I guess at the end of the day, what matters (to us) is that we (the guys making the game) like the art style. It's what we chose. We're happy with it. If people have a big problem with it they're certainly free to purchase a different game.

Until things are more finalized (finished shadowing system, per environment lighting, distance fog tweaks, etc) it's probably something not worth discussing (you've seen the name calling thoughtout the debate).  But yeah, when I saw those shots and people were bringing up 'detachment' between the objects and terrain, the lack of shadows for many of the objects caught my eye as well. We'll have to figure out why those tiles weren't placing there shadow decals.

Sorry esrever, I wasn't meaning to address you quite so specifically.  What I am trying to address is the general question of the graphical style.  We don't like the tendancy of these types of games to be littered with "stuff". We prefer having a cleaner look both from a game play point of view as well as aesthetically.

I like tons of shit on my maps.

I'm not whining because I'm mean, I just want this game to be perfect. I have pre-ordered long ago and I'm really excited about it. I also want to voice my opinion now during the betas because it seems completely pointless to do so after release... If the current screenshots are not representative of the final game, then fine.

I have a question: Will it be possible to mod the standard "empty" tiles so that we can get a different look on generated maps?

dsk2293: There is literally a "More Shit on Map"(tm) option where empty tiles get 2x, 5x, or 10x more groudcover. I accidentally turned it up and it very quickly did away with the barren stretches   Enjoy!

esrever: Yeah, the conversation gets difficult when people start asking for more 'stuff'...part of the reason we picked the style we did was the contrast between the wide swatches of color with spots of detail where necessary.

http://marinacorreia.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/mucha3.jpg

Which, in my mind, is perfect for a game where you want to immediatly know where the important parts of the map are. You see a huge, spwawlying town and it feels important, opposed to it just being another busy spot on an already busy composition.

I do think we can push the fantastic further, however. We'll keep chipping away and will continue to push out screens that show where we're headded. Hopefully we can sway some of the non-beleivers by next month.

My earlier comments weren't meant as criticism of the style either. I not only like it in other contexts, I think it's great you guys are bold enough to use it and I really hope you're inspiring other developers to try different things too.

Anyway, having thought on it some more... I think my problem is a side effect of the zoom. A lot of the appeal, at least to me, is the combination of sharp contrasts, soft curves and how the colours flow into each other. Zoomed out a fair bit, it sort of does happen in Elemental now. Not quite enough, I think, but it does sort of happen. Zoomed in, though, it doesn't really happen at all.

 - But I'll cease my raving. I only made my earlier comments because I thought you wanted feedback. As long as the graphics are functional & don't get in the way of windowed/weird res playing, I'll be content with anything.

Well, let's be honest. This was one your very early concept screens:

Know what? It was clean too, but far better looking than the actual game now, after almost 2 years. It was smoother, cool-looking, very inspired and unusual. Look at the landscape, look at the caster. All very clean, detailed, simple but cool, very appealing.

I know, people, I know...  you don't care at all about graphics, you are not graphic whores. In fact, maybe you even love bad graphics, for what it can matter. To me? Frankly it sounds just like an apologethic way  to look away from a flaw.

What can I say? I just can't deny to myself how disappointed I am with the aesthetic of the game so far, and to be honest I'm concerned it may be even worse when tactical battles will come, considering how human models and animations are simply the worst part of the game appareance so far.

I've already preordered this game months ago, I still have hopes about this game, so I'm not going with some childish whine like "I'm not buying this shit" or stuff like that... But let me be explicit: so far I'm hoping for some talented modder for a visual revamp. Maybe amazing people like these guys.

Yeah, right. I'm 32 years old, I play games (every damn videogame genre, to be more specific) since i was five, and now looks like you want to teach me what game is right for me.

Oh, come on, you can just say it is not Elemental strong point. It will sound far more honest.

Yeah, but there is a problem here, and the problem is: I actually find Master of Magic far more pleasant to the sight than Elemental. At least so far. And believe me, I'm not in a nostalgic mood, I cn say it cause I just played it for a few hours, just before posting.

Plus, so far it still even more fun and compelling to play, but of course I'm suspending my judgment here, cause Elemental Beta 1 is substantially an early alpha.

P.S. I know, my english sucks. Sorry about that.

Jesus Christ, it's pretty annoying trying to debate with raging fanboys.

I think the current screenshots look better that the one posted by TucoBenedicto. Somehow I don't like the use of colors on it.

Well, I don't. Really. In fact, to me is even hard to understand how THIS...

...can be perceived as better than this:

I regard this second one as very clean, iconic, charismatic, even cool. The first one? Just bland and mediocre, to me.

I don't like to blame other people's job, but I really can't count myself as a fan of this (those?) Stardock modeler.

Seems like most people are missing his point, you included. It's not really an art style problem, as the style hasn't changed much from the old screenshot to the new one. What has changed is that in the new ones, there are huge "empty" spaces.

I agree with Tuco totally on that. The older shot looks better then the newer one, simply because it looks more like a, for lack of a better word, natural environment. There's more odd individual trees poking up, little things here and there.

The newer ones have clumps of 'stuff', and clumps of empty space. It just doesn't look right, but it's something that can be fixed without changing the art style at all.