HoTS Portaits and Wireframes

[Cotcan]

So if graphics make a good game, then why is Minecraft doing so well? Maybe its not the graphics. Hint. Hint. The main people who say graphics = good game are Halo, CoD, etc players. Why do you think they rereleased Halo 1 again, but with better graphics?

[TheEconomist]

Games with longer development times and less funding have had better graphics

What? Alan Wake? That's about the only thing even remotely close. Very few games aer developed for close to a decade, and even fewer actually have advanced engines. Alan Wake is one of the very, very few exceptions. The crucial difference, however, is that Alan Wake's engine only became so advanced a few years before release (about 2005) and was done by the very people who laid down the foundations for all current-gen graphics engines.. A game like Alan Wake can change its engine many times with relatively few problems. A game like StarCraft, however, needs a constant engine for the sake of the almost infinite amount of iteration they go through.

Either way, its the exception to the rule.

here did you see me use StarEdit?

It's all the same. I was using StarEdit as an umbrella term for SCBW tools. My point is that, you say that no self respecting person would use such out-dated tools, yet you use one of the most outdated. Hypocritical.

[Quirel]

So if graphics make a good game, then why is Minecraft doing so well? Maybe its not the graphics. Hint. Hint. The main people who say graphics = good game are Halo, CoD, etc players. Why do you think they rereleased Halo 1 again, but with better graphics?

Anniversary edition, optimized to run on the Xbox 360.

They didn't do a very good job.

[Pr0nogo]

So if graphics make a good game, then why is Minecraft doing so well? Maybe its not the graphics. Hint. Hint. The main people who say graphics = good game are Halo, CoD, etc players. Why do you think they rereleased Halo 1 again, but with better graphics?

Graphics do not make a game, but they should not be ignored. SCII ignored and eschewed quality graphics when they had ample time and funding to make them, use a quality engine, and still make it compatible (or more compatible than their current engine, even) with older systems.

It's all the same. I was using StarEdit as an umbrella term for SCBW tools. My point is that, you say that no self respecting person would use such out-dated tools, yet you use one of the most outdated. Hypocritical.

So you cut out part of my post and responded to the one that didn't address your actual claim. Good job! Maybe I should start doing that, too.

[TheEconomist]

Would still like an example of when a game in development as long as StarCraft II has had great graphics.

[Pr0nogo]

Just off the top of my head: Duke Nukem Forever had way better graphics than SCII, and took more than twice the developmental time (15 years to SCII's 7). I can't speak for the gameplay of the game (other than, it sucks), but if you'd rather an all-around better-quality game that took longer, consider Team Fortress 2's 9-year developmental cycle*, or L.A. Noire's 7 (which matches SCII's time in the "studio" and still vastly surpasses it elsewhere). Fuck, even that 360 launch title Prey was better-looking than SCII, and that was released in 2006 (after 11 years). I almost feel like talking about Too Human but that game played worse than Dante's fucking Inferno.

*at this point I've started looking shit up

I would really have preferred to just skip to here instead of being smartasses to one another (which I'm as guilty of as you are), so maybe in the future you can just tell me what you want me to respond to rather than trying to get me to post even less intelligently than I do already, and we'll have a better time. You hinted at it with Alan Wake but I was evidently still at a loss, else I would have just responded with this post earlier.

[TheEconomist]

1) None of those games had true development cycles of that length. They were rebooted NUMEROUS times with almost nothing from the previous incarnations used. You would know that if you had researched instead of Google listed. Since this is about graphics, the point is even more clear. These games received their graphics engine updates a year or two before release (i.e. Prey, I followed its development.) Besides, Duke Nukem Forever was universally panned for its out-dated graphics while StarCraft II was almost universally praised for its art design (by critics).

2) Notice that you named almost all FPS. FPS naturally have better graphics because they arent as demanding. Comparing the two is like comparing tiny-space shooters like F.E.A.R. or Gears Of War to Arma II. I remember when WarCraft III came out I was surprised that my old POS computer couldn't played it despite being able to play Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 Arena past 60 FPS. Likewise, I had an old 7800GS computer that could play all of the games you mentioned max with no problems, yet stuttered like fucking crazy in StarCraft II. Not because StarCraft II is unoptimized, but because YOU CANNOT COMPARAE FPS TO RTS.

3) Prey, Duke Nukem Forever, Too Human, Team Fortress 2 all used premade engines, knocking years and years off their development cycle. Horrible examples. The first three existed only as basic outlines for most of the development process then, got rebooted and quickly pushed out in a couple of years with premade engines. Plus, Too Human played like shit.

4) Again, StarCraft 2 takes an iterative process. Don't feel like rehashing this.

5) If StarCraft II had gone the Dawn of War II route (OMFG! TEH GRAPHICS!) it would've failed. I don't know if you were here in the beginning but people used to bitch that there was too much visual information in StarCraft 2 for competitive play. If you had been the lead designer, StarCraft II would have been the bust of the century.

6) Blizzard tries to reach as large an audience as possible. This is good for eSports. Having it your way, the audience probably would've been cut down considerably.

Basically, you have no argument; just emotional outbursts. Regardless of how you feel about the graphics, as you'v shown yourself, examples of games with long development cycles that have graphics that stand up are the exception, not the rule. In fact, I can count the number of them on one hand with several fingers to spare.

[Church]

good grief

[Pr0nogo]

To say that all my examples are invalidated because they did not have "TRVE DEVELOPMENT CYCLES" is retarded. SCII didn't have a true developmental cycle of seven years, either. Most of your so-called argument can be applied to StarCraft II; I don't even have to respond to most of your post because I could just edit half of the nouns and it'd be applicable to the game you're supporting.

Dawn of War II didn't have stellar graphics. Don't know where you saw that. Warhammer 40k is niche in nature, which is why I didn't even bring it up. For all your talk of not being able to compare RTS titles to any other titles, you ignore that Dawn of War II wasn't even a real-time strategy, and that you can use the several fingers you still have to count the other RTS titles released in the past decade that weren't by Blizzard. Armies of Exigo? Okay. Command & Conquer? Sure. Anything else? Nope.

StarCraft II uses a number of premade graphics components (Havok physics, for example, which is also why the physics are horrid). Invalidating my arguments because some use premade engines is bullshit because StarCraft II uses tonnes of premade stuff - hell, half of its gameplay is just ported from the original StarCraft, a good amount of the rest is ported from WarCraft III, and whatever's left was probably ported from elsewhere. The only things StarCraft II didn't have premade were its graphics engine and its horrible plot, neither of which leave me thinking, 'oh yeah that took a while'.

StarCraft II isn't actually optimised, believe it or not. Its optimisation is pretty thin and that's why most computers can run way more demanding games with better framerates. This also means the audience that can play StarCraft II without performance issues is very limited - cutting into both eSports and sales. Many eSports players continue to play the predecessor; the only reason organisations like KeSPA still run with SCII is because of flash and logo - the same reason critics gave the game high scores and the same reason so many people bought it and maintain that they enjoy playing it.

I don't think you understand the nature of StarCraft II, or the gaming industry. It used to be simple; make a good game and advertise it well. Now it's just the "advertise it well" part. Eccentrics don't make a good game, and that's all that SCII has - it doesn't even have moderate graphics to boot. Most indie titles released last year look better than this. Maybe you just need a reality check; StarCraft II is a bad title, with a piss-poor storyline, horrible attention to lore, disgusting worldbuilding, a low multiplayer skill ceiling, and boring, bland, bad graphics. This discussion is much like reason and science versus religion and blind faith; one is obviously true (in this case, reason and science), and the other is only believable to complete idiots and wishful thinkers.

Anyone else who says otherwise is simply wrong.

[Hawki]

I don't think you understand the nature of StarCraft II, or the gaming industry. It used to be simple; make a good game and advertise it well. Now it's just the "advertise it well" part. Eccentrics don't make a good game, and that's all that SCII has - it doesn't even have moderate graphics to boot. Most indie titles released last year look better than this. Maybe you just need a reality check; StarCraft II is a bad title, with a piss-poor storyline, horrible attention to lore, disgusting worldbuilding, a low multiplayer skill ceiling, and boring, bland, bad graphics. This discussion is much like reason and science versus religion and blind faith; one is obviously true (in this case, reason and science), and the other is only believable to complete idiots and wishful thinkers.

Anyone else who says otherwise is simply wrong.

Pot calling the kettle black anyone?

If you want to state x vs. y engine, then that's a fact. If you want to go into semantics such as multiplayer skill, storylines and whatever else, you're getting into the realm of opinion. Heck, just looking at Wikipedia/Metacritic scores, and you'll see how different many opinions are to yours.

And of course, another difference is that I don't call people "idiots" for happening to have different opinions.