NCAA Football 12 Visual Issues After the Patch?

[bad_philanthropy]

So it seems there have been a number of threads popping up the past day or so speculating that the patch changed some of the visual aspects of the game in a negative way. I'm not here to debate the magnitude of the issue or complain about it -- I just want to investigate these issues and compile a list of all the issues. It does seem post-patch in general a bit of polish and lustre is missing from the visuals. I could be entirely crazy, but it seems to not look quite as good.

The first issue seems to be dirty unis. White uniforms don't seem to get dirty much or at all in some cases. I can't tell for sure but it looks like there might be a layer of lighting covering it up similar to what happened last year. Here's a quick example picture of the RB's uniform after his 17th carry.



Right now it seems like some of the flourishes like helmet sparkling have been switched off after the patch. I've provided some a pre and post patch example of what I mean. Same team, same lighting conditions (1st qtr in the shoe, 8pm, 1st play of the game.)

Pre Patch







Post patch


I'm also investigating the possibility that field degradation has gotten messed up as well.

If anyone else has any examples or issues to contribute please feel free.

[Bullet Sponge]

Re: Visual issues after the patch?

If they identified a frame rate issue and wanted to pump it up a bit by toning down some of the graphics, I'm fine with that. I'd rather have less sparkly helmets and smooth gameplay than occasional slow down.

[Rangerneb]

Re: Visual issues after the patch?

What about variables such as people playing it on 480, 720 and 1080?

[bad_philanthropy]

Re: Visual issues after the patch?

If they identified a frame rate issue and wanted to pump it up a bit by toning down some of the graphics, I'm fine with that. I'd rather have less sparkly helmets and smooth gameplay than occasional slow down.

That would be reasonable, but I don't think they mentioned it in the patch notes.

[Bullet Sponge]

Re: Visual issues after the patch?

That would be reasonable, but I don't think they mentioned it in the patch notes.

True, but most of the stuff they mentioned were very positive changes. Saying "We made the graphics worse because our game was running too slow" is something I'd just let fly under the radar if I could hehe. Field/uniform degradation may have been toned down for realism. Swapping out a texture from clean to dirty shouldn't affect FPS one bit. Unless the "clean" texture was an undetailed very basic texture (quite possible).

[bad_philanthropy]

Re: Visual issues after the patch?

True, but most of the stuff they mentioned were very positive changes. Saying "We made the graphics worse because our game was running too slow" is something I'd just let fly under the radar if I could hehe. Field/uniform degradation may have been toned down for realism. Swapping out a texture from clean to dirty shouldn't affect FPS one bit. Unless the "clean" texture was an undetailed very basic texture (quite possible).

It would be weird after last year though. They stated they actually did significant work on dirty unis and it was a mistake that they got switched off before going gold. Either way, maybe one of the art guys from Tiburon can provide some clarification.

[stoncold32]

Re: Visual issues after the patch?

True, but most of the stuff they mentioned were very positive changes. Saying "We made the graphics worse because our game was running too slow" is something I'd just let fly under the radar if I could hehe. Field/uniform degradation may have been toned down for realism. Swapping out a texture from clean to dirty shouldn't affect FPS one bit. Unless the "clean" texture was an undetailed very basic texture (quite possible).

No offense. But why would you let EA walk all over you like that. You spent money on this game, and expect the same game or better than what you played in the demo and saw in pics/vids.

Stop bending.

Those two Ohio St. pics are absolutely UNacceptable.

[SECElit3]

Re: Visual issues after the patch?

This was mentioned in another thread... and you are absolutely onto something here. I believe field degradation was affected by the patch because I remember seeing it before I installed the patch, but not after.

If you think about it a lot of players were not able to see the visuals before the patch, because I am sure many of them just installed it first thing, after booting the game up for the first time.

Field degradation and uniform degradation both were affected, I am sure.

Houston, we have a problem, EA, your patch is coming off my system.

[BigD]

Re: Visual issues after the patch?

Whatever the reason, the degradation looks to damn good to turn it off or decrease it. I highly doubt their intentions were to decrease it to improve the frame rate, as it was a thing of beauty last year. You'd think if they needed to up the FR they would experimented with it in an earlier build. Hopefully they inadvertently applied a filter and it will be resolved in fassssst!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[SECElit3]

Re: Visual issues after the patch?

Can someone point me in the direction of the patch notes.

[BigD]

Re: Visual issues after the patch?

Can someone point me in the direction of the patch notes.

http://www.pastapadre.com/2011/07/08/ncaa-football-12-first-day-patch-details

They do mention fixing the sparkle of helmets during night games. Maybe this screwed up most of the degradation?

[kt-od]

Re: Visual issues after the patch?

If indeed this is fact, I will not be downloading this patch.

[Mauler97]

Re: Visual issues after the patch?

I played with FSU last night with the patch and the gold helmets still looked good.

Your pics though, are very telling. Hopefully this is fixed asap. The stuff added with the patch are awesome so I don't want to delete it.

[bad_philanthropy]

Re: Visual issues after the patch?

I don't know that a "decrease" is necessarily what happened here. I think it could be something with the lighting layers getting messed up (probably unintentionally). I finally located some uniform wear on the white jersey, it seems like like the intensity of the lighting and how it focuses on players blasts out the dirty uniform textures. Or the opacity for dirty unis vs the opacity for the outer lightning layer is out of whack and blocking the dirty unis from being seen. It might also explain the helmet sparkling as it could be blocking out the details of the sparkling as well.

It seems like when I have a day game progress a little bit I can see some of the dirty and stains on unis in the shadowed part. It's still way more faint than it should be, especially compared to this pic one of the devs posted in the photography thread. Note how pronounced the stains are on the white material.



Pic of my RB after 23 carries. I could only see the dirt on the shady side of the player. I'm not seeing the wear on the shoulder pads of jersey in general -- which is a shame because that is one of the really prominent areas of wear on football uniforms. In general it seems like there is some issue with the white fabric and the lighting.





As for field degradation. I'm not sure if it's in. Here's a pic from the fourth quarter near mid-field, after a rush-heavy game. I'll leave it up to interpretation. I will say that any wear on the field isn't really apparent from the general gameplay camera.

[SECElit3]

Re: Visual issues after the patch?

It was in before the patch. My first game playing, I remember after the game seeing the field messed up and saying, "man that is pretty dang cool" I am wondering if these issues with the FG kicking are patch related as well.