I can't think of any reason why "pushing the limits" have to be exclusive to just pushing the graphical limitations. What about pushing the limits of fun? Making the most fun game you can make for a particular system.
The graphics are there for the purpose of visual representation of game objects. What if that object is a very long platform that is wobbling back and forth? If the player is standing on a static platform, it's not nearly as fun as standing on a wobbling platform, since wobbling platforms can effect jumping and collision. Since wobbling platforms take up more hardware resource than static platforms, then that is an example of pushing hardware to help out in gameplay.
Edit: the thread title got cut off for some reason
I agree with you when you say pushing the limits doesn't have to mean graphical. This can also mean in terms of sound, but what "pushing the limits" really means is getting as much out of the system as you possibly can. For example, Super Mario Bros. 1 pushed NROM to its limits in my opinion. They got a lot of game play out of that 32 KB, and by no means was that game graphically impressive.
But when I say I want to make a game that pushes the limits of the NES, I do heavily focus on the graphical and auditory aspects; I think they're very important limitations to work around with the NES. A game doesn't necessarily have to push these, but I think it makes for a more enjoyable experience when your game looks "slick". On the other hand, if your game is just pretty and isn't enjoyable, that's no good. One example of that would be Batman: Return of the Joker. Looks great, sounds great, but is pretty much no fun. I only play it because I drool over the graphics.
I think the best way to "push the limits of the nes" is to push the limits of the programmer, and by "push the limits of the programmer", I mean actually get the software
finished.
Seriously, there is no bigger technical feat than to just simply finish a project.
Celius, at the time I think SMB1 did look technically and graphically impressive. Particularly since at the time while many games had done some similar things before it, they didn't have the reach that SMB1 got being bundled with so many consoles.
I would agree that pushing the limits just means pushing the limits. The limit could be just what people think they are or be related to what the actual hardware limits are. But you don't have to push the limits to make a fun game which should be the top priority.
I agree with Drag, the most important thing is to finish your project. Nothing is more impressive than a finished project. A technical demo or buggy incomplete beta is not as impressive as a finished product.
MottZilla wrote:
Celius, at the time I think SMB1 did look technically and graphically impressive.
Back then,
scrolling was graphically impressive. As far as I know, SMB1 was the second side-scrolling platformer ever made (after Pac-Land).
tepples wrote:
MottZilla wrote:
Celius, at the time I think SMB1 did look technically and graphically impressive.
Back then,
scrolling was graphically impressive. As far as I know, SMB1 was the second side-scrolling platformer ever made (after Pac-Land).
I think Jump Bug was the first, in 1981. A few others might fit the bill as well: Dragon Buster, Legend of Kage, a section of Jungle King.
The point still stands though. It's not as if scrolling platformers were the norm at that point.
I completely agree. Something amusing occurred to me lately: Namely that nobody ever looked for good graphics until video games. Sports never required graphics, board games never required graphics. I guess in games like Chess you might have a really basic cardboard playboard and plastic pieces with seams on them, or you might have a glass playboard and pieces made out of marble or something fancy---but it is still Chess, and still presents the exact same challenges and fun. I think the recent retro craze in video games has been a collective awakening to this fact: Games don't need great graphics to be fun, and companies are realizing if they devote too may resources to impressing their audience the gameplay may suffer as a result. Unless you're Shigeru Miyamoto (I'm thinking of Twilight Princess in particular, here).
On the other hand though, I do agree with the comments made about making a game look slick. I love just LOOKING at Kirby's Adventure. Looking at Super Mario Bros. 1, while not unpleasant, doesn't make the word "beautiful" burst out of me like Kirby does. That said though, I would be happy to see some homebrews with SMB style graphics. I find nostalgia almost as appealing as beauty in many cases.
I disagree. Games NEED graphics to be fun - just compare how fun is a text-based-adventure RPG and an actual RPG with graphics. How many old crappy atari 2600 games are fun ? Okay some people will probably say the like them, but personally I don't like much any pre-NES games, and in fact it's one of the reason I love the NES - it's in my eyes the first system (ex-eaco with the C64) to ever have GOOD games.
I know I will be flamed and burned for saying this, but it is my viewpoint anyways.
It's wrong to say gameplay isn't related to graphics. A 3D game plays very differently from a 2D game. I like both and couldn't chose one over the other (although I like 2D better, but that don't mean I think all 3D games are bad).
For example, in Super Castlevania IV, you have this rotating room in level 4, which exploits SNES' mode 7. If Konami made a NES version of the game, of course it would look and sound like the NES (which wouldn't be an issue), but that part with thre rotating room would have been technically impossible to do which IS an issue (it's just a random example).
That being said I agree graphics aren't the ONLY thing - but better graphics CAN make a better game. However, like you say, if they invest everything on the graphics and don't care about the gameplay - this won't work.
Bregalad wrote:
I disagree. Games NEED graphics to be fun - just compare how fun is a text-based-adventure RPG and an actual RPG with graphics.
Whenever the discussion on Slashdot veers toward the tradeoff between graphics and gameplay, all the fans of NetHack and Dwarf Fortress seem to come out in defense of text-mode gaming.
Quote:
How many old crappy atari 2600 games are fun ?
Is Tetris Splash for Xbox 360 really more fun than, say, Edtris 2600 or Klax? That said, River Raid and Pitfall! have their die-hard fans.
Quote:
If Konami made a NES version of the game, of course it would look and sound like the NES (which wouldn't be an issue), but that part with thre rotating room would have been technically impossible to do which IS an issue (it's just a random example).
That and the NES's other
fundamental and practical limitations.
Bregalad wrote:
I disagree. Games NEED graphics to be fun - just compare how fun is a text-based-adventure RPG and an actual RPG with graphics. How many old crappy atari 2600 games are fun ? Okay some people will probably say the like them, but personally I don't like much any pre-NES games, and in fact it's one of the reason I love the NES - it's in my eyes the first system (ex-eaco with the C64) to ever have GOOD games.
I know I will be flamed and burned for saying this, but it is my viewpoint anyways.
It's wrong to say gameplay isn't related to graphics. A 3D game plays very differently from a 2D game. I like both and couldn't chose one over the other (although I like 2D better, but that don't mean I think all 3D games are bad).
For example, in Super Castlevania IV, you have this rotating room in level 4, which exploits SNES' mode 7. If Konami made a NES version of the game, of course it would look and sound like the NES (which wouldn't be an issue), but that part with thre rotating room would have been technically impossible to do which IS an issue (it's just a random example).
That being said I agree graphics aren't the ONLY thing - but better graphics CAN make a better game. However, like you say, if they invest everything on the graphics and don't care about the gameplay - this won't work.
Actually, that was the point I was trying to make. I was just in a hurry when I wrote the initial post.
I think that games in any platform can look good, even text-only games and Atari 2600 ones. IMO, the presentation of a game impresses when it's polished. That impresses me way more than resolution, colors and whatnot.
When I play a game, I love to see well done screen transitions, for example. A smooth fade animation is billions of times better than a flickery transition with partially rendered screens.
What I like to see is attention to detail, no matter how much detail the machine is actually capable of showing. As person interested in the technical side of things, I'll always be pleased to see that the programmer made good use of the tools that were given to him.
When will somebody fix the title of this thread? Change "grap" to "graphics" please!
psycopathicteen wrote:
When will somebody fix the title of this thread? Change "grap" to "graphics" please!
Maybe it can't be changed because of a character count limit. Maybe you can edit and rephrase it to fit in less characters.
Does "pushing the limits" only refer to graphics?
Would fit. The limit seems to be 52 characters, and that's 51.
MottZilla wrote:
Celius, at the time I think SMB1 did look technically and graphically impressive. Particularly since at the time while many games had done some similar things before it, they didn't have the reach that SMB1 got being bundled with so many consoles.
Well when you put it that way, yeah, I guess at the time SMB1 was really impressive compared to non-scrolling games that came before it. It kind of set the standard for platforming games.
I also kind of agree with Bregalad about games needing graphics, but I don't think quality of graphics is -that- important beyond a certain point. So long as I can tell what I'm looking at and it isn't annoying, I should be good to go. I am however talking about 2D. 3D is a different story. With PS1 graphics, I can usually tell what I'm looking at, but they always add a ton of detail to these super low-res textures that they put on crappy polygons; it looks terrible.
Yeah I guess you're talking about FF7 which has amazing ground breaking pre-rendered backgrounds with great lightning effects that looks absolutely fantastic and horrible crappy polygon characters that looks really lame - although you eventually get used to it and that doesn't prevent the game to be considered by many as one of the best game ever made.
Yeah, FF7 has really good pre-rendered backgrounds, but thankfully the 3D graphics in that game are simple enough where they're still somewhat appealing. That was toward when the PS1 was first coming out, so there wasn't a whole lot of detail on the polygons. But then FF8 came out, and it was a total blur of crap textures, though the CG cutscenes were amazing, and FAR superior to FF7's. That's a different story though, I guess.
A similar comparison would be comparing Wild Arms 1 and Wild Arms 2, both on the PS1. Wild Arms 1 had REALLY simple 3D models in the battles, and was 2D outside of the battles. But it was cool, because the characters were all 3D in battle, but it was basically a 3D model of their sprite (Imagine turning the sprites from FF1-6 into 3D models, so they still have the big eyes and no mouths). With those models, you could still tell what was going on, but there wasn't a lot of detail on them, so it was fine that way. When Wild Arms 2 came out, they tried to add a bunch of detail to the in-battle models, and it looked like complete crap, and you couldn't even tell what was going on. Adding so much detail made the graphics crappy, and thus lowered the quality of the experience. At least it did for me.