Elemental makes use of a brand new 3D engine developed specifically for PC strategy games. Its multithreaded design along with dynamic LOD (level of detail) allows for it to look great on a wide range of hardware.
To see and understand why Elemental can look good on low end hardware and yet benefit further from higher end hardware see for yourself how the dynamic LOD works:
Look very very closely here. This isn’t one 3D object. This is dozens of 3D objects. The engine determines how powerful your hardware is and based on that can choose to display objects based on that.
As more objects come into view, certain “less important” objects start to fade away:
Did something change?
Look closely. Did something change?
How about now?
As a result of the object-based system that Kumquat provides, the graphics look identical at a casual glance and yet, the polygon count is dramatically less in the third image.
And users with very low end hardware can simply play using the sprite based output (cloth map mode):
Because Kumquat is a PC-only graphics engine, it can make a different set of trade offs than the traditional cross-platform engine. Namely, it can assume players have a considerable amount of memory (1 gigabyte is the minimum total system memory to play a Kumquat based game – very little on a PC but twice what a current generation console has). Thus, a given game object can be made up of many sub-objects (which use more memory) but can be dynamically turned on or off based on 3D hardware instead of having to load up lower-quality 3D models.
Is it Thursday yet? No?!?! Damnit....
This discussion reminds me of how upset people were of Diablo III's graphics when screenshots were first release. Really the only thing that bothers me is how the characters look. They're too cartoony IMO. But I do appreciate the style Stardock's going for.
Besides I expect some industrious folks will take it upon themselves to create different art assets for the game after release.
Later,LAR
The fix is rather simple ... you just have sparse tiles that border the Clumpy tiles (separate the clumps from the empty space) ...
So you have a tile that "blends" the clump of forest into the barren space by having thinner forest, that slowly thins out from one side to the other.
Mind you, this approach sounds (and probably is) quite time consuming, and hurts the ability to make random maps.
Alternatively ... you make "tiles" bigger, with a small clumpy center of "active tile" surrounded by "border tiles", and you do this all in one space.
Highlight the part that you want to be the "active tile" and the rest becomes inactive (cosmetic) "border tiles"
Alternatively, you could somehow get Trees to Sporadically spawn on tiles that border forest/swamp tiles. Just use Asymmetry and alternating space (somehow).
Either way, making a Random Map generator with repeatable "awesome" is a lot harder than making a pretty screenshot.
I will agree that TucoBenedicto's screenshot is rather Favorable.
a couple notes about the screen-shot: I like the UI, with the exception of the mini-map. That mini-map looks nothing like the rest of the screenshot (or the scale is just way off). But I like how it shows how many settlements and heroes you have.
I guess the one thing that I don't like is how the "fallen" waters are LAVA (but it looks really cool, so I am honestly okay with it and I can look past its silliness)
The "evil water" being LAVA is rather artistic and makes for a cool screenshot ... but I'm not sure if it fits into the lore.
Actually it should be possible to make a tile that spans a few squares so that things are blended better.
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