Hey it seems people are getting excited about this game Aion, Ive looked at it a couple of times over the past year and dont really see much new or different but it could be great?

Wasnt Aion going to be made in cryengine using normal maps and shadows and stuff? what happened to that idea? I mean heres some old screenshots of the game

http://www.aionsource.com/photoplog/file.php?n=14&w=l
http://www.aionsource.com/photoplog/file.php?n=13&w=l
http://www.aionsource.com/photoplog/file.php?n=68&w=l
http://www.aionsource.com/photoplog/file.php?n=77&w=l

and some new ones from the nice new website

http://eu.aiononline.com/global/incl...reenshot03.jpg
http://eu.aiononline.com/global/incl...reenshot05.jpg

do people just not use normal maps in mmos? it still looks good quality but I was a little sad to not see those shiny curves :P

Looks awesome without.

^_^


Diablo 3 is doing the same, and I hadn't heard many complaints about the lack of Normal Maps for that game either.

yeah it does look pretty sweet, I played one of the betas a couple weeks back. It definitely has normal maps and shadows, though if you're in a crowded place with all the fancy fx on, it does slow down (a lot). maybe they turned down settings for some screenshots?

Aion definitely uses normal maps.

It's expensive to do per pixel stuff in MMOs as most of them composite textures together based on the armor you put on. It bloats hells of fast.

Guildwars had normal maps even--they just were not displayed right. Only on environments, though. We've since righted that wrong. =)

So much normallssssss

EverQuest 1 uses normal maps and so dose Aion. The thing with normal maps and MMO's is that there not there to define shapes only enhance with subtle details so people who cant run the game without normal maps on arnt going to miss out on the art.

Also im sure most MMO's bake in most of there lighting and only have dynamic lights on the character you play as and in some other areas that require it.

i was in one of the later Aion closed betas, and it looks freakn awesome. It does use cryengine2 but obviously its not at crysis level of c.r.e.a.m.!

check these out, not the best samples, but shows u better what its about

http://www.thebloody.de/chiara/wp-co...7/Aion0003.jpg

http://denjin108.com/Aion0301.jpg

it seems to me that its not using normal maps entirely, more using per pixel shading with specular maps. Some parts of the clothes uses, but at the hair we cant see any. Its just beautiful tho! I'm pretty sure they had to optimize lots of stuff just so they cant use too much texture to load lots of worlds and characters. Also it costs way more time to create normal map unique stuff.

interesting responses, it does look quite nice in some of those screens johnnyraptor. So do you think in the future we might have completely normal mapped characters in mmos? I mean surely most peoples computers can handle basic shaders these days eg half life 2 looked real good and its pretty old now.

@JohnyRaptor
It's not cry engine 2 its 1. the same one far cry used.

any idea when this will be out ?

Wasn't Age of Conan fully normal mapped? Although it made heavy use of instanced areas....

your right age of conan does seem to have quite alot of normal mapping http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/ageofc...8/?full_size=1

actually aion looks pretty damn cool in game, the engine seems cool lots of atmosphere in some of those clips

You Tube

You Tube

Originally Posted by bugo

it seems to me that its not using normal maps entirely, more using per pixel shading with specular maps. Some parts of the clothes uses, but at the hair we cant see any. Its just beautiful tho! I'm pretty sure they had to optimize lots of stuff just so they cant use too much texture to load lots of worlds and characters. Also it costs way more time to create normal map unique stuff.

The characters do have normal maps, but they're very subtle. Used more to get proper spec than OMG bumpmaps.

The character/monster textures in this game are gorgeous. I wish the same polish had been given to the environments.

oh snap your right!, good ol cryengine 1. soz, my miss.

still looks freakn awesome tho

think I might try this game it looks so nice :3

The big thing with MMO's is always going to be having the engine run on as many machines as possible, so the fact they scaled back a bit isn't surprising at all really.

I don't know if I want to give this a try or not. I'm hoping I have much better self control now than I did when I was 18 and started playing WoW.

Damn MMOs.

haha Im wondering wether to give an mmo a try but Im not sure which one, Ive never really properly played an mmo. Just guildwars for a bit but I didnt enjoy the combat and a tiny session of silkroad.

Originally Posted by Ged

haha Im wondering wether to give an mmo a try but Im not sure which one, Ive never really properly played an mmo. Just guildwars for a bit but I didnt enjoy the combat and a tiny session of silkroad.

said the same thing when i tried out wow. waaay too long later im still playing Be careful play em smart, not an idiot like me!

Originally Posted by Ged

interesting responses, it does look quite nice in some of those screens johnnyraptor. So do you think in the future we might have completely normal mapped characters in mmos? I mean surely most peoples computers can handle basic shaders these days eg half life 2 looked real good and its pretty old now.

I'll repeat that they are fully normal mapped. The diffuse has heavy handed lighting, though. If you took off the diffuse you'd still see those shapes. We are in a half-way stage, you know. Not enough people can scale up to a 3 texture setup. So if you turn off specular and normal you dont want it to look like hot garbage. Til recently just changing texture sizes was adequate to tweak performance. Now it's more important to drop textures.

We definitely use full per pixel nonsense on guildwars 2, though. ;)

stoofoo you companywhore, get me in the GW2 beta

When does GW2 come out anyway? Before or after the end of the world?

Originally Posted by stoofoo

I'll repeat that they are fully normal mapped. The diffuse has heavy handed lighting, though. If you took off the diffuse you'd still see those shapes. We are in a half-way stage, you know. Not enough people can scale up to a 3 texture setup. So if you turn off specular and normal you dont want it to look like hot garbage. Til recently just changing texture sizes was adequate to tweak performance. Now it's more important to drop textures.

We definitely use full per pixel nonsense on guildwars 2, though. ;)

somepeople were saying it was specular or something so I assumed most people were responding with guesses, sorry stoofoo you seem to really know what your talking about and guildwars 2 does sound very interesting indeed.

Yeah, I can for a fact corroborate what joe is saying

I've never done a stint in any MMO for more than 6 months... I usually get bored of the gameplay and environment... I don't really find it fun to run around pressing buttons to shoot pixels at pixels for 8 hours at a time (to do anything meaningful)