WWIIOL:BE GAME GRAPHICS?

A question from Popov716 in the Battleground Europe Q&A forum asks: "Why is the game so ugly?". Our "Resident Arteest" Dekard took some time to clarify how our graphics work and what we're working on.

Dekard:  Unfortunately, no our current engine doesn't support occlusion culling/object culling  ie. so when you are inside a building it's still drawing the outside of the building.

Q: "Do you use a LOD system for model (for units, buildings)?"

Dekard: All of our buildings/models have many LODs (level of detail models), many of our models are older and we've been using much of our time the last couple months creating more LODs for many of the legacy buildings that didn't have them or didn't have enough of them previously.

Q: "Huge map, and great graphism aren't incompatibles. My precedent example (COD, Red Orchestra) was just about modelling exemple. Around 1200 tri / character, with great lod at 500. Texture up to 256/256."

Dekard: Most of the games you refer to above have game characters in the polygon range of between 5000 to 8000 triangles with texture maps of 1024x1024 at least. WWIIOnline infantry is currently around 1200 in the current game. We are planning to do a third person redo as soon as possible and our plan is to update the infantry to around 5000 triangles, with added normal/spec/diffuse maps. We are also looking into new animation options available to us since we will have new models to work with as well.

Q: "Buildings texture. It is a disaster ... Colors are too much saturated and not harmonious. Bricks textures are used for roofs ... what was that ???!!!!"

Dekard: If you can point me to a building with brick textures for a roof, I'll look into it ASAP. The problem here is we've got buildings that are still in the game from many many years ago with different engine limitations for the game at that time. We still have a couple 'paper thin' buildings we are still looking at replacing as soon as possible. The new buildings we have been adding the last couple of patches are more in par with what I think our players are expecting. (munitions buildings/farm ruin/new AB Bunkers, etc.)

Q: "Vehicles textures :For the greater part they just look like, some sheet of paper. We absolutely not feel the metal, either the painting."

Dekard: As you can tell with the new updated Char B1 and the updated Spitfire we are trying to incorporate higher polygon and more detailed texture maps with our vehicles. When we get a chance to go over each model or create new ones they'll get the same treatment as those newer vehicles, we'd love to redo everything as well but with two artists we have to do what we can when we can via priority. Right now, the majority of work Toto and I have been working on is LOD work on legacy buildings and getting the buildings old and new to work with the new terrain changes in 1.31..