1997

[JABBERJAW]

How is it, that noone, from any game company can program physics that were done 13-14 years ago. Wipeout 1, xl, 64, wo3, all had float, and you can complain any way you want about wall physics, but no game since these has come remotely close to having an actual hovering feeling like them. Star wars racer(first one) was probably the closest in terms of pitch control vs turning and flying, but cpu assist kills multiplayer, and the tracks weren't like wipeout, and Quantum Redshift had the nice sliding feeling, but wasn't the same as wipeout with pitch on the flats(and that was programmed by wipeout people, so that doesn't count). Most games are just completely inferior in terms of physics of the ship itself. Even the new wipeouts do not have the pitch control of the old ones (although hd is closer). I just don't understand this issue. It seems to me, that programmers should be able to do better than 13 years ago.

opinions

[mdhay]

From what I can tell, the floatiness was caused by the camera following the track, not the ship, and most people who are new to wipeout wouldn't be able to deal with it, presumably.

Lets face it, commercialism (constantly bombarding people with adverts being a similar decline in quality) and capitalism (the focus on profit more than making a decent game in this case) has ruined wipEout for us that played them. It's a shamethat it isn't there, 'cos I'm sure many others besides myself and you would love to have that floaty feeling in HD. :3

[SaturnReturn]

Al, is this about non-WipEout style games too? Any other examples? Seems totally AG racing game related, in which case I'll move it to the Pilot's lounge as it looks pretty WipEout based.

Do you always use a NeGcon for the older games? Starting to play them after HD for me was interesting. It was obvious they were different, but the huge difference some people feel wasn't quite there. Using the d-pad, I still had a similar feeling with respect to the way I controlled the ship, i.e. lots of little adjustments. Using a NeGcon though, the floaty feeling is so far amplified by the different way of cornering, with a kind of single, smooth, sweeping motion (when I do it how I aim to), that it feels like a whole new experience again. I guess you have made a NeGcon for the PS3 now too so you are now able to make that comparison where I can't.

What mdhay said is something I hadn't thought about, but I guess the camera would play a massive role there. But why would commercialism prevent the older style physics from being used? It's not like they move away from that and then sold WipEout games by the bucket-load, right?

[mdhay]

Sorry, I was giving another example of how games made these days will never be as good as those from around 1997. I do tend to lose my train of thought lately....

[Darkdrium777]

Maybe it's because the physics impact the driving, and we could argue that driving in the new games is easier than the old ones.
In the new games it's more about going left and right and less about controlling pitch. It gives a more arcade and less sim-like aspect to the game, making it easier to approach (But thanks to track design still hard to master.)
Unfortunately WipEout doesn't have much exposure pretty much anywhere in the world so even this slight change doesn't help it in the long run. :(

[Koleax]

I hear the OP and don't know what to say, other than that I miss it as well.

2097 ships seemed to drift back and forth on the track ever so slightly, which I thought was a nice touch. It was a subtle way of making you feel like you weren't in complete control, that the ship was wild in a domestic tranquil environment.

[blackwiggle]

The programmers probably could do better today given the tools they now have, in the game players mind.
But it depends who's definition of "better" you are talking about.
The term "better" could be subjectively different, at least to the programmer.

Is getting the same effect by writing new code that does basically the same thing, but is easier to edit/ adjust/ use, and is much smaller better?
Probably is to the programmer.

If you have spend many months, if not years designing and fine tuning the tracks and then during beta testing find that there is a basic problem that is stifling game play, what are you going to do?
Change the tracks to suit the craft? [Big job, production manager is looking at the $$]or alter the handling of the craft to suit the tracks? [easier to fix and costs less]
I'm not suggesting that this is what happened to all Wipeouts, but I imagine some tweaks to what was the crafts designed optimum handling, would have been done if this situation arose.

The different SL crew who built the various Wipeouts didn't want to rest on their laurels [or be bored out of their minds doing the same thing over and over again], each one was thought by them to be the best Wipeout they could make at the time, craft handling changes would of been made for what was considered "better" to them [I mean you're not purposely going to change them to make them worse are you?] even though not all the changes were though of in that way by the Wipeout players.

[Chill]

@ mdhay: it wasn't just because of the camera following the track, you still had the same feeling in cockpit view...

I don't think they should have changed it at all... simply worked it forward and improved any weaknesses that it may have had...

[ProblemSolver]

That's an easy one; 1997 was the year the Monster 3D was released. Guess
what has suffered during game development over the years? Graphics was almost
always priority number one from 1997 onwards. Gameplay, physics, and many
other things have suffered a lot! Many companies have sold colorful games
without content. Hopefully Final Fantasy XIII was the last of this kind. I do
believe the days for games solely relying on graphics are counted. Colors for
dollars (that's an insider ;)) will be a thing of the past. Gameplay + story +
physics are back in. Hint: Watch the Indie games!

[AG-wolf]

Pft. People will always want style over substance, it's really a nuisance when you grew up with games which are now considered "old" or "minimalistic" simply because the game was more fun to play than it was necessarily appealing to look at.

The Sonic franchise is another prime example. The only really good Sonic games were the old Genesis (MegaDrive) ones; people may have enjoyed subsequent 3D titles as the years moved on, but the newer games still aren't improvements over the gameplay of the older ones.

More and more, I find that the types of games I buy are the smaller budget quirky and unique stuff like a lot of the releases on Xbox Live Arcade, rather than high-profile releases... Sure you still have to wade through some crap, but most of the time the smaller titles have a lot of thought and attention to detail put into them (the indie games, too). Even the PSN had a few games I genuinely enjoyed.

I'd love to see a resurgence of these style of games, but it's gonna take a higher demand from the people who mindlessly buy bandwagon crap like Gorey Shooter 27, Generic RPG 46, SPORTS 20XX, etc.

[Task]

Nice thread, Al.

Totally agree with you, too. It does seem really strange that 10 to 15 year old games haven't really met their match with 'modern videogams', doesn't it?

Being a software developer I think I can tell you why it is that these game physics haven't improved. Mostly, it's because wolfie and PS above are totally right: If it looks good on their screen, people will buy it. Nothing else seems to matter for some reason.

The more hardcore gamers (such as can be found in this community) truly treasure all the other details of the game: physics, leaderboard, story, music, etc. Heck, our favourite game is commonly criticised for the flat grey uninspired menu! 8 D

It is easily possible to develop a game that not just replicates the WOXL physics, but really _improves_ on them. Craft aerodynamics altering the friction value as the ship slides through the air and dynamically changing the slowdown accelleration around corners due to angle of entry and ship orientation? No problem! This is the stuff I dream about seeing implemented and feeling as I fly my purple brick. I know it can be done, and that it wouldn't be terribly difficult with todays powerful hardware. But to pull it off would mean sacrifices in the graphics department.

The reason you're not going to see float like in WOXL is because that allows flying like in WOXL and no modern game is allowed to show 'horrendous pop-up' these days like WO64 got away with. The easy way to eliminate that possibility is by making the ships less floaty and thereby restricting the draw distance to an easily predictable set of objects.

I've been playing two kinds of games the past while:
1) MMO internet spaceships where constant thrust equals constant velocity (sigh).
2) Indie games on Kongregate.

The first is just because I can't get over my spaceship addiction. The second is because the indie developers don't care about selling boxes on store shelves, they care about gameplay and story and music and etc.

And that's why the indie games have always been my favourite. Ahm gonna hafta agree with others and say that that's where gaming's at now.

If you want glitz, go commercial. If you want gameplay, go indie.

My hopefully informed opinion. 8 )

[JABBERJAW]

Eric, where did you pick up sports 20xx? sounds awesome ! :)

I like the comments so far, good discussion. It seems like all the additions that have been made to the wipeout series in the last 4 iterations, could easily have been added to the old style physics as well, It would feel different for sure, but still good. I did forget about jet moto having a wipeout style physics (kinda), but that was in 1997 as well :) and one hasn't been done since jet moto 3

[ProblemSolver]

Believe me, the race for the graphics crown will soon be over. There is a
phenomenon in Computer Graphics called; as better the graphics, as less
noticeable it becomes. Yep, diminishing returns & friends. We are not quite
there yet, but it's already on the horizon -- visible for everyone like the
sun! So spending millions of dollars just to improve the graphics doesn't pay
off any longer, because the improvements go unnoticed. And as such it becomes
a lot more feasible to impress with good gameplay and physics, again!
Developing the physics Task mentioned would cost only a fraction compared to
WipEout HD graphics.

The Indie movement, which has becomes pretty strong within the last two years,
is a clear sign that selling games solely on graphics will lead to a dead end
for the major companies within the next years if they don't chance direction.
Just watch GG and their Killzone 3. Even GG has started to scarifies graphics
for advanced gameplay and features. And if you look at it, the major graphics
bombs like KZ2, GoW III, UC2, and Crysis haven't sold as expected. A lot of
simpler games (graphics-wise) skyrocket the charts like nothing else. Why?
Because they have out-standing gameplay.

Graphic bombs are always needed to define the boundaries of your empire.
But if you only rely on graphics, you may find yourself leading an empire
having an empty interior.

[yeldar2097]

If WOHD didn't look as good as it did I wouldn't be playing it.

Am I the bane of good gameplay? Probably. Graphics ftw, **** the gameplay.

I blame my age :nod

[ProblemSolver]

The deal is to bring both together, gameplay as well as graphics.

[Lance]

It takes more than photorealism to make great graphics. There have been lots of photorealistic movies that were totally uninteresting graphically. That will be the case with photorealistic games, too.

[Dan Locke]

Lets face it, commercialism (constantly bombarding people with adverts being a similar decline in quality) and capitalism (the focus on profit more than making a decent game in this case) has ruined wipEout for us that played them.
Don't mean to butt in, but BOTH of those factors are commercialism. Capitalism is an economic system, and one which made the game industry itself possible in the first place. Commercialism is its unfortunate side effect.