This thread is about modern games, graphic engines and art styles. DeadMG posted a video showing off the new CryEngine3 and it started an interesting discussion about realism and (de)saturation. Here is a typical modern city scene: One grey-greenish texture with normal and displacement mapping. Endtimes. And by endtimes I mean end of all colors. Do they still sell monochrome monitors? I might save a few bucks. xD Another fine example, this time it's your generic first person space station tunnel shooter: In this environment you have to keep shooting to turn the constant grey into a brown-green. Of course there are exceptions. Low illumination, desaturation and gray textures can be useful to create a certain atmosphere: However, the effect might be a lot stronger if the whole game doesn't look like a colorblind vampires nightmare... Again, it can work for some games and movies: But sometimes it's just sad how far a 'realistic' look can go IMO: Seriously, there is hardly any difference to the greyscale version on the left side! Realism is great but when it comes to art - paintings, photography, movies and games - can we not aim for a little more? Or at least find an environment that looks pleasing to the eye without artificial help: The new generation CryEngine however seems to come with a build-in desaturation filter. Yes, you can make a lush-green tropical island look bleak: (original on the left side) Where would you like to spend your holiday? [/rant] PS: I have high hopes for your games though remembering Ekanauts blog about Art in Games.
CryEngine 3 does look awesome... but not all games need to look photo real. Some games can go with a different art style. Look at TF2, that game I think is better for the 'toon shading.
CryEngine 3 is amazingly beautiful, but I so wish, oh I wish, that they started using Digital Molecular Matter... Oh, Hi. Nice to see ya folks.
I loved Far Cry and Crysis was good (except for the last boss fight). The engine is just amazing. The TF 2 style however allows to produce additional content for a reasonable amount of money. Plus I think the comic-like style gives you a lot more room for new ideas and crazy stuff. In the German version they removed the blood and killed enemies explode into little pieces of junk: IMO that's even funnier than the uncut version and it works great. I'm looking forward to seeing your concepts and artwork! Are you white-boxing the game to test how it plays? If you do, please keep a few screenshots and release when the game is on the shelves or something. And maybe a few of the early 3D meshes, artwork... It's always great to see how a game develops over time. Pretty please. I'll send cookies and lolcats! PS: Have you seen the screens/vids of Borderland? They changed their artstyle from photo-realistic to this very late in the development: Looks pretty awesome if you ask me and it looks kinda familiar when I look at the Uber home page... More screenshots.
I didn't even notice that you had edited the Gears of War screenshot until you mentioned it I think realism can be fine in games sometimes, but the "gray-green-brown" color scheme is just too common. Real life often has plenty of color.
We're the furthest away from brown and grey as you can for the type of game we're making. As developers we too were too bored of the brown gritty filter that seem to dominate the landscape. Color grading and mood go hand in hand. So depending on the thematic elements in your fiction, you pick your colors to enhance that mood. It's a matter of perspective really. Could Gears of War with its war themes work in a more vibrant color scheme? Gears1 had a desaturation filter that they toned down for Gears2. There were some levels like the underground natural caverns that had more color than I expected for a Gears game. But it made sense in the given environment and fiction. Would Fallout3 be a convincing post-apocalyptic setting without the pushed dusty orange-browns or the over-bleached blue-greens? There's real sense of desperation you feel as a player as you walk across that endless barren landscapes looking for supplies. Maybe its more of the fiction in games that the colors are trying to evoke and not necessarily that developers are fond of using brown. I think this was a trend for more realistic and gritty games after the glut of cartoony platformers during the mid 90's. I for one as an artist in this industry feel like we've barely scratched the surface of defining various art styles and educating people on the use of colors and themes. It's a great time to be an indi developer with so many options like XBLA, PSN, iPhone and other digital distribution venues, where you can take greater chances with a unique style in art and gameplay, without spending 10's of millions of dollars of a publisher's money. There are big AAA games coming out that seem to break the brown mold like, Brutal Legend, Assassin's Creed 2, Modern Warfare 2, Borderlands, Beatles Rockband, and Uncharted 2. It's really hard to get a publishers to buy into the idea of a non-realistic-non-brown game until the more stylized games sell. Which means as trends continue, there will be plenty of me-toos until the next trend starts a new cycle. It's changing, slowly.
I honestly dont know what to say about how graphic engines are getting so advanced and realistic now. My only worry is about how it will effect people. The more realistic the game, the higher the chance weak minded people might lose their grip on the difference between reality and gaming. Though i have to admit, those graphics are completely sexy.
Anyone who's dumb enough to mix fiction with reality should just be put in prison. The prisons would be pretty empty... Because honestly... That has almost never happened in the history of video games.
[Disclaimer] This post is not about art in video games and somewhat off topic. Everything concerning the original topic is in the next post. [/Disclaimer] I think you are referring to school shootings and the like? We have that very discussion here in Germany. Politicians and the media are always quick to point out how the shooter had Counterstrike on his PC or some other FPS. But don't be fooled. Those kids went crazy because they were left alone with their problems, were mobbed by others, had no perspective for their future or were just mentally disturbed. And lets be honest, check the computer of a random 15 year old boy, you are bound to find some shooter. But the politicians don't want to tell you the truth: they failed those kids! Because nobody listened to those in trouble or offered advice and real help. It is so much easier to blame a new medium like video games and point fingers at somebody else. And the TV stations will happily provide coverage because they are glad nobody points to the fact that they have been broadcasting horror movies and violence on a daily basis. Video games are just a convenient target because the older generation doesn't know the first thing about them. The lack of experience and knowledge can cause fear and fear is a great motivator to rally people behind you. Besides, what are the politicians going to tell the parents? That their school system, teachers and the social networks failed? That the parents failed because the didn't care about the problems their kids have? That guns don't belong into the hands of children and should be locked away? They won't tell you the truth because improving the school system would be expensive. They won't point to the fact that under-aged children had access to dangerous weapons because that opens a can of worms in the US every politician wants to stay clear of. And they certainly won't take part of the blame themselves because all they ever do is pointing finger at others instead of trying to find the real problem and fix it. Sorry for the rant but this had to be said. PS: I'm 32 and I have played video games for nearly 20 years. I'd like to think that I have more experience about how video games affect kids than the bunch of politicians and journalists.
Now that I got that off my chest I would like to thank Ekanaut for sharing his views and his very long and informative post and Neutrino for confirming that your game will have some color in it. And some cookies for Scathis for mentioning the TF2 art style. It worked great for Fallout 3, the level that played in the pre war era (the mind simulation) was a great contrast and so was the starting vault. I loved the Nuka Cola vending machines, they were like little color spots in an ocean of destruction. Was a great idea to integrate them into the game as healing potion source. Yup and I like the dark and gritty look in some games. It was more that everybody decided it was time to remove the colors from their games at the same time, at least it seemed that way. And then they stuck to it for some time. I'm glad to see some new ideas popping up! I'd love to see some new art styles in games. I think the time is just right to try something new. With the success of TF2 & Co you artists might get a new chance to experiment with your ideas. And I'm very much looking forward to what you come up with!
Nah wasnt referring to school shootings. Mostly the fact that playing a game the more realistic it is, is basically playing mind games with certain weak minded people. Doesnt matter what kind of game it is. If they are so disillusioned so not be able to distinguish the virtual from reality, it cause more problems. As gaming becomes more popular and the graphics get more intense, it causes more problems ( though it may also be because of the larger sample ) but who knows. I have been wondering how in about 20 years if/when we have super realistic games if we will see far more gaming caused mental illnesses.
Hmm, let me try to give you a sneak peak of the future. In 20 years: - We will have graphic engines using raytracing with super accurate shadows and reflexions. You will be able to see yourself in every mirror or shiny surface in a game and blocky shadows will be a thing of the past. - Game developers will no longer build cities in a 3D program like 3ds, Maya... Instead they will take a bunch of pictures of a building and the 3D program will create a high poly mesh and cover it with a texture all by itself. (Google is already working on this.) - You will only have a small console at home that will connect you to a gaming server. The server will process all game data for you and send the information to you via high speed network. Hardware and software upgrades will be a thing of the past. - Blizzard will charge the soul of your firstborn for WoW: The Burning Crusade for the Frozen Throne of the Wrathful Lich King. EA will ship SecuUser 7.0 with their games: an armed guard will watch you the whole time while you are playing. Cheaters, hackers and pirates will be banned from life immediately. In GTA MCXXIII you will play a Martian mutant who steals space crafts and forges a crime cartel on Venus. Modern Warfare 341 and Armed Assault 178 will be played with life ammo in a jungle camp near you! Uber Entertainment will replace the government of the United States of the Northern Hemisphere. See, nothing could possibly go wrong...
Did you check out my blog post on raytracing in games? I think you are right on with this one. This is already being done in some cases. Personally I think procedural models that are potentially built from source images are more likely though. This is unlikely due to latency issues. Onlive is trying to do this so I guess we'll see how well they do.
Yes, and I played around with the concept in Blender a little. I'm still n00bish with it but it looks great and I hope we will see it rather sooner than later. Oh sweet, I knew they were working on it but I thought those were only studies to test it's validity for future use. Hopefully it will help the artists to free up their schedules from mundane tasks and go for the cool stuff. And it is foretold that in the ninth hour of anno domini MMXVIII the Greed of Men shall overcome the Laws of Nature. And They shall name the Lag and call it a Tactical Decision Pause and the Believers in Consoles shall flock to Their Cause in a treacherous Light brighter than the Sun outshining the Shadow of Doubt casted by mere Mortals. And it is written that the Quest for Total Domination over Control of the Hardware shall be won by the Beast which some call Publishers. And there shall be wailing and moaning and Blood and Gore when Believers in Consoles shall discover the Trickery of the Beast. But their Mammon shall be lost and the Beast will feed on the Marrow of their Bones... I have the same reservations about this technology but I'm also a strong believer in greed, peer pressure and the willingness of casual players to accept every arbitrary nonsense if you only make it look shiny enough. They will try and if they have to design their whole games around this lag they will do it. And people will buy it, not you and me, but a lot of them will. And it will be another blow to modding, mapping, creativity and everything I love about the PC as platform. But the PC will survive, it always does because people need it to write their letters and surf for pr0n!
the thing with Onlive is that if you weave a net close meshed enough the difference between having it run on your homecomputer or an external but close by server could be pretty small. This however needs gigantic investments and the large scale streaming an internet infrastructure you only find in South Korea (who aim to have all internet connections in cities at 1 Gbit/s in 2011/12). Also with the ever more decreasing prices of home computers I don't really see the point in centralizing it, instead I could see something like "social cloud computing" where you share the resources of your computer with your facebook friends to make more efficient use of the processing capabilities. But even those technical questions aside I am pretty sceptical that people will accept this kind of content delivery anytime soon - that is as long as there is an alternative: buying your own games which you then physically or at least digitally own. It might be quite cool for nichs like gaming from hotel rooms or in trains. Considering ray-tracing yah it is cool and probably quite widespread in 20 years but I think there will be quite some games which for artistic reasons won't use it. If you take a look at The Simpsons or South Park, its not really the technical superiority which makes it look good or in the case of South Park at least "different". So generally I hope that Games in 20 years will have a wide array of all different kinds of styles you find in fine arts.
Fortunately we have the experts here: How noticeable would the lag be if you had centralized gaming servers in the major cities? Let's say I have a ping of 20ms to the server (I think that's reasonable). Would you actually notice it in a game like SupCom? It might be a problem for very fast FPS but a lot of games would work. Not that I'm a big fan of the idea but I think they have a good chance to pull it off in the big cities if the invest a lot of money. Think about games like Crysis, they would certainly profit from this. Instead of upgrading your PC you could just rent a server for a month or two and play the game on max settings. It will take a lot of time to convince PC gamers like me that this is a favorable option though.
