Weapon design and you: how to avoid sci-fi samery

[FreedomFighter7]

There is no excuse for making the same idiotic bullshit every game dev and their mother is addicted to these days. It does not look good, it does not make sense, and it is fucking lazy. Use your own creativity and design something new from the features of something old.

That's what I'm getting at. The above is a matter of opinion. Mainly the first and second sentences.

Also, I happen to be an artist, though none of you have seen much from me. I believe I know what looks good, and to me the Halo 1 AR was alright, the Halo 2 BR was kind of ugly, to thin in my opinion, and the Halo 3 AR was alright. The DMR is amazing in my opinion, I don't care whether it looks like a realistic weapon or not. In fact, let me state this: I'm into geometry, specifically artistic geometry. Realism is out the window for me, and truth be told unless you are one sick bastard if games were 100% realistic you would be puking your guts out every time someone died. I think most guns in real life are pretty ugly, especially the Steyr AUG.

Games are about art, and having fun, not being a murder simulation! Games have been striving for that coveted title "art" for decades, when did we switch over to (terminology aside) simulating murder?

I do agree with the last sentence Rossmum wrote, I believe games (at least the Triple - A titles) aren't creative enough. Halo is a creative game when it comes to shooters, I don't know why that formula went out the window.

Warsaw

Originally Posted by FreedomFighter7

To the OP: all a matter of opinion.




Whether or not one enjoys the intricate sci-fi stuff is, yes. What makes something realistic or practical, no.

The problem as I see it isn't so much "rawr, fuck your greeble!" by itself as it is developers saying "Hey, look, we made a realistic and believable game universe" and then taking a dump on that idea by making everything look frigging ridiculous and impractical.

Rule of Cool is fine, and necessary, but you have to know where to draw that line based on how believable you want your world to be.

I agree with you Warsaw (and your drawings are great!) on some parts of that. How can a Sci Fi concept be realistic if its not even been invented yet? Its completely hypothetical! I've read just a few of your posts, and I know you can figure that kind of thing out, but not even you could know how a hypothetical weapon would work.

Lastly, this is a community primarily of artists, of whatever medium. If you're going to get into the games industry, do you have to be completely realistic? I don't think so. If you're going to work on architectural drawings I can see where using completely realistic modeling would come into play.