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Preview of Unreal Tournament 2
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Looks like we can finally have a glance at the Unreal Tournament 2 screenshots and a nice preview. Wow, games these days are just too real (but you wont hear me complain!). Enjoy!"
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First person shooters have something holding them back from being ultra-realistic and that is the bubble that surrounds the player. The degree of seperation between the player and the world. What am I talking about? Take a look at this screenshot. Notice how the gun is JUST to the right of the player's eye whilst the clown is very seperate. The clown can never interact with that gun and can never come between the player and the end of the gun. In my opinion, as the graphics get more and more realistic this is becoming a bigger and bigger problem in getting the player immersed in the game. The gun example is just an example, what I am trying to say is that the player is very seperated from the environment in first person shooters and that is becoming a major problem. Notice also how the player can never see their own feet.
Think this is a small issue? Well, imagine a game where the player COULD see their feet and enemies COULD come inbetween the player, the player's gun and the player's feet. Right now, first person shooters make the player feel like a gun floating in mid-air and shooting at things in the environment. DOOM didn't quite do that, it used view-bobbing and other techniques to prevent that feel. A newish game that has the same level of immersion is Medal Of Honour. Whilst I don't think you can see your feet in that or enemies can interact largely with the player, the player still gets immersed by things like view bobbing, realistic sounds and other activity keeping the player occupied.
Forget graphics, NOW is the time for immersion!
You can still see polygon outlines. Textures are still flaky at best. Lighting is still very unconvincing. I'm sorry, but games are not beginning to look "a little too real". On the contrary, they've still got a long way to go before they show even promise of looking photographic. All game engines out there currently provide essentially the same level of performance in terms of visual quality. Yes, I understand some game engines have advantages over others, but it all comes down to how they are used and the design of the game. Let me explain.
Game developers have traditionally pushed the envelope in terms of what hardware is needed to run the game. UT:2 doesn't appear to be doing that. They should not be afraid to use extremely high-res textures and let loose on the model complexity with much abandon. This may sound foolish, but also note that this is how the industry has traditionally worked. Popular and powerful software demands hardware makers to up the ante on performance. Think RAM and disk space would be as cheap as it is without Windows9x entering the fray?
Elements of the game's design also affect realism. It seems to be that on one hand, UT:2 is struggling to look extremely real, but at the same time, incorporates elements that undo any progress they made. I'm not talking about cheesy weapons or circus clown fighters. The environments - the structures and landscapes - just do not lend themselves to being believable. This is also in terms of detail, or lack thereof. There's no excess where there needs to be! Hardware will catch up. Go ahead, waste CPU cycles... people will buy a 2000THz Athlon Mustang XPXA 2015 Turbocharged.....
Why bother.