Lol, am I the only one that think it's poor sportsmanship to put a fellow on ignore and then continue to make snide remarks about him? Poor sportsmanship and childish. But ah well, let's respond as if he was actually listening.
Your original point, and the point I was arguing, was not whether the mainstream industry
has to make graphics of the AC level. Of course they don't. And it would be faster to make a quake 1 model these days than it was then.
But that doesn't change the simple fact that a "standard" model in a game these days, of the standard that your
average gamer
expects, takes longer than an "average" model of the Quake 1 days. This is simple fact, one you've tried to argue out of conceding.
You've also made a lot of statements like the following :
there are certain inescapable truths regarding 3D modeling, and one of them is that every single model is built from meshes - and those meshes have a number of polygons. No matter how complex, realistic, or beautiful that Altair guy is - when it all comes down to it - the wireframe is a bunch of meshes - or a single complex mesh made up of less complex meshes. When you model from the ground-up, it's very common to start with primitive cubes, spheres and so on. It makes no difference to me if someone has to blow his own horn trying to pretend that the basics aren't the basics.
Which is so meaningless to the point at hand as to be hilarious. Let me translate to non-technical speak for the audience so they can see the humor :
NN : More complex/larger houses take longer to build than smaller/simpler houses.
DA : But you have to remember this inescapable fact. Houses are made from bricks, and no matter how complex or large the house is the basic process of laying bricks down is identical, one on top of the other, with cement in-between to hold them together.
NN : .....
Do you see why I am amused? I've never claimed the basics aren't the basics. I'm saying the end product you're building has become vastly more complex/larger and so, despite it still being made of "bricks cemented together", that doesn't change the fact that "more bricks laid" results in increased cost in time and effort compared to a decade ago. The tools available have not eased the burden
enough to compensate for the much, much higher quality expected. Your statement proves absolutely nothing at all, one way or the other.
Now, your original comment that I disputed was how the 450 people hired for AC weren't to support content creation, they were mostly for marketing and hype. They aren't and nothing you've said comes close to proving things to the contrary. No matter how many snide remarks you make about "Mr Guru Ninja".
(That's "Nr Guru Ninja SIR" to you, btw.
)
Now, as to the point you are
now claiming is what you were really arguing all along, why the mainstream doesn't move to older graphics and focus on gameplay, I believe you've been kind enough to answer your own question :
I'm entirely conscious of the tiny market I'm targeting, as in a very exclusive audience
Exactly. The older your graphics, the more of the market you cut out. People have different tolerance levels for old graphics, the group who tolerates Dwarf Fortress is smaller than the group who tolerates Spiderweb games, which is smaller than the group which tolerates Crysis. In fact, I doubt there is a single gamer who would turn down Crysis level graphics unless they didn't possess the hardware to run it. (Art style also comes into it, of course, but let's just focus on technical detail for now).
The problem with the mainstream is that, if every single game developer decided to sit and keep graphics at the level they are now that would only work in the short term. Eventually someone would break that agreement and try to distinguish themselves from their (fierce) competition by upgrading their graphics, to draw the mass market attention to themselves. Distinguishing yourself graphically is a lot less subtle than via different gameplay and I'd argue a lot easier to do, even if it requires more time and money. And gamers would flock to that title simply because it looks so much better than anything else, evidence shows this is a fact. Other developers, seeing this, would they try to follow suite. And the whole graphics arms race starts again and the bar just keeps getting raised.
Which is essentially how it ended up like this in the first place. And how companies like ID and Epic operate, by establishing their cutting edge tech as "the" thing to beat. And creating environments where the competition has to up it's ante to stay in the game.
Do they absolutely
have to chase that curve? Maybe not. Would they be as profitable as they are chasing the graphics? I doubt it, sadly. I personally am following a different path for my indie dev but it only works because I accept that I will never see the kind of returns they do, and I'm happy with that. You say essentially the same thing for your stepwise engine.
The AAA developers are businesses first and foremost and they are trying to maximize profit for their shareholders. They make business decisions based around maximizimg profit, not necessarily creative satisfaction. A reason why I never tried to join the mainstream industry, despite having the qualifications to try and some of my peers going that way. If you're a passionate chef, you don't seek employment at McDonalds. But I don't resent McDonalds for choosing a profitable business model, or claim they are stupid for doing so. They simply understand the desires of the mass market.
I don't know anything about him personally, I only know what he's argued here. If he's doing something indie on the side, then one would think he'd have more sympathy for the art vs the business.
Being an indie or mainstream dev has no bearing on the technical accuracy of my argument. If I was the chief Art Honcho of EA itself, would you disregard my statements? If so then you're letting your emotions cloud your judgement. Mainstream developers are not fools and they aren't the enemy.
my basic point which is one of logic, not knowledge.
Oh man. Just...oh man. No. Technical discussions require technical knowledge to base them on. You don't get to just talk yourself into a position of authority.
But all that aside, nice card game though DA, I hope to see more of it, I love card games. And I built one of those step-by-step engines you're talking of in 'varsity, we called them "2.5 D" engines, they're actually quite fun to make. It was called "Dungeon of the Dancing Demons" because of the how my amateur animations appeared more like the monsters were dancing the jig than waving their claws menacingly.
@ KasperFauerby : Hey, nice screenshots, and nice to meet another dev.
I've never given up on the dream of creating my own indie RPG, but honestly it seems almost impossible if we want to meet just the bare minimum of what people expect regarding graphics quality.
Don't give up! It's do-able, just damn difficult. Vogel does it, Basilisk Games did it, The ITS team is doing it, Coyote is doing it, I'm doing it....it's a small movement so far, but I think it's the beginning of a groundswell. More developers are always welcome.
My main piece of advice that I can offer is to
just start doing it, use as much middleware as you can, tailor it around what art and tools you can scrounge up or create and make sure to talk about it publicly and often, it attracts people who can help you develop it as well as interest and moral support.
