I don’t believe this to be true. How would CD Projekt Red and Bethesda do complete next-gen updates to their Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 games, respectively, if this was a worry? And countless other games from other studios getting enhanced. W3 had a TON of updates…
“Witcher 3” Next-gen updates
Added ray traced global illumination and ambient occlusion.
Additionally, PC players with compatible hardware have an additional option to turn on ray traced reflections and shadows.
Added various mods and mod-inspired content to the game to improve visuals and overall game quality. We’ve included some community-made favorites in addition to our own modifications in areas such as environment and cutscene improvements, realistic pavements, and many decoration upgrades.
And yet “more zoom in AoE4 as an option” is somehow possibly going to be more impacting and worrisome than these? Please cite sources that make you think increasing zoom will or could bring litigation. My initial searches yielded nothing to worry about.
I don’t feel I play ‘nice and slowly’ on AoE2DE. I’m no Hera, not even close. Don’t want to either. Yes, I’m more casual, but still do a lot of fast clicks, and also play in “Fast” mode. Anything slower than that, like ‘Normal’ speed, feels like snail-pace to me. I have no problem identifying and clicking units and buildings, doing micro and macro, and so on, and I play 1440p max zoom out. Only issue is the control group #s have a poor font and font size, but that’s negligible: Control group number too small with UHD graphics enabled
Here’s my view in AoE2DE. No issues. Compare it to the AoE4 image in OP. I’m really not worried if AoE4 adds a lot more zoom out ability; I’ll be just fine
Options don’t alter the baseline requirements to run the game. Altering the default camera level in an RTS will.
If you improve the zoom out to let users zoom out from the existing default more, people will immediately request a higher (or even custom) default level.
Not that this is unreasonable. I’m just trying to communicate how it’s not flipping a switch, and that there’s actual work (and risk) involved.
If you’re rendering more pixels, it takes more memory to render it in a single frame. If more effects are firing across frames, it takes more CPU.
I don’t really know how I can prove this. It’s a simplification anyway.
But try zooming in with an FPS counter active. Should increase it (unless your PC specs are so ludicrous that there isn’t much difference). The same goes for zooming out, particularly with large armies present.
Again, this is a dev challenge to solve regardless.
fair points
on performance, i think the idea of having certain preset limit for max zoom out for ranked games at all times and optionally in other modes isn’t smt to dismiss, so you could have camera nice and back for majority of the game and have everyone adhere to certain limit with ranked, assuming it proves problematic in ranked without a restriction of some kind
zoom in however shouldn’t need a discussion to be let closer to the ground, and if certain assets look problematic up close (specifically launch day units) then give those a necessary tweak for up close
But I think to help answer a little bit, one thing I like about AoE2HD, CE, and AoK, are the crisp details and the colors. Vibrancy, crispness, and clarity. I tried to replicate that as best I could, given the options we are provided in DE… but it’s still missing in some marks. E.g., I don’t like that I can’t make shadows (like cast on ground from trees, units, and buildings) crisp and desarurated so there isn’t any color tint. They are all soft shadows and tinted a bit even after disabling Map Lighting, iirc
I can show my exact settings enabled/disabled later if you like, but from my memory, I’m using:
1440p resolution
Disabled Depth of Field
Disabled Bloom
Disabled Animate Fog
Disabled Animate Fog Border
Anti-Aliasing is probably off
Render 3D Water should be off for a more classic water look and deeper, richer blues
Disabled Map Lighting
Default Zoom is zoomed out all the way
Particles set to 'High"
There are some settings I’m not sure what I have, so I will have to update later when I can open the game
very similar to my settings, i just have res set to 4K via DSR, gives extra distance to zoom out
otherwise only settings of mine that differ are sharpness at 100% and bloom at 65% and enabled anti aliasing
to clarify what i’m using
i aimed for og look mostly but with enchancements if i found a combo that did so
smt similar to what i’ve seen in spirit of the law videos
(made the 4K tweak after this screenshot)
Cool, thanks! I will take a look later, KG9991380. I tried the Enhanced Graphics Pack before, but it wasn’t good for me, maybe it was the zoom issue. But I will try again. The DSR solution is a little clunky to toggle on/off, so I don’t do that. It is pretty awesome, though. I will ba e to try it more often
I know it will be a performance hit. Maybe not noticeable for a lot or most PCs. I just highly doubt there would be a lawsuit, especially considering it would be an option to do or not do as you please, and that’s where I was asking for sources to be cited. It’s okay, though. I don’t want to belabour the point, I know what you’re saying.
Regardless, I think this is the bigger worry: Nintendo patenting spawning of characters in games to fight, lol. I have a feeling Age of Mythology probably has some God or power that spawns characters? Or no?
