Comments on: Things That I Hate, #57

By: Bonnie

Bonnie — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 19:22:00 +0000

Thanks for bringing this up Bonnie, you've changed at least one game for the better.
Hooray!

By: MDÂ²

MDÂ² — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 01:52:01 +0000

Let’s not jump the gun here, I don’t really think it’s a problem of laziness. Economy, or ineffective/obsolete production models, seem more likely to be at fault. Or just plain hardware again (though with current gen PCs I hold doubts ^_^” ).

By: Craig Alexander

Craig Alexander — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 22:52:59 +0000

I suppose that would be taking things a step further. In some online games you get this cheap trick where they take the same model, resize it, recolour it and change its name slightly, and that’s supposed to be a new monster to fight. That, however, is a different argument.

I know what you mean though - each model itself should be slightly different. That’s completely possible. I think developers are just too lazy.

By: MDÂ²

MDÂ² — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 17:36:37 +0000

I had been wondering about that back in march while playing FFXII. Why, given that we have (as far as understand, and am told by people much more competent than I am in that matter) the mathematical tools, haven’t they develloped software tools that would randomize the form of monsters so that each iteration of the same type would feel unique ?

(Well, in the case of FFXII, it’s a hardware problem, but with PC games - I’m looking at you Oblivion - there should have been something done more recently.)

By: Craig Alexander

Craig Alexander — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 13:46:17 +0000

It’s been done before, in fact, almost a decade ago with Ultima Online. Developers of today have absolutely no excuse.

I’m developing a heavily tile-based game, and I didn’t think that through. Come to think of it, my grass looks a bit tiled. Thanks for bringing this up Bonnie, you’ve changed at least one game for the better.

By: Bonnie

Bonnie — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 01:22:54 +0000

What exactly did you have in mind?
Ah, to my understanding, it’s not a limit of graphics engines so much as a limit of thinking through what randomness looks like. It doesn’t necessarily need to be complex, just right :).

By: Cybersexy

Cybersexy — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 13:10:44 +0000

Personally, I can live with occasional graphic glitches if the game play is good.

By: FerrousBuller

FerrousBuller — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 19:01:47 +0000

Rescue on Fractalus, baby!

Seriously, isn’t that a limitation of current graphics engines? They all use texture maps to “wallpaper” polygons, because anything which looks better is (presumably) too memory- and/or computationally-intensive to be feasible on current hardware. You can increase the number and size of texture maps - and have for the last decade - but there’s a limit to how much storage you can realistically use; and in the end it’s still just wallpaper. [I think ray-tracing is the next big “in ten years” graphics rendering technique for games.]

What exactly did you have in mind?