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Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game

rockpapershotgun.com

31–40 of 76 posts

Re: Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game

#31
> Celebrated designer Clint Hocking – him wot worked on Far Cry 2, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Watch Dogs Legion, and the forthcoming Assassin's Creed Codename Hexe

Is this "him wot worked on" a typo or a deliberate style of speaking, presumably for dramatic effect?

Re: Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game

#32

HDR lighting is not realistic lighting

> HDR lighting is not realistic lighting

HDR lighting is not sufficient for realistic lighting, but it is required for realistic lighting.

Physically-based BDRFs[1] and such is also needed.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidirectional_reflectance_dist...

Re: Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game

#33
post #31

> Celebrated designer Clint Hocking – him wot worked on Far Cry 2, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Watch Dogs Legion, and the forthcoming Assassin's Creed Codename Hexe Is this "him wot worked on" a typo or a deliberate style of speaking, presumably for dramatic effect?

I'm pretty sure this is normal for RPS house style.

Re: Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game

#34

This feels like a very poor excuse when there are plenty of stealth games, or games with stealth aspects, that are successful despite leveraging modern tech. Splinter Cell games became bad long before we had raytraced shadows.

Games with stealth aspects rarely scratch the same itch as Splinter Cell did, which I miss. Mind sharing some examples of successful modern stealth games with light-centric gameplay?

Mark of the ninja - definitely fun and half the gameplay was putting out lamps.

The mimimi games: Shadow Tactics, Desperados 3, Shadow Gambit are my favourite.. it's view cones but they also depend on the amount of light there is. they're isometric though.

Re: Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game

#35

As an aficionado of the genre, it is a real shame that stealth games have fallen out of favor with the current crop of gamers. 90s and early to mid 2000s seems like was the peak for 3D games with deep storylines and pure stealth mechanics (MGS, Splinter Cell). By the time the late 2000s rolled around we started getting the watered down hybrid model aka stealth but you can play it like a FPS or TPS if you prefer. Fina…

And don't forget Thief, the king of medieval stealth punk fantasy loot games.

Self promo: I wrote a tiny post about an interesting technical detail of Thief's game engine - the world is actually solid, and gameplay areas are carved out of it like caves.

https://crabmusket.net/2025/the-solid-universe-of-thief-the-...

More here:

https://nothings.org/gamedev/thief_rendering.html#csg

Re: Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game

#36
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment reminded me of Commandos! apparently it has new releases so down the rabbit hole we go

Ah commandos I remember people not believing me that I cracked the last mission. Ah I would play this again. (An)using bear trap to kill every German soldier and all the backup was fun

(am)using

Re: Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game

#37
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment reminded me of Commandos! apparently it has new releases so down the rabbit hole we go

Ah commandos I remember people not believing me that I cracked the last mission. Ah I would play this again. (An)using bear trap to kill every German soldier and all the backup was fun

Jagged Alliance 2 wasn't really as much a stealth game but had a lot of the same kind of tactical thinking to it that I liked in Commandos.

Re: Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game

#38
Splinter Cell and Thief are the only series I'm familiar with that actually have light and shadow based stealth. Everything else is all hiding around corners or inside/under furniture, like Metal Gear Solid.

The Splinter Cell lighting stuff never made much sense anyway, since you'd be perfectly fine if you were standing in a shadowy patch while making a clear silhouette on the illuminated wall behind you.

The strangest misbehavior moment I remember from the first game was like this: There were two NPCs working on computers in a dark room. Behind them was an open door to an illuminated office. I walked into the office and shut the door, they didn't notice there was suddenly no light coming through. I turned off the office light, no reaction. I opened the door again, and then they noticed the office light had gone out.

Re: Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game

#39

As an aficionado of the genre, it is a real shame that stealth games have fallen out of favor with the current crop of gamers. 90s and early to mid 2000s seems like was the peak for 3D games with deep storylines and pure stealth mechanics (MGS, Splinter Cell). By the time the late 2000s rolled around we started getting the watered down hybrid model aka stealth but you can play it like a FPS or TPS if you prefer. Fina…

Anybody remember the game Project IGI (I'm Going In)?

That was the original stealth game in my opinion :D

... well, apart from XIII, NOLF, Commander Keen and Agent Sam, of course.

The 90s sure had some awesome games

Re: Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game

#40
post #3

This just feels like old man yells at sky. Old splinter cell and other stealth games still used on screen indicators of stealth. It was never "simple lighting" that made the player understand if they are "in stealth or not". It has always been up to the game designers to make visual understanding of what is hidden and what isn't hidden, this has nothing to do with graphics.

The implication is that the reason why you don’t see a lot of people sneaking around splinter cell-style in real life is because the lighting makes doing that really hard

We don't see them because they are so good at it, obviously ;)

Yeah, those stealth games never really clicked for me, with their absurdly imperceptive professional guards standing around everywhere.

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