Better background layout?

[pecelot]

I'm talking about this:

I know it looks cool because of the graphics, but still... French gendarmes (is the one on in the middle of the picture attacking?), Dutch vills (IDLE!) and reloading skirms, British flag in the foreground and Spanish gold in the background all on Caribbeans... Does it even make sense? xD I know it's not a serious issue, but AoE has so many possibilities for more beautiful and at least partly historically accurate sceneries that it should be changed in my opion. Just check out some amazing wallpapers that are available on the Internet (on HeavenGames as well).

[evilcheadar]

woow

[evilcheadar]

I've commented on this before, incredibly unrealistic and to be hones those skirms are pretty much toast if those are at least guard gendarmes

[musketeer925]

If you have an image you'd prefer, feel free to post it.

[Durokan]

I don't have any problem with the current picture; I just found these because I thought they looked cool on google. Just contributing, not really suggesting a change.









I like the boat one the best

[tilanus]

@pecelot

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Here you can check the original base screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/TyvoWAO.png

Historical accuracy is usually really the least concern for graphics in an AoE3 community. AoE3 is ahistorical at best. All I intended to feature with this scene are graphics that are characteristic for AoE3. Before you evilcheadar criticized how unrealistic the scene would be in a real game. You see the contradicting views, right? You want it historical, evilcheadar wants it to be a realistic game scene. And I guess everyone wants that it still looks good.

There is already one wallpaper featured on the right. The problem is no wallpaper is wide enough to be used as a header with our width specifications. So you need a 2nd graphic to blend with it. Now apart from fans of historical and competitive sceneries there are also people who say that they prefer the actual game visuals about abstract wallpapers. So I'll ask again: Do you see how hard it is to satisfy everyone's preferences? It's not easy. It's always easier to complain about work and results whose constraints and restrictions you know nothing about. So if you want to contribute something that actually would help, then I'd like to refer to musketeer's post:

If you have an image you'd prefer, feel free to post it.

@Durokan

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Just like I said to pecelot already: These are concept arts, not in-game screenshots. We want 1 concept art and 1 in-game scene, because there are supporters for both types of visuals and as a designer I need to find compromises. I'm also quite certain, that the wallpaper with the "boat" (it's a ship) is one from Empire Total War and not Age of Empires 3 (I saw myself they often get mixed up). I've played ETW, so I know its loadingscreens quite well. Also, I have most if not all AoE3 concept arts already at my hand. So it's not like I wouldn't know them already.

[momuuu]

There was a topic almost exactly like this a while back (even the way the OP was written was really similair, amazingly enough), might be interesting to look at too. I do prefer the concept art ones personally.

[iNcog]

I'm not even going to post in this thread. <_<

Edit: aw, shit

[fightinfrenchman]

@pecelot

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Here you can check the original base screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/TyvoWAO.png

Historical accuracy is usually really the least concern for graphics in an AoE3 community. AoE3 is ahistorical at best. All I intended to feature with this scene are graphics that are characteristic for AoE3. Before you evilcheadar criticized how unrealistic the scene would be in a real game. You see the contradicting views, right? You want it historical, evilcheadar wants it to be a realistic game scene. And I guess everyone wants that it still looks good.

There is already one wallpaper featured on the right. The problem is no wallpaper is wide enough to be used as a header with our width specifications. So you need a 2nd graphic to blend with it. Now apart from fans of historical and competitive sceneries there are also people who say that they prefer the actual game visuals about abstract wallpapers. So I'll ask again: Do you see how hard it is to satisfy everyone's preferences? It's not easy. It's always easier to complain about work and results whose constraints and restrictions you know nothing about. So if you want to contribute something that actually would help, then I'd like to refer to musketeer's post:

If you have an image you'd prefer, feel free to post it.

@Durokan

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Just like I said to pecelot already: These are concept arts, not in-game screenshots. We want 1 concept art and 1 in-game scene, because there are supporters for both types of visuals and as a designer I need to find compromises. I'm also quite certain, that the wallpaper with the "boat" (it's a ship) is one from Empire Total War and not Age of Empires 3 (I saw myself they often get mixed up). I've played ETW, so I know its loadingscreens quite well. Also, I have most if not all AoE3 concept arts already at my hand. So it's not like I wouldn't know them already.

Aoe is historically accurate

[pecelot]

Oh, sorry then, I had a break from ESOC and haven't really caught up with all the topics. It's interesting, though. It was mentioned separately twice, so it may be an issue then, haha.
The thing is you can easily join these two parts — concept art and screenshots from the game. I reckon there was already a nice picture of some Japanese units on Honshu or something, it looked really natural and as graphically beautiful as the current image.
Although I'm already concerned that AoE isn't a good historical game to rely on, we should still pretend it to be, especially in such parts as a layout. Else we can make a typical screenshot of Otto vs Japan MU on Texas, which would look exactly as pretty.
I would even recommend using one of these awesome takes:

[tilanus]

If you look closely you can see that these are all pre-release graphics. They're also renderings, so not the authentic look of the game. As I said, you want something "more historical" and others want a realistic, competitive scene from the game. All these scenes neither fulfill these criteria.

Aoe is historically accurate

[pecelot]

But still it's not bad to turn on max graphics settings and place some Japanese units on the coast of Honshu, which can be done by any player.
In my opinion you can still join these two aspects, something like 20 veteran British musketeers dressed in red in front of 2 firing falconets fighting against blue French skirms or goons on let's say Saguenay or New England with beautiful terrain and landscape. I imagine it happening in a real game (probably not in every single match between these two, though) and it can look pretty nice.
Even if you still don't agree with me, the current picture is neither taken from a competetive play nor at least partly historically accurate.

[91]

@pecelot

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(and anyone who wants to change the banner)

1. take a screen shot of the website including the current banner
2. Paste your suggestion of banner over the current banner.
3. Post results

I think this is the best way to see if it actually fits. Those are some really nice picture, but it's hard to tell if they would fit in the banner without actually seeing it "in action".

If any suggestion gets a lot of support we can change it no problem. I'm just a little afraid to change graphics that are used on every single page, because I know there will be some upset people if we do (especially if we can't prove that it was a change supported by the community)

[pecelot]

Well, it's always a kind of refreshment. Actually, it should be changed every season I think, with AoE itself allowing us to do that by having winter, summer and spring/autumn landscapes and maps.
I'll try it later, but of course it won't fit so smoothly like the current one because it won't be adjusted, but let's see

[91]

Also, here's the png for the logo, in case you want to play around with it too.

styles/we_universal/theme/images/logo.png

[Durokan]

lol wtf??

[pecelot]

I'm not a graphic of any kind, just wanted to give idea of a nice take from the game to give you my point. I thought about something like this:

Of course there are some mistakes, like selected cannon. I don't know how to hide HP bars in such situations, if that's even possible. My computer is pretty old, so it can't handle the best graphics during a normal game, but I'm still able to turn them on in a scenario editor in such cases. Although I imagine they can be a little bit better.

[tilanus]

@Durokan

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That's from the days when we set up the forum. That was a test header, didn't remember it's still on the server.

@pecelot

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Your mention of historical accuracy really has nothing to do with our debate. I mean, really? What in this pic is historically so plain wrong it hurts? All you see is a cyan dutch player trying to aid his miners from a french cavalry charge on both the miners and the british base below (that you could see in the whole pic does belong to a red player). It's fine from a logical perspective and has nothing to do with historical accuracy, that's just bs. So please stop this random phrase of hist. acc. as an argument.

I'm not sure you understand the differences between a concept art, a beauty shot (pre-render) and an actual in-game screenshots. I work in the gaming industry, so I can tell you in more detail if you like and why and how these things are not the same. You're right, max-graphics and arranging a small scene on whatever map with no matter what civs is a good idea and if you look at the current scene in the banner, you'll see I did exactly that.

The requirement for the banner is that it must have one in-game screenshot scene and one concept art, so that everyone can see the one type of AoE3 visuals he prefers. And we're not gonna repeat that discussion, it was hard enough to find a consensus in the smaller team. We have one concept art by ES already, so all that posting of wallpapers or beauty shots made by ES are not an option. So seeing your screenshot you need to pay attention that the scene you want to show in the header needs to fit into its ratio. All the action in the scene has to happen on one imaginary horizontal line. And it cannot be oblique as in yours, because rotating things comes with a loss of image quality. You have a clearly defined area for the 2nd scene in the header, so your screenshot scene has to fit in perfectly. That is why I composed a scene for better control, because it's harder to make the perfect shot in a real game. And it has to look good, and it has to look competitive, and obviously (if we believe you) it also has to be historical. It also shouldn't be too empty, important units should be visible, etc. etc. Welcome to the actually very tricky task to make a good scene for a header.

You may say I complicate and overthink that, but it's because I take my design work very serious. And people who complain a lot without actually understanding the technical challenges in detail usually make me very, very mad.


@91

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While I think it's okay to post the logo for people playing around with it and possibly make a suggestion, I really don't think we should make people believe all the header design is up for debate again. It clearly isn't for a good reason I already said: It was hard enough to find that compromise and actually everyone in the team - including me - is sick of discussing the header composition over and over again. I've done dozens of header sketches before we could agree on this one and it's not like people didn't have a chance before to present their ideas. This is already the best compromise we could find. And I already spent a lot of time on adjusting and composing the current header in Photoshop and I'll not allow that some random scene in bad jpeg quality and with zero composition from some design layman will destroy all of my work. I'm sorry for the wall of text and don't take it personal, but I want to prevent a false impression.

So it's not the whole header that is up for debate, but only the screenshot scene.

[91]

@tilanus

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The reason I link to the logo png is so that people can USE it to paste on top of their screenshot after covering the old header (including the logo) with their suggestion.

If the logo should stay on the banner, you need a separate png to paste it on top of your screenshot right?

[pecelot]

Of course the header isn't totally inappropriate in terms of realism, it surely could happen, but then again some Turks may happen to find themselves in Texas fighting against Ashigarus — pretty normal, right? They want to protect their mosque in the middle of a desert against pesky Japanese, who want to destroy it. And although I'm not an expert and you may be right, I still think we can make some „rules" of accuracy while creating such a banner. For instance, on North American maps we should allow only France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Spain as well, but not on Saguenay for example, and maybe Russians on Yukon and North-West Territory. Then I would assume it's at least in some degree accurate.

My bad, I didn't realise the difference between the beautiful shot, as you call it, and an in-game screenshot. But then you say that the site has to have two different header components so that it shows concept art and some in-game action to present more competetive side. And here I would bring the same question: is leaving idle vills by your coin mine protected by skirms and a culv against cuirs raids in any sort competetive? I'm talking about little details, but you mention them as well.

Generally I wouldn't say the current state is awful or something, it can just be better. I really like the idea, probably because it's mine, to have seasonal banner changes. Spring is coming, so maybe it's not time for Caribbeans yet.

And yeah, I understand it's not that easy, but I wouldn't say it's not doable. Your take was really nice, despite the fact I don't really agree with its content. I'm curious to see your attempt to create something like my screenshot: a fight between some vet British musks and a cannons against some skirms and goons on the shore of New England. You are certainly more skilled than me, so maybe your efforts will be better.

Of course I don't wanna be offensive or specifically critise anyone, just wanted to share my thoughts about that.