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Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

jeff-vogel.blogspot.com

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Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#381

Post by platz »

haversine02 wrote: post #41
glenvdb wrote: post #12

I think the problem is that the game is in Uncanny Valley. It's trying to achieve a certain level of detail/realism, but it's falling short of expectations. This might be completely intentional, to evoke a feel for games from an era that did the same thing, but comparing to Baba is You highlights the developer doesn't understand that. Baba is You has gone completely in the opposite direction in terms of graphical det…

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

Amazing result

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#382

Post by repomies691 »

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?

There are plenty of entrepreneurs here that hire all kinds of people, and always try to find good bang for the buck. Isn't that normal? I personally have hired artists, developers, marketers, lawyers, managers, you name it... I don't see why I would deal with any profession any different.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#383

Post by lesbaker »

underwater wrote: post #128

It seems like there is so much he could do that doesn't require paying for new assets or more expensive artists. For example lighting and shadows can be generated dynamically (currently they're baked into the assets, meaning they are inconsistent or completely missing). Or generate edges between ground textures procedurally so things don't look so blocky. Add a particle system for weather and atmospheric effects. If…

This is along the lines of what I wanted to say. Going from the main screenshot, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit (in addition to what you said) that could be done programmatically like making the ground tiles look non-uniform or adding some "noise" to the land/water boundaries. Even some decals such as rocks or flowers on the ground would do wonders. The point is that there is big-bang-for-the-buck things that game developers can do with existing assets and I feel this may have been missed in the discussion.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#384

Post by skywhopper »

nothis wrote: post #336

I'm super happy that games that look and feel like those from Spiderweb Software exist. I think it's charming. But the fact that he feels compelled to write an article in defense of the art style is telling to me. I think it's not unreasonable to answer the headline question with "because they're stubborn". Their games look crap, not because of a lack of resources but because of a disrespect for visual design (it's n…

What a weird comment. The guy says he likes the style of his games, and that they make a profitable business for him. Why do you insist there's a "problem"?

I thought this was a great article. Why do the games look "ugly"? Because 1) perfect graphics aren't even the point; and 2) this is a way to build a sustainable business.

Your technical complaints about the art entirely miss the point. And I guarantee that there is not a good supply of talented and reliable freelance artists charging $10/hour out there.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#385

Post by djur »

eropple wrote: post #329
djur wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semi-jokingly: he should just dig up the Exile I tileset he included a screenshot of in the article and go to town. IMO that's the best his games have ever looked, aside from maybe Nethergate (and some of the more artfully done Blades of Exile scenarios, of course, but that wasn't him). Vogel should peek over the fence at the adjacent roguelike community and do what they've done: custom tileset support. He's clearly…

I think Exile I's graphics look pretty good, yeah. For me, it's the Exile III version of the Realmz graphics, followed by the original Exile I graphics. (The backported Exile III graphics to Exile I and II look weird to me.) His newer background/tile graphics look just fine to me too, though. I built a couple full-tileset mods for Blades of Exile back in the day. You can do it with the new Avernum engine too. Of cour…

I kind of understand why the graphics were redone for Exile III, since there was a need to add a lot of aboveground tiles, and also cave tiles were needed for caves that were not Exile proper but just troglodyte dens or whatever. But the gray cave floor never felt as alien to me as what Exile is supposed to be. It bothered me less in Exile III since you spend so little time there, but it was weird backported, as you say. And of course it also ended up affecting BoE.

Now I'm feeling nostalgic. Wonder if I could get BoE running again.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#386

Post by cr0sh »

usrusr wrote: post #330
mysterydip wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

low-poly (and often untextured) 3D models is already a style being used in indie gamedev, seeme like it came into vogue a year or two ago. chiptunes are also a stylistic choice some games make over full hi def sounds and music.

Going off on a tangent, I'd really love to see a game that pushed production values within the artificial constraint of zero texture, just flat shaded geometry, while maxing out modern hardware. That would be the computer graphics style I dreamt of while growing up between X-Wing on the PC and Money for Nothing on MTV.

If you've ever watched any of the "Mind's Eye" CGI videos (which were just older CGI of the 70s, 80s, and some early 90s set to music) - you can get an idea of what your fantasy might look like in full motion.

Most of those old systems and animations didn't use texture mapping and relied on heavier polygon usage, because that's what the hardware could do, while still generating a frame in a reasonable time for transfer to film (still - we aren't talking any kind of "real-time"). While texture mapping was known how to do (sometime in the late 60s or early 70s - can't recall) - doing it with the hardware at the time was extremely slow, so it wasn't used much (IIRC, one of the first CGI films to use it was Sunstone).

Instead, most used hardware that could either do flat-filled polys, or some form of shading (Gouraud, then later Phong). So to make things look good they relied on more detail (more polys and colors) and less on textures (which can hide low-count vertex polys).

The original Tron might also be a good approximation (though from what I recall, it was hand colored from black-and-white computer rendered cels - not sure)...

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#387

Post by mopsi »

failrate wrote: post #211
mysterydip wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

low-poly (and often untextured) 3D models is already a style being used in indie gamedev, seeme like it came into vogue a year or two ago. chiptunes are also a stylistic choice some games make over full hi def sounds and music.

Lopoly and pixel art also has the advantage of being cheaper and faster to produce at an acceptable quality. Indies cannot produce AAA quality assets.

They also tend to age better because they never tried to look realistic in the first place. Cartoonish remains cartoonish, but realistic becomes dated.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#388

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

atoav wrote: post #301
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should he expend effort getting better at something he doesn't really care that much about when he can spend his time getting better at things he does? People like you always seem to miss the thing about time being a scarce resource.

"People like me" are uttering these things, because "people like me" are facing the same or similar questions themselves. You are right about time being a scarce resource. This is precisely the reason why one shouldn't skimp on $IMPORTANT_THING: because it can greatly reduce the value of all the time put into the thing already. So you got me 180° wrong – if his motives were purely economical, I'd completely understan…

Why does the sum of the value of his time have to be expressed purely in profit? That's ridiculous. Way I see it, he's optimized for the amount of enjoyment he gets out of what he does while still being able to pay the bills with it. We could all hope to be so lucky.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#390

Post by AcerbicZero »

The vast majority of games which I have sunk serious amounts of play time into often look mediocre, or worse. Its not that I don't enjoy high fidelity graphics, its just that those GFX's often come at the cost of mechanics, or replay ability. Not a fair trade in my mind.

Anyway, to make this useful here are some moderately or lesser known low-fi (ish) games that are basically responsible for me not having a PhD in something:

-Rimworld

-Starsector

-Neo Scavanger

-Gary Grigsby's War in the East/West

-DCS Barbarossa

-KSP (Kerbal)

-Factorio

-Xenonauts

-Rimworld again, but this time with excessive modding :)

-Everything Ssethtzeentach has reviewed

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