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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

#431

Post by eridius »

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…

> the Exile III version of the Realmz graphics

What do you mean by this?

I miss Realmz¹, and until today didn't realize that the developer of Realmz was also the publisher of the Exile series. But I still can't figure out what "the Exile III version of the Realmz" graphics is referring to.

¹My ringtone is actually the Realmz outdoor theme.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#432

Post by dmitripopov »

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…

Well, if you saw some of Jeff talks you know that he has a respectable sense of humor. Everything in this post that you are angry at is just plain trolling.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#433

Post by nvarsj »

lazyjones wrote: post #154
magashna wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That era also had fantastic art in arcade games, so don't deny that things like Kim Kaphwan's pants exist https://www.resetera.com/threads/animation-excellence-a-eulo... I'd say today's pixel art generally doesn't hit the heights that it did in SF3 or some of the mid KoF games

> https://www.resetera.com/threads/animation-excellence-a-eulo... > > Current technology isn't even close to being enough to replicate this with real-time physics. The claim on that page, that those detailed cloth animations were superior and somehow lost in the transition to 3D games, is bunk though. Modern games are very detailed, e.g. https://youtu.be/ot_sYoqe_2w?t=2355

The 2d animations look fluid and realistic. The Horizon Zero Dawn clip you linked looks simplistic in comparison - floppy 2d textures glued onto a character. The detail is much higher of course, but the realism is much worse. It's interesting how 2d animators could capture things that existing 3d tech can't even scratch the surface of.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#434

Post by eridius »

zapzupnz wrote: post #428
ebg13 wrote: post #141

Oh man. This thread is really something else. Like...for miles in every direction, all I can see are pitchforks, and here I am standing alone on a small hill thinking to myself "Holy shit. That's the Spiderweb software guy. I've played every single one of his games, EVERY SINGLE ONE, and loved all of them." The graphics in the games are exactly as good as they need to be to make wonderful story-driven RPGs.

It's not my understanding that having a fond nostalgia for somebody's works excuses the article's salty tone that basically tells people they're wrong for thinking the games are ugly, coming up with all manner of excuses but never once embracing that the problem is entirely the developer's own and nobody else's; yes, that point is laid out there but it's given as an excuse, not as a justification. There's a fine line…

> unprompted

The guy's been getting criticisms for 25 years. I think he's justified in writing a single blog post in defense of his art style. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#435

Post by eridius »

Cpoll wrote: post #340
mcv wrote: post #147

Sometimes 'better-but-not-good-enough' is a trap. That's basically what Jeff Vogel is saying about moving up from his poor inconsistent art to slightly better art, but it's also how I feel about moving up from ascii characters to his style of "crappy" art. AdoM is a fantastic roguelike created by Thomas Biskup, which originally had you as an '@' battling other ascii characters. Later he wanted a nicer interface and w…

Baba is You came to mind for me as well, as a game with incredibly simple graphics that still looks _really_ good. I think a big part of that is the consistency of the design. The high-contrast simple design also facilitates the gameplay. There's no visual noise, so it's very easy to 'read' the levels and focus on the solutions. With that said, I think the art is also deceptively good. I don't think I could replicate…

Baba is You is I think a great example of something that looks really simple but is actually really challenging to pull off. It's also probably not something you could reasonably maintain across 25 years using freelance artists. It also helps that the total number of unique objects in Baba is You is rather limited.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#436

Post by zapzupnz »

eridius wrote: post #434
zapzupnz wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not my understanding that having a fond nostalgia for somebody's works excuses the article's salty tone that basically tells people they're wrong for thinking the games are ugly, coming up with all manner of excuses but never once embracing that the problem is entirely the developer's own and nobody else's; yes, that point is laid out there but it's given as an excuse, not as a justification. There's a fine line…

> unprompted The guy's been getting criticisms for 25 years. I think he's justified in writing a single blog post in defense of his art style. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it.

What does the 25 years have to do with it? There are developers who've been in the industry for far less time who are much more reactive and responsive to criticism. If anything, that mention of 25 years is an indictment, not anything worse praising.

Also, 'art style' is a stretch.

Finally, yes, if I don't like it, I don't have to read it. Yet, I did, and I'm free to express my dissatisfaction and disagreement with the article's message: if you don't like it, you don't have to read it.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#437

Post by zapzupnz »

nslav wrote: post #217
ebg13 wrote: post #141

Oh man. This thread is really something else. Like...for miles in every direction, all I can see are pitchforks, and here I am standing alone on a small hill thinking to myself "Holy shit. That's the Spiderweb software guy. I've played every single one of his games, EVERY SINGLE ONE, and loved all of them." The graphics in the games are exactly as good as they need to be to make wonderful story-driven RPGs.

I have fond memories of playing Exile II as a 10 or 11 year old. My dad worked at Boeing at the time, and there was some sort of store where the company sold surplus supplies where he bought used Macs for me and my brothers. These were not fast computers so it was thanks to Exile II "looking like crap" that we were able to play it at all!

> There were not fast computers so it was thanks to Exile II "looking like crap" that we were able to play it at all

You're making the mistake of thinking that a game that looks good must use more resources. That doesn't make sense.

If one took the exact same resources and gave them a more consistent art style, keeping the same file sizes or even lowering them, the games could look just fine and yet still fine on a low-end machine.

Better looking graphics or art != larger file sizes.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#438

Post by jtms »

close04 wrote: post #359
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…

The problem isn't going into defense, it's having an acidic attitude towards it: > What fascinates me here is that the guy seems to think he is telling me news. Like, I'm smart enough to keep a software company running for 25 years, but I am unable to notice qualities in my games that are instantly obvious to Joe Q. Rando. Imagine that being said in any other context to realize how uncalled for such an attitude is an…

You must be quite sensitive to see this as “acidic”. I have seen this guy speak at several conferences and he is absolutely the opposite of “acidic”. Here’s an “acidic” comment for you: He makes great games that people love and he doesn’t owe you a thing.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#439

Post by nomel »

EpicEng wrote: post #366
Majromax wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 "…

>Finding talented, reliable, reasonably priced freelancers is HARD He wants the talent, but he finds talented artists to demand an unreasonable amount of money. To me it's him that comes off as unreasonable.

I think you're ignoring his statements about his business model, game audience, ROI for graphic's improvement, etc.

Re: Why All of Our Games Look Like Crap

#440

Post by NoodleIncident »

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…

There's always one guy saying this, but CRTs aren't supposed to look like that. You can clearly see the pixels; they're certainly not emphasized, but if they're that blurry, it's because you need glasses.

Super Mario Bros (NES): https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LgO7CNdQx0A/maxresdefault.jpg

A Link to the Past (SNES): https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C0qPvqpVIAAoEz4.jpg

Both of the above look far more like the picture on the left than the right. I actually don't even know what your "blurry" picture is supposed to be a picture of, I don't see the scanlines I'd expect on a CRT.

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