What makes a game look good?
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/What makes a game look good?
| ||
| Hello, I was looking through the image gallery and came across this: http://blitzbasic.com/gallery/view_pic.php?id=2136&gallery=&page=1 It seems impossible to me that such a beautiful scene could be created in Blitz! Oftentimes when I make games, everything looks out of place; nothing looks to be the same style as anything else. Tell me, what exactly is it that makes scenes like that look so nice? |
| ||
| Well the first thing to note is that that image was posted by JoshK, author of the mighty Leadwerks Engine, so that image presumably wasn't actually created in Blitz3D at all (Leadwerks was originally coded in BlitzMax, which is why you see it around here a lot). Although many of the effects needed for the scene are available through FastExtension. More relevant though, you totally hit the only important thing: everything looks out of place; nothing looks to be the same style as anything else. Art style is king. A unified style, balanced colour palette, and professionally composed scene looks good in any engine. That's why older games like Half-Life 2, Halo 1, Final Fantasy IX, Quake 2, etc. continue to look timeless and better than half the things available on the market to this day. |
| ||
| Thank you both. I'll take a look at this FastExtension thing. I do have a question; currently the game I'm working on is nature-oriented. It's fairly important that the nature in the game looks good. (FastExtension sample images below)    What specific features of FastExtension make these look so good? As for the modelling aspect, I am not a very good modeler. However, the things I can make are good enough, I believe. How exactly can I get nice looking shadows and lights? I've seen in the forums people talking about lightmapping and all that, and I've even tried a few to see how they work, but I can never get them to work! Is it that they export a "light texture" that is then applied to objects? If so, how do I load these "light textures" and apply them to the objects in my scene? Also, do you think any of the terrain in those pictures are Blitzterrain or meshes? Which do you think is better for shadows and lighting? Thanks |
| ||
| The quality of the art and art direction are one of the bigger things. A lot of what makes that screenshot work in the first screen is the color grading which isn't very well supported in b3d. Another thing that can make a huge difference is ambient occlusion which is very hard to do in realtime in b3d though you can bake it in. Some shading of the terrain would go a long way to smoothing out the overall look of the image to. |
| ||
| Simple answer- YES. Advise? Lightmaps are basically NEW texture maps that replace the old ones on your objects. They are calculated by the positions and intensities of virtual light sources in your scene. Often a custom file format is used (I haven't fathomed why). I prefer to let my object modeling program generate them for me. A good tool is important to every artist. I use 3D Studio Max 5 (oldie, but a goodie) You have to eventually settle on a lighting model for your scene that looks good. Non-static lighting (AND reflections AND shadows) are VERY SLOW on a computer and best avoided all together. There are lots of tricks. It's best to 'bake' these textures and make them the objects permanent paint job since the eye doesn't notice the sun's angle very much- until nightfall. I'm still new at this, so my sunset is a bit 'abrupt' when I reload my next set of textures for dusk, then nighttime soon after. I'm still playing around with trees. It's hard to be happy with them. And good luck with grass. |
| ||
..this one is B3D, I did ages ago..still looks good.. |
| ||
| Pretty Amazing....is there bump mapping on those or it isnt possible or would you it is possible do it for DX 9 Blitz 3D(which someone making library for it)? |
| ||
| On my shot, normalmaps are used, but not trough any external library..all is good old b3d...it was over 5 years ago I think, still, it looks nice.. |
| ||
| I think for GFX most important is lighting/lightmaps/shadows and good textures. Without shaders you can still achieve good results but I never got them running in miniB3D. But a good game doesn't need AAA graphics. At the moment I'm playing again Gothic 2 which has ridiculous graphics for today but still has a nice setting and feeling. It's most important to catch the player's soul, not only his eyes. Take a look what is possible with vanilla Blitz3D / miniB3D (check out my signature for sources) - some of my works from the last 10 years:           |
| ||
| when there is harmony betwin the elements a game will look good. |
| ||
| Be brave and make it look like a classic videogame and it'll look good, be a coward and make it look like what's popular now and it'll look bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQsjwOUnLdc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtMjEqVQjgc |
| ||
| Be brave and make it look like a classic videogame and it'll look good, be a coward and make it look like what's popular now and it'll look bad. ...But, making things look like classic video games *is* what's popular now?...<Error> A circular design dichotomy has forced this unit to overload and shut down... [/Error> |
   |