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The Hard Science of Making Videogames
twoblackeyes writes "PopSci delves into the 10 greatest technical challenges faced by game developers today, and the technology that will hopefully make them a thing of the past. At the top of every dev's wish list is increased realism: realisitic fire, water, enemy AI, material physics, etc. Here directly from the developers where the tech stands today, and where it will likely be tomorrow. '4. Artificial Intelligence - Problem: Once upon a time, the bad guys in videogames wandered around mindlessly, shooting at you while they waited to die. That doesn't cut it anymore. Players demand sophisticated enemies to fight and reliable in-game allies with which to fight them. Thing is, it's freaking complicated, and it eats up processor speed. "We're faking just enough smarts to make it work," says Mathieu Mazerole, lead engineer on Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed. Status: Imbuing characters in a game with lifelike decision-making ability involves employing the kind of high-level logic theories--learning decision trees, mobile navigation, finite-state machine models--used by top robotics engineers.'"
would rank the importance of realistic water simulations above the importance of good artificial intelligence in games.
And to think, I used to subscribe to popsci...
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Game creation IS a science, NOT an art. I'm glad the author recognized such facts.
I remember the box of my Super NES game, Street Fighter 2 Turbo bragging about it's awesome AI that kept you from "cheesing" your way thru the game.
If that was true, why did they put Guile in there... talk about Cheesy!
The computer "knows" too much. It is hard to find the middle ground to simulates luck element a player has.
My brother could own me in Unreal Tournament in big open maps. Put us in a close quarters map, and more often than not I would walk up right behind him by sheer luck. Of course my lucks balances, can't count the number of times I "missed" at point blank range with a flak cannon.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
What a stupid article. I wouldnt call it the top-10 challenges of making video games....its more like the top-10 ASPECTS of making video games.
It really just runs down the major points involved in making video games. Of course they're all difficult yes, but I challenge you to list additional aspects that arent a challenge.
Am I the only one who only really cares about a couple of these? Enemy A.I., sure. And having enemies react realistically to being shot is fine. But personally, I've never cared about how water or fire looked in a game...it's only a video game, after all. If it looks nice, great, but really, I'd rather see the focus returned to making actual gameplay.
The challenges or the game developers?
" '4. Artificial Intelligence - Problem: Once upon a time, the bad guys in videogames wandered around mindlessly, shooting at you while they waited to die. .."
I think this describes me on any FPS.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The article should be renamed from "10 greatest technical challenges faced by game developers today" to "10 greatest technical challenges faced by first person shooter game developers today" Contrary to popular belief, not all game developers are striving for photorealism.
-water effects look really well now, it's basically the only thing that looks realistic in the game(see hl2 or any modern fps)
-light and shadow effects have been also perfected (see doom3 or any doom copy fps, fear,quake4,etc...)
the thing i hate the most is how cheezy fire effects still look, they are the only thing that has barely evolved these lasts 10 years
You'd think with the success of casual games, and less "technically advanced" games for platforms like Wii and the web, game developers would see huge market of gamers who are simply looking for games to be more fun again. Who cares if it has the latest AI or better cloth physics? Leave the better cloth and fire effects to the SIGGRAPH people :).
It's just that even if they solve all these issues with games, and are able to render a true to life simulation with AI that can mimic a real person. It still doesn't even begin to solve the most important aspect of video games, which is FUN.
Fun cannot be realized through more processor power, better looking faces or AI.
All these problems are very hard to get 100% right and all they really need to do is to get it right enough that people pretend that they are in a fantasy world. Which is why old text based games like Zork can still do a good job of pulling a player into the world enough that it's fun. It's all about stimulating a person's imagination, not creating a photo realistic simulation of reality.
Sure it would be neat to have photorealistic fire that can burn the entire environment and interact with water in a realistic manner. But is that what you really want? I mean it's also very fun to be able to play as the human torch, which means that you have to bend the laws of physics in your game world to simulate such a being. So it's not really about being real as much as fun, no?
Art direction, character design, level design, are much more important then these issues, yet we are spending much more time on the motion capture of a video game then on the plot. Crazy, IMO.
Designing good AI is extremely difficult.
But is good AI really needed in games? Wouldn't it be enough to give the enemy AI's a few basic styles/options and what to do when they run out of ammo?
#1. Team options - how well do they operate together?
#2. Seek cover/concealment vs charge!
#3. Prioritize area effect weapons vs others (grenades vs pistol).
#4. Play dead vs pick up comrade's weapon.
You enter their zone, they have high team operations so they'll ALL have the same reactions. They ALL take cover and throw grenades at you.
You enter their zone, they have low team operations so they'll ALL be decided individually. "A" charges, firing his pistol as he runs. "B" ducks behind a tree and throws grenades until he's out then he fires until he's out and then he plays dead. "C" ducks behind a tree, shoots his pistol and then tries to move to a tree closer to you. When he's out of ammo, he grabs what he can off of "A"'s corpse and keeps fighting.
With a few options, each game will be very different.
Did anyone actually read this article before greenlighting it? This isn't news, science, well researched or even well written. It's crap.
Less than a year ago, there wasnt enough processing power to dynamically generate the movement of water in games, says Lee Bamber, a programmer for 20 years and founder of The Game Creators, Ltd.
Wow, fluid simulations started less than a year ago? Damn.
Simulate it on the molecular level real time, maybe no. But still.
If a characters face is too close to human, players will reject it, a psychological phenomenon known as the uncanny valley: Objects more familiar to the human eye are inspected with greater scrutiny, leading to a drop-off in acceptance as the simulated object nears the point of being lifelike.
A terrible description of a lousy buzzword.
"Like cramming the sum of all automotive engineering knowledge into a joystick"
Please.... please stop writing.
Dance Dance Revolution is goofy as can be, and I don't play it, but as a "game" it's a lot more fun and interesting than the anti-utopian fascist horseshit that passes for fun these days.
In fact, the Wii opens up a whole 'nother wonderful can of possibilities, as does Guitar god games an similar things. THAT'S where the creative action is, and that's wher ethe REAL innovation is going on. Not in stupid 12 year old boy shoot 'em up bullshit.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
would place the importance of graphical detail as shown inside above gameplay. If you don't have a good gameplay, you can have 1000000000000 triangle per square inch of pixels, it won't make your gamer more happy. The Primary challenge of a good game is not graphism. it is a good idea which translate to a good technical gameplay.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
The list includes at best 1 element which actually has a decent impact on how fun the game will be to play, AI, and it isn't even ranked highest. Seriously, I don't remember playing Super Mario because of the realistic "material physics" of the bouncing stars or bricks which shatter if you knock your fist against them... Based on this article I'd say the greatest challenge to designing a video game is convincing all the idiots that realism actually doesn't mean a whole lot compared to gameplay. Defcon's supersonic submarines and rather inefficient missile trajectories didn't exactly stop people enjoying that game.
I think they're going to bite themselves if they get things too realistic. People play games to escape, and be 'bigger' than they really are. Let's face it, the stuff that happens in movies would never happen in real life. I want to say the average life of a marine during WWII was in the range of minutes. That'll make the next Call of Duty really fun!!
Yes, AI is difficult. The best way to do it is to model it on the way actual players play, which would mean collecting a large database of player actions in specific situations, something that is finally becoming achievable due to the popularity of online play.
Programming a logic tree is old school. It doesn't work very well because it's easy for a player to "learn" the logic tree of a bot...It's something you don't even do consciously, but after you find yourself tossing a grenade in a certain direction, because you just sort of know the bot is going to be there...It's game over. You know the tree.
Picking up the data from the game though, you can get a lot of information. Using weapon X, 70% of players started shooting from 100 meters, hitting the target 30% of the time. Why? Who cares? A bot that engages from that distance with that weapon at that accuracy will seem normal to a person. Weapon nerf comes along, and all of a sudden people only engage with that weapon at 20 meters or less (desperation). The tree updates itself.
Learning systems are the next step. Build the tree from harvested data, don't sit and try to figure it out yourself. You don't even have to make it that complicated a tree...Take the 10 most popular situational actions (Bot on Defense with Weapon X) add some random rock-and-roll to keep the choices from getting repetitive, and you can work out positioning and situational reactions based on statistical comparisons with the actions of previous players.
Compile stats on a daily/weekly basis, resample the tree, and push it out to the clients as a patch...Or hell, if the bot logic is online, just update their datasets.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The water in Farcry and the Exile games was very good. However with that being said. When in a FPS, water isn't going to be the most important thing (unless you're making "Abyss:the shooter").
The article claims "hard science" but instead is a collection of blurbs that read like half-assed filler written by someone without a clue as to the subject.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
all i know is that spore is ganna rock!
http://robbie785.googlepages.com/spore
I don't think they're referring to just the relatively still "rippled mirror surface" water in a pond. They're still absolutely miserable at realistically simulating water that flows or splashes, and even worse than that at interactions between other objects and water. The oceans in games these days look fantastic right up until something falls in.
The strategy of a game might involve for example, ten different things that a human player could do well or poorly based upon the unique nature of the player. A good AI should be balanced against those ten things. A player might be very good at 3 of those things, but are weak in the 7 other areas. The AI should match those abilities. The AI should never be too good in a players weak areas, and never too weak on a players strong skills. Greater granularity of difficulty is the key. An AI doesn't even need to be all that "smart", because the game mechanics are known to the programmer. Just collect metrics and adjust the AI's "strength" to a player's performance.
This list is about making games more real, which doesn't necessarily mean better. There more to it, such as balance, game play, user interface, premise, and plot.
I'd still rather play NetHack than any MMO game, and I enjoy the early Final Fantasy games more than the later ones.
Trust me, my cat doesn't use learning decision trees, mobile navigation or finite-state machine models when trying to evade me or get into various trouble. And her processing power is pretty dim compared to a computer. Maybe it's time to start looking simpler solutions. Like rules based behavior.
Everyone is now familiar with flocking algorithms. That's one behavior. Model several behaviors, superimpose them where possible (i.e. walk and chew gum), slap a probability algorithm, and that's how a lot of researchers are getting lifelike behavior from robotics. Best of all, you get goofy, unexpected results. Just the type of stuff to make a game interesting.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
The craftiness and deadliness of some of the old quake bots and bots from other games? This was mostly stuff "some guy" did, not the developers themselves. Give the customers extensive ability to easily mod (and I mean easily, not like how things are with most games now) the actual AI behavior, and cunning players will make their own improvements.
I've seen plenty of very fun mods that were unplayable on lower end systems - but so what! Joe Public isn't under the same CPU constraints as the Developers. Let the people create!
Some games claim to be moddable, but its mostly fluff - hit points, mob skins, UI, etc. But then they fall flat when it comes to modding the actual AI! We need vast improvement here.
Try playing Capitalism II
"So, why aren't there products like these?"
Because there's simulations,,,and then there's the real thing.
mention 'Fun'. Focus on fun, and the rest is cake.
BTW: This is the same damn list that had 15 years ago, and it will be the same damn list 15 years from now.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They're focused on the wrong things. How about focusing on something fun.. Tetris is fun because it's just fun, not because of some stellar graphics and the AI behind which piece comes next. the same goes for Zelda or Final Fantasy or Mortal Kombat.. These games were all fun even back in 8-bit or 16-bit days......
If yes then when enemy is in throw range throw grenades until grenades == 0 or enemy == 0.
If you've gotten to the point where you have to ask that, you've already too far. Ask yourself why you as the designer are giving grenades to the guards inside the art museum.
Why would he need to decide that? He'd use his weapon until it was empty or the enemy were all killed. Then the decision comes in to look for other weapons or to play dead.
Again, he'd use his weapon until it was empty or there were no enemies. Then either look for another weapon or play dead.
Nope.
Nope and that's the point. The tactics the PLAYERS will use will have to CHANGE each time they play because the tactics the enemy will use will have changed.
Why do you think that isn't possible in my scenario?
The same can be said of processors and video cards.
Nope. That's just because it was easier to write them like that. That way there's no way for the players to "get lucky" and get through a level easily. The players have to gain "levels" and "equipment" to beat the "boss" monsters.
Nope. Because the computer will always be able to process faster than the player. The computer will know exactly how far you are from it and which weapon will do the maximum damage at that range. And instantly switch to that weapon.
You're falling back into the "boss" monster mentality. Why does the "boss" need to PERSONALLY be stronger, faster, smarter, etc?
Again, that's a holdover from the old 8-bit games. Kill the minions, kill the boss, grab the treasure, check xp to see if you gained a level, turn in the key, get better equipment, start the next level.
You don't need AI for that pattern. As I've demonstrated. The problem set is already defined by what equipment the players can have, what level they'll be (which yields hit point ranges and spell options) and the room.
With that, you could handle the boss simply by having a few more scripts he would use based upon the possible options I've listed. Of course, if you're still focused on the "boss" monster concept, then giving him a few more scripts makes more sense.
Personally, I don't see the appeal in that.
I mean objective #4, the problem of generating code that operates as an evil agent, a wily enemy loose in yer gamz and wastin yer avatarz. It will have to involve some learning and some capability to evolve. About 1 year after it finishes off all the opponents in whatever MMOG world it inhabits, some idiot at DoD will, just fer kicks, drop it into a networked C4I system and we will all be toast.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
I find it amusing that an entire piece about the "hard science" challenges in game development doesn't even deal with the development process itself. I mean, when you code in a higher level language, dealing with strings is now easy, whereas it was tedious in C. There's no library sharing like in every other language. There's no #include , whereas there's really nothing new to moving a bitmap anymore.
Even with something like OpenGL, you're still basically given a pile of bolts, beams, and sheet metal and asked to make a car. If I had a nickel for every time game developers reinvented the wheel, I'd be Bill Gates. Heck, I'm still coding font routines and sprite handlers for companies. I heard that even the Wii doesn't have a system level call for the main menu stuff...it leaves that up to you.
Someday, the tools will come along enough that people will be able to work with something higher level like Python or Ruby and not have to worry about twiddling their own framebuffers. We're still in the dark ages in game development this way. Having a CPAN for games is DECADES off. Instead, game developers are stuck trying to make a rock fall or a torch look right, and when they're done tweaking that crap, THEN they remember they have to make a game, not a shadow simulator. Thus: Doom LXXXVIII.
Crap. How about a game that's fun to play ? Yes, I know, I'm getting old and have ridiculous expectations.
Seen quite a few posts here asking why the physical models of these lag somewhat compared to how good the rest of the enviroment generally looks...
That's because NOBODY has figured it out - not just gamers and game developers. The Navier-Stokes describe the behaviour in simple situations but rapidly move into chaotic behaviour in most cases.
If you think you can, step forward and claim your million bucks... (and probably a Fields or a Nobel to boot)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navier-Stokes_existence_and_smoothness
"... and more and more now there are all kinds of electronic goodies available" -- Pink Floyd 1972
What do you do then? If you truly are the lone soldier/spec ops/cyborg going into the enemy installation, and there's 30-40 guards in there that are any smarter than a stick, you're toast. Unless you like playing stealth games, which to me are the ultimate in pointlessness - yes, you can be the super-soldier, harder than the entire regiment of 22 SAS, but you've got to sneak everywhere and not fight, otherwise you lose. What fun...
There are some things in generic games design that need fixing, and have needed to be fixed for a long time. Wood and cloth should burn. Glass should break. I have a gun, the door is padlocked; no, I don't think I need to trudge to the other side of the map to get the key, thanks.
These sorts of deficiencies were just about tolerable 10 years ago - we accepted that computers just weren't fast enough to do all the things we wanted them to do. What's the excuse now, apart from the fact that most programmers are just doing things the same way they've always done? I'm still waiting for the first engine that gives gamers and designers real sandbox freedom and the ability to improvise. I carry a reasonable amount of pocket trash - a small butane lighter/torch, a couple of mini multi-toolkits/Swiss Army cards, a small roll of masking tape, a small coil of cord - the sort of things that are very hard to improvise, but with which you can improvise a great many things. It's long annoyed me that secret agents, superheros, mega-cyborgs, vampire hunters etc. never seem to have pockets. A chair leg and a knife and a couple of minutes - instant vampire killer, whereas in any standard game, if you don't have the official +5 Stake of Slaying, then Count Alucard isn't going down.
If "friendly AI, please don't walk directly in front of my gun when I'm shooting at someone" is really that hard to code, then humanity never had any business writing anything more complicated than Pong.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/model-reduction/
Approximations of Navier-Stokes equations that may be used in games and other things.
You mean regular expressions? We already have those. They're very fast.
Badass Resumes
*shrug* Now _I_ too would say "who cares about graphics? Gameplay is king." However I end up talking almost daily with a couple of gamer co-workers, who, any way you want to slice it, _do_ place graphics above everything else.
They might _say_ that they value gameplay more, but any talk about some game they've bought will revolve 90% around how awesome or how sucky the graphics are, an you'll have to work on it to get even a nodding acknowledgement of anything else in the game.
A recent conversation with one, for example, went loosely from memory like this. (It's about a game which will remain unnamed because I'm not discussing here whether the game is good or bad. I'm just illustrating how -- whatever other faults the game might have had -- they didn't even play long enough to discover those, they got stuck on "eew, the graphics look like PS2 graphics!")
Him: "Hey, I went and bought game X because you said it's OK, and it's the biggest piece of crap ever. You made me waste my money on it."
(Not the most polite way to start a talk, but maybe he's just joking.)
Me: "Hmm? Well, ok, I guess these things are subjective. What didn't you like about it?"
Him: "The graphics! It looks like a PS2 game! Or like something that might have been ok on the Wii or maybe on the XBox last year, but in the meantime people discovered how to use all three GPUs!"
(I didn't know the XBox had 3 GPUs, I thought the 3 were the CPU cores, but ok.)
Me: "Hmm, well, maybe you shouldn't take advice from me if your tastes are that different. I generally don't pay much attention to graphics."
Him: "Well, I don't care about graphics either, but these are crap! They look like on the PS2!"
(Bit of a contradiction there, I would guess. But let's prod it some more.)
Me: "No, when I say I don't care about graphics, I mean I've played a bit of <insert PS1 game from the 90's> over the weekend."
Him: "Eeew... Isn't that almost 10 years old and with 2D graphics?!?"
Me: "Yep, that's the one. Just saying, I don't care much what it looks like."
Him: "Well, I don't care about graphics either, but, eew, that's 2D and low res."
Me: "Well, the one you were talking about isn't."
Him: "Yeah, but it looks like on the PS2! They can publish that kinda crap on the PS2 or the Wii, if they want to, not on the XBox!"
And so on and so forth.
Now how many gamers are that shallow, I couldn't tell. I like to think that this guy is an extreme case. Still, as they say, if you're one in a million, there are 6000 exactly like you. Plus by virtue of it being a continuum, there'll be some tens of millions in shades of grey on that side of zero.
And to return to whether TFA is fluff or not, well, think of it this way: people tend to gravitate around sites and magazines which see things that way. If one magazine or site told the above-mentioned guy to buy a game 'cause the gameplay rules, even though the graphics suck, I'm guessing it wouldn't take more than 1-2 times following their advice to stop reading it completely. So as long as there are people basing their purchases on glitter above substance, there will be people catering to that market segment. It's only capitalism in action, after all.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Yeah ... if he's out of bullets already. Otherwise you're hopping back and forth within his range of fire. Looks like you died, again.
I would guess that the app would shoot the players until one got within grenade range and then it would throw a grenade at that player.
When that player dies from the grenade, the app would switch to rifle and shoot the other players.
There aren't any novel tactics. It's shoot, move, in the open, concealment, cover, communicate.
You're talking about extreme edge cases. If you cannot kill him in a room before he can retreat, you've already lost due to the other tactics.
No. That was an example of how stupid the question was. If the DESIGNER is trying to encode those limits into his game, the DESIGNER is an idiot.
Again, that's a problem with the DESIGNER. It is acceptable for a HUMAN to face that decision. But if the HUMAN player is running over AI's with a tank, the DESIGNER is an idiot.
What if he did.
In the real world, that sniper rifle would be adjusted for him. Not for you. Taking up someone else's weapon means that you'd have to adjust it. You usually don't have time for that. Which is why you only grab his weapon when your weapon is empty.
If the DESIGNER has written the game such that the enemies weapons are not sufficient, the DESIGNER is an idiot.
Yes, they are. The guy who ran at you throwing grenades last time is now hiding behind a tree and shooting at you.
4 items, 2 options each gives a total of 10 different INDIVIDUAL tactics. And that's just the BASICS. Multiply that by the number of enemies you'll be facing at any one time (say 5) and you'll have FIFTY different scenarios. For each scene.
That's not counting specialized options that the designer puts in for a particular scene.
Adding just 1 addition option to those 4 gives you over a hundred different scenarios for each scene.
That's re-play-ability. Even at the most basic, 5 enemies in 5 scenes means that you'll have 250 different scenarios. Even taking just 2 plays to "master" a scenario gives you 500 complete playings.
Unless they charge and throw grenades. In which case, you die.
Or if they advance towards you using cover. In which case, you die.
And that is the point here. The DESIGNER can easily pick the options that will defeat any particular defense. Once you enter their zone, if their randomly chosen attack defeats your static defense, then you die.
Instead of trying to learn the moves of the enemy, you'll need to master the controls of the game. You're focusing on claiming that you can learn the moves. Yes, you ca
"You can't look at intelligence in pure terms of math. When you take them out in the world, and tell them to apply that computational power to walking, talking, and chewing gum at the same time, you see how far we still have to go."
There's also the fact that one is an analog machine (note I didn't say computer) while the other is a digital computer.
Let's play "name a popular non-FPS game"! Do we have an entry? Anyone? Come on, I know there are some out there! That? Oh, no, that was released years ago. Try again. Sorry, that's just a crappy remake of a 1995 game. Oh well, maybe next year we'll have something...
You aren't playing ANY of the games I like.
The AI in new games is pretty good; Playing FEAR at the hardest setting all the way thru was a mofo fo sure.
It really doesn't matter about the 'realism of the physics'; I play UT2004 with low grav, and quadjump enabled; the different is the cool part...Adapt or die, indeed!
The ai in Quake 2 was very predictable; Quake 4, FEAR, Battlefield 2142 are very much better. Same for the physics, lighting, graphics, etc.
The real question is whether it adds to the game or not. I really think that simulating real physics is a noble goal, maybe even Nobel; but isn't important to a game.
YMMV.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Mocap was a solved problem 10 years ago. Sure, there's better equipment for capping and processing, but a top technical challenge today? No way.
Why are they pushing to make games more and more like real life? Why even empty your wallet for a fucking game when you can walk outside and experience the same thing?
We play games for FUN (or used to, at least), not to rate which games have the most unpredictable AI, or which games can portray water closer to the puddle outside my window.
Call of Duty 9! Same as 1-8, but now you can see the pimples on the Major's face! And the ducks actually bob with the water! Oh how fun!
All this talk of better realism is great, but surely one of the most unrealistic aspects of games is that everything happens in a small stationary window in front of you. In the real world, if I look up at the top of a tall building, I have to tilt my head back and I have a real sense that I'm small and the building is big. Moving my wrist to look up on a small window just doesn't give me the same sense of bigness. I don't really feel like I'm in a game yet, it's just there on the screen.
More than 15 years back it seemed like VR had arrived. There were VR machines in the arcades where you could try out games like Dactly Nightmare. Sure the headset was like having two house bricks glued to your head, and the resolution was poor, but it was a really cool experience. It looked like it was really going somewhere. Now, 15 or more years later and zilch. No Sony VR game system, no Nintendo VR game system, no home VR systems in site.
It doesn't seem to me like there has been much drive to develop VR hardware, yet surely VR is one of those things that would get consumers really excited. You can get consumer level VR Headsets but the field of view is always so crappy that they have to disguise it by saying something like "It looks like a 90 inch screen at 14 feet away". I really think it's time we had decent VR. We have the processing power, but we are still waiting for companies to invest in the hardware. Yes there are some issues. Some people will feel a bit sick, but not everyone. Also I've heard worries about people injuring themselves, but people are already smacking each other in the face with Wii remotes. I want VR now!
From the article: "Gone are the days of Pole Position, when all it took to draw motorheads in was a steering wheel and something vaguely shaped like a car." Then they go on about how they measured sports cars recording their every nuance to reproduce it exactly.
That's nice. Give me "arcade mode" any day where I can have fun. The only thing that really needed improvement of the good older racing games was how they handled the opponent cars when they weren't on screen. Doesn't matter how well you were doing they'd still be sitting a few seconds behind you waiting for that one screw up. But if the handling of the car is good and the tracks are well done it makes no difference what the graphics are like. There are lots of flash racing games and some of them are fun, but mostly they come up short in those two important aspects.
Better jiggliness in tits. They're getting better, but not quite there yet. If it takes an 8-core CPU, so be it. Maybe they need to invent a JPU - Jiggle Processor Unit dedicated to tit jigglage alone. The physics can get complex.
Table-ized A.I.
I have a gun, the door is padlocked; no, I don't think I need to trudge to the other side of the map to get the key, thanks.
Have you ever actually tried shooting a padlock with a gun? (hint: it doesn't work like the movies).
Most gamers don't want more realism, they want more hollywood. This is a perfectly valid opinion as long as you recognise it for what it is.
Does anybody really want to lose health points or accuracy or whatever because their character is dying to take a shit?
gimme more fun!
Not wonderfully hyperrealistic crisp graphics, not involving storylines, not good music, not brain masturbation, just simple, humble, addictive fun! I'll give you all my dollars and social life for just a bit more of fun!
FUN!! that's all you need...
I don't feel like it...
- the more realistic a game looks, the more it is compared to reality and will utterly fail... man's stupid obsession with perfection.
- the more intelligent a computer ai will be, the more logic flaws will unveil it's true nature... also if it would be supersmart with no flaws, most ppl will just kick the game in the nuts, for being more clever than they are. just play a round of etwq with bots and you will find yourself unsure if you're just playing with plain stupid noobs or real bots!
- the harder the industry tries, the more it fails. sacrificing playabilty, gameplay and uniquness for the sake of realismn is a clear downer for fun in a game. also... the code gets unreadable for normal programmers and bugs will explode. i think the recent past shows that to us.
a plea to all game developers: FRIGGIN KICK REALSIM IF IT GETS IN THE WAY OF FUN!!! (sorry for allcaps, i thought this button has to be of use for something)
It's clearly that simple. I can't understand why games makers haven't done it yet!
It's more fun to play against humans than against bots. I care more about framerate, physics handling, and yes - water.
When will they realize, graphics are at a point where tweaking the reflectivity of the water, or the wispy-ness of the smoke won't change my mind about whether a game is fun. I'd trade less-shiny water for better AI any day. Or hell, maybe even just a better story. Stop stressing my PC to the limit! The fact that my new(ish) PC can't run Bioshock makes me want to cry. Well, there's $50 of my money they won't be getting.
I know people have said this every year since 0, but graphics are fine these days. The biggest improvement in my view would be animation/lack of rag doll-ness on the rag-dolls. Animation tends to be either really over-the-top or really static, sometimes varying between the two in a single game. Even some films have this problem (I'm looking at you, Spiderman).
But AI is surely where it's at. Current AI is terrible, and I think most people confuse "hard" with good AI. They just up the accuracy people! That doesn't mean it's more intelligent, it means it's less crippled. Sports games can be even worse - I just started playing a copy of Pro Evo 4 (okay, not new...) and it's shocking. The basic strategy of the computer players is to stand still and look at the ball. Or if there's really a risk of the opponent scoring, run away. And that's a game with a good reputation. Infuriating.
sam brightman
AI is only a problem is you have no friends & play SP all the time ;)
Go MP, its much more challenging
I've been following the evolution of Crysis on and off. While I'm impressed with the graphics engine, I totally tuned out when they demo'ed the main character jumping from the ground and landing on the roof of buildings, all while shooting down bad guys (and getting hit repeatedly in the process).
Somebody needs to understand that there's more to realism than lifelike graphics. *Very* few games deliver in that respect. That's the reason I've played Operation Flashpoint for a solid 5 years, despite looking *ugly* by today's standards. While it's got more than its fair share of quirks, its value is in the gameplay.
You could realize that I was using hyperbole (i.e. a joke) to point out AI may not be all about binary power. Heck, I've got fish that can handle reality better and faster than a computer. Thank you for violently agreeing with me.
Also, animal behavior is not based on deterministic logic trees. When presented with stimuli, multiple responses are triggered. These actually compete with each other. The probability of a behavior winning out is dependent on the strength of that learned response. But it's still a probability. Coincidentally, the studies showing that were based in part on cats.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Ah, don't sweat it much. Just about everything can, and occasionally _will_, get modded -1 Overrated. You could post something that's textbook physics (e.g., "E=mc^2") and someone will mod it overrated. Literally, I've seen terse excerpts of highschool level physics modded as overrated. It's too sad to make up. I have to wonder about the kind of mind for which reality is overrated, but there you go.
You have to realize that Slashdot moderation is... weird, and mostly irrelevant. Best thing to do is ignore it completely. Whether your message is right or wrong, depends only on what you wrote there, not on how many people agree with you. And sometimes it doesn't even have anything to do with agreeing with what you actually wrote.
E.g., the easiest was to get a -1 Overrated is as some comically impotent kind of "revenge" for disagreeing with someone in another thread. In which case, it doesn't as much reflect the quality of your message, but the "quality" of the person doing it.
E.g., one of the constants of the universe is that some people will _grossly_ mis-understand your point, and you can pretty much _count_ on regularly getting answers that have nothing to do with what you actually wrote. E.g., some people give up reading after a paragraph, or occasionally after the first sentence. Now realize that all those also get mod points eventually. Right.
So IMHO, don't sweat it much. Just say what you think, and who cares about moderation?
Don't get me wrong, I still think you're shallow to reject a game based on graphics alone, but I can genuinely appreciate coming forward and saying so. Moderation be damned.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I think 2 more issues may be added to the list:
1. Lack of good and affordable Virtual Reality goggles.
2. Lack of gaming controlles to allow more natural movements:
we still use keyboard/mouse (on PC) to move and shoot in FPS instead of VR gloves, for example.