Stolen Pixels #64: Twue Wuv

By Shamus Posted Friday Feb 13, 2009

Filed under: Column 12 comments

Fable 2 has received another lash at the hands of my comic.

Someone mentioned the bloom lighting in an earlier Fable 2 comic. Yes, the bloom lighting is infuriating when you’re trying to make a comic out of the thing. And all of my screencaps have ended up looking all hazy and blurry as a result.

The problem is actually part of the “beams of sunlight” effect they’ve devised. The game has shafts of sunlight that wrap around solid objects. It’s one of those effects (like motion blur) that looks spectacular when you’re moving, but looks like a mess in still frame.

In the past, beams of sunlight were static, pre-set shapes. I’m sure everyone has seen a game where a shaft of sunlight comes in through a window, and the shaft of light doesn’t move regardless of time of day. In Fable 2, those shafts of light are generated real-time. Seeing them reach down through the branches of a tree is really cool. The game also seems to have high dynamic range lighting, with the parameters set to “dreamworld”.

This comic was shot in Fairfax Gardens. Looking back, I think I might have had better shots someplace else. The ten-foot wall around the place seems to confuse the HDR lighting a bit, and make matters worse.

The effects look cool, and they work with the fantasyland style of the world, but they are ruinous to my screenshots.

 


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12 thoughts on “Stolen Pixels #64: Twue Wuv

  1. Sarah says:

    I can only assume you mean that Fable’s gotten a lash at the hands of your comic, not ‘has.’

  2. Shamus says:

    Gable wugga plinkish noffle!

    Also: Fixed.

  3. Sydney says:

    I think your sidebar comment on this strip is simultaneously the most cynical and hilarious thing you’ve yet said.

  4. JFargo says:

    Great strip today. I agree with Sydney on the sidebar. For the record, I think that the strips wouldn’t be as strong without the sidebars; they tend to “make” the joke for me.

  5. The game has shafts of sunlight that wrap around soild objects.

    Soild objects?

    There you go again, Shamus. You’re starting to give Tolkien a run for his money.

    Leslee
    PS Loved the comic. Had me laughing out loud at this one.

  6. CobraCmdr says:

    Sadly, every marraige I’ve had in this game has ended in divorce. No matter how nice a house I give them (including the special Demon Door one) my wife gets pissed when I’m gone on a quest and leaves me when I get back.

    Which is wierd cause she waited 10 years for me while I was at the Spire!

  7. Alex says:

    The chickens don’t glow still, do they? Has Molyneauiuuaioarchaeopteryx fixed that yet?

    Also, the sidebar comment freaking wins.

  8. K says:

    As long as they don’t re-introduce lens-flare, everything is fine. It always annoys me that the persons eyes I am supposed to be looking through are actually cheap cameras. Whoever came up with that deserves to be shot.

  9. Jason says:

    Shamus, the more you talk about this game, the more you make me want to buy it. Bad publicity is still publicity, as they say. I don’t even own an XBox 360 and I want to play it.

  10. Yar Kramer says:

    @Alex: I prefer to coll him Peter Mollynukes. Yes, I know this isn’t remotely how you’re supposed to pronounce it, but I don’t care.

  11. Christian Groff says:

    Ha ha ha, I love this comic. You said that sometimes Fable 2 can be realistic, with the woman swooning over the hero even though he’s rude and violent and evil and sacrifices his wives. Reminds me of The Sims 2, where you can marry a Sim many times and kill off their old wives. Now that I have Inteen, not even the underage women are safe! ^_^

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