I would like to correct something I said in my last post: I said that they neglected to give evidence of the hole made by the soulstone in the 'There's something dark within me now' trailer. I had a second look and the scarring on the wanderers head is, in fact, visible.
Here is the frame from the trailer - it's a little clearer than my avatar. You can just see the edge of the wound on his forehead:
That still leaves the sewn mouth inconsistency. Im not sure who removed the stitching, or when it happened, but I think it is likely that the warrior may have sewn his own lips together as a measure to contain Diablo (when the warriors own soul was still quite strong). It does make sense...
in your avatar i always wondered how the wanderer was carrying the soul stone that was supposedly in his head... and why his mouth was sewn shut..
can anyone explain?>
He has removed the stone from his head because pretty most of Diablo's soul has passed into his. He continues to carry the stone a while longer, and when it is utterly spent, he casts it away (as seen in the trailer the pic came from). He is now almost completely consumed by Diablo. Unfortunately, it seems they neglected to give evidence of the hole the soulstone left in his head - perhaps it was somehow healed by Diablo etc.
...or whoever made the trailer just forgot.
The sewn shut mouth is a bit of an inconsistency as well, I think. In the cinematics included in Diablo II, there is no evidence of the wanderers lips having ever been sewn when we see him talking to Marius. I don't know who would have sewn his mouth shut, nor when it would have happened (some time between when he kills Diablo at the end of Diablo I, and when he decides to journey to the desert. And when was his mouth unsewn? I don't think anyone would have really bothered to check the consitency there.
Well, I'll tell you this. I am OK with technology if it makes sense. Today's technology when it comes to video games is a negative thing to me. They make me buy computer parts, they force developers to spend 3 years on a game (Oblivion) that is 10 times smaller (literally) than the older version of the same manner of game that was made in a year (Daggerfall). They make developers worry about optimization more than the game itself. I don't like that. Of course, it's inevitable. But just because something is inevitable doesn't mean I am going to support it. I'll always be against it. I want to be able to play games, without slow downs, and I want those games to be good. Design is primary. Technology is nothing without design. Design lasts forever.
You say "if engines are properly optimized..." most of the time, they aren't. UE is not used in good games much because it's an FPS engine, and I really despise the FPS that they make these days, with the exception of badly optimized FarCry. The games that I actually like, Gothic 3 and Oblivion, are badly optimized. Same can go for Perimeter. Are you telling me I shouldn't play those games JUST because they are badly optimized? I don't really have a choice. I end up with games that are badly optimized, and I will continue to blame "technological progress" for it. And you think those guys developing those games really want to fuss with graphics that much? It's all for the mass to buy, to gorge themselves on realistic graphics without realizing what the game is about and complaining about the non-intuitive controls.
I am glad you like to look at pretty slideshows of pictures (or not, if you have a good comp every year), but I like to play games instead. And I don't care where engines go. If it was my will, I'd slow down the engine improvement and restrict it, so that the devs fucking start making goddamn GAMES not drawing PICTURES for people like you to stare at.
I will admit that Unreal Tournament 3 is a total and utter piece of shit, especially considering the root of the series: Unreal, which was absolutely revolutionary in terms of gameplay and graphics when it came out (Unreal was about five years in the making, and that proves that a huge production period is not always a bad or futile thing. Unreal was still a huge game, with loads of diverse levels and content). UT3, on the other hand, is a disgrace. It's built on a beautifully optimized - and visually stunning - engine, but the engine is just about all it has.
I'm not sure why you say 'badly optimized Far Cry' - I always thought it ran very well, considering it was such an advanced engine (visually) at the time of release. And I wasn't saying that you shouldn't play games because they are badly optimized, I was simply pointing out that it is the responsability of the game's developers to ensure that their engine is properly optimized. I was also pointing out that as long as it used a quality, well optimized engine, Diablo III could be an exceptional 3D first or third person game.
I agree that, in some cases, devs may spend too long on the engine/visuals, and end up neglecting other critical aspects of the game such as content, gameplay and story - as is the case with UT3. There are, however, plenty of FPS's like Far Cry, that have pretty visuals and good gameplay (even if Far Cry does lack a storyline worth mentioning).
I must confess that I am guilty of regularly spending on upgrades, but as far as I'm concerned it's well worth it. And I also know that you do not have to spend huge sums of money to be able to play most modern games comfortably.
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I'm actually very surprised that you say you like Far Cry. It bears many similarities to Dark Messiah apart from the fact that they are both first person games. In fact, the two include almost identical sets of strenghts and weaknesses: They both feature intuitive control systems, a diverse range of environments, fast (or stealthy, depending on the way you choose to play) and exiting gameplay, beautiful visuals (although Far Cry might be slightly superior here), terrible voice acting and finally, they both exhibit equally pitiful excuses for storylines. The only significant difference is that Dark Messiah sports the traditional RPG inventory/skill tree system.
I remember pretty clearly that all 2D games from 1998 played perfectly fine on our 1995 computer...
Well the rate at which technology is advancing is accelerating - what do you expect?
Quote from "Equinox" »
Exactly, Ram and CPU, not the video card, which is kinda a different story here. Apparently, CPU is a lot sturdier than VC's. In 2D games, you can have huge amounts of objects. In 3D, you can't. Not until much later, much, much later would you have the same range in 3D.
...on your computer. But, you see, the thing with 3D games, they are very dependent. Some games prefer different video cards, or different processors, or maybe they need more ram... so each time you get a new game you don't even know if you are going to run it because it's all so unique regarding what parts you need to have for this particular game...
It's up to the people who design the engine to ensure that it is well optimized and balances the computing load between the GPU and CPU. Again, I will use UT3 as an example. Unreal Engine 3 makes excellent use of both the CPU and GPU (and I have noticed that it almost fully utilises both cores of a dual core CPU). That is the kind of optimisation one would expect to see in modern engines. But then you have poorly designed engines that shift the majority of the load on to just the GPU. It's not that the CPU is sturdier or anything (unless you happen to have a very low end graphics card), it's all to do with the software. And then you have engines like the one used in Oblivion, which rapes the whole system, making framerates plummet and doesn't even look that great half the time. I have no idea how they managed that.
In general, first person shooters and first person RPG's tend to put more load on the GPU, while traditional RPG's and RTS games stress the CPU more (as they have more entities to provide calculations for (path finding etc.) at once).
If engines are designed correctly, one can get away with purchasing a mid range graphics card and a mid range CPU. There will be no hardware bottlenecks, and no money would have been wasted on power that is only going to be utilized in some programs.
Quote from "Equinox" »
I don't care how good they are if I don't have a top notch video card. I care if they even exist with my Radeon 1950x Pro... and, they aren't even there. I shoot a fireball, I see no reflections on the walls, none at all. I just see a light effect from the fire. Sure, if I turn on HDR... but then the whole thing just DIES for me.
You don't need a top notch video card. How much does the 512MB 8800GT cost these days? Next to nothing!
Quote from "Equinox" »
It has reflection effects, no matter how bad, reflection in the darkness, and upon walls and floors, and it doesn't kill my PC to generate those reflections. In DM, to see any reflections, I need to turn on HDR. Otherwise, fireballs just have glow effects, but they do not light the area around them or anything, unlike Heretic projectiles.
I see it now. Yes, I partially agree with you - I noticed that in Unreal (the original), certain projectiles make splash effects when they strike water, while in many later games (even games in the Unreal series like UT2003), they have neglected to add such effects. Yes, they looked nice. And yes, it seems stupid that they could have those effects in a 1998 game but not a 2002 game, but really, are they so important? The lack of simple reflections or splash effects, doesn't really have much impact on gameplay, or even the overall appearance of the game.
And again, of course it does not kill your PC to generate those reflections in Heretic - it's an antiquated game. You cant really expect people to still be using those particular kinds of effects in modern games, can you? If they did, game engines would never go anywhere.
Quote from "Equinox" »
I am not talking about water.
Sorry, when you mentioned 'reflections', I immediately assumed you meant on water. I understand what you meant now.
I wasn't talking about blurring. I was talking about playing games not for top performance.
Diablo, Heretic, StarCraft, Age of Empires 2, Half-Life 1, etc., these are games that I can run, and there can be tons upon tons of objects in there, and they are going to be nice and fast. Sometimes I just feel I'd rather have games posses simple design than slow down my PC, even if the slow down is not huge. It's still there.
These are all bloody ancient, outdated games! Don't get me wrong, I still play AoE2 and Diablo - they are great games, but of course you can run them with tons of objects in them! They were designed on systems that had about a fifth of the overall processing power that the average mid range PC has these day's, as you well know. When the first Age of Empires came out, some people couldn't play it without lag. The same with Diablo II.
Just because a game uses a 2D engine, does not mean that it will perform perfectly - it still uses the RAM and CPU, doesn't it? I'll grant you that it is less likely to perform poorly these days though.
possible in a 2000 re-build of a 1996 game, but in order to get the same crappy reflection effects in DM I have to turn on HDR and say goodbye to my performance, while THAT game runs on anything excluding my 8 year old notebook.
But the reflection effects in Dark messiah are not crappy. Sure, they might be when it is as old as Heretic is now, but at present they are very good.
Sorry, I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to show me in that picture.
If you are saying that fire in Dark Messiah does not reflect on water, then you would be wrong - I witnessed it myself just yesterday. I don't know whether you have to enable HDR to get those reflections in Dark Messiah - I have never noticed. What I did notice however, is that HDR has a very small performance hit in Dark Messiah.
He just stays there? I did not know of that trick.
I always find a room with a grate and an unblocked door. I run in, close the door in his face, and shoot at him through the grate.
That's how I found out - running headlong down a corridor, desperately searching for an unblocked door. Upon failing to find a door I intended on escaping down to the next level, when I noticed the idiot was stuck! I'm surprised a patch didn't that exploit.
I vote for a decent quality 3d game, including stuff like Titan quest, Fable, Elder scrolls 4, God of War, Guild Wars, Neverwinter nights. they are all pretty similar generally speaking.
I think fable and titan quest are the best maybe.
I would love a high res 2D game, but I dont' think diablo is the type of game for that, since it takes so much more time to motion capture things, and are less flexible for many different things, and generally don't implement 3rd dimention as well. I can love 2d graphics, but I think it would be a bad choice for designers, efficency wise.
I just think that 3D engines are getting so advanced these days that there is simply no reason to use a 2D engine any more. 2D engines were once used out of necessity - the hardware requirements were too great for games that needed to display large numbers of entities all at once - but now it's hardly a problem.
Oblivion looks more appealing than Crysis to me... it's colorful.
I don't see anything cartoon about it. You are just asking too much. FarCry is as high graphics as I will ever need lol.
Yeah, those games might be colourful, but they are hugely unrealistic. Far Cry is an exaggerated idea of paradise - the trees are too green, the water is too blue. The colours are so bright that things start to look plasticy. Sure, it looks nice, but not very real.
Quote from "Equinox" »
I got no idea what those are.
I got NO IDEA what you are talking about, frankly.
Sorry, my bad. They are just types of TV - some countries have NTSC, some have PAL. What I was trying to say, is that standard TV runs at a framerate of about 25-30 frames per second, but we don't notice that it is so low because the frames are blurred together so everything looks smooth. Whats wrong with doing the same in games? - you said it was a 'half-baked' method.
Quote from "Equinox" »
Wait, what? Busy fighting who?
The player, busy fighting the monsters. The player should be busy fighting the monsters, not counting them...
Sorry if I confused you, it should have been: '...and if it was a first person game, the chances are that the player isn't going to notice that the whole enemy host is not standing before them because they're too busy fighting.'
Quote from "Equinox" »
There are no "waves" in Diablo. There are packs of enemies who attack when they see you, which is how it is realistically and how it should be. Everything else is dumb scripting and I despise scripting.
Packs, waves, whatever! It's the same thing. They don't all have to be prespawned on mass, just appear when you enter the area.
Quote from "Equinox" »
What does that have to do with anything? Reflections do not depend on the engine. They depend on the designers. Which are a lot more important than any engines.
To be honest, I never noticed the missing reflections that you are complaining about. It seems a very insignificant thing to worry about.
Quote from "Equinox" »
That's like Fallout 3, genre change... it won't be D3 anymore.
There are many other aspects to the games that give the Diablo series it's unique feel. You would have to be very narrow minded if the camera angle was all that made the Diablo series Diablo, to you! Diablo III would retain it's unique atmosphere (it's 'dark, gritty charm', as Alphidius puts it below) , even if the viewpoint did change - if not, then the games creators would have failed miserably.
It's still a game I want to play. And whether it's bad coding or just graphics too high doesn't really concern me. HV and Perimeter are said to have bad coding, they run fine for me.
Well, it just seems ridiculous to me that I can run Crysis at steady 30fps, while Oblivion - which is now a last gen game - fluctuates wildly and often runs lower than 30fps in certain areas. Sure, Oblivion is beautiful if looked at from the right angles, but it's not consistant beauty. In some areas Oblivion just looks plain ugly - theres hardly any of that in Crysis. Furthermore, even the less detailed areas of Crysis look better than Oblivion does in some of it's better areas. It must be a poor engine to perform at the same framerate as Crysis when its only half as detailed.
Quote from "Equinox" »
FarCry on max looks better...
Yes, well I still like the look of Far Cry, although when you compare it to some modern engines it looks a little cartoon like - I didn't think medium Crysis looked as bad.
Quote from "Equinox" »
What you describe is an option. But still it's a half-baked way to play a game. I don't like to do that.
It's not 'half baked'. Thats like saying you're not going to watch TV anymore because the framerates too low and you dont like blur. I think NTSC is about 30fps while PAL is 25. Are they unwatchable? No, it looks fine because everything is burred together. Why games have only just started adopting that tactic is beyond me - in my opinion, it can only improve the experience, especially for people struggling with low framerates.
Quote from "Equinox" »
I am not sure what are you talking about, really... if there is no enemies, there is no waves of enemies.
You can have the enemies enter the field in smaller but relentless waves, the trigger for the next wave being the death of the majority of the first wave - loads of FPS games do that. It's just not necessary to fill the entire area with enemies, and if it was a first person game, the chances are that the player isn't going to notice that the whole enemy host is not standing before him because they're too busy fighting (as it should be ;))
It's simply the difference between a huge, performance crippling wave of enemies every now and then, and more frequent smaller waves.
Quote from "Equinox" »
Yes, DM uses Source, which is old, and it's light effects are worse than in Doomsday Heretic. Fire doesn't reflect at all. I am not surprised it doesn't eat much performance.
Aww, come on now... it looks fine. Better than Oblivion, but I didn't hear you complaining about those grahpics. Better than Far Cry too. It's a very good engine considering the detail. I really don't know why you don't like it - sure, the story is nothing compared to Diablo, but the gameplay is sound.
I really don't understand you. One minute your saying you'd rather Diablo II was a 2D game, and the next your complaining about a highly detailed 3D engine because it was missing some reflections. :rolleyes:
Quote from "Equinox" »
Then it would be a top down Dark Messiah... e.g., something like Nox. Ever played Nox? It's like an FPS in top down mode.
Well then it's hardly FPS then, is it?!
No, I really believe Diablio III would benifit from being in first person.
Gharbad the Weak is actually an interesting quest for me. I liked that you could have dialogue with someone as significant as he was. It didn't progress the story in any way, but it did give some insight into the minds of the Goat Men.
Yes, it was a good quest - in fact, I can't think of a Diablo quest that I didnt enjoy. The Butcher was the only one I struggled against. In my second game I sort of cheated against him... he has a problem navigating around the stairways that lead down to the next level and I found I could trap him on one side and shoot the hell out of him from the other side (I was the Rogue).
Since then I have resisted the temptation of using such cheap tactics.
I dislike that they didnt incorporate all that into the game though. So basically you have to read the manual lol assuming you want to know about the story
Yeah, if you play through the game without reading the manual first (like I did the first time round), quests like the Lachdanan one have as little meaning as the insignificant side quests (such as Gharbad). However when you read Librarius ex Horadrim, you realise that Lachdanan is a significant character who has played an important partin the story.
First of all, games are optimized to play on best controls. Afterwards, they start to look like crap or don't give much of a performance. I bought my computer a year ago, it barely runs Oblivion on max, Crysis on high with 20 FPS (and lower it looks like crap), with UT3 I need to totally drop settings because it's an online game and I need speed, and Bioshock just looks crappy on medium, because it's not that good in the first place. Seems to me like I need a new computer.
We shouldn't even mention Oblivion - that engine is a bloody mess as far as respectable performance/detail ratios are concerned.
I have to disagree with you on Crysis. Even with all settings on medium, it is still a sight to behold!
Personally, I play Crysis on high and I get around 30fps average. 30fps would usually be unplayable in a game like oblivion, however thanks to motion blur, 30fps can seem like 40fps - perfectly playable. What I am trying to say is that there are strategies now (most importantly motion blur), that can be used to reduce the effects of low framerates.
Quote from "Equinox" »
That's what other Hack&Slashes are for. Nox, Titan Quest, Sacred, whatever. If Diablo will have less enemies I don't think I would play it. Killing masses is what makes that game fun.
What I'm trying to say, is that the illusion of endless waves of enemies can still be created without actually weighing down the engine with sheer numbers. Plenty of First Person games have used such tehniques successfully in the past. Doing that might also encourage a bit more variation, rather than just different colours used to distinguish the skill levels within each class of monster (eg. Devil Kin vs Fallen).
Quote from "Equinox" »
Less characters will lead to harder-to-kill monsters, and that is what makes a Hack&Slash boring - when monsters take ages to kill. And I don't care about a 3D engine, even if they decrease the amount of monsters I perceive it's not going to save them. 3D is just 3D, it's not going to get good anytime soon...
Have you ever tried Dark Messiah? The combat is intense and exiting. There is lots of variation. Weapons have more than two different swings. There is kicking, an ubundance of different power strikes and you can use the environment. The magic is rather limited, but what spells you do have access to are effective and look absolutely stunning thanks to Dark Messiahs 3D engine. The enemies do not take ages to kill, but in some maps they just keep coming at you in what seems like huge numbers. All this while - in my experience - the framerate remains perfectly playable, even on an outdated system. (DM uses an enhanced version of the source engine)
I believe that if Diablo III were to follow after any game in terms of combat, then it should be Dark messiah.
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I would like to correct something I said in my last post: I said that they neglected to give evidence of the hole made by the soulstone in the 'There's something dark within me now' trailer. I had a second look and the scarring on the wanderers head is, in fact, visible.
Here is the frame from the trailer - it's a little clearer than my avatar. You can just see the edge of the wound on his forehead:
That still leaves the sewn mouth inconsistency. Im not sure who removed the stitching, or when it happened, but I think it is likely that the warrior may have sewn his own lips together as a measure to contain Diablo (when the warriors own soul was still quite strong). It does make sense...
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He has removed the stone from his head because pretty most of Diablo's soul has passed into his. He continues to carry the stone a while longer, and when it is utterly spent, he casts it away (as seen in the trailer the pic came from). He is now almost completely consumed by Diablo. Unfortunately, it seems they neglected to give evidence of the hole the soulstone left in his head - perhaps it was somehow healed by Diablo etc.
...or whoever made the trailer just forgot.
The sewn shut mouth is a bit of an inconsistency as well, I think. In the cinematics included in Diablo II, there is no evidence of the wanderers lips having ever been sewn when we see him talking to Marius. I don't know who would have sewn his mouth shut, nor when it would have happened (some time between when he kills Diablo at the end of Diablo I, and when he decides to journey to the desert. And when was his mouth unsewn? I don't think anyone would have really bothered to check the consitency there.
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Led Zeppelin
Black Sabbath
Metallica
...for some reason that's all I can think of right now - my mind has gone blank.
Oh well, those are my favorites anyway.
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I will admit that Unreal Tournament 3 is a total and utter piece of shit, especially considering the root of the series: Unreal, which was absolutely revolutionary in terms of gameplay and graphics when it came out (Unreal was about five years in the making, and that proves that a huge production period is not always a bad or futile thing. Unreal was still a huge game, with loads of diverse levels and content). UT3, on the other hand, is a disgrace. It's built on a beautifully optimized - and visually stunning - engine, but the engine is just about all it has.
I'm not sure why you say 'badly optimized Far Cry' - I always thought it ran very well, considering it was such an advanced engine (visually) at the time of release. And I wasn't saying that you shouldn't play games because they are badly optimized, I was simply pointing out that it is the responsability of the game's developers to ensure that their engine is properly optimized. I was also pointing out that as long as it used a quality, well optimized engine, Diablo III could be an exceptional 3D first or third person game.
I agree that, in some cases, devs may spend too long on the engine/visuals, and end up neglecting other critical aspects of the game such as content, gameplay and story - as is the case with UT3. There are, however, plenty of FPS's like Far Cry, that have pretty visuals and good gameplay (even if Far Cry does lack a storyline worth mentioning).
I must confess that I am guilty of regularly spending on upgrades, but as far as I'm concerned it's well worth it. And I also know that you do not have to spend huge sums of money to be able to play most modern games comfortably.
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I'm actually very surprised that you say you like Far Cry. It bears many similarities to Dark Messiah apart from the fact that they are both first person games. In fact, the two include almost identical sets of strenghts and weaknesses: They both feature intuitive control systems, a diverse range of environments, fast (or stealthy, depending on the way you choose to play) and exiting gameplay, beautiful visuals (although Far Cry might be slightly superior here), terrible voice acting and finally, they both exhibit equally pitiful excuses for storylines. The only significant difference is that Dark Messiah sports the traditional RPG inventory/skill tree system.
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Well the rate at which technology is advancing is accelerating - what do you expect?
It's up to the people who design the engine to ensure that it is well optimized and balances the computing load between the GPU and CPU. Again, I will use UT3 as an example. Unreal Engine 3 makes excellent use of both the CPU and GPU (and I have noticed that it almost fully utilises both cores of a dual core CPU). That is the kind of optimisation one would expect to see in modern engines. But then you have poorly designed engines that shift the majority of the load on to just the GPU. It's not that the CPU is sturdier or anything (unless you happen to have a very low end graphics card), it's all to do with the software. And then you have engines like the one used in Oblivion, which rapes the whole system, making framerates plummet and doesn't even look that great half the time. I have no idea how they managed that.
In general, first person shooters and first person RPG's tend to put more load on the GPU, while traditional RPG's and RTS games stress the CPU more (as they have more entities to provide calculations for (path finding etc.) at once).
If engines are designed correctly, one can get away with purchasing a mid range graphics card and a mid range CPU. There will be no hardware bottlenecks, and no money would have been wasted on power that is only going to be utilized in some programs.
You don't need a top notch video card. How much does the 512MB 8800GT cost these days? Next to nothing!
I see it now. Yes, I partially agree with you - I noticed that in Unreal (the original), certain projectiles make splash effects when they strike water, while in many later games (even games in the Unreal series like UT2003), they have neglected to add such effects. Yes, they looked nice. And yes, it seems stupid that they could have those effects in a 1998 game but not a 2002 game, but really, are they so important? The lack of simple reflections or splash effects, doesn't really have much impact on gameplay, or even the overall appearance of the game.
And again, of course it does not kill your PC to generate those reflections in Heretic - it's an antiquated game. You cant really expect people to still be using those particular kinds of effects in modern games, can you? If they did, game engines would never go anywhere.
Sorry, when you mentioned 'reflections', I immediately assumed you meant on water. I understand what you meant now.
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These are all bloody ancient, outdated games! Don't get me wrong, I still play AoE2 and Diablo - they are great games, but of course you can run them with tons of objects in them! They were designed on systems that had about a fifth of the overall processing power that the average mid range PC has these day's, as you well know. When the first Age of Empires came out, some people couldn't play it without lag. The same with Diablo II.
Just because a game uses a 2D engine, does not mean that it will perform perfectly - it still uses the RAM and CPU, doesn't it? I'll grant you that it is less likely to perform poorly these days though.
But the reflection effects in Dark messiah are not crappy. Sure, they might be when it is as old as Heretic is now, but at present they are very good.
Sorry, I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to show me in that picture.
If you are saying that fire in Dark Messiah does not reflect on water, then you would be wrong - I witnessed it myself just yesterday. I don't know whether you have to enable HDR to get those reflections in Dark Messiah - I have never noticed. What I did notice however, is that HDR has a very small performance hit in Dark Messiah.
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Do you mean 'if Diablo 1 is anything like Diablo 2, it must be awesome'?
Diablo 1 is great, although I'm sure it would take a little getting used to if you have only ever played Diablo 2.
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Hehe yup, that's it.
That's how I found out - running headlong down a corridor, desperately searching for an unblocked door. Upon failing to find a door I intended on escaping down to the next level, when I noticed the idiot was stuck! I'm surprised a patch didn't that exploit.
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I just think that 3D engines are getting so advanced these days that there is simply no reason to use a 2D engine any more. 2D engines were once used out of necessity - the hardware requirements were too great for games that needed to display large numbers of entities all at once - but now it's hardly a problem.
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Yeah, those games might be colourful, but they are hugely unrealistic. Far Cry is an exaggerated idea of paradise - the trees are too green, the water is too blue. The colours are so bright that things start to look plasticy. Sure, it looks nice, but not very real.
Sorry, my bad. They are just types of TV - some countries have NTSC, some have PAL. What I was trying to say, is that standard TV runs at a framerate of about 25-30 frames per second, but we don't notice that it is so low because the frames are blurred together so everything looks smooth. Whats wrong with doing the same in games? - you said it was a 'half-baked' method.
The player, busy fighting the monsters. The player should be busy fighting the monsters, not counting them...
Sorry if I confused you, it should have been: '...and if it was a first person game, the chances are that the player isn't going to notice that the whole enemy host is not standing before them because they're too busy fighting.'
Packs, waves, whatever! It's the same thing. They don't all have to be prespawned on mass, just appear when you enter the area.
To be honest, I never noticed the missing reflections that you are complaining about. It seems a very insignificant thing to worry about.
There are many other aspects to the games that give the Diablo series it's unique feel. You would have to be very narrow minded if the camera angle was all that made the Diablo series Diablo, to you! Diablo III would retain it's unique atmosphere (it's 'dark, gritty charm', as Alphidius puts it below) , even if the viewpoint did change - if not, then the games creators would have failed miserably.
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Well, it just seems ridiculous to me that I can run Crysis at steady 30fps, while Oblivion - which is now a last gen game - fluctuates wildly and often runs lower than 30fps in certain areas. Sure, Oblivion is beautiful if looked at from the right angles, but it's not consistant beauty. In some areas Oblivion just looks plain ugly - theres hardly any of that in Crysis. Furthermore, even the less detailed areas of Crysis look better than Oblivion does in some of it's better areas. It must be a poor engine to perform at the same framerate as Crysis when its only half as detailed.
Yes, well I still like the look of Far Cry, although when you compare it to some modern engines it looks a little cartoon like - I didn't think medium Crysis looked as bad.
It's not 'half baked'. Thats like saying you're not going to watch TV anymore because the framerates too low and you dont like blur. I think NTSC is about 30fps while PAL is 25. Are they unwatchable? No, it looks fine because everything is burred together. Why games have only just started adopting that tactic is beyond me - in my opinion, it can only improve the experience, especially for people struggling with low framerates.
You can have the enemies enter the field in smaller but relentless waves, the trigger for the next wave being the death of the majority of the first wave - loads of FPS games do that. It's just not necessary to fill the entire area with enemies, and if it was a first person game, the chances are that the player isn't going to notice that the whole enemy host is not standing before him because they're too busy fighting (as it should be ;))
It's simply the difference between a huge, performance crippling wave of enemies every now and then, and more frequent smaller waves.
Aww, come on now... it looks fine. Better than Oblivion, but I didn't hear you complaining about those grahpics. Better than Far Cry too. It's a very good engine considering the detail. I really don't know why you don't like it - sure, the story is nothing compared to Diablo, but the gameplay is sound.
I really don't understand you. One minute your saying you'd rather Diablo II was a 2D game, and the next your complaining about a highly detailed 3D engine because it was missing some reflections. :rolleyes:
Well then it's hardly FPS then, is it?!
No, I really believe Diablio III would benifit from being in first person.
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Yes, it was a good quest - in fact, I can't think of a Diablo quest that I didnt enjoy. The Butcher was the only one I struggled against. In my second game I sort of cheated against him... he has a problem navigating around the stairways that lead down to the next level and I found I could trap him on one side and shoot the hell out of him from the other side (I was the Rogue).
Since then I have resisted the temptation of using such cheap tactics.
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Yeah, if you play through the game without reading the manual first (like I did the first time round), quests like the Lachdanan one have as little meaning as the insignificant side quests (such as Gharbad). However when you read Librarius ex Horadrim, you realise that Lachdanan is a significant character who has played an important partin the story.
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We shouldn't even mention Oblivion - that engine is a bloody mess as far as respectable performance/detail ratios are concerned.
I have to disagree with you on Crysis. Even with all settings on medium, it is still a sight to behold!
Personally, I play Crysis on high and I get around 30fps average. 30fps would usually be unplayable in a game like oblivion, however thanks to motion blur, 30fps can seem like 40fps - perfectly playable. What I am trying to say is that there are strategies now (most importantly motion blur), that can be used to reduce the effects of low framerates.
What I'm trying to say, is that the illusion of endless waves of enemies can still be created without actually weighing down the engine with sheer numbers. Plenty of First Person games have used such tehniques successfully in the past. Doing that might also encourage a bit more variation, rather than just different colours used to distinguish the skill levels within each class of monster (eg. Devil Kin vs Fallen).
Have you ever tried Dark Messiah? The combat is intense and exiting. There is lots of variation. Weapons have more than two different swings. There is kicking, an ubundance of different power strikes and you can use the environment. The magic is rather limited, but what spells you do have access to are effective and look absolutely stunning thanks to Dark Messiahs 3D engine. The enemies do not take ages to kill, but in some maps they just keep coming at you in what seems like huge numbers. All this while - in my experience - the framerate remains perfectly playable, even on an outdated system. (DM uses an enhanced version of the source engine)
I believe that if Diablo III were to follow after any game in terms of combat, then it should be Dark messiah.