Who has issues with Incarnate graphics?

Thanks for posting about this issue with Barrier, guys, and sorry about the late response. People who are not prone to these kinds of visual triggers occasionally have trouble recognizing them, so I have a few questions for those who are bothered by this effect.


What part of this effect is causing issues? The initial activation effect, with the giant globe? Or the smaller continuing effect that is local to each player? Both?

What specific qualities of this effect are causing issues?


I’ll be using this information to revise the effect, hopefully to the point where everyone can view it without discomfort.

As a side note, is anyone aware of any footage of the old Sonic effects, and if so, could you post it here? I have heard about them, but they were before my time, so I don’t know what the original powers looked like. I’m hoping this will help the FX team avoid similar issues in the future.

EDIT: I'm focusing on Barrier since that seems to be causing the most issues at the moment. If other effects are physically bothering you, however, please continue to list them in this thread, as well as describe what specific qualities make them troublesome.

Thankfully I don't get headaches or nausea as a result of graphics, but there's a couple of effects in the game that drive me insane and hurt my eyes. I imagine if I continued to look at them long enough, the eye strain would move to a headache.

1. Barrier - The local pulse/glowy effect for individual characters is what bothers me the most. I've never really noticed the initial power cast, so that seems to be fine (for me at least), but the individual effect really bothers my eyes. So much that I'm usually thinking, "I hope this power goes away soon."

2. The Hamidon temp power from the LGTF - Holy cow, this power REALLY hurts my eyes. I have to look away from my screen every few minutes when I get hit with it on a TF. My thought process is generally, "Hit Hammy, please don't pick me for the power. Hit Hammy, please don't pick me for the power."

The entire graphical appearance of the temp power is an issue for me. It's bright. It's pulsey. It's glowy. It's really hard to even LOOK at the screen when my character is shining like a psychotic ball of pink lightning.

The pulse effect in Willpower also bothered me, but the minimal graphics option resolved the issue in my particular case. Generally speaking though, the powers that have strong, repetitive pulses on my specific character will be what affects me the most.

Thanks for listening!

I couldn't *find* video of the old Sonic graphics, unfortunately, when I started this. It's basically barely visible greyish rings - the problem (from memory) with this was the flicker of it being *barely* visible... enough to stimulate, though.

Some people were affected only by rings on their character, others were affected by the power being pretty much anywhere - some of it is left over in the Nullifier's sonic grenades, but you can move around and away from that.

... and there's apparently no issue 5 trailer.

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Thanks, Tunnel Rat, for checking in. As Bloodspeaker's computer is out of commission at the moment, here's his opinion via me:

Please take note that Barrier looks different to people with different graphics settings.

Not kidding.

I PMed a list to Zwillinger a little while ago, but here it is again, with a bit more detail. The following powers trigger migraines for me, even with brief exposure.

The large bubble from Sonic Resonance (Sonic Dispersion)
The basic resist toggle in Electric Armor (Charged Armor)
The -recovery toggle in Electric Control (Conductive Aura)
The Psi Mastery armor (Mind Over Body)

Playing with the colors on the customizable ones did not produce any lessening of the migraine trigger in those powers. Blazing Aura, however, only produces a migraine in me if the colors are bright.

It seems to be pulsing that causes problems.

Not noticed the issues with the incarnate stuff, but several issues with the electric powersets.

I always play with suppressclosefx active, and if you turn on all the electric armor powers, you'll find that not all of them actually disappear, and the effect causes me to only be able to use them in dark colors.

Static field - the lingering pulsing effect causes one member of our SG not to be able to team with anybody with this power as it triggers his migraines and epilepsy. This player also has issues with electric armor powers on other people, which are mitigated slightly by them being in dark colors unless the floor color is light.

Blue caves, blue caves, blue caves. I have a bit of color blindness and those caves are nightmares to move around in.

I have Asperger's Syndrome, which often comes with increased sensitivity to certain lights and sounds. I haven't experienced any seizures from the visual FX, but many of them have bothered me in some way.

Many of the sound FX, though, DO ride the threshold of pain for me.

I mentioned in another thread in Suggestions that all of the high-pitched whistles, shrieks, screams, and rings need to be toned down or removed. I still stand by that sentiment. I refuse to take Gravity or Sonic powers because of this, and Peacebringers are walking/flying migraines.

I love playing my peacebringer, but as stated above the whine that follows most of the powers is simple anoying as heck.

I pm'ed several devs many times back in the day when kheldians came out, but never got a reply.

Whirlwind from the Speed Power Pool is too annoying to consider ever trying the power to even find out if it's useful.

As several have already mentioned all the Speed pool powers could use an f/x revisit.

Tunnel Rat - I know it'll take programmer time, but if you could convince the uppers to let them code in a options tab where the game can sub alternate effects for common problem powers? Such as one checkbox for Peacebringer sounds, one for the Barrier powers vFx, etc?

Seems like something that, other than requiring a restart, would not take too much just because the game is already set to prefer the uncompressed /data/ folder if present.

If you're looking for live versions of the 'old' sonic graphics, just check out those -res grenades that longbow nullifiers throw over what, level 40? Those never got updated when they changed out the sonic graphics, and they STILL give me fits.

Edit: Heh, saw someone mentioned this already. Disregard.

You know, after reading this thread a light came on for me. Recently I have been getting headaches while playing and attributed it to other things, not of the migraine intensity, just annoying. And I do know it is when I am doing trials, usually several in a row.

I wouldn't even know where to begin trying to isolate exactly which of the new graphics could be causing since in the trials there are powers going off everywhere.

I've also recently been turning my world detail, character detail and particle count down to minimum when running trails lately. The reason for this is that it reduces lag for me, because I still see significant lag (I also do this on MSRs and such). And the second reason is so that I can see what in blazes is going on. With all the flashy shields and bubbles and powers firing I can't see anything at all. anyway, the point about turning down these setting is that since I've been doing it, I've been getting fewer headaches while playing. They haven't stopped, just reduced.

So now I'll make note of when it happens and if I recall something in particular that may be causing it. How would one go about isolating something like this..... hey, you have barrier, mind firing firing it over and over again while I watch so I can see if it gives me a headache?

How can you expect ppl not to reply with the thoughts that they want when, you are asking for changes that only effect a small playerbase? The animations are fine for me and most of the game populous (as i have not been in a team with someone complaining about this i take it as a very small minority). I really hope they don't change this for the reasons you stated i did not pay for high quality graphics card and monitor to have toned down graphics.

This post is merely showing my PoV it is not designed to be inflamatory or degrading to anyone

Only incarnate fx I have problem with is pyronic. I run the game on laptop, because I travel a lot, but I run the game on 1680x1050 with x8 AA (mobility video card) and ultra settings set to high and the game runs smoothly. I may get less FPS on CoV outdoor maps, but it's hardly something that would bother me or something my eye can notice, overall the game runs very well. I get some fps drops when there's a lot of AOE and FX on BAF, but even on small team pyronic always drops my fps drasticly for few seconds.