the one thing that popped out most in my mind is that id is making a "T"-rated game. "We don't need the hyperviolence," says Willits. "We're going in a different direction, but we're not stepping that far out of what we do. It is still a first-person shooter, after all." Are the blood baths a thing of the past as the team matures?

I wonder how much of that is a matter of Id's team reading the political tea leaves rather than a matter of the team 'maturing.' 

to those who follow the engine wars, is this entry in Nikolaus Gebhardt blog where he examines some of the technical matters in the lawsuit against Epic,

http://www.irrlicht3d.org/

And there are some details about the lighting model: According to Silicon Knights, lighting in UE3 was planned to be possible with 3 or 4 lights affecting each model, with some very low amount of precomputation for static lights. But then, according to Silicon Knights, "the prescribed lighting model for the Engine was to pre-calculate as much of the scene as possible and consolidate the light effects into three light vectors per vertex while lighting the character from a single point light that approximates the overall scene lighting..". Which is not that impressive, in my opinion.


Though from what I've seem in the tech details, it would seem Unreal 3 would have to be a more advanced engine than what is described in the lawsuit. You can fake a lot in a demo with prerenders scenery, but you can't fake dynamic shadows. 

what I've scene in the tech demos
not
what I've seem in the tech details  

 

"id is making a "T"-rated game. "We don't need the hyperviolence," says Willits."

- Please, teletubbies.

Oh-oh!!! Tinky-Win *BLAM* *BLAM* *smoke* 

id did commander keen, remember?
I liked the games back then.
No need for hyperviolence. Actually, I thought they'd leave it out earlier. 

I'm off to explore sth america for the next month and a half.

Release some maps so I can play them when I get back you lot :) 

Rhythm games: yes
Songs: As long the actions the player has to perform is well designed to match the music I think it matters less what kind music it actually is. For example I love osu tatake ouendan in the DS even if most of the songs are hardly something I'd listen to outside the game. 

"Hey we got a bazillion GB:s of textures in this small part of the game"

What I'm wondering is how much detail or how heavy compression they actually have to apply in the end to fit it on the game disc(s). 

"We don't need the hyperviolence," says Willits.
"Does it make the game more fun to have body parts flying around? Again, that goes back to our whole plan for what we want to do with Rage. If it doesn't add to the fun, we don't need it."

To me, it does add a little fun, it gives a more active response to your activity in the game. Petersen was insistent on the player being rewarded for shooting an imp with the sound of the shotgun, the death sound, the damage body and the blood spray. In Quake and such it is much more satisfying to gib someone with that splash damage than to just kill them, it is an extra oomph. I always found it kind of odd in Call of Duty and such, how I could be spraying a thousand rounds into someone, and just get 1 or 2 small red puffs and they would slump over, or have a grenade detonate under them and apparently not physically damage them, but magically kill them. You can argue that gore doesn't add to the fun, but it adds to the feeling of impact, much like dust kicking up from spraying a machinegun over the desert ground.

Not to get into this whole bit, but games like CoD and such that seemed goreless seemed to desensitize acts of violence more, because it displayed them as clean and rather insignificant. Compare that with Doom, Quake, Blood or... You can't not mention SoF/SoF2. There was no illusion that I was shooting people, with real bullets. They weren't cooperating with my fantasy of shooting them, they were being shot.

Anyways, yeah, I admire the sentiment of "if its not fun, why include it?", but there is something to be said about appropriate feedback for what you are doing in the game world. 

The visreal, engaging element of Quake is the violence. I recently turned off blood in Quake3 (no gibbing) and found the game a lot less engaging. Killing in a game world is fun - spraying your enemies across the scenery more so.

Granted in Quake1 you're looking at extremely low poly models with textures so lo-rez as to be offensive by current day standards, but even so, when that fiend attacks you know it wants to hurt you. With blood and gore this is underlined - either your reprisal or death of your avatar.

Undying was excellent on this by the way - the 'finish him' death scenes. My favourite was when the skeletons punched throught your chest and ripped out your heart.

Ok, I'm biased towards liking the violence - but it's what keeps me interested in this ten year old game.

I'd be bothered by this news item - id betraying thier origins - if they hadn't already done it years ago. 

have never heard before.

I have a friend who lives near by me, a family man, who is also an EMS (emergency ambulance if this acronym doesn't translate internationaly) worker and twice a month he is also a volanter firefighter. I go over his house often to play console games like Halo2 and Killzone. He is really my only contact to the console market of games.

He has an interesting take on violence in life and in video games. Of course, he has seen almost any grizzly thing imaginable, decapitations, sudden explosions causing bodily fragmentation, you name it and he takes
it in with nothing more than a shrug. The onliest thing that fucks with his head are the incidents where violent accidents injure involve kids.

Here is his take on video game violence: Densensitizing people to violence is a good thing. Video games are not likely to make people inclined to commit violence but instead people are likely to be able to deal with violence more effectively in the moments when they are suddenly confronted with it. People are more inclined to be less squeemish when giving aid to the injured if viscera and the like don't bother them. 

new map reviews posted today:

src: slime refinery complex (by JPL)
Q1SP Episode: Digs01-03 (9 maps) (by Digs)

http://underworld.planetquake.gamespy.com/index.html 

With the screenshots in the news secton.

Yep, I know whats in pipeline, but still - I reckon the page would look better with all reviews having a screenshot or two in the news 'title'. 

thanks for the input :) 

headthump: Of course I can't really tell for sure but I don't think having played some video games will have desensitized to any degree that would change the way I react if confronted with violence in reality. Maybe as games get more realistic any potential effect might become stronger.

ijed:
I'd be bothered by this news item - id betraying thier origins - if they hadn't already done it years ago.

Fine if you don't like what they do but talking about any kind of betrayal is just silly - they don't owe anyone anything. They're doing whatever they believe in and that's all they or anyone else should be doing. 

nice reviews 

It's a fairly immature position to take - the change from brash Doom1 slaughter to Lovecraftian Quake1 probably had nerds the world over bemoaning the change.

But I do miss the gruesome aspect of modern FPS - HL2 has horror, but it always feels clinical and too precise, never gratuitous or sinister. Although the headcrab guy that throws headcrabs was a touch of genius.

To get back to the topic of general abuse; I don't mind what id have become since thier humble origins, fuck knows they deserve it, hondas mala aside, but thier newest games all feel tired, to me at least. 

I don't play many modern FPS's - so there's probably a mountain of games I don't know about that do the gory, brash, ultraviolence that id wants to move away from.

Having said that, it seems like a very cynical move to increase thier market share. It the way of the world, but if your games are T then you have more customers.

It's like the difference between Evil Dead and Screams 1+ who cares how many more. Or Jason in space; fucking ridiculous, but with nice mainstreamed special fx. 

Uhm maybe they just don't feel like doing gore this time?

Your last post sounds like you just want gore for gores sake - however I think you touched on one important aspect in your earlier post:

To me, it does add a little fun, it gives a more active response to your activity in the game. Petersen was insistent on the player being rewarded for shooting an imp with the sound of the shotgun, the death sound, the damage body and the blood spray. In Quake and such it is much more satisfying to gib someone with that splash damage than to just kill them, it is an extra oomph. I always found it kind of odd in Call of Duty and such, how I could be spraying a thousand rounds into someone, and just get 1 or 2 small red puffs and they would slump over, or have a grenade detonate under them and apparently not physically damage them, but magically kill them. You can argue that gore doesn't add to the fun, but it adds to the feeling of impact, much like dust kicking up from spraying a machinegun over the desert ground.

Giving the player good and gratifying feedback for their actions is important, I don't see how it has to necessarily be in the form of gore though. 

I am advocating gore for the sake of it. I'm an adult, the issue of violence in games is less important to me since I don't have children. But when I do I won't let them play GTA, for example, at least until I judge that they have the moral and psycholigical maturity to deal with it.

But as an individual I want to see gory rewards for achieving in a game.

In the games I design I try to always reward the player, for any achievement, no matter how small. The best rewards are something funny or violent, because they resonate the strongest, with the most basic human instincts.

It sounds melodramatic but its true - when someone is playing your game / map you're setting it up so that they enjoy doing so. Gibbing a zombie or blowing its head off so that it wanders around on hands and knees looking for it are equally good rewards, but the second one requires much more work. And so the first becomes more common.

I enjoy violence in media; its a safe outlet for one of the most basic emotions and the protect the children nonsense spouted by such people as everyone's favourite idiot (JT) is like white noise.

Its just a shame to see a developer, long famous for thier aggressive style, taking the safe road in order to increase thier market share.

I spose I'm a bit pissed off about the mainstreaming of everything; it's a place where having a story for your game actively hurts it (for example), at least in the eyes of marketing and management. 

sell to a wider market. Lots of gamers are in the teen demographic, meaning they technically can't go into a store and buy any M-rated id games.

When a publisher pushes for a teen rated game, they want to sell to more people. There's never any other concern. id is likely the same way. 

could be just growing up.
The guys have kids themselves now and don't find excessive gore as fucking cool as it used to be. Sigh.
Why does everybody demand gore from them? It's not as if they have always done it. They did three dooms and three quakes with gore and that's it, move on! 

gore is awesome 

is like the Old Grey mare -- it ain't what it used to be. Back when Doom and Quake were first around it was something new, disturbing and unlike most other games I personally had ever seen (outside of The Immortal, which was one of the goriest Genesis games ever). It sent a signal that this wasn't some kiddie game, wasn't some puff piece. But that has been played to death now, with everyone else following suit, so why not take the other side of the road now?