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

[TVTyrant]

I have to agree with what he's saying. I've been guilty of such things in the past too. It's a good design trait to follow. The DMR was a really bad looking gun compared to the BR.

I think the Reach AR is way, way worse than the DMR. I agree on that one. That thing is horrendous.

[Higuy]

I didn't like most of the weapon arsenal in Reach, becuase: All of the weapons, including even some Covenant ones, were way to polygonal and box like, compared to most of the traditional, more organic shapes that payed more homage to modern guns while still retaining a distinct look. The guns in Reach were more of a generic sci-fi/industrial like that you see throughout movies and games today

[Warsaw]

Worst offenders are anything made by id or Epic Games.

Also, I've drawn heaps and heaps of sci-fi guns. Some sketches:





Example of greebly gun:



And what I turned it into because I despise greeble:



tl;dr: you don't have to make it look like a blocky piece of shit with detail for the sake of detail. I can tell you what every detail on my guns does.

E: the same can apply to armour and vehicles. Look at the Halo 1 Mk. V vs. the Halo: Reach Mk.V. Tons of greeble.



Do you see any greeble at all on there? No. You do not.

[t3h m00kz]

wait what

ut3 was fucking amazing

[t3h m00kz]

then again really I don't even really give two shits about the graphics in ut3 to be honest. I personally liked ut2004's graphic design more.

I gave a shit about the graphics for about ten minutes before I turned off the on-screen weapons and started caring about the gameplay, which has far more lastability than the fucking cosmetics.

if I gave two shits about graphics I wouldn't have played minecraft for as long as I did, and I wouldn't be playing ROTMG like crack

[Warsaw]

I'm going to drop this here:

Penny Arcade on Graphics vs. Aesthetics.

UT's design aesthetic is fine, and I'm not going to knock it for greeble. However, when talking about games attempting some amount of realism, I am completely justified in doing so. Halo, Crysis, Rage, Doom 3, Gears of War...I could keep going.

[t3h m00kz]

sweet busted link

[t3h m00kz]

found it, watched it

guess you could say minecraft and realm have decent aesthetics, they've both got a unique graphical style to them, and based on that I'd say they look good.





just based on what I've seen of h4 so far I'd say it's got great aesthetics as well. talking about the product as a whole, not just "omg teh wepinz" (which still look fitting in my opinion) because those are honestly just a tiny piece of a huge picture.

I felt like reach hit the grittiness they were trying to achieve as well; to me it just sounds like everybody was just disappointed there wasn't happy fanfare and blinding colors and shiny smooth metals everywhere because they had the balls to break off and do something different

[Pooky]

Worst offenders are anything made by id or Epic Games.

Eh, id was fine up until doom 3.

they had the balls to break off and do something different

By which you mean doing exactly what every other developer was doing at the time?

[t3h m00kz]

*bringing gameplay into a conversation about aesthetics??*

better doing that than rehashing the same shit over and over

silly halo 3, being halo 2 HD

if they didn't cut xbl support for h2 I probably would be playing that over xbl instead