devtrackers.gg
Meant to share earlier but heard from a few places people find the place a bit too bright/ cartoony
We tend to stay away from textures as they’re used so sparingly around the game and our control over them is incredibly limited :/ there are other ways we could break up the blank space but I believe the arena was kept quite clean purposely due to simplicity. If it was too detailed it would detract from the fight itself.
Textures are dangerous territory, but I'd like you to briefly look at a bunch of these areas:
Classic went a lot heavier with these "crap" textures but there's something very charming about them. There are a lot more places that use them (I know entrana does for sure)
The slightly muted slate texture in the first few images are what I imagined being used for the arena
The arena, right now, is flat unlike anything else in the game besides a few spots in new content (Theatre of Blood I think has a few of these unbroken flat faces)
To me a tiny bit of "crappy texture" feels more oldschool than uninterupted bright flat ground
I know your aim was to make this area very simple and not too busy, but I think the lack of the main background of it has had the opposite effect. Without "grounding" the background, the secondary patterns on top of it end up creating more sporadic shapes (with texture, 1 and 4 are ignored as new shapes)
Plus, the arena itself feels oddly plastic and a bit "neon"- hurts to look at for long periods of time. Something slate would make this feel more akin to Morytania (even though the general theme of this specific bossroom is meant to be oriental)
by the way, I love the hosidius rework and I'm SUPER excited for Shayzien!!
Funnily enough, there are no textures in the mimic room. I think the issue was the brightness of the assets as Ghost had a tendency to remove all lighting from his work to make them pop more. In that case that popped a bit too much :/ It works well for characters though, just not so much for environments.
I do see what you mean with the slate texture but we've as of late been moving away from textures as a whole. We have an art director now so we can start creating an actual 'art style' for future content rather than just throwing out whatever we please :P We'll lean into what has been successful in the past but I don't see us ever returning to textures.
And thanks! I'm glad you're liking the direction I've gone in with them. Hopefully more of that to come :D
Is there a chance that this new art director is out of touch with how the players want osrs art to look? I think its a genuine worry/concern to have considering past experiences, some reassurance that the director is on the same page with the style of the game and the style the players want would be nice. I think your stuff is literally perfectly spot on to the osrs art style btw.
Their job certainly isn't to alienate the community by changing the game into something it isn't. That wouldn't be overly productive :P Ry, Gee and I are helping him every step of the way and he'll be gathering feedback from both the wider team and the player base in time but it's very early stages atm.
I'm glad you feel my work is on point, it's what I've always strived for at the end of the day :D The thing is, a lot of players have wildly differing opinions on what 'OSRS style' is and it generally depends quite heavily on the time period they played back in the day that was most formative. I personally started in 2004 and played up until 2010 and fortunately the graphics being made during 2007 was always my favorite. Areas that were updated like Falador, Varrock and Canifis are good examples. Hopefully we keep some parity with these locations as that's what I've been doing since I joined. Although I suppose I may have messed it up a few times coughdragonstonearmourcough :P
