In a video game, what is real?
This is, strangely, a question that infects many discussions about making games, much more so that those about playing games.
Well, some things can be modeled somewhat realistically; ray tracing, shadow casting, physics, real time reflections, on the fly destructible or deformable terrain, goal orientated action planning AI... These are all "realistic" approaches" to making games, or you might say simulation based approaches. Other times people use tricks; pre-baked lighting, animated pseudo-physics, on-rails movement, scripted AI, matcap reflections... These are all cheats, to save development time and processing power. They don't simulate real word physics or behavior but simply try to mimic the results.
Players of games are rarely concerned with with such things. Everyone who plays a game knows deep down that it is not real, and they don't expect it to behave realistically. Sometimes they get annoyed with games which show bad faith, enemies which respawn inside a locked room. Guns with infinite bullets. Cars which don't dent or scratch when you crash them at 200MPH. Who wouldn't get annoyed? We've got used to better.
But in other cases things such as shadow casting lights... If you've played Diablo 3, a AAA modern game, you might not have noticed that there's only one shadow casting light in the scene, and that shines from above the player. None of the other lights cast shadows. How does no one notice that? Someone asked me today; "Why don't you make your lighting system better, more like Diablo 3?"
Actually right now my lighting system is much more sophisticated than Diablo 3. I have multiple shadowcasting lights in the scene, casting "soft" shadows, unlike the hard edges shadows of Diablo. But I wonder if I'm wasting my efforts there.
Look at the picture above.
It seems like there is a sword on the floor, glowing with light. Actually, the sword isn't glowing. It's just a simple plane with a texture that has additive type transparency. A trick that predates real time shadows, you can see it used frequently in games from the last century! If you move close you'll see that it doesn't illuminate the player, it doesn't cast shadows...
Diablo 3 is packed with tricks like that. simple 2d shaders, particle effects etc... But the basic lighting is very simple indeed. When people praise the lighting, they are really praising the fake effects, not the lighting setup itself.
So maybe I should just focus on adding more cheesy visual effects and shaders instead of trying to simulate real torchlight. In the end, who's going to notice it but me? If the game has a single unidirectional shadow lamp, no one is going to notice, and the result will be much faster on low end computers.
This is, strangely, a question that infects many discussions about making games, much more so that those about playing games.
Well, some things can be modeled somewhat realistically; ray tracing, shadow casting, physics, real time reflections, on the fly destructible or deformable terrain, goal orientated action planning AI... These are all "realistic" approaches" to making games, or you might say simulation based approaches. Other times people use tricks; pre-baked lighting, animated pseudo-physics, on-rails movement, scripted AI, matcap reflections... These are all cheats, to save development time and processing power. They don't simulate real word physics or behavior but simply try to mimic the results.
Players of games are rarely concerned with with such things. Everyone who plays a game knows deep down that it is not real, and they don't expect it to behave realistically. Sometimes they get annoyed with games which show bad faith, enemies which respawn inside a locked room. Guns with infinite bullets. Cars which don't dent or scratch when you crash them at 200MPH. Who wouldn't get annoyed? We've got used to better.
But in other cases things such as shadow casting lights... If you've played Diablo 3, a AAA modern game, you might not have noticed that there's only one shadow casting light in the scene, and that shines from above the player. None of the other lights cast shadows. How does no one notice that? Someone asked me today; "Why don't you make your lighting system better, more like Diablo 3?"
Actually right now my lighting system is much more sophisticated than Diablo 3. I have multiple shadowcasting lights in the scene, casting "soft" shadows, unlike the hard edges shadows of Diablo. But I wonder if I'm wasting my efforts there.
It seems like there is a sword on the floor, glowing with light. Actually, the sword isn't glowing. It's just a simple plane with a texture that has additive type transparency. A trick that predates real time shadows, you can see it used frequently in games from the last century! If you move close you'll see that it doesn't illuminate the player, it doesn't cast shadows...
Diablo 3 is packed with tricks like that. simple 2d shaders, particle effects etc... But the basic lighting is very simple indeed. When people praise the lighting, they are really praising the fake effects, not the lighting setup itself.
So maybe I should just focus on adding more cheesy visual effects and shaders instead of trying to simulate real torchlight. In the end, who's going to notice it but me? If the game has a single unidirectional shadow lamp, no one is going to notice, and the result will be much faster on low end computers.
Very simple comment from my distant past:
ReplyDelete"It is irrelevant how you do it, just as long as it looks right to you"
So take whatever shortcuts, do whatever you need, and cut every corner to get it right :)