Space Siege, or the future is grey...

[:1]What is it with so many games that play in the future, everything has to be in two different shades of grey or something? I just stumbled across this screenshot and I think its crying for help:









I took 10 minutes to improve it a little imo:







What do you think, some more light and colors or rather the old style?



This isnt just a single screenshot I picked btw, I can find at least another 5 with grey walls and floor in 2 minutes. Just use the Google image search...



PS: There are 16,7 million colors in your image editor, why only use 256?|||colors are for kids...



black and grey is for real MEN!



(agree with you btw , no need to overdo the booring colors, nice amounts of everything )|||Hmm, to me there is actually no real difference between the pictures, only that once is less dark.



In other words, if a game had destructible lights and you shot some of the out, picture B would look like Picture A.



In other words, to me you're advocating that futuristic universes should have more working light bulbs :P





But seriously, the second pic is a bit glaring on the eyes.



If the devs were clever then the monsters and other objects would be somewhat brighter, making them more visible against a dull background. Whereas if everything was bright that sort of clarity would be lost.|||No offence but the "corrected" picture looks cartoony like. Space Siege is not supposed to be cartoony.|||Meh,



I think that first picture does look pretty grey, but most screens I've seen of space siege didn't seem that bad on the color front.



As for your modified version, I don't think it looks cartoony, just well lit. And with some colors besides grey it actually does look better than the original.|||It's a room full of crates. How much color can there possibly be?|||AngryZealot|||from a visual graphics standpoint, perhaps they are leaving the background bland so that the characters, enemies, and special effects stand out more.|||Its not like Space Siege is the only game suffering from the grey virus:











But what is wrong with some colors? Im tired of seeing the same grey panels on all walls, ceiling and floor.



You can find some good examples of how colors can be used without looking cartoonish in Stargate Atlantis:











|||Col. Jessep|||brent_w|||AngryZealot|||Gnats3|||Cement can be tinted to any colour you choose. It's architects you want to blame. They're the aesthetic designers.|||But notice in your other screen shots, that the weapons and combat effects are all very bright colors, and stand out a lot in contrast to the background.



It's also interesting to compare with MMOs like WoW, Guild Wars, AOC etc. They often have incredibly beautiful and colourful backgrounds.



Whether its unconscious instinct by the art directors, or by deliberate design, the theme here is that action packed combat gameplay will tend to highlight the weapon and combat effects, blood, monsters etc, whilst letting the background fade into... well, the background.



Whereas games that involve exploration and travel tend to have greater focus on the scenery.



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Sure, when you look at screenshots, or when you're critiquing the game from a pure artistic or level design point of view, it might seem the levels are bland. But if you're actually considering the game as a package, it might work better overall with a subdued background and bright foreground if the game is rapid paced action based.|||I think we have to consider the context of the picture. It's obviously taking place in some kind of cargo hold, so why would there be lots of color? It's a completely utilitarian area. If this was a jungle, or even someone's room (living quarters), I'd have complaints.



If you go to Lowes (a US hardware store) it's all grey, with a few blue poles and support pillars. If you go to the Home Depot (another US hardware store), you get the nasty combo of orange and grey. In fact, when was the last time you went to a warehouse used purely for storage that wasn't some drab boring color?



As for your picture, the floor looks cool, but the walls look like a doctor's office.|||Insanity-O_o|||The problem is very simple. For some strange reason the majority of gamers and game designers seem to have decided that 'reality' is shades of desaturated brown and gray. Since Spaceships are clearly metal, they should be all gray.



This of course, completely ignores the fact that real life spaceships tend to be soft light colors and\or white, and that you get a significantly better effect with plastics and a few neon lights than you do with rusty gray metal.





I mean, come on guys, your in space, do you really think you can build a spaceship out of rough unfinished metal? Jesus.|||Thank you Phoenix!



I think a big part of it is that you can combine all those greyish-blue brown-greenish textures with each other without a second thought. You just make like 20 floor textures, 30 for walls and you can recombine them however you like. No surprises. They will fit somehow. It will also help the player to see enemies - like thats something I want...



But even if you stick with an all grey environment you can have more variation. Just make parts of the textures lighter (walls) than the rest. Id still prefer some colors on the textures, just turn down the saturation a little and it will work too.



I've checked all avaivable screenshots (20 official + 3 test level screens that were hidden on the server) and every single wall and floor texture is grey!



So far Id say:

lighting 3/5

effects 4.5/5

meshes 3.5/5

animation 4.5/5 (new trailer)

textures 1/5



But after playing Mass Effect for a few days now Space Sieges optic needs an overhaul. And like Angry Zealot already stated in the other thread: please rework the main character.|||Basically, the problem i have with Space Siege as it is now is it doesn't look like it's in a spaceship in the future. It looks like somone took a random warehouse on earth, boosted it into orbit and then gave everyone laser swords.



This totally ruins immersion for me, really.





Also, some intellegent environment placement would be nice, aka, quit it with the stupid random crates thrown about with no sense or reason behind them.|||The Arm Commander|||Just because it's rediculous doesn't mean it can't be immersive.|||PheonixIV|||PheonixIV|||As long as a game remains consistent with their art direction and story conventions, then immersion is usually fine.



What really hits you and breaks immersion is when game's make an unnecessary break from being consistent and bad environment design. Such as use of invisible walls and ceilings.