Necessary upgrades before launch

[Solaris_Wave]

Magic's new look now has that '70s vibe, working at the Car Wash (cue the song by Rose Royce).

Edited May 25, 2023 by Solaris_Wave

[MateKiddleton]

The JA2 portraits aren't great. JA1 portraits were almost always better even at crappy resolutions.

[Solaris_Wave]

Unfortunately, this is what Magic now reminds me of:

[Elite77]

2 hours ago, Solaris_Wave said:

Unfortunately, this is what Magic now reminds me of:

I actually don't mind Magic's redesign. Hat is a bit out there, but I don't think I really mind.

Mercs portraits I would redesign: Blood, Vicki, Livewire I would just remove entirely as a merc, Fauda maybe. Bunch of others. Len. Definitely Len. DEFINITELY Len.

Merc portraits I think are great: Shadow, Gus, Hitman isn't so bad, Steroid's portrait is fine, I would redesign his model outside of the portrait. Grizzly is fine, I like his beret, etc. Barry is fine, great. Red is fine. Lots of people look fine or great, in my opinion.

 

I don't think portraits are an important core feature of Jagged Alliance, they're nice, they add "soul" as MagicShadow said, but, aside from that, they don't make or break the game. If JA2 had the same portraits but completely different mechanics, none of us would've probably played it.

However, one thing I will say about Portraits: the reason why portraits were better back in the old days is because they were all 2D and usually hand-drawn, which gives the artist a lot more freedom to emote the art correctly, and also draw it to a high level of precision. 3D models are a lot more difficult to do.

Edited May 25, 2023 by Elite77

[WILDFIRE]

Still I hope there will be some improvements regarding the portraits, gameplay mechanics, inventory and animations in the final build, because in the latest trailer I saw zero changes.

 

We all posted some great feedback over the last year so hopefully the game benefited of that.

[Xeth Nyrrow]

7 hours ago, Solaris_Wave said:

Unfortunately, this is what Magic now reminds me of:

LOL...but also, you're not wrong. I think his was the biggest visual change and it goes farther away from his persona rather than evolving more in its natural direction.

[Stuurminator]

I don't mind the colours of the game in general. JA1 was very colourful and JA2 was more drab, but that was just following the trends of the time. Now the visual standard - not just in video games, but media in general - has swung back to bright colours, and that's fine. It doesn't turn JA3 into Fortnite or whatever.

The portraits are also fine, taken in isolation. When I look at new characters like Livewire or Fauda, I think they look absolutely fine. The problem is that many of the returning characters' portraits don't line up with their previous portrayal. Vicki's portrait (and model) is bad, not because it's poorly made, but because the Vicki from JA1 and JA2 is a professional who takes her job seriously and would not go into battle wearing denim overalls and rasta beads.

This speaks to a bigger problem in JA3 that I've been sitting on for a while: the devs don't understand the characters they're writing. MD has become a less cowardly, but equally unconfident Biff (right down to considering CPR on his kills). Grizzly is completely unrecognizable in appearance, voice, and personality - if you hid his name, no JA2 player would be able to tell who he's supposed to be. And Steroid? Find me a single instance in JA2 where Steroid talks about oiling his chest. Hell, were there even any where he talked about his biceps?

This is why I've mentioned my first team will be new characters. I just can't stand seeing my old favourites bastardized like this. This has stuck in my craw since I first time I saw gameplay footage and I have no idea why more people aren't complaining about this.

[Solaris_Wave]

9 hours ago, Elite77 said:

However, one thing I will say about Portraits: the reason why portraits were better back in the old days is because they were all 2D and usually hand-drawn, which gives the artist a lot more freedom to emote the art correctly, and also draw it to a high level of precision. 3D models are a lot more difficult to do.

I have often said that in these forums. Unless faces are texture mapped onto a 3D rendered model, they are not likely to be animated. Hand drawn art is just that. Back in the days of JA2 and even before then (especially early 90s), from an artist's point of view, it was relatively easy to animate faces. The resolutions were lower, meaning bigger pixels. The available colours were lower too. You could lift the eyebrow pixels up and down, move the eyes and make them blink, move the mouth…all while keeping the rest of the image static, hence matching it up with the base image.

Today, that is going to be harder, unless you deliberately simplify a face so you can make variations of it.

Some people have suggested using the new AI to animate the hand drawn portraits.

[Solaris_Wave]

3 hours ago, Stuurminator said:

been sitting on for a while: the devs don't understand the characters they're writing. MD has become a less cowardly, but equally unconfident Biff (right down to considering CPR on his kills). Grizzly is completely unrecognizable in appearance, voice, and personality - if you hid his name, no JA2 player would be able to tell who he's supposed to be. And Steroid? Find me a single instance in JA2 where Steroid talks about oiling his chest. Hell, were there even any where he talked about his biceps?

In some ways, you could say that they are now caricatures of caricatures.

In JA2, I saw each merc as a professional, with some being more so than others. They might have quirks as a side thing.

It might appear that now, those quirks are a main feature.

I have likened the new characters to the toys I used to play with as a kid: Action Force (a.k.a. G.I. Joe) and Cobra. Distinct and colourful individuals; their features, clothes and personality made to separate them from the other members.

Edited May 25, 2023 by Solaris_Wave

[Elite77]

6 hours ago, Stuurminator said:

I don't mind the colours of the game in general. JA1 was very colourful and JA2 was more drab, but that was just following the trends of the time. Now the visual standard - not just in video games, but media in general - has swung back to bright colours, and that's fine. It doesn't turn JA3 into Fortnite or whatever.

The portraits are also fine, taken in isolation. When I look at new characters like Livewire or Fauda, I think they look absolutely fine. The problem is that many of the returning characters' portraits don't line up with their previous portrayal. Vicki's portrait (and model) is bad, not because it's poorly made, but because the Vicki from JA1 and JA2 is a professional who takes her job seriously and would not go into battle wearing denim overalls and rasta beads.

This speaks to a bigger problem in JA3 that I've been sitting on for a while: the devs don't understand the characters they're writing. MD has become a less cowardly, but equally unconfident Biff (right down to considering CPR on his kills). Grizzly is completely unrecognizable in appearance, voice, and personality - if you hid his name, no JA2 player would be able to tell who he's supposed to be. And Steroid? Find me a single instance in JA2 where Steroid talks about oiling his chest. Hell, were there even any where he talked about his biceps?

This is why I've mentioned my first team will be new characters. I just can't stand seeing my old favourites bastardized like this. This has stuck in my craw since I first time I saw gameplay footage and I have no idea why more people aren't complaining about this.

I don't think it's a matter of trends (but if it is, I definitely like how 90s media looked).

Some colors are more suited to certain genres and tones than others. The JA2 colors were very well suited to a gritty almost American looking world (even though the setting was in latin america), and I thought worked extremely well for depicting a very average, run of the mill, run down setting and world, with green grass, dark brown mud, slightly off-white walls inside of buildings, and regular carpet or tile floors that you'd often see in offices in America or Canada around that time period.

And I don't think the old characters have been bastardized, people need to relax a bit. I do think that lots of people have a smug demeanor, illustrated by the smirking expression, which is what can ruin the tone and who the character is supposed to represent very easily, but aside from that, I have no serious problems or issues with portraits or anything like that.

There may be things I would change with JA3, but those things are not the portraits.

I do think that the overall tone of JA3 is a bit "let's go on a fun adventure", indiana jones a bit, or Hardy Boys a bit. Comes off as a little bit unserious.

While in JA2, the tone was very much, from the get go, you are met with a middle aged villager, a mother, Fatima, who wasn't particularly good looking or young or anything, just an adult living in this world with real life obligations and so on, who lost her husband to the war, you then meet run down rebels, who are very mistrusting and are clearly at their wits end, after being bombed by Deidranna's forces.

But I'm also sure this has to do with the marketing more than anything else, not the writing itself, because we saw the writing in JA3 via the beta footage, it was perfectly serious and how I would describe JA2 and JA3 should be.

JA2's writing was very much...serious with a small cherry on top of ridiculous encounters, but lots of things that happened in JA2 were not funny, they were very brutal. Moustache-twirling villain brutal, 90s action tv show or movie brutal, but brutal never the less. A brother was looking to rescue his sister from being pimped, there was some crazy looking kingpin. It wasn't dark, but it wasn't "fun", it wasn't "adventurous". There's a difference between making things very dark and gloomy and depressing, and depicting very terrible acts as this kind of simple, morally unambiguous perhaps depictions of "you know exactly who the bad guy is, he acts like a bad guy, he uses violence and has henchmen, he steals the girl for no reason other than he is bad (or steals any other innocent), he has a monologue or a speech". Lethal Weapon is a good example, with how some installments had clearly bad guys, who used force and violence, who presented very clear examples and scenarios of tone that wasn't dark per se, or gloomy or depressed, but was nevertheless serious and valid for an action type of context. Die Hard is an imperfect example. Rush Hour wasn't un-similar.

Lethal Weapon is a good example to use for reference, for what a JA2 tone should look like, in my opinion.

Edited May 25, 2023 by Elite77

[Solaris_Wave]

52 minutes ago, Elite77 said:

And I don't think the old characters have been bastardized, people need to relax a bit. I do think that lots of people have a smug demeanor, illustrated by the smirking expression, which is what can ruin the tone and who the character is supposed to represent very easily, but aside from that, I have no serious problems or issues with portraits or anything like that.

That is probably my biggest criticism with the portraits, that they are tilting their heads and smirking. Almost as if they are saying, "You think you're good enough? Well, I'm here now."

 

56 minutes ago, Elite77 said:

I do think that the overall tone of JA3 is a bit "let's go on a fun adventure", indiana jones a bit, or Hardy Boys a bit. Comes off as a little bit unserious.

I have that thought too a little, especially when I see Hitman going to war in a pink salmon shirt and white yachting slacks. I am not getting that vibe of a serious war-torn country that has seen lots of bloodshed and shattered lives, with the deposed daughter of the leader desperately reaching out to you to hire professional soldiers that are dedicated to restoring order.

[DougS2K]

11 minutes ago, Solaris_Wave said:

I have that thought too a little, especially when I see Hitman going to war in a pink salmon shirt and white yachting slacks. I am not getting that vibe of a serious war-torn country that has seen lots of bloodshed and shattered lives, with the deposed daughter of the leader desperately reaching out to you to hire professional soldiers that are dedicated to restoring order.

Just waiting for my flight to Grand Chien. They'll never see me coming! 😁

Edited May 26, 2023 by DougS2K

[Stuurminator]

8 hours ago, Solaris_Wave said:

In JA2, I saw each merc as a professional, with some being more so than others. They might have quirks as a side thing.

This holds true for everyone (or almost everyone) in AIM. A lot of MERC and some RPCs weren't really professional at all. But even the crazies weren't just their quirk. Razor was a dangerous psychopath, but you could still believe him as a human being. That's not true for JA3's Steroid.

It reminds me of JA1 and Deadly Games, where some mercenaries were one-dimensional walking quirks (mostly the ones that didn't make it to JA2). That's not a deal-breaker; I played Deadly Games before JA2. But it does feel like a step backward, and it certainly doesn't feel good to see my favourites from JA2 get that treatment.

That's why I'll be using the original characters, because I can take them on their own terms. And the goofier mercs like Igor or Tex are pretty hard to screw up, so maybe they'll come out okay, too. It's not like there's no hope.

[MateKiddleton]

JA2 mercs were still one-dimensional stereotypes. They had a few lines each and no character development. Their stereotype WAS their character. You're never getting Baldur's Gate level writing in a Jagged Alliance game. And that's perfectly fine in a game with 40+ playable characters.

[WILDFIRE]

For me the mercs in JA2 were serious professionals but with their own quirks and soul. In JA3 I have the impression that all characters are just their quirks and the grounded professional background is completely missing. They are just over the top caricatures now and the soul is somehow gone.

 

That is something that I really hate in modern gaming. In many games like Rainbow Six Siege for example the characters are now young and fancy teens with colorful hairstyles while the game is about professional soldiers that fight against brutal terrorism organizations.

 

Rainbow Six, Battlefield just as JA2 were mostly about serious soldiers and now the characters turned somehow into a pile of fun over the top caricatures.

 

With JA3 I don't want to judge too early, because the game isn't even finished yet and I know that some characters have a really good design but there are examples like Magic or Hitman where you think they fit in a dance club or holiday resort but not on the battlefield.

Edited May 26, 2023 by WILDFIRE

[Jaywalker]

6 minutes ago, WILDFIRE said:

That is something that I really hate in modern gaming. In many games like Rainbow Six Siege for example the characters are now young and fancy teens with colorful hairstyles while the game is about professional soldiers that fight against brutal terrorism organizations.

This is something I feel hits the nail on the head: for whatever of it there was, the personality of a mercenary in JA1 and JA2 came from the "inside", and what we see in JA3 so far is much more surface level.

By technical necessity, everyone in JA1 and 2 wore the same practical t-shirt and jeans combo, with the big guys opting for a tank-top instead. This was to some extent reflected in their portraits, they were all ID photos with no headgear no stupid smirks and no accessories.

They still spouted the same quirky nonsense in combat, but they LOOKED the part of a professional mercenary, and they didn't interject with literal memes.
Steroid had a poor grasp of English, he was a bit sexist at times, but he wasn't reminding you he's a bodybuilder at every step of the way.

[Stuurminator]

3 hours ago, MateKiddleton said:

JA2 mercs were still one-dimensional stereotypes. They had a few lines each and no character development. Their stereotype WAS their character. You're never getting Baldur's Gate level writing in a Jagged Alliance game. And that's perfectly fine in a game with 40+ playable characters.

They weren't one-dimensional. Maybe they weren't three-dimensional either, but they had more going on than a single gag. Steroid was a big dumb meathead, but he had other things going on, too. Dynamo had things to say besides "I want revenge on the Queen." Even Razor didn't talk about knives all the time.

33 minutes ago, Jaywalker said:

By technical necessity, everyone in JA1 and 2 wore the same practical t-shirt and jeans combo, with the big guys opting for a tank-top instead. This was to some extent reflected in their portraits, they were all ID photos with no headgear no stupid smirks and no accessories.

I'm not completely convinced of this. Your mercenaries' clothes could come in a rainbow of colours, and while everyone shared the same three sprites, some of them may have worn things as eccentric as JA3's mercenaries. I suppose the abstraction left it all up to interpretation.

[WILDFIRE]

31 minutes ago, Jaywalker said:

This is something I feel hits the nail on the head: for whatever of it there was, the personality of a mercenary in JA1 and JA2 came from the "inside", and what we see in JA3 so far is much more surface level.

By technical necessity, everyone in JA1 and 2 wore the same practical t-shirt and jeans combo, with the big guys opting for a tank-top instead. This was to some extent reflected in their portraits, they were all ID photos with no headgear no stupid smirks and no accessories.

They still spouted the same quirky nonsense in combat, but they LOOKED the part of a professional mercenary, and they didn't interject with literal memes.
Steroid had a poor grasp of English, he was a bit sexist at times, but he wasn't reminding you he's a bodybuilder at every step of the way.

That is exactly what I mean. The personality came from the inside and was not a gimmick. Now the characters are on the nose obviously direct about their special quirks and that is not natural. It feels off and silly sometimes. That the mercs in JA3 in some ways are more on a surface level is the perfect description.

[ninjalex]

I guess it's the same as the big difference between the Star Wars original trilogy and perhaps especially the sequels.

In the first you have a somewhat serious adventure, with some funny gimmicks and some classic oneliners. There is humor, but it takes the backseat. In the sequel everything is a quip, a joke and a gimmick and it's hard to take anything serious. The first one works remarkably well, the other feels shoehorned. Let's see how it works for JA. I have my doubts.

 

The limitations on the graphics in JA2 might have served it really well, and I CAN understand the risk of having 5 grey/camo blobs that are pretty much similar in the same outfits, but having their gimmick be soo central I'm afraid it will take away my immersion from it. The voice acting was what set them apart, as well as the pictures. But it might not work as well in a modern updated game.

[Jaywalker]

15 minutes ago, Stuurminator said:

I'm not completely convinced of this. Your mercenaries' clothes could come in a rainbow of colours, and while everyone shared the same three sprites, some of them may have worn things as eccentric as JA3's mercenaries. I suppose the abstraction left it all up to interpretation.

The only one that was "excentric" in his wardrobe, was Nails with his leather jacket, which even had gameplay implications.

[WILDFIRE]

@ninjalex: Yes the Star Wars comparison is pretty accurate. I thought about that the same way. The humour must come from the inside and should not be the main reason why some characters even speak.

 

First and foremost the characters must be serious not humorous caricatures. The main reason why most of the humour in JA2 works is because the jokes come out of the mouth of a dead serious person.

[Solaris_Wave]

5 hours ago, WILDFIRE said:

That is something that I really hate in modern gaming. In many games like Rainbow Six Siege for example the characters are now young and fancy teens with colorful hairstyles while the game is about professional soldiers that fight against brutal terrorism organizations.

 

I really don't like that either. It seems funny that in their pursuit to appeal to everyone and to make their games as widely accessible to as many people as possible (more people, more profit), the publishers of these games have ironically driven away a percentage of people that like more serious games.

I want my soldiers to look like soldiers, not some trendy, 'just left school' character with a loud hairstyle, cocky attitude and a social media persona.

Edited May 26, 2023 by Solaris_Wave

[Stuurminator]

4 hours ago, Jaywalker said:

The only one that was "excentric" in his wardrobe, was Nails with his leather jacket, which even had gameplay implications.

Eh...I still remember Vicki's bright purple shirt (unique among named characters, I believe). Grizzly had a red tank top, which isn't exactly camouflage (though it was good enough for Arulco's army, I suppose). Some of the colour schemes in JA2 were comparable to Hitman's pink shirt and white slacks, and may have implied similar attire.

[Hongweibing]

5 hours ago, Stuurminator said:

They weren't one-dimensional. Maybe they weren't three-dimensional either, but they had more going on than a single gag.

That's the thing - I don't think that the problem is that the JA3 characters are one-dimentional, while the JA2 characters were two-dimentional. Rather, the problem (assuming that it is a problem, of which I am not convinced) is that you take a two-dimentional character, and instead of expressing it in ca. half a page of text, you have to do so in ca. 2.5-3 pages of text.

Because in JA2 mercs did not talk so much, one could more easily assume/imagine (often mistakenly, I would argue) that they were more serious/professional etc. and not defined by their quirks. Whereas if you need to stretch that two-dimentionality over much more dialogue, you have to either make the mercs sound generic (which is a problem when you have 40 characters), or lean into their quirkiness, to make them more unique/distinguishable/memorable. The developers chose the latter. This, in turn, leaves little room for doubt regarding their seriousness/professionality (or rather the lack thereof, in many cases). Personally, the JA mercs never felt too professional/serious to me, I always (well, with some exceptions) had the feeling that I'm dealing with a ragtag group of people of questionable professionality (not to be confused with skillfulness) and of even more questionable sanity (admittedly, JA2 was an improvement in that sense compared to JA1 and DG, but not by much, especially if you consider M.E.R.C).

Edited May 26, 2023 by Hongweibing

[Lunokhod]