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If you are serious (I do game development for a living and work on graphical assets daily so that seems evident for me, but I totally understand it can be arcan

by GaelFG 3y ago

If you are serious (I do game development for a living and work on graphical assets daily so that seems evident for me, but I totally understand it can be arcane stuff) it's simply that they choose a stylized graphical style avoiding a lot of costly details you generaly find in hight end games. They use low poly models, as far as I know there is no baked lightmap (these are pretty expensives but are mandatory in a lot of engine if you want realistic shadows on higtly detailled environment) and their shader materials probably use very simple and low resolution maps. All these thing decrease the asset footprint by orders of magnitude. If you want to look in more detail in can look and compare a similar rendering in unity. Taking two unity exemple you can compare : - 'chop chop' a game using a similar rendering style : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGTTHOpUQDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGTTHOpUQDE, if you take the pig and its environment showed in the video and go in the github repository you can see they only use one texture map : an albedo one. All the models (pig + environment) weight about 6mB of textures and 350kB of models. and are sufficient to have the full main character and an environment. - a 'realistic PBR workflow gun asset' on asset store (choose randomly but seems nice, realistic and containing only the gun so we can see download size) : https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/props/guns/free-fps-weapon-akm-180663#content https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/props/guns/free-fps.... The workflow need 6 maps (there are 7 here but you generaly only use either a normal map or a heightmap) The pack weight 35MB. It's only the gun, you lack a full character handling it and the environment. While I really like zelda, even with stylized graphics the game look a bit outdated for me. The cellshaded characters are fluid and pretty but the 'low resolution texture and low poly models' bother me a bit especially on environments. The artistic direction is really good but technically I can only think they are held back by the hardware. As a game developer, I totally want to use all the resources i know i can find on the target hardware. Trust me even today they are lots of features game designer dream to put in game and cant because computing resources are still limited ^^. Do game NEEDS them to be fun ? Of course not, but COULD they be fun experiences ? I think yes :)

Dalewyn 3y ago
>If you are serious I absolutely am serious; a lot of games and software in general today demand far more system resources than they have any reasonable right to. Don't give me "but the textures!" and the like either, optimize that stuff better instead. Whether it's Windows 10/11 or Call of Duty or Elite: Dangerous or Chrome or whatever strikes your fancy, software today has no business demanding the resources they do. Lest we forget, the hardware we can buy today would have been considered supercomputers just a few years ago. You want to tell me that will choke and croak just doing mundane stuff like playing games or browsing the internet?
- GaelFG 3y ago
  Well they were given theses right by the users who spend lot of money on having these system resources and are asking games to be as beautiful and complex we can (not all the users, i'm not the last to spend time in oldschool games, but a significant and heavy spending portion of them). Business is exactly why most games dont spend an enormous budget on optimization today. It's not a requirement by the great majority of customers, it's quickly time and cost heavy, so the return on investment is pretty low. Yes, i think even with infinite optimization budget a today triple A realistic rendering could simply not be possible on a too old computer in realtime. I also think while it would really add value if background application like teams/slack/discord would be less resource heavy because they are open but not the main focus, when you play a high end video game it make sense to consider it's your main reason to use your computer at that time :) If simulating and rendering a complete complex intractable realistic but imaginary world with today achievable level of detail seems mundane to you, it's far to seems like to me :) No opinion about browsers and OS, today games are doing lot more of stuff valuable to most users than those of yesterday. I don't know enought about modern value of os and browser, exept empirically they do seems to crash a lot lot less than 20 years ago, but also syp a lot more on me :)
- FredPret 3y ago
  When's the last time you played a pixel-fest from the 90's? Games are like interactive movies now by comparison. Of course that takes a supercomputer! If you don't like that, nothing stops you from playing the older games.
- PeterisP 3y ago
  The priority of an AAA game developer is to provide as much graphic fidelity for a specific compute budget, not to consume the least compute for a specific graphic fidelity. If they "optimize that stuff better", the outcome wouldn't (and shouldn't!) be a lower usage of system resources but rather fitting in even more graphic details while still capping out all resources. They do obviously have the reasonable right to demand all the system resources that are available, because a game is usually an immersive experience that is the only important thing running on the system at that time, and the only purpose of those greatly increased system resources is to be used for gains in visual quality - there's no reason to not try and use all of that compute power of what would have been considered supercomputers just a few years ago.

by GaelFG 3y ago

Dalewyn 3y ago

>If you are serious I absolutely am serious; a lot of games and software in general today demand far more system resources than they have any reasonable right to. Don't give me "but the textures!" and the like either, optimize that stuff better instead. Whether it's Windows 10/11 or Call of Duty or Elite: Dangerous or Chrome or whatever strikes your fancy, software today has no business demanding the resources they do. Lest we forget, the hardware we can buy today would have been considered supercomputers just a few years ago. You want to tell me that will choke and croak just doing mundane stuff like playing games or browsing the internet?

GaelFG 3y ago
Well they were given theses right by the users who spend lot of money on having these system resources and are asking games to be as beautiful and complex we can (not all the users, i'm not the last to spend time in oldschool games, but a significant and heavy spending portion of them). Business is exactly why most games dont spend an enormous budget on optimization today. It's not a requirement by the great majority of customers, it's quickly time and cost heavy, so the return on investment is pretty low. Yes, i think even with infinite optimization budget a today triple A realistic rendering could simply not be possible on a too old computer in realtime. I also think while it would really add value if background application like teams/slack/discord would be less resource heavy because they are open but not the main focus, when you play a high end video game it make sense to consider it's your main reason to use your computer at that time :) If simulating and rendering a complete complex intractable realistic but imaginary world with today achievable level of detail seems mundane to you, it's far to seems like to me :) No opinion about browsers and OS, today games are doing lot more of stuff valuable to most users than those of yesterday. I don't know enought about modern value of os and browser, exept empirically they do seems to crash a lot lot less than 20 years ago, but also syp a lot more on me :)
FredPret 3y ago
When's the last time you played a pixel-fest from the 90's? Games are like interactive movies now by comparison. Of course that takes a supercomputer! If you don't like that, nothing stops you from playing the older games.
PeterisP 3y ago
The priority of an AAA game developer is to provide as much graphic fidelity for a specific compute budget, not to consume the least compute for a specific graphic fidelity. If they "optimize that stuff better", the outcome wouldn't (and shouldn't!) be a lower usage of system resources but rather fitting in even more graphic details while still capping out all resources. They do obviously have the reasonable right to demand all the system resources that are available, because a game is usually an immersive experience that is the only important thing running on the system at that time, and the only purpose of those greatly increased system resources is to be used for gains in visual quality - there's no reason to not try and use all of that compute power of what would have been considered supercomputers just a few years ago.