Quake 3 turns 10 years old - has technology advanced as you once thought it might?
polycounter lvl 19
Yesterday marked a decade of Quake 3 and, while that game did a lot to
peoples futures, looking back at the past I started to think about what I
thought games would be like around this time, today.
When Quake 3 hit the scene it did a lot for polygonal engines and, being
young, it would often muster up thoughts of what games would be like 'in
the future'.
I have to admit, I really don't think technology has come as far along as I
thought it would have. The unfortunate thing is, though, I cannot tell you
what it was I thought this would be. When I look at Crysis, Uncharted 2, or
Modern Warefare 2 - arguably the 3 best looking games to date - I really
don't see a decades worth of improvements.
My point? It's taken 10 years to go from Quake 3 to Crysis and just writing
that sound like somethings wrong with that timeline.
Has technology in games progressed as it should have?
Or are things going at a slower pace for reasons outside of our control?
When you were younger, how did you imagine video games to be 10 years
in to the future?
peoples futures, looking back at the past I started to think about what I
thought games would be like around this time, today.
When Quake 3 hit the scene it did a lot for polygonal engines and, being
young, it would often muster up thoughts of what games would be like 'in
the future'.
I have to admit, I really don't think technology has come as far along as I
thought it would have. The unfortunate thing is, though, I cannot tell you
what it was I thought this would be. When I look at Crysis, Uncharted 2, or
Modern Warefare 2 - arguably the 3 best looking games to date - I really
don't see a decades worth of improvements.
My point? It's taken 10 years to go from Quake 3 to Crysis and just writing
that sound like somethings wrong with that timeline.
Has technology in games progressed as it should have?
Or are things going at a slower pace for reasons outside of our control?
When you were younger, how did you imagine video games to be 10 years
in to the future?
Replies
Same. I would still play W:ET too if I could muster some interest from office mates.
I remember playing the original Command and Conquer on DOS forever ago. Hell some kids don't even know what DOS is and thought that by the time I was an adult or 10-15 years down the road that a game like C&C would just be mind blowing.
Sure the newer ones look great but overall the graphics haven't come leaps and bounds over what you would think they would with that sort of time span.
However you can look at a game like Madden and all its history and how it used to look and see huge strides in everything from features to game play to the fantastic look of it now. Sure it's just a football game and many people bitch that it's the same thing year after year and well yeah it's football of course it's the same, but you have too look at it deeper I think and you will see how much has changed in it. The animations are smoother, the way it handles and feels has gotten much better and overall I think it gets better every year.
So in a way I think games have progressed nicely and in other ways I feel that they have not and could be pushed further.
Just look at RAGE, absolutely mindblowing!
Thoughts?
still,
What's so mind blowing about it? I'm not arguing that it's not a sexy game, nor is the technology INTERESTING, but 10 years to get to a point where things don't look tiled? Yikes.
Hardware stagnation:
It has gotten worse since the consoles have become the predominate platform. I also think we're going to stagnate in more than just hardware, now that the money isn't flowing freely to new and risky ideas. But that stagnation will set the stage for a rebirth of sorts it will kick off a torrent of new ideas and games that push the bounds in different ways.
I think we're now going through a stunted content growing phase. So instead of the old bullshots driving the selling points, we're focusing on story and game play. I think games today do look a lot better, but they also PLAY a lot better. The games you listed are pretty good examples of that.
Looking back:
I think if you took today's games back 10 years people would implode with amazement at how far they've come. Being along for the slow ride isn't as impressive I guess.
I think back to playing the Call of Duty demo a few years ago and not being impressed by the graphics but by they way the structured the narrative. For the first time in a FPS I didn't run in guns blazing I crawled up behind a dead cow and sat there for a bit, trying to think of the best way forward.
I think we've started to grow in that direction ever since and people realize its not just the hardware advancements but the way we put the pieces together.
Where we're at:
If I had to analogize this to anything I would say we've managed to build a modern printing press and can crank out books like nobodies business, but we're not focused on the speed of the press, but what we're feeding into it.
We're still growing, just not in a way that can be easily qualified through bullshots.
I know I couldnt imagine a game like GTA4 10 yrs ago...
If you feel stuff havent developed fast enough blame the coders
ultimately i think the improvments are there, it's trying to make things accessible for everyone that's holding it back.
-i remember the first time i saw the curved archways tech demo for Q3, i think i've still got wood from that-
Gameplay on the other hand...
That said we have to remember how young this industry really is. 10 years really isn't that much time, and as the projects get more complex the rest of the world including consumers, and business folk have to catch up to the ideas and aspirations of creators.
Games aren't what they used to be, they are becoming massive, often international, projects. Managing projects of this size is a different animal all together. Right now we are trying to wrangle with the scope of the projects more so than their graphical fidelity.
Perhaps, its just that growth has diversified, not slowed down.
geforce GTX 285, 51840 megatexel fillrate
game play is worse in some cases, animation in some games is just clunky.
I also agree with Ruz, animation could use a big boost, and some games have realized that but still it could use a lot more love across the board.
I blame all the marketing departments, and all the good-intentioned, over-exicted technology developers for blowing future developments out of proportion. The technology is coming along at a decent rate, but I don't expect insane leaps and bounds to happen every few years at this point.
What about shadows? I was pretty blown away when I saw a full blown real time shadow solution for the first time. Baked is nice, but dynamic is immersive, not to mention the cinematic and narrative implications.
HA!
This is interesting - it seems to me in some cases this seems to be true - maybe sports having rather less mercurial subject matter allows effort (even necessitates) to go into the more subtle things on how the sport is presented visually and in gameplay terms.
If that was the case you'd think long running non sport franchises might have some similarity in terms of iteration and polish, but maybe long running non sport franchises have too hard a sell if their feature set doesn't broadly change from product to product.
I blame marketing people! For just about anything!
AI hasnt advanced at all, or perhaps it has, but they dont appear to be using it.
The same binary choices. Most games dont bother to give you any when there is no excuse to not give you any. Only lazyness, and an obsession with making the media exactly like the others.
I imagined games now to be like movies. Not how they are now like literal movies, you watch everything and get a little chance to shoot things. You would make choices as you would in reality and the game would respond and adapt to your choices. no cutting to fmvs either. You could replay the game several times testing the scenarios and outcomes.
I thought their would be lots of active worlds as well, unlike the passive player activated worlds we have now.
I thought AI would actually be intelligent, not getting stuck on trees or jogging in place. Even games that tout amazing AI (I'm looking at you, Crysis) in the end come out mediocre. AI needs better brains.
Animation is also not where I would have imagined, especially facial animation. Halflife 2 had some of the best facial animation I had seen - yet nothing better has come out in the last 5 years? Come on. Animation in general has been pretty lackluster the past few years with (most notably) Modern Warfare 2 having some of the best (imo). Uncharted was decent, but there were a LOT of snap-to's when jumping off edges, etc, which looked horrible.
I also have to put a lot of blame on hardware vendors and publishers. Why innovate when stagnation proves just as profitable? They're doing the bare minimum at making improvements, so they can maximize profit. While that's great for a business' success, it's terrible for the industry as a whole. Hardware vendors release a new graphics card that's only 20% faster, yet costs 3x as much, while publishers milk a profitable IP until it's ragged piece of flesh. There's a lack of innovation, fueled by greed.
I think the most innovation is coming from smaller studios and XBLA indi devs. Without the pressure of a monolithic publisher or insane deadline, these guys are pumping out amazingly great games. Not surprising, as garage dev is how this industry started
I'm still surprised when looking at most big-name titles. I would have thought that more big-name companies would have taken a cue from Valve, and integrated better animation tools into their engines. The Source engine is one of the older engines by today's graphical standards, but it still has some of the best animation tools and performance in the industry. The performances and lip-syncing you can get out of the Source engine are better than any other game I've seen. I would have thought that approach to performances in games would be industry standard by now.
I feel a large reason for this trend is the continued push for games to become big business. A greater focus on profitability and the pursuite of blockbuster titles and franchises has pushed technical development toward flashier effects, and away from areas that are seen as less important. Back-end developments and exprimentation have suffered as a result.
Another stumbling block is the introduction of multi-threaded processing, and the industry's failure to take advantage of this new technology.
Having worked on a handful of sports games, I'd have to argue otherwise. (From a graphical standpoint.) You have an enclosed environment with very predictable circumstances. There's a shit-ton of smoke and mirrors you can pull off in order to amaze people with cheap tricks yanked from other, more progressive genres.
Similar to Starwars, when Chewy is playing chess with c3po
For me, it's how we visualize the game, rather than what is on screen. That is, I wouldn't care if it's a bunch of cubes floating around in a hologram space (aka space invaders).. that'd still blow my mind.
*Edit*
Apparently we're getting there...
[ame]
stephenvyas thats a nice idea for a hologram but as far as I can tell its just 2d sprites that follow the viewers perspective so if you walk around it you will not see the other side of the object.
Id say the biggest changes have been in story telling, overall presentation and mass market appeal. In the days of quake you had to "know computers" to get Quake. With graphics, I'd put it some where in the middle of "amount of change". Graphics have had a pretty linear improvement for the past 10 years and it seems to be continuing. The only problem is as time goes by the improvements get harder and harder to notice for the average consumer, and art production times are trending up. At the bottom end with least change would be animation, AI, and overall innovation. We are stuck with mo-cap and a lot of labor as our best solution to animation, with "smart" systems just around the corner. AI has improved a lot but is still nowhere close to fooling anyone. Innovation has been pushed almost totally away from AAA games while they rely on sequels to bring in the big bucks.
I guess I thought things would be further along by now as well, but that's just how it goes...... I am very excited to see Ray Tracing in games though, and better AI/smoother animation. But it's moving that way... just taking more time than we all want..
I completely agree with this and would add that with graphics, look at polycounts for models in game, how have they changed over 10years, texture resolution and etc there have been huge leaps and bounds, I think consoles will make improvement in graphics quality staggered and stuck to hardware specs, PC games are a different situation, the pace of technological advance is much faster with new iterations of GFX cards out almost every quarter. Problem is most games these days are centered around consoles and not really designed to push PC hardware.
Game play has done didley squat in comparison, everything from genre to game structure, interactivity and etc. Graphics have done their bit to increase the immersion and game play has let it down. sometimes when I play games you can almost feel an invisible wall holding you back. Not all games are like this but the sequence scripted FPS with get from point A to B with limited methods for doing so are a case in point. I personally think if you want a game to be immersive game play wise it has to be sandbox style of game with a high degree of interactivity with the environment. Also games should not be stuck in so called genres, but encompass many different aspects of several genres in one game.
I just think that there are still a lot of elements that developers should have focused on instead. Gears of War is a good example. Most of the game looks fantastic. But as soon as the characters open their mouths, you begin to spot the seams. The lip syncing and facial expressions in that game are not very good, and that seriously breaks the illusion. And that isn't even during gameplay, I'm talking about the in-game cutscenes.
Developers looked at Quake 3 and decided that shaders were the future. They took that and ran with it. Now the shaders and lighting systems are what graphics are all about.
Once again we see that Valve is considerably more progressive than most other developers. Although they also worked on shaders, they never made those the focus. In terms of graphical fidelity, they are lagging behind. But in terms of overall experience, they have a considerable edge over the competition.
** completely off topic: i play regularly on CROM q3 servers http://www.cromctf.com, located in goergia. website fell recently, somewhy, but the servers work. if anyone's up to ctf/ffa lemme know!
...but the gameplay's still the same. Storytelling's not improved in most cases. Exploring ideas in games other than mindlessly shooting people, monsters and aliens is only slightly more important than it was way back then.
Oh, and where's my cheap cloth sim and hair tech? I'm tired of video game characters who are bald and wear only skin tight clothes or rigid armor.
I agree about the facial animation, its crazy that we still see games with wooden marionettes, like in Dragon Age for instance, when the source engine has almost perfected it years before.
I guess thats part of the problem, the disconnected nature of development. And the skewed angle towards the prettiest engines. The developers have to rebuild everthing over and over again and they have to think of everthing. There's no standardised form of tools that devs can use over and over and perfect.
Yeah. Even if we say that Q3 was a fast paced shooter so we can't compare it to Uncharted 2, the differences are more then obvious. We have proper shading with highlights and various nifty features, self-shadows and cast shadows, a huge increase in poly count and texture detail, number of animations and blending systems, and of course the enviroment. We also have nice AI in games like Halo where enemies act in groups and formations, flank you, or get scared of you, get tricked by you while looking the other way and so on.
I think people who complain should really examine Quake3 running at 1024*768 with no AA or AF and not just try to recall how it looked...
That is the biggest change related to games that I see.
Ten years ago it was reversed.
Honestly, you can do this at home. It's just a projector image getting displayed on fine wire mesh.
Now, to say something on that matter, I'd like to compare two games: CoD4 and Heavenly Sword. CoD4 had great action, but not a great story or storytelling. It was like a summer blockbuster you went to for a bit of eye candy and entertainment, but not a whole lot beyond that. Heavenly Sword, however, felt compelling, if not epic, at times. The characters played off one another; the battle between Nariko and the snake / eel gal, for example, had Nariko insulted and enraged by the gal first, and then as the player progressed through the battle, was actually throwing the gal's taunts back at her. The way Nariko indirectly addressed the player as if he / she were the sword's essence was intriguing to say the least. At the end of CoD4 I felt wanting for more of the action, at the end of Heavenly Sword I felt wanting for more of the story.
I would dare to say that narrative and characterisation hasn't improved at all since the NES era
Graphics could be better. But, it's perfectly understandable, considering that creating exclusives is no longer as profitable as it was before.
But, what disappoints me the most is how low are expectations of the gaming public these days. I can hardly think of any game, released this generation that deserves a full score.
I cringe whenever I read a review. All major games portals appear to compete with each other; bidding higher scores every time a popular game is released. Im pretty sure that average rating has increased since the last generation. Games, that a couple of years ago would be rated at 70-80%, now get 85-95%, and I have yet to see any revolutionary title this gen.
I remember countless titles touted to be the best shit since invention of the sliced bread, only to be forgotten several months later, after the game journalists found something new to hype.
Dont get me wrong, I hardly blame anyone who worked on one of these blockbuster titles. Considering the current economic situation, it is surprising that people still try to come up with creative ideas.
Personally, I cant wait to see the end of this generation as a gamer, I have never been so disappointed before. I hope that new hardware brings some changes, especially in the current business models, as they hardly allow any creativity.
I blame big publishers more than the reviewers or gamers.
The day valve will announce the new source engine and its games to come out
on consoles and the pc at the same time will be the time i jump infront of a train.
Assasins creed press x 20 times and your flinging up this 100 story builduing gameplay
just doesnt do it for me. I want to play and not be played with.
I do blame as well, but the only reason they can enforce their decisions is because we, as a gameplay public, are allowing them to. People bitch about the publishers all the time, but then they happily run into the nearest store and offer them their hard earned money.