Quarterstaff - Tyranny-looking "turn-based action strategy" game from Obsidian's Matt MacLean currently in Early Access

[Roguey]

Because many retards keep screaming for rotatable cameras in isometric games, which makes implementing prerendered maps quite a hassle.

Josh Sawyer says that if he were to ever direct another game like that, he'd just have regular 3D maps with a fixed camera because the prerendered paint-overs are just way too much of a hassle (all the extra time involved plus the memory footprint and what that does to loading times and so on)

 

[mediocrepoet]

Yeah! Kick his ass Tyranicon!

Oh! This must be what people who are really into Pokemon feel like.

 

[Tyranicon]

View attachment 47353

Yeah! Kick his ass Tyranicon!

Oh! This must be what people who are really into Pokemon feel like.

I guess on some level people are betting on developers and creatives in general as some kind of ideological dog fight.

Too bad the ones with the most money almost always steamroll over everyone else.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Too bad the ones with the most money almost always steamroll over everyone else

Nix, them AAAA games aren't doing too well, last heard.

 

[Surf Solar]

Because many retards keep screaming for rotatable cameras in isometric games, which makes implementing prerendered maps quite a hassle.

Josh Sawyer says that if he were to ever direct another game like that, he'd just have regular 3D maps with a fixed camera because the prerendered paint-overs are just way too much of a hassle (all the extra time involved plus the memory footprint and what that does to loading times and so on)

It's a good middleground, but fuck it. Nothing beats the beauty and detail of prerendered maps.

 

[gurugeorge]

Because many retards keep screaming for rotatable cameras in isometric games, which makes implementing prerendered maps quite a hassle.

Josh Sawyer says that if he were to ever direct another game like that, he'd just have regular 3D maps with a fixed camera because the prerendered paint-overs are just way too much of a hassle (all the extra time involved plus the memory footprint and what that does to loading times and so on)

It's a good middleground, but fuck it. Nothing beats the beauty and detail of prerendered maps.

I think 3-d is now is getting just fine with the beauty and detail. Where pre-rendered maps have an edge is in terms of variety.

IOW, 3-d still requires there to be a limited re-used stock of "clutter" and prefabricated environmental pieces. Pre-rendered maps are free from that limitation, so the maps can look very different.

I would say that the pinnacle of pre-rendered beauty so far, which is Deadfire, still has a slight edge in terms of beauty over say BG3, but it's nothing to shout about, and the difference vanishes when you look at a more mediocre pre-rendered game (e.g. Tyranny) vs BG3 - again, the difference is more in terms of the possibility of extremely bespoke map options that pre-rendered has.

One might also want to say that the fact of presentation of a static framed "picture" with its own internal artistic logic gives pre-rendered an edge too, but to my mind that's cancelled out by the requirement to have pre-rendered maps be oddly constructed to suit navigability and clickability of points of interest in 2-d.

Plus also, the isometric view in and of itself is a weird thing that our brains aren't really wired to parse properly.

 

[Hellraiser]

I think 3-d is now is getting just fine with the beauty and detail. Where pre-rendered maps have an edge is in terms of variety.

IOW, 3-d still requires there to be a limited re-used stock of "clutter" and prefabricated environmental pieces. Pre-rendered maps are free from that limitation, so the maps can look very different.

If you didn't mention that 3D is almost on par with detail and beauty I could get your point about variety. But if the technical bottlenecks of handling the same number of polygons or resolution of textures by the player's hardware are not a factor, then pre-rendered is not inherently better when it come to variety. The obvious perceived differences in such are always the result of the performance benefits of pre-renderer assets and possibly connected productivity gains (if you can make assets faster, because you do not need to optimize them as much as for real time rendering, you also have more time to make them look better).

If there really was parity then the only variable influencing how much variety in the assets you can have would be the developer's will. I mean it takes the same amount of effort to do 300 different rock shapes and rock piles (be it via some procedural generation script or actually doing it the pajeet way) regardless if the engine has to do the heavy lifting or of it ends up on a "static" image. Developers simply don't give a shit and often for good reason, the variety of assets used for clutter and other decals doesn't sell games but it does cost money to make. Just today I saw a great post of an example of how for instance Bethesda doesn't give a shit about this, despite their tools and engine being perfectly capable of doing better.

Having varied clutter, foliage, decals and other little details in scenes is not necessary to pass a progress review and tick off the boxes on the minimal viable product checklist.