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I've been noticing alot of games coming out 2K5, or even 2K6, and i'm struck by one thing: How little their graphics are differant, that you have to look hard.

Gone are the times when you can say "But RPG's\TBS's\RTS's have sucky graphics", today allmost everyone has a good looking engine, we're back to where we started, where its the gameplay that makes the difference, and games arn't judged solely by graphics.

Is this temporary before we have another graphical revolution? Or are we finnaly reaching a plataeu in terms of graphics?

Thoughts? comments?

It's "difference."

Well there are little places to go after 3D and before some sort of virtual reality set up. Also, a lot of games reuse engines instead of making their own.

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:It's "difference."

Grammer Nazi

StarshipTitanic wrote:Well there are little places to go after 3D and before some sort of virtual reality set up. Also, a lot of games reuse engines instead of making their own.

Whats wrong with that? Instead of 4-5 year development cycles, 1-2 years to make a quality game.

Virtual reality? while we're not there yet in totat realisim or total freedom, some of today's MMO's like There, are preety damn close.

Where can we go after 3D? If you mean 3D inside a 2D monitor, then we have 'projection capable' monitors that somehow project something without use of goggles, though it seems stupid.

Not a gramm/A/r nazi, more a spelling one

White Haven wrote:Not a gramm/A/r nazi, more a spelling one

Fine, a spelling Nazi, a grammAr nazi is Rogue.

*grins*

Seriously though, engine will always be important, although as graphics approach realism more and more closely, engine PERFORMANCE will start to be more critical. But yes, I do see gameplay starting to matter more, once geewhizbang glitz becomes the norm.

Ace Pace wrote:

StarshipTitanic wrote:Well there are little places to go after 3D and before some sort of virtual reality set up. Also, a lot of games reuse engines instead of making their own.

Whats wrong with that? Instead of 4-5 year development cycles, 1-2 years to make a quality game.

You proved my point. Companies go for the easy route by buying an engine and using it instead of making their own. Little variation.

White Haven wrote:*grins*

Seriously though, engine will always be important, although as graphics approach realism more and more closely, engine PERFORMANCE will start to be more critical. But yes, I do see gameplay starting to matter more, once geewhizbang glitz becomes the norm.

Though as I said above, engines are becoming easier to just purchase, reletivly cheaply.

I mean, are you going to slave for 4 years on your next Gem engine for an obscure game that will most likly not make anyone care (See STALKER), or are you just going to license the Unreal engine 2.0?

Preformance is nearly there, with UE2.0 giving great quality and great preformance, bar the horrible preformance of America's Army.

Computers are continuing to improve at the same old rate, so there should be improvements in graphics coming along. I think the difference now owes to the fact that improvements are relatively small since everyone has thousands of polygons/character, and since having three times that number results in only a slight difference as to the overall game.

StarshipTitanic wrote:You proved my point. Companies go for the easy route by buying an engine and using it instead of making their own. Little variation.

The engines are quality, stable and high preforming, the variation comes from the art team.
Its not a disadvantage.

Well, we're not quite to that point yet. Look at the differences between, say, the Nexus engine and the Homeworld 2 engine. Both were in development at the same time (Nexus took forever, blame shitty publishers back-to-back), but both look WILDLY different in quality.

www.nexusthegame.com

www.homeworld2.com

www.relicnews.com

I forsee that kind of engine plateau coming EVENTUALLY, but we ain't quite there yet.

White Haven wrote:Well, we're not quite to that point yet. Look at the differences between, say, the Nexus engine and the Homeworld 2 engine. Both were in development at the same time (Nexus took forever, blame shitty publishers back-to-back), but both look WILDLY different in quality.

www.nexusthegame.com

www.homeworld2.com

www.relicnews.com

I forsee that kind of engine plateau coming EVENTUALLY, but we ain't quite there yet.

OOOO, preety shaders *drops shiny nickle*
Seriously thats some nice job, the extra time has been worth it.

I've been talking more about UE3.0, the Battlefield 2 engine, the STALKER engine, comapre them, can a casual look differente between them, with no relation to the art assets?

FPS...can hang. Actually, if you can find it, there's an old tech demo from about two years back of Imperium Galactica 3 designed for the Matrox Parhelia. Sounds like a non-sequitor? Nope, it's Nexus, two names and about a publisher and a half ago. Significant because it's a more primitive version of the engine that was out far BEFORE HW2, to give a more even comparison. Don't have a link now, I'm at work, but I'll try to dig it up. Nexus, by the way, come sout everywhere BUT the US.Canada in a week. We get in February, thanks to Vivendi being useless cocksucking monkeybeaters.

White Haven wrote:FPS...can hang. Actually, if you can find it, there's an old tech demo from about two years back of Imperium Galactica 3 designed for the Matrox Parhelia. Sounds like a non-sequitor? Nope, it's Nexus, two names and about a publisher and a half ago. Significant because it's a more primitive version of the engine that was out far BEFORE HW2, to give a more even comparison. Don't have a link now, I'm at work, but I'll try to dig it up. Nexus, by the way, come sout everywhere BUT the US.Canada in a week. We get in February, thanks to Vivendi being useless cocksucking monkeybeaters.

I'm aware Nexus is IG3 under another name, though I have no idea where the said tech demo is.

Yeah, I'll try to find a URL for the tech demo when I get home. Curse these open-to-close shifts

Ace Pace wrote:I've been noticing alot of games coming out 2K5, or even 2K6, and i'm struck by one thing: How little their graphics are differant, that you have to look hard.

Gone are the times when you can say "But RPG's\TBS's\RTS's have sucky graphics", today allmost everyone has a good looking engine, we're back to where we started, where its the gameplay that makes the difference, and games arn't judged solely by graphics.

Is this temporary before we have another graphical revolution? Or are we finnaly reaching a plataeu in terms of graphics?

Thoughts? comments?

Personally I think its because of the consumers.
Think about it this way...
To sell the most copies you want to have the largest audience possible, right?
So, it might be a good idea for the game to be playable for people with consoles or low end graphics cards.
The result is that companies make sure that the graphics will work on modern consoles, and it ends up looking not much better than other PC games. See Battlefront, for example. Even Doom 3 runs on XBox!

The next Unreal engine (the one they demoed the Geforce 6800 Ultra on) looks unbelievable though- shows you what they're capable of if they shoot for high-end only.

I think when the next generation consoles come out we're going to have leaps in graphics detail since companies will aim for higher levels of detail for the consoles (3.5 GHz G5 XBox? 2.8 GHz GameCube?).

On one hand, I like the industry to grow, yay, more money spent into games in the future. On the other hand, I hate pandering to fucking whiners who bitch that 'my Geforce4 Ti 4200 can do three million texels a second, why isn't that enough?' when asking me about games. YOU IDIOTS, IT'S THREE YEARS OLD! Ahem. Sorry. /CUSTOMERS/

White Haven wrote:On one hand, I like the industry to grow, yay, more money spent into games in the future. On the other hand, I hate pandering to fucking whiners who bitch that 'my Geforce4 Ti 4200 can do three million texels a second, why isn't that enough?' when asking me about games. YOU IDIOTS, IT'S THREE YEARS OLD! Ahem. Sorry. /CUSTOMERS/

Replace that with MX420, add "but I want to play GTA:VC" and you get my daily recess plan.