Can someone explain the popularity of NWNCQ's textures? (technically)

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               I've been wondering this for years now.  I know at least some of you out there may have actual schooling/training/experience in visual arts which would allow you to compose a concise answer about this.

I tried out NWNCQ years ago and was heavily nonplussed by the effect.  To me, just about everything looked "muddy".  After going through and comparing many individual textures from NWNCQ to the default Bioware textures they override, one by one, I was kind of horrified.  NWNCQ turns the concept of what a texture should be in NWN....well, it turns it on its head.

And yet, fair and square by almost everything I can see, the broader NWN community loved the heck out of it and many comments indicate they couldn't imagine playing NWN without it.  I count about 22,000 downloads of all the files on the Vault page which are epic acceptance numbers for a project which hit the Vault something like a year+ after 1.69 was released.

Just off the charts.  So I think it's uncontroversial to say that, stylistically, Chico400 did something which resonated with a huge percentage of NWN 1 players.

But what...exactly...was that?  I've noticed that none of the regulars here seem to emulate the style nor have I seen anyone else on the Vault who's done so.  Why not?
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 26 février 2013 - 08:56 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               When I tried NWNCQ I had already been spoiled by the high quality textures used by artists such as Six, LoW, and Baba - not to mention Project Q, the CTP, and countless others whose style runs along  similar lines.

Personally, I can't explain the popularity of NWNCQ. Does it make vanilla look nicer? Yes, the overall effect looks much better than what you get "out of the box", but its still not up to par with the afore mentioned artists' work.

Perhaps its popularity comes from the publicity Chico gave it - he really did talk it up. When he was developing it you couldn't login to the forums without seeing a thread discussing it either directly or indirectly. Another big plus is the delivery method. Being an override you don't have to do anything beyond installing it in the override folder to gain its benefits.

I also think that NWShader was a big boon to NWNCQ. Without shader a lot of what Chico did just wouldn't have been possible. Maybe that's where NWNCQ exceeds expectation - by utilizing elements of shader to make the game look much better than what was available at the time while only using vanilla NWN..
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               I also think NWShader does the trick with the textures for NWNCQ. Without NWShader I don't see the value in NWNCQ.

That said my first impression of NWNCQ was positive. And what I liked about it were not the textures so much as how much lusher some of the tilesets look, AND that the interiors had roofs. NWNCQ Forest and Rural are vast improvements over the original in many many ways if you want to depict a lush environment in a similar vein as LoW's seasonal forest.

BUT with regards to the Forest and Rural tilesets, both Zwerkules' and T0r0's overrides are head and shoulders better than NWNCQ. And I now regret that I didn't know about their work prior to discovering NWNCQ. I used NWNCQ in my work rebooting the PW Vives, and I would have preferred to have used Zwerkules and T0r0's tiles. Too late now, but it still bothers me.

Also the more I look at NWNCQ the less I like it. I only like some of the tilesets (which is why I created the modular HAK delivery for it), and I do not think it work well as an override, but rather that it should be delivered as a HAK (the other reason I created the modularized HAK set up for it). Chico made a number of changes to tiles that appear to change the geometry of an area as lush vegetation or cliffs can appear to crowd together and obscure what used to show up as a path.

My thoughts about the textures in NWNCQ now is that many of them are much too large in scale. For example even though I still like the lushness of the NWNCQ Rural look, even then I think twice about using it, because the scale of the textures screw up the appearance. This is clear when using Coulisfu's now dated but still serviceable Oriental Rural tileset. Another thing that I often change by hand: one of NWNCQ's rock textures (the standard boulder texture) is indeed less appealing (to me) than the original. And I agree in OTR's overall sense of muddiness that the textures create. That may be due however to creating textures for NWN Shader. This last bit is just conjecture on my part, but when looking at them closely they almost appear to have a faked bumpmap embedded in the texture. It looks good when you aren't looking closely, but as soon as you focus on the textures up close, they are not appealing. In general, they would probably work better in an iOS game that has you zoomed out most of the time, than in NWN where sometimes you zoom in to appreciate details or capture dramatic screenshots.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_T0r0]

               Sorry no tech reasons here but I agree with Pstemarie "The delivery method". It's aimed at the player! (which outnumber builders by a wide margin). period.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               

OldTimeRadio wrote...

But what...exactly...was that?  I've noticed that none of the regulars here seem to emulate the style nor have I seen anyone else on the Vault who's done so.  Why not?

Why not? Because it has about the worst textures I've ever seen. Not just because they are so blurred but because there were pseudo bump maps applied to the textures which wouldn't be quite so bad if they'd actually matched the textures, but they were just some kind of grainy textures that even destroy the last bit of detail some of the textures they were applied to had left, like the paintings in the interior tileset.

I too don't have the slightest idea why people like that look. But because they do, I've given up making any tileset overrides. They'll hardly get used anyway.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               OTR. I believe its because its in one package and that the NWNCQ is primarily override. Before I continue, I should probably mention that I do not use NWNCQ anymore, but not because it would be bad, Im a builder and such must have in mind those who dont use NWNCQ and build the area without it.

I always supported this project because having dozens of reskin of the forest is maybe nice, but have it under one roof with features that those simple reskins didnt provided (tree foliage, roofs, tilefading) is better imo. Diversity is maybe a great thing but I was always more to the standardization.

Its not about texture's quality really, what I saw in very high quality tilesets like TNO was that they used very high quality textures, but they havent fit with textures from default nwn tilesets. Imo chico's does. Opinions vary, but for a player not  experienced from technical details, how textures work, this is imo what matters the most. And you can override textures if you dont like them (though its a bit weird to override override lol) because chico not only provided textures (like most of those retextures I mentioned) but he improved tile models - added basic NWN features (that many current builders ignore to do).

Of course, I don't agree with the course that chico later choose, such as adding slopes in the flat tiles or changing textures of door and placeables or the worst from some reason changing light source placeables which resulted in always shining lamps in module where they didnt before...

But overally his project is great value to the NWN content. And if someone ask me for a graphical improvements, NWNCQ is something I do mention. Maybe a bad choice of tetures still not makes it a wrong entirely. Maybe if someone replaced his textures with original or own it would be even better. I would be interested especially in the defaults.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par ShaDoOoW, 26 février 2013 - 08:50 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               

T0r0 wrote...

Sorry no tech reasons here but I agree with Pstemarie "The delivery method". It's aimed at the player! (which outnumber builders by a wide margin). period.

This may be true, but it shows that players are not likely to notice the problems which Chico's tiles create when used as an override. We did notice these in Vives, and it convinced me not to use NWNCQ with another project.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               

ShaDoOoW wrote...
Its not about texture's quality really, what I saw in very high quality tilesets like TNO was that they used very high quality textures, but they havent fit with textures from default nwn tilesets. Imo chico's does.

I couldn't disagree with you more. I think Chico's textures are as far from the original textures as they can be.
If you'd only use NWNCQ for a couple of tilesets and left the others as they are, you'd see how much the style differs.
Also some of the additions destroy the whole feel of some of the tilesets like the corkscrew like thingums in the evil dungeon tileset.
Yes, overrides should add higher poly parts to tilesets, but they should not add clutter which could as well be added as placeables. They should not add anything on walkable parts of a tile, the original walkmeshes have to be left intact.
They should not destroy the theme of a tileset. If it is an evil dungeon, don't make it look like a museum of the fine arts.

So you can add roofs to tilesets, but no extra pillars to support them because that would either mean players could walk through them if the walkmesh was left unchanged, or if the walkmesh was changed, access to barrels or the like could be blocked by pillars. This can cause game breaking bugs.
Likewise you can't add more trees to the forest tiles. There are very few trees on the original forest tiles, but those will have to do. Adding more only causes problems. What is possible here is adding ferns and bushes or thickets, because it makes sense that a player can walk through them, but try as I may, I've never been able to walk through a tree. '>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               

Zwerkules wrote...

ShaDoOoW wrote...
Its not about texture's quality really, what I saw in very high quality tilesets like TNO was that they used very high quality textures, but they havent fit with textures from default nwn tilesets. Imo chico's does.

I couldn't disagree with you more. I think Chico's textures are as far from the original textures as they can be.
If you'd only use NWNCQ for a couple of tilesets and left the others as they are, you'd see how much the style differs.
Also some of the additions destroy the whole feel of some of the tilesets like the corkscrew like thingums in the evil dungeon tileset.

Its been a while I used NWNCQ so I wont try to argue about it. In my first experiences with NWNCQ - version 1, i made a several before/after screenshots. And at least in Rural, the new textures fit nicely.

But I think that was before chico decided to build it with NWNShader in mind so maybe it isnt true anymore.

EDIT: taking back, you are indeed correct. Colors completely
different. But I must say it never "punched me to the face", maybe
because I didn't looked on textures but on an overal feel[smilie]http://social.bioware.com/images/forum/emoticons/wondering.png[/smilie].
               
               

               

                     Modifié par ShaDoOoW, 26 février 2013 - 10:05 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Nissa_Red]

               To be honest, I think most people here are being unfair towards NWNCQ. To me, as a modest part-time/hobbyist module builder, the value of NWNCQ is threefold :

1/ it adds roofs (to most standard tilesets). I've been addicted to those ever since this beauty. Then, once you've played with Diademus/Baba Yaga spider caves, or more recently with Zwerkules awesome cave override, you can't go back to non-roofed. It just seems as sloopy to me to use interior tiles without a roof, as it is to use an exterior tile without shadows. No quality texture can change that.

2/ its ease of use. No need to elaborate much on that, since it's been mentioned several times already, but even if overrides are "dirty", in this case, it makes sense (like LordOfWorms creatures overrides). Also, there are several versions of nwnCQ, replacing tiles with more or less geometry, more or less lights or textures, I think, so everyone should be able to cherry-pick whatever they like or not.

3/ its consistency. Anything is better than BW standard textures, one may think, but if Helvene or Toro have taught me anything, it's that consistency over areas matters, alot. I used to be a big fan of TNO, but I am no longer. Yes, it looks great on its own, but if you transition from an incredibly detailed forest or city area to a much less convincing rural or desert area, it strikes me as... weird. TNO also has the inconvenience to set the pressure on the graphical engine of the game quite high (I am not really sure why), even on machines (not only mine) which have no issue with any other modern times games. This means smaller areas overall, or enduring the "lag". NWNCQ doesn't seem to impact the engine as much, in my (once again, modest) experience.

Now, I am not saying NWNCQ is perfect. There are parts of it I would quite revise (the Underdark retextures, for example), but like anything, we can only advance step by step. Once we have good things in our hands, it's seems to be a natural predisposition in human beings to grow unsatisfied with it over time, and criticize it.

If I (or anyone here) could convince Zwerkules to resume his overrides (I am big fan of your non-NWN2 works, the Arabian tileset, the Medieval city tileset, the Cave override, not to mention the outstanding Roman city tileset, you don't know how hard it is for me to create a matching interior), now we would be talking, and I may sympathize with questioning the quality of past works of our community.

Till we achieve 100% Six/Zwerkules/Maxam/Chandigar/LRosenkrantz/PJQ quality in all of the standard tilesets, I will continue to use NWNCQ, and like with any other custom content I use from this marvellous community, feel very grateful for what I receive ^.^ 
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Nissa_Red, 26 février 2013 - 10:31 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_jackkel dragon]

               I'm not sure what others think of the CQ tilesets, but I've kept them in my override since I found them because of the way the rural and interior tilesets look. To me, the rural tilesets seem a lot less like the squares of connected tiles they are with the amount of little details added to things like trees and cliffs, all without the pathfinding nightmare that one might expect from so many new objects (I've gotten stuck on geometry in games enough times to accept walking through trees without thinking too hard.) The interior tiles are appealing to me because they all come with a roof, rather than needing to use placeables or a custom tileset with a roof.

All that said, I've kept in in my override only because A) it lets me play modules using the original tilesets with the new look and I know that not everyone likes it, and while I'll build with the more complicated art of the CQ tiles players who don't share my tastes can just see the original tilesets instead. Hidden reason C) is that I don't like having more than a few HAK files on any of my projects, and using CQ as an override gives me an updated appearance for the old tiles without adding any HAKs.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               At the time that they were released I was nearly hung drawn and quartered for daring to point out that it does in fact have flaws when used as an override. To give chico his due, he did fix a couple of them. However others still remain. These are problems for existing modules (ie pre-CQ), 2 of which are the sheer number of additional trees in the rural tileset obscures things badly and in those areas where the grass is still present the floor level was raised up so that things that had been placed on the ground just disappeared.

But enough of my gripes.

TR
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Tarot Redhand, 26 février 2013 - 10:48 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Nissa_Red]

               You are right, I had some of those times too where we spent looking for stuff which seemed to have been swallowed from "under" the ground. I theorized it as losing stuff in the grass, when my players tried to blame the DM (me) for stealing their hard earned loot back ^.^

What bothers me more though is that a small pebble could stop a charging mountain of muscles like an Ogre right in his tracks, on an otherwise completely FLAT ground (ttf01 or ttd01, I am looking at you). Removing all the tiny pebble occlusions and pointless litter spread across the WOKs has perhaps been the first thing I learned to customize in a tile.

Ground geometry is definitely not a trivial matter, but I will stop derailing the thread now, since it was textures we were talking about here, I think.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               

Tarot Redhand wrote...

At the time that they were released I was nearly hung drawn and quartered for daring to point out that it does in fact have flaws when used as an override.

I also was given grief for similar criticisms later on. Its unfortunate that admirers of a work can sometimes be over zealous. Its better to retain a critical eye in my view. Chico however has long been generous with his work and as far as I am aware encourages others to improve upon his work. In that light, I don't want to come down too hard on it.

But I can't say clearly enough that as an override package NWNCQ is awful. It breaks existing areas. As a HAK package it has some merit.


That said... with Zwerkules Bioforest and T0r0's Rural override available I see no reason to use NWNCQ. Their work is vastly superior, and mesh better with TNO and other tilesets. While NWNCQ holds together, it does not mesh well as others have pointed out with TNO. And with better options available for Rural and Forest, I just don't see a reason to use it. Perhaps for the tropical override?

Also many of the existing tilesets have been given some very nice overrides. Six for example did two texture replacements that aren't well known - one for the City and another for the Desert. With just a little looking around, you can find a near complete package of superior overrides. And they all mesh well with TNO.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               Talking of textures, would someone care to recommend something for a total novice to re-texturing to try their hand at and what you consider the best tutorial on the subject please.

Apologies to OldTimeRadio for this BTW.

TR