@Indielink I do agree with the last part! With so many characters and animation blending and everthing, it'd be a bit much. :v
In regards to the real-ness of the stuff, if you're telling me they did 360 scans of the real-world lit miniature sets, and cleaned up the scans to run real-time, then that's pretty cool. Even if that still gives off a bit less of a tactile feel than photographs/recording from the actual gameplay angle would.
GTA6 will sell thirty million before Christmas. I don't know about CoD anymore, but it will sell more than a remake tied to ONE system with 24 million user. ^^
@Indielink Ah, I expected as much! And that's very nice. Obviously shows. Though what WE see is still a representation running in the 3D engine, and while the animation seems to be done with stepped frames in quite few instances, it still isn't actual stop motion footage. ^^
@NintendoWife Oh yes, sure. They are, at the heart, still a toy company after all. :3 And Dang. Germany is always better off in this regard. You guys don't take crap from anyone. Still got the big PC boxes as well, I bet.
@johnedwin
Oh, I know, but over the course of a system's life, Nintendo themselves will be renegotiating production prices, and the price for larger cartridges typically comes down for third parties as well.
It becomes easier to strike a good deal when they know at Nintendo that a system is a success, and that they will be ordering in large bulks.
But. If not many use cartridges at all, prices won't ever come down. :--/
@NintendoWife They ARE also constantly in the market for eliminating physical products when they can elsewhere. The only Club Nintendo rewards were all physical, but had to be shipped around, and it was a hassle. All the stuff you can get for your points now are digital trinkets. :-/
Sure. They are not ditching it. They are merely going full speed on knowingly making it less convenient and less accessible, while deliberately undermining its perceived value to new consumers.
Could be worse though! I'm swear, I'm not angry 100% of the time!
@jsty3105 Oh sure, I know that we only have as nice tools as we do now BECAUSE money was invested in letting the creators spend more time on creating and less time on technical challenges.
Development time and team sizes still both bloated violently though, because everyone was competing to put MORE in their games. Bigger, better, faster, cheaper, as Jeffrey Katzenberg puts it.
When we hear about tools like this being developed, to me it smells like wishing to enable smaller teams with shorter time to STILL output the same board-approved "AAAA" products. Which isn't evil by itself. But, it likely isn't REALLY about creativity, and more about production capacity.
@johnedwin Yeah, and unfortunately this is self-perpetuating. Prices could be negotiated down with the parts manufacturers, if just everyone was crazy about using them. But it's tricky, when so many players are willing to pay the same for digital as physical.
"Unlock the potential for creators." Okay. Sure. I've heard that one before.
That's quite often code speak for giving developers less time to make things, resulting also in less time for experimentation and figuring out which things -should- be made and how they should look/work/feel/sound.
I'm quitting my final "daily game" in less than a month. That's Duo Lingo, once I hit my first 1000 day streak (and the family plan I'm part of gets canceled).
Never will I allow any game of any genre to hook me like that again, with all these little retention schemes and mind games. I've been through quite a few of them over the last fifteen years, and when it ends it's that same hollow feeling of having wasted hours, days, and weeks of my life.
@nomither6 Eh, I'm joking to some extent. Sakurai does operate on a different level than most, and at the same time his ideals border on the unreasonable.
He's not wrong here I feel, but he could stand to be less of a snob about it.
Why again with the timeline? It's such a lame attempt at appealing to a very specific type of fan. Surely they don't expect us to believe that the developers themselves care about this?
@DennisReynolds
As a technical director of graphics for animation and videogames I can tell you that you are largely wrong.
The general size of a game doesn't grow that rapidly from the individual texture being large, but rather from having three or more different version of it for normal maps, specular maps, and so on, as well as multiple versions of each map type in different resolutions, for facilitatating graphics setting on PC (and leaving them in in console versions out of laziness) or for LOD adjustments, to avoid relying on automatic mip-mapping, or coming up with other solutions.
Then there's the general unwillingness in modern production settings to make sure you reuse existing assets throughout a game when appropriate, when this could and should be done to reduce file size. This is purely a production issue. In modern games, you'll even find the same exact model and texture (even whole texture packs) existing multiple times in the game files. You'll also find many entirely unused assets, and older or broken versions of the ones used.
While I sound antagonistic here, I don't mean to say that YOU as a person are largely wrong. Just that it is a largely wrong assumption (that game publishers have had luck propagating) that the file sizes of games grew this big because of their visual fidelity, and an entirely wrong assumption that in this specific case the game couldn't look exactly the same, and take up half the space (or less), if it mattered to the heads of production that they meet such a target. But, it would cost money they aren't willing to spend, and consumers will accept the file size anyway, believing that they're paying for great graphics.
4K textures you actually see are NOT what makes a game take up over one hundred gigabyte.
@DennisReynolds Nah man, it is 100% the result of productions being hurried and messy, art direction and technical solutions getting phoned in, and management just not giving a toss.
Newer RE game are very different from the original trilogy. I do understand what he's saying. In growing with the audience, it's no longer enough for a new RE to be able to scare a 12-year-old. You must be able to frighten a seasoned horror player of 40.
This is likely part of the reason why the next generation played Five Nights at Freddy's instead.
@Aquinas
I'm not complaining. I'm actively resisting.
Monetarily, intellectually, and politically.
Adapting for me is developing methods to avoid having to look at AI-art and text, while providing tools to others for doing the same. Adapting is charting and documenting the ways in which data harvesting and non-human processing of my sensitive information is infringing on my creator rights, legal rights, and human rights.
Adapting is following the moneyflows and contributing what I can to holding investors, politicians, and pundits responsible.
I'm not pretending the next generation hates AI. I'm observing the 20-somethings I teach clearly take a stance of avoiding to interact with it when at all possible, while requesting ways in which they can be assured they will be interacting with humans and things made by humans.
The bits of AI that are acceptable are the same bits that have always been acceptable. The specially trained learning tree algorithms that perform specific tasks which a human have asked them to perform, where the same human will assume responsibility for both the severity of any errors and the morality of the process.
@axelhander I'm a technical art teacher. You probably have nothing to worry about. And of course, not ALL of AI has to go away, but the crap does. And there's so much of it that's genuinely just harmful crap, or only assists the rich in siphoning more value from the working class.
@Aquinas
Very polite of you to assume that the "next generation" after me is gen alpha. I'm talking about gen Z.
And 10 year olds do stupid stuff they shouldn't be doing all the time. They haven't learned to understand the consequences of their actions.
I have a fair amount of confidence they will grow up to distance themself from AI to a larger extend, and I'm certainly not seeing any of the ten-year-olds I know enjoy AI-art at all, which is most of the "AI" we are covering in this thread.
@Aquinas I teach the next generation, and I can tell you for a fact that most of them hate AI with a burning passion. But sure. They too will eventually die.
I joke here, but really, the only ones that seem to really love AI are gen-X, and I suspect they will die before the rest of us, nomatter how hard they try to bring forth machine-god to grant them eternal life.
@axelhander That's not entirely true. A lot of the outrage is very reasonable. And the angry people don't just want you to virtue signal. They want the AI to go away.
Over fourteen hours of music, almost all of absolutely stellar production quality. Crazy. But I guess Nintendo knows Mario Kart is a system seller, so they put their money shere it matters. ^^
@axelhander They shouldn't apologize, because they did it on purpose and they'd do it again. But they -should- be made to feel so awful about it that they'd want to reconsider whether it was a good idea.
@Aquinas
I'm not going to move on.
And I do notice it even if they have "fixed" the more obvious mistakes. And I won't accept the crap as neither the present nor the future. Studios who use it -should- be ratted out and -should- be punished.
I don't care if some of them get away with it. I'm not on a holy crusade to personally spot them all and throw them to the dogs, I'm genuinely more set on just avoiding looking at anything made with AI. Meaning I'd rather not give anyone the benefit of the doubt in this regard.
I'm part of several global movements fighting generative AI in media production, and while you think it isn't true that more people are speaking up, I'm certainly experiencing it to a much larger degree than was the case two years ago. The general audiences now raising their voices against slop may not catch all of it, as you say, and may even catch a lower total percentage than they used to, but they certainly don't like it and definitely don't want more of it if they had the option to go without.
@JohnnyMind I'm tired of the witch hunts too. A lot of small artists have really suffered because of them. In this case, however, a publisher is doing a barebones compilation of old games and are quite obviously using AI to promote it.
It'd be what it is if they didn't also lie about it. But you're right that none of this will have any effect on the quality of the games.
@Faucet I believe in the integrity of the human artist, but I don't believe lies spoken by human artists. This has generative algortithms written all over it, and that process picture only digs a deeper hole.
@Aquinas That's assuming people would have no real reason to care. What's happening is the opposite. More and more people are learning to notice why this looks awful, and are taking a stance against it.
Not going to watch the trailer. That bovine bomber "pipeline" is bad enough.
That absolutely is NOT a manual photoshop/illustrator redraw, and the following drawing is NOT an actual 3D render. It doesn't even make sense why the redraw-step would be necessary. Or why you would paint over a 3D-render in photoshop there at the end.
This is generative trash. It looks bad, and they should be ashamed.
So... they were already finished before getting canceled? Hopefully they don't turn out like Starfox 2, where it became somewhat obvious why it had remained unreleased.
Comments 7,425
Re: The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel Is Reportedly Still "More Than Two Years Away"
Oh. Well. I'm already old anyway.
Not like it makes much difference.
Re: 'The Elder Scrolls 6' Finally Has An Official Title
Ooh!
This is going to deal in the history and technology of the dwemers!
Very excited!
Re: This Gorgeous 'Stop-Motion' Adventure Swims Onto Switch 2 Next Month
@Indielink
I do agree with the last part! With so many characters and animation blending and everthing, it'd be a bit much. :v
In regards to the real-ness of the stuff, if you're telling me they did 360 scans of the real-world lit miniature sets, and cleaned up the scans to run real-time, then that's pretty cool. Even if that still gives off a bit less of a tactile feel than photographs/recording from the actual gameplay angle would.
Re: "No Offense To Zelda" - Activision Exec Says Call Of Duty: MW4 And GTA 6 Are The Two Biggest Games Of The Year
GTA6 will sell thirty million before Christmas.
I don't know about CoD anymore, but it will sell more than a remake tied to ONE system with 24 million user. ^^
Re: Nintendo Music Expands Its Library With Another Game Boy Soundtrack This Week
Aw yeah best Wario game coming through!
Re: This Gorgeous 'Stop-Motion' Adventure Swims Onto Switch 2 Next Month
@Indielink
Ah, I expected as much! And that's very nice. Obviously shows.
Though what WE see is still a representation running in the 3D engine, and while the animation seems to be done with stepped frames in quite few instances, it still isn't actual stop motion footage. ^^
Re: This Gorgeous 'Stop-Motion' Adventure Swims Onto Switch 2 Next Month
I'm always a bit skeptical of 3D graphics pretending to be handmade materials, but it does look nice here, and the character designs are great. :v
Re: Nintendo States That It Has No Plans To Ditch Physical Media
@NintendoWife
Oh yes, sure. They are, at the heart, still a toy company after all. :3
And Dang. Germany is always better off in this regard. You guys don't take crap from anyone. Still got the big PC boxes as well, I bet.
Re: Upcoming Resident Evil Remakes Have Pretty Tiny File Sizes On Switch 2
@johnedwin
Oh, I know, but over the course of a system's life, Nintendo themselves will be renegotiating production prices, and the price for larger cartridges typically comes down for third parties as well.
It becomes easier to strike a good deal when they know at Nintendo that a system is a success, and that they will be ordering in large bulks.
But. If not many use cartridges at all, prices won't ever come down. :--/
Re: Nintendo States That It Has No Plans To Ditch Physical Media
@NintendoWife
They ARE also constantly in the market for eliminating physical products when they can elsewhere.
The only Club Nintendo rewards were all physical, but had to be shipped around, and it was a hassle. All the stuff you can get for your points now are digital trinkets. :-/
Re: Nintendo States That It Has No Plans To Ditch Physical Media
Sure. They are not ditching it.
They are merely going full speed on knowingly making it less convenient and less accessible, while deliberately undermining its perceived value to new consumers.
Could be worse though!
I'm swear, I'm not angry 100% of the time!
Re: Capcom Is Looking To Evolve Its RE Engine Into An 'AI-Era Game Engine'
@jsty3105
Oh sure, I know that we only have as nice tools as we do now BECAUSE money was invested in letting the creators spend more time on creating and less time on technical challenges.
Development time and team sizes still both bloated violently though, because everyone was competing to put MORE in their games. Bigger, better, faster, cheaper, as Jeffrey Katzenberg puts it.
When we hear about tools like this being developed, to me it smells like wishing to enable smaller teams with shorter time to STILL output the same board-approved "AAAA" products. Which isn't evil by itself.
But, it likely isn't REALLY about creativity, and more about production capacity.
Re: Upcoming Resident Evil Remakes Have Pretty Tiny File Sizes On Switch 2
@johnedwin
Yeah, and unfortunately this is self-perpetuating.
Prices could be negotiated down with the parts manufacturers, if just everyone was crazy about using them.
But it's tricky, when so many players are willing to pay the same for digital as physical.
Re: Capcom Is Looking To Evolve Its RE Engine Into An 'AI-Era Game Engine'
"Unlock the potential for creators."
Okay. Sure. I've heard that one before.
That's quite often code speak for giving developers less time to make things, resulting also in less time for experimentation and figuring out which things -should- be made and how they should look/work/feel/sound.
Re: Opinion: I Played Mario Kart Tour Every Day For Seven Years, And What Am I Left With?
I'm quitting my final "daily game" in less than a month. That's Duo Lingo, once I hit my first 1000 day streak (and the family plan I'm part of gets canceled).
Never will I allow any game of any genre to hook me like that again, with all these little retention schemes and mind games. I've been through quite a few of them over the last fifteen years, and when it ends it's that same hollow feeling of having wasted hours, days, and weeks of my life.
Re: Sakurai Believes Industry Will "Slowly Die" Without Innovation As He Discontinues Game Designers Award
@nomither6
Eh, I'm joking to some extent. Sakurai does operate on a different level than most, and at the same time his ideals border on the unreasonable.
He's not wrong here I feel, but he could stand to be less of a snob about it.
Re: Sakurai Believes Industry Will "Slowly Die" Without Innovation As He Discontinues Game Designers Award
Sakurai -is- right. But he's also a superhuman and a fierce elitist. It's a little hard to live up to his ideals. ^^
Re: Mads Mikkelsen Stars In Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Campaign Trailer
Gross. I really hope these digital recreations of real actors will go away.
Re: Japanese Charts: Rhythm Heaven Groove Surpasses 1 Million Boxed Units Sold
Doing my part here in Europe!
Re: Nintendo Updates Zelda Timeline, Seemingly Confirming A Fan Theory
Why again with the timeline?
It's such a lame attempt at appealing to a very specific type of fan. Surely they don't expect us to believe that the developers themselves care about this?
Re: Final Fantasy VII Revelation Is A Game-Key Card On Switch 2, And It's No Wonder With That File Size
@DennisReynolds
As a technical director of graphics for animation and videogames I can tell you that you are largely wrong.
The general size of a game doesn't grow that rapidly from the individual texture being large, but rather from having three or more different version of it for normal maps, specular maps, and so on, as well as multiple versions of each map type in different resolutions, for facilitatating graphics setting on PC (and leaving them in in console versions out of laziness) or for LOD adjustments, to avoid relying on automatic mip-mapping, or coming up with other solutions.
Then there's the general unwillingness in modern production settings to make sure you reuse existing assets throughout a game when appropriate, when this could and should be done to reduce file size. This is purely a production issue. In modern games, you'll even find the same exact model and texture (even whole texture packs) existing multiple times in the game files. You'll also find many entirely unused assets, and older or broken versions of the ones used.
While I sound antagonistic here, I don't mean to say that YOU as a person are largely wrong. Just that it is a largely wrong assumption (that game publishers have had luck propagating) that the file sizes of games grew this big because of their visual fidelity, and an entirely wrong assumption that in this specific case the game couldn't look exactly the same, and take up half the space (or less), if it mattered to the heads of production that they meet such a target. But, it would cost money they aren't willing to spend, and consumers will accept the file size anyway, believing that they're paying for great graphics.
4K textures you actually see are NOT what makes a game take up over one hundred gigabyte.
Re: Final Fantasy VII Revelation Is A Game-Key Card On Switch 2, And It's No Wonder With That File Size
@DennisReynolds
Nah man, it is 100% the result of productions being hurried and messy, art direction and technical solutions getting phoned in, and management just not giving a toss.
Re: Final Fantasy VII Revelation Is A Game-Key Card On Switch 2, And It's No Wonder With That File Size
Amateurish on all fronts to make a game that big to begin with, and then also expect people to download it to an SD micro.
Re: Hideki Kamiya Says Capcom Has "No Awareness" Of How Scary Resident Evil Is
Newer RE game are very different from the original trilogy.
I do understand what he's saying.
In growing with the audience, it's no longer enough for a new RE to be able to scare a 12-year-old. You must be able to frighten a seasoned horror player of 40.
This is likely part of the reason why the next generation played Five Nights at Freddy's instead.
Re: PSA: It's Your Last Chance To Pick Up A Switch 2 Before The Price Goes Up
Eh. My birthday is on September 5. ^_^;
Either way, I probably won't be getting a Switch 2 until sometime next year.
Re: James Pond Publisher Denies AI-Generated Trailer, But No One's Buying It
@Aquinas
I'm not complaining. I'm actively resisting.
Monetarily, intellectually, and politically.
Adapting for me is developing methods to avoid having to look at AI-art and text, while providing tools to others for doing the same. Adapting is charting and documenting the ways in which data harvesting and non-human processing of my sensitive information is infringing on my creator rights, legal rights, and human rights.
Adapting is following the moneyflows and contributing what I can to holding investors, politicians, and pundits responsible.
I'm not pretending the next generation hates AI. I'm observing the 20-somethings I teach clearly take a stance of avoiding to interact with it when at all possible, while requesting ways in which they can be assured they will be interacting with humans and things made by humans.
The bits of AI that are acceptable are the same bits that have always been acceptable. The specially trained learning tree algorithms that perform specific tasks which a human have asked them to perform, where the same human will assume responsibility for both the severity of any errors and the morality of the process.
Re: James Pond Publisher Denies AI-Generated Trailer, But No One's Buying It
@axelhander
I'm a technical art teacher. You probably have nothing to worry about. And of course, not ALL of AI has to go away, but the crap does. And there's so much of it that's genuinely just harmful crap, or only assists the rich in siphoning more value from the working class.
Re: James Pond Publisher Denies AI-Generated Trailer, But No One's Buying It
@Aquinas
Very polite of you to assume that the "next generation" after me is gen alpha. I'm talking about gen Z.
And 10 year olds do stupid stuff they shouldn't be doing all the time. They haven't learned to understand the consequences of their actions.
I have a fair amount of confidence they will grow up to distance themself from AI to a larger extend, and I'm certainly not seeing any of the ten-year-olds I know enjoy AI-art at all, which is most of the "AI" we are covering in this thread.
Re: Feature: One Year On, Is Anyone Still Playing Drag x Drive?
Underdeveloped Basic Idea: The Game
Re: James Pond Publisher Denies AI-Generated Trailer, But No One's Buying It
@Aquinas
I teach the next generation, and I can tell you for a fact that most of them hate AI with a burning passion. But sure. They too will eventually die.
I joke here, but really, the only ones that seem to really love AI are gen-X, and I suspect they will die before the rest of us, nomatter how hard they try to bring forth machine-god to grant them eternal life.
Re: LEGO Is Getting A New City-Building Game Made By The Cities: Skylines Team
Look great! :v
Hoping for the game mechanics to be inventive and novel enough to match the LEGO branding.
Re: James Pond Publisher Denies AI-Generated Trailer, But No One's Buying It
@axelhander
That's not entirely true. A lot of the outrage is very reasonable.
And the angry people don't just want you to virtue signal. They want the AI to go away.
Re: Nintendo Music Update Adds Final Mario Kart World Free Roam Songs
Over fourteen hours of music, almost all of absolutely stellar production quality. Crazy. But I guess Nintendo knows Mario Kart is a system seller, so they put their money shere it matters. ^^
Re: James Pond Publisher Denies AI-Generated Trailer, But No One's Buying It
@axelhander
How do you cater to someone who does NOT want something?
Re: James Pond Publisher Denies AI-Generated Trailer, But No One's Buying It
@Misima
People on the internet will always try to find ways of discrediting you at the outset. A more analog life might be healthy for us all. :x
Re: James Pond Publisher Denies AI-Generated Trailer, But No One's Buying It
@axelhander
I agree.
The Anti-AI crowd also does not want to be catered to. Apologizing usually makes them even more skeptical of the perpetrator.
Re: James Pond Publisher Denies AI-Generated Trailer, But No One's Buying It
@imopthefloors
Believe me I'm plenty upset about those too.
Re: "Consumers Generally Do Not Care" About AI In Games, Says Former Square Enix Exec
What a stupid assessment.
Re: James Pond Publisher Denies AI-Generated Trailer, But No One's Buying It
@axelhander
They shouldn't apologize, because they did it on purpose and they'd do it again.
But they -should- be made to feel so awful about it that they'd want to reconsider whether it was a good idea.
Re: James Pond Publisher Denies AI-Generated Trailer, But No One's Buying It
@Aquinas
I'm not going to move on.
And I do notice it even if they have "fixed" the more obvious mistakes. And I won't accept the crap as neither the present nor the future. Studios who use it -should- be ratted out and -should- be punished.
I don't care if some of them get away with it. I'm not on a holy crusade to personally spot them all and throw them to the dogs, I'm genuinely more set on just avoiding looking at anything made with AI. Meaning I'd rather not give anyone the benefit of the doubt in this regard.
I'm part of several global movements fighting generative AI in media production, and while you think it isn't true that more people are speaking up, I'm certainly experiencing it to a much larger degree than was the case two years ago. The general audiences now raising their voices against slop may not catch all of it, as you say, and may even catch a lower total percentage than they used to, but they certainly don't like it and definitely don't want more of it if they had the option to go without.
Re: James Pond Publisher Denies AI-Generated Trailer, But No One's Buying It
@HolyGeez03
Maybe it's AI that needs to learn to adapt to the fact that we will keep fighting it even if it isn't going anywhere.
Re: James Pond Publisher Denies AI-Generated Trailer, But No One's Buying It
@JohnnyMind
I'm tired of the witch hunts too. A lot of small artists have really suffered because of them. In this case, however, a publisher is doing a barebones compilation of old games and are quite obviously using AI to promote it.
It'd be what it is if they didn't also lie about it. But you're right that none of this will have any effect on the quality of the games.
Re: James Pond Publisher Denies AI-Generated Trailer, But No One's Buying It
@Faucet I believe in the integrity of the human artist, but I don't believe lies spoken by human artists. This has generative algortithms written all over it, and that process picture only digs a deeper hole.
Re: James Pond Publisher Denies AI-Generated Trailer, But No One's Buying It
@Aquinas
That's assuming people would have no real reason to care. What's happening is the opposite. More and more people are learning to notice why this looks awful, and are taking a stance against it.
Re: James Pond Publisher Denies AI-Generated Trailer, But No One's Buying It
Not going to watch the trailer. That bovine bomber "pipeline" is bad enough.
That absolutely is NOT a manual photoshop/illustrator redraw, and the following drawing is NOT an actual 3D render.
It doesn't even make sense why the redraw-step would be necessary. Or why you would paint over a 3D-render in photoshop there at the end.
This is generative trash. It looks bad, and they should be ashamed.
Re: Kingdom Hearts IV Is Launching On Switch 2 In Late 2027, Here's A Brand-New Trailer
Wow, er... lot of death in this one.
Re: Rumour: New Mario LEGO Sets Could Be Surprisingly Affordable
I have some of the first Lego Mario sets. I won't say I found them to be a lot of fun, because I didn't. But I applaud the ideas that went in.
I personally have no interest in mini-figure Mario.
Re: Two Cancelled Virtual Boy Games Join 'Nintendo Classics' Today
@mutenroshi
Really? I thought it sucked pretty bad, sorry to say.
Re: Epic's Unreal Engine Rolls Out Major Update, Lumen Lite Mode Now Available For Switch 2
@mattitudemf
Haha, nah, not otherwise.
I just don't like seeing it sold as a miracle cure. :v
Re: Two Cancelled Virtual Boy Games Join 'Nintendo Classics' Next Week
So... they were already finished before getting canceled?
Hopefully they don't turn out like Starfox 2, where it became somewhat obvious why it had remained unreleased.