3 replies to this topic

[SmokingRope]

Hello, i've been pondering the mindset behind a games choice of high-resolution graphics effects. Usually you can choose between low and high resolutions, adding things like extra particles and dynamic lighting to the game. When these high resolution options are enabled however, they can easily make the game more difficult to play.

The first issue that might come to mind is the penalty suffered to performance, but this isn't what i'm referring to. Think instead in terms of the affect of each graphical effect to the players perception of the key game elements.

If you are in a driving game, and in a low resolution mode get no smoke from the tires, but high resolution causes your screen to become filled with billowing clouds and thus hindering your ability to see, players are actually discouraged from taking advantage of the high-end graphics capabilities that they have clearly put forth great effort to see.

But what is there to do, what graphical effects can reward players for buying that high-end video card. I think that it would be interesting to hear some ideas, and possibly some examples of existing effects that do, or maybe do not work.

[starstutter]

I think you should look up the meaning of "resolution". What you mean is general graphics settings. I was really confused that entire paragraph, especially when you said that high res makes things more difficult to play... which is the exact opposite case.

Anyway, as far as graphic effects go, yes, I know what you mean. In MOH airborne, I had to turn off the depth-of-field effects because
(1) they didn't look good
(2) they made it damn near impossible to snipe
(3) because of 2, it gave you a severe disadvantage in multiplayer.

The issue above though is really more of a poor design and possibly overlooked choice. The billowing dust cloud issue is also a bad design choice. Any developer in their right mind would keep the dust close to the ground and make them fade out quickly. If this isn't the case however, then you have a good point.

Remember though that games not only focus on gameplay, but the experience as a whole. I game with sharp pockets of lighting like doom is a good example. Rendering all the low-coverage dynamic lights is certainly fps intensive, and they also make enemies harder to see. If you replaced that with an ambient term, great, but now it looks terrible and it's not scary anymore. Yeah the advanced lighting makes the game harder, but that's the point. It makes it scarrier and more edgy.

One big advantage people with higher cards do have is actual resolution, as in screen size. If you can run a game at 1280x1024, you're going to have a MUCH larger advantage than someone who has to run at 800x600, simply because the screen will be so much clearer and you can see farther without issues.

[SmokingRope]

I didn't create the thread to criticize or otherwise demean the use of high-detail graphical effects. Saying that there must be a tradeoff between immersion (aka doom) and good gameplay would be difficult to defend, however in many existing games it is actually a tradeoff.

I want to brainstorm and/or discuss effects which can minimize that tradeoff.

A flashlight in high detail mode offers a greater cone of light when compared to a sprite based implementation used in low-detail mode (not to mention it is easier to comprehend visually). The smoke grenade in counter-strike could perhaps appear fluffier and less dense in high-detail mode when compared to it's low-detail sprite equivalent.

[SmokingRope]

One nice way to scale effects is to increase the texture details as the graphics settings improve. A low res 64x64 animated texture can be scaled to 512x512 in high detail modes to make the game look better without greatly affecting the gameplay experience. This can mean finer lines, more visible distortions in the texture, richer coloring, smoother transitions... For transparent textures, increasing texture detail could potentially hurt the players ability to see / interact with the environment but perhaps you could say that given identical alpha channels, the texture could be given arbitrarily more details?