Playing Deus Ex for the First Time

[ggrotz]

As someone who's familiar with other game engines, does Unreal 1 support LOD models? I ask because I wondered if this version of the Unreal engine handled LOD changes. If not, that explains why the default cans are so rough.

I'm not the authority on such things, but as I understand it, however the mesh is created dictates what it looks like. HDTP replaces the hexagonal mesh with a circular one. Since it's the same engine (for the moment), I can only think the poor choice of mesh is responsible for the looks of the default soda can. Especially since you can mask the old graphics over it and make it look tons better even without redoing the graphics as was done in HDTP.

First, do any of you think you could do screenshot side-by-side comparisons that compare:

Also, it'd probably be good for the advancement of HDTP and the New Vision Mod as a general matter (and maybe be for the benefit of the mod-community, generally) if side-by-side shots were made available.

I thought that's what I posted above? There's some general screen shot samples around somewhere that cover more than the Liberty Island dock. Such things are premature with HDTP since it hasn't even seen a full release, but know that significant graphic upgrades are there. Basically put, NV is for graphics in the DX world itself, HDTP is for 3-dimensional objects in the world.

[DDL]

Assuming LOD means what I think it does (i.e. increasing mesh simplification at increasing distance) It does use LOD, and sometimes in fact the LOD-scaling is far far too aggressive for our liking (the new personal computer, for instance, has to have it effectively disabled, or the screen disappears when you're more than 20 feet away). This also highlights a problem with LOD systems: the more complicated the mesh, the more awkward the simplification can potentially be. It's very difficult to fuck-up LOD scaling on a cube or a hexagaon. Less easy on a fully modelled crate with reinforced corner brackets and cross-bracing...

Really though, DX was overambitious to the point of barely holding it together, when it was released: the unreal engine is not a terribly efficient one, and levels like liberty island could make even high-spec comps (of the time) chug a bit. The last thing they wanted to do was add complications with mesh rendering too...

[MercWithMouth]

Really though, DX was overambitious to the point of barely holding it together, when it was released: the unreal engine is not a terribly efficient one, and levels like liberty island could make even high-spec comps (of the time) chug a bit. The last thing they wanted to do was add complications with mesh rendering too...

"Overambitious" would simply be a synonym for "masterpiece", in this case.

[DaveW]

Unreal Engine 1 doesn't support LOD in the way you're probably thinking. As DDL says, it's engine-driven - it uses a 'basic' algorithm to scale down the polygon count, which is completely hit and miss. A modern game engine uses different models at set distances, each created by the artist.

But to answer the original question; the reason the cans are hexagonal is because they were modeled that way. Every polygon was crucially important back then.

[MercWithMouth]

A modern game engine uses different models at set distances, each created by the artist.

That sounds extremely tedious. I'm amazed game studios are able to meet costs, much less thrive, considering all the work involved. Especially if they create models over and over even at "distances."

[Jonas]

Well the process is partially automated, but the main thing is that there's an artist there who can view the result and polish it up if it looks like shit.

[DDL]

Must be an interesting job: it WILL look like shit, obviously, because it's a low-def model...so you'd in effect be trying to make it look like the right KIND of shit.

"Ok, I took your model and tweaked it. It still looks fucking awful, but NOW when you view it from far far away, it looks great, rather than still fucking awful."

[Jonas]

Kind of like being an artist on World of Warcraft probably. All their art has the same kind of detail you'd expect from distant trees in a game like Skyrim, but it still typically looks really good. Must take a fair bit of skill to make such low-detail assets look so nice.

[gamer0004]

Which is why is always say: good artists are far more important than good tech.

[Jonas]

Ideally what you want is tech that makes it easier for your artists to be good.

For example, too much effort goes into making the work of awesome artists show up right in Deus Ex. Too much effort goes into jerry rigging half-assed solutions to texture issues that could be done with shaders.

Do you think our composers got more or less effective at doing their jobs when we implemented Jim's DXOgg player so they didn't have to use old tracking technology to set up their music? Yeah.

Technology can and should be made to work for the artists. A good artist can do great work despite crappy tech, but it's not the best way to make use of their time.

[gamer0004]

Sure, but I'm referring to graphics tech, not creation software, and your examples are extreme. What I mean is that it's better to have very good texture artists doing their job than to have not so great artists doing the same textures but with normal mapping and all that jazz, and that it's better to have good textures and animations than to have ambient occlusion.

[Jonas]

Sure but that's hardly a revelation, it's like saying it's better to have a great cook in a bad kitchen than a bad cook in a great kitchen, what else is new

Also it's even better to have good artists making good textures with normal mapping and ambient occlusion! This part of game development is not a zero sum game, normal maps pretty much make themselves (I shit you not, you put your diffuse map into NDO2 or Crazybump and the program shits out a normal map, it's not exactly a tremendous effort) and ambient occlusion is a programmer thing that also doesn't take time from the artists.

My examples aren't extreme, they perfectly demonstrate that a lot of the tech that goes into modern games actually make things easier for artists. Ricemanu and I spent a whole day fucking around with the new weapon scope textures for TNM trying to find the right tricks in Photoshop and Unreal to get it to show up right - with a modern engine we could've done it in 10 minutes and it would've looked much better too.

[Hassat Hunter]

On the other hand, making a map takes much longer with all the new tech.
So they still need more people to shift out games (that as result only last 8 hours though), thus higher costs, thus higher risks if not selling well.

[DaveW]

A modern game engine uses different models at set distances, each created by the artist.

That sounds extremely tedious. I'm amazed game studios are able to meet costs, much less thrive, considering all the work involved. Especially if they create models over and over even at "distances."

It's fairly easy to do, you can tweak models a lot in modern 3D packages without trashing the UV's meaning no extra work there. In general, cylinders get less sides and small details disappear (because you can't really see it at a distance, so it doesn't need to be rendered.)For a reasonably complex environment asset it probably only takes about half an hour to do LOD models - which is significantly less than the time it took to make the asset in the first place.


On modern game art, it's a lot easier to make good looking stuff nowadays - which means it's a hell of a lot harder to make your work stand out. Normal maps are entirely automated, one way or another (either through Crazybump or baking normals from a high poly mesh) - so anyone can do that. There's a certain stage in modelling where your stuff looks as good as everyone else's -more skilled modelers might be more efficient, but their stuff doesn't look any better. Creating modern texture maps is mostly a case of sucking out all the lighting information from photos and putting it together, which most people can do quite well.

So basically, a lot of crap artists now look like good artists. And most call themselves 'environment artists' nowadays to get away with modelling easy stuff like crates and barrels. This is why there's such fierce competition for game art jobs - because there's just so many people that are just as good as each other.

[Jonas]

On the other hand, making a map takes much longer with all the new tech.
So they still need more people to shift out games (that as result only last 8 hours though), thus higher costs, thus higher risks if not selling well.

I had an exquisitely sarcastic rebuttal written up about all games apparently only lasting 8 hours now, but it was needlessly antagonistic, so we'll skip that part. Thing is, the increased costs of level design aren't down to any demands of new technology, it's mainly down to computers being able to handle much more stuff at the same time, and creating and placing all that stuff takes longer than it would to create and place less stuff.

It seems not everyone universally agrees that more detail is a good thing, but in my own personal opinion, it's significantly more rewarding to create something that looks fantastic than not. If you give me a choice between on the one hand creating a game level from start to finish and having it look like... well like it was created by a game designer, or on the other hand designing it and then handing it over to professional environment artists and have it come back looking fucking extraordinary, I will definitely choose the latter. I'm not the sort of egotist who will sacrifice quality in the end product for the sake of my own ego (I'm another sort of egotist).

I don't remember precisely the first time a game level made me stop to just admire the beauty of it, but it was probably some time in the middle of the last decade. It took a certain level of artistic detail to get to the point where that sort of purely aesthetic experience was possible, and I wouldn't want to trade that in for anything.

Even the modern games that you may think are visually impressive despite being very technically simple probably use much more of the modern technology than you think. I'll bet Limbo is full of custom shader code.