If you have the PC version, you can turn it off by going all the way down to graphics level 1. If you have the PS3 version or want a higher graphics level, you will, unfortunately, have to deal with it. Sorry!
If you have the PC version, you can turn it off by going all the way down to graphics level 1.
Doesn't work.
Is it just me, or did the film grain actually get worse for Beyond the Alley of the Dolls after we started complaining about it after The Penal Zone came out?
Is it just me, or did the film grain actually get worse for Beyond the Alley of the Dolls after we started complaining about it after The Penal Zone came out?
Weird. It did work before.
And now that you mention it, it did get worse. Weird. At least I am not one to look for games based on their looks, so I rarely notice.
Is it just me, or did the film grain actually get worse for Beyond the Alley of the Dolls after we started complaining about it after The Penal Zone came out?
It's actually just deeper, but I think it's fine if you actually understand what it's really for. And the film grain actually enhances the realness of the graphics.
At the end of 305 we're going to find out that it was all just a movie.
*sinks into fantasies of bad season endings*
Eh, I don't think it's a movie for movies, I think it's a tale for people who live beyond the human comprehension. After all, the main homepage for the "Devil's Playhouse" is a movie theater that belongs, and leads to an interdimensional(?) world.
I get what they were going for with the film grain, I just feel that it came off more as annoying than anything else, which pretty much undermined the original purpose of it.
I get what they were going for with the film grain, I just feel that it came off more as annoying than anything else, which pretty much undermined the original purpose of it.
Depending on the people of course.
Focusing us in the problem at hand, since we cannot eliminate the grain effect, any idea to make the graphics more clear to our friend here?
If I were to guess, the B-movie Horror Genre is much Film-Grainier then 70s Action Movies, so it added more. Thus why Sammun-Mak had next to no grain, and Max's Brain had slight grain.
I still hate the fact I can't change the graphic settings the way I want. The film grain is preeetty annoying. Hey Telltale, I'm not an idiot, I can deal with some more advanced options without my head exploding. It would be nice to have an "Advanced" option in the menu, where you can mess around with the shaders and the shadows, the bloom and the anti-aliasing. 1 to 9 might be OK if I was 12, but I'm not.
i would love the option to get rid of it; perhaps having that turned off could allow the rest of the game to be rendered better, or allow those with crappy computers to have a higher graphics setting.
People should get used to film grain. Granted this time it's a filter and so it's actually ON TOP OF the actual image rather than being, well, INGRAINED into it, but the principle that Grain Is Not Bad still applies. I don't want overly-excessive DVNR to be the next pan-and-scan for me to have to avoid when buying videos because some people can't stand the thought of film grain.
This may be completely unrelated to the topic at hand and I may only be posting it because I'm tired at 3:20 AM.
I like the film grain effect. And I love the wobbly hand-held camera in the diner. Both effects there really add to the parody of "Night of the Living Dead" which I find *really* funny.
It's like I said before, the film grain is supposed to be for the fact that we're in a movie theater watching the events play out. Now I think we should have choice to increase or decrease the affect but not completely get rid of it. After all, the whole movie theater, narrator thing. It's all a Twilight Zone parody I believe.
I hate film grain in any game since I have bad eyesight so it makes certain things look dark unless I look close.
At the risk of sounding like a jerk... A common remedy for bad eyesight is glasses. I have bad eyesight, wear glasses and have no problem with the grain in S&M.
And I believe it didn't get worse with the new episode, it's just that BtAotD is darker than the others so the film grain is more visible. It's just my opinion though so I might be wrong.
Still, I don't hate the film grain. I think I actually like it
I don't really like it that much, although I get used to it as the episode goes on - does it tone down depending on the scene? I understand why it's there, but that doesn't make it any better. Perhaps it'd look better on a console, but when I'm sitting close to the screen it's (as GuruGuru says) annoying rather than successfully achieving an artistic effect. If I had a choice I'd turn it off.
I don't REALLY mind it. It doesn't bother me, really, and in the last 2 episodes it was like it wasn't really THERE anyway. I begin to think that the intensity of the grain effect varies from user to user.
I love the grain too. After playing a few minutes, I don't consciously notice it anymore but it adds to the noiry (is that a word?) atmosphere.
What I find annoying though it that the effect freezes every time before loading a cut scene or new location. The look-and-feel would be less choppy if the grain continued throughout the loading and black screens without being interrupted.
Regardless of other games doing it, if I want to see a grainy image, I pull out my old VCR from the basement and pop a VHS into it. We have computers and high-res displays nowadays - no need to reimplement any old-days' garbage. At least make an option to disable it.
And because I'm probably that old, it doesn't bother me.
That is true, but we are playing a game. So many companies today with their (trying to make the game feel like a movie) i want to play a game, not a movie.
Its so annoying when companies do that, i really dont and will never understand, grainy screens isnt cool. Playing a movie isnt fun, playing a game is fun
Telltale Devs: Get off your couches and make a freaking option to disable it! NOW!!!!!
I've heard screaming at developers on their own forum in all caps with exclamation points really works, and doesn't just make people turn you off. Wait, that's the opposite of true. Please learn to be polite, especially when in someone else's "house." Pretend you're talking to an actual human next time and you might get a better, more timely response. Sheesh.
For what it's worth, I like it. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, and in some scenes it is a little overbearing, but the noise it adds, I think, helps sell the period tone that we've been trying for with the season (which is zero budget sci-fi/adventure films of the 70s and early 80s). Again, it's not for everyone, but I'm glad we made that deliberate choice and stuck with it.
That said, the grain is pretty locked in. That doesn't mean I can't at least look at adding an on/off switch for the DVD version but please please remember that this is no guarantee. I don't know how much work it is.
Followup note: Replying with "its easy!" from your couch will get you absolutely no response.
At the risk of sounding like a jerk... A common remedy for bad eyesight is glasses. I have bad eyesight, wear glasses and have no problem with the grain in S&M.
At the risk of sounding OLD, I must say that wearing glasses for us old folks is sorta optional. I must wear glasses to read small print, and try to avoid it whenever possible, especially since I shelled out big bucks 15 yrs ago for laser correction.
If I had to wear my reading glasses to play a video game due to grain I would be sorely peeved. Luckily, it works for me to go "naked eyed" with the grain. But I can sympathize with Wootman...
That said, the grain is pretty locked in. That doesn't mean I can't at least look at adding an on/off switch for the DVD version but please please remember that this is no guarantee. I don't know how much work it is.
Followup note: Replying with "its easy!" from your couch will get you absolutely no response.
At the risk of sounding ignorant... (yeah I'm gonna start my posts like that from now on I think...)
Adding an on/off switch for the grain doesn't seem that hard if you did it the right way (which assume you did, being a real company and all). And if you did it really good, all it would take would be a simple if (GrainOptionIsOn) { RenderGrain(); }.
Then again, I've never worked with your engine so I can't say that it's definitely easy with a straight face.
With that said, could you feed my curiosity and tell me how exactly the grain is locked in (programmer terms would be best)?
Actually, this thread sparked my curiosity from the start. Being a hobbyist programmer, adding an on/off switch for grain seems like the easiest part of writing any engine. Thus, I was greatly surprised when I noticed there was no on/off switch for that.
I can't demand any response, of course, but an answer on why adding the grain switch would be hard and why I'm a complete jerk for ever saying above stuff would be appreciated
All I could think of was that you guys must have to rush it pretty hard near the deadlines, given such a short time to produce the episodes and don't have time for such small stuff.
It's not technically hard. The question is: Is there time to run new builds of all five episodes through Quqlity Assurance on Mac and PC for the grain? That's ten products going through QA. Will it be able to be wrapped in with other bug fixes, or would it be a separate thing? Would we back-port it to downloadable versions? Even though the switch itself isn't complicated, would we get programmer time okayed? It's not actually that complicated, but it's not just someone sitting down for 3 minutes to plug in a checkbox.
Why do you guys HATE the grain so much? So much so that you started to point people and yell at their faces, or teach a game making company how to code?
Why do you guys HATE the grain so much? So much so that you started to point people and yell at their faces, or teach a game making company how to code?
I don't mind opinions. I don't think anyone should mind people having opinions. I just don't like it when people try to force things, to yell and threaten about it! We make games, which are a collection of creative choices, and this is a business too, which is nothing, again, but a collection of decisions. Not everyone agrees with every choice and every decision, though we try our best to make things that we think are cool and will be liked by a lot of people. That's fine. I expect the feeling to be at least somewhat mutual. For there to be respect going both ways.
"The customer is always right" is a good attitude to keep in mind, but so is the Henry Ford quote "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse." I'm not saying that in particular, the goofy film grain effect is any sort of evolution or revolution or invention that we've made -- as said elsewhere in the thread plenty of games, television shows, and digitally shot films employ similar things -- but it's a deliberate choice we made when coming up with the flavor and texture of the game. I think that it works for a lot of people, and I think that there are parts of the game that simply hold up better for it. We can add a switch to turn it off, but at what point do you stop adding switches? Film grain is the goofiest, lightest little icing on that cake, so it's not a very big deal, but you have to figure out a the line, or at least a grey area, you draw where customization and tweaks end and the desired content begins. I don't think that holds true to all genres of games at all -- some of the best games are nothing but a bank of switches for the player to screw with -- but for an adventure game... I don't know.
Maybe I'm wrong and maybe I'm definitely diving too far off the deep end over such a minor aspect, or maybe I'm one who 100% of the time likes the world and the story and the "feel" of an adventure game more than the puzzles, but as a player in a piece of authored interactive visual fiction I don't really want to have the choice to turn off parts of the game that were deliberately put there.
Anyway I'm probably a weirdo, and as I opened this with, that is just my opinion, something to which everyone is entitled. And as I said a post or two up, I'll look at making that opinion slightly more maleable for everyone else, but I can't guarantee anything.
Hopefully these responses at least assure you that we're listening, even if I'm accidentally turning it into a discussion of weird stuff!
Thanks for responding to my question Jake, I really appreciate it! Gives me a whole new perspective on things, I didn't know you'd have to run it through QA just for adding a new button. Well, I guess that's the limitations of being a studio.
As for the grain hate (to at least *seem* on topic), like I said I don't understand the hate. It's not there to make the game prettier, it's to enhance the feeling of watching a B-movie from times long gone. Put on some nostalgia glasses people, dangit!
Thanks for responding to my question Jake, I really appreciate it! Gives me a whole new perspective on things, I didn't know you'd have to run it through QA just for adding a new button. Well, I guess that's the limitations of being a studio.
Anytime we re-package the game's data for a new release we have to QA it. That's how it works
This is especially true with episodic stuff, since on our side many things are shared between episodes (animations, textures, game scripts, engine code). So we have to make sure that an update somewhere else didn't break something in the old content. That's the main reason. QAing the "film grain switch" would be a few minutes I imagine. It's running through the game in and out in many configurations to make sure that, for instance, suddenly hints haven't stopped working, or Sam's walk animation is wrong, or whatever.
Comments
Doesn't work.
Is it just me, or did the film grain actually get worse for Beyond the Alley of the Dolls after we started complaining about it after The Penal Zone came out?
Weird. It did work before.
And now that you mention it, it did get worse. Weird. At least I am not one to look for games based on their looks, so I rarely notice.
It's actually just deeper, but I think it's fine if you actually understand what it's really for. And the film grain actually enhances the realness of the graphics.
At the end of 305 we're going to find out that it was all just a movie.
*sinks into fantasies of bad season endings*
Eh, I don't think it's a movie for movies, I think it's a tale for people who live beyond the human comprehension. After all, the main homepage for the "Devil's Playhouse" is a movie theater that belongs, and leads to an interdimensional(?) world.
Depending on the people of course.
Focusing us in the problem at hand, since we cannot eliminate the grain effect, any idea to make the graphics more clear to our friend here?
This may be completely unrelated to the topic at hand and I may only be posting it because I'm tired at 3:20 AM.
At the risk of sounding like a jerk... A common remedy for bad eyesight is glasses. I have bad eyesight, wear glasses and have no problem with the grain in S&M.
And I believe it didn't get worse with the new episode, it's just that BtAotD is darker than the others so the film grain is more visible. It's just my opinion though so I might be wrong.
Still, I don't hate the film grain. I think I actually like it
Telltale Devs: Get off your couches and make a freaking option to disable it! NOW!!!!!
What I find annoying though it that the effect freezes every time before loading a cut scene or new location. The look-and-feel would be less choppy if the grain continued throughout the loading and black screens without being interrupted.
I don't think it's that bad really.
Regardless of other games doing it, if I want to see a grainy image, I pull out my old VCR from the basement and pop a VHS into it. We have computers and high-res displays nowadays - no need to reimplement any old-days' garbage. At least make an option to disable it.
AND THERE WAS NO WAY TO TURN THAT OFF!
And because I'm probably that old, it doesn't bother me.
Yep, but now it would only take a switch (or a slider, as in L4D). I'd even edit secret config files to get rid of it - but alas...
That is true, but we are playing a game. So many companies today with their (trying to make the game feel like a movie) i want to play a game, not a movie.
Its so annoying when companies do that, i really dont and will never understand, grainy screens isnt cool. Playing a movie isnt fun, playing a game is fun
I've heard screaming at developers on their own forum in all caps with exclamation points really works, and doesn't just make people turn you off. Wait, that's the opposite of true. Please learn to be polite, especially when in someone else's "house." Pretend you're talking to an actual human next time and you might get a better, more timely response. Sheesh.
For what it's worth, I like it. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, and in some scenes it is a little overbearing, but the noise it adds, I think, helps sell the period tone that we've been trying for with the season (which is zero budget sci-fi/adventure films of the 70s and early 80s). Again, it's not for everyone, but I'm glad we made that deliberate choice and stuck with it.
That said, the grain is pretty locked in. That doesn't mean I can't at least look at adding an on/off switch for the DVD version but please please remember that this is no guarantee. I don't know how much work it is.
Followup note: Replying with "its easy!" from your couch will get you absolutely no response.
If I had to wear my reading glasses to play a video game due to grain I would be sorely peeved. Luckily, it works for me to go "naked eyed" with the grain. But I can sympathize with Wootman...
At the risk of sounding ignorant... (yeah I'm gonna start my posts like that from now on I think...)
Adding an on/off switch for the grain doesn't seem that hard if you did it the right way (which assume you did, being a real company and all). And if you did it really good, all it would take would be a simple if (GrainOptionIsOn) { RenderGrain(); }.
Then again, I've never worked with your engine so I can't say that it's definitely easy with a straight face.
With that said, could you feed my curiosity and tell me how exactly the grain is locked in (programmer terms would be best)?
Actually, this thread sparked my curiosity from the start. Being a hobbyist programmer, adding an on/off switch for grain seems like the easiest part of writing any engine. Thus, I was greatly surprised when I noticed there was no on/off switch for that.
I can't demand any response, of course, but an answer on why adding the grain switch would be hard and why I'm a complete jerk for ever saying above stuff would be appreciated
All I could think of was that you guys must have to rush it pretty hard near the deadlines, given such a short time to produce the episodes and don't have time for such small stuff.
kthxbye please don't flame me ^^
Why do you guys HATE the grain so much? So much so that you started to point people and yell at their faces, or teach a game making company how to code?
I don't mind opinions. I don't think anyone should mind people having opinions. I just don't like it when people try to force things, to yell and threaten about it! We make games, which are a collection of creative choices, and this is a business too, which is nothing, again, but a collection of decisions. Not everyone agrees with every choice and every decision, though we try our best to make things that we think are cool and will be liked by a lot of people. That's fine. I expect the feeling to be at least somewhat mutual. For there to be respect going both ways.
"The customer is always right" is a good attitude to keep in mind, but so is the Henry Ford quote "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse." I'm not saying that in particular, the goofy film grain effect is any sort of evolution or revolution or invention that we've made -- as said elsewhere in the thread plenty of games, television shows, and digitally shot films employ similar things -- but it's a deliberate choice we made when coming up with the flavor and texture of the game. I think that it works for a lot of people, and I think that there are parts of the game that simply hold up better for it. We can add a switch to turn it off, but at what point do you stop adding switches? Film grain is the goofiest, lightest little icing on that cake, so it's not a very big deal, but you have to figure out a the line, or at least a grey area, you draw where customization and tweaks end and the desired content begins. I don't think that holds true to all genres of games at all -- some of the best games are nothing but a bank of switches for the player to screw with -- but for an adventure game... I don't know.
Maybe I'm wrong and maybe I'm definitely diving too far off the deep end over such a minor aspect, or maybe I'm one who 100% of the time likes the world and the story and the "feel" of an adventure game more than the puzzles, but as a player in a piece of authored interactive visual fiction I don't really want to have the choice to turn off parts of the game that were deliberately put there.
Anyway I'm probably a weirdo, and as I opened this with, that is just my opinion, something to which everyone is entitled. And as I said a post or two up, I'll look at making that opinion slightly more maleable for everyone else, but I can't guarantee anything.
Hopefully these responses at least assure you that we're listening, even if I'm accidentally turning it into a discussion of weird stuff!
As for the grain hate (to at least *seem* on topic), like I said I don't understand the hate. It's not there to make the game prettier, it's to enhance the feeling of watching a B-movie from times long gone. Put on some nostalgia glasses people, dangit!
Anytime we re-package the game's data for a new release we have to QA it. That's how it works
This is especially true with episodic stuff, since on our side many things are shared between episodes (animations, textures, game scripts, engine code). So we have to make sure that an update somewhere else didn't break something in the old content. That's the main reason. QAing the "film grain switch" would be a few minutes I imagine. It's running through the game in and out in many configurations to make sure that, for instance, suddenly hints haven't stopped working, or Sam's walk animation is wrong, or whatever.