No - a lot of people here simply look at the very bad examples (and there are some) when it comes to textures. This is one of Age of Empires IV’s weaknesses: consistency in quality.
The quality of textures amongst buildings - and even amongst units - are not on par. Castles overall look meh, so do the houses in the dark age. But buildings in Castle and Imperial Age look GREAT. If you zoom all the way in, you’ll see a ton of detail in those buildings, and even the shine of the rooftop glass of certain landmarks looks gorgeous as well.
Hence, overall, I think this post is wrong, especially with AoE2 having the advantage of being sprite based and not 3D. What I will say, however, is that they need to polish up the textures of buildings/units that are lacking for sure.
Have a look at this and tell me that this doesn’t look detailed/great…
Edit: To give you an idea what I was talking about, look at the roof in the image below. Clearly it’s bugged/poor quality as the roof itself is not even consistently detailed, as it gets muddy in the lower half.
So yes, at first glance, I understand why people feel this way. Relic just needs to polish some of their work to not undermine their efforts in places that they’ve actually done a good job.
Buildings in AOM and AOE 3 are 3D and they are quite detailed considering how old they are. If it was possible 15 years ago, it is definitely possible now.
AOE 2 is a 2D game, it can pack all the details you want but basically you are seeing a flat image sprite. Thats why AOE 2 packs details. AOE 4 is a 3D game, it can’t have that many details, the buildings are 3D objecects, if this game has to run on a variety of systems. in AOE 3the buildings are simplistic, same with AoE online.
Yeah, obviously in 3DE they have been touched up but still when it comes to basic design and model they date back to 2005. Considering how (fairly) the early 3D era was back then they are quite impressive, and in DE I’m very pleased with how these things look.
ok you are right, but it’s the best looking castle in the game by far.
Compare that with for example the Western European castle and it’s a very different story.
The AoE4 castle of the English looks a lot better in my opinion.
AoE2 also had keeps but they called it castle. (The AoE2 building called Keep isn’t a keep though.)
But that is kinda fair tbh. All you need for a castle is a keep. A keep alone already is a castle additional towers and walls are just a bonus.
I do prefer the AoE4 name though. If you build walls with towers around your keep, all of them combined become the castle.
I do wish all keeps would buff nearby walls and towers to reflect that. That would also give you more reason to build them because atm they seem to weak.
One big problem with Medieval Buildings is that they are now 500+ years old but they were new when they were build.
None of the metal used back than still looks shiny. Most of it has been removed over the years anyway.
Same goes for walls. They were all painted white, all castles where white and so where most buildings. But if you don’t repaint them every 50-100 years they loose this colour. This process used to be called white washing. It has the nice side effect of being somewhat antibacterial.
The Tower of London used to be called the White Tower (and so it the name of the AoE4 landmark) but now it’s not painted anymore.
In AoE2 most of the buildings look like they look today and not the way they looked 500+ years ago. But even there buildings that god added more recently are more historically accurate.
I think both buildings you showed are more or less equal in quality.
The AoE4 one also has nice details like how the white paint is washed of at the bottom of the wall.
The AoE2 castle is also a bit tall and feels like it wants to add to much in to little space.
100%. People are saying that it’s because aoe2 is a 2d game, but my issue is not with the textures or the details, it is with the architecture style, it feels like a downgrade from previous age games. The worst offenders are the production buildings. The scaling is all wrong and they are not distinct enough, Every single building including the towers are more beautiful in aoe2.
Look how in aoe2 every building across civs looks distinct even though many are based around a single model.
I did not make a post about this because the “Gameplay is king” gang shoot down every opinion relating to the aesthetics of the game also I don’t think the devs will do anything about it this late into the development so this is a useless rant.
Hmm, didn’t notice that. I specifically tried to post the original pics. Still, as @JjForcebreaker said, they are pretty impressive for 2005. and I found some famous copper roof buildings around the world, they look beautiful, but don’t know if they were commonly used in aoe’s historical period.
Yep I agree they were pretty impressive, personally I think AoE4 looks better even than the DE versions, but thats my preference. I also think if AoE4 got rid of the damn fog that covers everything and sharpened up some of the textures it would look stunning. AoE2 DE had the same thing with the vignette around the whole screen and some fog. Disabled them and the game doesnt look so washed out.
As for the roofs, I didnt do extensive historical research as I’m sure Relic did on this matter, but googling “copper roofs” and “medieval copper roofs” both show examples of medieval buildings donning the same green copper. Relic has been incredibly thorough with their research on this game and it seems it would be a weird decision to randomly throw green roofs on an architecture style that didnt historically use them.
Based on what screenshots I’ve see of 3DE, the models look overhauled and the textures completely redone. I don’t think they qualify as dating back to 2005, in that context.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think AoE III looks bad for a 2005 RTS either, if you just talking about the original game.
Comparing recently added aoe2 dlc content with standard content from aoe4 ain’t the way to go imo.
I think aoe4 overall looks good in terms of models etc. What really keeps me from preordering or buying is that horribly bad UI in aoe4.
It’s just pukes … .not good.
As a reletavily new aoe player I wanna say this few things:
a) looks like it does not belong i to the game. It just doesnt fit or complement the overall artst,le for aoe4
b) very confusing for me, a new player. Every Icon has the same color and they all kinda look the same for me, making the game unfriendly for people that havent been playing age of empires for long.
c) i only have 100h in the last 3 month of aoe2 experience in total but the UI in aoe4 looks like it made not 2 steps forward but backwards. Not even a queue counter for units u produce, instead ur screen gets spammed with one icon for every unit. At least it was that way before the stresstest i couldnt play that one but thankfully i was able to before this.
And this really bothers me so much that i think i dont spend 60 dollar on a game with a UI as unfitting as this. It looked like having aoe4 in the background while the UI made me feel that I actually playing some scifi game like sc2.
In that topic aoe2, a 20 year old game already has a tremendously huge advantage for new players xrom my perspective. Even if starting today as an optional setting, implementing a colorful and easier to learn and overview UI should be possible till release.
Thanks for the screenshot, it helps to illustrate my issue with the game’s visuals.
For me, the building on the top looks as randomly generated as the maps, just mixing blocks in a procedural pattern. There is the shiny top, the roof tiles texture, the white helping structures and windows, and the wall texture itself. It looks like just stuck together, disconnected, and no natural blending between the parts. And this is only for the building itself, add to this the discontinuity to other buildings, the landscape, or the units. Just look how the bushes don’t fit, the ground texture has another scaling than the grass texture, and how the grass texture is just “cut” by the building on top of it. I also felt this extremely in the last stream especially with action around the river. There was so much stuff not adding up, it just felt “wrong”.
This has nothing to do with “readability” or tech restrictions. It’s a design issue with like five settings competing for screen occupation. To illustrate this further, I chose a low settings screenshot of relics’ most infamous game, which was also criticized for its graphics, but still does a way better job in this regard, DoW3:
I was hoping for hand-crafted SP content to look better, but after seeing this screenshot, where the assets themselves already look off, I highly doubt it. This isn’t done with a texture pack or some generic tech upgrades, this would need basically a complete redesign of the majority of content.
Even though the company overseeing the recent DLC content is the same company overseeing the AOE IV project so I don’t know why the comparison can’t be made
