I saw the pictures in the first post, and WOW. Those are some amazing images, and if minecraft looked like that, I would buy it 2 more times. That would be amazing.
I wouldn't mind if Minecraft had a more 3D Dot Heroes style to it. Basically keeping the simple, blocky format but using nicer, HD textures and shading effects like depth of field and specular highlighting
But... It has so high graphics, that it will have around 20 - 40 fps for a normal PC.
Like any other game, it would be scalable... so if your PC couldn't handle it, there would be graphics options (just like now, just so you know) to turn the graphics down. I like games that look so good you can't run them on full graphics for two or three more years since the hardware isn't commercially viable yet. Happened years back with Quake 3... game was so far ahead of it's time, I couldn't run that **** on full graphics for like a year or more when the next generation video cards came out. Awesome.
Quote from FutileHavok »
Amazing renders you did. Of course as everyone has said, java would have no chance.
Look four posts up (not counting this one)... Reading thread before posting = important
i think the OP should be spending less time typing messages on this forum and more time typing out an application to notch for a job as one of the artists of the game. :smile.gif:
i don't think the creeper's model should be changed at all however and that may become even less feasible in the near future, didn't notch say he eventually planned to have varieties of most base mobs?
similar to Diablo 2 as well as borderlands where the monster's has a base type and can be mixed with element types to create the more difficult versions of themselves.
i think your examples look really great and i hope they're able to come to fruition, but i think maybe an option in the settings of minecraft should exist to let players use old style legacy graphics too if this ever happens as i know not all like the idea of moving away from early console looking graphics.
It's interesting that you bring up Wurm Online. For anyone who doesn't know, Notch was one of the lead developers in Wurm Online when it first started...
Many games have textures with different resolutions. And I'm sorry, but I think that even if you start arranging crappy-looking blocks in various imaginative ways, you'll still end up with a bunch of blocks that look like crap, with pixels larger than life, looking worse than things looked back in the ZX Spectrum days. The old "crap in, crap out" principle. If you want to look at what people can do with properly textured blocks, you may want to look up some pictures people made of their EQ2 houses.
Now if all you can play this thing on is a 10 years-old PC, or an office one with an Intel graphics card (like the one I have at work), then the agenda is clear. But there is no reason not to retain the current uber-pixel textures if better-looking ones are implemented.
What is it with forums and throwing photoshops together and talking about how easy it is to create a game around that. Yes, it's possible for Java to handle this, but realistically, it can't. Sure, you can browse terrabytes of data and what not (whatever those examples were) but it's really difficult to have complex things like this that require a lot of precise timing that is hard to do with Java, especially on that scale.
And "make a new engine" is a worse idea. You have a game that works here, do you know how much work it is to create a 3D engine from scratch? And then do it in C on top of that? Please. I'm not against ideas, but this is a terrible one. Just because OpenGL exists doesn't mean 3D is easy to do
What is it with forums and throwing photoshops together and talking about how easy it is to create a game around that. Yes, it's possible for Java to handle this, but realistically, it can't. Sure, you can browse terrabytes of data and what not (whatever those examples were) but it's really difficult to have complex things like this that require a lot of precise timing that is hard to do with Java, especially on that scale.
And "make a new engine" is a worse idea. You have a game that works here, do you know how much work it is to create a 3D engine from scratch? And then do it in C on top of that? Please. I'm not against ideas, but this is a terrible one. Just because OpenGL exists doesn't mean 3D is easy to do
Higher resolution textures and some pixel shaders (bump maps, normal maps, height maps) will require none of the things you listed. No rewrite required... just some hi-def artwork with shader support. The rough edges of the blocks can easily be simulated with shader model 3.0 tessellation, the lighting is simple volumetric lighting (used in most directX 9 and above games, as well as Open GL, easily "faked" by using other methods such as Verlet integration).
Anyway, it's not as hard as so many people think, but yes it's not exactly as easy as pressing a few buttons either.
At the end of the day, it is very do-able, the java platform will handle it just fine, and the game will still be very playable even on slower machines since it would no doubt have scaled graphics to suit any machine.
Higher resolution textures and some pixel shaders (bump maps, normal maps, height maps) will require none of the things you listed. No rewrite required... just some hi-def artwork with shader support. The rough edges of the blocks can easily be simulated with shader model 3.0 tessellation, the lighting is simple volumetric lighting (used in most directX 9 and above games, as well as Open GL, easily "faked" by using other methods such as Verlet integration).
Anyway, it's not as hard as so many people think, but yes it's not exactly as easy as pressing a few buttons either.
At the end of the day, it is very do-able, the java platform will handle it just fine, and the game will still be very playable even on slower machines since it would no doubt have scaled graphics to suit any machine.
~Sol
I agree, its not nearly as hard as everyone here thinks. What the issue is the needed artist and developer time. I think updated textures and graphics would be a good thing to target for the end of alpha/beta phase. While polishing off the game logic bugs he or someone else can update the rendering engine with an "HD" mode (to go with "fast" and "fancy"), and an artist can whip up some higher res textures and normal maps. If they are especially ambitious maybe update the lighting model with some global illumination.
A good example of this: Starcraft 2. Just adjust the game visually from its highest to its lowest settings and see how much the bare stripped down graphics look like.
I wouldn't be opposed to this, but I wouldn't use it either.
I prefer Minecraft to have its glorious pixellated textures. It would look strange to have high detail, but yet still be blocky. just my opinion.
The blocky graphics certainly do have their charm.
If something like a HD version was added, I'm 100% certain that the original graphics would remain and be some kind of toggle option in the menu to play it "old school" style. :smile.gif:
I highly doubt that Notch would ever get rid of the current style all together if the graphics ever were updated.
What is it with forums and throwing photoshops together and talking about how easy it is to create a game around that. Yes, it's possible for Java to handle this, but realistically, it can't. Sure, you can browse terrabytes of data and what not ...
Er, realistically Java can totally handle this... in fact there's another project that does it called "NeoTextureEdit" http://neotextureedit.sourceforge.net -- it uses LWJGL (just like Minecraft)
Terabytes of textures are only required if you are limited to single-pass texturing, but it's much more efficient to do multipass, and even more efficient to write GLSL shaders.
I think HD is entirely possible and pretty straightforward to do without changing any geometry at all just using these type of textures. As for whether people want it... I'd like to see the option, simply because trying to play minecraft fullscreen makes my eyes explode.
In fact, a clever perceptual trick would be to use the same 16x16 texture cubes, and simply overlay them with procedural noise mod... it just breaks up the pattern and gives the eye something to lock onto... makes it feel more hires than it really is at high resolutions on large screens. (lots of games use this technique).
I don't mind the voxel-limitations of the world modeling -- I think it's a clever tradeoff and a nifty art style.
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Like any other game, it would be scalable... so if your PC couldn't handle it, there would be graphics options (just like now, just so you know) to turn the graphics down. I like games that look so good you can't run them on full graphics for two or three more years since the hardware isn't commercially viable yet. Happened years back with Quake 3... game was so far ahead of it's time, I couldn't run that **** on full graphics for like a year or more when the next generation video cards came out. Awesome.
Look four posts up (not counting this one)... Reading thread before posting = important
~Sol
i don't think the creeper's model should be changed at all however and that may become even less feasible in the near future, didn't notch say he eventually planned to have varieties of most base mobs?
similar to Diablo 2 as well as borderlands where the monster's has a base type and can be mixed with element types to create the more difficult versions of themselves.
i think your examples look really great and i hope they're able to come to fruition, but i think maybe an option in the settings of minecraft should exist to let players use old style legacy graphics too if this ever happens as i know not all like the idea of moving away from early console looking graphics.
It's interesting that you bring up Wurm Online. For anyone who doesn't know, Notch was one of the lead developers in Wurm Online when it first started...
So there is hope yet! :biggrin.gif:
This. All of it.
~Sol
You can make Java look like a lot of things. But the FPS will always be lower than a natively run application.
That's all anyone is saying.
And "make a new engine" is a worse idea. You have a game that works here, do you know how much work it is to create a 3D engine from scratch? And then do it in C on top of that? Please. I'm not against ideas, but this is a terrible one. Just because OpenGL exists doesn't mean 3D is easy to do
Higher resolution textures and some pixel shaders (bump maps, normal maps, height maps) will require none of the things you listed. No rewrite required... just some hi-def artwork with shader support. The rough edges of the blocks can easily be simulated with shader model 3.0 tessellation, the lighting is simple volumetric lighting (used in most directX 9 and above games, as well as Open GL, easily "faked" by using other methods such as Verlet integration).
Anyway, it's not as hard as so many people think, but yes it's not exactly as easy as pressing a few buttons either.
At the end of the day, it is very do-able, the java platform will handle it just fine, and the game will still be very playable even on slower machines since it would no doubt have scaled graphics to suit any machine.
~Sol
I bet you're disappointed now.
Fingerlicking good button to add on your personal blog http://getminecraft.net/
I agree, its not nearly as hard as everyone here thinks. What the issue is the needed artist and developer time. I think updated textures and graphics would be a good thing to target for the end of alpha/beta phase. While polishing off the game logic bugs he or someone else can update the rendering engine with an "HD" mode (to go with "fast" and "fancy"), and an artist can whip up some higher res textures and normal maps. If they are especially ambitious maybe update the lighting model with some global illumination.
A good example of this: Starcraft 2. Just adjust the game visually from its highest to its lowest settings and see how much the bare stripped down graphics look like.
The blocky graphics certainly do have their charm.
If something like a HD version was added, I'm 100% certain that the original graphics would remain and be some kind of toggle option in the menu to play it "old school" style. :smile.gif:
I highly doubt that Notch would ever get rid of the current style all together if the graphics ever were updated.
~Sol
Er, realistically Java can totally handle this... in fact there's another project that does it called "NeoTextureEdit" http://neotextureedit.sourceforge.net -- it uses LWJGL (just like Minecraft)
Terabytes of textures are only required if you are limited to single-pass texturing, but it's much more efficient to do multipass, and even more efficient to write GLSL shaders.
I think HD is entirely possible and pretty straightforward to do without changing any geometry at all just using these type of textures. As for whether people want it... I'd like to see the option, simply because trying to play minecraft fullscreen makes my eyes explode.
In fact, a clever perceptual trick would be to use the same 16x16 texture cubes, and simply overlay them with procedural noise mod... it just breaks up the pattern and gives the eye something to lock onto... makes it feel more hires than it really is at high resolutions on large screens. (lots of games use this technique).
I don't mind the voxel-limitations of the world modeling -- I think it's a clever tradeoff and a nifty art style.