SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - (Rant) More focus on gameplay, less on graphics

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- - (Rant) More focus on gameplay, less on graphics (https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=97791)

If you want 100% realism nip back in time and enlist in the U-Boat service and you will have all the 100% realism. OK only joking, but face facts there is no such thing as 100% realism, on the graphics side of the issue yes there are a lot of people out there will rush out and buy a game based on the pictures on the box. That reminds me of one of my friends who has that habit, there are many games out there which look great but how long do you play them before getting bored with them.

Games in the U.K cost the earth and I am very careful on the one's I buy. On the SH3 front I am still enjoying this game and next year I will be doing a bit of upgrading on my PC ready for SH4 and also I am going to give grey wolfs ago as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pants

I agree with Nvdrifter, games these days rely more and more on eye candy..games companys dont give a hoot these days..money money money...thats why we get patch after patch to fix things..look at BF2 they release a patch to stop people unlocking weapons, screwed up the game so they release a patch to fix a patch
Games back in the 80's early 90's had better gameplay due to having not so good graphics, Thats all they had to sell the game, the game HAD to have good gameplay ( replay value ) due to having shocking graphics ( by todays standards ), these days they hope you get blown away by the graphics.

Wouldn't agree with this. As you say, those graphics are shocking...*by today's standards.*

At the time, they were incredible, and got the same "Wow !" reaction that good graphics deservedly get today.

Hell, I remember when I thought wire-frame F-16's in a flight sim were amazing. :)

I agree with John. I can remember when I used to race Papy's first NASCAR sim and Papy's IndyCar2 sim. I learned I could run them in 'high res' which at that time meant 640x480 and I can remember being quite impressed :)

I also think the developers should take the SH3 graphics engine, fix the significant bugs with it, and use it to make SH4. The graphics are good enough as they are.

The focus needs to be on the interface and game engine. I would very much like to have a tremendous amount of "historical" bulletins and directives as part of the campaign. Missions with frog-men/UDT would be interesting, but not absolutely necessary.

I would also like to see the graphic engine split off from the AI, so the people with dual-core processors can get some use out of them. This would also significantly improve game performance.

The other thing to remember is us. :) Well, not all of us but the us that made the wonderful mods! The devs won't have to put everything into SH4. All they really need do to is make a beautiful, exciting, easy to get into sub game that mass markets can appreciate and enjoy.

Than comes the community. As long as the devs have built for us the tools and framework to extend the game to the levels of SH3 (and beyond hopefully!) anything "lacking" from SH4 will quickly be added, improved and created out of thin air by the players. That's the magic of this system. The devs make a product, and let us do with it what we will. We can make it as real or as gamey as we want.

So there will be room in SH4 for the gamers and the grognards both I'm sure.

Subsim: What other improvements can the players expect?

SH4 Dev Team: The most striking improvements will be in the graphics department, where the water and weather have gained a facelift. The ships are totally out of this world, so to speak. Multi-channel rendering with normal and occlusion maps, combined with higher poly counts and larger textures have greatly improved the look of our game.

:shifty:

We've come a long way since Atari Pong, lol.

http://www.pong-story.com/atpong2.htm

Yours, Mike

Quote:

Originally Posted by nvdrifter

You can hardly claim that implementation of thermal layers will be "striking" can you? Or that adjustments to weather routines will have a profound effect on the overall experience? I think you are nit picking semantics, and that you will find something to hang your detraction on no matter what. Of course there will be focus on the graphics, thats the first bloody thing you see! If there are changes to the simulation mechancis these most likely will be felt as subtle, and only reveal themselves over long periods of gaming. I am sure that the simulation is as well looked to so that the gameplay experience overall is improved. Notice that they just point at one improvement, the most striking. They are trying to sell the game here on some of those things that will catch people's attention.

[quote=nvdrifter]Subsim: What other improvements can the players expect?

SH4 Dev Team: The most striking improvements will be in the graphics department, where the water and weather have gained a facelift. The ships are totally out of this world, so to speak. Multi-channel rendering with normal and occlusion maps, combined with higher poly counts and larger textures have greatly improved the look of our game.

:shifty:[/quote]

Feels like a game requiring a decent P4 processor, a Gig of RAM and a good video card to me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TDK1044

Feels like a game requiring a decent P4 processor, a Gig of RAM and a good video card to me.

There is no such thing as a decent P4 processor ^_^. At 2007, asking for a gig of ram and a 2000+ Mhz processor isn't entirely unreasonable. Simulators on pc's have a long history of high system demands.

The thing some people forget is that the developers are not building this for us (as much as we would like to think they are). They are building it for the mass market.

Subsim.com has, as of this morning, 7,742 members in total. If every member owned a copy of Silent Hunter 3 (which I am sure they don't) then that accounts for about 2.6% of the total sales. And even if they did there is no consensus here on what is important as far as features go.

While it is fine to put forth your opinions on what is important, is is also important to remember that no one speaks for even the small minority that we represent.

JCC

I agree with you, John. Very well put. That's why the original SH111 specs stated minimum RAM at 256MB until about a month before the game's release when it was bumped to 512MB. Each time you bump the RAM you lose sales, but I can't see how you could run SH1V at less than 1Gig of RAM if the stated improvements are real.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Immacolata

Thanks, oh and I forgot Finchou: no, the good feeling is a major reason to why I still bother leaving port for another patrol in my VIIC, today 1½ years after SH3 was released. I really, REALLY enjoy the silent moments on the conning tower, just cruising across the waves as the rising sun climbs above the horizon. At some point, yes I tend to ignore this "graphics" but perhaps it is because they are rather good and makes me forget about them being graphics. Actually, I am reminded every time I gawp at a ship through my periscope and notice the jaggies created on the ships wires running from masts. It is there because the low resolution makes it impossible to draw the line unbroken, even with 6x AA turned on.

But no, good graphics means high aesthetics. And you never grow tired of a good painting ^_^

I have to agree that the Graphics are just awesome!! I too love that feeling of just looking around ...looking at the crew...watching the sun rise or set...pretty cool and makes the sim more playable. :sunny:

I kind of look at it from a dating prespective.....you always want to play with the hot girl (read good graphics)...but if she is dumb as rocks (lack of game play) and can't hold a converstion with you...you lose interest and long for something more....unless that is all you look for in a sim.. I mean girl. :cool:

All I am saying is Graphics should not take precedence over gameplay. I know this is hard for some to fathom...since you are always initially attracted to Hot chicks...I mean Graphics. But in the long run...GOOD grahics, with solid game play is better IMHO, than Awesome Graphics, with descent game play.

Good thread!!!!:up: ...like the discussions!

Quote:

Originally Posted by TDK1044

Prices for 1GB of RAM are around $75-$150 USD right now. There's simply no escuse to own a computer and not have 1GB of RAM anymore. If you can afford $50 on a game, you can afford $100 to vastly improve your ability to play the game and any other use for your PC you can think of.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nvdrifter

I am seeing more and more games being released these days that have beautiful graphics, but poor gameplay. Why are so many people on this board so concerned about having even prettier graphics in SH4 when SH3 gameplay was released half finished? There are so many things STILL missing or broken in SH3, I don't even know where to begin. But some big ones are:

-realistic u-boat repair times was left out (1 or 2 minute repair times, EVERY time?)
-poor enemy ship ai
-instant death screens (arcadish)
-instant death screen when compartment completely floods (omg, why?)
-broken collision damage model
-missing Hudson aircraft, which was common (a modder fixed this)
-sometimes cannot sit at the bottom of seabed to repair without taking damage at high time compression.
-u-boat crew rarely wounded, usually killed instead.
-cannot sit on seabed bottom without being pinged and detected (this is wrong, developers!)
-horrible and tedious crew management.
-no ability to surrender in campaign game (I can't believe they left this out)
-STILL no SH3 SDK released (this is a big one) :damn:
-and many other things not listed here.

Us modders have done everything we can to fix this broken game (SH3), but we have had to find half-a$$ed work arounds because UBI has decided to not release the SDK (so we can fix the broken game correctly). Why not, UBI? And a lot of the broken or missing features are hard-coded, so they cannot be fixed without the SDK. Releasing the SDK to allow us to mod- tweak the game would actually increase the popularity and customer loyalty to SH3. Do you not understand this?

Anyone remember Red Baron 3-d or Aces of the Deep? I do. Yes, they had average graphics and also had things wrong with gameplay, but at least Dynamix tried to give the games character and atmosphere. Like if you were killed in action, afterwards it would show a newspaper article showing that your boat was missing. Or in Red Baron 3-d, if you crashed behind enemy lines, there was a chance that you could make it back to your side. Or if you were captured, there was a chance that you could escapre before the war ended, and start flying again. Why all the focus these days on pretty graphics with poor, unfinished, or unrealistic (arcadish) gameplay? I just don't get it.

Pretty graphics mean nothing without realistic, fun, working gameplay.

YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!!!

If SHIV is just SHIII with prettier graphics alone I definately won't be purchasing...and I actually prefer the Pacific Sub war over the Atlantic.

I've seen many a great game series go down the tubes due to prettier graphics and "dummbed" down gameplay...usually when ported over to the Console Market.

I just don't understand how developers go backwards in a game series in this respect, give me more features and realism over better graphics any old day. This is somewhat of a "Study" subsim series after all, not "FARCRY" which was sold to the masses based on great graphics. Subsims will never apeal to the masses based on prettoer graphics but the longtime fans will appreciate the added features and Realism. :up: