Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Get all the latest news on Slitherine.

Moderator: Slitherine Core

McGuba
Colonel - Ju 88A
Colonel - Ju 88A
Posts: 1503
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2012 7:34 pm

Re: Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Post by McGuba »

Kerensky wrote: Thu Aug 02, 2018 7:41 pm Taking the big unit screenshot and throwing it into photoshop, I'm confirmed again. Original on the left, and much more vibrant and colorful versions in the middle and right.
https://i.imgur.com/DWGzkQG.jpg
Fully agree with that. Actually I wrote pretty much the same a few days earlier in that "bashing" :wink: topic:
- There is not enough colour variation, at least the "summer" (I guess that's what we see) season tiles are just too greenish and somehow boring. The same looks way more crisp, contrasted, and colourful in PzC.
It surely needs to be more colourful and less gray. Possibly with some more contrast as well. Of your modified screenshots I would vote for the middle one as that one looks more natural for a nice summer day and just about perfect. Your rightmost version is perhaps a bit too much blue.
ImageImage
slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=147&t=47985
slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=147&t=36969
Ravihon
Corporal - 5 cm Pak 38
Corporal - 5 cm Pak 38
Posts: 39
Joined: Mon Mar 27, 2017 7:08 am

Re: Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Post by Ravihon »

On the subject of looks that Kerensky and McGuba elaborated on I do think it could be part of the video settings. If I look at World of Tanks (I know different genre etc...) there I have to possibility to choose from a variety of filters to change the color palette used to fit my personal liking. This could be an option for PC2 as well take the 3 options presented by Kerensky, and I am sure for all you will find people that like one of them better, and have a choice then.
"Da wo ich bin, ist vorne..."
Kerensky
Content Designer
Content Designer
Posts: 8590
Joined: Wed Jan 12, 2011 2:12 am

Re: Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Post by Kerensky »

Ravihon wrote: Fri Aug 03, 2018 6:08 am On the subject of looks that Kerensky and McGuba elaborated on I do think it could be part of the video settings. If I look at World of Tanks (I know different genre etc...) there I have to possibility to choose from a variety of filters to change the color palette used to fit my personal liking. This could be an option for PC2 as well take the 3 options presented by Kerensky, and I am sure for all you will find people that like one of them better, and have a choice then.
Not only is it a question of personal preference and choice though, it can be pretty important for players with visual impairments to have access to these features. The most obvious example is gamers with some form of colorblindness. :idea:
kondi754
General - Elite King Tiger
General - Elite King Tiger
Posts: 4125
Joined: Thu Jun 25, 2015 8:52 am

Re: Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Post by kondi754 »

Please compare the screenshots below.
The first screen is from Unity of Command 2, which is currently in the final stages of production.
Don't you think that both games are disturbingly similar to each other?
I think about the infantry model... :?

In addition, the 2D map in UoC 2 is much better than the 3D map in PzC 2 :wink:
Attachments
post-1920a.jpg
post-1920a.jpg (93.7 KiB) Viewed 5539 times
2small.jpg
2small.jpg (165.96 KiB) Viewed 5539 times
Andy2012
Order of Battle Moderator
Order of Battle Moderator
Posts: 1842
Joined: Sun Jun 14, 2015 6:55 pm

Re: Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Post by Andy2012 »

IainMcNeil wrote: Thu Aug 02, 2018 9:20 am Unfortunately Andre73 turned out to be HBlack with another username and so has been banned again. I think this is the 10th time though I could easily have miscounted.

We're still determining if any other accounts are under his control. It is so very sad that he keeps trying to derail discussions. Anyone who has had the misfortune to deal with him knows he is rude, arrogant, unpleasant, self absorbed and the community is far better of without him and I wish he could take the hint and stay away. He does nothing other than put down other people mods and work and proclaim his work is better and he is better.
Can confirm. I think I sent four of his accounts to the chopping block already. I am a bit sad that I didnt recognize this one sooner.
His current troll project is OoB and if anybody receives PMs about 'forbidden OoB mods', please forward these to a mod or a Slitherine employee. Apart from the ban for being an insufferable person, there is also copyright infringement - so this is serious. Thanks. :D
Rudankort
FlashBack Games
FlashBack Games
Posts: 3836
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2010 2:23 pm
Contact:

Re: Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Post by Rudankort »

kondi754 wrote: Fri Aug 03, 2018 9:01 am Please compare the screenshots below.
The first screen is from Unity of Command 2, which is currently in the final stages of production.
Don't you think that both games are disturbingly similar to each other?
I think about the infantry model... :?
To me these games look completely different. UoC2 uses more "cartoonish" style ("cartoonish" in a good way, I like it quite a bit), it is much more detailed, and the scale of terrain features is larger. Also, it looks like their units are painted on top of terrain, and especially with these black outlines units look more like sprites in a 2D game (also not a bad thing, just different to how we do it).

I do agree that infantry units look similar. But they will look different in the final version of Panzer Corps 2 (more similar to how infantry units look in PzC).
kondi754 wrote: Fri Aug 03, 2018 9:01 am In addition, the 2D map in UoC 2 is much better than the 3D map in PzC 2 :wink:
One comment I have here is that to my eye UoC2 screenshot looks incredibly busy, and it is hard to tell what terrain is where. Whatever improvements we make in Panzer Corps 2, I will make sure the game never looks like this. Clean and clear game view was always a characteristic trait of "Panzer" games, and we will keep it this way in the sequel.

As for the "beauty" aspect of it, it is difficult to compare games without playing them for some time, because any screenshot is just a tiny glimpse of how it looks. In your example Panzer Corps 2 screenshot does look less interesting, but for example this screenshot does not necessarily look worse to me eye, while retaining clarity level which I want:

Image
Last edited by Rudankort on Fri Aug 03, 2018 1:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Rudankort
FlashBack Games
FlashBack Games
Posts: 3836
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2010 2:23 pm
Contact:

Re: Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Post by Rudankort »

Kerensky wrote: Fri Aug 03, 2018 7:33 am Not only is it a question of personal preference and choice though, it can be pretty important for players with visual impairments to have access to these features. The most obvious example is gamers with some form of colorblindness. :idea:
The good news is that our art director takes the issue of colorblindness very seriously, and it is a recurring theme in all our art experiments. For this reason I believe that the finished game will do a decent job in this regard.

Otherwise, it is true that Panzer Corps 2 in its current state is less saturated than almost any other strategy game out there. I did direct comparisons, so I can confidently confirm this. I remember there were ideas to have more saturated units over less saturated map, to increase their separation, which is obviously not the case yet. We will of course keep tweaking it, especially when we start getting more feedback on this from players. Fortunately, this is easy to tweak, for example by using lighting and post processing settings.
Rudankort
FlashBack Games
FlashBack Games
Posts: 3836
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2010 2:23 pm
Contact:

Re: Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Post by Rudankort »

Kerensky wrote: Thu Aug 02, 2018 7:28 pm I'm massively disappointed in that zoomed in screenshot. Not because I hate it, but because I like it and you aren't using it in any promotional reveals of the game and instead hide it away as a forum response instead of a promotional screenshot. As I said in some other thread, show off the 3D in glory, not try to show everything at once when many other aspects of the game clearly aren't ready for it.
This game just went from 'disgustingly ugly I'll just play it for the gameplay' to 'has serious potential' in my book.
Haha, fair enough. We'll sure keep this feedback in mind for later. I agree that the screenshots we've shown in the first dev diary are not to everyone's liking, but there will be so many more dev diaries in the future, we'll have plenty of opportunities to show the game from different angles, zoom levels etc., not to mention gameplay videos, so everyone should get a good idea of game's graphics in the end.
Kerensky wrote: Thu Aug 02, 2018 7:28 pm That potential still depends on how the units interact in motion, so we'll see how that ends up. But it would be nice to be able to make more cool and neat looking screenshots and video clips of actual gameplay. That was rather difficult to do in 2D Panzer Corps, compared to say my library of Xcom and Xcom2 screenshot material.
It will be hard to compete with XCom in this regard. :) But we'll see.
Retributarr
Lieutenant Colonel - Panther D
Lieutenant Colonel - Panther D
Posts: 1262
Joined: Wed Jun 04, 2014 7:44 pm

Re: Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Post by Retributarr »

Settings & Adjustment's:

Hypothetical!!! _ Let's say that I wanted to Experiment with the 'Set-Game-Parameters'!.

For example: "Operation Barbarossa"... What if I wanted to have control over how combat-effective/capable my forces or the opposing forces would be (where I could adjust the military effectiveness of either or both sides so as to experiment with), say for every 6 months or year period...incremental changes in the opposing forces would take place!. Meaning, that based on my Playing Capability/In-Capability,...I would then be able to make game compensating adjustments so that I could for example make it possible for 'Me' to reach 'Moscau' by the given historical time-line...if I was otherwise ordinarily unable to do so with the given Pre-Set Built-in Game Settings.

Part of the bigger picture in this is that in the given above example, the Russians would now be an easier push-over to begin with, but... with the passing months, would become a more dangerous adversarial aggressive opponent!.

This ability to make Game Adjustments could also impact the "Endless-Maximo-Russian-Reinforcement levels" and so on!.

This bizarre-concept could carry on to other Game Situations, where you could select a whole host of Undetermined Game possibilities that would Randomly happen/take place or not take place (Russian-Roulette)...making the game into an Unexpected-Expectation, where nothing is Chisled-In-Stone!.

~What-if the Baku Oil Region was captured???, so now there goes roughly 80% of the Russians Oil-Supply!.

Every Game would be an exciting New-Adventure!.~
bebro
Slitherine
Slitherine
Posts: 4327
Joined: Sun Nov 19, 2006 12:50 pm

Re: Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Post by bebro »

Rudankort wrote: Fri Aug 03, 2018 12:47 pm As for the "beauty" aspect of it, it is difficult to compare games without playing them for some time, because any screenshot is just a tiny glimpse of how it looks. In your example Panzer Corps 2 screenshot does look less interesting, but for example this screenshot does not necessarily look worse to me eye, while retaining clarity level which I want:

Image
I think it looks good overall. I like the relation of unit size compared to terrain in the pic, earlier units were too big for my taste (unless it's dynamic changing with zoom or so).

Units look sharp, though that might depend on gfx settings? 3d unit detail is very good imo, not sure about texture maps tho, hard to judge.

One thing I'm wondering regarding towed equipment like the nebelwerfer or the other arty in that pic: they always seem to have the carriage *folded* like they're on transport, attached to a truck or so?

I mean those anchors (if that's the correct term) would be folded out into V form in firing position except for a number of older guns still having a fixed carriage. Or is the anchors going into V form animated here?
zakblood
Most Active User 2017
Most Active User 2017
Posts: 16495
Joined: Thu Jun 12, 2014 6:44 pm

Re: Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Post by zakblood »

imo if you could alter the size of units from a scale of 1 to 3 or 1 to 5 etc as shown in Aggressors Ancient Rome on twitch the other day, then it would suit everyone's tastes

but tbh i like the look of it now, and in the end, it's only eye candy, i'd be more interested in what's going off under the hood regarding the AI etc as i'm more of a single player type
13obo
Captain - Heavy Cruiser
Captain - Heavy Cruiser
Posts: 911
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2016 11:01 am

Re: Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Post by 13obo »

Agree with zakblood. For me, graphics is all pretty and good enough, but the main thing is gameplay and AI providing suitable challenge. Hopefully, all this discussion around graphics won't mean that development time gets taken away from what really matters in these games.
Cablenexus
Sr. Colonel - Battleship
Sr. Colonel - Battleship
Posts: 1691
Joined: Mon Jan 04, 2016 7:09 pm

Re: Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Post by Cablenexus »

I really like what I see so far. The terrain and units distinct perfectly. The comparisson with Unity of Command 2 shows this exactly. That screen is so busy for the eyes and I cannot see where the terrain is and where the units are. The terrain textures are very clean and calm and also a bit photorealistic. The units perfect for me, but I agree with zakblood. I like small units so setting unit size would be nice (and counters eventually).

What I dislike the most from the screenshots are the (red/blue) icons. They feel causal and to modern for me.

I'm very curious how the UI will fit. So far I did not had any good 3D strategy game in Unreal engine with a good integrated UI. I hope it will be practical and usefull and not specially for showing the 3D capabilities of the engine so we get a sluggish and slow UI.

Overall good work for the Alpha screenshots I'm looking forward to more.
verstaubtgesicht
Senior Corporal - Destroyer
Senior Corporal - Destroyer
Posts: 117
Joined: Mon Feb 18, 2013 9:39 pm

Re: Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Post by verstaubtgesicht »

There is a lot of discussion about graphics here. Fine, but ultimately, who cares? I'm more interested in two things:

1) Is the AI going to be smarter? One of the most frustrating aspects of PzC was the clueless behavior of the AI, which after some practice could be ridiculously exploited. A good comparison is chess. PzC is like one of those weak early programs (or lowest levels of difficulty), which even I could beat with ease. Now even the simplest chess programs (I am not talking DeepMind Alpha Zero here) can shred me to pieces. Why can't the AI play better in PzC? If it's the computer power (I am not an expert, but I can't believe it is), better use the CPU on the AI brain than on the graphics

2) Can we get variability in AI's deployment/OOB each time so that scenarios are not static and can be replayed with some level of novelty each time?
bebro
Slitherine
Slitherine
Posts: 4327
Joined: Sun Nov 19, 2006 12:50 pm

Re: Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Post by bebro »

Chess has a very small map (8*8) and limited unit selection = easier to compute ;)

(my wildly amateurish guess without any knowledge of AI programming)
asuser
Sergeant Major - SdKfz 234/2 8Rad
Sergeant Major - SdKfz 234/2 8Rad
Posts: 628
Joined: Tue May 28, 2013 8:48 pm

Re: Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Post by asuser »

verstaubtgesicht wrote: Sun Aug 05, 2018 6:44 am There is a lot of discussion about graphics here. Fine, but ultimately, who cares? I'm more interested in...

1) Is the AI going to be smarter?
Fully agree... and additional the new unit / game functionalities. It would be nice to see some screenshots with new functionality next time. If that is already finished, make the graphic style better and better please.
DJ88
Corporal - Strongpoint
Corporal - Strongpoint
Posts: 65
Joined: Fri Oct 07, 2011 3:14 pm

Re: Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Post by DJ88 »

Rudankort wrote: Wed Aug 01, 2018 5:46 pm
Uhu wrote: Wed Aug 01, 2018 5:37 pm Nice new information and features! On the other hand, the graphics is very inferior compared to OOB, so I hope, it will develop further...
I hope so too. :) Can you elaborate a bit more? What are the biggest graphics issues, in your opinion?
IMO the scale is too large which typically happens with 3D. The modeling needs to be scaled down by about 25%. The quality of graphics is ok but I would recommend land units get re-designed to show image of movement vs standing. PG1 and PG2 had that look for instance. The naval units look better than ground units...good job on those. Most importantly to make graphics look as realistic / authentic as possible. I agree the ground units look very inferior to OOB and Close Combat (vehicles) due to the lack of realism. The rest looks pretty good except for the scale issue. Close Combat infantry graphics are terrible but the tanks and vehicles are the best i've seen in the business.
DJ88
Corporal - Strongpoint
Corporal - Strongpoint
Posts: 65
Joined: Fri Oct 07, 2011 3:14 pm

Re: Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Post by DJ88 »

Newer screen shots look better, good to see the progress. I hope to also see good AI programming for single player game play.
Sourdust
Senior Corporal - Destroyer
Senior Corporal - Destroyer
Posts: 102
Joined: Mon Feb 06, 2012 1:34 am

Re: Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Post by Sourdust »

I think the artillery guns should have crews. They look so lonely, and inoperative, without some guys to fire them!

It's like representing infantry by a pile of rifles and grenades...

Ditto for open-topped vehicles, you should see some crew inside.

In fact, even the tanks should be unbuttoned, in my opinion. Would liven it all up a bit.
Kerensky
Content Designer
Content Designer
Posts: 8590
Joined: Wed Jan 12, 2011 2:12 am

Re: Panzer Corps 2 - Dev Diary #1

Post by Kerensky »

Sourdust wrote: Mon Aug 06, 2018 1:30 am I think the artillery guns should have crews. They look so lonely, and inoperative, without some guys to fire them!

It's like representing infantry by a pile of rifles and grenades...

Ditto for open-topped vehicles, you should see some crew inside.

In fact, even the tanks should be unbuttoned, in my opinion. Would liven it all up a bit.
I suspect this would make it very difficult to determine between infantry and artillery units. Especially on more crowded maps with many infantry and arty units all closely packed together.
Post Reply

Return to “News & Announcements”