General Enhancements to Ambiance
Tella
Join Date: 2016-11-25 Member: 224219Members
Join Date: 2016-11-25 Member: 224219Members
Hello there! Recently I've finished a 2 week course of, you wouldn't guess - diving! So, launching Subnautica again for general comparison, I obviously noticed some glaring differences to the real life experience of diving, and I thought I'd share what I think is lacking by way underwater ambiance. Please keep in mind that I'm no developer and have little to no knowledge in game creation. I am going to speak very generally. Know that my intentions are humble.
First off let me disclose the fact that, of course, this is a virtual platform, a game, and as such it will not adhere purely and completely to real life standards. The suggestions I am going to list are, in my opinion, realistic in a way that would enhance the experience, not make life harder on us.
- Sounds: It is a well known fact that underwater sound is not as prominent as it is above surface. While not all is utterly quiet, the main sounds will come from pressure in the ears, the general motion of creatures underwater (including the diver), and the calls of colossal creatures. Luckily, we've got the third one. Big creatures like the Reefback do issue such calls. Of the second one we've got unoptimized sounds. I personally think the experience could be improved by reducing the clarity of such sounds as swimming fish or natural phenomena like the volcano's bursts. Basically add a little mud and uncertainty to every sound we can hear underwater. To boot we'd also benefit from an audible increase to pressure the deeper down we go.
I would also suggest taking off the rediculous growl made by the tiger sharks. While it is funny, I find it extremely immersion-breaking.
- Visuals: I suggest 2 basic changes to visuals. One is a simple shade of blur to everything we can see. Real life is in HD, but unfortunately the Subnautica engine is not real life. We do get the occasional ugly texture, especially the closer to it we swim. A simple fix for that, I think, besides optimizing textures, is to implements a gentle blur effect to the player's eyes. That would make everything we see a bit more unclear, in a good way, reducing the dominance of unsharp edges and low textures, and of course, also realistic.
The second visual change is dynamic desaturation. In reality, the perception of color gradually worsens the lower underwater one is diving. Eventually everything becomes predominantely blue. I think it would be really cool and more visually interesting if this effect would be implemented.
- The human perspective: The human character in the game feels more like a mobile camera than a physical mass. The lack of movements of his shadow on the ground is hard to miss. In diving, you'd generally pose your legs opposite to your moving direction and start propelling. In subnautica, you wanna move up? Same motion. Down? Same motion. Left and right? Same motion. A fix would be to improve the animations in a way that puts the player headfirst to their destination. For example, when you had down, the head faces straight down and the legs straight up. Oh, and the hands, why are we using hands to move underwater???
Stopping still underwater: should include little bobs to signify a slight struggle to maintain altitude. As it is now the player is a stone block when not moving.
Breathing: I like how noticeable the bubbles are when we exhale, but what exactly do we exhale? The player can never be heard inhaling from his tank. Is that maybe due to the fact that he carries no visible tank? Please fix!!
Those are my ideas for now. What do you think? Are they difficult to implement? Are they too realistic? Would you like to see them in the game?
Edit:
Apparently, the Trello thread adresses my point about blur. The current "to do" list includes "Implement DOF Blur" so I guess we're good on that one
Also, another card tasks the implementation of sun shaft shadows, to which one of the devs answered, "need Unity 5.3" (I take it that they'll eventually hit 5.3?). I understand that the current engine cannot handle some effects, but it's good to know that it advances slowly toward them.
First off let me disclose the fact that, of course, this is a virtual platform, a game, and as such it will not adhere purely and completely to real life standards. The suggestions I am going to list are, in my opinion, realistic in a way that would enhance the experience, not make life harder on us.
- Sounds: It is a well known fact that underwater sound is not as prominent as it is above surface. While not all is utterly quiet, the main sounds will come from pressure in the ears, the general motion of creatures underwater (including the diver), and the calls of colossal creatures. Luckily, we've got the third one. Big creatures like the Reefback do issue such calls. Of the second one we've got unoptimized sounds. I personally think the experience could be improved by reducing the clarity of such sounds as swimming fish or natural phenomena like the volcano's bursts. Basically add a little mud and uncertainty to every sound we can hear underwater. To boot we'd also benefit from an audible increase to pressure the deeper down we go.
I would also suggest taking off the rediculous growl made by the tiger sharks. While it is funny, I find it extremely immersion-breaking.
- Visuals: I suggest 2 basic changes to visuals. One is a simple shade of blur to everything we can see. Real life is in HD, but unfortunately the Subnautica engine is not real life. We do get the occasional ugly texture, especially the closer to it we swim. A simple fix for that, I think, besides optimizing textures, is to implements a gentle blur effect to the player's eyes. That would make everything we see a bit more unclear, in a good way, reducing the dominance of unsharp edges and low textures, and of course, also realistic.
The second visual change is dynamic desaturation. In reality, the perception of color gradually worsens the lower underwater one is diving. Eventually everything becomes predominantely blue. I think it would be really cool and more visually interesting if this effect would be implemented.
- The human perspective: The human character in the game feels more like a mobile camera than a physical mass. The lack of movements of his shadow on the ground is hard to miss. In diving, you'd generally pose your legs opposite to your moving direction and start propelling. In subnautica, you wanna move up? Same motion. Down? Same motion. Left and right? Same motion. A fix would be to improve the animations in a way that puts the player headfirst to their destination. For example, when you had down, the head faces straight down and the legs straight up. Oh, and the hands, why are we using hands to move underwater???
Stopping still underwater: should include little bobs to signify a slight struggle to maintain altitude. As it is now the player is a stone block when not moving.
Breathing: I like how noticeable the bubbles are when we exhale, but what exactly do we exhale? The player can never be heard inhaling from his tank. Is that maybe due to the fact that he carries no visible tank? Please fix!!
Those are my ideas for now. What do you think? Are they difficult to implement? Are they too realistic? Would you like to see them in the game?
Edit:
Apparently, the Trello thread adresses my point about blur. The current "to do" list includes "Implement DOF Blur" so I guess we're good on that one
Also, another card tasks the implementation of sun shaft shadows, to which one of the devs answered, "need Unity 5.3" (I take it that they'll eventually hit 5.3?). I understand that the current engine cannot handle some effects, but it's good to know that it advances slowly toward them.
Comments
The hands are there for player feedback. It's already been discussed once before it's unrealistic, but it keeps the view active, is a cue to the faster movement gained from not holding anything, and helps with orientation occasionally.
I do like the idea for more complex character movement. I believe UWE is currently working on that a bit, although anything about swimming angle specifically has yet to show up on Trello.
BOOOOOM fps down ! It's Unity not Unreal Engine.
Subnautica have already a LOT of trouble with clipping (map generation over player navigation), add a shader on everything can totally doom a middleware configuration.
Well that actually depends on what tactic is being used to introduce the blur. It does not necessarily have to be shader, rather via artificial means. Just like how we can play with saturation on our computer screen in a way that does not pay a toll on performance. Blur is the end of which means could be a lot of things.
Edit:
Apparently, the Trello thread adresses my point about blur. The current "to do" list includes "Implement DOF Blur" so I guess we're good on that one