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The 'EA Image' Tarnished
Gamespot reports that Pacific Crest Securities analyst Evan Wilson has gone on record saying that EA is wrecking its good name, with questionable business decisions and dropping game quality. From the article: "'Reviews of all of EA's annualized titles, its primary source of profit, have declined over the past two years,' Wilson noted. 'Although market share has not declined dramatically to date, in years such as 2007, which promises to have tremendous competition, it seems likely if quality does not improve. EA's aggregate review has also declined significantly in the past two years.'" 1up has the word that, in support of this, EA is still very proud of their 'paying for cheat codes' policy with Need for Speed.
The parent post has a minor error. Let me see if I can fix it.
EA is wrecking its "good name"
Much better.
What good name?
Sure but, cmon, how much better can Madden really get without smell-o-vision? Seriously, I like the EA games, and have noticed less improvement over the years, but all in all, they're still great games that are fun to play. I even like their stupid "Big" games and wish they'd release them on PC.
You'll have that sometimes...
So...the huge employee-driven lawsuit against EA for its draconian work environment, unpaid overtime, etc. didn't tarnish their image?
Lackluster re-releases of (American) football games after EA secured exclusive right to all things "NFL" didn't tarnish their image?
'nuff said.
But because such a short post won't explain to the uninformed: The debacle that was C&C Generals should tell you just how bad EA's influence is on a proven game series. After all the great work that Westwood did defining the C&C series, EA released C&C Generals as a wannabe StarCraft with horrible netcode and next to no support.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
I think almost a decade has passed since EA actually had a good name.
I know you can't polish a turd, but I can't see how you could tarnish one either. Unless they change EA to mean Extraordinary Assholes. That would polish it somewhat.
A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's an erection for?
What other shocking truths will these crazy journalists uncover next! I hear they're working on a piece regarding new evidence that water is apparently wet. Mind-blowing!
They tarnished their image when they took over Ultima Online and added Trammel and all the other 'carebear hold my hand' updates.
I thought you couldn't polish a turd.
... same principle though, really.
Oops, that's says tarnish
=tkk
Bill Gates - Creationist?!?
I weep for the early to mid 80's, where *EVERY* single title coming out of Electronic Arts was pure gold. M.U.L.E., Mail Order Monsters, Dr J vs Larry Bird, Racing Destruction Set, The Seven Cities of Gold, Archon - the list of quality, addictive games coming from them kept me and my Commie 64 busy for ages and ages.
Good idea: Offer players new and exciting content to download through online services, allowing your video games to generate extra revenue without having to develop an entirely new game that will vanish off the $60 shelves and into the $30 bargains in three weeks.
Bad idea: Gut half of your $60 game and redistribute it claiming that your customers will want to pay extra for what they originally got for free.
When I interact with a company I want to feel as though we are mutually benefitting each other. I give them my hard earned money, and they give me a product born of their own sweat and toil. I don't want to feel like I'm some resource they're trying to find new and more fiendish ways to exploit.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
'Although market share has not declined dramatically to date, in years such as 2007, which promises to have tremendous competition, it seems likely if quality does not improve...
What competition? I thought they'd finished buying and gutting every company that had a semi successful title in the last 5 years. And when they couldn't buy them, they obtained exclusive franchise licensing so they could torpedo their ships before they even left port.
I have no idea what the future holds for EA. But I wouldn't be so sure that they won't continue to get away with releasing half finished products, humping and dumping young developers and double charging their customers. It seems like plenty of people have continued to buy their products.
I'm just bitter they swallowed some of my favorite little development houses in the late 90s.
Watching EA run my favorite franchise into the ground was all the evidence I needed. It took EA about 9 months to come out with a patch for C&C Generals which could have been done with about 15 lines of code involving unit changes. I always hoped for more games like Red Alert.
EA lost their direction a long time ago. I used to play Ultima Online until EA bought it out. EA realized that getting two new customers was more profitable than keeping one veteran customer. That's true in the short run at least, which seems to be all they are thinking about.
They seem to adopt this policy to non-subscription based games, although it is slightly modified: selling two almost completely similar (or two shitty) games is better than selling one original (or quality) game. The 2007 annual sports game lineup that EA released were barely an upgrade from 2006 (and 2006 wasn't that much better than 2005, but I'll give it credit for being relatively significant). They should have just put it off until they worked out their issues with the next-gen consoles, or pulled their heads out of their asses. If they started thinking more about what the customers want instead of maximizing profit in the short run, they might do a lot better. I know a lot of people are going to get into the "companies only care about money" rant, but a lot of the time, caring about your customers will lead to more money.
If you look elsewhere, you will find that Valve is doing the Good Idea (except for the have-to-hope-Steam-won't-shut-down factor, which I still dislike). So it can be done. If EA is too stupid, tough luck ;-)
C - the footgun of programming languages
The article says that reviews for EA games have been getting worse since two years ago. That's about when EA started signing exclusive licensing agreements with professional sports. Without an NFL 2K7, why does Madden 07 have to be any better? If you want to play as your favorite NFL team, you have to go wtih Madden.
The article also cites alot of movie and comic book license games as proof of declining quality. But again, EA has the inside track on a lot of that IP. They are one of the few companies big enough to lock up the pricey licenses. There is a reason that Rare never made another James Bond game after their biggest hit, GoldenEye. EA is a giant, multi-platform developer who could pay Universal Studios a lot of money for exclusive rights to James Bond.
And when a kid goes to the store, he doesn't say "That game is an EA game, so it must suck," he says, "That is a Superman game, so it must suck." EA's reputation doesn't get tarnished when Superman Returns sucks. What gets tarnished is the reputation of Superman games (already pretty bad).
Right now, EA has the money and clout to get a lot of exclusive licenses. They can sell a lot of mediocre games with a great license, especially if they are the only ones in town with a game of your favorite series.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
My friend is a big Superman fan and pre-ordered "Superman Returns" the video game direct from the EA store. This was in April, the game then got pushed back to a November release date. In the meantime he had already been charged for the game. The game was supposed to be released on November 20th. As of November 24th my friend still did not recieve his game.
The only way to contact someone at the EA store if their is a problem is by logging in and sending a support e-mail which they say someone will get back to you in 24 hours. Three days later my friend still heard nothing after sending a support email and asked if I could help him somehow. I tried to find a phone number for the EA store - no luck, checked their main website etc... still no numbers got the address for EA games and googled it which gave me the corporate HQ number and location in the U.S. Called long distance to California to try to get it sorted out and the secretary instantly put my friend into an automated computer response system that did not have any options for the problem he was experiencing it then took a survey from him and hung up on him.
We called back a second time and got the same secretary again who transferred us to some guy that just went by the name of "Mike" he would not give his ufll name badge number nothing... I asekd him how my buddy could just get a refund since he went out and bought the game at the store since no one had gotten back to him. The guy said "Their is no one you can contact at the EA store the only way to contact someone is through their webmail form" I asked for a supervisor he said "I don't have the name of one to give you" I asked well who do I contact if this is not resolved ? He had no answer. I asked for his information in case this wasn't taken care of he just gave me his first name and refused to give me any other information and just kept saying it will be corrected I have let a supervisor know.
The morale of this story I would NEVER BUY ANYTHING DIRECT FROM EA EVER.
- He paid ahead of time
- They have no customer service except for email
- They have a don't call us or contact us if you have a problem policy
- They have a VERY SHADY way of doing business with customers.
- You can't talk to anyone live if you have a problem. Unless you call corporate HQ in which case you might get a Janitor for all anyone knows named "MIKE".
Now that a business analyst looks at it, we see evidence that EA is rotten to the core, not just bruised on the surface. They're apparently doing everything wrong, game-wise, development-wise and business-wise. The only thing they seem to do correctly is take over, assimilate and ruin a game studio in just such a manner as to manipulate the market share and keep their piece of pie the same size.
I'll never forgive EA for how it has ruined numerous studios (Origin was my favorite), several (former) employees' lives and the games that we loved to play.
Something familiar about those words....Oh, yeah. That has been Blizzard's policy for a decade now. "It's done when it's done." Go figure that it only took EA 10 years to adopt the one practice they should have been doing from the beginning.
Too little, too late. I feel extremely sorry for all of the lives it would affect, but I seriously hope EA bites the big one, goes down the toilet and either gets bought by a REAL game company or is taken apart and sold for scrap.
There is one reason why I have not yet dumped my EA stock: Spore. I'm not expecting it to save the company or anything, but I feel like I'd be a fool to sell before it's released.
Actually, the only reason I even bought EA shares several years ago was because I was a Will Wright fan.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
I totally agree, I can't believe what's happened to EA over the years. I think Battlefield 2 was the beginning of the end, endless map exploits and game bugs, followed by late patches that came in at 400-500MB's a piece. Give us a break EA, do you think we're going to buy 2142 after all the bullshit you put us through? Unfortunatly, every game I play these days has the 'ol EA tramp stamp of approval when you load up.. BAH! DIE! DIE DIE DIE!
Smokedot.org
Electronic Arts have been the scourge of the gaming industry for years. Every single time I've seen an article on here talking about a "current slump," I've found myself thinking, "Look no further than EA for the reason why, guys."
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Art can not and must not be produced on an assembly line. EA's biggest fault is their attempting constantly to do this. Their other enormous problem is that the *only* thing they as a company (or at least the management) care about is money. This is transparently obvious, and anyone who knows anything about them also noticed it years ago. The management's blatant, all-consuming lust for cash is deeply repugnant to the rest of us...especially when it overwhelmingly trumps all other concerns, such as product quality or the welfare of their employees.
EA's other problem is that consumers have been exposed to game companies (many of them in fact) for whom money was *not* the overriding priority...people who made games because they loved being creative in and of itself...not purely because they wanted to become billionaires.
EA are an evil company, and their customers know that they are evil. When that happens, any such company is going to start sliding towards their demise.
I vowed to never buy another EA game after Battlefield 2. Thier draconian, broken copy protection, lack of support, and general lack of insight into the industry have poisoned the well for me. They expect the game industry to bow to them rather then listen to thier customers. They've become too big, no longer innovate, and care solely about the bottom line and not the art of making video games. In short they've become the Microsoft.
I started with nothing and have most of it left.
Sure they are ruining their image.
Look how crap they game boxes are in Brazil:
BF2 cds came in a plastic bag, and need for speed carbon (collectors edition) came in a cardboard with glued fubber pin.
BF2 should be sold as a language development software instead of a game. I've strung together various new profanity phrases that's never been uttered before by myself and that have never occurred to me prior to its installation. Frankly, that's quite impressive.
Madden doesn't have to get better each year at this point, most of us would settle for it NOT REGRESSING. They're not even adding new stuff, they're removing features. I'd settle for it even staying the same with new names instead of removing things like coop play, and fantasy drafts, and everything else that they ripped out of the last two versions. That is why people are angry.
I've wondered if any small companies have tried to use BF2 at the office to build teamwork skills. I think the kit you choose probably says a lot about the type of worker you are and the way you are most comfortable contributing.
BR> For example, I do PC support at work and I find myself most often playing as an Engineer.
chargeback
My last purchase with EA was a BF2 booster pack through their newly christened download service. Didn't work, tech support doesn't know why and will only give me the same answer repeatedly despite telling them their canned answer doesn't work. I looked around, and this problem is experienced by numerous other users besides me but isn't addressed by EA. So of course, that taught me not to buy any more EA products. BF2142 being one I would have bought if not for my problems with the previous iteration. EA is at that point where they think they can comfortably ignore customers' complaints and it won't matter since they have so many -other- customers. Lose a few, who cares, you're still raking in the dough based on marketshare alone. The trouble is, they upset enough people and soon there aren't enough -other- customers left to keep them afloat. Just about any company past a critical size seems to make this gamble, 'saving' money with shoddy customer service in the hopes that people continue to come back in spite of poor service.
Call the credit card company and explain the situation. Specifically that they charged the card without shipping the product and have not returned contacts through the channel they told you to use on the phone. You don't need to mention that you bought it elsewhere. The CC company may be willing to simply remove the charge and deal with them directly if you have good credit and a good history of paying on time. Especially because charging well in advance of shipping is generally not considered ok.
Werd.
From all of the Quake-clones, only a few really stand out. Unreal branched to make their own engine, (recently licensed by EA Games, in fact--NOTE: link downloads PDF file) so did Half Life (the first). (partly responsible for the industry movement to "skeletal" modeling) Of the two, Source engine is truly the more powerful. (even if not the more ubiquitous)
Steam resembles a constant hack-in-progress, and the "Content Servers" are what get my goat every time. (2 megabit pipe and I'm still downloading at 80kbps?!?!) Let's join hands and pray for it's quick emergence into robustitudity. (yes, I made that up... what, you don't invent any words?)
In all, it only amounts to the partly-bruised banana in an otherwise delicious arrangement of delights in the gaming industry.
'click' ... purchased ... 'click' ... installed ... 'click' ... start game -- nobody else has that
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
Again, we have to give EA credit for creating the best Golf series ever. Tiger woods is awesome.
nothing
You get the Need for Speed Carbon Collectors' Edition. 8 hours later you've finished the game (WTF? that was quick!). But you haven't even unlocked all the cars yet as you were meant to get the EA Downloader Edition to get the Pagani Zonda. What is my friend meant to do who bought the game on PS2? That 50+ car list isn't looking so good now, is it?! EA, stop crippling your games. Too late for me though, you won't get another cent out of me ever again.
"Anonymous could not immediately be reached for further comment." - International Business Times
Don't worry Spore will bring it back for a little while. It probably will be the only EA game I buy too.
"To be is to do." --Socrates
"To do is to be." -- Aristotle
"Do-Be-Do-Be-Do..." --Sinatra
I had Pinball Construction Set for the Mac (128K/fat), but I don't recall the maker. Could that have been EA, or is this just a clash of names?
:p
Man how I loved those 'hardwarey' cling-clong sounds, so much better that modern blippety-bloop ones.
Oops, showing my age. Sorry.
"Good news, everyone!"
I was in Hong Kong two weeks ago, which happened to coincide with the PS3 launch and EA's new public space at the top of the Peak Tram route in the new building looking over Hong Kong Island to Kowloon.
So you have thirty PS2s, xbox360s and PCs.
No PS3s.
No Wii.
I'd say EA did your friend a favor. It's bad enough he actually paid for that game, he shouldn't have to play it too.
EA STORE
e rce+Crossing+Dr,+Louisville,+KY+40229&ie=UTF8&z=15 &ll=38.10157,-85.680313&spn=0.02006,0.049739&t=k&o m=1&iwloc=addr
Attn: RMA Department
5000 Commerce Crossing Parkway
Louisville, KY 40229
Google map
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=5000+Comm
Now call the local council/city hall or sherrifs office and ask for a phone # to the building owner etc...
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Just a quick grammar note. It's "a lot" not "alot". Remember, you wouldn't say "thelot" either. This is only for your benefit. Enjoy!
Is $50 that bad for a game? I mean, I remember in 1979 paying $49.95 for 'Thunderball', a game cartridge for the Magnavox Odyssey 2. I thought it was excessive then, but of course, that didn't stop me from wanting to play a pinball game on my O2. Take a look at the 3K cart today and you just can't believe how expensive that was - especially considering the fact that it was $50 of 1979 dollars!
And yet, development time of the earlier games also took time. Just because today's data files are gigabytes instead of bytes doesn't mean that there's any more effort being made by the programmers. Today we have graphic artists (both 2D and 3D), motion capture people, even soundtrack people. But back then, it was all on one guy to take six months to write a 3K masterpiece. It's all relative isn't it?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
1. Online career
2. More realistic career team management
3. Draft
4. Arms shouldn't pass through people's chests anymore
5. Commentary shouldn't be asinine
6. Consistent deep passes shouldn't be the best strategy.
7. Strategic decisions in the middle of the play. Need a hole opened? Ask for one.
8. A punting mechanic that isn't boring and gamey.
9. A passing game that isn't "press X to bring up a menu, press Y to pass to player Y."
The ______ Agenda
Nothing like buying a new game, only to find out that inside the shrinkwrapped box, there's a nice little card saying
"Oh yeah, by the way, we're going to collect information about you to display in-game ads on the billboards. Nothing you can do about it if you want to play the game. Cheers, EA!"
So I think, hell, it can't be too bad.
So i'm flying around in 2142 and what pops up on a wall? An intel core2 duo ad. Not just in one spot on the map...Dozens. Nothing like having the suspension of disbelief broken by a damned BILLBOARD in your game.
So the users get pissy and bitch at DICE (who is now pwned by EA). Dice's response? "Oh, we're going to also use the billboards for 'community' stuff to like announcements and leaderboards".
People get angry and send emails to the largest battlefield podcast. The host's response? "Oh, we don't think it's all that bad, and by the way we'll probably be advertising on it soon." (Way to sell-out G.I. Jersey).
People do the same thing to EA, who promptly print out the emails and use the to wipe the ass with. Oh, I forgot, they use $1 bills for that gleamed from xbox users who needed some extra cash in "The Godfather")
You can bet that I won't be purchasing any more EA games. (and I spend at least $1000/year on video games)
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
I have been a gamer since, well, since they were invented. I have watched EA churn out re-re-released crap for sooo long it makes me sick. ANYONE that has played any of the Tiger Woods games knows that they haven't change at all since the first. Sure they add a few crappy courses and update the user interface, but they game is still the same. They don't even bother to update the commentator audio, it hasn't changed in years. Madden has changed little, although graphically all of their games have improved. But so has technology in general so, EA gets no credit for having nice graphics. Almost all game nowadays have quality graphics. Now, anyone familiar with EA's handling of the Battlefield 2 franchise, knows all to well about their customer support and patching processes. They are also aware of how EA systematically destroyed what had the potential of being one of the greatest games ever. They routinely buy up quality gaming companies just to keep their corner on the market. And I think it's shame that they control gaming football(US). Isn't that some form of monopoly? That's also why I now play soccer :)
I could probably sit here and site numerous times EA has made MAJOR mistakes, yet they somehow stay on top. I guess allot can be said for deep pockets. It's a shame they don't use that capital to create a decent gaming company.
If you look elsewhere, you will find that Valve is doing the Good Idea (except for the have-to-hope-Steam-won't-shut-down factor, which I still dislike).
Good Idea? I don't think so. What Valve is doing is exactly the sort of Bad Idea the parent was talking about - they're breaking up what would ordinarily be an expansion pack and selling it for new game prices.
Skeletal animation was neither introduced nor invented by Valve, AFAIK the consoles of the era required skeletal animation since they couldn't handle vertex interpolation properly. Games like Virtua Fighter and Mario 64 have segmented models where each segment corresponds to a bone. If you wanted to make a game for these consoles you had to use skeletal animation.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
At the risk of going off-topic, I'll address your mis-founded objections.
Half LIfe released in November of 1998. Would you happen to recall the game consoles that were around in 1998? Don't say "Sega Dreamcast". (unless you happened to live in Japan at the time)
That's right... Sega Saturn, PlayStation (one) and N64. That's about it. 3D capabilities were veritably primitive for the latter two, and the Dreamcast was certainly well before its time. Even so, a significant 3D title at that time was Virtua Fighter, which you have duly mentioned.
The Saturn (and 32X) had the title, but while the fighting figures on the screen had "joints" that served to mimic life-like movement, the shapes still reflected their simple-polygon parts and did not truly "join" where the separate parts moved. (non-deformed)
In mentioning "skeletal modeling", I was implying that the texture-deformation of modern game characters is partly from Valve's efforts. The texture deformation was based on how a core structure—or skeleton—was embedded within the greater, fleshed-out model. Rather than being comprised of separate primitives, the models for Half Life became modeled as a single form, then articulated with skeletons which the engine could interpret in real-time. This resulted in more life-like "skin" and "clothes" and realistic (though still puppet-like) "speaking" of the on-screen characters.
Revolutionary aspects of the original Half Life include skeletal animation, (interpolated skin-animation, rather than simple, intersecting polygons) seamless storyline and auto-saving. Some of these features were also part of Quake II that came around nearly a month later. Animation techniques since the first Quake (1996) had been evolving from the polygon and primitives "jointed" together, but the poly's themselves would have visible artifacts where the shapes clipped through each other. Skeletal animation and skinning changed most that to create the more-human and "rounder" characters we know today. (notable also is introduction of NURBS into 3D modeling, however the mathematics behind it have been around since the 50's)
Incidentally, NURBS surfaces have more to do with "vertex interpolation" than jointed texture-deformation.
Now for some quid pro quo...
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
I know of the consoles of the era. Vertex interpolation (which is necessary for inter-frame blending when you're using vertex animation) was just too costly for those processors which is why they used those segments. I'm pretty sure those developers on the old systems would have loved to make contiguous meshes but if it wasn't possible...
Skeletal animation only means the model uses a skeleton, i.e. a hierarchy of transformations and each part of the model gets assigned to one or more of these transformations. Whether you have a contiguous mesh or lots of small segments assigned to these transformations does not matter. If you decide to store vertex transformations instead you don't have skeletal animation. But I don't see why Virtua Fighter shouldn't count as skeletal animation. SKA allows interchangeable meshes that use the same skeleton, VF does that with Dural.
I don't know what you mean with texture deformation, AFAIK Half-Life didn't make much use of manipulating UV coordinates. Do you mean their "reflective" surfaces (sphere environment mapping)?
And what game other than Wanted uses NURBS? Those things aren't practical for realtime use since they are just a higher order description of the mesh and in realtime environments you don't need those outside of terrain. NURBS just mean you can't put the polygons where you want them and we haven't reached polygon numbers where placing those polygons by hand would be impractical. Hell, even with those we'd probably use subdivision modeling and ZBrush or Mudbox.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
What a bountiful collection of jargon you have... it's clear that you come from a dogmatic school of 3D modeling. (if any school... and if you are self-taught, I applaud you... even if not for the lack of humility)
Texture deformation happens on the contiguous mesh, (one-piece models) though it is generally a real-time feature of the engine and not the model itself. Part of Valve's innovation was making model-animation specifics part of the engine, rather than relying on design-time parameters. Why did you not make the leap to this conclusion? Are you so steeped in static modeling that you fail to envision the model in action?
As to the idea that I was even referring to consoles in the first place, I didn't. Valves efforts were founded in the PC gaming arena, and eventually tossed a bone to the sixth-gen consoles such as Xbox, GameCube and PS2. For the benefit of my first post, I was only referring to PC game technology and relevant hardware. (3dfx, nVidia, S3 and ATI) If you remember, the consoles of that age aspired to the performance of even a mediocre 3D-accelerated PC back in the day.
AFAIK Half-Life didn't make much use of manipulating UV coordinates.For this thoroughly unrelated claim, I have to make a mention of its inaccuracy. Half Life had plenty of UV mapping; it's now an indispensable part of 3D design! Sometimes the interactive objects in HL reassigned texture-maps, sometimes they used a procedural texture, thereby changing the visible surface in real-time. This is a relatively simple technique and is prevalent in many games since HL, Quake II, and even Unreal.
Have you modded or mapped any Valve games? Used Hammer recently? It's a free download. (or you can jump all the way up to the Source SDK) I encourage you to try it out, after all, it beats the $500+ price tags of 3D Studio and the like.
Skeletal Kinetic Animation as a technique is, in fact, a bit after the first Half Life release. It did not really have a name at first, but it came to be known as such. Valve was good enough to help distribute the technique around the 3D community rather than patent and camp on it. (they earn my respect with such gestures) Though Valve did not, themselves, invent or introduce it, they played a significant role.
This is why I've said that the state of modern 3D-dev is thanks in part to the efforts of the Valve team. This, in and of itself, is the only point I wish to make; all other ideas from my initial post seem to have dropped from your radar
I'm not sure of your exact stance in this discussion... frankly, it's a bit troll-ish. (debating irrelevant details and trying to intimidate with barrages of so-called uber-speak) If there is nothing more constructive to add, let's call it a day, shall we? If you feel like debating yourself even more, feel free to do so. I will have moved on.
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
What a bountiful collection of jargon you have... it's clear that you come from a dogmatic school of 3D modeling.
I've learned that at Polycount and it matches pretty much every piece of documentation on the matter I've seen.
Texture deformation happens on the contiguous mesh, (one-piece models) though it is generally a real-time feature of the engine and not the model itself. Part of Valve's innovation was making model-animation specifics part of the engine, rather than relying on design-time parameters. Why did you not make the leap to this conclusion? Are you so steeped in static modeling that you fail to envision the model in action?
I still don't see which part of the process you call texture deformation. Intuitively I'd assume either doing something with the UV coordinates at runtime or the very process of determining what texel goes where when the scene is rendered to the screen (or buffer) but the way you use it seems to match the mesh deformation.
As to the idea that I was even referring to consoles in the first place, I didn't.
I didn't claim you did however I do claim that console use of skeletal animation does predate Half-Life and that the technique had to hit the mainstream whether Valve used it or not. Considering the amount of data vertex animation creates on models of a more modern polycount and animation numbers we'd hit hundreds of MBs of animation data per model with today's games so the use of skeletal animation by games was inevitable.
For this thoroughly unrelated claim, I have to make a mention of its inaccuracy. Half Life had plenty of UV mapping; it's now an indispensable part of 3D design!
I wasn't talking about UV mapping, I was talking about modifying those UV coordinates at runtime which is what I assumed you meant with texture deformation.
This is why I've said that the state of modern 3D-dev is thanks in part to the efforts of the Valve team.
I think we disagree on the size of that part, though.
Valve was good enough to help distribute the technique around the 3D community rather than patent and camp on it.
Considering it relied on the Biped plugin for 3dsmax for creating the data back then that'd be a bit hard to patent.
I'm not sure of your exact stance in this discussion... frankly, it's a bit troll-ish. (debating irrelevant details and trying to intimidate with barrages of so-called uber-speak)
From my position it looks a lot like you're doing that.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
EA killed Origin. I weep for a future without Ultima. Challenge everything?
Come back when you've actually used this knowledge. To debate based on documentation is tantamount to looking at a postcard of the Eiffel Tower and argue about its height. If debating semantics is your wish, there is a great many who would love to engage you in that very same, fruitless pursuit... not me.
Seriously! What is your point? That Valve's contribution to 3D techniques is lesser than what I claimed? (also, completely off-topic for TFA) Aside from the words, "in part", there is no further qualification for the amount (more or less) that I accredit to Valve or the individual developers. The difference that you believe you are debating never existed in this thread. Why you engaged my response in the first place is beyond me.
I'm generally a helper when it comes to neuroses, but in your case I have nothing to offer. The phantom arguments that you wish to conquer can not be found here.
[In response to the implication of "troll-ish" behavior...]From my position it looks a lot like you're doing that.
The ruling on the "I'm rubber and you're glue..." argument is that it will immediatley transfer your case into the Juvenile Circuit. (no cookie for you) Though I have engaged certain sub-points, (note that they were not introduced by me) it was only to cite the true origins. (not regurgitated theoretical documentation or speculations on current dogma) The other technical fallacies that you have perpetrated will have to remain as your badges of ignorance for someone else to point out at a later time.
I'm through with this pointless bickering. If you can't invent a better excuse for an argument than that, this "discussion" is over.
Good day.
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.