Little misunderstandings and the benefit of real-life exampl

Talk about anything and everything related or unrelated to the FreeOrion project, especially Strategy Games.

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M4lV
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Re: Little misunderstandings and the benefit of real-life exampl

#16 Post by M4lV »

I wanna discuss if it adds no fun. If you had read through what I said about screenshots, UI and graphical looks, you would know what I'm talking about.

Please read everything. And realism when adding to fun is exactly what I meant in the first place so stop putting me into that corner again like tzlaine and eleazar did. Is it really so hard to read and understand me correctly?
Bigjoe5 wrote:Please do not pursue the topic of realism any further. As it is, you are not unwelcome here, but as people have pointed out, realism arguments are.
It is simple bullshit (sorry, but it is) to say I was giving/using realism !arguments! as I was only giving a realism background that could possibly serve as encyclopedic description of my feature.

Realism backgrounds and descriptions serve logical coherence when used properly so a draconian no-realism remarks is as stupid as cutting in your own flesh especially since it's not true to itself anyway because everyone here always uses realism arguments or descriptions somehow.
Just take a look at the recent terrain worlds thread. Don't be stupid about it and close your eyes. Eleazar does it, everyone does it. I just can't stand being put out as the only one especially when I wasn't actually the one who did..

As for the food, who cares. Take Star Trek for example, they got replicators. Imagine a tech where those replicators use this mysterious food and convert it on a submolecular basis into usable food for the other race. When agreeing that each races uses biological food (and no pure iron or lead for example) and food consists of more complex components than those of simple and abundant plants or trees in order to be used as full-value food, it's all about E=mc² and the artistic/realistic choice that biomolecular dismantling and reordering is easier than with other material, isn' it?
Guys, you need to understand that in order to have some sort of logically coherent, exciting explanatory FO universe encyclopedia (which is a real fun thing for most scifi game players and fans), you need to give your decisions some "realism" background thought. You can even rename realism to artistic freedom or whatever, but make yourself some thoughts about the how and why you gonna implement something. Otherwise something is missing later on and possibly you got lots of realism and why is this and that threads later on from players cause you don't have any encyclopedia to refer to. Plus the danger of creating some uberstyle logical exploit (at worst case even on code implementation level) is always there reducing gameplay fun for those who recognize it and take that serious. If you wanna rule out those players and make them shut up, you gonna take a lot of fun (and possibly people) away from the game in my opinion.

It's fine by me if you decide against that and totally neglect such possibilities, but then please don't use me as a scapegoat when you yourself use realism descriptions and back-up-hints in all kinds of threads too. It is wrong to do so only with newcomers particularly when they did nothing wrong, i.e. not the thing they were accused of.

tzlaine
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Re: Little misunderstandings and the benefit of real-life exampl

#17 Post by tzlaine »

M4lV wrote:Guys, you need to understand that in order to have some sort of logically coherent, exciting explanatory FO universe encyclopedia (which is a real fun thing for most scifi game players and fans), you need to give your decisions some "realism" background thought.
You are changing the argument. Your original post was not in Story or Brainstorming, but Graphics. You were asking people to consider changing the colors in every system, based on the color perceptability of the viewing race's eyes. That was not germane to the discussion in that thread, and so it was appropriate for me to try and shut down that line of discussion before it derailed/hijacked the thread.

It is also a classic example of adding complexity for little or no gain. I am not making a dictatorial "dev-decision" when I say this. I am able to say this authoritatively, because I have been around in this project since the beginning, and have a very good sense for what the community will decide in cases like this.

Finally, I have read your posts, in their entirety. Part of the problem here is a misunderstanding of terms. You think you are arguing for realism, but in fact you are arguing now (i.e. in the post quoted above) for self-consistency and/or immersion. These are laudable goals, but whether something is realistic or not has no bearing on whether it is self-consistent and/or immersive.

You may find that this post expresses this fact nicely. You may wish to re-read it carefully.

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=638

To be clear, no one is arguing against having an encyclopedia with suitable technobabble explanations for the game's mechanics.

M4lV
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Re: Little misunderstandings and the benefit of real-life exampl

#18 Post by M4lV »

Of course realism has no immediate/direct bearing on self-consistency of the game's mechanics, there's one thing about it however when taken into account properly, and that is self-consistency (of itself) inherited from the fact that our real life is consistent ;). So if we take reality as a measure when it seems fit (i.e. when we talk about more general, non-future-tech-related things), we can be pretty sure to "import" self-consistency from real life into our game :).

As for the hijacking of the respective thread, here's Eleazar's intro post again:
eleazar wrote:For ease of posting, i thought it would be better to discuss way to improve and help distinguish the different planet types in the graphics forum so we can upload images more easily.

As a baseline here is what we currently have in trunk as of today. Assembled in photoshop without any of the atmospheric effects.
As you quickly notice, he says something about discussing ways to improve different planet types and also about the lighting and color of the atmosphere whereby the latter was the point of interest that laid to my green star proposal. Of course, green stars produce other atmospheric colors (besides other star colors on galaxy map) than yellow/white stars due to their different refractive index (and here we have to deal with the "realistic" functions of computer programs (Photoshop) or libraries (OpenGL) that light their lit objects exactly along these refractive index effects and formulas).
eleazar wrote:See how even when illuminated by a strongly yellow light source, the different types are still reasonably distinguishable: Though i think the examples below could work even better.
So eleazar showed us pics of planets illuminated by yellow light and therefore my argument wasn't hijacking because the discussion was simply if we should also consider checking for green light and how the planets would look like then too. Of course that might mean more complexity for the artistic part but I'm intrigued to see an image example first before I'd decide against that idea.

The green star galaxy map appearance idea was just backpacking along that idea and didn't need to be treated/explained in a different thread before it proved to be looking good on planet's surfaces. And there your post cut in and cut off the discussion which I found a bit glib and then the whole thing was transferred to the realism debate level which I never had in mind anyway since I was waiting for artistic proof of my idea. I'm arguing that if it looks good, it only adds to the visual variety and enhancement of the game. Green stars make those planetary systems look nicer (hopefully) and btw. (might) look better on overall map. I think it was worth checking.

I think we can put the whole thing to rest now. At least I know now that I can try to make a self-consisent description for my features, especially when tech-related, and that this is welcome. Whether or not that description stems from real life experiences and facts is irrelevant but as for the above-noted reason of imported self-consistency and natural feel for the gamer later on, I try to stick to what is or might be seen as realistic.

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Bigjoe5
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Re: Little misunderstandings and the benefit of real-life exampl

#19 Post by Bigjoe5 »

M4lV wrote: It is simple bullshit (sorry, but it is) to say I was giving/using realism !arguments! as I was only giving a realism background that could possibly serve as encyclopedic description of my feature.
This thread is a realism argument in and of itself. It's existence is proof that you are pursuing the topic of realism too far. I don't care about your realism background for your star colour idea, in fact I think you got shut down a little quickly. My point, as I clearly stated in my previous post, was that you should have included a reason for your suggestion when you first posted it, not just scientific background information.

People use realism arguments as a backdrop for their ideas all the time. People can't help but use realism as inspiration for their ideas, but in the end, a decision is made based on gameplay value. If the game would be more fun with super god-beings all around, they would already be in the game.

I apologize if it seemed like I was trying to push you into the little corner, but bear in mind that you really are fairly new here and arguing about forum policies with a member of the creative team is somewhat out of place.
Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

M4lV
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Re: Little misunderstandings and the benefit of real-life exampl

#20 Post by M4lV »

I understand that I might should have used my graphical improvement argument first-hand before I used the realism backdrop but I didn't have time for that when I wrote it (and honestly I forgot about it but in either way, I would have added it any time when asked politely for reasons to add this feature) and thought that in order to understand that otherwise seemingly crazy idea, I post that explanation first. I wasn't expecting to be shut down as quickly like that, as you said.

But as far as discussing that thing with anyone, including a member of graphical team, being out-of-place, I disagree. I have a right to defend myself and put things clear. It's not something I wanna exert that early after joining but when I see misunderstandings, I clear them, no matter what it takes. That's my policy ;).

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