RuneScape High Detail






 * All images in this article were taken directly from the the RuneScape website, and remain the sole property of Jagex.

The July 2008 graphical update is a major overhaul of RuneScape's graphics, scheduled for release in early July. The exact release date is currently unknown, but players have speculated that it will be released on 6 or 13 July. Jagex has been working on this update for about a year and a half, and includes major changes to textures, shadows, and lighting in the game world. As the graphics are more intensive on computer hardware than the current game, they will be fully optional, presented as a detail mode similar to the existing high and low detail modes. This keeps in line with Jagex's traditional targeting of users with older, low-end systems.

Unlike the transition from RuneScape Classic to RuneScape 2, there are no significant changes to game mechanics or the game engine coming along with this update. Therefore, this update cannot be truly called "RuneScape 3", and Jagex has not referred to it as such.

Graphics comparison
Jagex published two similar images. They show a contrast between the graphics detail now, and what it will look like in the near future. The images were similar in the fact that they were taken by the same player in the same location, but in different detail modes.

In the past few weeks, more images were posted that showed more and more improvement of image quality. An example is the water. The original water was just land, but only coloured differently, as if someone painted a blue road. There was no separation between land and water. One of the images showed that the water was of much improved graphical quality. To achieve this, an extra "floor layer" was required, because the water actually features a bottom.

Full-screen mode
With this graphical quality enhancement, Jagex has stated that there would come another update that many people would desire: full-screen mode. This will replace the current system, whereby the playing area is of a fixed number of pixels, and can appear rather too small at higher screen resolutions.

When playing in full-screen mode, the number of pixels will increase so that the image quality would not decrease and suffer from pixellation.

System requirements
Just two days before the initial announcement of the updates, on the 6 June 2008, Jagex issued the "Send us your Specs!" update to obtain information on hardware specifications of the RuneScape players. This information may have affected the new update in a minor way; it has been a year in development, so it must have been almost complete by the time Jagex collected the data. However, it will certainly be useful for planning future updates.

In the Development Diary and System Specifications of the 16 June 2008, Jagex stated that the system requirements to be able to play in the new detail mode are as follows :


 * 1.5 gigahertz processor or higher
 * 256 megabytes of RAM or more
 * 64-megabyte 3D Graphics card, such as Nvidia® GeForce™ 3 or above

Jagex also recommends that users' computers should exceed the system requirements so that unwanted issues don't arise during gameplay. They also recommend that users have the latest drivers installed for their graphics card.