the actual title: Splinter Cell veteran totally fooled them
and RPS delivered :DDDD idiots
Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game
61–70 of 76 posts
Re: Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game
#62Just a quick shoutout to the Splinter Cell Enhanced patch[1], to restore, among other things, the shadows from the original console version.
And, as a bonus, the original Splinter Cell 75% off on Steam[2] and 50% off on GOG[3] (same price on both platforms).
[1] https://github.com/Joshhhuaaa/EnhancedSC
[2] https://store.steampowered.com/app/13560/Tom_Clancys_Splinte...
Re: Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
> 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. This is true of Unreal Tournament too. How unusual is it?
From the second link:
>> Because Quake levels started empty, Quake had invisible "exterior" surfaces that required a separate process to detect and eliminate. If the level wasn't watertight, then the exterior could be reachable and the automated tools couldn't eliminate it. In contrast, because the Thief level started solid, this was never necessary. (I think Unreal's CSG may have started as solid as well.)
It's just unusual. I think C&C: Renegade should be 'solid by default' too.
One of the benefits is what you don't have a problem with the edge cases with an escaped ray casts and view points - you simply don't have casts and views into the infinity.
Re: Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game
#64I believe that creative liberties in games and movies are essential. Just as Star Wars would have been incredibly dull without laser sounds in the vacuum of space, there is no absolute need for entertainment to strictly mirror reality. From a design perspective, if implementing a cutting-edge lighting system clashes with the core game design, I think it's perfectly acceptable to fall back on a legacy lighting model.…
Also: you cannot pretend to be "physically realistic" on a computer screen. The simplest thing: if there is more ambient light, your pupils decrease and your sight is different. You cannot simulate "true light" unless you also simulate that.
Yeah some games are practically unplayable if you don't completely darken your room and even then contrast depends so much on the display tech of your monitor.
Re: Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game
#65I don't see how the lighting tech has anything to do with the ability to make a stealth game. You certainly wouldn't want to simulate and measure the actual light levels in real time. You'd use an entirely separate information system in world space to define stealth areas, points, volumes, gradients between them, etc. The gameplay designers need total control here. You can't rely on emergent properties in the engine'…
> You certainly wouldn't want to simulate and measure the actual light levels in real time. You'd use an entirely separate information system in world space to define stealth areas [...]
Issue of readability still applies for manually defined stealth areas. You want to indicate these in-game to the player somehow, and more complex lighting does so less clearly than a sharp cut-off would.
> Additionally, no one is actually forcing anyone to use ray tracing or real time global illumination schemes. These are self-inflicted wounds.
Some of the lighting techniques mentioned (like ambient occlusion) are relatively basic by modern standards - it's not just ray-tracing. While there is a market for games that put readability above all else, there is also a pull for games with some level of visual detail, both externally from reviewers/consumers and internally.
> [...] just got started and stopped coming up with wild excuses about how new, non-mandatory tool features sometimes dont do what we need them to.
Hocking just seems to be discussing the challenge faced ("there would be some learning if we wanted to really use these modern lighting techniques"), not using it as an excuse to stop making games.
Re: Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game
#66Splinter 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 strange…
Newer Metal Gear Solid games definitely have light and dark as an element of stealth. In MGSV playing at night is basically easy mode.
Re: Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game
#67As 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
> Commander Keen
An.. interesting proposition. Wolf3D is a stealth game too then - there is an option to quietly stab some enemies from behind.
Re: Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game
#68I don't see how the lighting tech has anything to do with the ability to make a stealth game. You certainly wouldn't want to simulate and measure the actual light levels in real time. You'd use an entirely separate information system in world space to define stealth areas, points, volumes, gradients between them, etc. The gameplay designers need total control here. You can't rely on emergent properties in the engine'…
This is so obviously untrue. The stealth games that "define stealth areas, points, volumes, gradients between them, etc" are not fun. e.g. think of grass in an Assassin's Creed game: clearly defined, but the mechanic feels cheap and unrewarding because grass functions as a black hole. Contrast that to a classic stealth game like Chaos Theory, that uses actual visibility and sound, that keeps you immersed and challeng…
> clearly defined, but the mechanic feels cheap and unrewarding because grass functions as a black hole
This is a game design problem. This has nothing to do with the engine. Just remember the bikes in GTA:Online. Utter bullshit from the start, removed, added back because people wanted the utter bullshit of these bikes.
Re: Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game
#69As 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…
I've been having fun playing Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun (2016).
In it the player controls a team of stealthy assassins in real time who coordinate to infiltrate heavily guarded Shogunate fortresses. The characters and voice acting are quite well done.
The gameplay is very tricky and fickle but I guess it's fun because yesterday I downloaded the expansion with a bunch of new level to sneak around in.
Re: Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game
#70As 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…
Both Hitman and Splinter Cell both gained one of those limited-use mechanics to walk by someone and you could press a button and they wouldn't spot you.
Completely ruined the immersion for me.
Edit: In Hitman it was called Blend In, and in Splinter Cell it was called Mark and Execute.