I like the cake analogy. I'm a big fan of cake, and like most cRPGs these days, they are often very bad. Is the
cake more important than the frosting? Yes. I too would eat cake without frosting, but would never eat frosting
without cake. OTOH, neither would I ever buy a frosted style cake without, not only frosting, but excellent
quality frosting. And frosting is actually much harder to do well than the cake itself. So I think the analogy
works pretty well. What I would like to see from these indie devs is a cake that I would actually want to eat,
and unfortunately that includes the more difficult to make frosting.
I think it really needs to be pointed out that just because someone *wants* something doesn't mean they expect
it. I think anyone in this thread who claims that they wouldn't like to see graphics at the level of Crysis or
Crysis 2 in Dead State and AoD are lying. A photo-realistic Dead State would be amazing. You may say that you
don't care about the difference in graphics quality between Doom II and Crysis II, but I don't believe you. It
reminds me of girls who say they don't care about looks. I never believe them without proof (an ugly boyfriend
works well). Only a very, very tiny percentage of girls who say that really mean it. Same deal here.
I am very excited about both Dead State and AoD despite their old gen graphics, but that doesn't mean that
criticisms about the graphics are not valid or shouldn't be voiced. There is no point in pretending that the
graphics are going to be good by modern standards. Will they be excellent graphics by 1990 standards? Yes. Will
they be excellent graphics by 2007 standards? Definitely not. Castle Wolfenstein and Crush Crumble and Chomp are
two of my favorite games of all time (I didn't have a computer that could play the early cRPGs from that time).
The difference between that level of graphics and Dead State is much, much greater than the difference between
Dead State graphics and Crysis. And yet I still think it is something worth bitching about even though the devs
are not in a position to do anything about it. It's not a deal breaker, but it definitely saddens me that they
(or maybe "we") can't do better in 2010.
I do admit that I am a graphics whore. I am not ashamed of it in the slightest. CG is a field that has always
interested me. And one of the things that has kept me living all these years is to watch the progress of graphics
go from the level of Crush, Crumble, and Chomp to the level of Crysis. I find it kind of offensive when people
claim that graphics don't matter. I'm sorry but they do matter. I can remember a time, before computer games even
had graphics. And you know what? I strongly prefer the fancy graphics. Would you rather play a game like Super
Star Trek where a spaceship is represented by an ASCII character like "+" or "*" (don't remember what it actually
used)? Or would you prefer a photo-realistic, bump-mapped, zbrushed star ship Enterprise that looks slightly
battered and creaky and real enough to step right onto? It's your choice, but I would prefer the latter. Now, why
I prefer it gets into the whole "immersion" issue which is a whole other can of worms, and I believe a false
enemy of the Codex. It's like that thread about 3d being the enemy. It isn't. Correlation is not causation.
BTW, when I mentioned the issue of being disappointed with the graphics I wasn't really expecting such a shit-
storm about it. And I wasn't expecting the whole thread to turn into an argument about graphics. It was merely a
comment. An observation. One that the devs should expect unless they want to spend the next 5 years working on
cutting edge graphics. It wasn't intended to mean that the games were without value because they don't look like
Crysis. It is pretty small on my long list of disappointments in the year 2010. No HAL 9000. The best we can do
is megahal. No flying cars. No nuclear fusion. No Moonbase Alpha or Mars base station or interstellar spacecraft.
No replicants that look like Sean Young (when she actually was young) or cities that look like the one from Blade
Runner. We are now living in the future but it aint all it was cracked up to be. The lack of photo-realism in
Dead State and AoD actually ranks pretty low on my list of disappointments. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth
discussing the problem and trying to come up with solutions so that maybe at some point in the future indie games
*can* have photo-realistic graphics. VD didn't just complain about the lack of real cRPGs. He went out and did
something about it. And this discussion has motivated me to at least think about starting an open source game
engine project and coding for it myself full time. There clearly is a need for one. After all where would these
projects be without Torque 3D? Maybe they wouldn't "be" at all.
Again, these 2 games are pretty much the only ones I am really looking forward to at the moment. When I expressed
my disappointment I didn't fully realize the difficulty of getting beyond Torque3d graphics. I have since been
schooled on this issue (in both senses) however and agree that for practical purposes there really is nothing
that they can do about the graphics. So I think discussing "art direction" is like rearranging the deck chairs on
the Titanic. Compared to modern games, the game will still be ugly. There is nothing anyone can really do about
that. That's something we just have to accept for now. Would you care about the art direction in Doom or
Wolfenstein 3D? The very idea seems kind of laughable until you get beyond a certain level of graphics.
Don't you mean "1 admt 1 grph whr"? Sorry. I can't do txt. I really am too old for it. You can't teach an old dog
new tricks and all that. We can't all be 15 years old or whatever. Yeah. It's a generation gap thing. When my
generation dies (dont' worry it won't be long) you can all communicate with each other as tersely as you wish.
Maybe emoticon conversations will become the standard and using words will be frowned upon. But frankly I think a
lot of you may just be slow readers and have trouble with reading comprehension. It really doesn't bode well for
our future that so many young people these days can't read for shit. And you don't even try to write. In fact
this whole "wall of text" thing makes actually expressing yourself at any length stigmatized. It should take you
no more than 3 or 4 minutes to read through and understand my post and every point I made. Whether you agree with
my points or not is another issue.
And they are called paragraphs, or if you are a really slow reader maybe mini-essays. We also used to call it
discussion. When I used to participate on some old discussion newsgroups the length of my last post would be
considered average or even short. I don't have any problem reading posts many times longer than that if the topic
interests me. I don't know why it's such an issue for you guys. I doubt I will ever understand such things
either. I wonder if it is just this sort of tendency that is responsible for the of cRPGs. Your generation is
starting to not only play these games (what's weird is that the girls play them too), but make them as well. You
really shouldn't mind taking 3 minutes to read a post. Hell quite a few posters here can't be bothered to post
even a single word. They post a pic or an emoticon instead. You may think that walls of text are boring, but I
think that replying with emoticons and pics are boring. Cue the rest of this thread being spammed with huge pics
and emoticons. Being clever and being predictable are not the same thing, believe it or not. Do you consider this
to be a long post? I bet you do. I bet there is also a clear correlation between the lengths of people's posts
and their ages. The New Shit indeed.
Have you actually played the game? If you can name a single game with more photo-realistic graphics than Crysis I
am all ears. If you mention a 720p console title I will laugh very hard. The bloom can be turned off and/or
turned down. I play with DX9 on XP (with a hacked file to get "very high" settings) so a lot of the more annoying
DX10 effects like DOF and motion blur are disabled by default. Crysis is *definitely* not one of those games that
tries to hide a lack of detail or beauty with DOF and bloom. With all settings on very high it is the most
beautiful computer game I have ever seen. Again, if there are more beautiful games on the PC (all console games
look like shit) I would be very interested in hearing what they are. This isn't a dig. I am serious. I think the
consensus on the intertubes is that, despite it being 3 years old, no game has yet dethroned Crysis when it comes
to graphics. Leave it to the Germans. They were always clever. Admittedly Crysis does look like shit on any
setting below "high" and it is really only "very high" that I find so impressive.
Of course there are no guarantees that Crysis 2 won't actually look worse than Crysis 1. That is possible because
they are porting to consoles and a lot of idiots complained that Crysis was not "optimized" even though most of
those shit heads had never written a line of code in their life and don't know a thing about optimization. If
they did, they wouldn't complain about it before at least reading the code. No one optimizes their code anymore.
Optimizing your code has been stigmatized with the strawman of "premature optimization". Hell, alot of times CS
students are even taught in languages like Java. Haha. Not a lot of point in optimizing that. So what did Crytek
do in response to these criticisms? In Warhead they removed a lot of the detail and called it "optimization". So
it is possible that they may do the same thing with Crysis II. Graphics may not really get past the Crysis level
until next gen consoles are released. And god knows when that will be.
So single sentence or even single word posts are what you are calling "an economy of words"? Sorry, but words are
necessary to communicate. Fewer words is not necessarily better. Again, unless you are a slow reader with poor
comprehension. Just look at the average length of posts even in this thread, which is a more intense one than
most. Sorry, but that isn't what I call discussion. It is more about trying to seem cool and making snide remarks
which is obviously your specialty. I realize that the Codex has never really been about deep discussion, although
it has actually improved a lot IMO since I first came here, but I thought the point of this place was to actually
discuss cRPGs. At least it is not all flamefests like it used to be. It is actually possible now to have a
limited discussion (which is why I have started posting more), but not a deep one. Again, because there are too
many people like you around.
Okay then. Put up or shut up. I'm 40. I will be 41 in a few months. If you really are my age or even older then I
find the way that you write very strange. You write like someone in their teens or twenties. One of the new
generation. And your complaints about walls of text correlates with phrases like "teh hard". Of course I have
also started adopting some of the newer netspeak phrases. It's just the way kids talk now, and I actually kind of
like some of them. I would guess that you are at most in your mid 20s. But if you are 24 or so I am guessing that
English was not your favorite subject in school. Am I right?
As far as graphics whores being responsible for the decline I am sure that is at least partially true. But better
graphics represent progress and that is never wrong. It is not my fault that developers have prioritized graphics
over gameplay. If I were a developer I would try to make my games both beautiful and fun to play. It doesn't have
to be a zero sum game. Although I admit that that is how things have played out historically for the most part.
Better graphics are not the problem. The problem is greedy publishers without an ounce of integrity who just want
to make a fast buck.
@Clockwork Knight: I only mention my age because I am an analytical type of person and a lot of the posts here
would make no sense at all if you were all in your 30s and 40s. I actually think the posters here are quite a bit
older than they are in most gaming forums. That is why I post here and not there. Obviously games are going to
attract a hell of a lot more kids than adults. I have definitely noticed a direct relationship between what seems
to be the average age in a forum and the level of discussion possible. It's not that I have a problem with
teenagers or twenty-somethings per se. I like intelligent, polite teenagers just fine (especially pretty female
ones). It's just stupid and rude teenagers who are no fun at all. It's like trying to communicate with an alien
species except that they don't actually want to communicate. They seem more like animals than people sometimes. I
tried to participate at the Obsidian forum for instance, but it was just impossible. It was just so obvious that
I was talking to a either a bunch of little kids or creatures indistinguishable from little kids. I think the
internet has a lot to do with the new rudeness. I bet most of you would never be so rude in real life. In the
real world it is socially stigmatized to be so asshole-ish, but not on the intertubes. I am also curious about a
correlation with nationality. Obviously not everyone here is from the US. I would expect non-usians to be a bit
easier to talk to. But I don't think rudeness or flamefests are the biggest Codexian flaw at the moment. It's the
lack of any real discussion. You just don't want to really talk. Fight maybe. But not talk. Oh, and I *do* want
you to get off my lawn.
I can't think of anything I would rather spend my money on than computer equipment. What is a "casual gamer"
exactly? Does that mean you don't like computer games very much or that you don't like to play them very often?
If either is true I'm not sure why you have a post count of nearly 3000.
Also what is the point of the 2 pics you posted?
_________________
posted from a mobile phone
of English grammar.
