Deus Ex Human Revolution

[Flabio]

I've long suspected that games isn't the hobby for you anymore Sketcz... Even I don't get that worked up about things and I'm a miserable cynical git.

[Sketcz]

I've long suspected that games isn't the hobby for you anymore Sketcz...

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MID-EDIT:
Thinking about though, I think I disagree with you. I'm a game critic, it's my job to champion quality and criticise that which is sloppy.

If Goldeneye, a game from 1996, could offer environment interactivity, then pretty much every FPS after this should be offering the same thing.

You're a dev Flabio, can't you see how we're regressing? The inability to interact with an FPS environment is what I'd expect from Quake or Doom, not a 2011 blockbuster.

This **** is just plain unacceptable - and I won't stand for it.
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END EDIT (old post below)

Question for you as a dev:
The bomb glitch, which I've been experimenting with, only seems to occur when you're not facing the bomb. If you go around the corner and face the hobo, even though he's out of sight the bomb still kills him.

But stand right next to him looking in the opposite direction and the game doesn't detect the damage done to him.

How does this work? How could this get through playtesting? This means their programmer must have coded the engine to only apply explosives splash damage when you're actually viewing the explosion?

I mean, I have a rudimentary understanding of coding, and I can't even imagine how this would come about.

Theories, Flabio?

[Flabio]

Does having a destructable world add to the gameplay? You only have so much memory to play with, and with the required level of visual fidelity to actually sell any copies in the first place is there room to get in a nice destruction system and still have the pretty textures you need for the screenshots? I do actually think there are quite a few regressive things in this game, but none of them got in the way of my enjoyment OF the game (the AI, which is what I do for a living, is pretty appalling in here. I could just easily say 'this is a modern 2011 game, why are there no dynamic crowds of civilians wandering around the city hubs given Ass Creed does it...).

Game dev is, and always has been, about choosing where to spend your limited memory and CPU budgets.

As for why the hobo thing happens, that's just going to be an LOD thing. It's not that the engine isn't applying the explosion damage, it's that the hobo is a low priority character so is most likely not processed at all when not on screen. Same reason why you kill someone in GTA, go round the corner and come back and they're gone. You can only process and remember so much stuff, so you prioritise the things that actually matter for the gameplay (ie, if you pulled the same trick with a cop, or a story NPC, then the explosion probably would kill them).

How did it get through playtesting? Probably because it was deemed low priority as it's not a game breaker, and stuff like that tends to not get fixed when you're up against a deadline to get the game into certification (people often blame test 'how could they miss that?', but most of the time they *didn't* miss it, but the person whose job it is to get the thing on the shelf made a call to leave it in). Hardly anyone gets to drift their launches 'till its done' nowadays, cause the marketing stuff has to be booked 6 months or more ahead of time.

I think the main issue you're having with gaming is that you're expecting everything to expand to fill the space available on PC, but we have to target console to actually make our money back, and with that come limitations.

Plenty of PC gamers decry 'lazy console ports', and that's fair comment. But I've seen first hand that delaying a while to do a decent proper PC port doesn't gain you any more sales and it tends to generate even *worse* internet backlash.

So yeah, the things you don't like about it are things I noticed, but found didn't make me dislike it. Maybe I have lower standards (likely, I do love those Dynasty Warriors games after all...) Although I should point out that in the little poll up there, I went with a 7...

[Sketcz]

An informative and fascinating reply, as always. Thank you.

You should have a blog, or do youtube commentaries on various rival developer's games (anonymously, of course). I always enjoy dev commentary and technical talk.

EDIT:
To answer your question, destructible scenery doesn't necessarily add to the mechanics of a game, but it's one of those things: when it's present you're not likely to say "hey look at that!", but it is definitely conspicuous by its absence. For me anyway.

[QualityChimp]

Thanks for the feedback, Flabio. Always interesting to hear from the creation side of videogames.

One of the things I heard about Duke Nukem Forever was that the first level had an insane amount of interactivity. Too much. They should have spent that much time on making the game fun.

I think it depends on if you think it's a game-breaker that it bothers you. Surely most people haven't spent many hours blowing up tramps and watching burning death animations.

On Max Payne, I loved the little cans of pop exploding in slow motion, but laughed at little barriers stopping him. I just accepted it was the game's way of showing the limits of the level.

I just got on with it and enjoyed the game.


Please don't bomb/burn/shoot me!

[Guts]

Why are minor and major additions to your skill tree the exact same price? The whole thing is grossly unbalanced, from acquiring Praxis to spending them.

Major augmentations are 2 Praxis points, like cybernetic legs, arms, Typhoon weapon system. Extra augmentations within those are 1 point each (run longer, lift heavier objects, shoot with less recoil etc.).

[Tig]

Thinking about though, I think I disagree with you. I'm a game critic, it's my job to champion quality and criticise that which is sloppy.

If Goldeneye, a game from 1996, could offer environment interactivity, then pretty much every FPS after this should be offering the same thing.

This is one of the things I'm hoping for in the next generation - not prettier graphics, but better underlying "simulation" (probably not the right word) which allows for more authentic interactions with game worlds.


I think it's been a problem with this generation- we've had a huge increase in visual detail with no corresponding leap in interactivity. So now there's a weird disconnect where our games are packed with detail, very little of which is interactive.

I bet DE:HR has got as much interactive stuff in its levels as Goldeneye.... but while Goldeneye only included objects which could be interacted with, DE is packed with visual details which are just cosmetic, making it seem more inconsistent and confusing. Excess detail is great for screenshots, but not so for gameplay.

[Guts]

DE is packed with visual details which are just cosmetic, making it seem more inconsistent and confusing. Excess detail is great for screenshots, but not so for gameplay.

I strongly disagree with this.

Would anyone really prefer say, an office room where there would be one computer monitor and one glass bottle which have full physics and can be shot, broken into pieces etc. than a fully furnished and decorated room where you can't shoot anything, but it looks like a real office room?

[FelixofMars]

To a degree I think this is correct, I think there has been a lot of headyway in the interface, usability and graphics in modern games but also they erosion of easter eggs, hidden features and as you say the intractability of things that are not part of the core experience. I think all the efforts being transferred to streamlining and graphics and not enough time is being given on adding things that in some ways make a game memorable and possibly add more wow factor than is given credit.

Its hard to say the reason for the detail lacking of shooting bottles etc. From experience I know that we planned to have lots of interactive objects shooting off desks and breaking but it ended up dealing damage to the framerate etc and we where better off dropping it to push the look of the environments. Not sure if this was the same case with Deus Ex but it did mean a drop in what we considered to be loose props and those objects that looked loose but could not be shot.

Sadly I think that people are mistaken in the power of the modern consoles, go look back at Halo then play Halo 3 and there has been a lot of improvement to the geometry, texture and lighting but at the same time a lot of this is down to shaders and better understanding on nromal maps etc. The actual visuals are a lot easier to improve for not much of a CPU push adding lots of simulation is still intensive and the power between machines is not as much as you think between consoles once you use that power to show off the visual fidelity.

This is one of the things I'm hoping for in the next generation - not prettier graphics, but better underlying "simulation" (probably not the right word) which allows for more authentic interactions with game worlds.


I think it's been a problem with this generation- we've had a huge increase in visual detail with no corresponding leap in interactivity. So now there's a weird disconnect where our games are packed with detail, very little of which is interactive.

I bet DE:HR has got as much interactive stuff in its levels as Goldeneye.... but while Goldeneye only included objects which could be interacted with, DE is packed with visual details which are just cosmetic, making it seem more inconsistent and confusing. Excess detail is great for screenshots, but not so for gameplay.

[Sketcz]

I think it's been a problem with this generation- we've had a huge increase in visual detail with no corresponding leap in interactivity. So now there's a weird disconnect where our games are packed with detail, very little of which is interactive.

Precisely.

I'm voting for Tig as my official spokesperson - he has eloquently summarised what took me several pages and video to put across.

Another thing which annoyed me, and bothers me no end with Yakuza, is recycled NPCs which use the same head/body types. It's OK with cops, because they're in uniform with helmets, but everyone else and it starts looking like the clone wars.

Someone mentioned Ass Creed and impressive crowds. I've not played AC, so tell me about this. Does that game address the problem of crowd repetition by procedurally generating different types of face/body combinations?


EDIT:
Games looks MUCH better without the gold filter.

[EvilBoris]

I went to a gig the other night and everyone inside looked the same, about 3 different hair styles 1 style of glasses on some people and combinations of the same clothes!

When it comes to games I accept that as the scale of the game increases the quality of voice acting and animation and overall visual fidelity drops. Just look at WoW or Oblivion or Fallout. I think the same thing happened with this to some extent. As the scale and complexity increases then so will the bugs and glitches, which again I expect from a large scale game.

[Flabio]

Incidentally, the leap in visual fidelity not being matched by a leap in every other aspect is something most game AI coders lament too.

With consoles they've upped the memory available from the previous generation, but it all gets nabbed feeding the more capable GPU.

Does annoy me a little when the graphics guys I work with can ooh and aaah over the latest siggraph papers and think about implementing it in games, when we still don't have the CPU grunt allocated to game logic to implement stuff that the acadmemic AI community invented years ago. Heh.

On blogging, there are quite a lot of people I know who blog over here: http://www.altdevblogaday.com , some of it will be full on technical and not too interesting, but there's a lot of 'state of the industry' type posts too.

[Adam]

[112]

I couldn't hold it off any long and had to play this... Spent about 4 hours on this last night, and im still on the first propoer mission lol... I can't help but marvel and explore... plus i have a thing for taking out as many enemy AIs as poss without being detected, then watch them pile up in a small room. Luv the little touches, but there are some noticable glitches, which are just too obvious sometimes lol...

Im still trying to get used to the controls, peering over object when in cover is a bit hit and miss for me at the moment.

lol Final Fantasy XXVII

The little quirks and inuendos remind of MGS 2 a lot. Gotta say though the main character Adam has terrible voice acting, almost as bad as Christian Bale in Batman Dark Knight... Uhh, i can't hear him half the time!

The tutorials are helpful, but tend to give away too much i reckon. But damn is there a lot to take it... im still not 100% convinced by the hacking...

Having said all that i am looking forward to getting back to it after work

->Open Spoiler<-

ive only just met that Purist soldier who shot himself in the head (must have been watching pron in the interwebs, his eyes were WAY too engrossed )

112

[Nocturne]

*Never mind, I managed to find out*

I'm 21 hours in and have only just beaten the first boss, blimey. At this rate it seems I'll be lucky to finish in less that 100 hours.