Slashdot Mirror
The State of Video Game Physics
The Guardian's games blog convened a panel of engineers and other experts to talk about the current state of video game physics. A great deal of research is currently going on to make better use of multiple cores so that advanced physics tools and engines can take advantage of all the processing power available in modern computers. Many of those tools are being put to work these days to find more realistic ways of breaking things, and game developers are trying to wrap their heads around destructible environments. Mike Enoch, lead coder at Ruffian Games, said, "This idea of simulating interactions and constructing the game world similar to how you would construct the real world generates more emergent gameplay, where the game plays out in a unique way for each player, and the player can come up with solutions to problems that the designer might not have thought of." Another area that still sees a lot of attention is making game characters more human, in terms of moving and looking as realistic as possible, as well as how a game's AI perceives what's happening. "The problem is not necessarily in having the most advanced path-finding technique with large-scale awareness; we need to have more micro behaviors, with a proper physics awareness of the environment," said software engineer George Torres.
Indeed, some of the most physics-accurate games I've played, have been some of the most generic and dull in memory. Greater physics can add to a game, but /designed/ physics, is what makes a game /fun/.
Am I the only one that is tired of all these epeen graphics and physics that make any machine that costs less than a grand run like a slideshow while the AI makes Forest Gump look like a genius? I swear the AI was better 5 years ago than it is now.
I picked up MoH:Airborne in the 10th anniversary pack and by the second level it was just sad how fricking awful the AI was. Sure the game looked nice and all, but when you have Nazis lining up to hide behind the EXACT SAME COVER that you have already piled corpses by like fricking firewood, I mean come on now. And if you crank the difficulty on high in the new games all it does is give you EA style cheating where you can be in the perfect cover and everybody knows exactly where you are, or you get a green ass grunt that can snipe you from a half mile away with a crappy bolt action without even an optic scope, meanwhile you pound bullet after bullet into them and they act like they are the Terminator.
So if any game designers are reading this, enough with the epeen graphics and physics already. They graphics and physics were good five years ago. Nobody cares if in the heat of battle every stick falls correctly when you blow a building up, but they sure as hell notice when the bad guys just tiptoe through the tulips while walking through a killing field where you have piled up bodies all over the place. And please don't say online makes up for your shitty AI either, because it doesn't. If I wanted to deal with a bunch of campers, lamers, turtles, and teabaggers I would be playing Halo. There were plenty of games in the past like the original Far Cry that would give you a decent fight. Build on that instead of turning our PCs into slideshows.
Oh yeah, and quit calling them "multi-platform" when you try to pass off some lame ass console port as a PC game without even taking a second to think about a decent PC control scheme. Thanks.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Why is the physics of the game world important? The thing that really counts is the plot and the game-play. Requiring super-duper CPU power (or GPU power) for the physics and the graphics is another big waste. Looking at all these new ... and expensive ... games makes me want to dig out my old Sega Genesis and play some of the old games like the Phantasy Star titles. Kindergarten graphics, no real attention to physics, but those games were FUN!
I'd love to see a Linux port of those games!
Teen Angel - a Ghost Story