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After a discussion with Duckbutt on gaming graphics, it has spurred me to write a little piece on what I think to all these graphical “advancements” and all this tosh.

 

Now, if we take a look at old games. For the purpose of this we will look at three generations of “retro” games. Doom; Quake; Quake2.

Each of these games improved apon the others graphics slightly.
Doom was 2.5D, that is you had a 3D world to move around in, but sprites to shoot and and look at.

Quake was full 3D polygon based with wonderfull 8bit textures and similar lighting to Doom.

Quake2 took the 3D graphics and added cool lighting.

 

Now looking at these three games, each of them shows a significant improvement graphics wise over the game that preceded it.

But they still look like games.

 

Now lets take a further look on down the track a bit of this games line, Quake3, Doom3 and Quake4.

Quake3 took the Quake2 graphics and made them pretty with 32-bit textures, high-poly models, curves, and a proper use of the OpenGL lightmaps.

Quake3 was unmistacibly a game. But it looked (for the time) real, but still cartoony if that makes sense.

Then there was a pause in id Software games. The industry moved on with its technology, and things started…. well not looking like games.

 

Between Quake3’s release and Doom3’s release, graphics wise, huge leaps and bounds were made by games.

We had such gems as Unreal Tournament 2, Seirous Sam, FarCry, Halo2, Half-Life2.

Now, whith the exception of Seirous Sam since it was based on 1999/2000 tech, all these games have made strides to look more life-like.

 

Now I’m not knocking these games, since they are all really fun games, and I enjoy them all emmensly, but they don’t LOOK like games. And to be quite honst, while they each make steps to imitate life as closly as posible… do they really look that good?

Ok, most of those four kept their game charm with how they use the life-like graphics, then FarCry went and did the whole SM3.0 HDR thing on us.

HDR lighting, bloom, motion blur, depth of field, bump mapping, normal mapping, per-pixel lighting, vertex lighting, soft shaddows. The list goes one.

Now whilst all these effects could be used to create some really good looking games (and most of them have *cough* WarSoW *cough*), most of these effects seem to be used to imitate life as closely as posible, THEN try to slap a game ontop of that promotional stuff.

 

Valve is starting to get that (look at Team Fortress 2 and Portal), but most companies seem to be trying to create their own reality. I thaught the purpose of playing a game was to have fun escaping reality, or an alternate one?

Normal mapping. When this was first announced for FarCry, the posibilities of what it could do when coupled with other effects where mind boggoling. It can be used quite effectivly past trying to make things life like. Think about it. An Artist can create a character. ANYTHING. Wether it be a human, a monster, a bird, or any other animal; with as much detail as they can bring to their screen. Then have that detail put onto a really basic model. This means people with low-end hardware will be able to enjoy the game just as much as those with high-end hardware, what it could do for the character of the game was amazing.

 

What have we ended up with after this? People using it excesivly to try to put real looking humans in games, which with over use of Bumpmapping, specular mapping, and a bunch of other effects makes all this detail blend into the background.

 

Seirously, take a look at UT3. Just take a look at the screenshots, watch some movies. Then play it.

Its one huge blurr. No not because the settings are low, I’m talking at 1440×900 on a 32″ LCD with everything set to high here. All these effects are just so much, it doesn’t look like a game anymore, and when in motion, looks quite ugly.

 

Now I’m not saying every game should look like Quake3 with Picmip 5. That would look UGLY!

But a game, thats trying to be a game and not simulate a modern battlefield / world war 2 battlefield SHOULD look like a game, that is, keep all ur beutiful characters, but allow us to see where we are in the heat of battle, where we are going, and allow us to SEE our opponents without squinting.

Ever wondered why people say the first Call of Duty was the best? It was realistic, but didn’t try to look like real-life. It gave us beutiful graphcis for its time, but made sure the parts of the game still functioned like a game. The US and Germans stood out against the background, but still looked belivable.

Then we look at Call of Duty 2. The graphics are basicly the same, but with bloom and bump mapping added…. and the textures done up that much to look real that the soldiers blend into the souroundings. Just like in real-life.

THIS IS AN ARCADE SHOOTER FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

 

Anyway, I’ve run out of steam. Games should look like games and play like games and not a simulator.