First person mode

[sMartins]

I was bothered by it on my local dev machine.

I don't know, I don't remember any huge problem related to the wasd controls, it worked fine to me ....
Though I agree that the new Haven runs better in general, I clearly remember that when I started to play Hafen after Salem, so are you meaning that the big difference in perfomance between Salem and Haven is caused by the wasd thing?
... cause if is that I can see what you mean.

What's your typical reaction time?

I don't know what's my typical reaction time Magic , for sure less than some years ago .... but i recently played a bit of Fortnite and I'm still good/decent with FPS.
Also I can see if it something related to hacks and cheats ...

[Granger]

1: half-assed isn't bad when lots of people like the result.

I don't like doing something when I don't like the result, especially if you consider inclusion into the default client to be a "mark of official approval". Gazing into the black void is a mind-jarring experience and already ruins, for example, a lot of YouTube vidyas of Haven for me.

Add a skybox?

Speaking of void, I would suggest to change the blackness of the void tile in the mine to the respective wall texture, cave wall type for all unknown tiles and stone type when the tile is known - rendered at ceiling hight. Void looks meh.

[ven]

1: half-assed isn't bad when lots of people like the result.

I don't like doing something when I don't like the result, especially if you consider inclusion into the default client to be a "mark of official approval". Gazing into the black void is a mind-jarring experience and already ruins, for example, a lot of YouTube vidyas of Haven for me.

So many of the aesthetic thread's pictures are actually product of cam bad:

It is of course worth noting that half of those picture have been manually modded to include distant scenery and beautiful skies, and the rest of them at least has a very specifically chosen perspective, which the game wouldn't be able to uphold consistently.

Couldn't this be solved by random skyboxes, or just a fog like The Elder Scrolls III did back in 2002 to avoid rendering everything?

Still, it would be great if you could at least add a cam command that centers the camera right on the character's head. It doesn't have to be any more official than cam bad.

[loftar]

Add a skybox?

I didn't think I'd have to spell it out, but clearly there's much more to the void than just its blackness, which isn't solved by skyboxes.

Speaking of void, I would suggest to change the blackness of the void tile in the mine to the respective wall texture, cave wall type for all unknown tiles and stone type when the tile is known - rendered at ceiling hight. Void looks meh.

Hmm, there may be a case to be made, but I can't shake the feeling that it would look even more weird with there being effectively just a second, slightly elevated floor in the caves.

Couldn't this be solved by random skyboxes, or just a fog like The Elder Scrolls III did back in 2002 to avoid rendering everything?

See above in re skyboxes. As for a fog, my reply above to shubla applies, but I also did consider this for Salem (where a fog would have been very thematically appropriate anyway), but couldn't think of a formulation of fogs that would work for anything other than a strict first-person perspective (or perhaps a close over-the-shoulder perspective). The problem being that "fogginess" ("obscuration factor", if you will) is strictly defined by the distance light travels from the surface it struck to the eye/camera picking it up, and therefore it doesn't limit view distance from the player object, but from the camera, and the camera is not the center of the viewport that the client knows about, and also with a from-above perspective the fog will simply obscure everything. There's also the problem with custom clients invariably having to remove the fog since it would obscure some objects that are obviously absolute essential to see in competitive play.

[ricky]

Speaking of void, I would suggest to change the blackness of the void tile in the mine to the respective wall texture, cave wall type for all unknown tiles and stone type when the tile is known - rendered at ceiling hight. Void looks meh.

Hmm, there may be a case to be made, but I can't shake the feeling that it would look even more weird with there being effectively just a second, slightly elevated floor in the caves.

I dunno, RuneScape does the same thing and I think it looks better than The Void™

[MagicManICT]

Anyone remember Turok on the N64? Lots of fog... lots and lots of fog.... It creates an atmosphere in a modern game, but too much just makes the game seem like it's from the mid 1990s (that can't render more than 50m away from the camera).

@sMartins: well, my point was that the delay on the network usually is going to be such that as a player you're generally not going to be able to react to every small change efficiently. I worded my statement poorly. A thousand pardons, please. When it comes to network errors, you might be able to see it, but your reaction may not be enough to compensate properly, or if you do, depending on the type and nature of error, you might overcompensate.

[mlg_no-Scoper]

if you enable free camera and adjust the angle to be just above your characters head and at full zoom, you get a glimpse at what first-person haven would look like. It took a few pictures here:
(note: this is with the worst graphics settings. If you enable shadows and per-fragment lighting the result will be much prettier. you can even go as far as anti-aliasing, but it won't make that much of a difference, or at least I don't think it will)

[Flyrella]

I didn't think I'd have to spell it out, but clearly there's much more to the void than just its blackness, which isn't solved by skyboxes.

Could you at least make the void to be sky-blue color on the surface level? Maybe color can change depending on the time of the day and weather %)
Not the best solution, but might at least work somehow.

[ven]

if you enable free camera and adjust the angle to be just above your characters head and at full zoom, you get a glimpse at what first-person haven would look like. It took a few pictures here:
(note: this is with the worst graphics settings. If you enable shadows and per-fragment lighting the result will be much prettier. you can even go as far as anti-aliasing, but it won't make that much of a difference, or at least I don't think it will)

That's not bad actually. Would be great if someone could do the same angle shots in aurora and the community fair to see how it's like.

[shubla]

I didn't think I'd have to spell it out, but clearly there's much more to the void than just its blackness, which isn't solved by skyboxes.

Could you at least make the void to be sky-blue color on the surface level? Maybe color can change depending on the time of the day and weather %)
Not the best solution, but might at least work somehow.

You seem to be using a custom client so you could ask that from the developer of it, might be easier to get him agree with that. Of course something neat would be to have user customizable skybox color or image. With default ones also provided.