Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Okami's constant usage as proof that 'graphics technology doesn't matter'
2011-06-19 11:08:28
edited 2011-06-19 11:09:20 in Meatspace
We Played Some Open Chords and Rejoiced, For the Earth Had Circled the Sun Yet Another Year
Ask yourself this: If Okami were ported downward to the PS1, would that 'visual aesthetic' still look as good as it does?
Comments
MY BFF JILL?
----
Okami is not proof that graphics tech doesn't matter.
Classic Mega Man games, Felix the Cat, Super Mario Bros. 3, and Castlevania 3 are proof that graphics tech doesn't matter...that much at least.
Castlevania 3 are proof that graphics tech doesn't matter...that much at
least."
All of which are bad examples because (except for maybe the first Mega Man, and even there) they were very technically advanced for the time period and the hardware they were on, and in comparison to their contemporaries.
----
If Okami were ported downward to the PS1, would that 'visual
aesthetic' still look as good as it does?
I had a similar argument on the TVT forum, and I gave Metal Slug as an example of something that proves that raw graphical muscle can and do sometimes matter, and not just for the browny realistic shooters the fora has such an hard-on for. The other guy responded MS would look the same on the SNES.
The hair-splitting over "graphics" is a very silly argument, anyway.
For example, compare almost any black&white sci-fi B-flick to the Twilight Zone. The Twilight Zone had its narmy moments, but otherwise did a very great deal with very little. It was good in its day, and its still good now. That said, the Twilight Zone was advanced for its day, but it still stands out nonetheless.
The moral: Graphics are temporary, everything else is forever. (Unless Seinfeld is unfunny gets invoked.)
That said, photorealism is rarely a lucrative endeavor compared to the immense art development man-hours that it takes to produce relatively mundane assets. Tools are getting better of course, but ultimately you still need a dude sitting at a computer for hours on end tweaking a mesh or mask/diffuse/spec/bump map, and that time scales directly with the resolution you want it in.
Also, Okami had pretty much the same modeling complexity as everything else, but WITH A TOON SHADER and less time bothering with Z-brush.
There are exceptions of course. LA Noire wasn't gonna fly with anything less than what they had, for instance.
immense art development man-hours that it takes to produce relatively
mundane assets.
This.
This is why so much of the visual art that we humans have created--from charcoal on paper to oil on canvas to animated features--has stylized depictions rather than photorealism.
- When the programmers get overworked, you have silly bugs.
- When the artists get overworked, large chunks of content, which may or may not have been rather crucial to the original gameplay design, get cut due to lack of completed assets. Additionally, what does get completed rolls over to the programmers with little to no time to implement them properly or adjust the placeholder gameplay to how much got cut. So basically, demanding too much of your artists shoots your entire game in the balls twice.
Also note that unless you're in a really big dev studio, you'll only have a handful of artists.
Not every game should look like Wind Waker or No More Heroes, and a game doesn't need to to age well.
What really kills old games is outdated graphic design - logos, menus and fonts. The MDK and Resident Evil covers didn't exactly age like wine.
I wouldn't know, I played it on the Wii becuase HD whores can screw themselves.
I'll never be drawn into a game based on graphical value, graphics are just there to make the aesthetics look good and if I don't like the aesthetic then I won't give two flying fish about the game. All the photo realism and HD stuff is just a waste of money for bother consumer and the developers. Photorealism has their place and people can do what they want wit hit but We haven't exactly found a way to make it quickly and cheaply.
We Need a McPhotorealisticGrFx or something.
The giant sales numbers that games like this usually pull in say otherwise.
^ and ^^: Do we have any proof as to whether a game's art style affects development costs? You never hear a dev say that they're going for a stylized look to save money.
If you're not impressed by current gen graphics, there's a good reason: The 360 and PS3 are being stretched, hard. Programmable pixel shaders means we we're only limited by the console's power. HDR, AA, 720p, 3D, real time shadows, motion blur, physics, SSAO, normal mapping everywhere, tesselation, GI, parallax mapping, sandboxes 10 miles across. Many games don't even run in HD.
There are very few people I've seen like the "browny realistic shooters" on TV Tropes, or even here. Most of them bash the everliving shit out of them on a consistent basis whenever FPSes are brought up.
and fonts. The MDK and Resident Evil covers didn't exactly age like
wine.
No, outdated graphics design is merely a matter of taste. The issue is interfaces. A clunky menu system using Calibri is worse than an intuitive menu system using FixedSys.
Game designers have gotten MUCH better at designing more intuitive or otherwise better interfaces, and this is due in large part to experience. On the other hand, gamers have also gotten used to certain interface designs--such as outer button to jump and inner button to fire, for a simple example--that these are now considered effectively industry standards.
And yes, graphic design choices are a matter of taste, but the entire field of graphic design is about knowing what the vast majority of people will find astethically pleasing. And if people don't design their graphics like they did in the 90s, then it's because they believe that most people will find them unappealing.
And it's not just logos or fonts. Early to mid 90s games have this..."look" to them. Well, two seperate "looks". It's difficult to describe without pictures, which I can't post on the mobile site.
(Sorry if this doesn't make much sesnse, I haven't slept in 24 hours)
The Link: the Faces of Evil and Zelda: the Wand of Gamelon used two buttons to do a crapton of functions (which ended up conflicting with each other frequently), and left the third one unused.