Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: TheSHEEEPBloom, the bane of graphics quality since early 2000s.
I have disabled it in every single game since (where possible) and am just amazed that there are still devs out there thinking there's any value to it.

Bloom actually adds to realism if it's subtle enough and done correctly.

No, it doesn't. It just doesn't.
Nothing in reality looks like bloom does. Brightness doesn't "bleed over" to adjacent imagery like that, making you unable to see contours of what is next to the light source. You'd have to look directly into the sun to get that - in games it is always applied to every light source, no matter how small. It's just applied globally.
Just like nothing in reality looks like motion blur (we'd all throw up constantly if it did).
By now so many games using wrong techniques have conditioned quite a lot of people to believe it looks real, when it simply doesn't. It is really sad.

You are right about SSAO, and HDR if used sparsely as well (especially if not combined with bloom). Or god rays. All have their place, if used correctly.
But bloom is just the "look, mum, I got shaders in my game!"...

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Bloom, the bane of graphics quality since early 2000s.
I have disabled it in every single game since (where possible) and am just amazed that there are still devs out there thinking there's any value to it.

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Thanks for that. Could be something for me and my GF when we're looking to play something relaxing.

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Quoting: TheRiddickI heard their also commissioned to produce System Shock 3??? did I read that correctly somewhere?
I love system shock so I hope they get this remake done and do it justice, and are able to make system shock 3.

No, SS 3 is being developed by Otherside Entertainment.

There's no real connection here - other than the franchise, obviously.

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Quoting: HendrinMckayNot good news at all. Not in the game development industry but am a programmer. Anytime a project I've worked on is put on hold that usual spells the end of it. It's just too hard to have a team go back a month or two(or more) later and try to pick up where things left off.

I hope I'm wrong, I really do.

Nah, you're not wrong. I have the same experience. The money is gone, obviously, after all this time.
The only chance for them is to find some external money source and start over from scratch.

And when has that ever happened successfully?
At best, we're looking at a Duke Nukem Forever situation here.

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Awesome, backed!
15$ for some hope is a good deal ;)

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Quoting: omer666

Quoting: TheSHEEEP"Professional" journos liked the game somewhat because they never really play games for long and are mostly just amazed by pretty or pretentious things.

Yeah, good old conspiracy theories about magazines getting paid for producing free advertising.

How did you even get the conspiracy theory out of that statement?
Maybe put the tinfoil hat back into the shelf, it seems to obstruct your view.

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Quoting: GuestFrom this I learned that there's going to be an Age of Empires 4 and my heart aches because Microsoft owns it :(

Yeah, that is the worst takeaway of this whole situation.
Who knows what they're going to do to the series...

But AoE being Windows-exclusive is not really news. It has been since the inception of the series.

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Quoting: omer666So the rampant negativity won in the end. Well, whatever...

There's no rampant negativity here.
Just a game that's all-around pretty underwhelming, developed with a mystifying lack of vision or understanding of what people actually liked about the previous games and design decisions that are borderline inane (mobile-junk-like unit unlockables in my RTS game, no thanks).

Even developers themselves are aware of that [External Link].

"Professional" journos liked the game somewhat because they never really play games for long and are mostly just amazed by pretty or pretentious things.

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Holiday Island was one of my favourite games growing up.
The sounds, the art, everything was just super fascinating to me.

I don't know how many islands I ended up driving into financial ruin :D

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