But thats not how things are done in games - the textures are generated, then cached as traditional textures for use on the video card. So you don't have any quality benifit from procedural techniques, and in most cases loose quality because an artist cannot simply grab the brush and paint some pixels.
If procedural textures are going to become a mainstream in game graphics, it's not going to work the way it does now. These approaches are mathmatical in nature, and require a special kind of thought process which is quite different from how artists trained in traditional painting think. Additionally, we have more than enough storage on modern hardware, and more on the way, so it's not like we'e hurting for space or anything. If these textures were being generated on the fly, per frame, then they might offer some advantages, but thats not really a good use of the processing power right now.
For some reason, the NYTimes writer replaced the word 'online' with 'website', leading to mad confusion about what we do here at Harmonix. So, in other words, we're still focused on console games as always..
I don't get this whole John Madden thing; I mean, why spend hundreds on a console when you could be down at the park playing for the price of a football?
I don't get the whole GTA thing, I mean, why not go down to wallmart and buy a real gun to shoot real people with?
I generally prefer smaller teams with more time, but just creating that situation is not necissarily even a win. If anything, I'd say the amount of focus a project has is most closely tied to it's potential success; and focus is naturally diluted as you add people and time (usually more by adding people than by adding time).
As a counter example, we just shipped Guitar Hero. Start to finish in 9 months, including designing our own hardware controller. It's as highly regarded as SOTC or GOW is, yet was built in a fraction of the time with a much smaller crew. Focus was key for us; we knew exactly what we were building, and every member of the team knew exactly what the vibe had to be. We knew the project had to rock, and if there's one thing you can say about GH, it's that it rocks.
Except that by law a corperation has the equivelent rights to a person. A long time ago corperate lawyers argued that corperations should have the same rights as people, because at the time they acted as entities for the needs of the people. And suddenly, an amendment passed to protect the rights of african americans was hijacked into giving corperations an overwhelming amount of power. In the years since that amendment was passed, the system has simply run out of control.
How can you expect MTV to get it right when the game industry itself can't get it right? Every year at GDC I go to the awards, and every year it's clear that far to many of the game industry musicians are would-be film composers trying to break in through gaming.
The centerpoint of gaming is interactivity; not figuring out how to get your next project recorded by an orchestra. Thus, the focus should be as much on creative use of music in games to enhance the interactive experience as it is on the quality of music produced. Certainly there is an achievement to be had in recording a high quality film score for a game (expecially on a game sized budget); but I don't think thats the pinacle of what makes a game's soundtrack work, or what builds a more interesting game experience. If we don't focus on what makes music unique to gaming, the industry won't be recognized for it's music.
I see this just as often in other parts of the industry too; this code is my thesis, this game is my chance to write a novel, etc.. It just... misses the point.
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But thats not how things are done in games - the textures are generated, then cached as traditional textures for use on the video card. So you don't have any quality benifit from procedural techniques, and in most cases loose quality because an artist cannot simply grab the brush and paint some pixels. If procedural textures are going to become a mainstream in game graphics, it's not going to work the way it does now. These approaches are mathmatical in nature, and require a special kind of thought process which is quite different from how artists trained in traditional painting think. Additionally, we have more than enough storage on modern hardware, and more on the way, so it's not like we'e hurting for space or anything. If these textures were being generated on the fly, per frame, then they might offer some advantages, but thats not really a good use of the processing power right now.
For some reason, the NYTimes writer replaced the word 'online' with 'website', leading to mad confusion about what we do here at Harmonix. So, in other words, we're still focused on console games as always..
I don't get this whole John Madden thing; I mean, why spend hundreds on a console when you could be down at the park playing for the price of a football? I don't get the whole GTA thing, I mean, why not go down to wallmart and buy a real gun to shoot real people with?
I generally prefer smaller teams with more time, but just creating that situation is not necissarily even a win. If anything, I'd say the amount of focus a project has is most closely tied to it's potential success; and focus is naturally diluted as you add people and time (usually more by adding people than by adding time). As a counter example, we just shipped Guitar Hero. Start to finish in 9 months, including designing our own hardware controller. It's as highly regarded as SOTC or GOW is, yet was built in a fraction of the time with a much smaller crew. Focus was key for us; we knew exactly what we were building, and every member of the team knew exactly what the vibe had to be. We knew the project had to rock, and if there's one thing you can say about GH, it's that it rocks.
Except that by law a corperation has the equivelent rights to a person. A long time ago corperate lawyers argued that corperations should have the same rights as people, because at the time they acted as entities for the needs of the people. And suddenly, an amendment passed to protect the rights of african americans was hijacked into giving corperations an overwhelming amount of power. In the years since that amendment was passed, the system has simply run out of control.
How can you expect MTV to get it right when the game industry itself can't get it right? Every year at GDC I go to the awards, and every year it's clear that far to many of the game industry musicians are would-be film composers trying to break in through gaming.
The centerpoint of gaming is interactivity; not figuring out how to get your next project recorded by an orchestra. Thus, the focus should be as much on creative use of music in games to enhance the interactive experience as it is on the quality of music produced. Certainly there is an achievement to be had in recording a high quality film score for a game (expecially on a game sized budget); but I don't think thats the pinacle of what makes a game's soundtrack work, or what builds a more interesting game experience. If we don't focus on what makes music unique to gaming, the industry won't be recognized for it's music.
I see this just as often in other parts of the industry too; this code is my thesis, this game is my chance to write a novel, etc.. It just... misses the point.