Just for your information, jakg and others:
A PC has to do different things than a PS3. When designing a console (or a CPU for a console) you know pretty well what it's going to do. Mostly draw polygons, texture things, process shaders, load textures, numerically integrate differential equotations (physics), etc.
However, a PC does all kind of other stuff like decode xvid-streams, encrypt data, compile sourcecode, render images and basically everything that's mathematically calculatable. And it should do all this stuff at a good pace. A console only needs to do a limited band of activities quickly, the other things can take ages and no one will notice.
That's why a console will always have an edge in these activities, while it'd basically suck at other duties.
(Unless it's a Xbox, which is merely a normal PC in a fancy case.)

Vain

Becky, it was the fluid simulation that looked so real and so nice.
Then someone said how long would it take to see things like that in games.
And then i said it would be next gen. playstation which would do it realtime.
And we were talking about how powerful was a ps3 when it comes to floating point calculations.

It is not an argument about ps3 or pc or best game or things like that.

Quote from Vain :

...

Even so, i dont see quite how the all power-ful cell chip can be that good, or else it would be doing SOMETHING in a PC (ie Graphics), but it isn't, and to state that a console costing the price of just the graphics card has infintely more power makes no sense!

You mean "test drive 1" is better than "lfs"?
Or "match day" is better than "pes6"?
There will always be good creative ideas.

c'mon
You can't kill creativity but only help it with developing technology. Technology gives you more freedom to be creative.

Quote from Jakg :

Even so, i dont see quite how the all power-ful cell chip can be that good, or else it would be doing SOMETHING in a PC (ie Graphics), but it isn't, and to state that a console costing the price of just the graphics card has infintely more power makes no sense!

Graphics card? Ps3 would be around 600-700 usd i heard.

Quote from ZORER :

Graphics card? Ps3 would be around 600-700 usd i heard.

so will the 8800GTX!

Quote from ZORER :

You mean "test drive 1" is better than "lfs"?
Or "match day" is better than "pes6"?
There will always be good creative ideas.

c'mon
You can't kill creativity but only help it with developing technology. Technology gives you more freedom to be creative.

Time = Money
Profit per product is important thing, as profit per product x sales = income
Now if game takes 10 guys and 1 year to produce and you sell it for 50€ you get certain amount of money, there is certain amount of time to do creative new things.
If games require more work it means more time or more ppl is needed, but that costs more, game price can't be rised very high, so what to do, well more efficent working means skipping new ideas testing etc, concentrate to things that sell.

Roughly it goes like that in business.

Quote from Vain :

Just for your information, jakg and others:
A PC has to do different things than a PS3. When designing a console (or a CPU for a console) you know pretty well what it's going to do. Mostly draw polygons, texture things, process shaders, load textures, numerically integrate differential equotations (physics), etc.
However, a PC does all kind of other stuff like decode xvid-streams, encrypt data, compile sourcecode, render images and basically everything that's mathematically calculatable. And it should do all this stuff at a good pace. A console only needs to do a limited band of activities quickly, the other things can take ages and no one will notice.
That's why a console will always have an edge in these activities, while it'd basically suck at other duties.
(Unless it's a Xbox, which is merely a normal PC in a fancy case.)

Vain

even in the case of the xbox, match it up against a similarlly specced PC, and the xbox will play the same game better than the PC. why? the OS (yes, all consoles have an OS, to counter a post on the first page). The console OS is very much slimmed down and optimized for the sole task of operating the hardware (which is pretty much standardized) and running games. Regular PC OSes have to be designed to run on many different types of hardware and must perform many other types of functions.

that's also why you needed a 166mhz computer to emulate a PS1 game. The PS1 ran at 33.8mhz, and if you wanted the game to play as well as it did on the PS1 you needed a 300-400mhz computer...just to make up for the speciliazation of everything related to the PS1 console.

Would be great if someday there would be proper standards so operating system would need to made so complicated on driver side, same driver would work for all gfx cards etc. Current stupidity is just waste of resources.

As we saw how nice water effect ps3 can make in realtime, how about powerful pc? Has anyone seen similar or close done by pc? I'm interest to know how close it is currently possible to get to that we saw in move water effect video.

Quote :

You mean "test drive 1" is better than "lfs"?
Or "match day" is better than "pes6"?

The post was about innovation, all four games mentioned where 'sure bets', low risk products that followed a formula, although one could possibly argue Match Day didn't follow on from a game that was before it - but what was unique about pes6? I'm not really a soccer fan, but my work colleagues basically joke about the two current football games that the only difference is "the controls".

Where software industry in the 80's won out over current games is people could produce original titles, like 'Battle of Britain', 'Baloon', 'Jetpac', 'Hyperbowl'. Some of these are better known than others, and I mention Baloon for a specific reason.

It was a very simple game released in 82-83 or something like that, for the Spectrum, you controlled a balloon and the screen was filled with spikes (actually + symbols). What possessed somebody to write and release that?

Simple, graphics and plot concept where not an issue, it was about gameplay, the challenge was to get the balloon to the top of the screen without bursting it.

These days flash games are the domain of such simplicity, but the point is, it was a totally off the wall game concept at the time (and probably would be again if it was remade!).

There where very few sequels in the 8 bit era, a few granted, only toward the end and into the 16 bits did we even start to see the first formulaic rehashes of games start to appear, but still we'd get treated to something totally radical like Glider Rider. WTF was that about? It doesn't matter, you either loved it, hated it, or never heard of it, but the point is the concept was totally off the wall, and finding such original games in that time was easier, you just popped into any computer game shop or newsagent and the place was littered with them.

These days there are less radical ideas, as we strive for realism and better graphics a radical game now is one that lets you drive a vehicle in a first person shooter, or has more gory blood effects, or has the prettiest water, what we see less often is an fps game that doesn't have a gun.

ok i see.

i agree but it is the same in some other things as well...like music or plastic arts.

plastic arts?

Edit: Saved by Wikipedia.

One new idea of game was Narbacular Drop, then aquired by some FPS company and named to portal, well they took idea from original game.

Spore is then new utilization of many of old things and ideas, again this kind of title could not been made by normal company like EA for example.

There is few of these, but nothing wild and new is being made by companies anymore as it costs too much, making realistic graphics and massive effects etc. takes so big part from budget.


So I really agree with Becky with this view of future.

I don't agree. I think it's always been like this. There's always been innovation and there's always been a constant stream of rip-offs born of the fruit of great original ideas. In the 8 bit era, think of all the snake clones, the mario clones, pac man clones, space invaders clones, frogger clones... sure there may have been some differences in those games, but you could usually say- that's coming from that, very easily. My god, look at all those old text adventures. 100's of them, maybe 1000's. All following the same basic design formula.

The problem is we're all a little more sophisticated, a little more critical, a little more cynical than we used to be. A game used to be just a game, now it's an rpg, or a rts, a doom clone... The industry just goes through it's fashions like it's always done. Remember when every second game you picked up was a Sierra adventure? FPS, is just the flavour of the week. Next week it'll be something else. And there will always be an alternative.

PS, I've always lived by the rule that the best stuff is the stuff that you have to go looking for yourself. It's out there- you just gotta dig it up...

Quote from Electrik Kar :

I don't agree. I think it's always been like this. There's always been innovation and there's always been a constant stream of rip-offs born of the fruit of great original ideas. In the 8 bit era, think of all the snake clones, the mario clones, pac man clones, space invaders clones, frogger clones... sure there may have been some differences in those games, but you could usually say- that's coming from that, very easily. My god, look at all those old text adventures. 100's of them, maybe 1000's. All following the same basic design formula.

The problem is we're all a little more sophisticated, a little more critical, a little more cynical than we used to be. A game used to be just a game, now it's an rpg, or a rts, a doom clone... The industry just goes through it's fashions like it's always done. Remember when every second game you picked up was a Sierra adventure? FPS, is just the flavour of the week. Next week it'll be something else. And there will always be an alternative.

PS, I've always lived by the rule that the best stuff is the stuff that you have to go looking for yourself. It's out there- you just gotta dig it up...

+1
I think people tend to have a falsely rosey view of the past.
Although I think that the industry has changed dramaticaly over the past 10 years in good and bad ways, it's naive to think that overall, we don't have things better now than we did then.
You still have to wade through a heap of crap to find good games, just as you did in the 80s.
I remember thousands of C64 titlea being available, but only a small percentage were good or innovative. And, don't forget the years of crap platformers in the 16 bit era. They may not have been sequels, but they were generic and anything but innovative.

In terms of small dev teams; I agree that it's harder because of the money flowing though the industry nowdays. But!
As I said earlier, I think the combination of the consumer version of XNA Studio and Xbox Live will see a plethora of indie games come out this generation.
Some commentators are throwing around labels like "The YouTube of video games". An egaggeration no doubt, but I'm looking forward to see what happens anyway.

I accept that argument of the rose-tinted specs, with other things i'm often the one marking it. The problem I have with it is that nowadays I barely see any innovation at all in the shops to the point that over the last 2-3 years I have stopped buying games in shops altogether, perhaps i'm now guilty of not looking hard enough to find it.

Perhaps also i'm guilty of aged cycnicism because I have 'seen it all before' but that i'm just an old git and really I should move aside for the youngsters?

Perhaps it is more a case that innovation is there but it just doesnt get published anymore, instead the innovators are going for online sales. In which case the big publishers are looking in very poor shape indeed.

I dont think people have stopped innovated, and I do accept you can still find it. I just dont think it is as widespread and for a very good reason. As an indipendant developer myself I can release a game for free and get it in front of millions, but if I release a paid for game via the same websites I will have to pay tooth and nail to be listed and the big ones dont want the paid for games at all.

If I try to get on a magazine coverdisk I have to take out an advert, if I try to get a publishers I have had innovation turned away, they want bland. I even submitted a game to a publisher once who's entire product range was, in my opinion, graphically starved. I sent in a pretty game that was still in development and they couldnt see the finished product and where not interested! lol, they had no creative vision at all (and sadly i'd burnt my bridges by sending it in).

I think it is bit same as with TV-series, think about LOST for example, really pretty and well done, but quite boring, imo.
They take now one day and take small things from one day and that is what is action in todays series, when before there was many times several days in one episode, several locations etc, things were moving on much faster, now it is all about detail.

Now as I'm at edge of youngster and oldie by age, I start already to miss this old style and I do fail to see any innovation in LOST, even I hear some saying that there is lot of innovation.

So I believe it is our vision that is blurred indeed, are we dropped from wagon then already?

I find innovation from games that are not sold in shops, usually shareware or even freeware titles, so I can't help to think that in traditional gaming business (big companies, games at shop shelf) games wont return enough investment so they have started to play safe, they move with trends, put together pretty package with ok engine and collect money from teenagers that have always lacked bit of vision what is good and what is money hole (sorry teenagers, I have been one too ).

But still, it is great how more realistic water effects are coming closer to our little escape from reality by virtual worlds in games, hopefully methods are invented that it wont take much extra time to produce these effects, so that there would be more time for actual game with eye candy.

Quote :

hopefully methods are invented that it wont take much extra time to produce these effects, so that there would be more time for actual game with eye candy.

All of the key graphical developments in the last few years have had the opposite effect, shaders being a key example - but next we have DX10, as if making shaders wasn't bad enough, now we need two graphics engines. One to get the best out of the game, and one for the mass market and those who do not sign up for Microsofts vision of 1984.

From where iam seeing it, some developers are trying to do innovations but to do innovations they need new technologies to make their games more real. If the hardware companies would say "ah, enough of cpu/vga/ram/etc. research, lets do some household equipment" than the whole game market would die in 2-5 years , imho . People are buying high end PCs and they want to feed them with adequate games . I for myself welcome the new DirectX as it brings new technology , better graphics and other things so the games could get one more step forward being as real as they can be ! ( imagine LFS S3 in dx10 , stunning graphics & pchysics / yeah, you can say "keep dreemin' boy ... " but you CAN'T stop the advance of the technology because that is how it should be !/ ) .

DX10 is a step backwards too far in terms of it only being available on a DRM based OS though, it is not progress, it is 1984*. The issues of our digital equivellent of civil liberties being quashed is being brushed aside and glossed over with fancy graphics. And it will be sucessful, because too many people want fancy graphics and dont care about the rest.

*Reference to a very famous work of fiction about living in an opressive regime.

About the XNA and 360 console mentioned before, as I understand it XNA is an indi-toolkit for the 360. Whilst I applaud this, I find it very difficult to support a platform that unleashes a firmware update that crashes 360's that have had replacement drives. The purpose of course being to catch those who replaced their drives to play games that they should not be able too, but the side effect being those who had their 360's repaired also then became locked out of their xbox. This is a form of DRM.

Modern games have good graphics,but gameplay is shit.

Old games (DOS games) have worse graphics, but the gameplay is the best there is.

I dont give a single damn about graphics. All I care about is the gameplay! And that is why almost all modern games SUCK

Quote from farcar :

Can't wait till this sort of thing is possible in games. 10 years maybe?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pmm9UKqc5I&eurl=

I saw that movie before, verry nice It's renderd and i think its going to be used for movies. Maybe in 10-20 years this wil be posible on a "normal pc" for that time

Quote from Becky Rose :

... The issues of our digital equivellent of civil liberties being quashed is being brushed aside and glossed over with fancy graphics. And it will be sucessful, because too many people want fancy graphics and dont care about the rest...

Not everybody is stupid. For me graphics are on the second place , the actual feel and atmosphere of the game is on the first place . If somebody releases a game with ass kicking graphics but poor gameplay than it won't be a bestseller . Look at GTA San Andreas for example. Graphics are not very good compared to other titles released at the same time, but the gameplay rocks and that is why it is a top selling game. Other example - Call of Juarez , new game, great graphics but the story and gameplay are not the best, so the game got 6.x points out of 10 in most game magazines .
Innovative games are out there , you just need to search for them ( valve's Portal looks promising for example ) . Also "for a newborn every joke (game)is a new one"
btw, dos games rock , Quest for Glory anthology FTW ! :d

Quote :

games wont return enough investment so they have started to play safe, they move with trends,

In many cases you could use that argument against a lot of the indie developers as well. Just like the larger companies, some of them are very conservative and unwilling or unable to take any kind of risk- preferring instead to churn out the 50 millionth 'match the 3 colours' title, because they believe it will sell.