... Yep, it's probably possible to make low poly looking good enough for everyone. There are many example of high quality low poly art in CG, but doing the same rendering in real-time is challenging. ...
I see it a bit differently (considering the latter part). The trade-off is
that you will have a lot less polygons to render. The gained time can be
spend in evaluating a more complex shading model, basically.
... Anyway, I've been working on the 2 new visual styles in
Super Night Riders. In the classic style, I've replaced the riders 3D models with the old ones from the original
Night Riders.
Any thoughts? ...
I'm a bit at odds with how it all looks.
I know you have different themes, but let's just focus on these two.
First, in the low-poly version you tried to be of low-poly yet have colored
the world like being real, sort of, which is at odds with what people know
about the real world from the get-go. You will always have do deal with this
contradiction of people not being able to abstract away sufficiently. For
those people your low-poly style won't mean a thing, looking like low-quality,
because the reflection of the low-polys don't match the known reflection of
similar real world materials.
For example, the color and shades of the trees in the low-poly version is
fully at odds with what's known about trees from nature. And that's what
people will compared them to, if they are colored that way. And if the colors
and shades won't match, you stood no chance with low-poly. But that's not
saying there can't be any match. There are games having pretty cool low-poly
trees with colors and shades given the impression of a real tree yet being of
low-poly.
Second. In the new version, I think you make the same "mistake" again, going
for a "realistic" look yet the assets, rendering etc. can't support it. It's
not that it can't be that way, but people will compare with what they know
from the real world. This new version will give them a slice of the real
world yet contradicting their knowledge even further since now you are going
to tell them that this is a more "realistic" look or something. The game
would need to make a lot of fun to let people overlook the not-so-real
graphics.
What I want to say is, whenever one tries to create something real looking,
one will always have to fight against the imprinted vision of what people
know about the real world. It's an uphill battle. It takes a lot of resources
to produce something believable within this regards.
I know you have different themes other than these two, but if this would be
my game, I would go a different road altogether. Since it is an arcade game
so to speak, there is no real need to draw from the real world. And to get
away with people's imprinted vision of nature, I would completely color the
world differently, not even trying to mimic sort of a natural look. Away
with these "real looking" trees! I mean, make the low-poly trees pink or
something. And why a blue sky, green grass etc.? It looks boring. There are
so many cool colors and gradients you can build a cool sky or lawn out of.
Put a galaxy in the sky, make a cool sun, use more specular reflections,
mirrors etc..
That is to say, I think it's best to pull the player out of what (s)he knows
about the real world making it, well, a video game. Something enticing to
experience and cool to look at.
My take.
