this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
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In case you didn't read the article:
"It’s important to note that the game is still very early in development, and these screenshots don’t show the latest state of the game, but it does give us a general idea of the style they are going for."
These are pre-alpha visuals. It's not uncommon for games at this stage to look even worse than this.
Not how it works. They have assets already made. You don't redo character models, weapon models for a beta release. At best you use stand-in models, when it's not important to look good. This isn't a stand-in model, replacement or anything else. A spinfusor is a spinfusor. It has all the animations, all the textured. Game has motion blur even.
Best that'll change is the lighting, explosions etc. But the map is already looking bad for 2023, so do the models. I'm not holding my breath for better visuals.
You do, in fact, actually redo character models and other stuff for a beta release. This is early alpha, they're using placeholder models and textures, probably from previous Tribes games, nailing the core gameplay loop before working on graphics.
This is standard practice.
They also have Starseige Deadzone and Starseige Raiders (Raiders isn't available yet, but has been playable for a while). They all share some weapons, but Tribes has been a different time period in the past, so I wouldn't be surprised to see the models change to fit Tribes better.
That said, yeah. All of it is possible to change. Graphics, particularly terrain, are pretty likely to be cleaned up. The first goal is to make it playable, then to make it as good as possible.
You do realize the release date is q1, 2024 right?
Yes it is.
The last Tribes game before this was Ascend, released over a decade ago.
Polygon targets, textured sizes, shader technology and much else has evolved dramatically since then.
You may reuse old assets as placeholders during development (but this can be problematic for the same reasons why temp music in filmmaking is problematic), but you absolutely do not have assets already made. Assets change over the course of development, often right up until release.
I can't speak to whether or not these assets are from Ascend or earlier, nor can I speak to the visual production quality Prophecy is capable of, but seeing shoddy looking visuals from a pre-alpha title is normal.
Source: I am a trained game developer.
And can you remake all of the assets in 4 months?