GAFB: 02 – Less is more
As a games artist you are trying to make things look as good as you can with as little impact as possible on the computing time needed to draw them. Computers and consoles only have a finite amount of computational time in their CPU (Central Processing Unit) or GPU (Graphics Processing Unit).
When developing a game, the framerate is the performance measuring stick, where 1 frame is equal to the time taken to process everything. In each frame the computer or console must figure out exactly what is going on, where it is happening, what can be seen and what can be heard, then draw what needs to be seen and play the correct sound. The more things the CPU needs to do in a frame means the frame will take longer to complete.
The faster a frame can be processed, the better a game will look and sound. When you see a game running at 3-5 frames per second (fps), it looks awful – it stutters. You can often notice this happening in some racing games – at the first corner in the race before the pack is split up the console is having to compute and draw 20 cars – that’s a lot of data. It can be likened to looking at the world through a strobe light. It is generally unacceptable for games to run at any less than around 25 frames per second. With faster paced games, especially reaction based games such as First Person Shooters (also shortened to FPS, but uppercase), it is important to have even higher framerates. PC gamers often tweak their systems to eek every last framerate boost to give them that edge over their opponents.
So where does all this leave us as artists? Well, we need to make our work as efficient as possible. Sure, a highly detailed model with dozens of large highly detailed textures will look wonderful, but if the hardware can only display that one model on screen, with nothing else – no AI, no sound – then the game will not be much fun, will it? It won’t be some much a game, more of a picture. At the end of the day, you are there to make art for a game, not a game to display your art.
There are 2 hard and fast rules to remember when it comes to helping the framerate:
- Keep your polygon counts lower
- Keep your texture smalls.
April 12th, 2007 at 12:05 am
Frame rate definitely affects how long I play a game. If it’s a game where I constantly feel I’m watching a slide show – I’ll just avoid it. Saying that I also prefer stylised looks for games (such as Tak) which don’t use as much power, I’d take visual style over anything else like visual detail. I do like detail but not for any other hit.
April 13th, 2007 at 11:36 am
Keeping it simple, low polygon count gets you higher frame rates than high, ditto texture sizes. However, the games industry is anything but simple and there are plenty more aspect to take into consideration, though I’m sure Rick will come on to those in due course.
What’s most important is to retain a consistent art style throughout the product – this can violate some people’s “freedom of expression”, well tough shit – you want freedom? Go solo. You want your name on the next GTA? Suck up some rules.
Compare something like EQ2 which had massive polygon budgets and characters that looked ok in isolation but visibly jar when placed next to one another with World of Warcraft which must have some of the tiniest poly and texture budgets to hit the screens in years, yet they maintained consistency throughout the project and it looks and feels fabulous as a result.
Go look up “uncanny valley” when you get the time and inwardly digest – high poly is not the same as high quality.
April 13th, 2007 at 11:45 am