fun language v better visuals producing language

Hi,

After reading countless debates about Blitz v other languages and the Bio shock thread (in which people are criticising the visuals), I have a question for you fellow Blitzers out there....

Is it better to produce/develop a game in a language which you enjoy/find easier programming in or in a language which would potentially produce better visuals ?

Are you coders sacrificing visual quality because you find it easier or more enjoyable progamming in Blitz rather than in another language which for example providers shader support (e.g. DB Pro).

As for people who say that visual aren't everything, then I would say that they are very important. Just as important as the playability of a game now days.

I don't see how there is any correlation between programming language and visuals. This was made in BlitzMax:

I differ.

I would rather rent a pixar video than pay £30 for a game that has the playability value of a lollipop stick.

Good looking or not!

Dabz

I wasn`t aware that games had playability nowadays ;)

Jason.

Don't get *too* taken in by that thread. BioShock is being made with probably the best pound-for-pound 3d engine around right now, so if it's being criticised for visual quality, it just goes to show that you can't please all the people all the time.


Like so many things, it's a balancing act. Aim too low and your game doesn't look as good as it could. Aim too high and your game never gets finished.


No, I have a much better language and much better 3d features than DB Pro. DB Pro is not a good example here anyway. It's a horrible syntax, it's a very weak language with many omissions, it's 3d engine is less powerful than even some free options like Irrlicht and it's stability has only recently become decent.


Possibly more important. If you have a bad game, people won't buy it. If you have bad graphics, people won't even download it.

Interesting... I wonder what would happen if I could hand-pick 4 BlitzMax programmers and a dozen or so 3D/graphics artists, what kind of visually pleasing playable game we could make...

I think you'll find talent is quite important, regardless of the language.

Give Joe Average the best 3D engine and the best graphics tools, and I doubt he could produce something half as good in his whole lifetime...

And I'm not sure how you would define "potentially better visuals". Given the same hardware, they all have the same potential.

I use Blitz3D as it is easy - I don't want to faff about with C++ etc.

My stuff is still awesome-looking even though it is DX7 - some people couldn't believe the quality of my animated people and the hundreds of animations - let alone all the other geometry, sound, music, textures I have.

Hi,
Thanks for the reply guys. I hope I haven't annoyed anyone with my point of view, but this is some thing I have been thinking about lately.

Before I carry on heres abit about myself:
Im an environment artist working for a world leading games publisher/developer based in England. I work in an environment where I have to work alongside other artists and collaborate with programmers as well as producers.

Anyway back to topic:
Leadworks- What I was trying to say was that sometimes some people maybe sacrificing the visual impact of their project because they enjoy programming in a specific language too much and thus don't consider the less elegant languages which may offer better results. For example Blitz3d is a very good language to program in, but it will be outdone by DB Pro visually if both were given to top programmers and artists, simply because DBpro has shader support. And about your image from your project - technically it may be good (bump/normal maps, etc but nothing new) but the overall look doesn't do anything for me im afraid.

Dabz - Now a days, if a game isn't a new gimmick or doesn't have wow graphics then it wont sell. Games are produced for a majority of 100,00s not 10s of people.

Quicksilva - :)

Gabriel - so True :)

Brucey - If you are a top artist and top programmer, then your language can be a limiting factor. Not all programming languages give the same access to the hardware.

Thanks.

Then you are talking about the engine, not the language. The Blitz3D engine can be used with any programming language. And Blitz3D itself can actually be made to run a few different engines.

I don't actually like the visual style of that shot much, but I had to crank up the effects so they would be noticeable. If I go with more subtle effects, which I think looks a lot better, it doesn't grab the viewer's attention as much. And you can always tone down specular lighting and HDR.

What is it you're looking to produce, exactly?

If it's something commercial with AAA graphics, then Blitz3D isn't going to cut it - although, it is still capable of producing some very nice visuals. As leadwerks shows, BlitzMax can be used with a 3rd party engine to up the graphics stakes, though frankly, if I were to go the whole hog, I'd probably just bite the bullet and go the C/C++ route.

Luckily. that's not a route I plan taking any time soon. Just doing stuff as a hobby, at the moment.

Swings and roundabouts.

Hi Leadworks.
Maybe you could:
introduce dirt/grime/wear'n'tear into the textures. Everything just looks to clean.

Make the objects more dirty where they meet the ground/ceiling.

Change the colour of the lighting.

Introduce cracks into objects.

Implement Ambient occulusion if you haven't already.

Lower the specular effect on the objects.

I already told him it looks too plasticky, but from his comments above, he's fully aware of that. :)

P.S. What's ambient occlusion? That's a new one on me.

If that was the case, why would they sell retro titles in compilations such as Midway Classics, or even have downloadable titles from years gone by, like they have on the Wii's Shopping Channel?

I know why, because they SELL... No fancy graphics, they relied on good old time gameplay, which I presume, people miss!

I also imagine that the at least a quarter of gamers are'nt equiped with the most up to date GFX cards out there... Which in turn, will cause the game to run like a slug on max settings.

So even if a game did have fancy pants 'Wow wee' graphics, they'd only have to yank the settings down to get a decent frame rate, so wheres the benefit in that?

And what do you have left of that £30 you've spent after turning the graphic settings down, thats right... Gameplay!!!

And thats when you realise that the devs have churned out an ordinary game which has been done a million times.

*But it looked great in the screen shots*

Dabz

Ambient occlusion maps are kind of like radiosity lightmaps, but not as "baked" - you can use dynamic lighting on it and it will still look realistic.

Dynamic occlusion maps are basically the same as ambient occlusion maps, but the occlusion map is generated dynamically, which means a reasonable approximation of animated models with radiosity in real-time.

Oh, and eye, I'm not having a pop or anything, your opinions are as valid as mine.

In my eyes though, gameplay makes a game, graphics dont! ;)

Dabz

Ambient occlusion is a shader-driven effect which is probably best described as a crude version of Global Illumination. It's ( with rare exceptions) a static, precomputed effect so it only works on static geometry. Essentially, areas of a mesh which are occluded by geometry ( the self same object or another ) between it and the lightsource ( hemispherical, like a sunlight ) are darker than areas which are open and not occluded.

It's then normally mixed with a dynamic lighting solution like normal or parallax mapping. If you weren't going to mix it with a dynamic lighting solution, you might just as well precompute vertex or even lightmapping in Gile[s] and leave it at that.

Generally speaking, only dedicated/serious PC gamers have up-to-date GFX hardware (hence, I don't).

Most casual gamers almost certainly won't.

I guess you need to choose your marketplace.

I think there is a big difference between `form` and `content`.

Form is the appearance that something has and how it behaves and what it seems to be in a very objective detached kind of way. The form of something is merely how it looks visually and how it seems to be different from other things. Form has no meaning whatsoever but in this world many people believe that one form is better or worse than another.

So many games now focus almost exlusively on the form in the game, which means they're focussing on trying to change the shapes of models to show more detail, trying to eggrandise the environments that you play in, trying to show some sign of improved behavior through more realistic or interesting changes in the form (ie animation) and trying to show higher and higher levels of realistic appearance as some kind of show of prowess.

This is all entirely based on putting the `forms` in the game on a pedestal and milking them for all it is worth. This pretty much squeezes the living daylights out of any kind of soul or meaning or valuable content because all of the focus is on the surface with nothing beneath.

With a strong focus on realism there is increasingly less focus on symbolism or something beyond appearances, and that usually means a diminishing of spiritual content. These games have no soul. That is why, I believe, so many such games are war games and games of violence and darkness. Those who focus so intently on making a big deal about an appearance tend to also be those who look at life in the same way and live in a mindset of darkness, with in some cases perverse happiness gained from murder and death.

It goes hand in hand with trying to make the form of the characters and the form of the environment so important above all else. Appearances and forms mean nothing and so unless the developers can see the world in a different light they cannot increase the meaning of the game in any way other than to increase the technical specs, or to overinflate the importance of the graphics. All they can do is then put all their efforts into making the game bigger in appearance or having finer graphics. It's an expansion in the direction of vanity and away from any kind of real meaning or substance, and all these super-high-end engine features are really just a cover for the intense lack of insight or depth that most of these games end up with.

And of course as has been said, it depends largely on who is using the engine and what use they put it to and what they decide to focus on. But sadly in so many cases I think this is true - people including the developers and the customers have the wool pulled over their eyes thinking that all this shock factor and big ego nonsense is more appealing or desirable than something of greater real worth.
And that kind of a focus is really a spiritual problem in today's societies, and just happens to express itself in the form of these games.

The alternative to form is content. Content is to do with where you are coming from. It's to do with how you evaluate what is important in the big picture and what is true. If you're coming from a very egotistical place then you will focus heavily on painting a fanciful dream illusion and the game will end up being a shallow meaningless emptiness. If you are coming from a place of truth and light and, quite frankly, spiritual maturity, then the focus isn't going to be on how things appear, and is going to be more on the beauty of the relationship that you have with it. After all, oogling fancy graphics and getting all excited about polygons is shallow nonsense, compared with a deeper relationship based on a sense of what is really important.

If the content is right, the form is irrelevant because the content provides the meaning. If the content is wrong the form ends up having to fend for itself and its meaninglessness has to be compensated for in distorted egocentric ways.

Gameplay is more to do with the right content than focussing on the form, and when the gameplay is right it does not matter what the form is. when the gameplay is right the form could be anything from some bizarrely simple graphics to some wacky off-the-wall japanese oddness to some pretty ray-traced glorious enviornment. The important thing is that the focus is not on how things look because the content, ie the gameplay - the relationship that the user has to the form, is more important than the form itself. Without that central core of a beautiful relationship a game is left as an empty shell and all it has to show for itself is its appearance.

All this said, I'm not sure which is more disappointing, the developers who continually focus on appearances and totally ignore the depth of content, or the customers who share the same mindset and keep on buying into it just as much.

So in terms of the original topic, I would say the language you write it in is not important because the graphics are not the deciding factor. Graphics have the potential to distort and to paint a picture of something untrue, which generally is the intent to make you think wow that is amazing and I must buy it, but which ends up being disapointment at its total lack of depth or meaning. If you can look past the allure of the graphics then good content and good gameplay and a good ethic or mindset is much more important and you can do that no matter what your tools are. It could be a flash game, it could be written in AMOS Basic, it could be some huge mega engine, doesn't matter. But it DOES matter to the people who think the graphics are all important. But how can you expect someone like that to appreciate what good gameplay is, anyway?

I think you can create a mega-high-tech game engine and have it do all sorts of things that might offer some degree of excitement for the customer, but if that's all there is to it then that's a huge emptiness. On the other hand if you have decent gameplay then it doesn't matter what the graphics do - but, you can get the best of both worlds by using that super great game engine in a wise and artistic way that complements the deeper soul of the game, rather than detract from it. The more eye-candyish and attractive the graphics become the more it steals attention from what is really important and it should never get to the point where it so exclusive.

Dabz, I value your opinions, and you are right that even if we don't agree our are opinions are still valid.

I believe that companies sell retro collections because the game/content has already been done years ago, and so they can resell those games with minimum time spent on them. The companies will always make a profit on them because they haven't spent that much money reselling them.

"I also imagine that the at least a quarter of gamers are'nt equiped with the most up to date GFX cards out there... Which in turn, will cause the game to run like a slug on max settings.

So even if a game did have fancy pants 'Wow wee' graphics, they'd only have to yank the settings down to get a decent frame rate, so wheres the benefit in that?" - You are talking about PC games, not console games which have high tech hardware, so there isn't a max settings problem.
Console games far outsell PC games.

That may be so, but with regards to your original post:-



I thought we were talking about PC gaming/graphics and gameplay! :)

Dabz

[edit]And I know I mentioned Retro games from other consoles, but these titles are just as popular through emulators on a PC! <--- Quick get out ;D

Ok I admit that this topic has gone abit off topic, I thought we were just talking about games in general at that point. :)

ImaginaryHuman - I like your post. I think it holds true for any medium, not only games.

eye- Welcome to Blitz forums- I dont think I have seen you before.

Graphics will always be important, but so many games have decent visuals these days, it is hard to differentiate. Playuability is where it's at, but programmers have forgotten this, which is why I think the indie developer still has a shot, if they aim in the right direction. Question: Are games nowadays more interesting than those of 10 years ago? IMO, NO.

Blitz doesn't have a 3D engine, so use whichever you choose. I think the smart money is on Blitz for quality of language of usability. Just look at the titles turned out.

Thanks ragtag, I'm glad someone is finding my stuff to be of value. There will be people interested in the state of the art graphics for a long time to come regardless of whether the content is really meaningful or whatever. And then there will be others who are not so taken with the visuals - although nice visuals are usually always a good choice - and more interested in interacting.

Sometimes it seems like innovation is simply to take the past state of where things are at, come up with some ingenious advances and make a more sophisticated engine. But it would be nice to see advances in the direction of playability too.

At the end of the day, a game is just a toy for the ego so for the most part if it doesn't appeal to the ego then it has less chance to be popular. Doing something radical or that makes more sense is probably not so likely to be as popular.

It depends on a lot of different factors.

Personally I would think it better to develop a game in a compact language (like Python or C) as opposed to an "anti-compact" language (like C++), because the former is much more productive, and much less prone to strange errors.

Yes, this is true, but there's a distinct difference between these games and a new game. As I said earlier, if people don't like the graphics, they don't download the game. That is, of course, a gross oversimplification, but in order to sell a downloadable game you ( usually ) have to achieve two things.

1) Get them to download it.
2) Get them to buy it.

To achieve 2, you have to achieve 1 ( keeping in mind the usually I already inserted above. ) If they've already played the game, they don't need to know if they like it. They already know. So they can safely bypass this stage, even if it's only because they're blinded by fond memories for a game they're unlikely to find as enjoyable a second time around.

That won't work on a new game. Unless you're going to license an existing property and remake it, people aren't going to know anything about your game until they see it and play it. So you've got to make them download it, where the retro remake does not have this burden. If they decide it doesn't look very nice - a bit rough around the edges - and decide not to try it, they'll never know that you had good old time gameplay.

How is C more productive and less prone to strange errors than C++? Almost everyone who's used both languages (including me) would say exactly the opposite - that C++ is more productive and less prone to strange errors than C.

But regarding gameplay vs. graphics, I think of a game as a series of layers:

...........................
Realistic Graphics
----------------------
Storyline
----------------------
Fun Game Dynamics
----------------------
Use of Skill
============

The top layers are the ones you notice first, like graphics, storyline, etc., but they're also the first ones where the novelty wears off the fastest. The lower layers are less obvious as first, but create more lasting entertainment.

Some games are excellent in the top two layers, and while they're usually amazing to play at first, they get boring very quickly. Games that are strong in the bottom two layers are usually fun for a very long time, but may not have the same initial appeal as an "eye candy" game.

Only a few games implement all layers well.

Oh. For the record Realistic Graphics != Good Graphics. In fact games with unrealistic graphics (like Psychonauts or Jet Set Radio) are often far more enjoyable than games with "Realistic" graphics. Particularly since most developers seem to think that Realistic = Dark. Maybe they just need to be let out of the basement more often.

..well..regarding Good graphics and B3D capability to give it a AAA shot...Tomb Raider Anniversary, is classified as AAA title right? So in that manner, after I play it and really enjoy it, however, I realize that every single vfx done in Anniversary is possible to do easy with B3D with same quality..I mean, I turned on all quality settings in game and I really cant see a thing what is not possible to do with B3D..so, as always, it depend how you use your tools, thats whats count anyway...remember Michelangelo Buonarotti and his David?? Done by hands and polished by sand paper made from crystal sand glued on to dried goat skin...and violaa..lasers today cant reach after hundred years same quality of surface polishing..hi tech ha?

@Lead, Is your picture in the first post for a "The hobbit" game?