PSA - Realism VS Awesome

Okay kids, gather around Uncle Mike, this is important!

Okay, so I'm sure as many(if not all) of you know, Scathis has gone on record to say;

A fun, catchy quote for sure, but like many slogans or catch phrases in marketing, it's not quite everything it's cracked up to be. After according to Scathis the quote WAS used without the context;

First, lets talk about what many of you guys think it means.

A lot of people are using it as an excuse to either take cheap shots at ideas for being realistic or for proposing things that are crazy and unrealistic but subjectively 'awesome'.

And that's wrong and bad and you taking the cheap shots should feel bad.

Okay, here's the things, awesome stuff is awesome yes, but realistic and awesome can very easily go hand in hand. Case in Point, Curiosity. now, the Rover it self is pretty cool, and it's the first of it's size on Mars. But you know what the really awesome part is? The Seven Minutes of Terror, Going from Orbit to Surface in about seven minutes. And that's 100% realistic, and 100% awesome. I mean, I have a hard enough time getting to work on time, imagine trying to do something like that?

Anyways so I think by now we can see that realism and awesome aren't exclusive to each other. The kicker is that Realism is important to Gaming. But first, Realism is just one possible term here, we could also use Logical, Plausible, Believable , these are all words that work in the same manner so consider them interchangeable in this regard. Why is this important? Well for anyone who has done any serious game design or Learning about Game Design in earnest should know this term: Suspension of Disbelief(Wikipedia) Basically, when dealing with a Sci-Fi or Fantasy(not to be confused with a historic setting, like say Ancient Egypt) there are going to be aspects that aren't realistic and could snap us out of the immersion the game is trying to set up. To avoid this Smart Developers can include realistic elements to trick us into not thinking about it. For anyone whose read the Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy, it's like how you have to not think about flying when flying. A good example that stick out in my mind are UEF units from SupCom/FA. The Tanks have all the basic features of tanks we know like the M1 Abrams, Tracks, Hull, Turret and Barrel. The Devs expect our brains to easily recognize it and ignore some of the small inconsistencies like the exposed tracks on the top of the hull and just go with the flow.

A Bad Example of this is Actually SupCom2 and it's Flow field Pathfinding. Because of the Flow field pathfinding Tanks and other units visibly 'clip', impossibly occupying the same space basically. When we see that we know it's not physically possibly, and out brain skips a tick thinking out it, and depending on the person something as simple as that can totally shatter your immersion.

So if you're still trying to figure out what all that has to do with Realism vs Awesome what you need to take away from this that that they Aren't Exclusive. You need some awesome to make (some) Realistic stuff fun, and you need some realism to make (some) Awesome stuff believable.

Mike

Re: PUblic Service Announcement -

+1.

And you have a spelling mistake in

aren't exclusive.

Re: PUblic Service Announcement -

This.

Re: PUblic Service Announcement -

Fixed that and the title, thanks.

Mike

Flow field is a great technology, supcom 2's implementation not so much. I have much more confidence in ubers implementation.

I've gone on record saying pretty much the same thing, but if I got into that here the OP would have been twice as long ;p

Mike

Perhaps a way of summing it up is:

Breaking the suspension of disbelief IS NOT AWESOME.

Yeah, but: while some ideas on this forum are out there in terms of realism other are merely scratching the borders of plausibility. Realism vs. awesome is a fine line that uber will have to draw somewhere (and i'm sure it will make a great game, gameplay wise. They are going to playtest it after all).
Suspension of disbelief is an entirely different topic that is not easy to address. Not everybody has the same knowledge of planetary mechanics and will draw his line somewhere else. Since the premise of the game is already entirely unrealistic how do you decide what is realistic within the game system and what isn't?

Anyway it's a game about awesome mechanisms of war that annihilate planets, I don't think there will be a moment in the game where i will be put off because i think: Now that's unrealistic.

The much bigger issue is, what if you expect something to work based on your understanding of the gameplay mechanics and it doesn't either because it wasn't awesome enough or too unrealistic?

(Also for the record: i don't think planetary billiard will be in there, but i guess there will be a mod for that in short time)

For me, a game must be coherent. A lot of people are confusing coherence with realistic.
It's different. A game has rules and they might be completly unrealistic. But it must stick to them to keep the illusion of a coherent world.

I want to get to bed, so I'll try to get everything, if I miss something just let me know and I'll get back to it tomorrow if no one else tackled it.

To me there are 2 kinds of Suspension of disbelief, the kind where the game 'Tricks' the Player and the kind where the Player 'Tricks' Himself.

The Game tricking the Player stuff is like what I was talking about with FA units, show make something look like a tank and even if it's not 100% accurate the Player will still think Tank anyways.

The Self tricking is a bit trickier(lul) but here's my view on it, some people discussing about orbits and things like that in detail(I think most people can understand the basic premise of an orbit, especially now with Wikipedia[Kids have it so easy nowadays >.>]) are actually arguing for more arbitrary Orbit mechanics, not because they think they are more realistic, but because they have the insight/knowledge of orbits they can see where they might not make for the best gameplay.

I don't think it's as fine of a line as you make it out to be thought, to sum up the point, don't sacrifice Gameplay, I'd argue someone having fun playing a game is a lot less likely to question the little things that pop up, they might still be jarred by the bigger things thought.

Mike

Wonder why those people haven't all died off yet from sleep deprivation?

I agree with this original topic. And to add to the flavor: when in doubt, consult the way it was done in TA and you'll ground yourself in awesome and realism to a good degree.

Well, don't get me wrong i understand your concerns, but like most of us i already have a very clear idea of what i'd like to be able to do and not able to do in my personally ideal version of PA.
Realism and awesome are merely rhetorical clubs to batter other people into thinking there's a valid reason things should be your way. ;-)
Admittedly i would like realism for the most part, but there are also some things that i think would be too much (lagrange points, n-body problems with equal size bodies). On the other hand there are things i think would be awesome to have and i don't care how unrealistic they are.

As this is the thread of realism vs awesome let me make an (incomplete) list of different amounts of implementation that would be either awesome or realistic or both, fell free to add to it:

Various possible models:

• 
  Stationary:
  • 
    Planets don't move relative to each other and don't rotate either, KEWs are more like a scripted sequence than a physical event.

1. 
   Semi Rotational:
   • 
     Planets don't move relative to each other but rotate and moons have orbits and rotation, KEWs are still like a scripted sequence.

1. 
   Full Rotational:
   • 
     Planets move around the sun and moons orbit around planets, Asteroids are the only objects where you can influence the trajectory.

1. 
   Simple Simulation:
   • 
     Everything moves about as it should in a solar system, forces you apply to planets change orbits but for each planet only the gravitational pull of the sun is considered. Planet type does not change with sun distance.

1. 
   Full Simulation:
   • 
     Everything moves about as it should in a solar system, there are Lagrange points. Changes to one planets orbit distorts the orbits of close by similar sized planets as well. But as the forces required are astronomous it takes ages to pull off. Planet surfaces turn to lava if you're to close to the sun. Oceans freeze if you are far away, there might even be cycles with strongly ellipsoid orbits. Efficiency of solar plants is effected by distance to the sun and your planets rotation etc.

I think that at a "full simulation" approach is too much and you would have to consider so many things for your actions that it becomes distracting from actual gameplay. "Full rotational" is the level i would like to see the most, but it's hard to justify other than i think it's the level were awesome, realism and gameplay are in balance.

Also i'm well aware that Uber will probably try different versions and stick with what works best, but when has that ever stopped people (including me) from discussing on the internet...

Mike: why couldn't you post this 26 days ago?

It would have saved us from reading so many half-baked ideas, and equally as many invalid arguments.

this.

+1 to that. People also need to understand that if they like or hate something, not every one feels the same way, in fact some people have the opposite reaction.


I also like the "Full Rotational" (maybe Semi for simplicity) but would rephrase change the trajectory to fire both Asteroids and Planets, limiting the control to only designating the target, but would love to be able to crash planets in to other planets.

Quoted for truth. As long as the unrealistic bits don't jump out at the player, things will be fine. And awesome.

Good points but I'd prefer good gameplay over realism or certain definitions of awesome. That's just a preference and of course when done right gameplay isn't inhibited by realism or awesomeness.

I would like to point out that realism can be in different places. For example you could have realistic and complicated orbital paths for spacecraft. But if you assume these robots have very high tech materials it is also realistic to give the spacecraft powerful enough engines to 'ignore' orbital mechanics and just fly directly towards other planets. Although for some people the windy orbital paths are awesome.

I'm not quite sure what the point of that was. Maybe it's that you can't please everyone.

For the record, they also got a martian satellite to take an image of it DURING landing, see the black and white photo on the right.

Those kids are crazy...