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Cinematic Game Graphics 323

Posted by timothy from the unfinal-fantasy dept.
CowboyRobot writes "LucasArts engineer Nick Porcino has an article detailing what to expect from graphics in the next generation of game systems including the "influence of cinematic realtime rendering, the promise of advanced lighting techniques and high-dynamic range images, the uses of the rendering pipeline, and the future of multiprocessor-based rendering and advanced geometry." These will allow run-time rendering of high quality backgrounds and characters, ultimately resulting in games that are closer to full-blown Pixar animations, allowing better narratives and more immersive user experiences."
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Cinematic Game Graphics More

Cinematic Game Graphics

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  • Storyline! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) * on Sunday May 02, 2004 @01:43PM (#9034860) Homepage Journal
    Look, the graphics are important, but I must say. Story, story, story.. That is what is going to make a great game beyond any cool effects and such. This is especially true if games are going to become more immersive and be more "cinematic" in nature. Games like Half-life, Marathon, and Deux Ex were games that succeeded not because their graphics were the absolute cutting edge, but because they had reasonably good story lines. I would still like to see more in the way of character development and story progression, as the immersive environment depends much more on story than anything else. After all, how many of you remember the Infocom games?

    • Re:Storyline! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by a rabid platypus ( 619640 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @01:49PM (#9034893) Journal
      Storyline is all well and good, but I hate a gmae that locks me into a plot. Instead of dynamic graphics, I'd rather see dynamic plotlines. I'd much rather shape the progression of the story than be a mere rider on the train that goes down the rail of the plotline. That being said, I believe better graphic capabilities can lead to more interactive environments, which in turn can lead to more interesting ways of changing, or progressing the plot.

      • Re:Storyline! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by James Lewis ( 641198 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @05:47PM (#9036292)
        I hear this from a lot of people and, no offense, but they don't know what they are asking for. The only way to have a truely "dynamic plot" in the way you speak of it, is to have a world you are plopped in to in the way that many single player RPGs are done. In that case, there really isn't a plot, you are making it up yourself as you go.

        Ever try one of those "choose your own adventure" books? They tended to be about 200 pages long, but the actual story would be at most 10 pages. It was dynamic in the sense that it gave you several different branches to choose from, but it was still static. You would often times come to a branch you had visited in the past. This could be done with games, but, just as it is with the book, the actual game play time to "beat" the game would be much less. With games, it is worse than a book, because as games get more sophisticated, the content becomes more time consuming to produce, and "dynamic" games become somewhat impossible.

        But I have failed to adequetly discuss the main problem with dynamic plots. A "dynamic" plot ISN'T a plot. A plot is by definition a narrative... something that is being told, and not influenced. If you are asking for a dynamic plot you are asking for a game without a plot. That's fine if that is a type of game you like, but you shouldn't dismiss plot driven games as restrictive or unimaginative. Think of all the great movies or books you have read. Did you ever feel that you wanted to influence those in anyway? Why should a game be different? Games offer the ability to make player feel a part of the plot more than any other medium, but not necessarily in control of it. In a game with a good plot, the motivation should be finding out what happens next, just as it is when you are reading a good book or watching a good movie. The only problem is that very few games offer anything better than a different version of the same plot that has already been told in a million games already. What's worse, even when game developers actually do manage to make a decent plot, most gamers are so jaded by the 100 past poorly written games they have played that they just skip through the storytelling sections of the game. They are focused on beating the game, and not playing it.

        I think it is silly that game developers, and players, have created so much hype about "interactive" and "dynamic" games. There's only a hand full of games that have been able to tell a fresh, interesting plot since the inception of games, and players and developers are basically throwing up their hands and saying, "well lets just not have a plot, and call it dynamic". Games need to figure out how to create and tell stories effectively before they start worrying about taking on ideas that are as man-power intensive as even a simple "choose your own adventure" type book.

        • Re:Storyline! (Score:4, Interesting)

          by a rabid platypus ( 619640 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @06:44PM (#9036681) Journal
          Good points! Perhaps I should clarify what I mean by "dynamic". Dynamic as in there is a war going on, the actions of my armies influence the direction of the war and the types of missions I can under take. Note there is a general plot: war; however, I can work within the war to influnce and change it's outcome. Just becasue the game changes according to my actions doesn't mean it doesn't have a theme or "plot". It just means I have more control over the eventual outcome. Games that make me run the same missions, over and over are quite frankly, boring. Replay value is nill, and there is no real sense of accomplishment. In the type of game I just described replay value would be pretty good, as there are many ways to win a war. An example of a game that is too well defined would be Mech Commander 2. Pretty and a good premise, but the same missions. It would be better if the missions were generated according to my actions, and if I could do things inside of missions that would affect future missions. Just becasue a game changes, doesn't mean it doesn't have a theme or an overall plot. It just means I can reach those end goals MY way.

        • Re:Storyline! (Score:4, Informative)

          by tekunokurato ( 531385 ) <jackphelps@gmail.com> on Sunday May 02, 2004 @09:20PM (#9037449) Homepage
          I disagree--games like Planescape Torment or the Fallout series had plot, it was just a more general plot outline and let you make a lot of choices along the way. "Post-nuclear villager seeks GECK to save his village, along the way encountering organized crime, disorganized crime, mutants, aliens, and civilizations, and eventually taking down the remnants of the Unites States Government itself!" That sort of general plot outline leaves a player with loads of choice but still guides the plot in its eventualities.

        • Re:Storyline! (Score:3, Informative)

          by Moraelin ( 679338 )
          I _think_ that what most people have in mind by "dynamic plot", really means "AI". The dream isn't to get a game lacking a plot at all, but one which more or less can addapt it to what you're doing.

          Same as if you're playing a PnP (Pen-and-Paper) game with some buddies, the GM (Game Master) will accomodate some deviations from what he had in mind. If noone wants to go talk to the dwarves next, the GM will come up with something else.

          Of course, that as such is impossible. But it maybe _some_ freedom wouldn'

    • Re:Storyline! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <`akaimbatman' `at' `gmail.com'> on Sunday May 02, 2004 @01:49PM (#9034895) Homepage Journal
      What was the "storyline" fot Mario? Or Space Invaders? Or PacMan? Storyline is only important depending on the type of game. The real focus should be on FUN. If you find the game tedious, it doesn't matter whether it has the best storyline since War and Peace. Thankfully technology can provide us with more interesting simulations, larger expolosions, better feedback, and other adrenaline pumping features.

      Bridge Commander is the perfect example of how modern technology makes new games possible. Who *doesn't* want to captain a starship? Now if only other game makers would start building original and fun games instead of recycling the same old garbage.

      • Re:Storyline! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Those games had simple stories. But good ones. In PacMan the story was "little guy is being chased by ghosts, but can turn the tables on them if he eats a special cookie".

        "Simple" isn't synonymous with "bad". "Complex" isn't synonymous with "good".
      • >Who *doesn't* want to captain a starship?

        Now, I know in what context you said that, and what you mean...and I know I'm going to seem like a horrible prick, but...that just struck me as hysterical.

        That's just about the 'most slashdot' quote I have ever heard.

        ;)

      • Re:Storyline! (Score:3, Informative)

        by XryanX ( 775412 )
        Pardon me, but I seem to recall the Mario games having a relatively in-depth storyline about Koopa kidnapping the princess and what not.
      • I agree - I love Mario games, and games that are fun. I HATE games that try to tell me a story. Why? I'm not the type of gamer who can devote hours at a time to playing and remembering a story. I like to sit down, blow stuff up or play a sports game that's fun, and then go do something else later. I enjoy games like Jak & Daxter that have a story line, but are mostly just fun.
        • Well, since the original article was written by someone at LucasArts, I thought that a reference to Armed & Dangerous would be appropriate.

          Armed & Dangerous is a fun game. There is a story...but it's only there because it's funny. The graphics suck, but that's okay too.

          Armed & Dangerous is a good game because you get to kill a LOT of guys, and fire a LOT of bullets.

          Sometimes games need to be about that- lots of killing and explosions. We don't want to get dragged into a Deus Ex style story
      • Bridge Commander?!?! I'll agree that the concept, if fleshed out properly, would be cool. And it's a fun enough time waster, but frankly it's a good example of taking a vauge idea, building a quick proof of concept, and shipping it. It best redeeming feature is that you can create new starships and bridges for it.
        It too much the same thing over and over again, with really flimsy excuses to shoot up yet another bunch of craft, to claim it's got a plot or rational story line.
        It just struck what it re

    • Yea, but don't forget the industry pumps out plenty of crap as well... you might end up with Leisure Suit Larry Xtreme Edition (*shudder*).

      I must admit that I've got the Zork games archived on a CD somewhere (classic series if I do say so myself), I never did finish Zork 2 & 3 and that was 10 years ago!! That would be a trip down memory lane.

    • there's bunch of games, legendary games, GOOD GAMES, that don't have any story at all but that doesn't matter because they're not about the story.

      though, just plain good graphics never made a good game, just remember those pre-rendered camera-fly-by games of mid 90's.

    • Re:Storyline! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MistaE ( 776169 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @01:57PM (#9034945) Homepage
      I agree with ya dude, but one thing that must be taken into consideration is that developers can't be carried away with a game focusing on narrative too much. I really don't think that gamers would like to play "interactive movies" like Xenosaga (I enjoyed the game, but geeze, the cutscenes were way too long and plentiful).

      The trick is going to be balancing the amount of graphical detail with story lines and such. We know that a game that combines the two in just the right amount is pretty damn rare, but I look forward to the days developers get it right.

      Personally, tho, I feel that one of the more important aspects is game play. You can have a beautiful game with an interesting story, but if you can't even stand to work inside of the world in terms of control and rules, then what's the point?

    • Storyline is fine, as long as it can fit on one page of an old NES cartridge manual.

      Sometimes the simplest of storylines provide all the setting needed for a good game.

      I'd like to see a "getting back to basics" style game... side scrollers, overhead 2d like FFI, etc... Design the game and playability like that's all you had, come up with the design, plot, etc... THEN implement the graphical voodoo- get their priorities in check.
    • Just in case the server crashes and burns (like they usually do),I have put up a mirror.
      The mirror of http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content& p a=showpage&pid=139 is at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_189/www.acmqueue.co m/modules.php%3fname=Content&amp%3bpa=showpage&amp %3bpid=139 [demonmoo.com]

    • Re:Storyline! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Hogwash McFly ( 678207 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @02:09PM (#9035018)
      I'm not directing this at the parent, but I'm fed up of this whole Graphics vs Gameplay debacle. The two are not mutually exclusive people! For most people graphics would be a subset of gameplay. In most cases graphics are part of the gameplay. You see, with more realistic graphics, one can believe that they are actually there, driving that Goliath tank or commanding a massive army, hence the gameplay is improved. Graphics and Gameplay is not oranges and apples, more like clementines and tangerines.

      Disclaimer: Good graphics does not a good game make. However, most of the great games have good graphics (compared to what is/was technologically viable at the time - Pong had good graphics, Mario, etc.)

    • Re:Storyline! (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Look, the graphics are important, but I must say. Story, story, story.. "

      Developers, developers, developers..

    • Re:Storyline! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Randolpho ( 628485 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @02:22PM (#9035102) Homepage Journal
      You know... Story is great for some games... *story* driven games.

      But for games that have any replay value, it's gameplay that's most important. Half-life had a great story, but it stayed popular by offering a great multiplayer game as well. The most popular games, games like The Sims, SimCity, Roller Coaster Tycoon... all of these games have little to no story, and tons of fun gameplay. In short... Story is only important for certain genres.

      As for graphics being the end-all be-all of gameplay... Meh. I'll still be playing Solitaire. Of course... with the newest and bestest graphics cards, my SolMark benchmarks will be way off the chart. ;)

    • Re:Storyline! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Saville ( 734690 )

      Kind of like how Pong was so popular because of its story? Then Ms. Pac-Man totally had a better story, which is why it was so popular. Super Mario Bros. had the best story yet. Then there was Doom... Man, that Doom story took at least a paragraph to tell. It owned.

      Story is sometimes important, but it is possibly the most overrated element (maybe graphics are). Look at the FMV games that focused on story and Square's Bouncer [gamecritics.com]. These are games that worried about story. Chris Crawford has been focuse

    • Re:Storyline! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Elbeno ( 754684 )
      Story and graphics are orthogonal. To me the real caveat here is realism for realism's sake.

      Realistic graphics don't make a good game, and "cinematic" doesn't have to mean "realistic" either. The best games have good gameplay, good story if required for the genre, but equally importantly, a distinctive, consistent graphical style - not necessarily (or even desirably) a realistic one.
    • You can't improve stories as easily as you can improve graphics. A game is something which takes about 40 hours and, if we are talking about FPS (RPG), involves you running around and shooting stuff. There is only so much story that you can inject into the game and it has already be done. Half-Life, Max Payne, Mafia and other games are example of 100% good story. You can't make it better, or rather you can't predictably make it better.

      Graphics, on the other hand, can be improved and they will be improved u

  • This article makes for interesting reading for developers and gamers alike.

    On a more basic level, I can think of several games I have played that really impressed me graphicly. One that springs to mind (that got a mention in the article) was Quake III [idsoftware.com] from id Software [idsoftware.com]. Another game I remember being impressed with was WarCraft 3 [blizzard.com] from Blizzard [blizzard.com] (The way it let you angle the camara and sort of fly from an overhead view into tight third-person was awsome).

    With all the cinimatics we're seeing in games (both

  • And AI! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by metalmario ( 717434 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @01:46PM (#9034873)
    Nice graphics is a bonus, but if the AI is still as stupid as it was 10 years ago, who cares? We need better AI! It shouldn't be that hard. Take for example Morrowind - no AI at all. Even I can do better than that. ;)

    • Re:And AI! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Soul-Burn666 ( 574119 )
      I haven't played it myself (not real GPU), but more than one friend of mine says the AI in FarCry is really awesome. If someone doesn't know, FarCry is an FPS situated in huge landscapes with a lot of stuff to interact with.
      When you hide for cover, the AI actually tells the enemies to change positions and then when you think you'll just pop out and hit where the enemies were, you'll be baffled to see they are actually hiding somewhere else!!!
      More than that, the same friend was in front of some werehouse and

      • Re:And AI! (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I was about to say the same thing actually.

        Apart from the HL2 video, no 3D world has really made me think "that's a step forward" until I played Far Cry. I mean, I read about bump mapping, multiple textures, particle systems, and Far Cry has all that, and it rocks! The wave effect on the beaches is one of the best in game 3D effects I've ever seen.

        But you're right, it's the AI that sets it apart. There's no telling what people might do. And that even includes jeep and helicopters - the drivers respond int

    • Re:And AI! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Saville ( 734690 )
      What do you want from your AI? Do you want it to have feelings? Do you want the shop keeper's child to have been murdered by goblins the night before so that he won't give you the discount on your sword that your charismatic attributes you spent your level-up points getting are useless? Or do you want predicable AI?

      What do you mean by wanting better AI? If you mean you don't want your Peons to creat traffic jams for themselves when harvesting resources I agree because if I'm playing I told them to do s
    • The problem with AI , beside incredible techical and scientifc difficalties (Well, if we are not talking about sloppy path finding :) ) is that it's easy to market graphics, and difficalt to market AI. Screenshots(if they are not forged and shoe frame per second) and short demo is enouth to show publisher and prospective buyers that the game has great graphics. But how would you show off agreat AI ? The point of good AI is that it always behave at least sane, in all zillion of the game situation, and you wo
      • OH YEA it sells...
        If you have seen the HL2 demo vids and read the comments, you would have seen many people refer to the awesome[1] AI. The vid shows that the hero runs into a house and blocks the door with a box and then the enemy soldier tries to break it open while the other one shoots at you from the window. And that the allies AI is actually worthwhile. They will shoot and hide and follow your orders belieavably.
        Many people said this is an awesome step towards a really believable world.

        [1] Note: some

  • at the rate PC games are pushing the market (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the_2nd_coming ( 444906 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @01:46PM (#9034874) Homepage
    low-impact game players like me are out of date in 3-6 months and can not play games until we upgrade our computers!!

    this is insane and why I like consoles.

    I mean I had a monster Fusion 3d card from the day it came out and it worked flawlessly until Black and white came out. after that I had to upgrade to a Gforce 2 GTS.

    in recent years, the gaming industry is moving to fast for me to keep up anymore.
    • This is right on. Of course we should expect computing power to grow according to Moore's Law (although there was a recent article indicating this may fail soon for laptops: Wired [wired.com]).

      But if one looks into Moore's Law for Software (Googled [google.com]) you find a different analysis. In short it looks like algorithm development has lagged sufficiently behind the computational power.

      So what does this mean for gaming? It seems developers are hanging onto old ideas and relying on the growth in proc speeds (and bus
      • Are you stupid or what? If you want to render a pixel, there is only so much optimisation possible. In the end of the day you still need to spend a few processing cycles on it. And if you want anything more than raw texturing, you need more processing cycles. And if you want complex geometry and effects, add yet more cycles. They have to come from somewhere, and this "where" is hardware.

        There is one reason we need better algorithms - to more efficiently utilise the power of new hardware. Yes, some optimisa

      • Re:at the rate PC games are pushing the market (Score:4, Informative)

        by daVinci1980 ( 73174 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @07:01PM (#9036776) Homepage
        IAAVGGP. (I am a video game graphics programmer.)

        No offense intended, but you really have no idea at all what you are talking about. We're not holding on to old ideas; we're still waiting for hardware to catch up to the ideas we had 30 years ago. Almost all of the algorithms and processes used to do cutting edge rendering today are based on academic papers from the 1970s.

    • As long as you have the option of turning down the detail level on games to play them on older hardware, I don't think you have any cause for your whining.

      It is not the industry's fault that you can't afford the latest and greatest bleeding edge hardware. I can't either.

      Or do you bitch and whine that a 5 year old Ford Taurus can't keep up with a the latest Ferrari, either?

    • Re:at the rate PC games are pushing the market (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bleckywelcky ( 518520 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @02:42PM (#9035226)
      You say this is why you like consoles, but the simple fact is that graphics on consoles suck horribly. Think about it, what is an XBox? Just a computer. What kind of graphics chip set is in the XBox? Some sort of NVidia creation. Is that chip set evolving and getting better just sitting in the XBox? No. Is some magical NVidia or Microsoft Gnome running in your house every 6 months and changing the chip set out with a new one? No.

      The simple reason you are able to keep a console for 2 or 3 years and continue to play new games on it is because the graphics just simply suck. I'm sure if you play Doom 3 at 640 x 480 with half of the detail options turned off, it'll run fine too. But when you are comparing how well they run, you have the XBox running 640 x 480 with half of the detail options turned off, while you have the computer running at 1600 x 1200 with EVERYTHING turned on. You better see a difference in running performance... If you want your computer to last 2 or 3 years without upgrading, just keep turning the graphics levels down with each new game generation - problem solved!
      • The graphics on the XBox "suck?" Did you think that three years ago? What's changed? Creating graphics that look like an XBox game still takes just as much effort as it did then, after all. Did Half-Life's graphics suck when it came out? No? Then why do they suck now? Granted, technology has advanced, but that doesn't affect the "quality" of graphics; it's really just the quantity of Purdy Effectz they can put on them. Granted, the PlayStation2's graphics aren't as good as even the XBox, but I can v
  • To get a good console system, you need to shell out maybe a $150. For computers, you need a damn fast computer and a damn good graphics card. I prefer to play games on my computer, especially FPS's, but the performance of a lot of games seriously lags what it should be considering what an XBox can accomplish with a similar architecture, but slower clock speeds. Maybe it's windows bogging it down, maybe it's the x86 architecture itself with it lag due to backwards compatibility, but I just want to play sp
    • The reason the xbox can do graphics so well is that game creators only have one architecture to build for. They know their memory limits, they know what optimizations they can apply for the CPU and graphics card. They also only have to render at 640x480.

      I can't imagine games like Splinter Cell doing well with low-end graphics. In a game where stealth is key, you are always moving slow and paying attention to detail. Without real-time lighting, hiding in the game wouldn't be nearly as fun. You also wou

  • Technology versus Design (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 401k ( 640574 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @01:49PM (#9034896)
    Sam and Max was a great LucasArts game with minimal graphics. George Lucas has a capacity to be wowed by technology and graphics much to the detriment of story -- look at the new Star Wars movies as Exhibit A. Incredibly impressive digital character like Jar-Jar, yet used totally wrong -- as opposed to Gollum in Lord of the Rings. Or look how lovely Naboo is, yet how excruciating is the dialogue between Anakin and Amidala. How painful the plot. I worry that as games become more cinematic, with massive budgets, huge staffs, and herculean marketing machines behind them, the craft of game design and the art of storytelling will get lost. It's not just LucasArts ... Square with their movie and their over-rendered, RPG-lite Final Fantasy games (boring as all get out, to me) is another example of this trend. Meh, PC gaming will always survive though, and remain the most fruitful playground for original titles, because no publisher or license is required.

  • My guess... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RyanFenton ( 230700 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @01:50PM (#9034898)

    Lots of REALLY overdone camera-swoops of battlescenes, taking up lots of player time when they are expecting a chance to actually exert some control the events of the game.

    Hey - it's what happened to the Final Fantasy Series, and several other console games once designers got the power. There's only so many bullet-time-style uses of cinema-style art that is compatible with player freedom.

    Ryan Fenton
    • That game they released called "final fantasy the spirits within" had lovely graphics, but it more gameplay than the other ones in the series. After all in Final Fantasy X (on PS2), you could only pause and continue, but with The Spirits Within (DVD) you could rewind and speed it up as well, just using your remote control!

  • Where are the "Sound Acceleration" cards? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jezral ( 449476 ) <mail@tinodidriksen.com> on Sunday May 02, 2004 @01:50PM (#9034900) Homepage
    Off-topic, I know, but I've been wondering...

    ok, so we've been able render Toy Story in real-time for a while...

    But, where are the cards that can generate the sound of one arbitrary object hitting another? I don't just mean positional sound of pre-recorded samples, but really create the sounds from scratch (or an "audio-enabled model").
    • You do realize that you're asking for what amounts to RayTracing for Audio? The idea of realtime raytracing has just barely begun to penetrate the research community, and they have to cheat like hell to make it work. Trying to calculate material properties, force applied, vibration vs. tearing, listener posistioning, doppler, etc. in realtime would amount to far more CPU power than is currently in the hands of the public.

      • raytracing? (Score:3, Informative)

        by mnemonic_ ( 164550 )
        Sound synthesis is more than just raytracing.

        Also, sound echos based on 3d geometry have been possible since the release of the Aureal Vortex 2 chipset several years ago. But that was not creating audio, just simulating its propagation through a 3d space by tracing the soundwave paths.

    • Re:Where are the "Sound Acceleration" cards? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Hogwash McFly ( 678207 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @02:02PM (#9034972)
      Well, personally I've never played a game where I've thought 'Hmm, it would seem more realistic if the sound of the rocket changed according to the surface that I've shot it at'. However, I have thought many a time, 'This would look so cool if there was better lighting and a higher polycount'.

      Ask people if they'd rather be blind or deaf and 99 percent would choose deaf. The visuals are the most noticeable element of any computer game, because you damn well see them!

      I'd rather they mastered photo realistic graphics first before putting any energy into 'sound generaion'. That's not to say I wouldn't want both the graphics and sound to be perfect, I just belive that sound should take second priority :)
      • I personally react much better to sound than sight. Sight requires I actively be looking around, with sound, I just have to listen. Deer don't look around, they listen for a twig to snap.

        I can almost never play Smash Brothers Melee with the sound off. I listen for things like items being thrown (ok, time to dodge), moves with large execution times (ok, time to strike while they're vulnerable), etc. That way I don't have to keep my eye on the opponent at all times, I can focus on using the environment t
    • But, where are the cards that can generate the sound of one arbitrary object hitting another?

      VERY very astute question. 1 gold star for you.
      I really hate games when you get the same fscking sample every time you pick up ammo or knock into something. There should be 20+ samples for every possible sound so that it doesn't sound so monotonous. And fuck it if the sounds won't fit into RAM, everybody should have 1G these days

      • Even without tons of samples there are ways to make sound FX less monotone. A little change in frequency, speed and volume can make one sample sound slightly differend each time it's used.
        • You can hear halo doing this a little bit when you fire machine guns etc. Though theres loads of other sounds that sound exactly the same, e.g. warthogs crashing into a building.
          Why don't they put more effort in to this, I would have thought sound would be fairly important for a fps, given that it should allow you to place where you're being shot at from.
          • The first time I heared of this technic was with Duke3D, so it's not very new. I wonder if this requires much CPU cycles. Perhaps future sound cards will get a high speed DSP and do this in hardware. (Pretty much the same route graphics cards went, so expect another fan inside the computer)

    • Re:Where are the "Sound Acceleration" cards? (Score:5, Informative)

      by duckpoopy ( 585203 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @02:08PM (#9035016) Journal
      It's in the works... Very CPU intensive.

      O'Brien, J.F., Cook, P.R., Essl, G., "Synthesizing Sound from Physically Based Motion," In Proc. SIGGRAPH 2001, Los Angeles, CA, August, 529-536, 2001

      and other pubs by O'Brien.

    • Re:Where are the "Sound Acceleration" cards? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @02:16PM (#9035062) Journal
      But, where are the cards that can generate the sound of one arbitrary object hitting another? I don't just mean positional sound of pre-recorded samples, but really create the sounds from scratch (or an "audio-enabled model").

      Not to put too fine a point on it, but... we don't know how to do that .

      Even what you may have heard of is wild, wild cheating compared to what you describe.

      I've given some (intelligent, educated) thought to this issue, and here's the problem. Light is adequately simulated with a line in the macroscopic world. It is, technically, a wave, but it is so high frequency that we can ignore it unless we're trying to simulate at quantum scales. This keeps the complexity down to merely polynomial, and some smart people have figured out how to shrink that polynomial down to a surprising degree.

      Sound is not so friendly. Imagine some reasonably complex object, like, oh, a chair. We'll even cheat and make it all out of one material and go ahead and make it as geometrically simple as you like, as long as it's a chair, which is to say, at least three legs and a sitting surface, preferably with some sort of back support. Now, mentally give the chair a tap.

      Now, odds are you're not too practiced at this sort of mental visualization, but here's what happens. For the sake of argument, let's tap it on the direct middle top of the sitting surface. Let's cheat some more and assume that one impact is what makes the sound, rather then an oscillation at the tap point. (See how much we're cheating, and we'll still end up with an uncomputable scenario.) So the tap radiates outward from there and starts wiggling the legs. The sound partially bounces off the legs, and goes back, and some of the sound wiggles into the legs. The sound bounces all around in the leg, and every time it bounces off of the edge, it loses some of the sound to the atmosphere and some of it bounces back. By the time it hits the bottom, it's bounced several times. (See, sound can't turn except at one of those boundaries, where it is essentially absorbed and re-emitted.)

      Meanwhile, the same thing is happening in the back of the chair. Plus, on the sitting surface, we have reflections of reflections of reflections to deal with, and thanks to the wonders of resonance, we absolutely have to track each and every one of them until they hit a really low level. In a fraction of a second, we have hundreds upon hundreds of seperate waves to track, and they aren't even rays, they are "wavefronts".... imagine a wavefront hitting the edge of the chair at an angle, like an ocean wave bouncing off the beach. It doesn't bounce like a particle, it is two entirely new waves, the one that reflects and the one that continues on.

      Basically, we can't even simulate this horrid simplification, the real world is even worse. Sound is highly, highly parallel. Ultimately, sound simulation is firmly exponential and the constants are very, very high. Maybe if those magical quantum computers come online we'll get this, but we'll quite possibly never get it with conventional technology; we're always going to have to cheat.

      (One can try to imagine a transformation of the chair where the sound travels in a straight line in some space, but I'll be damned if I know what that actually looks like in real code, nor am I sure that it would be any easier to compute then a straight-forward simulation anyhow. Bright ideas in this regard should probably not be posted on Slashdot and saved for your PhD thesis in Mathematics/Physics/Computer Science; they'll all be waiting with bated breath.)

  • Ha! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Better narrative? Better storyline?

    Don't make me laugh!

    The already short budget allotted to video games will be devoured in graphics production to make graphics that don't look like shit with the new technology. We already see this problem in many games today; too much attention is paid to fanatically high quality graphics that no one really even pays attention to, and very little time is spent on working on the story and making the game FUN.

    To me, graphics aren't what make a game fun. The devs might

    • ...developers probably have an easier time gauging graphics engine and how powerful they are then the strength of a plot. In order to gauge how well a graphics engine performs, you can get hard measurements from benchmarks. To see how good something looks, you can just show pictures to anyone off the street and they'd be able to tell. Now, compare this to story, or gameplay. How do you measure that? While screenshots will reveal how good the graphics are, you can't get something similar for story and g

  • Silent games (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 02, 2004 @01:51PM (#9034909)
    ...cause with all the fans making noise you're not going to understand a word of the story.

  • Unng (Score:3, Funny)

    by Hoplite3 ( 671379 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @01:52PM (#9034914)
    Wake me when they make a rendering pipeline that corrects for bad story writing on the fly. That'd be useful.
  • I'll be happy when graphical achievement tops out, at least somewhat. I think it's already begun, actually, but we're not quite there yet. When that happens, we may actually be able to get some sort of basic standards going, with games becoming more like books or movies instead of constantly requiring upgrades and more processor power. PC gaming, especially, falls victim to this. I have a PlayStation2, along with a gaming-class computer. The other day, I realized that I paid more for my video card than
    • You think it's Ridiculous, I think it's great. I can get a $100 video card that totally smokes my friends $400 card from two years ago. I can go to the bargain bin and pickup a game that has been through many patches already and only costs me $20.

      Progress only hurts those on the cutting edge, everyone else benefits from your lust to have the latest and greatest.

      Having said that...I'll be grabbing Half Life 2 the day it comes out.

  • No thanks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phoxix ( 161744 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @01:55PM (#9034933)
    I'll just wait till John Carmack has something to say on all of this. Why? because he actually delivers on the technology he speaks of. LucasArts and EA have been going on and on about movie like Video games, and yet have never had much to show for it.

    Additionally, any real game player knows that playing the bloody game is *much* better than watching mindless mini-sequences.

    Sunny Dubey

  • Oh (Score:4, Insightful)

    by krumms ( 613921 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @01:55PM (#9034935) Journal
    ultimately resulting in games that are closer to full-blown Pixar animations, allowing better narratives and more immersive user experiences.

    Oh bullshit.

    How do better graphics translate into better narratives, or immersive user experiences?

    There's always going to be a "Woah!" factor with each new generation of consoles, but people get over it rather quickly. And once they do, you better hope your games have substance or they'll litter store shelves. Permanently.

    • How do better graphics translate into better narratives, or immersive user experiences?

      I totally agree. It might seem strange, but one of the most immersive games I've ever played has been Civilization 2. It has tile-based graphics, no lighting effects, no animation except for unit attacking, which consists of a sprite simply moving across the screen and an accompanying explosion animation, and had an odd limitation where the world leader portraits would be incorrect when playing scenarios with custom ci

  • Please Don't (Score:5, Insightful)

    by UserChrisCanter4 ( 464072 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @02:04PM (#9034988)
    You know what? I hope it doesn't get too much better than this.

    I'm no technical luddite, but to me, the current graphical position we're in is, I feel, sufficient to do almost anything a game creator would want to do. Realistic shadow and light effects, faces that look realistic enough to convey who the character is supposed to be (in the case of a game like Buffy where the character is supposed to be Sarah Michelle Gellar), explosion and fire effects that actually look convincing, etc.

    Would I like more? Eh, I guess it would be cool if a face really could be made up of 15,000 polygons instead of the entire model of the body. The downside is the amount of time and effort required at that point. Gran Turismo 2 had something on the order of 600 cars, each of which were made up of ~350 polygons. Now many of these were nothing more than pallette swaps, with nothing more than a graphics set and spoiler added onto the base car, but many were unique vehicales that had a distinct manner of driving that would interest some people. Gran Turismo 3 bumped the number of polys per car up to ~3,000 (IIRC), and thus bumped the number of cars down to 150, because there simply wasn't enough time for the team of artists to create more than that.

    And therein lies the rub: Ever-expanding graphics place a burden on smaller dev teams that will eventually become too large to bear. Gran Turismo's popularity lies in (at least as far as I'm concerned) its realistic (sans damage) physics, almost RPG-ish approach to car collection/upgrading, and the "real" cars. Arguably, such a game could be done 10 years from now in HD with all kinds of crazy effects, and legitimately, the game was done 6 years ago on a 33mhz MIPS processor. But 10 years from now, when someone wants to create something that captures a similar subset of cool features (maybe a fun arcade-y dogfighting game a la Crimson Skies, maybe the new and revolutionary fighting game that introduces some unique quirk to make things fun), they're going to have a hell of a time competing visually in a market where 1,000,000 poly models require a single artist to work for almost a month to make a single character look halfway decent.

    My point, thusly, is that we've reached a plateau in graphics similar to movie effects. Lord of the Rings, or X-Men, or Spiderman would suck 10 years ago because of the lack of effects houses and hardware capable of doing justice to the storylines. That burden is off of the film producer, and now they can legitimately tell any fanciful story they wish. The same holds for game developers; outside of being limited to 64 simulataneous players for want of RAM/processor cycles, a game developer isn't really heavily limited in the graphics/physics/speed department from telling his or her story, or producing his or her experience. But at the rate things continue, that developer may be limited in the monetary department because of the expenditures necessary for future games.
    • You are so right. The amount of artwork, and the detail of each model required to populate such a game is staggering. Perhaps it is now up to the software guys to come up with novel ways of synthesizing this amount of detail, to take some of the load off of the artist. In the past techniques like multitexturing, bump mapping, displacement mapping, subdivision surfaces have improved the illusion of detail. I imagine that similar innovations will keep artists from having to model by brute force.

    • Re:Please Don't (Score:3, Interesting)

      by onion2k ( 203094 )
      But 10 years from now, when someone wants to create something that captures a similar subset of cool features (maybe a fun arcade-y dogfighting game a la Crimson Skies, maybe the new and revolutionary fighting game that introduces some unique quirk to make things fun), they're going to have a hell of a time competing visually in a market where 1,000,000 poly models require a single artist to work for almost a month to make a single character look halfway decent.

      Most game models these days are modelled as
      • Agreed, up to a point (although from what I understand, making low poly models is more difficult, because it still needs to look fairly close to the original). The problem is that past about 10,000 or so polys, more work needs to be done to justify the number of primitives.

        To continue with the Gran Turismo example, take an Acura NSX. The difference between a 300 poly model and a 3,000 poly model is pretty significant. Less seaming on the high poly model, curved surfaces actually look curved. You can ev
    • If the game industry is using *computers*, but creating all models from *scratch*, then they're not really make good use of their equipment. As the level of detail advances, so should their methods for creating new models. There are already websites popping up which have an inventory of high-poly models, ready to use (and for a fee).

      I seriously doubt the number of polygons is going to be the limiting factor. Those dev houses that can't figure out a way to do it more efficiently will just go under.
      • See my above post for a further expression of the issues with raising polys.

        Do they create them from scratch? Highly doubtful. I would be imminently surprised if the art team on GT3 started out by deleting every model from GT2 and beginning anew, but several magazine articles and interviews indicated that each model took 3 weeks of man hours to produce. Don't forget that the model also has to be textured, another thing which can't just magically happen.

        Do I think that it's going to come crashing down?

  • Toy Story didn't have to wait on the CPU (Score:3, Insightful)

    by duckpoopy ( 585203 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @02:05PM (#9034997) Journal
    to compute AI, collision detection and physics. Rendering Toy Story at 60 fps is one thing, playing Toy Story is much more difficult.

  • No way (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Have Blue ( 616 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @02:06PM (#9035000) Homepage
    Games aren't going to match Pixar movies until the writing, acting, and animation is up to Pixar's level, and you can't get those from a hardware upgrade.

  • Funny (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Pan T. Hose ( 707794 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @02:09PM (#9035026) Homepage Journal

    LucasArts engineer Nick Porcino has an article detailing what to expect from graphics in the next generation of game systems including the "influence of cinematic realtime rendering, the promise of advanced lighting techniques and high-dynamic range images, the uses of the rendering pipeline, and the future of multiprocessor-based rendering and advanced geometry."

    Funny. That is exactly the same what gaming technology engineers were talking about when the first consumer GPUs were hitting the market in the nineties. Meanwhile, the best games ever made by LucasArts are successfully emulated by ScummVM [scummvm.org] on 486. Cinematic realtime rendering, advanced lighting techniques and high-dynamic range images and multiprocessor-based rendering and advanced geometry my arse.

    • Yeah, i agree. LucasArts is one of those companies that really didnt get the transition to 3d right....

      But i think the main reason for them being fucked up is the new star wars trilogy. Someone (or everyone) in their managment seems to concentrate all resources to "movie franchise" somewhere in the end of the 90s, and then only crap came forth...

      But on the other hand: Noone says you CANT make a good game with good grafix. I would sell my sister for a Ultima underworld with doom3 engine graphic...
  • A story, when written well, relates the human experience. Ultimately, the goal of the game is to allow you to experience life in an entirely different world. Narrative is not necessary in gaming. Even RPGs have limited storylines. One of the most popular series of all time, Ultima, has a story as a backdrop, but most of the plot is open ended. Frankly, game design is mostly a technical discipline. The game designer doesn't need to work as hard at capturing the imagination of the player.

    Cinematic grap

  • this is getting wierd (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Wellmont ( 737226 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @02:15PM (#9035061) Homepage
    I don't mean to sound funny in any way but this is a serious worry. I'm frightened by the over hype of Video Game consoles. I'm afriad when I see computers more powerful inside gamming machines that retail for 100 to 400 dollars. Makes me wonder if spending 2000 to 3000 dollars on my computer or 500 dollars on a graphics card and Half Life 2 is worth it. Makes me wonder which industry is Really screwing over it's loyal customers. I know the bottom line is to make money, but damn this seems like pure product assasination. Instead of Microsoft and Sony developing computer security, or working on fixing they're current products they are in a race to strip the PC of every title its ever had:
    Master gaming machine,
    Master processing machine,
    Master rendering machine,
    Best priced machine,
    Most useful and fun machine.

    Hey don't get me wrong, if this means computer's and technology is going to get cheaper and look cooler (see, xbox design) I'm all for it. But if this also means microsoft and Sony can beat the crap out of hardware manufacturers like ATi, Asus, Abit, and others then count me out, I'd rather not participate in the destruction of companies that have provided me with high quality long lasting products in favor of a DRM gaming machine like computer.
  • We already have Toy Story-level graphics and we've had them for years... Sony promised us Toy Story-level graphics in real time years ago, and by golly, they released the PlayStation 2 and behold, we did!

    Which is to say... been here, heard this. Don't believe it till you see it, and are playing it. And a gentle reminder to the Sony fanboys to take the claims Sony makes about the PS/3 with a grain of salt; they played you for chumps last time, with the worst visual quality of the current generation. (There
    • We don't have real-time Toy Story graphics yet because there is no Real-Time Motion-Blur. Pause a dvd of toy story and look at a frame. Compare this to a paused frame on a video game and notice the difference. Until this technique is incorporated you will always notice the difference between CG for the cinema and video games.
  • This article only touches on with two words what the REAL graphical revolution will be. That's going to be Real-Time Motion Blur. With all the tech heads clamoring on and on about 60+ FPS as some holy-grail, why are we all so accepting of watching our movies at a paltry 24 FPS and deem that it looks more real than any video game? It's because if you ever pause to look at a frame of your favorite movie in action you'll notice that the image is severely blurred and contains imagery that encompasses not only

  • Graphical Lust May Kill the Industry (Score:4, Insightful)

    by FlipmodePlaya ( 719010 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @02:31PM (#9035162) Journal
    As studios work harder and harder to provide an immersive graphical environment, production costs skyrocket. Take Shenmue, a game that continues to amaze me with the complexity of its world. You can pick up and examine detailed objects from dishes in Ryu's kitchen to toys bought from vending machines. There was rarely a purpose for this, just an added touch of realism. Features like these helped to make it one of my favourite games, but they also helped to make the creation cost some $70 million (statistics vary)!

    As technology advances and visuals on that scale become expected by the consumers, only the richest companies will be able to produce games. This will limit the number of titles being put out, and eliminate smaller studios completely (we see this happening every day).

    My hope is that simple, but not ugly, graphics will become a more popular style. Colourful, cartoony designs made of large shapes, and the like. Artistic environments will replace realistic ones. There are plenty of great games that have skirted high production costs by limiting graphical prospects. Chu Chu Rocket, which I was just playing, did that. The graphics do no more than they need to, and as a result, I'm sure it was an affordable game to produce.

    I wouldn't want some great puzzler to be rejected by a publisher who doesn't want to spend the money to bump map the scales on its dinasaurs.

  • Environment Processors? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Aphrika ( 756248 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @02:32PM (#9035163)
    While I think the graphics end of games is pretty much set on it's trajectory, I think it goes hand in hand with the environment the game/film/rendered media is set in. As soon as you introduce movement, you introduce physics.

    I've always wondered if this is going to yield some kind of environment processor - kind of like a GPU, but one that solely handles physics - physics of liquids, solid, gases, and their interactions. Sure it's nice to write your own, but there's got to be so much overlap between engines it makes sense to model the world properly on hardware. Why not?

    I mean, pretty pictures are all very well, but I want to see things dent, explode, flop down stairs/over balconies etc...

    • I looked for the best link I could find on it...

      http://developer.nvidia.com/object/Particle_Syste m .html [nvidia.com]

      Some of the demonstrations there include particle systems whose trajectories are entirely done within the shader. I'm not exactly sure why this would be 2001... I suppose it shows that even back then, some physics functions were possible in the GPU.

      Ultimately, GPU's are going to be able to function as highly parallel, highly powered vector processors. Many of the cards are going to be able to h

  • Too much focus on graphics! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MysticalMatt517 ( 772389 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @02:37PM (#9035188) Homepage
    I am really, really tired with the amount of focus that is put on graphics in video games. Yes the eye candy is nice but I would rather have awesome gameplay with average graphics over awesome graphics with average gameplay any day.

    A prime example of this is "Wreckless" for the Xbox. That game was absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately the gameplay sucked. Yes for a good half hour it was fun to gaze at the beauty of the game, but at the end of my five day Blockbuster rental period I happily chucked it back into the return bin and wished for my half hour back...

    The point is graphics don't make the game. I play my Gameboy Advance SP more than my Xbox and Gamecube combined. Part of that is because I'm never home, but I wouldn't bother if the games wern't totally awesome. Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga, Metroid Fusion, and Wario Ware Inc. don't hold a candle graphically to the stuff on my GameCube and Xbox, but they're awesome, fun to play games. What happens a few years down the road when 2D games and games that aren't photorealistic are scoffed at and ignored? There are going to be a ton of awesome games overlooked.

    I think that game developers need to stop wasting time trying to shove just one more polygon on the screen and start working to make gameplay the best possible. The majority of the games out there suck. It's because most developers are too high and mighty. They would rather make a beautiful looking game with average gameplay than to make an average looking game with awesome gameplay.

    Look at Wario Ware Inc. Not just Sprites, but jagged ugly crude sprites that serve just enough purpose to function. The game includes a crude grayscale nose and finger, and you have to pick the nose with the finger in under three seconds... Yet the gameplay is amazing. I've had more fun with that game than the last Tony Hawk release.

    The industry could use a few more nose-picking developers and a few less wannabe Picasso's.
  • And, this is probably the reason why cinematic guys start making in-roads at /.
  • for the love of all things, make the game/engine/whatever spit out exactly one frame per screen refresh!

    It used to be trivial on console and DOS-based systems, and now it's not hard on multi-tasking systems either, now that we have 1ms timer resolution.

    Video driver writers take note. This needs to be supported at the driver level.

  • 'These will allow run-time rendering of high quality backgrounds and characters, ultimately resulting in games that are closer to full-blown Pixar animations, allowing better narratives and more immersive user experiences."

    I'm studying the Disney brand right now and Pixar of course came up. We've discovered that Toy Story and such would have had a very high probability of being successful without the CG animation becaus the characters were so strong.

    Thus, the point I'm trying to make is that the graphics

  • This document still talks about hacking away at one object at a time, rendering transparent objects last, and so on. That means they're still talking about using a bunch of ad-hoc techniques to fake reality, rather than using raytracing and raycasting to simulate physics.

    I won't be impressed until they can manage that in real time.

  • Babble (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Caedar ( 635764 )
    They talk about the next generation having 'Cinematic Graphics'. Isn't that what THIS generation of graphics cards claimed to have?
  • DirectX still requires games to use verticle sync which reduces frame rate about 50%. You can try to force it off, but then the game is unplayable because user input is somehow timed to the framerame and mouse sensitivty for example, becomes completely inconsistent.

    Am I the only one who has noticed this?

  • It's the gameplay, stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Incoherent07 ( 695470 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @04:50PM (#9035959)
    All of these new developments share the same flaw: in the end, games are not about what you see, they're about what you DO.

    Innovation in graphics is easy, since you know exactly where to go with it. The amount of work required to create the content goes up, but making prettier graphics is conceptually not hard... more computing power + better optimization = better graphics.

    To be perfectly honest, I could care less how photorealistic games look. It's impressive, yes. But in the end it's not the important part. If I wanted to see really amazing computer graphics I wouldn't need to play a game to do so.

    What about innovation in gameplay? Shinier widgets do not a more fun game make. Unfortunately, innovation in gameplay involves risk... will people like it? And the problem is that because of the higher development costs (due to the better graphics; see also the games story from a few days back), publishers are less likely to take a risk on a new idea... they'll go for what sells: a sequel to an established franchise, a sports game, a movie franchise... something they know people will like.

    Games, as an art, are really not about the shiny things on your screen. Yes, you need them, but at this point quadrupling the detail of the picture is really not going to significantly augment your gaming experience.

  • This seems bogus in many ways. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Zobeid ( 314469 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @04:58PM (#9036014)
    The hype this article lays down in the first page turned me off.


    The next generation of console and home computer hardware is going to bring a revolutionary leap in available computing power; a teraflop (trillion floating-point operations per second) or more will be on tap from commodity hardware.


    How much power will it draw? How are you going to cool it? The laws of physics appear to present certain obstacles, these are starting to become real problems. But even if you can make this kind of power happen in a game console -- will it make the game drastically better? Will it even make the graphics drastically better? I have doubts.

    It looks to me like we've reached a point of diminishing returns with 3D graphics. Each new generation of hardware is resulting in less dramatic improvement to the images we're seeing. Continuing to throw more hardware at games and calling it a "revolution" will lead only to disappointment.


    Our stories will have the potential for the same depth and sophistication as is expected today in a film or television show.


    Ha, I say! Ha! This is the kind of drivel I've heard from game industry pundits going all the way back to the mid 1980s. Somehow it never seems to happen. We've got plenty powerful enough hardware today, and advanced enough AI algorithms, if only there was a serious push to use them. Yet, this article seems to be implying that a deeper and more sophisticated story is somehow tied to better graphics.

    I was recently looking at screenshots from upcoming games: Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft. EQ2 definitely has highly advanced graphics, from a technical standpoint. Tons of polygons, massive detailed texturemaps, advanced lighting effects, yadda yadda. . . So why does WoW often look more attractive? I think it's because Blizzard focussed on art with a sense of style rather than flogging the technology.

    Blizzard are also working hard to create a well-designed, well-balanced game that's fun to play. Sony, on the other hand, are bragging about their voice acting and how cinematic everything is. Is it a game, or is it a movie? I'd like to play a game, please. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned that way?

    After the introduction the article dives into a lot of technical subjects that I'm not qualified to comment on. At the end it wraps it with a surprising admission. . .


    The graphics revolution that is upon us will be a creative one; present work methods are too labor intensive to scale to the volume of data that we will need to create to support the medium.


    The author implies that this is a problem to be overcome -- probably by borrowing techniques from film and television. I'm thinking instead: Maybe this is the point where we should take a step back and ask if we're even on the right path, if this is the direction videogames (and computer games) should even be going? Is this real progress?

  • FF6 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by i0wnzj005uck4 ( 603384 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @05:56PM (#9036369) Homepage
    You know, with all the recent game developments and my newly-purchased computer, I have to admit that better graphics does, at times, produce a better game. I've been absolutely loving Beyond Good and Evil, and that's in great part due to how immersive and overly-detailed the world is in the game. How you can walk around the orphanage and see little child drawings of the pig-man on the walls -- these are things that most games miss, these little details. However, as a game it succeeds as a whole; without the story and the gameplay, as many other people have been saying, it would have been a failure despite the beautiful graphics engine. (This is the reason I hated the new Prince of Persia: the fights just weren't all that well-thought-out.) Anyone else here remember being drawn into FF6 (FF3 US) for extended periods of time? Or how ultimately playable FF7 is even now, despite the fact that its graphics are severly outdated and it always runs at a low resolution with a low framerate? Right now I'm living in Japan. I have Beyond Good and Evil, the new 4 Swords Zelda game, and FFXI. Wanna know what I'm playing most, though? The original Zelda on GBA, second quest. That should say something about the current state of games and immersion.

  • Graphics don't matter (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Saville ( 734690 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @07:07PM (#9036801)

    much. Unless you are trying to simulate reality I don't understand the continued obsession with improved graphics. With the Dreamcast hadn't we reached the golden age where any game imaginable can be created? What about using stylized graphics like Jet Set Radio [sega.com] instead of realistic graphics? Would The Simpsons be funnier if it had more realistic drawings or real actors instead of voice actors and simple drawings which look less real than Disney's Snow White from the 1930s?

    Look how anime gets away with simple "graphics", but is able to quickly communicate emotions. Same with "South Park." We need to be more worried about what we do in games and how we do it (look at the success of novelty items like the eye toy [eyetoy.com]) instead of only trying to push visuals.

    I understand the excitement over new graphics when they enabled new games. Pong->Space Invaders->Pac Man->Super Mario->Street Fighter II->Super Mario Cart->Virtua Fighter, but I just don't see the point any more.

    Here are three screen shots; which looks most fun?
    fake far cry [xbitlabs.com]
    real far cry [ubi.com]
    gish [chroniclogic.com]
    Personally after watching the gish movies I think it looks the most fun :) But even the fake far cry screen shot, which won't happen until far in the future, doesn't really look more fun than the real far cry screen shot.

  • Graphics DO Matter (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Beg4Mercy ( 32808 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @10:10PM (#9037657)
    Everyone seems to be saying "but what we really need is better gameplay (and better stories)." I for one would like to post that I WELCOME THIS CONTINUED IMPROVEMENT IN *GRAPHICS*. People are making the mistake that developers have to pick ONE of good graphics, sound, storyline, or gameplay. But they are NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE! You're looking at the game the whole time you're playing it, graphics cannot possibly hurt the gameplay. Nice graphics create better immersion -- which ties into the story. Focus on the graphics AND the gameplay. It can easily be done. Obviously the graphics programmers and artists are going to be working on the graphics, but the other members of the team (like designers) will take care of the gameplay, sound, and story. Don't go the way of Nintendo and believe people are not interested in technological innovation. They are, and they are ALSO interested in gameplay, story, and sound. We can have excellence in all four.

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