So last time I described how OpenGL used to work in the pre-graphics card stone age. Those were simpler, clearer days. Yes, they were also slow as hell and unable to do much in the way of fancy graphics. But, you know, simple.
But the simplicity couldn’t last. The evolution of OpenGL is basically a long series of refinements where more and more work was gradually moved to the graphics card. Let’s go over them.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Strange Evolution of OpenGL Part 3”
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At five minutes, the protagonist aims his camera at a car and the computer is able to instantly identify the rear passenger by taking a picture of the back of his head at night inside a darkened car through the closed window. That is so silly it actually makes me laugh. It’s the perfect set-up for any number of jokes about technology, privacy, or police funding. But the game plays it totally straight without even a whiff of self-awareness. Working on this videogame would drive me bonkers.
I also have to wonder how many sets of handcuffs the average officer carries around. Is it infinity?
And then agent sidekick plugs her USB device into a laptop to “get a traceroute on an outgoing IP” for a videoconference that has already ended. On one hand, that’s more bonkers than the magic camera that can identify people you can’t see. On the other hand, I take it that’s pretty much par for the course for CSI depictions of the internet.
Josh was sick this week so we couldn’t continue our Absolution playthrough. Instead…
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The common defense is that criticizing the story parts of a COD or Battlefield game is like critiquing the story parts of a porno: You’re missing the point. But if a porno spent over half its budget and a third of its running time on story parts, and if they hired AAA actors to be in it? Yeah, I think that’s worth a critical look. If the story doesn’t matter, why spend so much money on it? And if you spend THAT MUCH money on it, why can’t you make it good? And if you can’t make it good, why spend so much of the audience’s time on it?
I like the criminal chatter behind the door before you bust into the room. But then you kick open the door and everyone is clearly sitting down and making no effort to do the things they shouted. I like that you can arrest people instead of murdering them. But then one person pops out of the bathroom and you somehow end up murdering everyone anyway, including the people who were cuffed on the floor? And the table disintegrates? Then we need to gather evidence, but instead we trample on all the bodies and evidence before having the magic teleporting car chase.
It’s like there was one game designer who wanted to make this game grounded and interesting, and another developer who was a hyperactive 12 year old, and they took turns designing the game.
Sure is pretty, though.
My column this week is a list of games that were harmed by their cinematic aspirations. It very nearly turned into a rant against Square Enix. Once I realized they made the list three times, I started thinking maybe the problem is less with the industry and more with a couple of wannabe filmmakers at Square.
I’ve said before that I’m pretty sure Square has a top-of-the-line mocap studio in Redwood City, California. That’s the home of Crystal Dynamics, the developers behind the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot. Without any evidence, I’m suspecting that a big part of the problem is that Square is now a hammer in search of a nail. They have this expensive facility, and so they want to use it as much as possible, whether it makes sense or not. This explains Thi4f and Absolution having such an unwelcome and inappropriate focus on story. Although it doesn’t explain Human Revolution, which doesn’t seem to use full-performance capture like the others. I assume the Crystal Dynamics mocap facility wasn’t available during the development of Human Revolution.)
Then again, this is Square Enix we’re talking about. They rose to power making Final Fantasy, and it’s entirely possible that they’re simply following typical executive monomania: Take something that worked in one context and DO IT EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME AT EVERY POSSIBLE OPPORTUNITY. Like EA assuming that since DLC worked so well in X, then it will work equally well in ALL GAMES. Same goes for yearly releases. And multiplayer level-grind deathmatch.
Still, if we could spend some of this money on more gameplay and less horrible movies, I’d be happyOr at least, complaining about something else. Which is kind of like being happy..
Enjoy this super-rare Josh-free Diecast. Get well soon, Josh.
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Hosts: Shamus, Chris, Rutskarn.
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #98: Bloodborne, Olli Olli 2, Axiom Verge, Fanservice”
In case you missed the first entry: We’re here to talk about how OpenGL has changed and why that’s importantTo me, anyway.. The odd colorful screenshots are from one of my many half-baked OpenGL-based engine prototypes, presented here simply to break up the monotony of the words.
Before we can talk about where OpenGL went, we have to talk about where it started. So let’s talk about how rendering works on a fundamental level.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Strange Evolution of OpenGL Part 2”
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So then the animation glitches out and shoves the guard into 47. Then the AI glitches and goes stupidly hostile. Then the collision glitches out and won’t let the player escape the elevator. Then the game logic glitches and lets the player leave when foes are hostile.
Then the nuns. My goodness are those nuns infantile and infuriating. I know I keep saying this, but I’m not against games having same T&A in them. But this? This “fanservice as written by an adolescent” approach to putting tits in the game in unendurable. This is completely ridiculous, yet done without any humor, lampshading, self-awareness, or sense of fun.
Once you get to the lab, the level designers decide to take away your disguise and the keycards you’ve acquired. Then it shoves us into a simple linear “open this one door” situation. From there you enter an open area with a grand total of two disguises, so no matter what you do you need to be sneaking around like Splinter Cell instead of walking around like Hitman. Then it gives you an assassination target of someone you’ve never heard of, know nothing about, and have no reason to killI’m sure the briefing gives you a half-assed excuse, but it’s not like the story has set this up. It spent the last cutscene on the nuns., and in fact going after him should logically make it harder to achieve your real goal of rescuing the girl.
The environment design reminds me a great deal of Arkham Origins: The level designers just make “videogame levels” with no thought as to how these areas are used, how people would get around, or how they should connect to each other. It’s just random corridors.
This game is to Blood Money as Thi4f is to Thief. I know it’s supposedly the same studio, but it feels like a project given to a new team that had no interest or respect for the original work. This game is baffling.
But then Josh pushed the guy off a ledge so all is forgiven.
Why killing you might be the least scary thing a game can do.
Let's ruin everyone's fun by listing all the ways in which zombies can't work, couldn't happen, and don't make sense.
A game about the ghost of an underwater football player who travels through time to save the world from a tick that controls kaiju satan. Really.
This is why shopping for graphics cards is so stupid and miserable.
Here is how I'd conquer the game-publishing business. (Hint: NOT by copying EA, 2K, Activision, Take-Two, or Ubisoft.)
Let's do some scripting to make the Starcraft AI fight itself, and see how smart it is. Or isn't.
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2014.
Remember the superhero MMO from 2009? Neither does anyone else. It was dumb. So dumb I was compelled to write this.
Scenes from Half-Life 2:Episode 2, showing Gordon Freeman being a jerk.
No, game prices don't "need" to go up. That's not how supply and demand works. Instead, the publishers need to be smarter about where they spend their money.
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