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Posted by Thomas
McGuire on February 5, 2001
Company: Bethsoft
Product: Sea
Dogs
Graphics
Sea Dogs
only supports a 16-Bit colour depth, although more importantly it uses high
resolution textures. As a result the in-game visuals look lovely most of the
time, although you will notice some image banding depending on your graphics
card. You can check out our Sea
Dogs Tweak guide here also.
Each
ship is quite well detailed, although possibly the only thing visually lacking
would be crewmen on decks of the ships. Sails move depending on the wind
direction & there’s a good sense of motion on the ship, helped by the ways
crashing at the bow of the ship.
Battle
damage is only semi-visible on ships. Sails get ripped through by cannon fire,
leaving gaping holes in them. Sometimes you will see smoke coming from the ships
themselves, although damage to the hulls is otherwise not visible. Ships sink
rather nicely eventually though, & if you get a critical hit they explode in
a spectacular manner, masts breaking apart as they sink. If the sea itself is
clear enough you can sometimes see the ships resting on the ocean beneath.
Forts
explode in a spectacular manner too as you destroy each section with a
cannon/cannons
in them. On these you seem to be able to see the forts walls getting
scarred/blackened by cannon fire. Although the fort itself visually doesn't lose
any of it's structure.
The
islands you see are well detailed for the most part as well, whether it be when
you are sailing towards the town itself or actually in the town itself. The
towns themselves generally look quite spectacular with lovely detailed textures
everywhere.
While
at sea, or in towns for that matter you’ll face all kinds of weather, from
calm seas to storms, or as you see on the islands, night time, normal sunny days
or foggy days. Your ship is always bobbing in the water & the effect is
quite natural to experience. The weather also has a great effect on the game, be
it fog which makes it hard to see into the distance, or rough waves making
aiming your cannons harder due to the more pronounced bobbing in the water.
That
said graphics aren’t entirely perfect, as mentioned earlier the colour depth
is limited to 16bit only, some graphics cards could no doubt benefit from the
less apparent banding that a 32bit colour depth can offer. Some of the
animations also feel rather stiff & you can’t interrupt animations either
it seems, e.g. you can’t suddenly stop running, rather you finish the running
frames then halt. At sea the game exhibited occasionally a weird problem
rendering ships, the 2 shots below illustrate what I mean. This seems to be some
sort of weird clipping problem, where the ship is only fully rendered when not
obscured by the landscape.
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After
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