Slashdot Mirror
On The Trendiest Concepts In Game Design
Thanks to the Guardian Gamesblog for its post discussing some of the 'trendiest' concepts currently infusing the world of videogames. The author notes: "Like every other entertainment sector, the videogame industry is prone to sudden fads and fashions that seem to spring out of nowhere, take the scene by storm, and then disappear only to be replaced by more advanced technologies, or better ideas, or something really silly", before pointing out trends such as 'sandbox gameplay' ("Sandbox is the new 'non-linear' - a favourite buzzword for open-ended game design... the dole office is full of unemployed end-of-level bosses") street racing games ("All the big driving genres - arcade, rally, F1 - have been done to death, so developers, already fascinated by crime and edgy urban themes, have turned to street racing"), and 'historical accuracy' ("Once the preserve of sad PC strategy titles, history has become a major videogame theme.")
Not all trends are bad! Remember full-motion video? That sure revolutionized the game industry.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
Having absorbed this information and passed the sand/racing/historical coaxial data structure through my Trendo-O-Mogrification device I can confidently predict the the the next great game icon will be none other than...Speed Buggy!
Of course it's going off the rails. How else is it ever going to fly?
Can any 3D folks out there tell me what the difference is between normal mapping and bump mapping? I mean, different representations of the data aside, aren't they both used for the same purpose?
Most of the items on the list seem to be the inevitable result of our current progress with respect to graphics technology...we are advanced enough for moderately complex real-time physics, but not so advanced that we can swing real-time ray-tracing, etc.
I'd say the real trends are things like episodic gaming, MMORPG's, the leveling treadmill, the limits of player interaction, etc. In short, the things that we actively choose, not those that are dictated to us by the limits of our technology.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
Is sandbox really a good term to use for video games? Maybe it's just me, but when I think of sandboxes, I think of something that's gritty and irritating to my eyes, usually full of crap, and that after you're done playing in it you haven't accomplished anything.
The biggest buzzword at the annual Game Developers Conference this year was "Innovation".
"Sandbox" is also often used to describe the environment in which Java (and others) run.
;)
[quote parent] something that's gritty and irritating to my eyes, usually full of crap, and that after you're done playing in it you haven't accomplished anything.
Fits perfectly.
Square dancing so rendy it never released a game :).
I remember iMuse being a touted feature of X-Wing. With the wholesale adoption of digital audio, I imagine it's harder to implement. A soundtrack can add to the experience, but I'm hard pressed to think of a good example.
Bump maps are textures that use only black and white (for lower / higher values, respectively). These textures give a small illusion of depth on an object, like the previous posters example of the grout between bricks. It cannot be used for anything large, because the lighting information is very basic.
Normal Maps are an extension of bump mapping in a way. Instead of using simple black and white images they use the red, green and blue channels of a color texture to capture the directions that varying surfaces on an object face. A "normal" is the direction that a polygon faces outward, and the term Normal Mapping comes from the Normal information contained in the texture. When a light hits a normal map it takes into account the direction that some surfaces were facing on the original, higher-detail model, and shades the pixels to create the illusion that the flat surface is actually composed of many different faces.
Both Normal Maps and Bump Maps use flat polygons for the most part (or as low detail as possible).
Displacement mapping is actually used in games today, but usually in the form of height-maps for terrain. Displacement mapping will probably never be used on actual models for the most part, because unlike Normal and Bump maps it can actually create more polygons when applied to a surface, and therefore would not be a good idea for fast and efficient real-time rendering.
I hope that answers your questions and I hope I got everything right.
Someone needs to spend time to create the ultimate olympic game that's a non-button smasher. But include 50 events, and borrow old engines from EA or sega sports to include basketball, softball, soccer.
I want to see vollyball, ping pong, tennis, along with all the track & field etc. Have it go online.
...the ultimate button-masher game! This is a game that rewards the player for pressing the buttons as quickly and randomly as possible. Kids will go crazy for it (ever seen one get near a piano?). Each household should have a copy of the button-masher game. Not only does it keep the kids busy mashing buttons (thus not mashing each other), but it generates zillions of RSA keys for you!
Sounds more like something we forgot for a while. We've had those since Super Mario Bros (remember the star song?).
Ever hear of a game called Tresspasser? It was released back in 98 (same year as HL), and had a far more detailed "physics engine" than anything at the time. Only problem is, the game was a horrible, buggy, steaming pile of dog feces (i've seen it on more than one "worst games ever" list). But physics were semi-possible back then.
The crappy thing is, Tresspasser kind of scared developers away from doing physics engines, lest they pull another tresspasser and completely fuck up their game. It wasn't until recently (starting with UT2003, AFAIK) that the big boys of the industry said "no, we can do this right". Suddenly, physics is a buzzword and a 'new thang' instead of being 5 years old and still evolving.
I suppose the only good news is that detailed physics are probably here to stay now, and should get better as the industry keeps fueling their evolution.
I think the biggest trend in recent years, particularly from US developers, is to make easy games.
It seems like a lot of people just want a game that they can play through and finish without too much effort. More like an interactive movie than a game. If you get stuck, the mags are full of cheats to help you. Some games even have a special cheat menu now (Tony Hawks, Turok Evo etc).
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Colin McRae rally 3 had you drive some tests to get a rally licence before you could start championships. But CMR4 doesn't have it anymore.
Maybe this is a good thing, because I remember Driver, and its insanely difficult test in the parking garage that you had to pass before you could actually start the real game.
But (as with anyone) if the article's author knows enough to predict long-term trends in the mainstream, he should be a VC or trader rather than a journalist.
I remember when FPS and RTS games were labelled fads and "flavor of the month" genres, mostly by myopic proponents of older-style turn-based and/or isometric games who couldn't grok a future so radically different from what they were used to.
"Magic the Gathering" was being called a stupid fad by myopic proponents of older-style dice-based fantasy gaming, around the same time.
I think the author of this article is not very informed, because though sandbox games have been becoming more common, they are still very rare. The main sandbox game that I know of are GTA, Morrowind , X2 the Threat, and a small game called Flatspace. If anyone else knows of some, add em to the list, but I can only hope more people would make games like this as I tend to play them longer.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
Mini games. Goddamn mini games.
I'll never be able to play an RPG again without needing to dodge 200 lightning bolts consecutively to get some item to prove my life dedication to the franchise. Every single one of them. Goddamn mini games. Even KOTOR has that stupid card game. Make a real fucking game or just give up.