Reworking the Artwork needs to be a priority

[Vandom]

This is not an ‘AI Art Bad’ post, but a critical review of the artwork, and how it negatively affects game play. What I’m referring to is the pictures for items, technology, but also other ones like on the Phase Resonance page.

Images aren't helpful

The biggest issue is that these images don’t give any useful information to the player, they just kinda look nice and Sci-Fi like.

For example: Phase Resonance Combat 3 gives an increase of not just weapon reload, but also weapon damage. How is a player at a glance supposed to tell that at all by two green energy looking things? All Combat levels are just generic green energy looking things!

This is also inconsistent with the Technology page, as the Shield tech uses generic green images. Level 1 Shield tech is a green orb thing, Level 2 is the exact same picture, while Level 3 has a picture that is similar, but without the side orbs so it looks at a glance even weaker.

The AI art looks fine, and matches the style, but is too generic. Hardly anything is descriptive, while there are inconsistencies are all over the place.

Non-AI images also suck

There are a few cases where a non-AI generated image is used, and that is for actual ships and structures. This makes it a lot easier to see and identify them, some of them even show corresponding increases to the level of the upgrade level!

However these are also terrible and need to be redone. They don’t match the art style of the other images because they are screenshots of the game models, and in general look bad and lazy.

Many screenshots are also nondescript or unclear, since for example: For the the Orkulus, the Hangar upgrade doesn’t show any strike craft, the Phase Jump Drive doesn’t show it being used so it’s just a picture of the starbase. The Armour upgrades just show a picture of the arms of the starbase, and while the differences between the levels of upgrade are shown, but so tiny they can’t be seen unless you are really looking hard for them.

There are also loads of inconsistencies and issues with these screenshots. The Icon for many of them doesn’t match the picture when you mouse over it, usually the backgrounds are different. The Phase Jump Inhibitor is also not centred, I could go on and on…

It all really matters

It’s all a mess, and unfortunately negatively affects my enjoyment of the game, and how I play. For example, currently if I want to find the Armour upgrade for all my ships, I would need to mouse over the Health, Hull Regeneration, then the Armour upgrades. The pictures aren’t clear what is what, so I have to mouse over and read the name, and more often the effect, just to understand what I am researching. It’s the same when getting planet or ship upgrades and items.

The current art doesn’t help the player figure things out at a glance, and is wildly inconsistent. It’s really annoying, and I don’t care if it’s AI or screenshots. Please fix.

[BoogieMan]

It would be nice to be able to get a better idea of what the upgrades do by the button graphic. Maybe if they were a bit larger they could convey more information at a glance.

Also more options should be moved to a proper menu instead of being a big blob of text on the CTRL+SHIFT+S menu.

[Soyak Striker]

♥♥♥♥.. I wish I realized it had AI crap before I bought it.

[Draco]

Originally posted by Soyak Striker:

♥♥♥♥.. I wish I realized it had AI crap before I bought it.

There was a disclaimer on the store page.

[K]

You know what's funny? I don't know why Stardock thinks saying most art are done by human artists is somehow a positive when people thinks the art is AI without prior knowledge. Just by looking at them they think these art are AI. What does that tell you? That the human art is somehow so AI-like that it might as well be AI, and therefore a negative? Or that it is a lie and most arts are indeed AI or heavily "enhanced" by AI and therefore also negative?

Whether it is AI generated or merely enhanced by it doesn't matter. The crux of the problem is that AI fills in detail in a way humans don't. That's one of the reason why regardless of art style, humans can tell it is AI with sufficient consistency. One of the things we do when we design stuff like a spaceship, we add what we call greebles. We humans have a way of adding these greebles for non-functional detail and texture to a model that AI don't. AI fill these detail in a form of pattern that is different to humans simple because their thought process is so different. This is why when we look at art that has this weird sense of pattern of detail, we can tell it is AI.

Furthermore, these details are so unnecessary for icons. Who looks at icons from games of old and thought they don't have enough random detail and noise? If Stardock actually has a team of artists making these art, then I'm sorry they've all wasted their time drawing all these pictures with so much detail. I can't imagine the time it took to make all of them. Because a simple purple shield shape icon from Sins 1 represented shield technology way better than whatever mess it is now.

[DuskBit]

Originally posted by Soyak Striker:

♥♥♥♥.. I wish I realized it had AI crap before I bought it.

The ai art was trained in house with the consent of the artists who worked on the game if this alleviates any of your concerns.

[Soyak Striker]

Originally posted by Draco:

Originally posted by Soyak Striker:

♥♥♥♥.. I wish I realized it had AI crap before I bought it.

There was a disclaimer on the store page.

At the very bottom of the page.

Originally posted by DuskBit:

Originally posted by Soyak Striker:

♥♥♥♥.. I wish I realized it had AI crap before I bought it.

The ai art was trained in house with the consent of the artists who worked on the game if this alleviates any of your concerns.

AI generated images show the devs are lazy and didn't want to put the work in. What does the amount of images it was given to feed it's algorithm, it doesn't have 7 fingers instead of 5? Also consent? The artist's consent is their paycheck, they have their hand tied behind middle/upper management.

[Global Worming]

They need to replace the AI race characters pictures with portraits of the most active forum users here

[bigsapling]

I already said this in another similar thread: I really would appreciate remaking the images to be more clear on what they represent. Someone posted a picture of the first game in the other thread and compared the tech tree images in this one to that. It was a lot clearer and eassy to make out each individual tech in the first game (I never played the first one, just saw the picture that person posted).

[Commisar Jon Fuklaw]

Changing the artwork does not need to be a priority. It's fine. Stop looking for things to whinge and ♥♥♥♥♥ about like it's your job.

[ravenous beast]

They absolutely should change the art out. Not only is it AI art and therefore stolen from actual artists and therefore an IP law violation (still being litigated in courts...) the art is unreadable, it most instances it has precious little to do with what the actual tech is.

My hope is that it's just a placeholder until they can get something real in there. If this stays in for the long term it'll be very disappointing.

[SaltyClownShoes]

Originally posted by Soyak Striker:

Originally posted by Draco:

There was a disclaimer on the store page.

At the very bottom of the page.

Originally posted by DuskBit:

The ai art was trained in house with the consent of the artists who worked on the game if this alleviates any of your concerns.

AI generated images show the devs are lazy and didn't want to put the work in. What does the amount of images it was given to feed it's algorithm, it doesn't have 7 fingers instead of 5? Also consent? The artist's consent is their paycheck, they have their hand tied behind middle/upper management.

You people are complaining about something that everyone in EVERY industry already uses but they just don't say anything about it.

The game has been in active development for over 2 years. Lazy is hardly what I would call the devs. I backed it on Epic and I got a free key to register it on Steam. That's amazing support for the community.

Sometimes I think people just like to find things to complain about. Because this game is a 10/10 uplift of an already great game, but brought to modern systems with modern stability and support for epically massive gameplay on the new 64bit game engine.

The art team used AI to help them uplift the game is very different from a developer just making their entire game and all it's art with AI. Feeding AI the proper art sets and samples and training it was likely a long process to begin with.

AI isn't going away and everything uses it even if you don't want to believe that.

[Kestrel]

yeah the AI art I found to be very distracting, the images for the tech are oxymoronic; they all felt samey and yet so different for each individual tech or function it represented.

Like what the hell is going on in this picture that is supposed to be a logistics upgrade? Did the planet contract mpox?

https://i.imgur.com/Y4pItpU.png

I really hope the devs redo the art for these (or get mods), even the player portraits were so genetic and soulless compared to Sins 1.

Otherwise, game itself is great

[ParakeetRiot]

+1 on reworking the art. I was glad to see that there are actually a lot of artists listed in the credits. I think AI use was understandable to get the core features of the game up, running, and presentable, but ultimately it has to be changed. The Vasari portraits all look the same and there are some people out there who just won't play the game if there is AI art.

[Sera]

They don't give a ♥♥♥♥, if they did they wouldn't have used this slop in any capacity.

[Vandom]

Originally posted by ParakeetRiot:

+1 on reworking the art. I was glad to see that there are actually a lot of artists listed in the credits. I think AI use was understandable to get the core features of the game up, running, and presentable, but ultimately it has to be changed. The Vasari portraits all look the same and there are some people out there who just won't play the game if there is AI art.

The outrage and hyper focus on the AI art is pretty silly. At this point the tech is good enough that half the people wouldn't know if there wasn't a disclaimer. Five years from now it will be the norm rather than the exception.

The issue is the poor work that was done by a human. The same level of care and attention to detail went into the AI image generation, as was used to produce out of centre screenshots without a background. They are placeholders, and stand out as such.

I just hope the devs learn the right lessons from all the criticism, since this isn't an AI, but a UI issue at heart.