Notgames Forum

http://kotaku.com/video-game-graphics/

Looks great! Too bad it will be used mostly for brainless shooters. :P

I guess the terrain deformations in the first video were pretty good... On the whole it doesn't really seem to be a huge step up unless I'm missing something (presumably I am).

I don't think you are. Especially if we take games like Fraction into consideration, where terrain deformation occurs in a much more complex environment - although losing some of the detail boasted here, for obvious reasons.

The lighting is the important bit. Yes, that is very different.

Yeah, I was impressed by this.  The indirect lighting is huge.  The subsurface scattering is wonderful.  These are things that previously required a high end renderer like Mental Ray.  Emissive materials that actually cast light into the scene.  Volumetric particle effects.  There's a lot to get excited about here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOvfn1p92_8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOvfn1p92_8) This is the video I saw earlier - it explains everything out pretty clearly.

Too bad it still takes 5 seconds before you see changes you've made to the code in the editor .. should be instant.

1. The lighting is indeed very well done. And typically one of those features that players may not notice because it looks so natural. But for a developer, it's a big bonus.

2. Their editor is starting to look very interesting. Will it be available to the public? Will it be expensive? is it PC only? Can it compile for other platforms?

UDK is currently free and you can currently compile for Mac as well as Windows. That will probably continue to be the case. :)

Oh, right, I noticed that too.  Looks like they've implemented some sort of visual editor for code.

Kismet (http://www.unrealengine.com/features/kismet/) has been available for a good number of years already ( since 2005 ) ;)

ah, I see.  The last time I used Unreal was Unreal 2, so I'm a bit behind

I believe this is why I never got into game development myself. I look at all this software and I see a great barrier between my ideas and being able to make something out of it all by myself. It doesn't seem natural, somehow, like making a drawing, writing, photographing something or playing an instrument. And I'm well aware that we've come a long way in this regard. And yet I fear that my mind may eventually become formatted by these interfaces and their never ending menus, functions and floating windows. The same thing happened to me when I dabbled in web design years ago.

Which is why I respect you all so very much.

There's nothing natural about drawing well! Modernism has given us the illusion that art is something spontaneous, like the work of a child or some "primitive" from the colonies. I like that videogames are bringing back the idea of craft and dedication to art.

That being said, the current tools for creating in this medium are not very suitable for artistic invention. But there is progress. I think the slowness of this progress is caused in part by the fact that engineers need to build the tools that artists can use. And the communication between the two groups is very difficult.

My evaluation was subjective, based on my own education and how I developed my skill - or lack of - and intuition throughout the years. Although I've been using computer interfaces for almost as long as I've been taught how to hold a pencil, I feel more comfortable drawing than I do programming. I do very little of both, for some reason.

Much could be said about what it means to draw well: it's a very tricky issue, that one!

I've long been interested in hearing what game designers think about the crafts. There appear to be many vital similarities between the work of a game developer and that of an artisan, even if this is very seldom mentioned or debated. It's refreshing to hear someone like you harmonizing both concepts in a single sentence.