Phml
Forum Staple
Posts: 2036
Registered: 06-09 |
Ah, the quote war maneuver. A brilliant way to prove to everyone you're a paragon of reason and logic, and not at all governed by your emotions. That is, if "everyone" is a group of easily fooled six years olds. Complete with the suggestion anyone who doesn't agree with you doesn't get you, and doesn't get you because he is just too stupid to do so (bonus points if you suggest he's scared of anything new, like quake2-looking techbases in 2012), and you've certainly got all the important parts of being an artist done. I would post a link to a picture of a beret you can wear, Ed, but I'm too dumb to use the Internet.
Moving on.
Obviously Doom can't do much in the vein of true realism, but I think it can evoke things that would generally come under the term "realism". You can't build a realistic city in Doom, but you can certainly build something that references the architectural and spacial properties of a real city -- in such a way that it appears potentially functional, like a place that could have been built for a purpose and then inhabited. That's the only type of "realism" I see people trying in doom, and I think it works quite well. It can never have the detail of reality itself, but it does capture something of the spirit of reality.
This I can agree with, to an extent. We definitely all build off some basic notions grounded in the real world, but the question is how close do you try to get, and that's what I try to get at with "attempting realism". If you're throwing computer panels in walls, pipes and wires on the ceiling because you feel it'd make sense, in the end you're still going to look at something that won't look realistic nor look as realistic as it might in a more modern engine (and that's before we consider the implications it can have on gameplay).
I mean, I want to say obviously I'm not saying Doom mods shouldn't be realistic at all, because if you'd push that argument to the extreme you can start questioning the concept of having walls, or ground, or guns, or three dimensional enemies or pretty much anything. Consciously attempting realism, trying to go as close as possible, just doesn't strike me as a smart goal given the vast amount of better options, but trying to get an atmosphere going or a setting as a backdrop for the game is another thing. Or, to put it another way, if you want to design a realistic looking military complex and pick Doom to do so, I'd think that's silly, whereas if you want to design a Doom map that feels like it takes place in a military complex, that sounds fine.
And with regards to the "six foot hole with a spoon" thing -- I personally find complex things in Doom to be very impressive due to the limitations of the medium, but that isn't the main reason they're impressive. Creating things like that isn't like saying "this is impressive because I did it with self-imposed constraints", it's like saying "this is impressive because it does something unexpected with a game engine you've been exploring since you were six years old".
Is there a difference? I can sort of see one, but at the same time it feels like it's two ways to say the same thing. Both situations seem to come down to "something is great because it is unexpected within a specific environment". I can understand the appeal, I just don't share it at all. It's too technical. Best for something to be impressive on its own, regardless of anything else.
Last edited by Phml on 02-07-12 at 19:21
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02-07-12 17:05 
