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It is a well-known fact in the games industry that certain developers find it preferable to develop certain genres of game with a certain "feel" to it. If you buy a game in the shops nowadays, without looking at the logos on the front cover or at the start when the game loads, it is fairly easy to judge who has developed the game. Very often this is so that there is some sort of individuality between the developers and their games, so that it isn't in a way similar to a game of a rival developer. You will also find that quite often you will find that this is an attempt to better the games developed by rival companies and increase the weight of their wallets a bit more.
It is also quite easy to estimate how good a game is going to be by the amount of time that a developer spends making the game. Take Perfect Dark for example. It was in development ever since a few months after Goldeneye's release, and only came out a short while ago. The same can be said for the first-party developers, the ones that produced the console to run the games. Shigeru Myamoto was more concerned about the time a console took to load the information for the game, and therefore, produced a few poor games just so that he could ease the wait for a game to finally play after the loading has completed. This is one of the main reasons why production of the Gamecube started. The PS2, on the other hand, wasn't exclusively designed for just games, and therefore took a lot of time. Sony, being developers of DVD players, videos and TVs wanted to combine the art of video gaming with film and music, and so the PS2 was born with the add-on of DVD and audio CD compatibility. The Xbox was Bill Gates' attempt at bettering the PS2, but with a now dated Pentium III chip and a controller that is so big that the only hand it fits in are the foamy ones you get at football stadiums or the ones on Gladiators several years ago.
With games, though, it is usually the case where the developers try to achieve the same results, but in those attempts, they manage to only reach as far as the opposite effect. Now that technology is advancing a great speed, developers are able to be a lot more creative, but that creativity comes at a price. Worlds and characters are becoming much more detailed and shaped. Perfect Dark Zero on the Gamecube features Jo Dark with a head that looks like a head. She isn't the blockhead as featured in the N64 version, where the amount of polygons was too much for the poor little console to handle, and so it had to be reduced. The same has to be said for sport and racing games. On consoles from the past, like the PS1 and N64, it must hurt the players to be kicking a football that pointy. I'm surprised that Conker didn't stab himself with the corners while pushing the boilers dangly bits around. It's like, in racing games, on the same consoles as mentioned above, having wheels like that would be more bumpy than driving across the moon after a load of intergalactic wars. Another thing is that when the polygons are all put together to make the worlds, they don't overlap far enough and you can therefore see where they join. Obviously, you'd be able to see them join even if it was done right, but what I mean is that when the polygons aren't overlapped far enough, you get flashing, dotty white lines in-between each polygon, just like in the mouths of the characters in the movie sequences in James Bond: Agent Under Fire, where Twin says, "In the meantime, you can enjoy the view." And Bond looks at here and says, "I already am!". That's the best modern example that I could find. Also, developers like to sometimes increase playability and loading times by decreasing the amount of colours used in a palette, but this leads to environments looking shoddy and quickly put together, without all the extra detail which make it look a little bit more realistic. Turok and Hybrid Heaven are probably the best examples of this, where developers have been too lazy and concentrated on the way it looks rather than how it looks rather than how a game plays. Personally, that doesn't bother me much, as long as the game is good, but we're all entitled to our own opinions here, right?
It makes you wonder what gaming will be like in the future. Games that seem futuristic now will change by then, and the things in the futuristic games now will either seem like normal stuff or will seem like just plain strange.
Thanks for reading (if you did!)
Twain
It is also quite easy to estimate how good a game is going to be by the amount of time that a developer spends making the game. Take Perfect Dark for example. It was in development ever since a few months after Goldeneye's release, and only came out a short while ago. The same can be said for the first-party developers, the ones that produced the console to run the games. Shigeru Myamoto was more concerned about the time a console took to load the information for the game, and therefore, produced a few poor games just so that he could ease the wait for a game to finally play after the loading has completed. This is one of the main reasons why production of the Gamecube started. The PS2, on the other hand, wasn't exclusively designed for just games, and therefore took a lot of time. Sony, being developers of DVD players, videos and TVs wanted to combine the art of video gaming with film and music, and so the PS2 was born with the add-on of DVD and audio CD compatibility. The Xbox was Bill Gates' attempt at bettering the PS2, but with a now dated Pentium III chip and a controller that is so big that the only hand it fits in are the foamy ones you get at football stadiums or the ones on Gladiators several years ago.
With games, though, it is usually the case where the developers try to achieve the same results, but in those attempts, they manage to only reach as far as the opposite effect. Now that technology is advancing a great speed, developers are able to be a lot more creative, but that creativity comes at a price. Worlds and characters are becoming much more detailed and shaped. Perfect Dark Zero on the Gamecube features Jo Dark with a head that looks like a head. She isn't the blockhead as featured in the N64 version, where the amount of polygons was too much for the poor little console to handle, and so it had to be reduced. The same has to be said for sport and racing games. On consoles from the past, like the PS1 and N64, it must hurt the players to be kicking a football that pointy. I'm surprised that Conker didn't stab himself with the corners while pushing the boilers dangly bits around. It's like, in racing games, on the same consoles as mentioned above, having wheels like that would be more bumpy than driving across the moon after a load of intergalactic wars. Another thing is that when the polygons are all put together to make the worlds, they don't overlap far enough and you can therefore see where they join. Obviously, you'd be able to see them join even if it was done right, but what I mean is that when the polygons aren't overlapped far enough, you get flashing, dotty white lines in-between each polygon, just like in the mouths of the characters in the movie sequences in James Bond: Agent Under Fire, where Twin says, "In the meantime, you can enjoy the view." And Bond looks at here and says, "I already am!". That's the best modern example that I could find. Also, developers like to sometimes increase playability and loading times by decreasing the amount of colours used in a palette, but this leads to environments looking shoddy and quickly put together, without all the extra detail which make it look a little bit more realistic. Turok and Hybrid Heaven are probably the best examples of this, where developers have been too lazy and concentrated on the way it looks rather than how it looks rather than how a game plays. Personally, that doesn't bother me much, as long as the game is good, but we're all entitled to our own opinions here, right?
It makes you wonder what gaming will be like in the future. Games that seem futuristic now will change by then, and the things in the futuristic games now will either seem like normal stuff or will seem like just plain strange.
Thanks for reading (if you did!)
Twain
Yeah, I saw that in one of NGCs back issues.
The thing is, there wasn't any visible loading times with the N64, so the three-second wait when the screen went black before the game started was artificial.
Nintendo consoles have never had loading times, except for TWINE and Quake.
Switching to discs is sure to bring up a problem somewhere alpong the line concerning loading times and artificial "breaks".
The thing is, there wasn't any visible loading times with the N64, so the three-second wait when the screen went black before the game started was artificial.
Nintendo consoles have never had loading times, except for TWINE and Quake.
Switching to discs is sure to bring up a problem somewhere alpong the line concerning loading times and artificial "breaks".
RM18 wrote:
> Supposedly in one Gamecube game loading times were so fast that Nintendo had to
> artificially insert loading times into the game because testers found it
> unnerving!!
i heard that 2, they had to put about a 3 second wait in between screens
> Supposedly in one Gamecube game loading times were so fast that Nintendo had to
> artificially insert loading times into the game because testers found it
> unnerving!!
i heard that 2, they had to put about a 3 second wait in between screens
Supposedly in one Gamecube game loading times were so fast that Nintendo had to artificially insert loading times into the game because testers found it unnerving!!
I personally think that the GC discs that are around now, only compatible with GameCube, will be the next-gen CDs. That'll reduce loading times and allow large arenas and environments.
I read all of it, it was a good post!
I think that developers will soon reach a dilemma, if they haven't done so already. People want new, detailed games but they also want them straight away. Something is going to have to give - length or detail. I think Ninetndo's new 'short and sweet' policy proves they have gone for detail
I think that developers will soon reach a dilemma, if they haven't done so already. People want new, detailed games but they also want them straight away. Something is going to have to give - length or detail. I think Ninetndo's new 'short and sweet' policy proves they have gone for detail
It is a well-known fact in the games industry that certain developers find it preferable to develop certain genres of game with a certain "feel" to it. If you buy a game in the shops nowadays, without looking at the logos on the front cover or at the start when the game loads, it is fairly easy to judge who has developed the game. Very often this is so that there is some sort of individuality between the developers and their games, so that it isn't in a way similar to a game of a rival developer. You will also find that quite often you will find that this is an attempt to better the games developed by rival companies and increase the weight of their wallets a bit more.
It is also quite easy to estimate how good a game is going to be by the amount of time that a developer spends making the game. Take Perfect Dark for example. It was in development ever since a few months after Goldeneye's release, and only came out a short while ago. The same can be said for the first-party developers, the ones that produced the console to run the games. Shigeru Myamoto was more concerned about the time a console took to load the information for the game, and therefore, produced a few poor games just so that he could ease the wait for a game to finally play after the loading has completed. This is one of the main reasons why production of the Gamecube started. The PS2, on the other hand, wasn't exclusively designed for just games, and therefore took a lot of time. Sony, being developers of DVD players, videos and TVs wanted to combine the art of video gaming with film and music, and so the PS2 was born with the add-on of DVD and audio CD compatibility. The Xbox was Bill Gates' attempt at bettering the PS2, but with a now dated Pentium III chip and a controller that is so big that the only hand it fits in are the foamy ones you get at football stadiums or the ones on Gladiators several years ago.
With games, though, it is usually the case where the developers try to achieve the same results, but in those attempts, they manage to only reach as far as the opposite effect. Now that technology is advancing a great speed, developers are able to be a lot more creative, but that creativity comes at a price. Worlds and characters are becoming much more detailed and shaped. Perfect Dark Zero on the Gamecube features Jo Dark with a head that looks like a head. She isn't the blockhead as featured in the N64 version, where the amount of polygons was too much for the poor little console to handle, and so it had to be reduced. The same has to be said for sport and racing games. On consoles from the past, like the PS1 and N64, it must hurt the players to be kicking a football that pointy. I'm surprised that Conker didn't stab himself with the corners while pushing the boilers dangly bits around. It's like, in racing games, on the same consoles as mentioned above, having wheels like that would be more bumpy than driving across the moon after a load of intergalactic wars. Another thing is that when the polygons are all put together to make the worlds, they don't overlap far enough and you can therefore see where they join. Obviously, you'd be able to see them join even if it was done right, but what I mean is that when the polygons aren't overlapped far enough, you get flashing, dotty white lines in-between each polygon, just like in the mouths of the characters in the movie sequences in James Bond: Agent Under Fire, where Twin says, "In the meantime, you can enjoy the view." And Bond looks at here and says, "I already am!". That's the best modern example that I could find. Also, developers like to sometimes increase playability and loading times by decreasing the amount of colours used in a palette, but this leads to environments looking shoddy and quickly put together, without all the extra detail which make it look a little bit more realistic. Turok and Hybrid Heaven are probably the best examples of this, where developers have been too lazy and concentrated on the way it looks rather than how it looks rather than how a game plays. Personally, that doesn't bother me much, as long as the game is good, but we're all entitled to our own opinions here, right?
It makes you wonder what gaming will be like in the future. Games that seem futuristic now will change by then, and the things in the futuristic games now will either seem like normal stuff or will seem like just plain strange.
Thanks for reading (if you did!)
Twain
It is also quite easy to estimate how good a game is going to be by the amount of time that a developer spends making the game. Take Perfect Dark for example. It was in development ever since a few months after Goldeneye's release, and only came out a short while ago. The same can be said for the first-party developers, the ones that produced the console to run the games. Shigeru Myamoto was more concerned about the time a console took to load the information for the game, and therefore, produced a few poor games just so that he could ease the wait for a game to finally play after the loading has completed. This is one of the main reasons why production of the Gamecube started. The PS2, on the other hand, wasn't exclusively designed for just games, and therefore took a lot of time. Sony, being developers of DVD players, videos and TVs wanted to combine the art of video gaming with film and music, and so the PS2 was born with the add-on of DVD and audio CD compatibility. The Xbox was Bill Gates' attempt at bettering the PS2, but with a now dated Pentium III chip and a controller that is so big that the only hand it fits in are the foamy ones you get at football stadiums or the ones on Gladiators several years ago.
With games, though, it is usually the case where the developers try to achieve the same results, but in those attempts, they manage to only reach as far as the opposite effect. Now that technology is advancing a great speed, developers are able to be a lot more creative, but that creativity comes at a price. Worlds and characters are becoming much more detailed and shaped. Perfect Dark Zero on the Gamecube features Jo Dark with a head that looks like a head. She isn't the blockhead as featured in the N64 version, where the amount of polygons was too much for the poor little console to handle, and so it had to be reduced. The same has to be said for sport and racing games. On consoles from the past, like the PS1 and N64, it must hurt the players to be kicking a football that pointy. I'm surprised that Conker didn't stab himself with the corners while pushing the boilers dangly bits around. It's like, in racing games, on the same consoles as mentioned above, having wheels like that would be more bumpy than driving across the moon after a load of intergalactic wars. Another thing is that when the polygons are all put together to make the worlds, they don't overlap far enough and you can therefore see where they join. Obviously, you'd be able to see them join even if it was done right, but what I mean is that when the polygons aren't overlapped far enough, you get flashing, dotty white lines in-between each polygon, just like in the mouths of the characters in the movie sequences in James Bond: Agent Under Fire, where Twin says, "In the meantime, you can enjoy the view." And Bond looks at here and says, "I already am!". That's the best modern example that I could find. Also, developers like to sometimes increase playability and loading times by decreasing the amount of colours used in a palette, but this leads to environments looking shoddy and quickly put together, without all the extra detail which make it look a little bit more realistic. Turok and Hybrid Heaven are probably the best examples of this, where developers have been too lazy and concentrated on the way it looks rather than how it looks rather than how a game plays. Personally, that doesn't bother me much, as long as the game is good, but we're all entitled to our own opinions here, right?
It makes you wonder what gaming will be like in the future. Games that seem futuristic now will change by then, and the things in the futuristic games now will either seem like normal stuff or will seem like just plain strange.
Thanks for reading (if you did!)
Twain