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"Graphics are the first thing finished in a video game," so devs on Twitter share what early games really look like
- Thread starter Captain of Outer Space
- Start date
- Tech
Not completely true. The game development process is also secretive because engines and tech are a whole business on their own. Some developers dont talk much about their tech because of it. Though id say marketing plays a bigger part still.
It's not and pretty indefensible position. Nearly every year there's GDC videos on game development, post mortems of how they went about making the games and reflections what they could have done better, showing games in prototype forms to finished products. There's so much information for the general public to figure out that go in fairly detail that goes beyond what the average person even needs to know about game development and it's all free to watch from some of the best in the industry.
Wonder if the school was as good as the commercial...you better hurry up, ive got a new game that needs designed
Wikipedia said:
Interesting that shadow warrior looked more of an rpg like ultima underworld with those inventory slots on the right screen in its first inception. I guess just like quake which was also supposed to be an rpg, it became too complicated and they went to the tried and true fps.
my mom said id never get anywhere playing these games
and she was right
You can literally download Unity and Unreal right now, go over the documentation, and start working with them right now. What would you need for them to not be secretive?
One of the best takes tbh
View: https://twitter.com/vectorpoem/status/1571944766526607360?s=46&t=IFb9wnOwLpH9zfbFzOzDnA
View: https://twitter.com/vectorpoem/status/1571944766526607360?s=46&t=IFb9wnOwLpH9zfbFzOzDnA
I mean, unreal and unity licensing is part of the business. Plus not all engines can be licensed like Rockstars engine for example. The tech is a trade secret for all intents and purposes.
I mean sure I've never seen the inner workings of RAGE, but like, that doesn't make me lie about how games are developed to shit on Rockstar.
What kind of trade secret to you expect to find in an in house engine? Because odds you aren't going to find a magical piece of code that makes a game better. Odds are any "secrets" are either going to be the a classic trade off between performance and flexibility or something they'll give away in a GDC talk.
As someone who has worked on over 10 games, only one of them had great art from the beginning and it's for the reason stated by James Silva. Apart from that, the moment you start seeing the final graphics come in on a game you've been working on for 2 years, and it all comes together, is a high I still chase.
I wish this industry cared more about the people working in it.
I wish this industry cared more about the people working in it.
It's not purely to shit on some guy. It's to support the devs at Rockstar who are weathering a storm of shitty takes like this due to their work being stolen and shown before it was ready.
Well I just want to say thank you to that original poster because I love seeing all these early gameplay look. It's really cool to see how games are made
I am glad to have at least done two big projects in Dreams to understand better what makes a good game so tough to pull off. It's great to see professional devs come out with this footage. The internet reaction to the GTA VI leak or early builds of Dead Space was disappointing.
Indeed, but apparently, we are the vocal minority. It's very strange that "gamers" are not sightly interested in how their medium is made but like to think they know everything about it. At work, every year we have an open day where student comes in and each of us explains what exactly we do and how we do it (I work in AI). You can see in their eyes the passion and for most of them, it's a memorable day.
I really doubt that being overwhelmingly shamed as a total idiot, with receipts flying all over the place, is the kind of attention this guy wants (troll or not). But yeah, I certainly don't feel sorry for him since it's pretty clear he's an asshole.
He privated his twitter feed. I don't think he's enjoying any of this. It doesn't even make sense, because he's the one being dunked on.
I mean by the Twitter man's own admission, he studied a game development major at a computer science department at a university, so he definitely seemed very interested in it or he wouldn't have chosen that major. His fault, that a lot of students share is thinking that if you studied something you've become an expert in the broader domain and are not just one of many who got a limited glimpse from one perspective.
I can definitely see computer science university courses starting from creating a model, learning how to rig and skin it, then adding an environment, and learning how to bake lighting, to finally end with animations and some interactions. So if that's what he got taught in a bunch of eight week courses in a major called game development, it's an understandable mistake to think this is how game development works.
Heck I have a MSc in Game Technology from a computer science department at a top university myself and I didn't really learn about rapid prototyping and iterative design cycles until I started researching and later teaching at a design school. Because that's just not how computer science professors think.
this was a long time ago and they've admittedly gotten better at it since then with agile development processes, though computer engineers still have to be weird about it saying they're a greek letter black belt for understanding a basic design process
(I know this is technically more business school than engineering)
(I know this is technically more business school than engineering)
Absurdly dumb take but imagine if making of materials were just part of the package (special edition or whatever) and discussion of a game post launch instead of just being used to dunk on a Twitter shitheel.
Is that... VisualBasic?I've always remembered this early shot of The Sims 3 lol
fuck this shit is so dumb lol
do people honestly think rockstar is gonna put out a bad looking game? that's like the antithesis of rockstar
do people honestly think rockstar is gonna put out a bad looking game? that's like the antithesis of rockstar
One would hope that. But I learned in recent years that many posts I thought to be sarcastic are just really posts from dumb people (I still hope this whole US-Trump thing is just a very sarcastic comedy show, please americans you can reveal the joke now!).
Yeah, and based on the comments in the tweet it was on a different engine and then switched to the Build Engine.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
The first thing that popped into my head when I saw the original tweet was the modding scene for the original half-life, and how many posts trying to kick off something new started with a finished render of a gun or character model.
"I'm making a {insert-concept-or-IP-here} mod! Check out this gun. Now I just need programmers, animators, mappers...etc"
Context. The person said "I know how game dev work, I do modeling and stuff".
He made then false statements. And the industry is not as secretive as some make it ought to be. We have GDC and the likes, lot#s of insights when you actually want to see it - and not just armchair the whole thing.
I hear this a lot and I hard disagree. Some of you are just absolutely terrible at discerning sarcasm. I've been in so many threads where I've seen an obviously sarcastic post and waiting literal pages for someone to finally call it as it is, meanwhile everyone takes it at face value.
Idk if it's cultural or what but it's almost absurd at times.
This is particularly poignant given that the twitter account of the original offending claim, is nothing BUT bluster that denied ever being uneducated about anything. The user had an opinion on everything, and almost all of them were out of touch with reality.
Hahaha in general the modding scene was great like that. I was dunking on computer science students just now, but I also encountered the opposite quite a bit. People who would come in and say I have a great idea for a game, I can't say what because I obviously don't want it stolen I'm just looking for people who can actually make it. You'll get a ten percent cut if you say yes.
That tweet's stupidity aside it's really cool to see so many devs come together and rally behind Rockstar.
My favorite stuff is seeing how games are made. I really like seeing early footage of released as it's always really interesting to see what was already figured out in some manner and what wasn't. It's also interesting when something cool doesn't make the final cut as it begs the question why? Was that mechanic not fun? Did they not have the time to flesh it out? A bit of both? Was it fun but it broke the game in some way? That stuff is interesting to me. Also, back in the day watching behind the scenes stuff on PS2 God of War 2 was how I learned about Maya which I now use daily for work.
I'm not disagreeing with you about this being a problem here but this is a problem with the internet at large. It's unbelievable just how much people will take at face value.
Ok yeah, it was a dumb and ignorant post from this guy of course, but all these devs responding have to be honest with them themselves and ask why he thinks that. The way most audiences experience games for the first time is when studios do their "worldwide reveal" crap in a near final state of the game. Or crazy CG that isn't of course, real game art. Transparency isn't the industry's strong suit.
Compare it to film making, we see so much behind the scenes work that we know and understand largely how actors work within their environments and green screens because they talk about it all the time in press event or talk shows, etc. The only thing we get from the gaming space is Dev only conferences like GDC which are behind paywalls and many other closed door work in progress events. On the other hand, we see companies like Epic Games, or Unity showing just "how easy" it is to throw in pre made game art or generated environments and to make a game from nothing
This goes back to people calling devs "lazy" or saying how something is just so simple to fix it should be obvious. Most people outside enthusiasts forums have no effing clue how this stuff is really make.
Compare it to film making, we see so much behind the scenes work that we know and understand largely how actors work within their environments and green screens because they talk about it all the time in press event or talk shows, etc. The only thing we get from the gaming space is Dev only conferences like GDC which are behind paywalls and many other closed door work in progress events. On the other hand, we see companies like Epic Games, or Unity showing just "how easy" it is to throw in pre made game art or generated environments and to make a game from nothing
This goes back to people calling devs "lazy" or saying how something is just so simple to fix it should be obvious. Most people outside enthusiasts forums have no effing clue how this stuff is really make.
No, it's because the guy pulled a "trust me bro I'm an expert" and then doubled down when called out on his bullshit.
If he had only made an ignorant but well-intentioned post nobody would've cared.
This isn't a valid argument. Even CGI in movies doesn't start with graphics completed. Let alone the countless behind the scenes documentaries/vidocs released and available everywhere online such as the Halo 2 and 3 Bungie vidocs. I'd argue lazy gaming fans who can't even bother doing a Google or youtube search is the rhetoric that needs to be normalized.
I remember playing a super early build of Project Cars, and they had just added the Monaco track.
Just the track, mind.. like, the tarmac. I think there might have been walls, but that was it. No buildings, no environment of any kind except the skybox. It was literally just a bit of road floating in the sky. Incredibly hard to drive on because there were zero roadside landmarks to reference braking points and stuff.
And yeah, even after all the rest got added, the final flourishes of lighting and post-processing was finally dropped in like a month before the game went gold.
Just the track, mind.. like, the tarmac. I think there might have been walls, but that was it. No buildings, no environment of any kind except the skybox. It was literally just a bit of road floating in the sky. Incredibly hard to drive on because there were zero roadside landmarks to reference braking points and stuff.
And yeah, even after all the rest got added, the final flourishes of lighting and post-processing was finally dropped in like a month before the game went gold.