There was no teaser at CES 2025.
When is the next event where we could expect some news?
There was no teaser at CES 2025.
When is the next event where we could expect some news?
XD
CES is not about videogame reveals man!
Lol! Forgive an old man!
So it’s hard to say.
They haven’t been announcing their events super far in advance, the New Year New Age event from last year was announced on January 31 and happened on February 23.
We know something is coming, and they haven’t ever released something without teasing it ~1-2 months in advance. We know it’s more than likely going to come out first week of April (end of season).
It would be safe to assume we’ll hear something by the end of February, but it will probably have very little notice.
Whatever it is, I hope they take some time to polish out the visuals for biomes.
They have most of the assets already. It’s just presented in bad lighting, with dull colours, lack of clarity and lack of variety in the usage of assets. Plenty of the desert biomes don’t actually look like deserts, and the same goes for the forest ones.
In other words, I’d like them to properly try to convey the biomes as they ought to look like, instead of simply being biomes that were checkboxed ASAP, which is how they currently feel.
Just look at the water here for instance. While they did fix sea water specifically, anything else really falls short. Rivers are still like they were, puddles are practically invisible, there aren’t any real swamps or anything like that.
And of course, I’d like more biomes too. The selection is too samey.
a random biome option would be greatly appreciated, as well as a more tropic biome, plenty of possibilities
Couldn’t disagree more. I hope they do more for the game’s visuals, and add more biomes, but without compromising the art direction in IV. If I wanted it to look like another game, I’d play another game.
Just a reminder for devs make graphics upgrade chosable because some computers may not be able to handle it.
You’re probably mistaking what I am saying. In the picture above, you can see how water (and there is water), just doesn’t really work when it is shallow. If you reference the AoE2 picture I posted earlier, you can see the kind of clarity that we should strive for. This is entirely possible, with existing assets and tools. I’m not asking for them to change the artstyle itself, but to enhance what we already have.
The water not looking as good as it could at certain angles (including the default camera angle at times) has little to do with lighting, “dull colours”, or lack of asset variety. Water’s actually pretty complicated in this game. Lighting too. It’s not as simple as rotating a light source, or upping the saturation of the water volume.
“lack of clarity” can mean many things. The AoE II screenshot stands out to me for being too “game-y”. Where do we find the middle ground that satisfies the most players?
plus Gaia spawning according to biome.
I’d guess the middle ground would be water that doesn’t literally look like the floor beneath it.
And I disagree, it isn’t complicated. They have plenty of tools to alter transparency based on height. Either way, this is only one of many things they could buffer to improve the visuals of the game.
I think an off-angle screenshot on what look to be pretty middling graphical settings, that requires you to be on a single map, and I think from limited testing a single biome (to really demonstrate how bad it is), would suggest that if this were an easy fix, perhaps it’s simply been overlooked.
Or maybe it’s not easy I default to assuming things around water and lighting are complicated more than they’re simple due to my limited experience looking at the available settings in the map editor (I’m more of a tuning pack guy, I’m no good at making maps).
Here’s another Marshland example, Sahara biome, all settings turned up, default camera perspective (maybe the Panoramic camera is also an issue, it’s the only way I think you can get that kind of vertical angle):
I definitely agree it could be better at a glance, but ingame all the fishing spots have generated a ton of birds that are sqawking non-stop, so it’s kinda hard to pretend you’re not surrounded by (navigable) water.
I have a personal dislike of bright blue water in video games (unless I’m literally playing on the Mediterranean biome), or otherwise overly-saturated water. Shallow water is, often, very hard to discern. It’s why I tell my kids to be careful - you can’t tell how deep a puddle is just by looking at it.
(I tested other maps that have larger bodies of water, and they all had the appropriate contrast - it’s only Marshlands that the water is shallow enough to have this issue)
I agree that there are things that they could do to improve the visuals. I just don’t agree with the things you’re suggesting.
that there would be a basic expectation with any other AOE, except here it appears
the best course of action would be to make water mesh actually visible first, with seperate parameters for depth shading with shallows, no need to go full neon blue, more so smt like this
And I’m not asking for this. Mind you, none of this is real. The visual parts of games are only ever faking and trying their best to convince you, that you’re not just looking at polygons and colours. There are always multiple ways to solve visual issues in games, many which don’t require to just crank up the GPU to max.
You don’t have to make water better in all sorts of bizarre ways just to make shallow water visible. There are plenty of ways to cheat that into existence, like relative height to transparency shaders. This should be on any competent developer’s bingo card, and I don’t say that to bring down the AoE4 developers.
Rather, it is like you say, as this is something minor which has simply been overlooked. But, more truthfully, there is a bit of lack of budget in that department, so they can’t afford to polish out these things. What this means, is that there are many “minor” issues like this, which have cheap and reasonable solutions, but which they simply don’t have time for.
Either way, I still long for it and will keep proposing that we get more visual fidelity.
You can (just) see it in my screenshot. Rivers and larger bodies of water don’t have the same problem - it’s basically only Marshlands, and marsh is a very unique kind of terrain if I’m being pretty honest. Water and at the same time not (we have a famous area known as the Fens here in the UK).
It’s more obvious in other biomes, too, even on that map.
Yes, but that would make the water too opaque. How familiar you with actual marshland? A bog, or terrain like that? And as I mentioned, r.e. “dull colours” and a lack of clarity, this is the only map on which this happens. As far as I’m aware, no other map has this difficulty - all water is deep enough for the shaders to do their job(s).
AoE IV is not a game that really maxes out your GPU. RTS games rarely are - they’re mostly CPU-bound. But you’re going to get the best look and feel on the higher settings. There are various things I can turn down that would have little impact on the point of my screenshot.
On that we agree. I just don’t think there’s a nice improvement for Marshlands that won’t itself have its own drawbacks, or reduction of immersion for a demographic of players. I agree completely r.e. the faking and trying to convince when it comes to graphics in general. The drawback is this becomes subjective very quickly.
And to be clear, if the developers change it to make it more readable, that’s perfectly fine. I won’t object. I objected initially to your overall criticism of how assets are used in this game. Marshlands was the example you presented (that I’m very familiar with, because it’s often been raised).
its the combo of that 1 biome that depth/lack thereoff and how its lit, basically if the water wasn’t soo clean (name a single marshland with water so clean) it’d be fairly easy to spot
If they can make the water murkier without making it opaque (and without messing up any deeper bodies of water - which could be a problem), that might help. But marshland generally isn’t known for its clarity, so maybe they tried stuff like this as-is.
I maintain there are much better and more striking visual wins to be had, mainly around animation and things like Gaia / fauna. Heck, we’ve seen how much more interesting just varying the trees and whatnot has made maps since launch. More of that will ultimately make the game look a while lot more interesting.
also, not an art critique, make anti aliasing effect foliage please, or try smt in rendering thats not like current solution, its all artifacting even at 4K
on water ye opacity should have smt specific for marshland condition only, i’m sure it can be added, there’s already ocean and rivers, this would be the #3 on that list effectively