Petition for hunting gaia variation

in terms of water, i actually don’t think much needs to change on the effect itself, they could add non static edges (like aoe3 DE water on high), however the real killer is all the hidden reflections and other light effects that aren’t visible from default camera angle, primarily due to really poor default sun position, which from what ik of game’s development was an intentional downgrade so to speak

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I disagree, the current implementation of water is pretty bad. It is very unlike the AoE3:DE one, as it is just a shifting texture. Depth is also displayed as a “painted” deeper blue colour that overlays this texture, and if you ever rotate the camera, it becomes very obvious.

This looks very bad and artificial. Water can look stunning and there are multilpe ways of achieving different biomes for it, like arctic, marshy, deserty or whatever. You’d think “water is water”, but it looks wildly different in different environments.

Some can look murky and dark, some can be almost see-through in its clarity. The problem with AoE4’s water is that, there is no true “depth” to the maps, so they resort to “painting” that blue colour on top of the texture. Had they made it like actual water where some parts look see-through, the water maps would look like puddle maps due to how shallow it is and how much it lacks detail.

It is just bad. There is no reason to defend it.

EDIT: Part of the reason why most maps look so similar is because all of the water is 100% identical. This is unnecessary and I hate to say it, but lazy. A proper implementation would’ve done more justice to the current biomes.

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There’s no reason to discuss anything if this is the bottom line!

I personally think the thing that hurts water the most is how little ships interact with it. The lighting does (speaking of rotating the map, this makes that very obvious). Fishing nets do (or at least apply an effect when the net hits the water). Even the clouds are reflected. But the ships feel very float-y, even though they handle a lot better than at release.

I dislike what I’ve seen of the DE boat / oar ripples. At least with regards to the more painted style and softer edges that makes Age IV distinct (imo). But it would help a lot if the water in IV reacted in some way.

I definitely don’t think water is bad. But it could be better. Much like the Gaia situation.

It doesn’t seem like such a bad idea to me…in those moments when you can’t use infantry you can use armored vehicles to reconnoiter the area and secure it, then when the storm bleeds, you can send infantry to capture those areas…

That’s true, with some lighting changes the water and the textures would look better… for example what age of noob showed in his video…

The problem for multiplayer is mainly them occurring at random. Something like the day/night cycle in WC3 is not super annoying because it is consistent and the UI tracks it. I guess you could do that for a weather event too, but that seems a bit silly.

For the campaign, as he said, it was just dumb because you could usually just wait it out which was the “correct” decision, but annoying and slowed things down.

Something like a special terrain types that give similiar effects (like the stealth forests) is fine.

You could have terrain that can’t be built on, terrain the units move through more slowly, terrain that slowly damages units, etc…

Of course there are different ways to vary the gameplay just…

If the water is just a texture, why is it so taxing resources?

Because Relic doesn’t know how to program water well…that’s why CoH scenarios and even less DoW ones lack naval combat…in the main saga of CNC you do not have naval scenarios either, but at least they solve it in the Red Alert saga with many unique naval units in RA2 and RA3…

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Given that they programmed ice that tanks can crack and fall through, I’m gonna say “you’re probably wrong here”.

Performance issues are complex, and Age IV has had some in particular since release. Mostly the performance has been getting better, but the while-panning-the-camera performance has always been where it’s weakest.

on aoe4 performance wise, i’ll say this, its better than i expected, for a completely single threaded game, that is ultimately the issue holding any additional performance back, and yes camera panning hammering the cpu is directly related to this, i’ll argue given the visual output the gpu requirement, more specifically vram, is pushing things beyond what i’d expect these kind of visuals to require, then again, its up to relic to prove me wrong and show what the engine can do to justify the high vram usage

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You’re right, but the issue of breaking the ice in CoH 2 is more about physics than performance itself…In CoH 2 there are no waves, much less naval combat to use…

It’s a bunch of things, and it all requires programming. Good programming, even.

Of course, it’s all a programming issue too…

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@Developers - Please expedite this to the top of your list. I mean you wasted time on ENCHANTED BIOME. This would have been 1000 times better resources spent.

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lol to be fair they could added more fauna instead to work on an biome that is annoying for the avg player

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Yes, AoE 3 DE has about 35 different types of fauna; AoE 4 has the deers and boars and stops counting…

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The game has potential

and wolves, then if you count the animal statues near buildings but i don’t think those really count, as they aren’t living beings
aoe4 is also the first to not have birds flying around the map

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And i also would like “Panda Bears” on asian maps!

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Yes, there is a lot of wildlife missing… How can it be that a 2005 game seems more alive than a 2021 game…it’s surreal…

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