Woohoo!!

[blastpop]

Not to be a naysayer, but I hope the the icons and the sharpness has/can be increased as compared to other SSG releases. They have been blurry to my eyes, so much so that I have stopped buying this series. I know others have complained... Just not fun when the icons are not sharp.

[Rosseau]

Yes, imagine how beautiful the game would be in 1680 x 1050.

But it seems they want to concentrate on code, not graphics, in the limited time they have.

Would be nice though.

[e_barkmann]

certainly looks best at 1280x1024 native but you can play around with monitor scaling in the graphics card software to make it sharper on a widescreen LCD.

cheers

[Fred98]

ORIGINAL: rosseau

Yes, imagine how beautiful the game would be in 1680 x 1050.

I would imagine that the hexes would be smaller and you could see more hexes on you're screen.

I don't know how it would be more beautiful.

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[TheWombat_matrixforum]

I suspect the issue is that, with LCD monitors, anything that's not the native resolution often introduces distortion or lack of sharpness for things like unit counters and informational text. It depends a lot on what your monitor's native resolution is vs. the game's resolution, the quality of your monitor, etc. I play the SSG stuff on an old 4:3 20.1" Viewsonic with a native resolution of 1600x1200, and the games are perfectly fine, but I agree that when you use the zoom function in particular it's a bit chunky. A very small nit pick however, all things considered.

ORIGINAL: Joe 98

ORIGINAL: rosseau

Yes, imagine how beautiful the game would be in 1680 x 1050.

I would imagine that the hexes would be smaller and you could see more hexes on you're screen.

I don't know how it would be more beautiful.

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[Owen]

The blocky pixelated look of this game engine has absolutely nothing to do with monitor resolution or zoom level. Look, for example, at the Avatar image for Joe98. Notice the zigzag staircase effect of the diagonal lines and the lack of smooth transitions during color blends. It's obvious that SSG is still using an old graphics engine that was ported over to Windows ages ago.

Now look at this screenshot from War in the East. tm.asp?m=2410710#

See how crisp the graphics are on the icons. See how the diagonal lines show no stair-step effect. This is what a native Windows graphics engine looks like.

I'd love to play Across the Dnepr. But I can't endure graphics that look like they are from a DOS game circa 1999.

[e_barkmann]

I think it is an engine from around the early 2000's but it was never a DOS port; none of the games in the series starting from 1995 were designed for or ever ran in dos. The screenshots posted do clearly show how crisp the game can be played at the right resolution.

The Grigsby game certainly looks nice and I am sure I will get around to playing it when it finally does come out, so I can make my own mind up.

cheers

[Obsolete]

I always thought the graphics here were better than in most wargames I'm accustomed to.

[Pete AU]

To be honest I find the DB series counters better looking than than Grigsbys vanilla look - still, at least with the DB series you can edit them if you want (and thats something I love about the series) - getting them to look like Grigsbys wouldn't be hard - but isn't it nice to see division symbols etc rather than counters reminiscent of 1970's zip loc games? Grigsby's map looks great - I would have liked to see more effort on the counters.

I think if the unit editing template was bigger in the DB series then the counters would look crisper, but I'm not that fussed, and would it really sell more games. The games are always excellent and thats what matters - after a few glasses of red who cares.

[Nebogipfel]

[align=left]The nice counters (and of course the look of the maps and a well done AI) were the main reason, that i decided to buy ssg games, 2 years ago. It would break my heard, if the division symbols were taken away.
[/align][align=center] [/align]

[TheWombat_matrixforum]

Actually, for many folks I think it does indeed have a lot to do with the monitor they're using, and its native resolution. No, that doesn't affect the basic fact that the graphics are not Windows native (in that they don't scale with resolution), and yes, the graphic style is quite a bit different than a lot of other 2D wargames out there. But if you find the graphics blocky or imprecise, that effect will be accentuated by LCD monitors with resolutions that aren't the same (or scalable to) the game's resolution.

Personally, I'm more of a fan of crisper but plainer military symbology, but I've grown accustomed to the SSG style and it certainly doesn't affect my enjoyment of the game. It's a different aesthetic, not just a matter of old tech, I think. YMMMV.

ORIGINAL: Owen

The blocky pixelated look of this game engine has absolutely nothing to do with monitor resolution or zoom level. Look, for example, at the Avatar image for Joe98. Notice the zigzag staircase effect of the diagonal lines and the lack of smooth transitions during color blends. It's obvious that SSG is still using an old graphics engine that was ported over to Windows ages ago.

Now look at this screenshot from War in the East. tm.asp?m=2410710#

See how crisp the graphics are on the icons. See how the diagonal lines show no stair-step effect. This is what a native Windows graphics engine looks like.

I'd love to play Across the Dnepr. But I can't endure graphics that look like they are from a DOS game circa 1999.

[Lützow]

Considering your graphic driver can deal with image scaling, the native screen resolution doesn't matter, as SSG games always work in full screen mode. On my Subnotebook (11,6" screen, 1366x768 resolution) Kharkov looks crisp but counters are almost to small for recognizing tactical unit signs. However, on my main rig (24" screen, 1920x1200 resolution) the map still is sharp but counters are somewhat pixelated.

[benpark]

Berlin would be great to see.

I worked on a Berlin scenario for the BiN engine, but had to drop it as the AI was very tough to figure out:

tm.asp?m=779649

[mariovalleemtl]

Can't wait to play anyways.
 

[freeboy]

wow, not a stand alone? Just an fyi that I definately would have bouth this as a stand alone, bought all other ssg titles for the last what 25 years? save Karkov, BUT as a non stand alone I think no.. sorry 

[mariovalleemtl]

I am donwloading it now. You made my day  [:)]

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: freeboy
wow, not a stand alone? Just an fyi that I definately would have bouth this as a stand alone, bought all other ssg titles for the last what 25 years? save Karkov, BUT as a non stand alone I think no.. sorry 

Between this and the Kharkov update, by purchasing Kharkov you now not only get access to Across the Dnepr, which is a mega-scenario with a huge amount of content and one of the best operational challenges in wargaming, but you also get three additional free scenarios from Kharkov which are excellent in their own right.

[ComradeP]

Between this and the Kharkov update, by purchasing Kharkov you now not only get access to Across the Dnepr, which is a mega-scenario with a huge amount of content and one of the best operational challenges in wargaming, but you also get three additional free scenarios from Kharkov which are excellent in their own right.

What you're saying here isn't correct, you don't get "access" to ATD2 as you'd still have to purchase it after purchasing Kharkov, that's the entire problem freeboy has with it not being a standalone game.

I think Matrix would make a lot of people happy if they'd offer a Kharkov+ATD2 bundle for a reasonable price, say, 45 euro's.

[wodin]

I have a 19inch widescreen so I will not buy any SSG games again. I installed BiI the other day and it looked awful. The highest res on a 19inch is 1400x900 its a 2ms widescreen aswell so it isnt poor quality.

[Erik Rutins]

You may want to check your display driver settings. Most people aren't familiar with how to configure their drivers any longer, but usually the poor quality scaling on flat panels is because of out of date drivers in default configurations. Some LCDs scale well, others scale poorly, which is why you can also set scaling to be done by the video card or set the driver not to "stretch" things at all. With the proper scaling settings in the drivers, you can generally get any common resolution to look good.