Curmudgeon Gamer
30 December 2006
Blockheads
During breakfast, I was trying to read back up on video cards in case I ever discover a three-hundred dollar bill laying on the ground and have nothing better to do with the cash. (Though I think we all know I'm happy with what I've got, for now.)
Looking at the first image on this page from an Anandtech review of video card performance in Rainbow Six: Vegas, I caught myself wondering when we'll ever get to the point that buildings aren't arranged in perfect grids in our virtual worlds. Look at the corner the guy's looking around. A perfect edge, down to the molecule. What's more, it appears the architects of the buildings on the street he's considering charging built their shanties (is this really Vegas? I'm guessing not) perfectly to code, four feet -- to at least eight significant digits (4.00000000') -- from the street. Add to this that not a single building seems to have a significant dent in the wall and, well, it's simply horribly unrealistic. Characterless boxes set up according to a inferior spin on the Jeffersonian city plan.
Compare this to the fellow in the same picture or the gun model from the pages previous and I believe you'll see the cityscape's attention to realism is sorely lagging.
This reminds me of the perfect cubits of Tomb Raider, where every tomb, even the city of Venice, regardless of time period or continent, has somehow built itself to the same exacting specifications of the ones prior. Luckily Lara is well-versed in the eyeball measurement of cubits, as each of her jumps, the distance she can push cubit-cubed, um, cubes around floors before tiring, the height she can swing herself up from one pole to the next -- all cubits. I'll give the original a free pass, but the continued use of cubits in later games (seems even Angel of Darkness still had some cubit-ism) seems downright lazy.
I understand now, knowing a bit about the innards of an Atari 2600, why every ladder, from Pitfall to Donkey Kong to, well, I don't recall more ladder games at the moment, but why each was the same width, and why that same width was also the horizontal width of the smallest barrier in Combat. It had to do with limitations of the console; the playfield graphics had a minimum width of very limited granularity. There is no such technical limitation forcing a similar convergence of any sort in today's PC games.
I want buildings slightly further from the slightly winding street than one another. A few buildings not precisely built parallel to one another. Some buildings that have stories that are 10' high, others with 8.342'. Real balconies that vary from building to building, even floor from floor. Uneven sides of buildings, for heaven's sake. Potholes and small grades in streets. Furry lobsters. I want it all. Need I remind anyone what a little strategic use of a random number generator did for a game like Elite?
People are lamenting their inability to tax their quad SLI setups. Hit 'em with some reality, please.
Looking at the first image on this page from an Anandtech review of video card performance in Rainbow Six: Vegas, I caught myself wondering when we'll ever get to the point that buildings aren't arranged in perfect grids in our virtual worlds. Look at the corner the guy's looking around. A perfect edge, down to the molecule. What's more, it appears the architects of the buildings on the street he's considering charging built their shanties (is this really Vegas? I'm guessing not) perfectly to code, four feet -- to at least eight significant digits (4.00000000') -- from the street. Add to this that not a single building seems to have a significant dent in the wall and, well, it's simply horribly unrealistic. Characterless boxes set up according to a inferior spin on the Jeffersonian city plan.
Compare this to the fellow in the same picture or the gun model from the pages previous and I believe you'll see the cityscape's attention to realism is sorely lagging.
This reminds me of the perfect cubits of Tomb Raider, where every tomb, even the city of Venice, regardless of time period or continent, has somehow built itself to the same exacting specifications of the ones prior. Luckily Lara is well-versed in the eyeball measurement of cubits, as each of her jumps, the distance she can push cubit-cubed, um, cubes around floors before tiring, the height she can swing herself up from one pole to the next -- all cubits. I'll give the original a free pass, but the continued use of cubits in later games (seems even Angel of Darkness still had some cubit-ism) seems downright lazy.
I understand now, knowing a bit about the innards of an Atari 2600, why every ladder, from Pitfall to Donkey Kong to, well, I don't recall more ladder games at the moment, but why each was the same width, and why that same width was also the horizontal width of the smallest barrier in Combat. It had to do with limitations of the console; the playfield graphics had a minimum width of very limited granularity. There is no such technical limitation forcing a similar convergence of any sort in today's PC games.
I want buildings slightly further from the slightly winding street than one another. A few buildings not precisely built parallel to one another. Some buildings that have stories that are 10' high, others with 8.342'. Real balconies that vary from building to building, even floor from floor. Uneven sides of buildings, for heaven's sake. Potholes and small grades in streets. Furry lobsters. I want it all. Need I remind anyone what a little strategic use of a random number generator did for a game like Elite?
People are lamenting their inability to tax their quad SLI setups. Hit 'em with some reality, please.
Labels: blocks, cubits, legos, Rainbow Six, video cards
--ruffin at 10:47
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