Console graphics -- as good as they need to be?
Ben Kidwell
currently, as represented by the following (and if you don't like the
graphics in some of these, substitute games of your choosing -- and this
isn't about systems, if you think that every Gamecube game is beautiful and
every other system's games are ugly, fine, whatever...I'm talking about the
games that YOU think look good)
Devil May Cry
Halo
Rogue Squadron II
Dead or Alive 3
Metal Gear Solid 2
Ico
I would argue that we've arrive at a point where game consoles can
render just about anything in realtime and make it look good. It seems to
me that the technical limitations now lie in the complexity of physics and
interaction. In other words, is there motion in the scene? Can you actually
interact with the surfaces of the world you're in, or is everything just
scenery covering fairly simple 'boxes' -- the classic example is the
non-polygonal worlds in games like Resident Evil. In my opinion, nothing in
the world looks stupider than watching a survival-horror character marching
in place, 'stuck' on the edge of a table in the scenery. (Not dissing the
games, just saying it's too bad the worlds are just 'painted')
Even a game like Metal Gear Solid 2, with a lot of great interactive
detail (like shooting glass bottles and watching them shatter) is only able
to make the game world seem like it's 'real' because it's all made of metal
and sharp angles and hard surfaces.
I think the next generation of game consoles should focus on having gobs
of memory and spectacular computational ability for physics and AI, rather
than on the maximum possible number of triangles per second. I'd much
rather have a machine with 200 mb of memory and the ability to calculate
the physics of complex dynamic systems like animal muscles and bones and
complex adaptive intelligence but only rendering 25 million polys per
second, rather than getting 200 million polys that just sit there and
rotate as the camera swings by!
Am I crazy? Would everyone else rather see Toy Story quality rendering
on top of the same old static worlds with a handful of detachable objects
and characters walking on the surface?
B
James Lippingwell
"Ben Kidwell" <bkid...@execpc.com> wrote in message
news:3c022589$0$65154$272e...@news.execpc.com...
Colonel W. Spoongoon³
nastycpl
it takes for some of these games to come out........ill take what we got
now...........at least for a little while
GregoryD
Herein lies the big problem with increasing graphic quality on 3d gaming
systems:
doing so increases the budget needed for each game. It's why so many PC
game manufacturers have gone out of business... it isn't enough to simply
have
4 guys in a garage programming a neat new concept. Now you need fully
fledged
staffs of people to do artwork, modeling, creating tools, writing scripts,
writing
code, designing storylines, etc... and other than Sega, who else really has
come up
with much innovation lately? Rockstar? For sheer playability, Mario 64
still ranks
#1, and it's been years. So they've hit a wall. Instead of focusing on the
story or
gameplay elements, for example, Square has focused exclusively on graphics
and rehashed the same tired ass story 3 times now.
Oh well, enough about that. I'm going play some Frequency.
GregoryD
Ben Kidwell
<g...@thelovetunnel.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> Don't cross post.
Why not? This is a question that I thought would be interesting to all
owners of current gaming hardware. The problem with cross-posting is when
irrelevant topics clutter up the NGs, right? If there was a decent
'all-platform' discussion group, I would have just posted there, but
alt.games.video is more or less dead.
I suppose I could have taken the same post, changed it to say, "are
Xbox/PS2/Gamecube graphics as good as they need to be?" and only mentioned
titles specific to that platform in the text, and then posted it seperately
three times -- but what would the point of that be? I was trying to create
discussion between platform owners that wasn't just stupid system-wars
trolling.
I try to be a good internet citizen, so if there are good reasons to
avoid crossposting entirely, please let me know about them -- but it seems
to me that crossposting is useful for subjects that are legitimately
relevant to multiple categories of users.
Anyway, somebody mentioned that I should go play Trespasser -- which I
assume was kind of a joke, because wasn't that game notorious for being
completely and hopelessly unplayable? That actually brings up a good point,
though -- because 'realism' is certainly not the point, it's gameplay --
and I don't think anyone would prefer to play a platform game in which your
character might suffer a twisted ankle that would hobble them for the rest
of the game, just because that's a realistic result of the physics of
jumping, etc.
B
Dweeb
and not worry about the graphics so much. "Ohh, Ahh, prettttyyy" lasts about
a half hour. If the game sucks, it sucks no matter what it looks like.
Sinistrad
Example? ICO's atmospheric and far-off vistas. It would be a completely
different experience with restricted graphics.
That said, I still think there's room for improvement. I agree that a gorgeous
game that sucks isn't what we're looking for, but graphics are now treading in
the realm of experience enhancing. Trust me, the rain in MGS2 might serve
absolutely no purpose but to make me feel wet.
On Mon, 26 Nov 2001 17:13:13 -0500, Dweeb had the audacity to say...
Colonel Spoongoon ³
>
> Why not?
I know you had a good disscusion going on d00d, and I take my frustrations
out on you, for that I apologise... but we in agvngc have had sooooooooooooo
much cross posting twaddle in the last few weeks that any x posting now
seems to attract knobheads..
Don't mean to offened, especially a time worthy post. Just pissed of at the
trolls that latch on to this kida thing and bring down all the froups...
:-)
Dave A
"nastycpl" <sh...@screwoff.com> wrote in message
news:9ttf3n$oke$1...@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net...
In a sense you agree with the original poster and don't realize it yet. One
of the more laborious aspects of developing a game is developing it's
rendering engine. If the industry said today's graphics were good enough
until we get the AI and other things improved that would allow half a dozen
engines to be used(licensed) for a long time. this would effectively
shorten the development cycle so that the time could be spent on AI,
physics, story, etc.
Dave A
erik robson
wrote:
> I would argue that we've arrive at a point where game consoles can
>render just about anything in realtime and make it look good. It seems to
>me that the technical limitations now lie in the complexity of physics and
>interaction.
<valid points snipped>
I know what you're getting at, but as a console developer, I can
assure you that we're nowhere close to having the hardware horsepower
we want/need. The games that you listed all look beautiful not
because of the power of their respective systems, but because of
careful work and tuning by developers. If we could "render just about
anything in realtime" then the background city in MGS2 would be fully
detailed; Devil May Cry wouldn't be restricted to (mostly) tight
corridors; capital ships in Rogue Squadron wouldn't have blurry
textures when you got close to them.
So technical/hardware limitations won't stop being an issue for a long
time; however, that issue is really independent of the interactivity
thing. Regardless of hardware, I agree that developers should be
focusing more on world interactivity. It's difficult, not because of
tech limitations, but because it requires a lot more planning, tedium,
and design restrictions. (I personally think it's worth it, though.)
Shin-AkumA
No family or gamer is going to pay 2,500 - 4,000 dollars for a gaming system
and that's what it would probably take to give you the horse power you're
seeking.
"erik robson" <er...@fiction.pair.com.stopthespam> wrote in message
news:htk50u4a12h1uouhi...@4ax.com...
Doug Dingus
>
> The hardware you seek cost to much.
> No family or gamer is going to pay 2,500 - 4,000 dollars for a gaming system
> and that's what it would probably take to give you the horse power you're
> seeking.
>
Been following this sort of thread for a while and just had a number of
things to say so only the first paragraph addresses your statement
above. Skip the rest if you are not in the mood. :)
I disagree here. As graphics technology continues to trickle down, it
will find its way into console machines. The N64 has a stripped down
SGI graphics engine in it. In the years before N64 was released that
engine could only be found on expensive workstations. The engine and
now the workstations can be found very cheap in both the console and
from e-bay. Current trends show that this process will happen faster as
the graphics market matures. Nvidia GFX engines are found in consoles
now at the same time they are found in more powerful general purpose
computers. Both are much cheaper than the graphics engines of the past
with far more capability. Unless someone makes a significant
breakthrough that changes things, this is the way things are going to go
for a while.
The design of the graphics engine is also a factor however that
contributes to its overall value and the console life.
Good console design does not set initial limits on how its hardware was
used. To put this very simply, nobody knows at the time of the system
design what approaches game developers will take in order to realize the
vision of their games. An old but good example of this is the Atari
2600. Original design specs were targeted at the simple ball and paddle
games of the time. (128 Bytes RAM 1.7Mhz CPU 4K ROM) There have been
new display techniques discovered for this machine as late as 3-5 years
ago. If you look at the number of different games and display
techniques they exhibit you will see this clearly. I am not saying that
the 2600 is still in active use, but am saying that the design was quite
different from other consoles made at the time and that the design was
open ended enough to allow improvement as developers continued to learn
about the hardware. Compared to the 2600, other consoles used a fairly
straightforward approach that yielded better graphics initially, but
very little improvement over the life of the console. Most everything
looks the same graphically with little improvement over time.
Console graphics engines are never good enough. Developers are always
going to want more as do the gamers, but this is the art of it. This is
why I enjoy consoles generally over general purpose computers for
games. The very best efforts are near the end of a consoles active
life. The hardware is known, and the dev team is well tuned and next
the next cycle of competition is coming. Out of this mix comes some
damn good games. So I sort of like it how it is. When we get the
perfect console (which none of the three out right now are) the whole
thing will get stale. Hope that does not happen for a long time yet. I
like the surprises.
So today I am watching how things play out between GameCube, PSX2 and
X-Box. I do not know much about the GameCube yet other than it is fun
to play. PS2 has a very open ended engine that will allow improvement
over time. XBox appears to have less of this quality, but very good
initial performance. It will be interesting to see how the market plays
this one out. Will developers continue to exercise PS2 given its larger
base? or will they go for the easier to develop XBox?
I don't post here often, so know that flames go right to the kill file.
Doug Dingus
Applications Engineer / Trainer
Acuity Inc. Portland, Oregon
IRIX, Linux, GNU --> it's all good!
Mortis
says...
> I'm starting to think designers should spend a little more time on gameplay
> and not worry about the graphics so much. "Ohh, Ahh, prettttyyy" lasts about
> a half hour. If the game sucks, it sucks no matter what it looks like.
I'm still going ooo and ahhh to GT3 and I've had that for ages :-)
--
___________________________________________________________
-Mortis- -Suzuki Bandit 600-
-----------------------------------------------------------
"Don't shoot the messenger. Unless he's an anorak-wearing
pigeon raper." - Nite (AGHLTFC)
___________________________________________________________
erik robson
<ak...@quakefraggers.com> wrote:
>The hardware you seek cost to much.
>No family or gamer is going to pay 2,500 - 4,000 dollars for a gaming system
>and that's what it would probably take to give you the horse power you're
>seeking.
>
Well... that's right, except *right now* isn't the point. The point
is that costs will always be coming down and technology will always be
growing. That said... I'm not sure how much hardware power will be
necessary to render everything we ever wanted.
When they implement Pixar's Renderman renderer on a chip, and it
renders at interactive speeds, than I'll be satisfied. :)
Scott
<dbohne...@yahoo.com> wrote:
I agree with you there. The problem is that there are a lot of people
that think better graphics = better games. As an example take Halo and
Red Faction. Halo may have somewhat snazzier graphics but the story
isn't nearly as cool (IMHO) as Red Faction's. I've played them both and
I just enjoy the whole Red Faction "experience" more.
Daniel Kolle
Who gives a fuck about graphics?
It is the games that matter!