Comments on: Clear Sky Tech Trailer

By: UncleLou

UncleLou — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:17:34 +0000

Everyone said Stalker had “dated” looking visuals (most of the time I have trouble thinking through what utterly absurd graphics whores many reviewers must be to say this about every other game, but this one really took the cake. Stalker has some of the most awesome visuals around, and some of the most astounding naturalistic design,

I entirely agree. I was completely baffled by these reviews (and some gamers said it as well). The NPCs looked a little old, but apart from that, Stalker is one of the best-looking games I’ve played, with a still unmatched grasp of natural lighting.

By: Muzman

Muzman — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 04:57:38 +0000

There are actually two quite concrete examples of where attention paid to the graphics killed or badly restricted the gameplay of a game ; Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief: Deadly Shadows. A desire for slightly ahead of the curve visuals and shakey management made sure those games were spending large amounts of their time cutting and reworking ideas to suit the graphics renderer.

Anyway, you really can’t begrudge GSC for sprucing things up a bit. Everyone said Stalker had “dated” looking visuals (most of the time I have trouble thinking through what utterly absurd graphics whores many reviewers must be to say this about every other game, but this one really took the cake. Stalker has some of the most awesome visuals around, and some of the most astounding naturalistic design, but there’s always some twit performing some specular highlight based accountancy. Aye yie yie).
If Clear Sky had pretty much the same standard as the old game I’d be very happy indeed. Shame I’m unlikely to be walking through any self curling mist in some lab, but oh well.

By: Pace

Pace — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 04:50:12 +0000

To me the pretty eye candy is a big part of the experience. Detailed and realistic visuals really add to the immersion, and I think can be enjoyable in and of themselves. I mean sometimes I like to just look at the scenery. One of the reasons I really liked stalker is because of its unique (and impressive) look.

By: Scandalon

Scandalon — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 03:06:13 +0000

Meesta: Which brings up the question…why didn’t they just use Unreal Engine 3 (or whatever) in the first place?!? Sure, with any engine there’s some things that aren’t exactly what you’re looking for, some modifications have to be made, but seriously, when you contemplate the pure man-hours that have been spent and re-spent on “solving” the same problems over and over again in different engines… (Not to mention how much is accomplished with terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad tools… You wanna know why Each HL2 episode takes so long? The engine/tools are from the dark ages!)

As for the contention that pretty graphics don’t adversely affect gameplay…BS. Now, obviously, by themselves, they don’t hurt. But there’s almost always tradeoffs, esp. w/ a still-in-process technology (see previous paragraph on engine re-use). There’s only so many programmers, so many QA testers (or money to spend on them), so much time available to track down bugs, for design decisions, etc… Do I know for a fact that implementing eye candy effect “X” in STALKER resulted in the lack of feature “Y” or breaking of missions 3, 6 and 42? No. Do I have an educated guess that wrestling w/ the tech contributed to pet peeves I have w/ the AI? Yes.

Ideally, everyone would make their games w/ flat-shaded white boxes, spheres and cones, then add the eyecandy on top and refine/adjust after that, and it would all be on a solid, easily maintainable, scalable, cross-platform codebase. In the realworld, however, some tradeoffs are necessary. (But teams seem to consistently pick what I think are the wrong ones. But I’m just Some Dude. ;)

By: much2much

much2much — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 02:31:10 +0000

Talking about what was promised for the first Stalker.

I am grateful that they actually released the game at all. Poor chaps spent so bloody long on the thing without even being able to sell one copy. This could just as easily have been shelved and never seen the light of our screens.

I can imagine that releasing it and having people love it in spite of it not living up to expectations (all the while seriously wowing people with some elements) was a huge shot in the arm for the developers. Not to mention they now have cash that they have generated from their first game to make the second.

By: MeestaNob!

MeestaNob! — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:25:17 +0000

Enough Vista discussion please.

Anyway – so whats the difference between this engine and say, the Unreal Engine 3? Answer: These guys have made an interesting game with there’s.

Discuss.

By: UncleLou

UncleLou — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:04:50 +0000

Pretty happy here with Vista – can’t even remember the last time I used my dualboot setup for XP.

Anyway, the trailer looks fantastic.

By: Turin Turambar

Turin Turambar — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:37:35 +0000

Pretty graphics cut into the gameplay in an indirect manner. It’s time, people and money used in the development studio that it could be used to make a better gameplay, plot, or whatever.

By: ravuya

ravuya — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:36:21 +0000

I’d imagine the “A-Life” system is doing things at a somewhat lower granularity than “single NPCs” in regions you’re not currently present in. It might not be truly honest, but it’s not like people will notice.

By: Seth Tipps

Seth Tipps — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:07:52 +0000

The only case where a pretty graphics engine might cut into the possible game play would be a game like dwarf fortress, where the AI or some other feature is so complicated (and unoptimized) that it can eat some serious processor speed. Even then, most graphics engines are more gpu then cpu intensive. In any case, it usually requires a different team to do the graphics. In-house graphics are rare, aside from the engine itself. Most of the art is contracted.

In this case, I am amazed that a game that claims to have fully implemented the A-Life system sports prettiness of the degree we have just seen without quad-core support. Dwarf Fortress can eat up quite a bit of a single processor. Imagine fully functioning independent AI for each stalker in the zone. That’s gotta burn through some cpu. IMHO, they are going to implement quad core, or scrap some of the A-Life system. So this might be a case of graphics vs. gameplay after all.

BTW did anyone notice that moving anomaly? and not just another lightening dohickey either. That might take some getting used to (I for one liked to memorize anomalies rather than continually throw nuts ahead of me in the tunnels).

By: dhex

dhex — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:47:35 +0000

mark: i thought the rain running down the signage was pretty neat.

By: propanol

propanol — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:43:08 +0000

I ran Vista until it decided to lock me out after I’d replaced the motherboard in my box, citing the license agreement as saying that I’m only allowed to use it on one system at a time and that this copy was running on a different system than it had originally been installed on. Now, here’s my perception of computers: they’re machines to do my bidding, not the other way around. Software should not lock me out because the creator thought it’d be good/clever/whatever; it should just do what I tell it to and nothing else.

After that ordeal, I went back to XP, obviously.