Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap • Hacker News Board

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#291

Post by spiderxxxx » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:28 PM UTC

Karliss wrote: post #52

haversine02 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The art doesn't even need more detail or realism, it just needs consistent detail. Even just a simple palettization/pixelation preprocessing for every sprite could be enough - https://i.imgur.com/oPH7paD.jpg

And making sure light is consistent. In the first picture some objects like banners, notice board, bathtub shaped thing have clear shadow below them, others like fence, green plant, mushroom don't. Buckets have light coming from left side hay stack from right, other from top. I wonder if it would look better if some objects were flipped horizontally.

That's at least 50% of it, if he had given his artists any direction it should be this: Light coming from top left, soft shadows. Give the artists a palette and let them create. When you don't have any limits, your creativity is unbounded, and that can be bad for delivering something on a time budget.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#292

Post by billfruit » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:32 PM UTC

billfruit wrote: post #165

scotty79 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the actual message is that he doesn't have money to throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks, and he's not going to risk going into debt.

Yet some small developers have managed to build visually stunning games, like Brigadier. Enter The Gungeon, Stardew Valley, Dungeons Of The Endless, were all developed by very small teams.

I meant Brigador there.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#293

Post by jayd16 » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:32 PM UTC

Majromax wrote: post #254

Goronmon wrote: post #214

I wonder what the sentiment would be if the situation was reversed. Here we have a developer effectively looking to pay below market rates for artists, and then unsurprisingly not finding many good artists willing to do that long term. Not a judgment on my part, just saying that he's looking to keep the art budget to an absolute minimum. Instead if it was an artist defending his choice to make relatively simple games…

> If the context of the discussion was about developers instead of artists, how would HackerNews feel about someone lamenting the fact that they can't get any "affordable" developers to work on their projects? I'm not sure the reaction would be all that negative, to be honest. The problem to me isn't when someone says "we want cheap work and we understand it will not be particularly high-quality," but when they say "…

His problem, and you can see from his wording, is that he thinks about "graphics" not "art." Sure he made a 3d game. So what. He doesn't seem to have the same passion for art direction as he does for game design so its not surprising at all that you can throw money at the wrong problem and not get much out.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#294

Post by soup10 » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:32 PM UTC

Good art is expensive and he makes niche games. My gut feeling is that if he just improved the art without making sure the games appealed to a wider audience it would fail financially.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#295

Post by pharke » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:34 PM UTC

jmull wrote: post #199

barryhoodlum wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying he's not successful. He's implying you either have shoddy graphics, or spend big money on AAA graphics. But they're not the only two choices, and that's proven - there are successful games without AAA graphics that also don't look bad. If he's feeding his family on his games, changing his attitude to their appearance could expand his audience significantly for relatively minor effort.

> He's implying you either have shoddy graphics, or spend big money on AAA graphics. He really is not. The article goes into the details of the nuance of where his games are graphically. Not to mention he specifically addresses what you're talking about. The next step up in art quality is to add one person to his permanent team, which roughly doubles each game's budget and roughly doubles the sales needed to support…

I think others have pointed out that this belief that he'd have to hire someone is a fallacy. There are some pretty basic techniques that he could learn from literally watching a few YouTube videos that could be applied to his existing graphics that would just take them to the next level. He's leaving money on the table because he's too stubborn to admit that visuals matter to a lot of people and the basics of design aren't so complicated that they'd eat his dev time/budget.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#296

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

Goronmon wrote: post #214

I wonder what the sentiment would be if the situation was reversed. Here we have a developer effectively looking to pay below market rates for artists, and then unsurprisingly not finding many good artists willing to do that long term. Not a judgment on my part, just saying that he's looking to keep the art budget to an absolute minimum. Instead if it was an artist defending his choice to make relatively simple games…

I don't really see the problem. The game may be a nightmare for developers in this theoretical scenario but if the major bugs get kinked out then the audience doesn't care.

I guess it's the same case here. The art isn't as if the entire art pipeline was MS Paint so most people who don't mind graphics may at worst just put up with it for the gameplay they expect from Vogels games.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#297

Post by jayd16 » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:42 PM UTC

I think the main take away is Jeff is just not passionate about art and so it gets cut. Even when talking about art he seems to mostly be talking about technically advanced graphics and still not the art you can achieve with those graphics. This is fine. Play to your strength.

The rest of the blog post is one of those soliloquies more to reassure yourself than anything, I'd say.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#298

Post by SkyBelow » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #244

SkyBelow wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is partially a skill set issue. I can appreciate good pixel art but I am at a total loss for how to create it, which has been a major reason I haven't making my own game (and pixel art packs are each too small and feel too distinct to be able to mix). Some people just go with the graphics they can do, don't care about looks, and focus on making the games good in other ways. It probably prevents them from b…

> (and pixel art packs are each too small and feel too distinct to be able to mix). Hard to disagree with that. I have a few from Humble bundles and can't even use them in prototypes. They're just a grab bag of junk.

They had such a bundle a week ago and I was kinda left wondering who would make use of such a pack. To have the skills to integrate such a pack would imply having enough skills to not have use for such a pack.

Maybe for slightly better placeholder art for a game before they are ready to invest in an art upgrade?

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#299

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

jayd16 wrote: post #280

tempsolution wrote: post #220

There is a big gap between "crap" and AAA for sure. But think about this (in today's time): * Half Life 2 looks like crap * Fallout 3 looks like crap * Actually any game from more than a few years back, looks like crap But any of those are hopelessly out of reach for any Indie developer even with today's tools. There is real AAA from earlier days, that still looks good these days, like: * Battlefield 3 * Crysis 2 * C…

>But any of those are hopelessly out of reach for any Indie developer even with today's tools. This just isn't true. It only a question of money and/or time.

Yes, I think that's exactly what that comment meant.

I'm sure a 2 man experienced team consisting of a programer and an artist can recreate the vault intro sequence of F3 in a few months. They wouldn't be able to expand thst into the full 2007 game without years of man-hours. Because F3 itself took thousands of man hours. It'd take a lot less time with modern tools, but not enough to offset the work of hundreds of developers.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#300

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:54 PM UTC

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #84

> People who grew up with Nintendo and Sega really like pixel art. As one of those people, I really don't like pixel art at all. Today's pixel art looks nothing like games did back in the day. The simple reason is that those Nintendo and Sega games weren't played on 27" 4k LCD monitors or 65" OLED TV's but on on the barely 14" CRT in my bedroom. We didn't have huge pixely sprites, they were small and blurry. It had a…

I think you mean you hate BAD pixel art. Thing about the critical modern successes is that they try to recreate that feel for modern hardware. In the process that naturally means they use more resources to pull off the visual look because 1) there's more resolution so more work needed and 2) it's usually being applied to a modern pipeline (computational lighting, for instance. Something NES games lacked)