Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: MR_T3D on September 28, 2009, 12:46:37 pm
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Personally, i think that advances in the graphics in games is no longer that worthwhile, since about 2005, specificially the games battlefield 2 and the source engine.
HOWEVER I SHOULD STATE THIS NOW: BF2 could use a bit longer distance in its LoD's, both model and geometry, but view distance on 4km maps is good enough, could use more physics-based obojects, and source engine also looks good when properly utilized.
PC games today such as ArMA2 and Crysis look awsome, no doubt, but they aren't that much more awsome, espicially on medium-low hardware, medium setting, when compared to those gammes in full res, full AA,, high setting. Its just that the bump-mapping but slightly lower res diffuse texture. doesn't seem to jive with me, and is the main reason why i prefer the look of America's army 2.X..X to AA3, in fact, i don't really like the look of most all of the games using unreal3, even Gears of War on consoles :doubt: .
now of course, FSU looks awsome, espicially some of the bump-mapped ships, but space-based game's visual quality is largly in the talent of the modelers, while the more 'earthly' mainstream games have to deal with enviroments, which i am sure consume a few resources :rolleyes:
As far as i am concerned, there is something to be said about a game with full-resolution textures, nice models which, yes, sometimes use hexagons for minigun barrels, but with spec mapping that hides it, as opposed to full-dynamic-lit 12-sided barrels, and yes, are not rendering a million tri's at a time.
am i crazy in thinking this, or do other agree with me?
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I agree that game graphics have largely peaked by now, but not with the games you brought up. Crysis graphics are in fact that much more awesome. :p The BF2 engine and Source were pretty average even for their time.
In any case, I don't expect to see any graphical improvements beyond Crysis until 2012 or whenever the next generation of consoles comes out. The consoles drive all game development these days and we have reached the limits of what the 360 and PS3 can do.
You're right that large textures generally make a bigger difference to graphical quality than detailed models, and they are something we don't see much of these days because the consoles can't handle them. The best textures I've seen actually come in mods for various games. There are large 2048x2048 texture packs for UT and Deus Ex, where you can really see the difference. Fallout 3 also has similar content mods, although I couldn't get those working properly.
Most of the UE3 games do have crappy textures, although UT3 is an exception and has much better ones.
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yes crysis is beter, no doubts, but i justy believe that with the games i listed that they are goood enough.
I'm on a BOAT
AND yes, i agree, we won't see anything much better until next console generation.
AND yeah, it seems real stupid if you look at the memory in the 360 and ps3 in their manuals.
AND yeah, those texture packs look great.
i dunno, i played UT3 during its 1st free steam weekend, and the textures were alright, but not great.
even browsing some high-res screenies on the web, from systems with better g-cards than my 8600, i see that the textures ARE high res, good quality, it seems more like a lighting issue that i simply don't like.
i'd personally rather see developers work on stuff like destructible enviroments and larger scale combat than bump-mapping and dynamicially-lighting everything and their mum.
espicially bullet marks, those are always nice to see.
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Honestly, good enough is relative to the player.
While games like Crysis look good, they have a defect that on certain objects and scenery, the textures and models aren't as good as they could be. Games could benefit a great deal if they could get all those visuals on a consistent package, rather than gorgeous animated characters with shading and dynamic lighting and shadows in their teeth and trees that look like... things that slightly resemble trees with hideous textures.
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I play Dwarf Fortress, what are graphics? ;)
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Art design is more important than graphics.
I've been playing through Halo 3 ODST and while it's nowhere near as technically proficient as Crysis, its neon-and-rain cityscapes (rendered in gorgeous outline, almost like cel-shading, with night vision active) are really striking.
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I just finished playing Dead Space, awesome game... really spooky, the graphics are quite good, specially the "bloody" parts on the walls and all that stuff ^^
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I play Dwarf Fortress, what are graphics? ;)
You know, those, little colorful things, hopping around the place on your screen? Those are the grandfathers of graphics. :p
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Art design is more important than graphics.
I've been playing through Halo 3 ODST and while it's nowhere near as technically proficient as Crysis, its neon-and-rain cityscapes (rendered in gorgeous outline, almost like cel-shading, with night vision active) are really striking.
yes. that game shows how nice the H3 engine is. looks nice and clean, sublte bump-maps and the lighing in ODST is AWSOME.
my only beef with it is the weapon/blood marks on stuff only really appear on geometry, and not in spitscreen.
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i'd personally rather see developers work on stuff like destructible enviroments and larger scale combat than bump-mapping and dynamicially-lighting everything and their mum.
Red Faction: Guerilla has destructible buildings, although it apparently doesn't let you actually modify terrain like the old RF games did.
As far as graphical features go, I would like to see more games with large crowds. That was my favorite aspect of Assassin's Creed and made the game very immersive.
While games like Crysis look good, they have a defect that on certain objects and scenery, the textures and models aren't as good as they could be. Games could benefit a great deal if they could get all those visuals on a consistent package, rather than gorgeous animated characters with shading and dynamic lighting and shadows in their teeth and trees that look like... things that slightly resemble trees with hideous textures.
I think the trees are fine, but you're right that some things in Crysis do look strikingly bad compared to everything else. The rock cliffs and the interiors of the Korean encampments (improved in Warhead) come to mind, and the water is a little underwhelming as well.
yes. that game shows how nice the H3 engine is. looks nice and clean, sublte bump-maps and the lighing in ODST is AWSOME.
my only beef with it is the weapon/blood marks on stuff only really appear on geometry, and not in spitscreen.
I looked up some screenshots of this and can't see much there at all. In any case, Battuta was referring to the level artwork, as the engine itself looks quite outdated.
I think the best level artwork and concepts I've seen are in the UT2004 and UT3 maps, both official and fanmade ones. UT3's original maps were less impressive, but some of the newer and custom ones are very good. They are loaded with details and many of them have a strange, surreal look that I especially like. They actually try to be creative instead of just emulating reality like most games. It's kind of wasted in these games though since you aren't going to notice anything in the maps while actually playing. :p
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I gotta argue with the assertion that the Halo 3 engine is outdated. It produces crisp, beautiful visuals on the basis of excellent art design (in levels, skyboxes, characters, and weapons.) Crysis is more technically proficient, but Halo is more striking. 'Clean' is the best way to describe it. Solid, coherent, confident, bold. And smooth!
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I'm going to have to agree with Battuta here. For all its hype, the CryTek engine offers shockingly little for its system requirements. The H3 engine does more with what it's given.
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I guess I can't argue with 'outdated' in that it's now aging, but it's never looked anything but extraordinarily handsome to me.
It's sort of a grand ol' dame of engines. It may be old, it may not have the new hawtness, but it just has class and grace and polish.
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I don't know why you guys like Halo 3's graphics so much. The Halo games have never been known for their graphics, and even on the consoles there are better looking games around.
You are also confusing the engine itself with the level artwork. The engine has hardly anything going for it today, even if the levels might be well designed. In fact, I believe it has a hardcoded 30fps cap, which already makes it garbage in my book. :p
I'm going to have to agree with Battuta here. For all its hype, the CryTek engine offers shockingly little for its system requirements. The H3 engine does more with what it's given.
Crysis does have somewhat inconsistent graphics, but at its best it's streets ahead of anything else out there. If you take the engine performance into account, UT3 is the main example that comes to mind. It can look great and run well on fairly moderate hardware. The original Far Cry is also worth mentioning, as it still looks remarkably good for such an old game. It has aged a lot better than other games from that era, and the engine was capable of much more, as seen in the Delta Sector mod for it.
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I still can't help but feel that the CryTek engine - and games developed on it - are largely a yard-stick for graphics and they're successful precisely because they target the high end modding crowd who want to prove a point about the power of their computer systems.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Crysis and Warhead but there's till a feel of "Here's what happens when we stop caring about getting things to run on everyones computers and simply make something as hardcore as we can. Looks good doesn't it? But you can't run it, ha ha."
So Crysis may be capable of the best visuals on the market to date, but it isn't refined into a solid / reliable / suitable-for-all engine as perhaps the H3 / Source / UT engines are. It's still damn pretty though, and if nothing else it's a good thing for companies to aspire to because...
...on a closing note, it has color in it! All those game engines out there with some sort of curious brown shader (Gears of War / GTA4 / etc.) can look nice but really they needn't have this artistic filter and in some ways that's a cop-out for making some actually interesting textures etc. Crysis achieves this and can still throw all the colors of a tropical island at you. That's the ace up its sleeve for me.
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I don't know why you guys like Halo 3's graphics so much. The Halo games have never been known for their graphics, and even on the consoles there are better looking games around.
You are also confusing the engine itself with the level artwork. The engine has hardly anything going for it today, even if the levels might be well designed. In fact, I believe it has a hardcoded 30fps cap, which already makes it garbage in my book. :p
It has color and beautiful lighting. It looks great, and it makes me go 'whoa!' more than any other engine. For better or worse, my criteria aren't much deeper than that.
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I don't know why you guys like Halo 3's graphics so much. The Halo games have never been known for their graphics, and even on the consoles there are better looking games around.
You are also confusing the engine itself with the level artwork. The engine has hardly anything going for it today, even if the levels might be well designed. In fact, I believe it has a hardcoded 30fps cap, which already makes it garbage in my book. :p
It has color and beautiful lighting. It looks great, and it makes me go 'whoa!' more than any other engine. For better or worse, my criteria aren't much deeper than that.
amen!
i think the point here is that we achieved a stage around 05 where deveolping better graphivces simply isn't as nice looking as good art. and yes, crow would be just as nice as destructible enviroments, and RF:C IS a good looking game in my opinion, but i ws generallyu discounting consoles in my OP, it WAS focoused on the PC, but ahh, well.
and now its time for 2h class and 3h lab this afternoon./ fun.
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I grow weary of the constant attempt to be "more realistic" in video game graphics. I prefer simpler, stylized graphics. Not necessarily cartoony, but a graphical style and the engine underneath it should support the game mechanics and the story being told, not the other way around. Hence Warcraft's popularity.
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sometimes "realism" gets in the way of balanced playability
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Here's the kind of thing I was thinking of with regards to H3:
clicky (http://nikon.bungie.org/images/coastalhighway.jpg)
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I still can't help but feel that the CryTek engine - and games developed on it - are largely a yard-stick for graphics and they're successful precisely because they target the high end modding crowd who want to prove a point about the power of their computer systems.
What struck me about Crysis and Warhead was that the graphics degraded abominably as the settings were lowered. Crysis on medium settings looks horrible, worse than most games do on their lowest. (This is probably where Battuta's comment about the crappy plantlife comes from, as Crysis plantlife is incredibly crappy on medium settings, looking about as realistic as if were made of Erector Sets.)
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I made a comment about crappy plantlife?
Crysis really can be astoundingly gorgeous. The interior of the alien ship, the huge mountain trembling before you. And it's beautifully colorful - one of my favorite contemporary engines. But it's full of strangely plastic characters with odd animation and art design that never quite inspires.
Now, as CP5670 rightly points out, this is art design, not engine design. But...I don't know. There's something about Crysis' characters that says they don't really cooperate with the engine. Whereas something like Halo (or Nexus - another old engine that still looks great) just seems full of objects with weight, objects that fit into the world but catch the eye.
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Here's the kind of thing I was thinking of with regards to H3:
clicky (http://nikon.bungie.org/images/coastalhighway.jpg)
That actually looks fairly good, better than what I was seeing on Google. However, it cannot be an actual ingame shot given the resolution. The ground also seems to be sand but has an odd, glossy look to it.
Actually, I looked into the engine itself a bit and it has to be one of the crappiest engines in use right now. :p It's not only locked at 30fps, but it also upscales everything from some lower resolution, has no AA capability and does not do trilinear filtering (which became standard in games about 10 years ago). It's a good thing there are no other games using this engine.
What struck me about Crysis and Warhead was that the graphics degraded abominably as the settings were lowered. Crysis on medium settings looks horrible, worse than most games do on their lowest. (This is probably where Battuta's comment about the crappy plantlife comes from, as Crysis plantlife is incredibly crappy on medium settings, looking about as realistic as if were made of Erector Sets.)
This is true to some extent. Crysis doesn't scale well at all and needs to be played at least at "high" settings to see the game like it's supposed to look. On the other hand, the difference between high and very high is fairly small.
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sometimes "realism" gets in the way of balanced playability
Although I agree that this is true "sometimes", I have been too-often annoyed by people who seem to think that doing something realistically (most often that means "Newtonian" for space combat) is inherently bad.
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Here's the kind of thing I was thinking of with regards to H3:
clicky (http://nikon.bungie.org/images/coastalhighway.jpg)
That actually looks fairly good, better than what I was seeing on Google. However, it cannot be an actual ingame shot given the resolution. The ground also seems to be sand but has an odd, glossy look to it.
I think it's a panorama composited of screenshots, thus the resolution.
Actually, I looked into the engine itself a bit and it has to be one of the crappiest engines in use right now. :p It's not only locked at 30fps, but it also upscales everything from some lower resolution, has no AA capability and does not do trilinear filtering (which became standard in games about 10 years ago). It's a good thing there are no other games using this engine.
And...yet...it looks fabulous. Artistic and beautiful. So...? (Not to mention that the upscaling thing is what allows it to have such beautiful lighting.)
I strongly suggest actually playing both the games you're comparing, mind. I've played and loved both Crisis and H3 intently.
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I made a comment about crappy plantlife?
I'm probably confused. Someone was ragging on the trees.
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And...yet...it looks fabulous. Artistic and beautiful. So...? (Not to mention that the upscaling thing is what allows it to have such beautiful lighting.)
I strongly suggest actually playing both the games you're comparing, mind. I've played and loved both Crisis and H3 intently.
I still haven't seen much evidence of that. The screenshot you posted is reasonably good, but it's certainly nothing beyond or even equal to what the best looking PC games right now offer.
I don't have the game (or a 360 for that matter), but my brother has it. I'll check it out at some point when I visit him, although he tells me that the graphics are mediocre. :p
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I've said, time and again, that they are technically mediocre, but they look great. It's mostly up to the excellent art design and animation.
This is not a PC vs Xbox thing. I have a top-of-the-line PC. I thought Mass Effect looked better on Xbox, but that's not really fair given that it's a port. I thought Halo 3 looked far better than ArmA 2. I thought Halo 3 was as good to look at as Crysis because it offered more and it was aesthetically coherent (though Crysis was knock-down gorgeous when it got its act together.)
Prince of Persia was also on that level.
YMMV, of course, but...I don't know. Things like Battlefield 1943 are far more modern and yet look repulsive. Gears of War 2 and Killzone 2 as well.
I have to take a moment to spit on the Frostbite engine. I hated Bad Company and so far as I can tell Battlefield 1943 is just as bad.
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I've said, time and again, that they are technically mediocre, but they look great. It's mostly up to the excellent art design and animation.
Well, what I see so far indicates that the game doesn't actually look so great, in artwork or any other sense. It's good, but not spectacular. And to be honest, I don't think it can look great during actual gameplay due to the limitations of the engine. The 30fps cap would get on my nerves even if everything else had been perfect.
As I mentioned before, I think the best and most varied level artwork appears in the UT games, surpassing Crysis in that respect. Those are pretty much my gold standards to compare to.
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:doubt:
You're free to disagree that it's beautiful, you're even free to disagree with the art design and color palette, but please, don't tell me that my perceptions can't possibly be correct because of something as silly as an FPS cap.
If I sit down and look at the game - take the gorgeous skybox around the destroyed ONI Alpha Site in ODST, or a cruiser overhead - and say 'wow, that's really beautiful', then it's beautiful. Not beautiful because I'm uneducated regarding framerates or upscaling or whatever. It's just beautiful.
And the scale of the vistas portrayed is truly awesome. Sometimes Crysis-level, though no doubt with more trickery.
I don't mind approaching it from the technical side, but that's rather missing the point. I imagine you'd critique the Nexus engine on much the same grounds and yet it still looks superb.
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The 30fps cap would get on my nerves even if everything else had been perfect.
Considering I found said cap undetectable, and it's been news to everyone else I've consulted, I think you're talking out of your rear about the cap even mattering.
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If the issue is that it can't look great to you because you're ultrasensitive to technical details like torn frames and whatnot, that's fine. But dictating that it can't look great to anyone who is not an ignoramus seems kind of high-handed.
People can be fully aware of the engines' technical specifications and still view it as an excellent engine. I thought Half-Life looked better than Half-Life 2 in a lot of ways. And MechCommander was infinitely more gorgeous than MC2.
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:doubt:
You're free to disagree that it's beautiful, you're even free to disagree with the art design and color palette, but please, don't tell me that my perceptions can't possibly be correct because of something as silly as an FPS cap.
If I sit down and look at the game - take the gorgeous skybox around the destroyed ONI Alpha Site in ODST - and say 'wow, that's really beautiful', then it's beautiful. Not beautiful because I'm uneducated regarding framerates or upscaling or whatever. It's just beautiful.
You're entitled to your opinion, of course. Although we can't really have a meaningful forum discussion about it if you cannot elaborate further on what exactly is beautiful about them. :p I can give you specific reasons why I think they are not so great.
Seriously though, an FPS cap that low would be a deal breaker for me in any first-person game, especially when the engine is obviously capable of much more. The motion quality just suffers too much. I recently got the Incoming games from GoG, which I had played in the past and liked. However, they both have a 30fps cap and it looked almost nauseating for a while. I can remove the cap like I did in the past, but the game speed is dependent on the framerate and they run way too fast at 85-100fps on modern computers, so there is no option but to play at 30fps.
Considering I found said cap undetectable, and it's been news to everyone else I've consulted, I think you're talking out of your rear about the cap even mattering.
A google search on it brings up numerous articles and forum threads about it. It's apparently a well known issue.
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can give you specific reasons why I think they are not so great.
You can give specific technical reasons why you feel the engine is bad...all of which have been thoroughly laid out and explained by the developer as intentional choices. I like the engine because of what that 30 FPS cap and upscaled resolution allow it to do.
You may value different attributes in an engine than I do, but simple FPS counts have meant very little for a long time, especially when Crysis (for example) can comfortably be played at 20 FPS due to its excellent use of motion blur. What matters is the end product. The Halo engine may look pretty grainy if you zoom in and pick at every non-aliased edge, but when you're in the flow of the moment, or when you pause to examine a gorgeous vista, it holds up and even excels.
All this while tackling environments and tasks pretty impressive in their size and ambition.
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People can be fully aware of the engines' technical specifications and still view it as an excellent engine. I thought Half-Life looked better than Half-Life 2 in a lot of ways.
I've never actually played the original Half-Life myself, but I'm calling your bluff on this one. Those faces...my God, those faces (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HalfLife_GMan.jpg). :p
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But it's an uncanny valley thing. When everything is uniformly meh, it comes together in a cohesive way that never disrupts your immersion. You accept the world on its own (slightly crappy) terms.
When it's a great engine with some noticeable failings, on the other hand...'oh, look, a graphical glitch! Oh, look, that texture is horribly low res! Man, that door is just a texture!'
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You may value different attributes in an engine than I do, but simple FPS counts have meant very little for a long time, especially when Crysis (for example) can comfortably be played at 20 FPS due to its excellent use of motion blur. What matters is the end product.
Sure, but motion quality is an important component of the graphics too. I think the end product suffers a lot if the motion does not resemble movement in real life. For the record, Crysis looks as bad as any other game to me at low framerates. I played it at fairly low resolutions to at least get consistent 40fps minimums, especially towards the end of the game.
But it's an uncanny valley thing. When everything is uniformly meh, it comes together in a cohesive way that never disrupts your immersion. You accept the world on its own (slightly crappy) terms.
When it's a great engine with some noticeable failings, on the other hand...'oh, look, a graphical glitch! Oh, look, that texture is horribly low res! Man, that door is just a texture!'
I can kind of see where you're coming from. This is an issue in FS2 as well. The original ship models look a lot worse than they used to, when you have all the new high-poly models as a basis for comparison. :p
On a different note, I found some old screenshots I had uploaded of that Delta Sector mod for Far Cry, which you guys might find interesting. It is quite impressive what that 2004 engine was capable of.
DS0001 (http://home.comcast.net/~cp5670/DS0001.jpg) DS0002 (http://home.comcast.net/~cp5670/DS0002.jpg) DS0003 (http://home.comcast.net/~cp5670/DS0003.jpg) DS0004 (http://home.comcast.net/~cp5670/DS0004.jpg) DS0005 (http://home.comcast.net/~cp5670/DS0005.jpg) DS0006 (http://home.comcast.net/~cp5670/DS0006.jpg)
Similarly, I think the Crysis engine is capable of much more than what the game itself does. These images (rendered in the engine) give some indication of what we may see in the future, even if they are beyond the range of current hardware to do in real-time.
blade_runner1.jpg (http://hardcoregaming.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/blade_runner1.jpg)
blade_runner2.jpg (http://hardcoregaming.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/blade_runner2.jpg)
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I'll be honest, those BR screens looked a lot more like the UT3 engine than the crytek.
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But it's an uncanny valley thing. When everything is uniformly meh, it comes together in a cohesive way that never disrupts your immersion. You accept the world on its own (slightly crappy) terms.
When it's a great engine with some noticeable failings, on the other hand...'oh, look, a graphical glitch! Oh, look, that texture is horribly low res! Man, that door is just a texture!'
See, I think I'm simply capable of overlooking little flaws like door-that's-a-texture, provided the experience as a whole provides me with some eye-candy graphical moments and vistas (and you can't deny that HL2, and especially the episodes, have some really stunning environments along the way). I just don't find that they yank me out of the experience at all. Along the same lines, I think I've found that the hi-poly MediaVP models have actually lent me a greater appreciation toward a few of the nicer-looking retail models, though others definitely do stick out like sore thumbs. In comparison, when you go back and play something from the N64/PS1 era (or the comparable PC games of the time), especially something involving human characters, the combination of those blurry lo-res textures and blocky models just lends itself to a visually drab appearance. You look at something like Ocarina of Time, or Goldeneye, or Final Fantasy VII, and they really don't hold up visually (though from my experience, OoT still managed to have a few environmental thrills); even though the graphics may be cohesive in technical level, that cohesiveness just makes everything seem somewhat bleh. Those screenshots of the original Half-Life engender the same sort of response in me, whereas in HL2, I was more along the lines of, "Ooh, look at that sunset! Those Striders look awesome! Check out Alyx's facial expressions!" while ignoring the occasional blurry textures.
(Interestingly enough, I feel like the SNES/Genesis era has this problem greatly reduced vs. the PS1/N64 generation, since the former represented somewhat of a zenith for 2D graphics, as opposed to the latter's first simple forays into the 3D realm.)
On a related note, I don't really know anything about the realm of game engines as a whole, but based on the hardware I have, I was amazed that the Source Engine managed to perform as well as it did on a low-end box and still give me a decent amount of graphical oomph. I've heard that Valve takes some care to keep things very scalable, and it definitely worked for me. Even with my 64MB Radeon X300 card, I was able to get some nice pop out of Portal and HL2 Episode 2...not HDR or anything, since those would have slowed me to an absolute crawl, but some pretty awesome normal map shadowing and the like.
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I say that you are all completely wrong, because the true power of graphics has yet to be unleashed.
Either that, or I'm out of a job, so f*ck you guys.
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I'm sorry if things aren't going well for you blackhole.
I'll say it again. Technical capabilities aside, and certain devs take fire for this, the modern marketplace in the frontline of interactive entertainment is to make they're universes as dark and dramatic as possible. This is bad from multiple standpoints, but firstly and foremost among them is that they all begin to look the same.
It all becomes a case of "Oh look! Yet another emotionally tortured anti-hero in armor that I can't see cause it's too dark and gritty!" I'm not saying I want the Gears series or "Doom" to turn into "Hello Kitty Island Adventure!" But I find them less interesting because my eyes are doing what everyone's eyes are and I can't see them as well as I used to.
That's one of the reasons I enjoy Warcraft so much, the world is dark and has dramatic things going on it, but the world itself is colorful and engaging, not Burned Out Cityscape #63 or Industrial Corridor #10 or something, you can tell the most dramatic, epic story in the world with Ocean Group VA's and Hollywood "A" Listers, but if the graphics and visuals don't act in support of this story by engaging the eye of the player it'll all be for nought. Best example I can think of outside of Warcraft is Beyond Good and Evil, that was a dark, dangerous place without being dark and depressing, the world is vividly colored if not bright and some of the design work lends itself to and reinforces the oppressive atmosphere in the narrative. Also, if there's nothing left for me to save, why am I playing the game in the first place? If the world ended and we're still fighting, it's just a grudge match at that point, and while grudge matches are fun, I don't wanna spend $40 and 20+ hours of my life getting to the conclusion in burned out cinder after dark, dank cave after abandoned apartment building.
In summary:
Do I think game engine technology has reached it's zenith? It's close, there's only so much you can simulate on an inherently 2D surface. I do think that they'll continue to become more efficient and that eventually we'll be able to have photo-realistic characters rendered real-time.
Do I think that the designers are utilizing this power? I'm ambivalent, certainly they are utilizing the full technological power they are given, but overall the quality of storytelling, graphically at least, has declined in the current generation of game makers.
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I'll be honest, those BR screens looked a lot more like the UT3 engine than the crytek.
yeah, i think thats because the amazingness of cryengines is their foliage, and real time editing, thier urban enviroments are just good, looking at HD footage of cryengine3 in urban setting reminded me a lot of inFAMOUS visually.
ALSO: i'm just going to say i liked BF:BC's graphics, its a war-based game and it has a nice bit of 'dirt' to the look, i know someone :nervous: didn't, but i will agree with 1943, that game just doesn't look nice.
An intersting perspective, liberator, not going to disagree, but you kindof slide off topic into story, as opposed to visuals/graphics.
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that cant be ingame
consoles cant do 3,130 x 1,848 pixels
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that cant be ingame
consoles cant do 3,130 x 1,848 pixels
If you are talking about
clicky (http://nikon.bungie.org/images/coastalhighway.jpg)
Then......
I think it's a panorama composited of screenshots, thus the resolution.
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And even then, there is clearly room for improvement.
You know, like waves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_surface_wave).
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Water waves? I thought that stuff was sand or dirt. :p
The best water effects I've seen are probably in Bioshock and Red Alert 3.
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I have no idea what that surface is to be honest. It looks like the skin of an orange to me.
Regardless, the waves apply to sand as well.
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I'll say it again. Technical capabilities aside, and certain devs take fire for this, the modern marketplace in the frontline of interactive entertainment is to make they're universes as dark and dramatic as possible. This is bad from multiple standpoints, but firstly and foremost among them is that they all begin to look the same.
Also, and this is pretty specific--I'm looking at you, Killzone--if you want me to take your game for serious, then space Nazis probably aren't the way to go. And if you do go with space Nazis, don't call them Helgast, for chrissakes (they're, like, ghastly! And from hell! Hellghastly! It's great!).
And the universe aside, wtf kind of aerial assault craft is this:
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3441/3267132604_cf6b21914d.jpg)
I would rather be in a flying Higgins Boat. And it doesn't even look cool.
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Graphics, eh?
I admit that current rendering engines are probably quite good rendering visually beautiful environments. The problem is the art design that I find to be more and more unimaginative, or that such beautiful graphics are wasted on a mediocre game. But what do I know, haven't been able to run new games on this box. Though that might change with octacore...
It is a little bit sad that 2002-era games seem a lot more interesting than current ones with better graphics engines. KOTOR 1 (and KOTOR 2 for lesser extend) has lots of visually interesting locations, and I will probably remember some of that art for a long time. Prince of Persia Sands of Time (and Two Thrones) is still beautiful and offers some interesting views about climbing up a 1 km tall tower, something few people would ever try to do. Tomb Raiders offer lots of visually interesting environments (if the gamer can get his eyes off Lara).
Though Fallout 3 seems interesting in different ways (especially the ruined environments and the general feeling of **** has really hit the fan), I don't like the color tones or animations where characters seem to float rather than run. Mirror's Edge seemed visually interesting, but then the game part seems to be neglected. Some of the screenshots from Duke Nukem Forever seemed more vivid to me because the developers weren't afraid of using colors. The art department of Half-Life 2 deserves a special mention of creating such interesting models (is that organic or a machine?) and colorful world.
In the end it turns out that graphics are part of the gaming experience, and should suit the overall mood of it. Detailed stuff in a fast paced game is questionable, as the gamer doesn't have that much time to wonder about it. Then again bland environments in a adventure game is also bad.
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:doubt:
You're free to disagree that it's beautiful, you're even free to disagree with the art design and color palette, but please, don't tell me that my perceptions can't possibly be correct because of something as silly as an FPS cap.
If I sit down and look at the game - take the gorgeous skybox around the destroyed ONI Alpha Site in ODST, or a cruiser overhead - and say 'wow, that's really beautiful', then it's beautiful. Not beautiful because I'm uneducated regarding framerates or upscaling or whatever. It's just beautiful.
And the scale of the vistas portrayed is truly awesome. Sometimes Crysis-level, though no doubt with more trickery.
I don't mind approaching it from the technical side, but that's rather missing the point. I imagine you'd critique the Nexus engine on much the same grounds and yet it still looks superb.
:rolleyes:
Well..if that's your only criteria.
Infintiy engine is the best engine evar then. I still play BG2 and I find it better looking and more beautifull than H3.
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People are too hung up on 3D. Bring back the sprites!
Check out this artist's blog and some of his new art for old games: http://diglett.blogspot.com/ (http://diglett.blogspot.com/)
I would love to play an X-com style game with higher resolution sprites. Not this lifeless 3d thing that permeates everywhere.
Of course it won't work for all games, not something like FPSes for example. But a lot of games would do well to borrow the techniques of the past.
And I disagree about all games trying to look dark. What about Halo? Bright colours everywhere as Yahtzee remarked. Most games try to look dark, have atmosphere, etcetera, but . . . well whatever. Atmosphere is more than graphics. Atmosphere is music, gameplay, sounds, etcetera. I only played Thief 1+2 about a half year ago, or a bit more. And that was the most atmospheric thing I've played. I don't care if the guards were low poly. It doesn't matter.
People need to realise that games are about immersion. Not about graphics. And you don't need the best graphics for the best immersion. If people want great graphics they watch a movie, because the latest games usually don't top the latest movies. But if they want immersion, interaction, they turn to games.
Games should focus on what they're good at, what separates them from other media.
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I started playing Stalker: Clear Sky last night. I haven't gotten anywhere in it yet, but people say this game is an example of good artwork on a crappy engine.
As far as color goes, Mirror's Edge is probably the best example of a modern, highly colorful game. I don't think it actually looks that good, but I do like the fact that it has a unique art style.
The art department of Half-Life 2 deserves a special mention of creating such interesting models (is that organic or a machine?) and colorful world.
Really? Everything is brown and gray in that game. :p
Detailed stuff in a fast paced game is questionable, as the gamer doesn't have that much time to wonder about it.
Yes, this is why I think the work put into the UT2004 and UT3 maps was largely wasted. Some of those maps should have really gone into a singleplayer game.
People need to realise that games are about gameplay. Not about graphics.
Fixed. :p
In any case, people are discussing graphics here because the thread is about that, not because anyone thinks it's the most important part of a game.
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People need to realise that games are about gameplay. Not about graphics.
Fixed. :p
In any case, people are discussing graphics here because the thread is about that, not because anyone thinks it's the most important part of a game.
No I realise that. But part of the discussion about graphics is not only about art direction and quality but the necessity of quality in my opinion. Though I think I'd be in the minority since most people (ie the gaming community and industry, not the participants of this thread) seem to be obsessed with graphics. But I think there's some appeal in some retro-style gaming. Something which is largely forgotten I think. If games concentrated less on graphics and more on innovation there might be more creative and new styles of games out there.
But I don't think graphics have ever reached a plateau. People will keep improving them until they're life-like, and then improve them some more until you can put some visor over your face and not tell the difference between the game and reality.
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That's what I've been saying Arklabeth.
The graphics need to suit the story and gameplay, you can't have one without the other.
Perfect example of this is Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3. I went in expecting a semi-compelling story like RA2. Instead I found a game that is lovely, the art and level of detail is quite suitable, but the game falls flat on it's face because the story(s) are barely veiled attempts to have Jenny McCarthy run around with a midriff, Gemma Atkinson happily stand there quite clearly missing HALF her uniform (http://www.blogcdn.com/news.bigdownload.com/media/2008/10/ra3actorfeature4.jpg) as well as the other 60% of the cast who seem to be there to show off they're assets not they're acting ability. From a gameplay standpoint, it's quite fun, the co-commanders thing is cute but pointless, it just serves to reinforce the fact that they made a multi-player only game for a fandom that doesn't remember the multi-player, they remember an epic tale of the near total world takeover by an insane soviet telepath.
/sigh
I've ranted again.
Basically, my desire for video games in general is this:
BRING BACK THE EPICNESS OF OLD!
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My main gripe about Halo 3 was that it had no OMGWTF moments. The powering up of the Ark portal was not exciting, it was like Stonehenge on a cloudy day.
ODST was much better than Halo 3 in this department, and they used the same engine.
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The only OMGWTF moment of ODST was the realization that my Hog's gunner was actually using the AA gun for AA. I nearly dropped the controller. :P
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:doubt:
You're free to disagree that it's beautiful, you're even free to disagree with the art design and color palette, but please, don't tell me that my perceptions can't possibly be correct because of something as silly as an FPS cap.
If I sit down and look at the game - take the gorgeous skybox around the destroyed ONI Alpha Site in ODST, or a cruiser overhead - and say 'wow, that's really beautiful', then it's beautiful. Not beautiful because I'm uneducated regarding framerates or upscaling or whatever. It's just beautiful.
And the scale of the vistas portrayed is truly awesome. Sometimes Crysis-level, though no doubt with more trickery.
I don't mind approaching it from the technical side, but that's rather missing the point. I imagine you'd critique the Nexus engine on much the same grounds and yet it still looks superb.
:rolleyes:
Well..if that's your only criteria.
Infintiy engine is the best engine evar then. I still play BG2 and I find it better looking and more beautifull than H3.
I agree, the Infinity engine was beautiful.