So... the graphics improvements to the action within gameplay window:
It had been a very long time since I had played prior to BG:EE's release. I was playing BGT then. But it does seem to me that the graphics are noticeably improved. It looks pretty gorgeous, actually. And the zoom feature is very neat--I like it a lot. As to the overall quality of the graphics I'm just not sure if I'm wearing rose colored glasses, though. What say you all?
in your experience, are they noticeably better than BG1 via Tutu or BGT?Native support for high resolutions.
BG:EE natively supports high resolutions in 4:3, 16:9 and 16:10 format up to 2880x1800. All original art assets, including sprites and background art, will be upscaled in real time to adapt to the chosen screen resolution without incurring visual artifacts (e.g. shrinking, stretching, etc.). Cutmull-Rom Bicubic filtering will be used to ensure that all supported resolutions display sharp graphics.
Dynamic zoom in/out feature.
It will be possible to zoom in and out of the battlefield dynamically during gameplay by scrolling the mouse wheel up and down, within generous limits. Since the art in the game is rendered from the source, it is possible to get a 1:1 pixel ratio when zooming out. Although new art and old art are treated in the same way on the engine level, the new stuff might have a better color range and be a little clearer.
Flipbook animation transparency and Alpha blending.
As per this thread, BG:EE will feature flipbook animation transparency and alpha blending for BAM files. However, this is only going to happen post-ship as it requires the creation of a new subsystem and tools (and probably a new BAM format) to enable the devs to work with the images and keep them 32 bit through the asset pipeline. Currently, spells are upconverted to 32 bit at load time to feature one-layer alpha blending (as a result of the mod 1PP having been integrated).
Full 24-bit tiled rendering for new area art.
While the original game rendered 64x64 pixel tiles with a maximum of 256 colors (8 bit), new area art has no limitation in terms of colors per tile. Hence, each tile will display the full 24-bit spectrum of 16,8 million colors. However, due to the vast array of hardware on the PC and the risk of breaking older cards which may not support the feature, this won't be brought to the PC for launch; instead, it will likely come post-ship as the developers want to be sure people can continue to enjoy BG:EE on the PC without having to upgrade to the latest hardware.
It had been a very long time since I had played prior to BG:EE's release. I was playing BGT then. But it does seem to me that the graphics are noticeably improved. It looks pretty gorgeous, actually. And the zoom feature is very neat--I like it a lot. As to the overall quality of the graphics I'm just not sure if I'm wearing rose colored glasses, though. What say you all?