By Kieron Gillen on September 10th, 2010 at 4:30 pm.
PC Gamer have got terribly excited over revealing the “incredible new art style” for League of Legends. There’s more in their issue, but they show how two of the legendary leaguers and – er – trees have been changed. Generally speaking, it looks like the increased-detail sort of retexturing and seriousing-up which you know will be rife after Diablo III is released. We’re also pleased to see that Riot Games have discovered desaturation in photoshop. Incredible.
10/09/2010 at 16:39 Michael says:
Not that the originals were perfect, but this is a clear example of someone using technology they don’t know how to use. The bumpmaps and specular are so poorly done, you’d think they were done purely by accident.
‘Oh, oops, I turned that on by accident. Look how bad this looks now, better turn that off’
11/09/2010 at 19:28 heartlessgamer says:
Just going to stop in here and point out the money hats the developers are wearing.
10/09/2010 at 16:43 fearian says:
and thanks RPS for putting more text over the only part of the image where things look to have changed significantly *slaps forehead*
11/09/2010 at 10:10 Sam Crisp says:
Uh, I’m pretty sure that text is part of the barrel texture.
10/09/2010 at 16:45 Film11 says:
Apparantly it looks much better in motion and that things are far from done, so it might have changed majorly by the time it’s released. So try not to be too harsh :)
10/09/2010 at 16:45 Shagittarius says:
Someone found the brightness slider?
10/09/2010 at 16:52 Steelfists says:
PCG ARE SELLOUTS! How much did it take to bribe those fickle harlots? Shocking.
10/09/2010 at 16:52 Navagon says:
The contrast is a bit too extreme now. It also looks very desaturated. I mean, sure, it looks a bit more 3D but it’s still not done as well as it could be.
10/09/2010 at 16:54 Patrick says:
Not that I don’t love LoL, but I’m surprised noone’s brought up this month’s abso-fantastic cover: http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2010/09/1110_PCG_CVR-evensmaller.jpg
10/09/2010 at 16:56 Kieron Gillen says:
The cover is totally awesome. Was trying to work out a way to justify linking to it. Splendid stuff.
KG
10/09/2010 at 17:00 Zyrxil says:
Wilhelmmmm!! /Khannnnn
10/09/2010 at 17:32 Oneironaut says:
That cover is very nice, haven’t gotten my copy yet this month.
Also, why do they send out the November issue in September? I just subscribed a few months ago, but the month on the magazine is never even close to the month I receive it in.
10/09/2010 at 17:53 Alex Bakke says:
Bwuh? But… I was reading PC Gamers’ review of Civ V in the current issue. (The one with the Portal Bots)
10/09/2010 at 18:16 Phill Cameron says:
That’s the cover of the US version of the mag. The current on is the Portal bots one.
HOWEVER, I think the important thing to take from all of this is that Washington spits fireballs.
10/09/2010 at 18:26 Alex Bakke says:
Yeah, figured it out shortly afterwards :P
Derp.
10/09/2010 at 22:37 LintMan says:
@Oneironaut:
As I understand it, the dates aren’t for the consumer, they are for the vendor; they are “keep this on the newsstand until” dates. So the issue you just got should be kept on display until November.
10/09/2010 at 16:57 Ginger Chris says:
The model on the left is completely unlit and all the shading is baked into the texture.
The model on the right is simply badly lit (single pure white light from above, rather than typical gaming lighting of lights everywhere) but is fully normal, spec-mapped and actually has lights on it unlike the previous.
Having done an art test for a job at Riot Games, it’s actually quite tricky to retain the colourful cartoon art style while introducing per-pixel shading like this. It’s really easy to fall into the trap of making your normals too grainy and overly detailed and your awesome model can be completely wrecked if the image you are showing off happens to be as poorly lit as this one.
So yeah, cut them some slack.
10/09/2010 at 17:06 Kirian says:
Dash it all, beaten to the punch.
I think RPS do need to cut them a little more slack. This is something that’s months away at best. I’m not sure why Kieron’s being so sarcastic about it- they never normally cover League of Legends so I’m not sure why they’re starting now with this.
Instead of that PC Gamer cover.
10/09/2010 at 18:35 DrGonzo says:
Yeah, I am disapoint. League of Legends is by far my most played game and has been almost a year now.
Personally I think the new models look nice. I don’t know how anyone could deny them looking better to be honest. But whatever, League of Legends isn’t pretentious enough to deserve any kind of praise I suppose.
10/09/2010 at 18:48 suibhne says:
I think the fun-making is more at the expense of the journalism, not the game devs.
10/09/2010 at 20:26 Kirian says:
Well slap my arse and call me Betty, you’re right. I apologise to KG for missing his point.
10/09/2010 at 17:02 Kirian says:
It is an awesome cover.
Also the problem with that shot isn’t desaturation, it’s that they’ve lit the big dude from above with an incredibly strong light so he looks rubbish.
They’ve also put far too much gloss varnish on the second guy, Mordekaiser. If they’re going for the ‘tabletop miniature’ look then they someone needs to tell them about miniatures and gloss varnish.
10/09/2010 at 17:03 Lightbulb says:
Well that’s about twice as big as you’d see it in game so it doesn’t matter too much…
The real problem with LoL at the moment is the difficulty getting on servers as they have (temporarily they say and I hope) capped the number of concurrent logged in players.
11/09/2010 at 07:46 Polysynchronicity says:
Try this:
On your arrow keys, hit “Up Down Left Right Up Up Down Down”
Tada, launcher no longer reports “Server Busy”
Enjoy
10/09/2010 at 17:07 Ian says:
My mind! They blew it!
10/09/2010 at 17:09 Flaringo says:
Man, I wish they would just screw the bump-maps and do some awesome texture-painting instead. Like in the good old days. :(
But then again, that’s a lot of work.
Mordekaiser looks more like a toy than a big, bad, evil knight-ish thing with all this fancy shader schmader crap.
10/09/2010 at 18:48 Flaringo says:
Normal-maps! Not bump-maps.
10/09/2010 at 17:20 Garg says:
The other screenshot of the guy in armour and the mace on PCG has a much better “lead figurine” look, although it hasn’t really worked for the one here.
10/09/2010 at 17:42 Arathain says:
My dear good lord! They look slightly different!
10/09/2010 at 18:34 Homunculus says:
Related, tangentially: Quick, someone point me towards a decent tutorial resource for making diffuse layer clothing textures for game assets. Focusing on getting folds right, for preference. Please!
10/09/2010 at 18:44 DrGonzo says:
Again, I’m going to ask, what’s wrong with the models? Looks like a massive step up to me. Also, it’s worth going to the PC Gamer article to check them out, the picture posted on here is by far the least impressive. And they decided the write over the best looking bit.
Mordekaiser looks amazingly better, and the trees look rather sexy too. Wow, I just called trees sexy. Time to leave the house I think….
10/09/2010 at 18:47 Sigma Draconis says:
Personally, I don’t think League of Legends needs a graphics overhaul, but this is a game still in progress. I’ll hold judgment on the graphical changes until I see how the actual results look in-game.
I’m more interested in how LoL is getting this amount of coverage (and praise, looks like) from PC Gamer. Probably because it left a better impression on them than Heroes of Newerth did, going by their somewhat lukewarm review of it: http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/06/04/heroes-of-newerth-review/
10/09/2010 at 19:00 Cyrenic says:
As per my post below, League of Legends is quietly growing into one of the most played online PC games. Mainstream coverage was just a matter of time :P.
10/09/2010 at 18:55 Daniel Klein says:
To be fair, I like the Mordekaiser remake much better:
http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2010/09/mordekaiser.jpg
(Again, disclaimer: I work for Riot, and I’m biased as all hell. I love our game)
So this Team Shiny (that’s the actual internal team name) work is still a little in the future, and having seen other screenshots it does look great in game.
That said, our artists are very, VERY careful about erring on the side of simplicity. While working on this graphical overhaul, we have been very very careful to make sure that the game both still plays fine on low end machines and (and this is most important to me) that it retains its visual clarity which sets it apart from the admittedly much prettier HoN. That’s always the experience I have when I play a game of HoN (which I check in on from time to time to see what they are up to): first, oooh that’s PRETTY and then “what the hell is going on?”
So yeah, let’s wait to see it in game :)
10/09/2010 at 20:55 Zogtee says:
To be fair, I like the Mordekaiser remake much better:
http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2010/09/mordekaiser.jpg
Someone has been playing World of Warcraft, haven’t they?
11/09/2010 at 07:49 Polysynchronicity says:
Funny, I have exactly the opposite issue… I have a much harder time seeing what’s going on in LoL, because while your art style isn’t as detailed it’s certainly busier and the heroes have much less distinctive shilouettes.
Both fun games though.
10/09/2010 at 18:57 Cyrenic says:
In other news, according to the always questionable (but still fun to look at) metrics on xfire: LoL gets just as much online play as Starcraft 2: http://www.xfire.com/
For a free game that makes the micro transactions as un-obnoxious as possible, it’s cool to see them doing well.
10/09/2010 at 19:03 pakoito says:
Xfire isn’t reliable at all.
10/09/2010 at 19:06 Daniel Klein says:
Shh, let’s not draw anyone’s attention to this ;)
Who knew that if you gave people a solid game and treated them nicely by selling them convenience and aesthetics (but not power) they’d repay you in MONEY?
10/09/2010 at 19:33 pakoito says:
I’m a HoN raging fanboy and I’ve behaved nice so far, don’t play your chances in here…
JK, but still a HoN fanboi
10/09/2010 at 20:07 Cyrenic says:
Oh pakoito, you’re wondering about LoL vs. HoN? That’s easy:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=league+of+legends%2C+heroes+of+newerth&ctab=0&geo=all&date=ytd&sort=0
10/09/2010 at 20:48 pakoito says:
I heard millions of dollars on ads vs an indie company helps.
10/09/2010 at 22:02 Eggy says:
not to mention actually designing a game instead of carbon copying a poorly balanced mod.
11/09/2010 at 01:31 pakoito says:
Dumbing down a game is not always a good option. And about balance…Xin. And a new hero a week to push more $$$.
10/09/2010 at 19:04 Wichtel says:
They are doing too well right now. At least in Europe they have to restrict server access at peak hours.
10/09/2010 at 19:06 Sirbolt says:
Nvidia normal map filter, bake in some ambient occlusion, turbosmooth the model, aaaand… Done! And yeah, the spec is rather bad. Especially on the Mordekaiser guy. Easy with the cube-mapping!
10/09/2010 at 19:07 Johnny says:
Well at least it’s less painful to look at for long periods now.
I still think it’s terrible.
10/09/2010 at 19:17 reetva says:
http://i.imgur.com/WBoOx.jpg
10/09/2010 at 19:29 Hoernchen says:
I still wonder why rps thought it would be a good idea to draw a penis below the “thanks pc gamer” test..
10/09/2010 at 20:03 tomeoftom says:
Incredible.
10/09/2010 at 21:40 Barnaby says:
“We’re also pleased to see that Riot Games have discovered desaturation in photoshop. Incredible.”
Lol’d really hard at this. Good one.
… oh and the changes seem a little lacking to get excited for them.
10/09/2010 at 22:04 Nick says:
The US side of PC Gamer constatly post about LoL updates like they work on the game or something.
10/09/2010 at 22:05 Nick says:
Oh, my mistake, its HoN they are going on about normally.
10/09/2010 at 22:14 Jim9137 says:
Even at the risk of sounding a retarded hick from the backsville: What the heck is League of Legends?
11/09/2010 at 15:30 pakoito says:
The new pay2win best game. It’s a dumbed down Defense of the Ancients for the casual market, with high success.
12/09/2010 at 00:06 Ace says:
It isn’t terribly dumbed down. It’s definitely not pay to win. I’ve paid no money to Riot, enjoy the game, have fun playing, and repeatedly win with my IP purchased Shen and Trist. I have a lot of other characters unlocked through IP. Only a level 22 also… by 30 I will have most of the characters unlocked.
You win if you focus on the game and perform well. That’s all.
13/09/2010 at 06:50 pakoito says:
Strip dota from competitiveness and you get LoL, the 1$ hamburguer of the AoS genre.
10/09/2010 at 22:43 BATTLEMOOSE says:
gief free riot points! :D
11/09/2010 at 02:47 Starky says:
Yeah 2d screenshots don’t do much to show the difference between flat textured models and properly burned in normal maps.
Given that it is pretty much exactly trying to show a 3D difference in a 2D medium, and as such is near impossible.
I can almost guarantee you that if you loaded both of those up into a model viewer and rotated around them the first would look flat and angular (painted on) while the second would look rounded and detailed… Hell you can kind of see it in the second image around the fingers and toes anyway.
12/09/2010 at 16:32 Juror #9 says:
Kieron says,
“We’re also pleased to see that Riot Games have discovered desaturation in photoshop. Incredible.”
Yep desat. is quite helpful in giving it that lived in, weathered look that we all would enjoy in games that have a need for it. There’s nothing like seeing a brand new barrel to smash apart for an item, when the enivironment clearly shows it shouldn’t be in such good condition. Beauty is in the details.
13/09/2010 at 03:42 adam says:
am I missing something? the original art looked better.
13/09/2010 at 08:24 The Sombrero Kid says:
ARE YOU INSANE! THEY TOOK AWAY THE PURPLE STUFF! THATS MASSSIIVVIVVIEEE!
notice you didn’t link to the other picture they released, which is even more mind blowing, they chaged the texture of a grey guy to brown!