Alex St. John on PC gaming

[Jonathan]

And so, what you see, is one of the reasons that games that have 40 million dollar budgets, wheras are 80 percent of the cost of the game is art now, and the art replaces, or fakes, the absence of good 3D or realistic 3D physics. Because instead of having a realistic interaction with the [game] world, what I do instead is create a lot more animations, for every possible scenario in the game….

That's become too burdensome for big publishers to sustain. So I think you're at a point where, from DirectX 10, it's pretty hard to make anything but incremental performance without a radical change in architecture.

I never really thought about it this way, but it makes perfect sense. So much of a game's budget is spent on art trying to make the game interactions look realistic. Seems like a better plan is to spend money on programming simulations that produce realistic-looking results.

[George]

Ah, but more realistic doesn't directly translate to more entertaining, or even more immersive. I specifically remember a moment in FFVI. That game had maybe two dozen sprites per character, each on the neighborhood of 20x20 pixels. Anyway, at one point, a ledge drops out from under the characters. In a very cartoony way, the characters hang there for a second, switch to a sprite with their eyes bugged out and mouths open wide, and then fall. Far more entertaining than a perfectly modeled collapse would have been.

One of the popular lighting algorithms (specular? gourad?) is completely bogus physically, but just looks good.

Animation and even some recent live-action stuff are full of those kinds of tricks that give more impact than perfect realism would, and I think they should absolutely stick with them over realism for realism's sake. But I also agree that in a single game, you (the player) are probably not going to appreciate $32 million of art.

And, to contradict myself, I was playing Oblivion. It started to rain, and I ducked under a ledge. It wasn't until I noticed that the rain fell through the ledge that I realized how silly that was. Now that's an immersive level of realism. Hell, if they had gotten the physics right, I might not have realized it and actually waited out the rain.

[Jonathan]

I guess realism is the wrong word. You should be able to achieve effects algorithmically rather than using an army of artists. Spore, for example, has an infinite number of cute monster walks.

[Jonathan]

http://www.ocmodshop.com/ocmodshop.aspx?a=1379

Valve's latest title uses procedurally generated monster population. It doesn't sound like the levels themselves are procedurally generated, just the attacks.

[Vyrosama]

http://www.ocmodshop.com/ocmodshop.aspx?a=1379

Valve's latest title uses procedurally generated monster population. It doesn't sound like the levels themselves are procedurally generated, just the attacks.

Looks interesting...anyone plan on getting this? I wouldn't mind co-oping through this

[Jason]

http://www.ocmodshop.com/ocmodshop.aspx?a=1379

Valve's latest title uses procedurally generated monster population. It doesn't sound like the levels themselves are procedurally generated, just the attacks.

Looks interesting...anyone plan on getting this? I wouldn't mind co-oping through this

sure, just need to get a stable internet connection for my main system.