| How far can you take Renegade's graphics? [message #187904] |
Tue, 31 January 2006 10:17  |
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m1a1_abrams
Messages: 375
Registered: August 2003
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Commander |
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I think it's come to people's attention lately that maybe the Renegade engine is more capable than was previously thought. When Exdeath showed some in-game screens of the Reborn lightmaps it was pointed out how sharp the game looked in general, nevermind the lightmaps thing... because he has modern hardware with the settings turned up high. I mean I don't know that much about graphics cards and whatnot, but I assume the Renegade engine must be pretty ok if it can even support some of the things cards can do to games these days. I mean you get some basic texture filtering options with Renegade, but there isn't any anti-aliasing to turn on in the menu... I assume because PCs at the time wouldn't be able to run it anyway... but it must be supported, even if you can't access it through the menu since you can turn all those things up to high in your graphics card interface on your desktop and it all works. Like I said, I don't know much about graphics cards and how much they can tweak graphics that weren't designed to be that good, but I turned anti-aliasing up to 8x and anisotropic filtering up to 16x resulting in Renegade looking awesome. I was expecting the game to just not run at all or give me day-glo textures, but it works fine online with an FPS of 60 or higher.
Anyway, I took a screenshot to show how much better Renegade looks when you force all the settings to highest with your card, rather than letting the programs decide the detail level. I think it looks pretty nice... and that's just the game as shipped. I don't think the age of the game would show that much at all in a mod with higher poly models and modern hardware to run it on.
http://www.glowfoto.com/viewimage.php?img=31-084717L&y=2 006&m=01&t=png&rand=9606&srv=img2
It's funny, because the modding scene in particular seemed ready to move on from Renegade because of frustrations over the graphics, even if the C&C gameplay couldn't be replicated without a great deal of work in other engines... yet so long as you tweak the settings at the graphics card rather than in Renegade's meagre set of options, it can still look the part even today. People keep mentioning how Renegade can quite happily manage vastly more polygons than they used in the retail game, and that it's only textures that it struggles with... but even if that's the case, filtering seems to make low-res textures look like they're quite detailed.
Your thoughts?
Edit: I think I linked to a private photo album so nobody would be able to see the screenshot. This should work though and it has 3 pics insteadhttp://www.glowfoto.com/users2/Dan_Rooth/view.php?aid=4996
[Updated on: Tue, 31 January 2006 11:27] Report message to a moderator |
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| Re: How far can you take Renegade's graphics? [message #187922 is a reply to message #187904] |
Tue, 31 January 2006 13:45  |
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m1a1_abrams
Messages: 375
Registered: August 2003
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Commander |
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Eh, that's weird. I can barely tell the difference between those two pictures. I had to skip between them fast before I noticed that one was more "faded" than the other... but apart from that, both look like they have anti-aliasing and whatnot on high.
For comparison, I tried to reproduce the same shot you used, first with only the stock Renegade graphics settings set to highest and second with Renegade on highest *and* AA/AF set to highest in the NVIDIA display.
http://www.glowfoto.com/viewimage.php?img=31-120824L&y=2 006&m=01&t=png&rand=1329&srv=img2
http://www.glowfoto.com/users2/Dan_Rooth/image.php?iid=53881 9&aid=4996&offset=4
As you can see, there is a big difference.
Edit: oh wait, I know what is going on in your pics now. If you have a Geforce card too, I think the "image quality" setting is actually all of the other settings combined... so if you put it on high quality all that means is that it sets everything to highest, including antialiasing, blah blah... so you don't have to change them manually... like an all-in-one slider. So I think you will have had everything on high both times.
[Updated on: Tue, 31 January 2006 13:50] Report message to a moderator |
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| Re: How far can you take Renegade's graphics? [message #187926 is a reply to message #187904] |
Tue, 31 January 2006 14:03 |
JPNOD
Messages: 807
Registered: April 2004
Location: Area 51
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Colonel |
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The sniper looks better then that it looks here, what graphics card do you have? Is there a feature in Renegade that a Geforce 3/4 TI serie doesn't support? Is it just because of the high reso?
p.s
wow for fucks sake, 20 popups come up on that site.
Host it on a different site next time plz 
WOL nick: JPNOD
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| Re: How far can you take Renegade's graphics? [message #187976 is a reply to message #187904] |
Tue, 31 January 2006 19:46 |
Kanezor
Messages: 855
Registered: February 2005
Location: Sugar Land, TX, USA
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Colonel |
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The problem I don't like is that the textures still look quite stretched (especially for the terrain), in all of the screenshots of stock Renegade, with or without all of those extra nonstandard settings.
But really, it doesn't affect Renegade's gameplay too much, which is what I play Renegade for: the gameplay.
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[Updated on: Tue, 31 January 2006 19:46] Report message to a moderator |
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| Re: How far can you take Renegade's graphics? [message #188014 is a reply to message #187904] |
Wed, 01 February 2006 01:47 |
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m1a1_abrams
Messages: 375
Registered: August 2003
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Commander |
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Yeah, the ground textures and such are applied really huge on the Westwood maps. Anisotropic filtering can't change that... all it does is make the existing texture look sharp from every angle, no matter how far away it is from you. Unfortunately a lot of the stock Renegade textures *are* stretched, even when they aren't being warped by the camera angle.
The point of this thread was really to say that if you put higher poly models and well applied detailed textures into the game, higher end graphics cards can make the game look really nice. Also, I understand that mappers can put bump mapping in their maps, although they have to do that themselves... the same with lighting effects.
[Updated on: Wed, 01 February 2006 11:38] Report message to a moderator |
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| Re: How far can you take Renegade's graphics? [message #188093 is a reply to message #188055] |
Wed, 01 February 2006 15:53 |
Kanezor
Messages: 855
Registered: February 2005
Location: Sugar Land, TX, USA
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| Renardin6 wrote on Wed, 01 February 2006 13:14 |
Renegade engine is 1337. (not for textures, we know!)
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That looks like how I've been playing Renegade ever since I upgraded to my X800XL.
And I definitely play with anti-aliasing off! With my 1280x1024 screen, the no pixellation of the detail is hardly worth not being able to read the text (eg, credits, FPS display, score list) at a glance.
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