I'm really at a loss to explain it. Since I release Mahjongg Variations many people have complained about the graphics. Strangely during beta testing that was the one thing people complimented... so I'm really not sure what's going on.

So Either...

A) The graphics aren't good and my perception of nice images is somehow broken

B) There's a bug and the graphics aren't displaying correctly

So if anyone willing would take another look at the game and tell me if the graphics work on their vid card and what they think of the images I'd appreciate it. The demo can be found on our site...

http://www.twilightgames.com

- Confused

Game Version: 1.2
Build Number: 3.1c.3s

Video driver: NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS/GeForce2 Pro
Direct 3D: Unknown

Operating System information:
Major version: 5
Minor version: 1
Build number: 2600
Service Pack 1

Fault Location:


this is what i got trying to activate it with Direct 3d. I have windows XP, and latest DX drivers.

but with regular DX (default), everything runs smoothly. Great graphics, dunno why people complain.

Operation timed out here - your website seems unreachable today for me at least.

Cas :)

Originally posted by princec
Operation timed out here - your website seems unreachable today for me at least.

Cas :)

I just tried it and it came in just fine from asia. Not sure.. probably just a temporary outage somewhere between us and you.

Originally posted by svero
I'm really at a loss to explain it. Since I release Mahjongg Variations many people have complained about the graphics.


What exactly did they complain about?
The style of the graphics or did they just find them confusing, off-putting etc.?

Maybe it was someting like the shadowing that confused people.
They look nice to me though! ;)

Originally posted by Carrot
What exactly did they complain about?
The style of the graphics or did they just find them confusing, off-putting etc.?

Maybe it was someting like the shadowing that confused people.
They look nice to me though! ;)

People aren't being specific. They're rating the game using a built in ratings thing I added. There's room for comments but they just score it 1/5 and don't comment.

Originally posted by svero
People aren't being specific. They're rating the game using a built in ratings thing I added. There's room for comments but they just score it 1/5 and don't comment.

maybe its the annoying screen when you turn the game off. people might get annoyed by it and get their "revenge" by doing so.

don't worry about the graphics, it looks excellent.

Originally posted by svero
So if anyone willing would take another look at the game and tell me if the graphics work on their vid card and what they think of the images I'd appreciate it.
OK, downloaded the game, worked fine (apart from starting in 72Hz(?) mode which isn't centered on my monitor). Now, before I start - keep in mind that I'm trying to be as critical as I can here, in hope it might help.

I didn't like the Twilight logo that appears first - looks too grainy to me. Also, the smaller logo on the lower right has highlights on the corners of the letters, but to me they looked like visual glitches on the first look - antialiasing gone bad or something (mind you, at that point I was actually looking for the glitches, because of what you wrote).

The letters of the small blue font on the nagscreen are thicker in the corners - this also look like antialiasing issue to me, and makes the font a tiny bit less readable than it could have been.

The main menu looks great, but it did confuse me for a couple of seconds, mainly because of that floating text that presumably tried to bring attention to the help button, but I never had time to read it because I was trying to make sense of the buttons underneath it. Perhaps moving it to the bottom right corner would be better.

I really didn't like how the ingame menu has the same texture on both the buttons and the background. That just seemed wrong to me. I also think you could get away with less contrast on the texture itself.

One last thing - I think that the way the tiles and the background are spatially unrelated makes my brain confused a bit. I am a very spatially perceptive person, and I think it just ticks a 'not real' flag somewhere in there. Not sure, though. ;)

Once more - don't take this the wrong way, I was trying to be as critical as I can. I hope at least some of it will help. :)

>(apart from starting in 72Hz(?) mode which isn't centered on my >monitor).

It goes to 72 if it can otherwise uses default. Many of the drivers return 60hz as default so if I just use that you get a lot of flicker. Any advice on how to handle this better would be appreciated. (aside from prompting the user)

>I didn't like the Twilight logo that appears first

Sure... well the actual logo it's based on is a nice image but I reduced it to that thing to save room on the download. Maybe something cleaner would be better for a simple black and white image.

Thanks for the feedback.

- Steve

I didn't really care for the graphics but have a hard time putting my finger on exactly why... the default tileset felt "muddy" to me, brown and fuzzy and not distinct enough. I have a hard enough time getting my brain to handle 'seeing' right for mahjong - I need as much contrast as possible to help in my visual scanning.

So I switched to the Kitchen tileset, one with metal beveled edges, but they looked messy, had stray black pixels on the bottom edges. Switched to the Music set, and they at least weren't ugly but they still didn't seem very distinct. Dimly lit, not easy to tell apart at a glance... the Construction ones were worse, the wood pattern made it even harder for me to try and see things at a glance.

Well. Anyway, there's my overall feeling about it.

I ran the game on three different systems (2 Win98 boxes and an XP box) with three different vid cards (Diamond Viper770, Mach64 RageII and GeForce2 MX) and didn't notice any drawing bugs or other visual anomalies. As far as the graphics go, there weren't any that I thought were bad or unpleasing, though it seemed like the colors did run together a bit on some of the more intricate tiles. Overall, I don't see why anyone would rate the gfx 1/5.

Originally posted by papillon
I didn't really care for the graphics but have a hard time putting my finger on exactly why... the default tileset felt "muddy" to me, brown and fuzzy and not distinct enough. I have a hard enough time getting my brain to handle 'seeing' right for mahjong - I need as much contrast as possible to help in my visual scanning.

So I switched to the Kitchen tileset, one with metal beveled edges, but they looked messy, had stray black pixels on the bottom edges. Switched to the Music set, and they at least weren't ugly but they still didn't seem very distinct. Dimly lit, not easy to tell apart at a glance... the Construction ones were worse, the wood pattern made it even harder for me to try and see things at a glance.

Well. Anyway, there's my overall feeling about it.

Ok. That's interesting because I was thinking maybe we should add a high contrast clean tileset...

- Steve

Originally posted by svero
Ok. That's interesting because I was thinking maybe we should add a high contrast clean tileset...
- Steve
BTW, I showed the game to our art lead here, and he said that the shadows on the tiles are too dark - something about how the shadows being much darker than the background messes up the way you perceive the board. He's good at spotting that kind of stuff, so you might try to darken the background and/or lighten the shadows and see if it helps.

He was also full of praises for your main menu, BTW. :) Great work there, I forgot to mention it in the first post. :)

I agree that the problem can be with tilesets. I would suggest you to add more "Chinese" style tilesets, and backgrounds, too.

I just tried it and there seemed to be a (very small) problem with the shadows: sometimes a top corner shadow remains when you pick up a tile in front of (below actually) a pile of other tiles (for example, you have 1 free tile and behind it piles of 3 high, you pick that one up and there is still a little shadow at the top right).

Also, with the first tileset, the shadow is so dark that I can't read the numbers at the top right.

Mike

P.S. How about a tileset with only diferent colors or color combinations?

svero - I really like the graphics actually, except for a few things. Now keep in mind, my game has a few graphical/perspective/shadow issues of its own, so take this with a grain of salt...

1) The twilight logo seemed pixelated or something as mentioned

2) I agree that the default tile-set does look a little muddy. I think its that each individual tile is shaded which is fine, but when put next to each other in formation the lighting just seems a little off. This kinda made it hard to tell when things where at the same level or just right next to each other. And as mentioned the shadows are a little too dark.

Other than that, I really like the oriental/bamboo style menu seperators and tablets.

If you don't mind, can I ask how early sales figures are looking?

Ditto on most of Papillon's comments: particularly about there not being enough constrast between the tiles and the designs upon them.

David

Originally posted by BrewKnowC
[BIf you don't mind, can I ask how early sales figures are looking? [/B]

Last I checked around 1.6% conversion and dropping. Not so hot.

Tested it on Radeon 9000 Pro on Win2k. No graphical glitches apparent in either DX or D3D mode.

The gameboard looks dead to me. Dull, grey & brown, dark, and dreary. A quick fix would be to punch up the brightness & contrast a bit. I did a little messing around with your screenshot #3 to see how it worked. The tiles are boosted up high, and the menu/status sections boosted a little less.

Here's the original, (http://coines23.home.comcast.net/screen3_full.jpg) and here's my boosted version (http://coines23.home.comcast.net/screen3_bright.jpg)

It's already feeling more alive. You might want to experiment with some subtle color in the stone menu section too, just to bring some life to it.