[coffeesoft]

This thread reminds me how much we enjoy with 50 Polygons   

[An4ximandros]

Aliasiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing...

[CT27]

Good graphics can make an already good campaign seem great, but they IMO can't make a bad campaign into a good one.

[Lt. Spanks]

Game-play first... then make it shiny.

[Droid803]

Very Important. It's not hard to make something look good with all the high quality community assets out there.
No excuse for making things look like ****.

[v-dash]

its strange when talking about freespace and graphics, for so many years i played my original copy of freespace 1 and 2, and yes i did at times long for a hd remake of this game (before i found about this awesome project) but this game transcended just graphics, what freespace was able to do is staggering, they built a beautiful universe, great races and characters, a dark and eerie mood, a mysterious plotline all without the need of graphics, yes graphics is important in gaming now, but some games, it goes beyond just graphics

[Janos]

The first two questions are not mutually exclusive at all. FSO striving to improve it's graphics is completely independent on the actual implementation of the graphics. Graphics are a visual asset in a storytelling media that is ultimately audiovisual.

To state that the graphics are not as important as the "other" content is either so trivial as to be unnecessary (since the graphics are only a part of the entire emergent experience) or artificially limiting the potential of the efficiency of your storytelling (the only constraint being available time or skill, neither which are relevant to this question).

[Lepanto]

The first two questions are not mutually exclusive at all. FSO striving to improve it's graphics is completely independent on the actual implementation of the graphics. Graphics are a visual asset in a storytelling media that is ultimately audiovisual.

To state that the graphics are not as important as the "other" content is either so trivial as to be unnecessary (since the graphics are only a part of the entire emergent experience) or artificially limiting the potential of the efficiency of your storytelling (the only constraint being available time or skill, neither which are relevant to this question).

To be honest, for modders, available time and skill are QUITE relevant. Graphics, storyline, and gameplay can indeed complement each other, but each element can be examined independently from each other, and modders must choose which elements are most important to focus on. Modders do not work in an abstract environment of idealized emergent experiences; ultimately, they have to set their work priorities, and making high-quality custom graphics may lose out. Though there are a lot of publically available assets, some campaigns may call for graphical assets that do not exist in high-quality HTL form; in that case, modders will have to choose between a time-consuming upgrade/creation of new assets, or just using lower-quality assets (see: the NuINF team using tilemapped ships because properly HTL-ing their MASSIVE fleetpacks would be an onerous task that would sap even more time and push their release date back even further.) Even if, say, the maker of campaign X could enhance an important moment in mission Y by making a kewl new graphical asset, he must choose whether it's worth it to put in the time and effort to make the new asset(s), or whether his campaign would be better-served by focusing directly on storyline or gameplay.

The question I'm asking here, I suppose, is HOW much effort do you want campaign-makers to specifically devote to graphical excellence, vis-a-vis release time, storyline, or gameplay?

[Janos]

The question I'm asking here, I suppose, is HOW much effort do you want campaign-makers to specifically devote to graphical excellence, vis-a-vis release time, storyline, or gameplay?

All graphical excellence is for naught if the product is not available. If the question is that then the graphical side should be relatively low on the priority list. The end user only experiences finished products, and graphical improvements are often released in updates and post-release packages.

But look, you ask:

Do you think that the community's asset standards should keep rising, and that new campaigns should strive to have full-HTL modpacks? Or are you willing to tolerate some graphical weakness if the campaign offers something else that interests you?

Those are not mutually exclusive. They are not even comparable. Another one is a long-term community goal in itself; another one is tactical reality dictated by time-constrained resource acquisition and applies to individuals, not to the community. 

[Flipside]

Graphics are nice until they affect gameplay. For action games in particular the primary goal should really be the experience, smooth responsive gameplay with less polygons is preferable to me to lag in the middle of the most response-critical parts of the game. There's nothing more experience breaking than being in the middle of combat and having the graphics and physics engine effectively say 'You don't mind if we borrow your framerate do you?', it ruins the immersion.

Don't get me wrong, I like the shiny as much as the next, but if the game suffers for its own presentation, then things have got too weighted in the wrong direction.

[Phantom Hoover]

Graphics are a visual asset in a storytelling media that is ultimately audiovisual.

quoted for truth

[Kolgena]

Voice Acting>>>>>>>>>>>>Writing>Gameplay>Graphics

Seriously, early on when I was exploring all the user-made campaigns, I refused to touch anything that wasn't voice acted. However, as things go, making fleets of high quality assets almost seems easier than doing voice acting for a campaign.

[Black Wolf]

However, as things go, making fleets of high quality assets almost seems easier than doing voice acting for a campaign.

There's no almost about it - high quality assets are unquestionably easier.

Think about it - at worst, you need maybe four people to do a high poly model - a modeller, a texturer, and maybe separate UV mappers and convertors. In many cases though, one person can do all those things. Thus you often only need to coordinate one or two people to make a ship. Voice acting, even on a simple campaign, will require dozens of people most likely, and coordinating all of them is painful. Additionally, the most time consuming phases of making a ship are modelling and texturing both of which are creative (and therefore fun), and the creator can immediately get feedback on how it's going, because the ship creates its own context. Voice acting, by contrast, is relatively non-creative (there's obviously the "acting" part, but ultimately you're reading from someone else's script), and feedback is often difficult outside of the context of the mission, and all the other elements around a particular line (including lots of other lines that may not have been recorded yet). That means that the motivation for voice actors is going to be much harder to maintain, especially for larger roles that can easily require hours of that kind of work.

So yeah, no doubt whatsoever that it's easier to make awesome ships than awesome VA. If you need even more proof, look at the list of voice acted campaigns vs the list of high quality user made ships. The difference is pretty staggering, and for good reason.

[Droid803]

Why are people acting as if there's some sort of tradeoff going on between "good writing" "good gameplay", and "good graphics"? These are not mutually exclusive in the least.

You could make the argument that all of the above represent time investments, but really, due to the differences in skillset for the three - it's often the case that they get handled in parallel by different people, thus making it so that there's really no competition between them. Additionally, Graphics are fairly easy to make good - requiring not so much investment in terms of manpower/hours, as highlighted above, so you really have no excuse.

[A]re you willing to tolerate some graphical weakness if the campaign offers something else that interests you?

Campaigns by definition should offer things other than graphics, if it doesn't then it would be an asset pack (with missions?), not a campaign.
Now that we've established that some sort of good storyline and/or gameplay is required, and that this is not mutually exclusive with having good graphics, let's rephrase that question:

"Will you tolerate graphical weakness (in exchange for nothing that shouldn't be there anyway)?"

The answer is pretty obvious then - no, I won't tolerate graphical weakness because there's no reason I should. There's not reason something should be graphically weak, when you look at its competitors which will all have "other things of interest" anyway, and are graphically stronger at the same time.

Voice Acting>>>>>>>>>>>>Writing>Gameplay

I donno about that, man.
I don't think all the voice acting in the world will save ****ty ass writing.
Or gameplay that's broken or just plain boring.
Given, it's not likely for something that falls into either of those categories to get voice acted, but you never know - someone might have more money than sense, after all.

Sure I'd accept that it comes before graphics, but as stated above, the effort required to get good voice acting is immeasurably greater than that required to have good graphics, and seeing as again, the two do not compete for talent pool etc. - if you're going to get something voice acted, you might as well put in the effort to make it look good too.

[General Battuta]

I just pushed through by far the toughest voice acting job in Hard Light history in ~3 months. I'd rather do it three times than wait for somebody to try to HTL a fleetpack.

High-quality visual assets are harder than voice acting.

[AndrewofDoom]

As this medium is about being able to interact, you know video games, gameplay should be first and foremost always. Exceptions abound obviously (ie Transcend or is it?), but in the end, my feeling in general is that interactivity needs to be first and foremost with storyline (as it can provide meaningful context that motivates and drives the player) being a distant second with the rest being an even more distant third. The game should and must be entertaining in some form but need not be always fun.

[General Battuta]

You're making two separate assertions there, one of which is right (gameplay should come first) and one of which is incompatible with the first, and wrong (interactivity should come first).

[AndrewofDoom]

You're making two separate assertions there, one of which is right (gameplay should come first) and one of which is incompatible with the first, and wrong (interactivity should come first).

I think I might have typed it out wrong then. I feel the two go hand in hand with each other in ways. Gameplay in of itself is interactive, but the level of interactive depth drives how replayable a game is. I can play campaigns like Blue Planet and Wings of Dawn and enjoy my time there, but I struggle to even desire to play them after the first time. Because I feel like I've already done what I can do in it. Tenebra has missions that feel really replayable though since a few have multiple ways to actually complete the mission.

Now I'm saying replayability is #1 aren't I? Okay, I'll just settle with entertaining core gameplay mechanics being #1 with replayability being a close second. Because replayability means nothing if the game doesn't deliver me value in the first place from the gameplay side of things.

[Flak]

Gameplay and playability comes first, but that doesn't mean graphics is not important. A game is a package of the whole thing, gameplay and graphics included and several others as well (such as story, audio, ingame physics, etc). It is the final product that is important.

edit: my post 312 on my 123 day, isn't this just coincidence?

[General Battuta]

You're making two separate assertions there, one of which is right (gameplay should come first) and one of which is incompatible with the first, and wrong (interactivity should come first).

I think I might have typed it out wrong then. I feel the two go hand in hand with each other in ways. Gameplay in of itself is interactive, but the level of interactive depth drives how replayable a game is. I can play campaigns like Blue Planet and Wings of Dawn and enjoy my time there, but I struggle to even desire to play them after the first time. Because I feel like I've already done what I can do in it. Tenebra has missions that feel really replayable though since a few have multiple ways to actually complete the mission.

Now I'm saying replayability is #1 aren't I? Okay, I'll just settle with entertaining core gameplay mechanics being #1 with replayability being a close second. Because replayability means nothing if the game doesn't deliver me value in the first place from the gameplay side of things.

This is a pretty interesting point - and I think fairly true. Of the three you mentioned BP1/BP2r1 rely most heavily on the emotional hue of their narrative to carry the gameplay, which is basically a gated corridor with fairly narrow systems. The player has to pass the gates to enable the narrative to proceed. The design philosophy is one of gameplay and emotional loops with reset states in between, and the big payoffs for player performance are scripted sequences. The game systems are complex and well-thought-out, but they are designed to control the player's emotional state and provide clear rules about what they cannot do. Replay value is contingent on wanting to ride the roller coaster again.

Wings of Dawn has meatier, more developed base systems more aimed at enabling the player to do a wide range of things, but uses the same narrative model of a gated corridor.

Tenebra is a little closer to Deus FreeSpace in that each mission presents a very wide phase space of possible player choices, a handful of systems the player needs to learn, and basically says 'well, go on, figure out an interesting way to put the pieces together'. There aren't many gates except at the very beginning and end of the missions. (This is most true of Everything is Permitted, One Future, and Her Finest Hour.) And as you said these missions were intentionally designed with heavy replayability in mind.