Hiya folks! 'Tis been a good long time. Though I haven't posted diddly squat for months now, I do still keep checking up on stuff on the site and the forum. The recent Q&A thrilled me to no end regarding the fact that they plan to go for a more realistic SC1 look. So while making myself a bowl of spaghetti and procrastinating on what I should be doing for class, an idea came to my head. I decided to take a few screenshots of SC2 as it stands now and basically do some very basic Photoshop editing to desaturate some of the team colors. I think the results look pretty decent, at least to those of you who feel that the current colors are a bit too kiddy. So I guess take a look if you gotta moment I guess. I really hope some time down the line I'll be able to post more regularly. Til then, wish y'all the best.
I'll agree that the colors are way to bright in sc2 right now and I hope they tone them down, but I have to agree with LT that those two pictures are lacking the color a little to much. Yeehaw! I gots me an -|LT|-
Of course, being in the (tiny) camp that has never had a problem with the color scheme, or the brightens of the team colors, I am going to have to say that the desaturated images are, as I expected they would, making my eyes work much harder to figure out that's going on. To achieve the effect I imagine everyone wants, you'll also need to find a way to reduce the shininess of all the units. Throw in a blur to simulate atmospheric distortion and the extreme distance of the orbiting camera. It needs clouds, big white puffy wispy gloomy gray (I just remembered that it is illegal for white clouds to exist over a warzone) ones like you'd see over a real battlefield. Just keep working on it until everyone's satisfied with the resulting photorealistic gray square. Come on guys! There are bright colors because bright colors draw the greatest response from human eyes! Would you like to have textured, dark red stop signs with the word "STOP" written out in earthy, brown lettering? Do you want that "CAUTION" to be less assaulting, so you can better take in interesting behavior of the huge boulders falling onto the road?
While I agree that SC2 in its current state seems oversaturated, I don't agree that it's due to vivid team colours. Have you seen grass that green? Can you imagine a patch of minerals that has absolutely no debris in it? The master saturation for the whole game should be reduced to around 80%.
Real grass is actually saturated like that... it just has more tiny sharp shadows to break it up. I get the impression that everyone wants the game to like like 300. And to that I would say no, please, please no.
i like the grass. I like a little bit of color... cause the edited screenshots seems LIFELESS. although still good i still want somewhere in between.
Maybe the game should have a slider to choose how saturated the team colors are. That way you could put it at the level you want and it'll look more gritty and realistic. I can't really see any imbalances with this, except some people might not be able to tell what color's which. Those people could just turn up the saturation a bit.
Personally I'm not too worried about the colorings. That will work itself out. But I do like what Archlimit has done with the images as far as darkening down the renders so they look a bit more earthy. I'm pretty sure he just didn't bother to add the team colors back in and/or wasn't talking about team colors at all. Instead he was simply referring to the texturing of the units and buildings themselves. So as far as the team coloring, you guys are off topic on this one. Knowing ArchLimit he was just referring to the unit renders, which is his specialty. Welcome back Arch, it's nice to see anything posted from you. owerup:
YAY Limit is back. I have to say I liked the team colors just fine and hope the Protoss keep team color for the pylon and psi blaade ect glow. Terrans might do well to go a little DARKER but your desaturation makes it look like a postapocolyptic world after a nuklear blast. Its just too gray
Hm....The first pic looks like a nuclear winter. Like big time. The second is rather.....Surreal. Dreamlike.
i think the protoss and zerg are good as they are colored, but i agree with archlimit over the terran, however i think some color should be kept, small stripes
YAY ARCHLIMIT!!! WB MAN!!!!!! =D =D =D i love anything that arch does...anything! so good job man!!! even tho i dont mind if the game is gna be super bright coloured or the dark look i will still love sc2 forever... gj once again, i hope ull post more =P owerup:
What are you talking about 10-Neon?! THIS IS STARCRAFT! Haha! I wonder how StarCraft would turn out if it had the lighting effects of 300. It would definitely be weird. Anyway I shall return to the topic. The desaturation of the first image reminds me of Player 13 - 255's color in the original StarCraft. The second one looks pretty good for the Terrans because of the metallic colors and look. The Zerg on the other hand look like allies...
I actually like the color in the first image. Terran units and buildings look great with those colors, very serious, considering Starcraft II is a very serious game and dramatic game.
