Clint Hocking, the creative director of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory explains the issue of modern lighting in stealth games.
Echo Dot
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91h

It’s called art direction. It’s a game if you don’t want to do realistic lighting that’s fine you can do what you want.

@[email protected]
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23h

Chaos theory still looks amazing, and that was on the unreal 2.5 engine with hugely prebaked lighting. Just legitimately do that again.

It’s not any worse than what we had for the OG Splinter Cell except when the developers make it way too damn dark. Hollywood has a similar problem with a lot of modern movies.

Also I find it ironic that one of the things I remember seeing people complain about with Hitman: Blood Money was the, at the time, new system that let 47 highlight usable objects in the world. The previous games made you faf around just trying to use anything because you couldn’t tell a random background object from something you could actually use. Lotta people whined that it oversimplified the game.

@[email protected]
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46h

What? As if with global illumination there are no hard shadows. If you walk around when the sun is shining, guess what type of shadow you have? So the solution is to only create levels with few, bright light sources so that hard shadows get cast.

Stop worrying about realism!

@[email protected]
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1110h

Right? I play games to escape reality anyway

justdaveisfine
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4711h

This is a peak AAA problem. The need for ultra high fidelity realism clashes with the need to make the actual gameplay.

Maybe they need splashes of yellow paint to show where the stealth area is.

@[email protected]
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139h

They also need red vision cones to show where the un-stealth area is.

Sanctus
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6912h

You just dont have to do that? You can change the lighting so it is more informative for a stealth game rather than have it be realismmaxxed for no reason.

@[email protected]
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44h

Honestly games focus so much on unimportant nonsense to keep the feeling of realism, then you clip through a wall and see your character’s teeth from the inside.

@[email protected]
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34h

Had a nice giggle, thanks

Encrypt-Keeper
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3512h

Yeah a big trend right now is indie games made with what is basically PS1 graphics. Having more tools for better graphics and lighting does not at all mean you have to make your game look a certain way.

@[email protected]
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34h

I love the look of cel shading. Make a stylistic art choice. Hell, make it pixelated. Idc of i can count the stitching on the clothes.

VindictiveJudge
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27h

Or make lighting less of a factor in detection. Line of sight only worked just fine for Dishonored, and Assassin’s Creed used to have a fantastic social stealth system.

ProdigalFrog
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11h

As a thief fan, Dishonored’s stealth system felt terrible in comparison.

@[email protected]
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4
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5h

No. Light was like, the primary stealth mechanic of Splinter Cell games. Well, the good ones anyway. The HUD literally has a Light Meter on it to tell you how detectable you are.

Thats like saying “Just make Sonic slower.” Its literally the main mechanic of the game.

@[email protected]
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2011h

In a world where game designers decided “yellow” means “climb here”, it seems crazy that a stealth game can’t be made with better lighting and textures because it becomes readable. That’s the point of stealth.

@[email protected]
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610h

Oh sure, a genre that got on the radar with a 1987 MSX game, one that became what it is partly because of hardware limitations, is impossible to do nowadays because “now we can do realism”.

Talk about creating problems for yourself.

@[email protected]
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1212h

There are two really good examples of how to represent that from the past two Splinter Cell games. I’m not convinced it got any harder from this explanation.

@[email protected]
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1812h

It definitely didn’t. The lighting doesn’t need to be AMAZING when you can literally add a light blue bloom to the edge of the screen to simply express that you’re hidden.

Theyr all just out here tryna make me buy a new video card. Ain’t happinen slick

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