I'd probably be happy if the fog started closer to the player.
I really don't think you would. It means everywhere you look your screen will be mostly just blue, unless you are right on top of things. All these suggestions to make the game look more underwatery sound great in theory, and trust me, we've thought about them a lot and tested different looks a lot. But at the end of the day, they make for a very monotonous playing experience, and really detract from the lush world that we are trying to build.
In earlier builds when the fog sliders were available for tweaking I was able to make it look pretty good. The fog starting at 0 and ending at around 250 as far as I remember. It would look much better if the fog intensity was a curve instead of a linear function (I may be wrong about it) to make it start at 0 but make it much less intense closer to the player.
You're right about being an armchair game developer though. It's very easy to come up with these ideas and surprisingly often they turn out to be completely impractical.
I would like to see a tweak... Seeing the "RED SCREEN OF DEATH" is reminding me too much of CoD, FPS, etc... Maybe just a directional way of showing that where you were hit would be more interesting-- and maybe... blood trails... + sharks.... hm...... food for thought (puns)
The question you need to ask.
Which side looks like you're underwater.
use spoiler tags for images please -Kouji San
I would say the real question to be asked is, which side looks more interesting, more fun, more like a world you want to be immersed in for hours at a time? Which side of the image allows for a much greater variety in visual looks for creatures and environments? Realism for the sake of realism is not something we feel the need to adhere to for Subnautica, or really any game we make at UWE for that matter.
There are plenty of ways to make it still look and, more importantly, FEEL like you are underwater when actually playing the game, and I think we can still pull that off without completely removing some very important colors from our game palette.
Personally I think the second looks better overall, but I get your point. An option for a color grading filter that is dependant on depth would be awesome though, but it also brings more problems. In reality you would lose almost all color past 50 meters. If Subnautica goes beyond that, will everything just be blue and black darkness past a few hundred meters? Difficult thing.
I think to make this work out, you would not have to base color reduction on depth but on distance from a lightsource. The point should be, that when turning on your flashlight, close objects should look normal while distant objects get their red amount reduced.
I also thought the right picture looks better but there is also a reason why many underwater games failed: if all you see is this underwater look, it gets dull and I also think you start to feel uncomfortable. Maybe some human instinct from when we lived in the ocean.
Not to sound like a know it all, but we all know color is the perception of reflected photons within a certain wavelength, frequency, and energy level. If you put it in a lore perspective, perhaps the plants that are giving off the red simply generate their own source of it, perhaps in a chemical reaction due to something that resides within the water. Objectively speaking, even that would mean it would only look red within a certain distance. Then again, there is no telling what the chemical makeup of the ocean we've landed in, and what type of radiation is being given off by the nearest star, and the downed ship.
As stated earlier though, it certainly makes the water look more habitable and fun. That's good enough for me.
Comments
In earlier builds when the fog sliders were available for tweaking I was able to make it look pretty good. The fog starting at 0 and ending at around 250 as far as I remember. It would look much better if the fog intensity was a curve instead of a linear function (I may be wrong about it) to make it start at 0 but make it much less intense closer to the player.
You're right about being an armchair game developer though. It's very easy to come up with these ideas and surprisingly often they turn out to be completely impractical.
I also thought the right picture looks better but there is also a reason why many underwater games failed: if all you see is this underwater look, it gets dull and I also think you start to feel uncomfortable. Maybe some human instinct from when we lived in the ocean.
As stated earlier though, it certainly makes the water look more habitable and fun. That's good enough for me.