So unless you're working for profit it's essentially a waste of time?

The way it's going, I'm thinking reading this thread will soon become a waste of time.



Also, major at hassat for not even using the fucking first release of HDTP.

@ Jonas and AEMer; Yup. Which proves how irrelevant the question was. Pretty much every leasure activity is a "waste of time". Same for gaming. It's fun, but it's to kill some time.

@ DDL; Like I said, not really need it. I've only heard about the demo around the time I heard of TNM, and decided to just wait it out for the full release. It'll be nice to play DX/TNM with NV and HDTP though in the future .

@ DDL
Well you can't just ignore Hassat because he has a different point of view.

@ Hassat
Well, my point with the question wasn't really to delve into that; it was to examine whether the project has worth.

If I'd thought of it earlier, I would've rephrased the question rather than ask a followup, because I don't really think it's about whether or not someone is wasting their time (that discussion is fairly useless, I agree), and that's not really what I wanted to know.

What I wanted to know was, do you think what the HDTP people are doing is worthwile. Is it a good thing they're doing it. Does it result in quality, and a better experience for the people playing Deus Ex. Do you respect the concept of upgrading textures, and do you respect the people putting in the hours to do the work?

Because if so, then better graphics surely has some worth.

Depends on the gamer. Me, not so much.
But I know I am a rarity in that case. For most (think that angry Australian reviewer who's name I forgot who mentioned "he could barely get past the blocky look of Deus Ex") it definitely is worthwhile though.

I'm one of those people who don't bother with Morrowind graphic packs and just play as it is... so yeah, color me insane

Not insane, just massively missing out. To me, games are the sum of many many parts, and to not appreciate the look of a game is similar to playing with the sound off - you disregard a whole sensory dimension of the game experience. There are so many different reasons to love videogames, and one of them is the pure aesthetic experience of it. I'm not saying you're wrong, or a worse human being, just that I think my game experience is better than yours.

I have a couple of friends who can't listen to the lyrics in songs, because they simply can't concentrate on it; they listen to music purely for the melody. There's nothing wrong with that, but I can't help but think they must be missing out on those occasional flashes of perfection I experience when a really powerful lyric is paired with a particularly moving part of the music - everything just comes together and creates this affecting synergy that can get stuck in my head and lift my spirit for days afterwards. Doesn't it suck to be unable to enjoy something that's intended to be a major part of the game experience, and into which hundreds of thousands of man-hours have been invested?

I don't know, since I am exactly like your friends. Just listening to music, usually unable to comprehend the lyrics spoken.

Though on the other hand, one could wonder, aren't you missing out, if we are able to appreciate the music so much more than the sum of the parts?

I... don't really understand what you mean. You mean because I can appreciate lyrics, melody, and the way lyrics and melody comes together, I must somehow be missing out compared to always focusing entirely on the melody? Eh...

I think the answer is a pretty clear no, there.

The disadvantage of listening to lyrics is that it becomes impossible to listen to about 95% of all music. That means even music with a great melody become unbearable. Same for games, I guess. Enjoying graphics is great because good graphics make a good game great, but it also makes a good game with bad graphics bad. And I myself prefer many older games (with terrible graphics) to new ones. This has nothing to do with nostalgia, as I've been gaming only since, say, the year 2000. Only in 2005 I discovered games like Tales of Phantasia (Deus Ex as well obviously) and others that were a lot more fun and emotionally moving than any other game released around that time. So yes, some old games are still absolutely fantastic if you can look past the graphics, better even than many modern games with great graphics.

I'm not sure Jonas's example was the most apt though: a more analagous comparison would be Jonas listening to a track where all the elements are crystal clear, and hassat listening to a track where all the elements are crystal clear except the lead guitar, which is scratchy and popping like a crazy motherfucker, and claiming that's fine, since "the bassline is all you really need".

It may be TRUE, but it'd still unarguably be a better experience if the rest of the elements were as good as they could be.

Unless (back to non-comparison land), you know, you actively dislike better graphics.

Basically the question was... while you can enjoy the parts, we might enjoy the melody part more than you do these parts. So are we at a loss, or you?

Philosophical!

No. No no no. For fucks sake, people. The issue isn't fucking musical appreciation, and the issue is NOT "OMG BAED GFX MAEK TEH GAME UMPLAYABLES", either. It never was.

The question is a definition of 'better'. I personally think that if a game is great, and has shitty graphics, it's still a great game. If someone makes the exact same game only with better graphics, that is BETTER. It does not make the original shit by doing so, as this is not a zero sum game.

To that end, I see absolutely no reason why anyone would NOT use a nicer-looking version of a game (hardward limitations aside). It seems pointlessly self-restrictive, like deliberately not getting better glasses because "hey the world looks good enough even when blurred".

Thanks DDL. Sorry for almost derailing the thread with a half-assed analogy.

I will say this though, and it hurts me to give ammunition to the "everything was better in the 90's" angry-old-men-trapped-in-young-men's-bodies brigade, but game development has some characteristics of a zero sum game. If you're operating at Bethesda's level, you have time and money to get everything right, but even at that level you don't have infinite resources. The problem is, when you add more graphical fidelity, implementing new features becomes harder - for example, if you want to add a new arrow type in Baldur's Gate, you can just use the same arrow graphics but give them another name and other stats - it's all code and system design. If you want to add a new arrow type in Skyrim, you need a different model for the arrow on the first-person bows, a different model for the arrow in the third-person bows, and a different model for the quiver (all of which must be carefully constructed to fit all the bow models and all the character outfits without clipping.

There is some truth to the idea that higher graphical fidelity tends to reduce the feature depth of a game because every new feature takes more work to implement. It's similar to how Torment had several books worth of dialogue which probably took far less time to write and implement than the smaller amount of fully voiced, animated, and scripted dialogue in Mass Effect. It's not completely a zero-sum game, and too many people vastly exaggerate the inverse proportional relationship between graphics and feature scope/depth. For now, contrary to what the RPG Codex segment vehemently claims, I'd say a lot of the added complexity in games has been handled by staffing up instead of reducing depth, but the truth is you can only staff up so far before you're spending too much money on a game compared to how many copies you're probably going to sell. AAA studios routinely have 200-300 people working there now, and a large part of that is that every last bit of a modern game must be properly supported by high-quality 3D art and animation.

I have to say I agree with DDL. If everything else is constant, than better graphics -> better game.
In real life however, we can rarely hold everything else constant.

Take HDTP(as an example). It has better graphics, but one might argue that the art design has gotten worse, or that it no longer fits with the rest of the game. As such: the improvement is cancelled out, or overshadowed by the reduction from the other things.

I should also say that I personally like everything in HDTP except for the new models. Gunther looks so out of place

Well, Jonas _did_ say that he thought his gaming experience was better than Hassats.

I'm not sure that necessarily follows. Do you enjoy solving Sudoku's more because you can solve harder ones than someone only solving easier ones? Do you enjoy playing Starcraft more because you're in the masters league and not the bronze?

Or conversely, do you enjoy games more because you play on the easiest difficulty setting, thereby circumventing challenge but (probably) play more games because you can wrap them quicker?

I think the answer is, if you disregard graphics completely, and it doesn't matter to you at all, you're definitely exposed to way less of the content of the game. Same thing with music and lyris. You're exposed to less of the content.

That doesn't necessarily result in a worse experience....just one with less stuff in it. But there's a ton of ways in which to bring _more_ stuff into an experience...a better understanding of game theory will bring _that_ into most games. If you know a lot about the band playing a song, _that_ comes into play, even if you don't listen to the lyrics...so just because one disregards the graphics doesn't mean the experience will necessarily have less quantity of stuff inthere.

But graphics is one of the things that game developers excercise a lot of control over, and as such, disregarding it is one of the ways of avoiding meticulously _designed_ content...which can then lead to a worse qualitative experience.

Does that make sense?