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Several points

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2012 4:49 pm
by BlackJagged
Guess, most die-hard VP3 players will first hate this new game cause it just obliterates all our "skills" by increased realism. Makes me grunt, too, but its okay. Actually its good. I want it realistic.

Since, if I get it right, there was no beta-testing, we are the beta-testers, and I guess you are mostly interested about observations of flaws. Still I dont want to be only nagging, so let me say what I liked after the first two hours of testing: The cue ball is really good, graphically----not just the reflections, but particularly that tiny, tiny bit of translucence. It almost looks like good SSS. It looks real. And: after a while of playing snooker I realize that Im coming to about the same poor results, for the same reasons, that I get in rl. This seems to be much closer to reality. Good!

Here the nagging:

-----The biggest problem, as I felt, is already solved by papagaya's comment below: this odd animation-flaw that occurs immediately after shooting. To me it just felt as if, regardless what I tried, every shot was a brutal hack. Papagaya said: "turning off vertical sync solved the problem" and it did solve the problem for me. Perhaps it would be good to just change the default to exactly that, otherwise we will have newbies asking about this prob for the next 15 years and at some point someone will set up a "First steps in VP4" and step one will be the advice to turn of vertical sync.

----The backgrounds I find underwhelming. Not sure how it works, technically, but I'm sure my machine could manage a lot more of realism there. Are it the same backgrounds for all machines?

----While the pool tables, all in all, are looking good, I was very disappointed by the look of the snooker table. At least on my screen I get a table with a green that glows like Cryptonite, while the red balls, if they are not close (close balls are always looking good), are looking somewhat muddy, darkish, 2-dimensional. Changing the table color to "Tan" improves all that greatly, but naturally Id prefer to play on a normal, green table.

----What annoys me most atm, in snooker: even with the "Shooting" in mouse settings set to 100 and even with a "tournament table" its horribly slow. I'm not exactly playing pro tables in rl, Im normally playing normal amateur-, sometimes pretty slow tables, but this is really slower than anything in real life. Perhaps I miss something in the settings, but if I go to "table settings" I can not influence anything, the table speed is set to 23 and I cant change it. Unless I miss something, I guess I have to play myself up in the career to get to faster tables, but I find this dissatisfying. Its just not realistic, and having to *BANG* every shot to just get a bit of speed somehow ruins the realism for me.

Still: Great you finally managed to put this game on a new level. I hope you will be able to make the adjustments we are suggesting...then in the end this will hopefully become the killer game it should be!
Oh, and a tiny graphic issue: at least on the snooker table the lines, like the "D" are drawn in black, instead of the usual white. That makes them hardly visible. For a general feel of orientation, I think, it would be better to have these lines more visible.

Aiming

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2012 5:53 pm
by BlackJagged
After a bit more of playing snooker it seems to me as if the aiming is different than the aiming for snooker was in VP3. Its seems to be much better: in VP3 at some point I realized that the aiming is different than aiming in the pool games: in snooker I had to aim just a tad beside the pocket. Now the aiming seems to be more realistic. Hard to unlearn the mental fix one needed in VP3, but thats a great improvement!

Re: Several points

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2012 11:12 pm
by Fluke[FIN]
About the color of the snooker table felt: There is something in the color which seems familiar but somehow it feels too bright. Yesterday I couldn't tell me why the felt is looking partly so familiar. But now when I watched some pictures which I took on our local club some time ago I noticed it: I had a couple of photos of a table taken with the flash enabled on my camera. On those pics with flash enabled the cloth looks very silimiar to vp4 cloth; the cloth have a bit like glow like effect on it and the green is very bright. But when you are IRL looking the table the color is not that "aggressive". The flash also made the reds to look "not that deep red" as they normally look when youre watching them.

I play vp4 in desktop view mode and I got my display calibrated with Spyder3Elite. Thats why the colors on the does not bother me that much. In full screen mode the game over-rides the settings made by Spyder3Elite and the colors almost rips your eyes out :)

Re: Several points

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2012 11:18 pm
by vpeer
No you did not get it right, you got it completely wrong.

Re: Several points

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2012 11:23 pm
by Fluke[FIN]
vpeer wrote:No you did not get it right, you got it completely wrong.
Can you tell me why/how exactly? I'm not a graphics designer/engineer etc, neither a camera specialist. That what I just wrote was just a quick thought of why the color of the vp4 snooker cloth seemed so familiar but at the same time a bit too bright.

Re: Several points

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2012 11:33 pm
by Fluke[FIN]
Also, what affects on how you see the snooker table felt IRL with a snooker table with proper felt which is strachan, is that the felt has got the nap. The nap is ironed starting from the baulk end towards to the top end. If you put your finger on the table with strachan felt and slide your finger on it you are changing the direction where the nap is pointing. That "different direction nap" is clearly visible because it reflects light in different way than the untouchable felt.

A (bad quality) picture to show the drawing effect; you can see the darker lines drawed by bridge hand fingers sliding movement on the table on this one. Taken on the same day with flash disabled -> longer exposure time and a bit shakey hand and out of focus causes bad quality pic.

Re: Several points

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2012 11:54 pm
by vpeer
I was referring to the original post.
Your comment were reasonable and pretty close to why the felt is probably too bright. We took the color samples from a photo.

Re: Several points

Posted: Fri Aug 17, 2012 11:00 am
by Tayvl
vpeer wrote:No you did not get it right, you got it completely wrong.
How about quoting what you're replying to? Otherwise you come off as a petulant noob...

Re: Several points

Posted: Fri Aug 17, 2012 11:23 am
by vpeer
I lost the original long response, did not feel like retyping. And I am petulant.

Re: Several points

Posted: Fri Aug 17, 2012 1:23 pm
by Tayvl
OK, as long as you're already petulant let me add something that will annoy you... Why have the AI been programmed to all shoot like Curly when in "Good Luck" mode? I thought the modes changed the difficulty for everyone, including the AI. Was it just easier to program the computer to "Find a solution to this leave that makes the shot and leaves the cue ball in position for the next one"? As it is, "Skilled" opponents are for the most part "Inerrant" opponents at the Deep Pockets level. Is that supposed to be an improvement on VP3? Doesn't seem like one to me.

Re: Several points

Posted: Fri Aug 17, 2012 2:41 pm
by vpeer
All the opponents should not play like Curly in Good Luck mode.