Interview Chris Avellone on time limits in games at Critical Path

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Tell me, are Arcanum's tiles and character animations a higher resolution than Fallout's? I have a feeling that'd be the cause for the "plastic" feel . . .

That's probably one of the main causes - more resolution but with the same amount of detail.

When you looked at Fallout closely you could see details all the way down to the pixels.
If you look at Arcanum, details end way before pixels start - so you could say that Arcanum looks bad largely due to the same reasons early 3D does - which is amusing if you consider stupid dolts holding arcanum visuals in high esteem but dismissing any and all 3D.

Then there is issue of tiles, sprites and areas using them not really conveying either splendor or squallor they should.

Sounds kind of like the uncanny valley. TL;DR version - low-res sprites and tiles don't try to look like real things. Comparably detailed high-res sprites and tiles try and fail.

Basically if what you can represent visually is limited by pixels, you will settle for a certain level of abstraction. A green blotch with a brown square beneath it represents a tree. A smaller brown square means its a bush. Since its just representing a tree you really don't care that it doens't look like one. Similarly, since it doesn't look like a tree, you don't really care that all the not-trees look the same.

Once you can start to represent things more naturalistically (in the sense of mimicking the physical world), then repetitiveness and missing detail becomes far more jarring, as you expect something different.

 

[DraQ]

Sounds kind of like the uncanny valley. TL;DR version - low-res sprites and tiles don't try to look like real things. Comparably detailed high-res sprites and tiles try and fail.

Basically if what you can represent visually is limited by pixels, you will settle for a certain level of abstraction. A green blotch with a brown square beneath it represents a tree. A smaller brown square means its a bush. Since its just representing a tree you really don't care that it doens't look like one. Similarly, since it doesn't look like a tree, you don't really care that all the not-trees look the same.

Once you can start to represent things more naturalistically (in the sense of mimicking the physical world), then repetitiveness and missing detail becomes far more jarring, as you expect something different.

I think it's actually simpler. Consider photographing a plastic tree. And low enough resolution and possibly colour depth you will no longer be able to see anything wrong with it, it will be indistinguishable from a photo of real tree at same fidelity level. Same applies to not actual photo, but renders. For non-realistic depictions it may apply as well as they may be instinctively acceptable as good for what they can be.

Now, when you increase the fidelity of presentation but not the fidelity of model, things get ugly, because they start to conspicuously differ from how they *should* look. You can even observe it for drawings - go to an online gallery and notice how often something that looks very promising as thumbnail will turn out to be just eew when zoomed in.

The thing is that Fallout looked pretty much as well as it possibly could. Arcanum failed to.

 

[Scruffy]

I see you both joined in 2007, the original 2011.

Man the fuck up, assholes.

you're a horse, you don't know things.