Community Question: Genres of Choice

[FROST1]

Well, frost, you’re also missing the major point about the art assets necessary in attempting to achieve that style. These photo-realistic environment goals are necessarily either dependent on repetition of the same props or following a limited corridor. This is about the artists making the assets. It is tangential to technology and some day may be able to be circumvented more successfully than it can at present by the same (one reason the rage engine texture system is exciting). The style currently holds back the scope of ambition for other aspects of the game, such as scale or player agency to accommodate better fidelity.

Reality also consists of repetition; even though no two parts in the real world are exactly identical, billions and billions of things do look ALMOST the same. In a way that those things are visually indistinguishable from each other. New cars, paper-sheets, eggs, most of the stuff you can buy in a department store, or any store at all, blackbirds, screws. knobs, chinese people:wink: No, seriously, there’s so much repetition in this world, but in computer-games it’s just more. They don’t have to make everything look absolutely unique, they just have to reduce the amount of repetition. And I think they are doing this more and more successfully. Like they’ve done it with Rage.

[acQu]

Not a wall of text and probably been said already, but i agree with “realistic graphics are not so important”. It rather restricts you in a certain way. I liked for example a colorful Saints Row 3rd or Borderlands 2 cel-shading much more than BF3. But BF3 was also impressive in a way. However, it seems some/many people are not liking e.g. cel-shading that much.

EDIT no clue if true or representative, but i heard some bitching about it here and there, on streams, forums, etc. Would be interesting to start a new survey

[FROST1]

[QUOTE=acQu;407513]Not a wall of text and probably been said already, but i agree with “realistic graphics are not so important”. It rather restricts you in a certain way. I liked for example a colorful Saints Row 3rd or Borderlands 2 cel-shading much more than BF3. But BF3 was also impressive in a way. However, it seems some/many people are not liking e.g. cel-shading that much.

EDIT no clue if true or representative, but i heard some bitching about it here and there, on streams, forums, etc. Would be interesting to start a new survey :)[/QUOTE]

I totally love Borderlands and its style, have the GOTY* from the first part and the Vault Hunter ed. from the 2nd one. You are not alone acQu. But look at the Steam stats, they’ll tell you the same. BL 2 is still one of the 10 most played games at the moment.

*~100hrs ingame

[Chris2]

I just had quick look around my office, there isn’t much repetition here beyond 4 power sockets, 2 fluorescent bulbs (the 3rd one isnt working) and stuff my colleagues have also raided from the stationary cupboard, to create a room like the one I’m currently in would take absolutely ages, 1000s of unique assets for one single room, buildings tend to have more than one room and worlds tend to have more than one building. Though he was quite quick to dismiss photorealism ever happening it wasn’t the point of the video, he was more saying why bother? I don’t think he’s saying we shouldn’t strive for better visuals but rather aiming for photorealism seems a bit of a waste when we can do so much more interesting things with games.

@ acQu, I still remember when Zelda Wind Waker was announced… Yet years down the line it’s well regarded for it’s visuals that still hold up rather well today.

[tokamak]

Definitely.

Same for WoW. 7 years old or something, the areas that were out back then still look terrific today. And it didn´t even have the post-processing going on in Wind Waker or TF2.

I also guess that if the game industry itself lets the whole photo-realism go, that 3D card manufacturing will change as well. The performance may be still increase but there will be less need for things like tessellation and reflection and shadows and such. If you can use the resources to develop architecture for those kind of things and then instead use those resources to create cards that are better at physics and large malleable gaming worlds and what not.

More practical cards and less focus on cosmetics so to speak.

Man, gaming is really starting to look like legitimate art-form now. We’ve had the renaissence, discovered there isn’t much else beyond realism and are slowly starting to take steps towards impressionism and expressionism.

[FROST1]

[QUOTE=tokamak;407520]
Man, gaming is really starting to look like legitimate art-form now. We’ve had the renaissence, discovered there isn’t much else beyond realism and are slowly starting to take steps towards impressionism and expressionism.[/QUOTE]

Right right, but why does everybody seem to pretend one excludes the other? There are enough talented people out there to produce whatever they like most. If it’s ueber realism or 8bit top down games. It’s not like we can’t have both. And trying to force-feed the audience with exclusively “artistically ambitious” games isn’t the “right path”, neither is it chasing down the pot of photorealism at the end of the capabilities of momentary hardware.
And everybody can have his opinion or not, but one thing is just for certain, either you like it or not, the striving for photorealism will never stop, even if it TOTALLY doesn’t make sense from a gameplay standpoint. And no, again, I personally don’t need photorealism, but arguing against it is like arguing against the need for another smartphone, tablet PC, or e-book reader, etc., etc., We don’t need another smartphone every two weeks, but it just happens and it will go on happening regardless what our opinions are.

It’s a waste of time to talk about the pros and cons of something that has allready so much variety to it like computer games. You can’t even test/play them all. Look at the crazy amount of indy-games at the moment, opposed to the few AAA wich are actually striving for a photorealistic look. They are so few. And just think about it, would you like to play MW if it would have the look of Minecraft? Makes no sense right? You may argue, why do we have to play such games anyways? Well, don’t ask me I’ve never played a MW game in my entire life, but millions of people seem to have a lot of fun playing it, as well as CSGO wich is, imho, more photorealistic than it is not.

It’s not like the dev-studios of AAA games are using resources wich are desperately needed somewhere else to produce impressionistic and expressionistic and artistically ambitious games. Crytek will never produce a 2D platforming game. But one bazillion indy developers do. Isn’t that allready enough?

[montheponies]

I think physics is definitely the next area to develop on - back when Far Cry came out I was stunned with the havok engine. I remember in particular shooting the rope that held up a weight bag in one scene, and then watched it roll down the sandy beach (with a little unrealistic pistol shooting help) - that latter point sums things up, shooting a weight bag in real life wouldn’t make it roll, but in the game world it did and it was the better for it. we can’t interact with the virtual world to anything like the same extent as the real world so making one element ‘uber realistic’ will always jar and could easily make things boring from a game perspective.

Much better to be consistent and ensure the underlying game is aided by the development (be it in graphics, physics or interaction/control).

[Patriotqube]

Couldnt get myself to read all the posts tbh

I come here because i Play FPS Games so my vote is on Shooter.

Couldnt care less about all the other kind of games

[FROST1]

I think physics is definitely the next area to develop on

Yeah, that’s true. I think they haven’t cared enough for physics in the last couple years* and they are quite well behind their actual capabilities. And as much as I like Borderlands, especially the physics of liquids there are below acceptable, especially because they look so disconnected from the overall artstyle. Other effects(e.g.fire) in BL are great, but liquids…not so much.

Generally spoken, if we would measure animations and physics on the current graphic standard I’d say it would look like this:

graphics(as a measure bar)= 10/10
animations=8/10
(facial animations in particular= 6/10)
physics=5/10

Of course this could differ greately from game to game, but that is my personal, overall impression of the current priorities and results of the “medium” to AAA gaming industry.

*At least in the games I’ve played.

[tokamak]

Oh and the idea that you need huge design studios to create impressive graphics is dated as well. Hawken and Natural Selection prove otherwise.

[Album] Natural Selection 2

Natural Selection still has an air of indie cheapness but the post-processing in both games really help in hiding lower production values.

[BioSnark]

Hawken is maybe a better exception to prove the rule. Natural Selection was released 10 years ago, tomorrow.

[FROST1]

http://imgur.com/a/ZP9QV

Wow, game ( http://www.naturalselection2.com/ ) looks great, gameplay appears to be quite interesting too. How could I’ve missed that? And it’s basically coming out today, WTF!?

Thnx Tokamak for sharing.

[BioSnark]

There seems to be well over a hundred full servers already, hours before release. Very irritating. Go away, hipsters D:<

stalks back to quake wars

edit: launch trailer.

[Humate]

oh zerg in an fps!

[tangoliber]

Played a few NS2 matches last night. It’s nice seeing all the servers and new players. Every server I’ve played on has people giving advice and explaining things… It’s a good community.

Every match is fun… even losing is fun. There are a lot of different narratives that can arise naturally from the game.

[FROST1]

[QUOTE=tangoliber;407616]Played a few NS2 matches last night. It’s nice seeing all the servers and new players. Every server I’ve played on has people giving advice and explaining things… It’s a good community.

Every match is fun… even losing is fun. There are a lot of different narratives that can arise naturally from the game.[/QUOTE]

Just bought it; why even bother? There’s nothing(FPS wise) out there, that is even remotely as great* as NS 2 anyways. Can’t wait to fry some Kharaa butt.

*fresh, atmospheric, innovative,etc…

PS: Made up an NS 2 Thread in the Off Topic section(Just saying).

[StalkerDeaf]

Hi,Pc Games Call Of Duty:United Offensive Multiplayer GooD… Splash is a New Business Was? Wolfenstein:Enemy Territory, The Same as Free Download

[Ashog]

The only mp game I really play apart from FPS (I really hate TPS) is StarCraft 2, and even that seldom. FPS games are just the right **** for me that brings the most pepperonis on my ass

[tokamak]

The way you can build walls in NS2 is very interesting and is exactly the kind of stuff that would be interesting to see in an SD game. Provided that the maps have enough possible corridors (think ET not Brink) then it would be very interesting if the defending team actually had to chose where to position their (limited) barricade resources in order to cut off certain routes so they can focus on other paths instead.

Area control is the most interesting thing that shooters can adopt from other genres. W:ET featured this the most out of all SD games. ETQW had it but the different choices you could make didn’t have as much weight as in W:ET.

This dimension also adds enormous replay value to a game. A few clever maps and the ability to lock down a limited amount of paths (or make the enemy at least work very hard for them) gives more variety than having a large quantity of maps.

[shibbyuk]

Depressingly, probably stupid little Wii minigames. Such is the result of getting married!