How would you use better hardware on games? POLL

[mizzou]

Couple options listed above....

I think I would like a game with more detail AND ai. Like hitman #1 graphics...except every building is enter-able and filled with unique life. The streets filled with cars. The businesses filled with workers, the sidewalks customers.

Day and night, life in its minute details are simulated on a large scale.

I like to think GTAIV and V come close, but obviously the pedestrians and buildings are merely stage items placed in front of you to appreciate, but not look too deeply into as they are underneath very fake.

Or....perhaps you want a photorealistic world, a'la Gran Turismo? Something that translates the real world into a canvas of pixels.

graphical tech (I see your pores)
physics (When I throw you, you break)
AI (Hi, My name is Dr Sbaitso)
Minute detail (enter the random shop)
interactivity (blow that wall up, son)
Scale (I'd like to raise that army, and then fire the first shot, then watch from afar)
Some type of combination (Describe!)


Sure, better EVERYTHING is nice...but you only have so many resources to pull from. If you go for everything, it will all be mediocre. Or...you can be totally absent in areas to be greater in others.

Online is a great way to get rid of complexing AI...but the trouble is that people are sometimes douchebags...and it's hard to do that on a grand scale



I'd love to see games with simple graphics....but making the game much more deep.

 

[Blitzvogel]

Everything.

A game like Rust would be killer with procedural destruction and physics on vegetation and player creations. In the end though, a good game is a well crafted experience by the developers balancing fun and challenge.

 

[Yreka]

All of the above

Edit, ok thats cheating.. If I had to pick one, it would be AI largely for the reason you mentioned.. I also think there has been the least improvement in this area comparatively.

 

[turn_pike]

AI obviously.
With good enough AI even a text game would be be improved tremendously.
But the problem lies not on hardware rather on software (as in it is still an unsolvable problem in computer science).

 

[alcoholbob]

Graphical tech, since I favor games that you can actually stop to look at the scenery.

 

[Wardawg1001]

Some combination of the options, but I picked AI since that is where I'd most like to see improvement. AI has been so stale for so long. I understand the immense challenges, but I still feel like nobody is even really trying that hard to make strides in this area.

 

[Samastrike]

I think a combination of the above with the biggest 2 being interactivity and then AI

 

[DeathReborn]

I voted for Minute Detail because I really REALLY hate having open world games and virtually no building you can enter. It really sucks when they say "freedom to explore/roam" then have hundreds or thousands of hollow boxes called buildings that you can't enter.

AI is also a bugbear but the blatant lies of above trump it, just.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Ehh, depends on the game ...

Something like Kenshi, The biggest improvements would be scale and AI. Any racing type game or flight/car/boat/anything simulator would gain from better physics. Games like simutrans and openttd would benefit from scale as well as AI. Games like X3 Albion Prelude would gain from a shitton of AI improvements (haven't tried new one due to all it's horrible flaws.)

Of course there's always room to improve graphics, but it's not my top priority.

And interactivity is indeed something that should be included. All the little detail touches help to make a game more interesting.

As far as detail goes, of course more detail is always better. Imagine the GTA type games if you could go in every room of every building and they were all unique ... the scale of it sounds impossible, but, it could be possible using some sort of procedural generation algorithms .. even if it's just only once generated and then the generated map is then touched up by hand ... so .. everybody gets the same map ....

 

[ratjacket]

physics of the internal body

plumbing, pressures, organs, fluids, bones etc

so when u cut/shot/explode a body

you get the picture (not just cookie cutter, a unqiue experiance with each shot as the internal body and physics of it are calcualted aswell. not limited to shoting faling moving etc)


AI reacts to the stimulas of pain


plus all the rest of the above

 

[Stringjam]

AI by a mile out of that list.

Advanced behaviors and LOTS of them. Less NPC reuse and more individualized characters with tailored attack behaviors / styles.

NPC's that work together and help each other (I remember seeing this for the first time in FarCry2. NPC's picking up or dragging injured NPC's away from the fight).

I'm not too concerned about minute detail. I would rather have meaningful detail. If all those buildings don't have a purpose in the story, then for the most part, I have no desire to enter them and walk around (unless there is some truly stellar artistic direction involved...and you just can't pull that off for hundreds of buildings).

I'm already very happy with the state of physics implementation. It has become far more advanced and realistic than AI has over the years.

 

[norseamd]

everything but the graphics needs to be improved. dx 11 is perfectly fine. dx 9 can work but i think it is too dated. mores cores might bring more of this to games. why not run a core entirely on ai processing. physics engines today might have enough but few games implement them enough. scale, interactivity, and details have been possible for a while. maybe less so with scale. remember summoner or the old ie games? they ran on a lot older hardware. summoner on ps2 and ie games on mid to late 90s computers.

 

[mizzou]

speaking of AI...remember ultima7 the black gate? im hard pressed to think of how much more advanced skyrims villager ai is then that.....when you look at the difference in processing capability.

sure its script based...i think....but in the end arent our lives script based or event based to an extent? most of us are creatures of habit and deviate very little from that.

 

[SMOGZINN]

I can group these things into two groups:
Group 1:
Graphical tech (I see your pores)
Minute detail (enter the random shop)
Scale (I'd like to raise that army, and then fire the first shot, then watch from afar)

Group 2:
Physics (When I throw you, you break)
AI (Hi, My name is Dr Sbaitso)
Interactivity (blow that wall up, son)

Group 1 is all to do with graphics, and it is something that has been improving steadily. Graphical tech and Scale are opposite ends of the same thing and minute detail is a lot like scale, being able to zoom out to a world view, or walk into every water closet in the palace are similar things. This really comes down to how many pixels you can push and how many textures and objects the artists create.

Group 2 on the other hand deal with three things that all affect each other. Physics and interactivity go hand in hand, as if I had a good physics engine I could make every object in the game deformable. Lots of game designers do not see this as advantageous because it makes level design a nightmare. At the same time AI is a lot like a physics engine, it require a lot of variables to be designed and tracked. Just think what a game system would be like if designers create a psych profile for each character that then plugged into a psych engine that the game then used to determine reactions in stead of just scripting everything.

Overall, I think that Group 1 has had the lion’s share of improvements because those are the things you can show off in a demo video, while group two has not advanced very much because you can’t really show off those improvements in 30 second segments.

So, if I had to choose only one, I think I would choose a physics engine. I think that would do more to improve group 2 then anything else.

 

[norseamd]

Graphical tech and Scale are opposite ends of the same thing and minute detail is a lot like scale, being able to zoom out to a world view, or walk into every water closet in the palace are similar things. This really comes down to how many pixels you can push and how many textures and objects the artists create.

this has a lot more to do with the size of the game files than graphical power. art files take up space.

the bigger issue is that there is little thought put into game design any more. this affects all game proffessionals from art to programmers to qa to designers to sound.

this is all made much worse by the rise of publishing in video games.

 

[clamum]

blackinches had the right idea. Use it for a lot of porn.

 

[dust]

I think a combination of the above with the biggest 2 being interactivity and then AI

This +minute detail. Keep the rest as change:thumbsup:

 

[Midwayman]

Physics and interaction pretty inseparable. I'd love to see them in more games.

However I think the biggest win is one not listed- VR support. Its going to be biggest change in games since the Voodoo 1.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Everything, I like things to increase proportional to one another, there's no point in amazing graphics if a game is dull because the AI is tediously predictable.

However within those choices there are things I'd prefer to see more of than others, I'd prefer to see less post processing in graphics and a push for higher native resolutions, when 4k is little more affordable I'll be all over that.

Within AI I'd like to see more human traits modeled, not just war tactics same old same old, but I'd like to see things like intimidation modled as a trait the AI understands, when I roll into town in fallout 3 having killed 200 people thus far, other people should be scared, not boolean 0 or 1 scared or not, but be able to asses my capabilities and their own and have that effect their decision making.

Within physics I'd like to see more dynamic breaking of objects rather than developers simply throwing huge numbers of objects into a scene.

 

[Sable]

Hi, My name is Dr Sbaitso

Oh that takes me back! hahahahaa

 

[SMOGZINN]

Within physics I'd like to see more dynamic breaking of objects rather than developers simply throwing huge numbers of objects into a scene.

I agree! I would also like game publishers telling us that a game has breakable terrain and then include 2 walls in the entire game that can be broken, and both of them marked with a a large crack. Then littering your level designs with unbreakable wooden boxes and 3 foot walls that are impossible jump over.

Or telling us that using the terrain to our advantage will be a important part of the game and then having it be chandeliers that you can drop on monsters heads, but only if you spend enough time setting it up, and then having it do so considerably less damage then you could have done with the skill directly. (I'm looking at you Blizzard)

 

[gothamhunter]

AI

 

[T_Yamamoto]

Physics would be awesome.

The only game that I have seen that uses physics that are pretty decent is that car game that is using new tech.

 

[mizzou]

Well I'm surprised at the diversity of comments!

 

[DigDog]

What i'd like to see is more scripting, at whatever the cost of human resources.

Back when any time that you made a choice, you cut out 50% of a game's content. Now all they do is give you Mass Effect 3 style endings, but i'd like to see my choices ingame actually change what happens to the story.
So really the only hardware i'd tak more would be the HDD and the coder's hands. ghghgh

Btw in case you were wondering, its the graphics-loving scum who got us into this mess - now when a producer pays for a dungeon to be designed, by god, players will have to play that dungeon - no way it doesn't get to be explored.
We told you graphics would ruin games but did you listen ?? nooo noooo!!