I know, that doing realistic engine in a kickstarter (limited) funding is risky, but the idea itself is not s bad. I wish PA 2 had enviros like these: 1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?annota...&feature=iv&src_vid=OiGADgezjC8&v=oUSdSjnDB_E or 2) or 3) But PA 1, easily could have such or similar engine:
In my opinion; best results are when you strike a balance between the two. No realism at all is terrible. Don't get me wrong - I fanboy over realistic procedural stuff more than most - but too much realism is just as bad for a game.
Computers are incapable of making 100% realistic anything. Everything is just approximation, but more realism in PA wouldn't hurt. I don't expect it to be 100% realistic (hardware wise impossible and there would be no Sci-fi in realistic scenario). It would be great to have realistic size planets, more realistic gravitational interaction and, some basic (still decent) classical mechanics simulations. Rest could be sci-fi for sake of fun (plasmas, lasers, teleportation, faster production, mass/metal extraction, easy construction, faster day night shifts, planet smashing wars. etc.). Just watch videos.
This would be cool in Kerbal or X-Plane. Or maybe X: Rebirth. I'd love to see planets that large in PA, but after crashing my machine trying to make a huge planet in the system editor ... we'll see in 6 or 7 years. Anyway I tend to like a less realistic style in most games.
Realism tends not to allow for style, with a few exceptions (MGS2 and Silent Hill 3 both have an excellent sense of style despite being apparently realistic). PA's low-poly stuff and tiny swirly planets look amazing. There's no shortage of games going for "realistic" and looking like a donkeys arse as a result. In this situation, suggesting we need more realism is very silly indeed.
TL;DR: realism's overrated, maintaining a cohesive "style" is a better target. Realism, generally, is not only highly overrated but also misunderstood. What most people mean by a game being "realistic" is not "it conforms to the world outside the game" but rather "it conforms to the world inside the game." Essentially, as a player, you're giving the creator of a game one giant leap of faith (that would be that you're going to be attaching your brain into this world they've created) and just like any good storyteller knows the audience (in this case the player) isn't going to give you any more than that. As a result the rest of the "rules" of the world (or in this case game) have to make a degree of sense within themselves. Such as in the Lord of the Rings if Frodo could've just put on the ring and walked over to Mordor with no problem the audience would cry BS because it'd defeat the laws of the world that was established (namely that the Ring is "bad," m'kay). In PA and similar games we, the players, are giving the devs one giant leap of faith: that we're commanding an autonomous robot army in space. We expect certain things, such as there being no real reason why multiple commanders couldn't have access to the same technology given that they've accomplished interstellar transport, that their weaponry is still kind of limited since if it wasn't they'd kill each other with railguns from across the galaxy, and that there's certain limitations on their mobility which means they can't just teleport into an enemy's base. Provided these (and some other, lesser rules that you can infer from these examples) stay intact then Uber can probably flex the "realism" of the world as much as they like. BUT! If suddenly you could build a teleporter or a massive railgun or multiple commanders not only would the game's functionality break but much more importantly the "realism" of the game would break and the players would lose interest (and subsequently complain on the forums more than likely). The realism isn't derived from how the game looks or how many trees are rendered on a planet or even the method of propulsion but rather it's derived from the limitations Uber places on the world when you jump into it. What's actually kind of interesting about this is that if they added MORE "realistic" things like accurate tree damage and such it would actually start to break the rules in the opposite way (such as you'd start to question what sort of power source would actually allow for autonomous machines, why they'd have walkers, etc etc etc). This latter reason is actually part of why games like Call of Duty (for example) end up alienating people. Sure, a bullet from a rifle to a person's head will kill but that collides with the fact you respawn (since as far as we're aware that doesn't happen outside the game, usually) and have a HUD not to mention perfect reflexes and can only run for ten seconds (okay, maybe that last bit's realistic for the average gamer). Now if it, say, knocked off a person's helmet OR if the player had to restart (like Counter-Strike) then it may not be all that close to reality but it "feels" more realistic because it conforms to the limitations established by the world. This actually feeds even more into the visuals of the game, the fact it looks blocky and "stylized" helps VISUALLY reinforce the expectations of the rules of the world; if it looked like REAL walkers you'd start to question why they didn't just build better tanks instead because, "that's what'd happen in real life (tm)." Instead, the cartoony style tells the player that, "hey, it's a fantasy, just roll with it." Same thing goes for Team Fortress 2 and Loadout. All of this actually has a lot more to do with storytelling since "story" is how people interpret everything in their lives and like a good story things are supposed to "make sense" and draw creative solutions from established limitations. As it works for stories, so does it follow for game design. It's also why F.E.A.R. feels amazing and "realistic" despite the fact tons of things happen in it that are very far removed from reality. It's why Quake 3 with its crazy movement shenanigans doesn't seem all that strange given that you can run at full speed and carry a ton of guns. And so on and so forth. Postscript: sorry about the massive post, I deal with this kinda thing regularly and get impassioned about it.
That would make a good blogpost, frozenfoxx, and I agree with it, but I think the OP was just talking about a grittier visual style. I doubt the logical internal consistency of the world crossed their mind.
Sorry about the long posting, you're probably right. I suppose what I wanted to say was, "if you make the visuals grittier you end up destroying the entire world of Planetary Annihilation as the blocky/cartoony visuals reinforce its unspoken underpinnings," but without all the background it sounds like I'm just throwing it out there to troll the author, something I definitely didn't want to do since it's indeed a valid question.
Nothing wrong with long posts. That's a good point. I'm sure someone's written something specifically about game logic complexity vs graphics complexity but the examples I like the most are the games of crypticsea, Sub Rosa and A New Zero. They have extremely simple graphics where every single graphical element conveys some information relevant to the gameplay, nothing is there solely for flavour, and the game still has flavour. A game should be fun even when played with stickmen and wireframes. "More graphics" can serve style or more complicated effects can be more effective at conveying certain subtleties of information but in general I think many games from the last 10 years have so much "superfluous graphics", like, I don't know, a sci-fi car with useless wing mirrors. If you can't use them, why put them on the model? Space Engineers has a feature on its bullet list that every function is tied to an object existing in the game and Kerbal Space Program does this to a point too. There's something about an internally consistent world, you know? Like the drawers and cupboards in Amnesia/Penumbra.
