mothra on 27/10/2011 at 12:02
yeah and 3 months later nvidia/ati releases a new GPU and stagnation has been reached again. But who cares about graphics, I want PC devs to travel to the undiscovered country of better AI, not only in terms of combat but all kinds of interaction with the player and the environment.
DDL on 27/10/2011 at 12:23
Graphics are fairly easy though: you take what already exists and make it better. A wall remains a wall all the way from being a single polygon textured with a 8-bit bitmap version..up to a fully modelled, rendered, bumpmapped and diffusemapped and "whatever they do these days" version.
AI tends to be vastly trickier, generally because what's currently used is either 'specific task-oriented, relatively convincing' (so things like "generic trooper" type AI in shooter games, more "hunting/flanking-type AI" in slighly more involved shooter games, or even 'opponent' AI in football/tennis type games), or 'more flexible, but generally horrible at everything' (radiant AI).
Building from the former platform will get you better behaviour within a specific task-area, so shooter AI that can do teamwork, share health kits, plan pushes, initiate distractions etc, or football AI that can do offside trapping and pass feinting...but you're never going to get a football AI that can also patrol a corridor or hold a conversation.
And while building on the latter certainly sounds ostensibly more progressive, it rapidly just becomes unmanageable if you stick to making it handle things in relatively context-specific fashions, because there are just so many damn overlaps (hence the tendency for enemy soldiers in crysis to drown spontaneously, because their AI recognises 'shouting' and 'swimming' as separate states: ifn they're swimming and they shout..they die).
Going down the neural-net type 'learning/emergent' AI route has problems too, since you're not, after all, generally trying to produce truly emergent AI properties, you're trying to produce "emergent properties that fit within the boundaries the AI should have": so an AI trooper that realises it can hit you while avoiding death by simply running off-map and sniping from behind a block-player actor..is bad.
And so on. It's not so much "why aren't they doing this" as much as it is "where the hell does one even START?"
nicked on 27/10/2011 at 12:31
Quote Posted by Sulphur
A plateau implies there's nowhere further to go. With technology, there always is. It's stagnation and nothing else.
Alright then, "large flat ledge halfway up a mountain."
Sulphur on 27/10/2011 at 12:54
Feeling a little craggy today, are we.
Renzatic on 27/10/2011 at 13:31
Quote Posted by DDL
Graphics are fairly easy though: you take what already exists and make it better. A wall remains a wall all the way from being a single polygon textured with a 8-bit bitmap version..up to a fully modelled, rendered, bumpmapped and diffusemapped and "whatever they do these days" version.
STEEP PARALLAX MAPPING! \m/:mad:
nicked on 28/10/2011 at 05:54
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Feeling a little craggy today, are we.
I'm just pissed that I get 20% off because I already own Batman AA on Steam and I still can't afford it! :D
SubJeff on 30/10/2011 at 11:20
Bought.
On Steam.
Sucks that we have to wait til 18th Nov, bonus that having AA means I get 20% off.
EvaUnit02 on 30/10/2011 at 12:28
Triple whammy of DRM on the Steam version:- SecuROM, Steamworks, GfWL.
Still, $39.99 USD is awfully tempting.
june gloom on 30/10/2011 at 19:17
not for $40, it ain't
i'll do what i did with batman AA and just wait for it to go super cheapies on sale and just get the console version in the meantime
EvaUnit02 on 30/10/2011 at 19:21
By NZ standards, that's dirt cheap. $40 USD = ~$50 NZD. PC version retails in local shops for $99 NZD.
But then again, I'd probably be better off getting Skyrim for $60 NZD. If it's anything like Fallout 3 (and the far, far superior New Vegas) then I can easily see myself getting sucked in for 150+ hours.
