Must have visual effects in a game

Lil Margin · Post by **Lil Margin** » Sun Apr 03, 2011 8:48 pm

Hey guys,
I have seen some visual effects like blur when you run,etc but which one of these effects is a must have for you in a video game?
And which effects do you know that can make a game visually better ?

Radikalizm · Post by **Radikalizm** » Sun Apr 03, 2011 9:12 pm

I can't say that any effect is really a must have for video games in general, it all depends on the style you're going for

If you want photorealism you could go for effect which make it look like you're watching the scenes through a camera or actually through someone's eyes, you could use motion blur, depth of field, tonemapped HDR, etc.

If you want something cartoon-like you could maybe choose for cel shading and other over-the-top effects to make it look less 'real'

Effects are nice, but good gameplay still beats visuals no matter how impressive, visual effects are just there to complement the gameplay

ChaiRuiPeng · Post by **ChaiRuiPeng** » Sun Apr 03, 2011 9:26 pm

i don't think there are any 'must have' effects...

last time i checked we are making games not videos...

a game should be about how well ***balanced*** features like story, gameplay, graphics and sound all come _together_, imho, i think if you start focusing on one single element of a game (in this case graphics) then your game is.... well frankly going to suck... remember, graphics are really only a tiny piece of the iceberg when it comes to games.

Radikalizm · Post by **Radikalizm** » Sun Apr 03, 2011 9:38 pm

ChaiRuiPeng wrote:i don't think there are any 'must have' effects...

last time i checked we are making games not videos...

a game should be about how well ***balanced*** features like story, gameplay, graphics and sound all come _together_, imho, i think if you start focusing on one single element of a game (in this case graphics) then your game is.... well frankly going to suck... remember, graphics are really only a tiny piece of the iceberg when it comes to games.

Although sadly it's the part most people judge a game on, there's always only a very small part of hardcore gamers who stick with a game after its graphics get outdated even though it has an amazing gameplay, storyline, etc.

It is true that good graphics won't make a bad game better, but people mostly only take time to consider a game if it's graphically appealing, or if it has a distinctive style (eg. minecraft)

Graphics shouldn't be neglected, but your game also shouldn't revolve around them

pippy3 · Post by **pippy3** » Sun Apr 03, 2011 10:53 pm

Post processing is like makeup. Too much and she looks like a whore, but just a little is perfect. Of course the underlying structure is more important than what's on top.

shadowslair · Post by **shadowslair** » Sun Apr 03, 2011 11:57 pm

pippy3 wrote:Post processing is like makeup. Too much and she looks like a whore, but just a little is perfect. Of course the underlying structure is more important than what's on top.

Amen...

Seven · Post by **Seven** » Mon Apr 04, 2011 12:53 am

pippy3 wrote:Of course the underlying structure is more important than what's on top.

if we are still talking about the whore, then I cannot agree with this.....

viejodani · Post by **viejodani** » Mon Apr 04, 2011 2:09 am

In my opinion, it's better to focus on the core of the game you're making, without worrying too much about graphics and special effects. Then you can have a list of details to improve the game's appearance.

Many developers that focus on the effects overlook some small issues of the game and they are well noticed once released (and fixed by patches). I get annoyed when a game looks pretty and is so broken I have o wait for a patch to fix the gameplay

Lil Margin · Post by **Lil Margin** » Mon Apr 04, 2011 3:06 am

Offcourse i will focus on the core of the game but i want to make something great looking

.
I heard allot about post processing, what is it exactly? does anyone have a youtube video showing the exact difference when its on and off?

Adler1337 · Post by **Adler1337** » Mon Apr 04, 2011 4:14 am

I heard allot about post processing, what is it exactly? does anyone have a youtube video showing the exact difference when its on and off?

It is a way to implement an effect that generally needs to be processed over the entire screen. Sorry if my explanation sucks

ChaiRuiPeng · Post by **ChaiRuiPeng** » Mon Apr 04, 2011 4:22 am

Lil Margin wrote: I heard allot about post processing, what is it exactly? does anyone have a youtube video showing the exact difference when its on and off?

haha it depends, there's lots options for pp

Lil Margin · Post by **Lil Margin** » Mon Apr 04, 2011 4:30 am

wel how would you explain post processing to an entire beginner?

lazerblade · Post by **lazerblade** » Mon Apr 04, 2011 4:39 am

I can try to explain.

When the scene is rendered in 3D, it is usually dumped straight into video memory to be drawn on the screen. For post processing, you instead render to an image in memory, and then apply whatever effects you want to that image before drawing it on the screen.

It's called post processing because it happens after the scene has been processed and rendered. It's just effects applied to an image in memory.

Hope that helps.

Adler1337 · Post by **Adler1337** » Mon Apr 04, 2011 5:31 am

lazerblade wrote:I can try to explain.

When the scene is rendered in 3D, it is usually dumped straight into video memory to be drawn on the screen. For post processing, you instead render to an image in memory, and then apply whatever effects you want to that image before drawing it on the screen.

It's called post processing because it happens after the scene has been processed and rendered. It's just effects applied to an image in memory.

Hope that helps.

Your explanation is a lot better than mine. Lil Margin, you can also kind of think of it as taking a screenshot, opening it in photoshop, and applying a filter or some effect over it.

serengeor · Post by **serengeor** » Mon Apr 04, 2011 5:38 am

Radikalizm wrote:Effects are nice, but good gameplay still beats visuals no matter how impressive, visual effects are just there to complement the gameplay

Great words

No matter if game has plenty of nice visual effects, the game with a better gameplay would always be more attractive to me.

I remember I watched resident evil 5 trailer on tv show, it looked cool, and had really nice visual effects back then, though when I got to try it, I wasn't really impressed, because the gameplay for me looked kind of too constrained. I got bored quite fast of it.

The last(and the best) game that I played that had many visual effects was F.E.A.R 2. It was damn good, because the visual effects only get you more into whats happening there. It was really fun(ok, not fun, but scary

).
Though the second time I tried to play it, it got boring too because I already knew whats going to happen