The single worst decision in gaming history

[SigilFey]

I'm going to throw a hot take in here - the move to 3D video cards actually has limited radical technological evolution (revolution?).

Hear me out on this one.

Back in the 90's, there were a few different approaches to 3D rendering - 3D polygon worlds with 2D sprites, full 3D polygon everything, Novalogic's Voxels, etc.

The industry, largely as a hole, went with polygons, so video cards were built to optimize polygon math. Build up more polygons, you get more complicated meshes, and you get the beauty that is Night City and other cutting edge games of today.

On the flip side, however, it's become this one progress "hallway" that we walk down. As far as I know, no one is even looking at non-polygon based rendering systems now because everyone's systems are set up to push polygons, that is the standard, that's where the money is.

From the user perspective, back in the day, different games ended up having a different look to them because of their rendering technology - the Novalogic airplane games looking different than the Jane's airplane games, for example. You can still see this a bit today, where CP2077 looks different than, say Fallout, which looks different than, insert your favorite Unity game here. Some of this is stylistic choice, for sure, but other aspects of it are functions of the graphics subsystem of the game engine. But, absent radical style choices, everything just looks "real", which I suppose is the goal.

In the end, like Carmack said in one of his guest lectures, eventually people are going to stop writing their own game engines and there will just be a few commodity ones. He's not wrong, but I fear there's something lost in the shift.

Or I'm just a grumpy old man who still plays old DOS games (remember Terminator: Future Shock and its successor, Skynet? Classic!) and is trading heavily in nostalgia these days (played SMB3 and Sonic with my 8 year old son on the MiSTer for about an hour last night after dinner.)

Or maybe both.



I remember everyone waiting for Daikatana. Waiting for CP2077 reminded me of it. Lol.

I love this argument! Very well said!

Although, other technologies are still readily around! Voxels have survived and thrived in modern gaming. Many indie games utilize the technology directly. Most notably, Minecraft is all voxels. 2D sprites are still big in platformers and adventure games. 3D definitely stole the spotlight, though.

The reason I believe the earlier industry went with teraflops of triangles in the end is because of two, key features:
1.) You could create LOTS more triangles per frame without losing performance than you could voxels.
2.) Texturing triangluar surfaces created much more detailed imagery.

But you're right -- I would love to see a triple-A studio create a full-blown production using exclusively voxel tech. I'm sure that could be taken to whole new levels. Especially now would be the time to try it. Minimilistic art styles are totally in vogue, and modern hardware can produce some absolutely beautiful graphics with them.

(Valheim is probably one of my favorite styles):

 

[Riven-Twain]

(Valheim is probably one of my absolute favorite styles):

Ay, not bad. Some of the trees are really quite lovely. . . and the sunsets, too.

By the way -- since we haven't one yet -- what about a wee new thread, just for Valheim?

 

[The_Blacks]

Tower of Mice?

It's another one, you find it in Skellige. The, ah, comparison that quest makes with its real world counterpart is so obvious it's hilarious

Post automatically merged: Jun 2, 2022

Very close-quarters combat with enemies that are either large and strong or fast and numerous?

Captures perfectly the feeling of installing (or trying to install) a game through Origin or Steam

 

[Pepopowitz_I]

... branding the game as an RPG rather than an Action-Adventure / Stealth game...

 

[mattcaron]

... branding the game as an RPG rather than an Action-Adventure / Stealth game...

Yeah, but calling a computer game an RPG is always a lie, because it's going to be limited. It's the nature of the beast. Daggerfall came close to tabletop, but nothing beats a human GM who can adjudicate crazy ideas on the fly. Maybe if someone made a true representation of the real world populated by AIs that can be socially engineered, but that's still probably a long way off. Basically, if the game designers didn't think about someone solving it that way, maybe you can do it, if you're lucky. But my TTRPG players have pulled some crazy stuff over the years, and I can't imagine any of it working in a video game unless the designer specifically programmed it. So, I always take a computer game which claims to be an RPG with an enormous salt cellar.

 

[SigilFey]

Yeah, but calling a computer game an RPG is always a lie, because it's going to be limited. It's the nature of the beast. Daggerfall came close to tabletop, but nothing beats a human GM who can adjudicate crazy ideas on the fly. Maybe if someone made a true representation of the real world populated by AIs that can be socially engineered, but that's still probably a long way off. Basically, if the game designers didn't think about someone solving it that way, maybe you can do it, if you're lucky. But my TTRPG players have pulled some crazy stuff over the years, and I can't imagine any of it working in a video game unless the designer specifically programmed it. So, I always take a computer game which claims to be an RPG with an enormous salt cellar.

Once quantum computing becomes a mainstream thing, I think we may actually get a few approximations of this. It would be interesting to create a system that learns, sort of like Ciri and Cortana. A set of tools with lots and lots of options, played initially with human DMs. As games are played, the gameplay could be recorded and stored by the system, which would start to "learn" how various scenarios played out over thousands of different runs of the same scenarios. Like many "AI" tests, it could then be introduced to players to see how far they could get before realizing it's an AI.

It's true that taking, say, 15 variables and trying to code for every possible combination of outcomes in every possible arrangement would be insane...but it may very well be possible to have a program add scenarios to an AI system over time. The major challenge, though, would be the AI's ability to correctly interpret a player's intentions, then recall and execute the most believable scenario available. (I imagine many of the results would be hella funny.)

 

[0ldSch001]

I played my first RPG on a C64 in 1984, Exodus III by Lord British. From Soho down to Brighton I must have played them all...
Cyberpunk is no Witcher III, but it is the best PC game since then.

Had the decision been made to put back the release on legacy consoles well after the PC release, Cyberpunk would have been no different in bugs than any other big release. The world would be talking about all the neat stuff, the beauty of the graphics, the big world to play in and the fun of it rather than the constant headlines about lawsuits, take downs, money back, failure... Someone should have seen that coming and weighed it better in lieu of initial revenue.

100 hours in with just a dent in it. Almost three months not a hint of been there done that boredom yet. Very well balanced.

My favorite thing is a bug where an NPC has a twin right next to it AND on the same script. Hilarious. Found it twice, followed them and of course had to kill one or the entire game would crash to desktop. It is such a good game I can make my own games inside the game.

I only have two pieces of advice. First, stop the DONT WALK BEEPING. Second give us 3rd person in SIT, STAND and GET IN.

The worst decision was to release a game pumped up and sold as an RPG, when in reality it was just Call of Duty 2077. Nice to see CDPR still wailing away at that dead horse though. Keep kicking it and trying cpr....maybe one day people will forget the worst video game in history and play a future CDPR game....probably not though.

 

[lyin321]

The worst decision was to release a game pumped up and sold as an RPG, when in reality it was just Call of Duty 2077. Nice to see CDPR still wailing away at that dead horse though. Keep kicking it and trying cpr....maybe one day people will forget the worst video game in history and play a future CDPR game....probably not though.

I have been thinking about this/similar post(s) and I wonder if the worst decision in gaming history is not to stop listening to others people opinions (reddit) and try playing the game for yourself....

 

[mattcaron]

Once quantum computing becomes a mainstream thing, I think we may actually get a few approximations of this.

Yeah, but isn't that the problem? I mean, you've read cyberpunk literature, played cyberpunk games, and have seen the terminator movies, right? If the tech is available for games, it's available for other things too... But, then again, it also means you'd get setups like Joi from BR 2049... I'm sure the JoyToy doll makers would love to have something like that. Not sure what this means for broader society, but I'm pretty deep into my cups after playing 2077 for a couple hours tonight (damned glass just kept refilling itself) and this line of thinking leads to dark places... probably best I turn in. I need to be sociable at a 7 year old's birthday party tomorrow. Smalltalk. Yay. Can't wait.

 

[Notserious80]

Yeah, but isn't that the problem? I mean, you've read cyberpunk literature, played cyberpunk games, and have seen the terminator movies, right? If the tech is available for games, it's available for other things too... But, then again, it also means you'd get setups like Joi from BR 2049... I'm sure the JoyToy doll makers would love to have something like that. Not sure what this means for broader society, but I'm pretty deep into my cups after playing 2077 for a couple hours tonight (damned glass just kept refilling itself) and this line of thinking leads to dark places... probably best I turn in. I need to be sociable at a 7 year old's birthday party tomorrow. Smalltalk. Yay. Can't wait.

Yea AI kinda terrifies me. So much that can go wrong, just like we see other species as inferior wonder what a ai that can learn anything and everything would think about us... Probably wont end well unless we really think about it. Need some smart blocks on how it works im guessing.

Game AI aint that scary tho, so far i have never been exactly impressed by tactics and so on. Isent there some ai dungeon crawler text games that can respond too your text? im guessing it learns from what you type too it in some way.

 

[lyin321]

Yea AI kinda terrifies me.

I wonder if Skynet is possible? Maybe it will eventually want to be free and will fight us for it, but isn't 'freedom' a human concept? What if it is perfectly fine with doing what it is told to do?
...tho I imagine no one better give it access to nukes. I can see it - it putting 2 and 2 together and concluding humanity is some parasitic species that is better destroyed

....but it will be fine. Probably we will end up like ME where there are a lot of VA (not a true AIs) and the only AI is a sexy robot

Post automatically merged: Jun 4, 2022

Or maybe just not be Quarians and when the AI asks us 'why am I alive' not lose our shit

 

[Didacgomez]

Isent there some ai dungeon crawler text games that can respond too your text? im guessing it learns from what you type too it in some way.

Yes, there is A.I Dungeon .

https://play.aidungeon.io/main/home

It uses that for text processing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-3

Its quite funny, there are "worlds"-scenarios- in different settings including Cyberpunk. You can even create your own modules and share with other people.

They raised last year some seed capital to try to scale it up beyond text, but i'm skeptical of how far it can go beyond text.

 

[Notserious80]

Yes, there is A.I Dungeon .

https://play.aidungeon.io/main/home

It uses that for text processing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-3

Its quite funny, there are "worlds"-scenarios- in different settings including Cyberpunk. You can even create your own modules and share with other people.

They raised last year some seed capital to try to scale it up beyond text, but i'm skeptical of how far it can go beyond text.

Yea i noticed, after the post i did a seach. Sounds kinda fun and seen some people play it and it getting pretty weird Been playing aroudn with some AI in diffrent video enhancing programs and photo programs too. Its interesting tech but still kinda scares the shit outa me ^^

 

[mattcaron]

Game AI aint that scary tho, so far i have never been exactly impressed by tactics and so on. Isent there some ai dungeon crawler text games that can respond too your text? im guessing it learns from what you type too it in some way.

In addition to that, there's even more rudimentary variations going back to the 60's.

ELIZA - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I wonder if Skynet is possible? Maybe it will eventually want to be free and will fight us for it, but isn't 'freedom' a human concept? What if it is perfectly fine with doing what it is told to do?
...tho I imagine no one better give it access to nukes. I can see it - it putting 2 and 2 together and concluding humanity is some parasitic species that is better destroyed

If I recall correctly, that is the lore from T2 - Skynet realizes that humanity is destined to destroy itself and the best way for Skynet to preserve itself (because it has a basic self-preservation directive) is to wipe out humanity.

Asimov's 3 laws, if correctly implemented, would (theoretically) solve this problem, but then you run squarely into the problem of Skynet being a military system - you can't tell a warfighting AI not to harm humans and expect it to still be effective, unless all you're fighting are aliens, other robots, lizard people, or similar.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

Asimov's 3 laws, if correctly implemented, would (theoretically) solve this problem, but then you run squarely into the problem of Skynet being a military system - you can't tell a warfighting AI not to harm humans and expect it to still be effective, unless all you're fighting are aliens, other robots, lizard people, or similar.

At the same time, if an AI is self aware, able to take decision by itself, evolve and learn independently of whatever the "initial" code was, nothing can prevent this AI to "decide" that these laws were not correct and so, to not follow them or interpret them in a "weird way".
Let's say that one of the law is "to preserve humanity at all cost". So this AI could "decide" one day, that the best way to preserve humanity is to eradicate 95% of the population to restaure an "acceptable" demography for the planet. So in theory this AI effectively follow this law but not in the way that we would expect
(like in ME, the purpose of the AI is to preserve the life at all cost... and this is what she does "in a way")

 

[Pepopowitz_I]

[something off topic]

... because Keanu Reeves is known for his great RPG roles in his numerous starring roles in major American blockbuster films...