Scrutinizing: The Conduit (Wii)

So, the good folks at IGN have posted a bunch of new screenshots from The Conduit.
That means it's time for another round of our little Scrutinizing series.

Let's get started:

In the above shot, we can see some cool lighting effects going on. Notice how the central objects emits light that affects the walls around it, while also "bleeding" colors as if being recorded by a camera. On the down side, some sections of the geometry are too simplistic when viewed from a near distance, and some walls could benefit from a little bump-mapping.



This door look painfully bad, but the weapon is awesome!


The High-Voltage guys seem to be concentrating a lot of effort on the alien characters. Here we can see quite detailed alien structures coming from the walls. Too bad they can't seem to apply the same level of detail on the environment, as the ceiling textures look very blurry. Maybe the lack of video memory is to blame?


A very nice radial blur effect takes place, making the guy in the front appear unfocused. Notice there is a blue light hitting their shoulders and legs from the right. Very cool!

This is the same scene, but from a regular viewpoint. Now we can see the blue light is coming from the screen on the right. The screen itself bleeds a blue color on the camera lens. Oh, and take a good look at the helmets, as they show some reflections... probably an environment mapping effect, with static texture. Lovely. The control room, on the other hand, could be more detailed.


Aliens are again fairly well detailed, casting nice shadow effects on the floor. The white door shines with environment mapping. w00t! :)


Weeeeeeeeee, I'm a happy alien!!! \o/ Those are very cool effects on his body. Hey, those table shadows, could they be pre-calculated? If so, I'm guessing this table is undestructible.

This scene looks so empty. How about putting some vases, plants, paintings on the wall...? Also, I can't help but think this floor should be reflective, and not opaque.

Wow, I don't know what's going on, but it looks interesting, specially the water effects. The ugly sandbags keep getting in the way though (look in the past screenshots and you'll know what I mean, those are ancient and without and signs of improvement so far).

Guys, I'm glad those insects can fly around without getting stuck on waypoints (are they using volumetric areas instead)? Why aren't there any metalic materials on the environment...? You'd think a control room would have a lot of metalic objects, like maybe those pillars at the right.

What a mess. I like how the sun shines through the windows. The aim looks tilted, maybe the game is reading the controller angle?

Fire and smoke particle effects, nice!

I'm very pleased so far with the kind of polishing they are putting onto this game. Let's hope High-Voltage will be able to improve the environments just a little bit before launching, so as long as the gameplay don't suffer for it.

Scrutinizing: Deadly Creatures Wii

I was watching the developer walkthrough video for Deadly Creatures on the Wii, when I felt the urge to comment some of the in-game images. Who knows, maybe some developer will stumble upon this and at least take some points into consideration, from a humble gamer who wants to see this game succeed.

So, let's get started:



1. In the above image, although the model and textures look quite nice, there is an overall "bland" feeling, like the scene lacks some lighting. Maybe some bump maps could add a fine specularity to the creature skin (the Wii hardware can do that natively, AFAIK).



2. Again, the scorpion body is perfectly modeled, but there is no specularity. I suspect that even a measly environment map could do the trick. The shadow also looks too weak.



3. I'm not so sure about this rat. It looks evil enough, but it also looks a bit like a bat (heh, that sounds funny). Maybe its fur could be modeled as a series of concentric textures, like the bee queen in Super Mario Galaxy.



4. This scene looks great, I love the camera angle and the subtle focus. I just hope the textures for that man in the background are detailed enough... Also, the TV screen could emit some sort of colored local light.



5. This is where we can see a cool gameplay aspect, as the bug walks over walls and objects in all directions as the camera follows it from behind. My only gripe with this scene is the same from the previous scene: no local lights on the TV screen.



6. Please guys, spend 3 or 4 more quads in this particle system. Seriously!



7. Lighting is a bit awkward in this scene, as both characters are dark while the floor is well lit. There are no shadows below them whatsoever, and again, no specular lights on the snake's scales (that could make it look even more terrifying in the dark).

Well, I think this is it for now.
I hope this game turns out to be a big hit :)
(oh, and BTW, sorry about the bad English).