As a former professional graphics designer myself, I am a fan of the comic graphics of the race potraits in ISG but I dont like the 3D rendered ship much.They are looking a little bit disconnected when compared to the power- and characterful race portraits. For example sword of stars (which has a very talented lead graphics lead designer with Arioch who has his own web comic "outsider") used a pleasent and what is most important very compact and streamlined graphics style. IMO ISG should change the whole ships and planetary graphics to the same "hand drawn" comic style as their race portraits.
Very difficult to contest your point here, they are indeed incongruous. I'm not sure how I would feel about that without actually seeing it, plus I would hate for ISG to look too much like Stars In Shadow. Still... if it could be done in a way to retain some originality and not get too "cutesy"... it would address the first point you made
Just wanted to register that I was never a fan of "cutesy" or blatantly "comicy" art styles in 4x space games, it was one of the reasons I didn't get very excited about "Stars in Shadow". So while it might be fine for some people, I definitely wouldn't be one of them. Not sure how many others feel the same way, but to me cutesy graphics are more of an unwanted and cheap-looking distraction rather than something that actually adds quality to the game. Subjective I know, but its just my opinion.
Hi guys. Yes, they are bit incongruous now and they were even more, believe me This is a normal reflection of our initial doubt in the definition of art strategy for the game, whether the game should take the cartoonist-stylized-cheaper style or a more realistic, scifi-ish one. We've made several experiences with the collaboration of our artists and in the end we decided to approach the characters with the ships graphics style (even the ships will be more detailed and some of them discarded). We're working now in that effort. In the end, everything will tend to be a bit more realistic. Hope this clarifies what to expect in ISG for the next releases.
The issue is that with more realistic graphics, it would likely involve either a ton of developer time. Remember that this is still a small indie game where resources are limited. The question is if it is worth it.
Unfortunately @CrazyElf there are many gamers, influential ones at that, that can't get past graphics. So if it doesn't look pretty enough, they will never give it a chance. To a degree, graphics should be cool, not tacky and definitely not ugly or poorly thought out (contrast etc.) At the same time, they can never make up for a poor game, The devs will just have to balance this out as best they can, but some will never be satisfied no matter what they do unless they sink a couple of million just into graphics and production value, I don't think that is necessary and I doubt that anyone so extreme about graphics is really the correct target audience anyway.
I mean, the barriers to good graphics have gotten a lot smaller - especially since Unity became available, but there are still pretty big barriers. If the game works out, it may be possible in future games to make better graphics.
