Several points
Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2012 4:49 pm
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.
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.