• Low texture detail - look at the rich detail in texture of the HL2 and COD, compare it to the blandness of battlefront
• More? - I don't know.

I know we can fix to an extent the low-poly and low texture detail issues, but the advanced lighting is hard because the renderer itself just doesn't do it. BF can render like 3 lights on an object ingame then it gives up. I came up with a terribly long work around for it though using 3ds Max, but it's not very practical. You gotta then load 2 models of whatever you're doing, one with the base texture, and one that overlays on top of it to provide the lighting.

I mean swbf2 is a fun game, but hasn't anyone else noticed this?

oh my! i never realized that but now the scales fall from my eyes! xD
i think battlefronts biggest problems are the lighting and the textures(style)
and the sporadically used flags....

yes, we all have noticed it. I cant believe that most of the model textures in this game are 512x512, that is horrendous.

Those are unfair comparisons, Half-life 2 was a bit ahead of its time in 2004, Modern Warfare was released a couple years after BFII and Pandemic wasn't aiming to impress anyone with their game's graphics anyway.

I think Battlefront II is on par with other games of the time... such as Unreal Tournament 2004:

I agree with Nihillo, and that screenie from SWBF2 doesn't look like highest settings to me.

You have to compare apples to apples as well - SWBF2 is a team shooter, and those kind of games will always (in comparison to the game's time period) look inferior to their contemporaries of other genres. They have to be optimized for lots of individual events going on at once over a larger area.

Maveritchell wrote:You have to compare apples to apples as well - SWBF2 is a team shooter, and those kind of games will always (in comparison to the game's time period) look inferior to their contemporaries of other genres. They have to be optimized for lots of individual events going on at once over a larger area.

Fine, CS:S instead of HL:2 then. Still looks a lot better than SWBF2. Lighting really makes a lot of difference, and SWBF2's lighting is very very basic.

The_Emperor wrote:Fine, CS:S instead of HL:2 then. Still looks a lot better than SWBF2. Lighting really makes a lot of difference, and SWBF2's lighting is very very basic.

Not a team shooter. Counterstrike does what, eight, twelve dynamic entities on a map at a time? Allocation of resources is a big deal, and SWBF2 has to allocate a lot of resources to AI, many units, differentiated dynamic entities (vehicles, units), etc.

lighting aside, the models could easily have more detail and so could the textures, and the engine can handle that.

Is there a way for us to bake lighting onto the models?

yeah, its used in oretty much every game now, ist called ambience occlusion map

Maveritchell wrote:

The_Emperor wrote:Fine, CS:S instead of HL:2 then. Still looks a lot better than SWBF2. Lighting really makes a lot of difference, and SWBF2's lighting is very very basic.

Not a team shooter. Counterstrike does what, eight, twelve dynamic entities on a map at a time? Allocation of resources is a big deal, and SWBF2 has to allocate a lot of resources to AI, many units, differentiated dynamic entities (vehicles, units), etc.

Exactly -- everyone discounts SWBF2, yet it has to account for up to 40 AI characters all at once. And then people discount the AI as dumb, well take a good look at a FPS AI of the time as well. Half-Life 2 is as good of an example as any. It's got two modes: 1) Charge the player and attack, 2) strafe around the player and attack -- so it ain't much "smarter" than SWBF2 in that respect.

Long story short SWBF1/2 could have looked better, but comparing it to Half-Life 2, the predecessor came out in 1998, so they had six years to work on the engine AND the content. SWBF1 came out only two years after Star Wars: The Clone Wars, SWBF2 only 13 months after SWBF1. Not enough time to work on the engine itself. Just enough to build something off an existing setup.

Besides, if MeshEx has shown us anything, it was that with enough work we could get it close to Half-Life 2's looks. The reason it wasn't was because they didn't want astronomical sys requirements and had no time to update the engine anyways.


Sorry --- long reply for a short point...

Nihillo wrote:Those are unfair comparisons, Half-life 2 was a bit ahead of its time in 2004, Modern Warfare was released a couple years after BFII and Pandemic wasn't aiming to impress anyone with their game's graphics anyway.

I think Battlefront II is on par with other games of the time... such as Unreal Tournament 2004:

Hidden/Spoiler:

Agreed - SWBF1 came out September 20, 2004, UT2004 on March 16, 2004. That's a much more realistic comparison. Here are pics for Call of Duty 2, which came out in 2005, and is the only realistic comparison:
The textures look pretty muddy to me, and the aside from tons of bumpmapping in the first pic and higher res textures it doesn't look much better.

Maveritchell wrote:

The_Emperor wrote:Fine, CS:S instead of HL:2 then. Still looks a lot better than SWBF2. Lighting really makes a lot of difference, and SWBF2's lighting is very very basic.

Not a team shooter. Counterstrike does what, eight, twelve dynamic entities on a map at a time? Allocation of resources is a big deal, and SWBF2 has to allocate a lot of resources to AI, many units, differentiated dynamic entities (vehicles, units), etc.

On Half Life 2: Death Match I've seen servers of 32 people, some with bots that I at one time thought were real people. Tons of dynamic entities, way more than battlefront. They filled the map with bottles, boxes, milk jugs, containers, shelves, tables, chairs, computers, breakable glass, swinging lamps. All are moveable and destructible by shooting, pushing, or using the gravity gun to grab and throw across the room. In battlefront, mostly everything is static except for like a few turrets and vehicles.

What I really meant anyways wasn't, "Why did pandemic decide to go light on the graphics?" Rather, I'm more interested in "What (graphical) factors make battlefront look unrealistic compared to other games?" Maybe if we could isolate why it looks fake, we could address these factors and make it look even better.

What can we do to improve ourselves, basically.

We'll I'd say item #1 is texture resolution and bump/specular. Your Red/Blue models are a great example of what can be done. Past that I think using object lights where needed can make a difference, but honestly I don't think you're going to get a realistic look out of SWBF2. I'd say it'll always have a semi-cartoony look to it no matter what we do. The best thing at this point is a proof-of-concept map with hi-res textures, proper lighting, bump/spec/detail textures where applicable, etc. If it could be done at that point I'd say we're in business.

I'd say we could probably get close to LotR: Conquest quality (which clearly looks like minimal changes were made to the engine) by updating models and textures and tweaking lighting, but that's probably the limit.

Shader settings also have a big impact on how models look when rendered out.

Check the following directory in any project folder.

data_modid/Common/shaders/PC

Inside are various .h .vsh and most importantly the .xml shaders. Another interesting tidbit, XSI Mod Tool 7.5 has the ICE system in it. You can use ICE to create shaders and you can export them in .xml format. So theoretically it should be possible to make new shaders for SWBF2, like a stronger Normal Map shader or even make the game look like Borderlands. It bears some experimentation.

Also modern game models tend to have three associated texture maps.

normal map
diffuse/color map
specular map

other possible textures also include

parallax map
bump - used mostly for props/environments now
alpha map - cutting shapes out of planes for low poly stuff (PSP, DS)

Teancum wrote:I'd say we could probably get close to LotR: Conquest quality (which clearly looks like minimal changes were made to the engine) by updating models and textures and tweaking lighting, but that's probably the limit.

Hidden/Spoiler:

You can make Star Wars Battlefront II look like that?!?

Sure - that ain't nothin but high-res textures on high poly models with a bit of bump/specular. Look at everything but the fighters and dragon and you'll see that isn't far off from SWBF2.

Well, call me easy to impress if you want, but I think that looks awesome!

I'm not if its possible, but can we use ENB Series of BF2?

EDIT- Because it not only works for GTA SA and IV but my friends do it on COD 2 and 1 ?

All you need to do is run the engine through d3dx9 and run a streaming ini . Or ask the guys in the forum.

http://www.enbdev.com

BattleBelk had ENB working for SWBF 1.
One thing i noticed: when rendering my TCW Clone i slapped a specular map on it in XSI. I didnt delete it before exporting. When i was checking the .msh in a hex editor it was still referenced. I didnt put the spec map into my sides folder so i dont know if this makes any difference.
Btw, does the bumpmap flag in mshex/mshtool use a "real" specular map(adjustable specularity) or just specular on or off? Afaik we have a normal map flag in the exporter(not sure)? Does it work?