I started playing a game called The Ascent. While the gameplay is nothing really new or spectacular, the developers REALLY went mental with the HUB of the game. It's very cyberpunk, meaning both the game and the genre (well, duh). Not much to do, other than run around, open crates and talk to people for lore and side missions, shop for gear. Then again, Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't offer any more, either, despite how VAST the game-world is, which is its most impressive part, for both games, IMHO. Also, people seem to like leaving crates out on the open streets with all sort of stuff inside, including cloths (and even guns, in Cyberpunk 2077), which is weird. Em-8er won't need that, though.
Running around the main hub of the game instantly reminded me of the description of Home, in the Gatestrider novel. Densely or haphazardly placed buildings, in a neon and holographic jungle, with both English and Japanese texts. In The Ascent, the place is described as an arcology and Home is essentially a space-arcology. In The Ascent there is perhaps more room than what the developers had in mind for Home, but the aesthetics are basically how I imagine it. The heavy glare in the second picture was only showing at certain angles, but I took the screenshot deliberately when it was the strongest, cause I like that bleeding of light. I can be annoying and hurts the eyes, but it's perfect for the setting.
So, I don't know how demanding it would be for the developers to create something like the above for a full 3D environment and how big the file-sizes would be. Don't know if Unreal 5 makes that easier or not.
Is it possible to have us run around in first or third-person, down on the planet, as we normally would, then, when we'd return to the main hub, it would suddenly switch to a perspective like the above? Not saying that could/should be in Em-8er or if it would even be welcome, I'm just curious if it's even possible.
RANT WARNING
The reason I hope they make MOAR games like this, with the overhead perspective (and in The Ascent the camera sometimes changes, zooms out and lowers, depending on where you are, which looks cool), is because, in my own layman understanding of game-design, it's less demanding on hardware and they can really go mental with the size and detail of the game-world, models and environment. Of course, there are games like the last three Assassin's Creed titles and Horizon: Zero Dawn, where the world is unbelievably huge, the graphics are great and my system can still easily run it, but I do believe, without any actual knowledge of the process, that there is a LOT of potential, in even just 2D side-scrollers, or 2.5D, 3D side-scrollers, Souls-like side-scrollers (like Salt and Sanctuary, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Dust: An Elysian Tail, Ghost 1.0, Dex...etc.), because they could pack so much into it, without bloating the Gigabytes.
Running around the main hub of the game instantly reminded me of the description of Home, in the Gatestrider novel. Densely or haphazardly placed buildings, in a neon and holographic jungle, with both English and Japanese texts. In The Ascent, the place is described as an arcology and Home is essentially a space-arcology. In The Ascent there is perhaps more room than what the developers had in mind for Home, but the aesthetics are basically how I imagine it. The heavy glare in the second picture was only showing at certain angles, but I took the screenshot deliberately when it was the strongest, cause I like that bleeding of light. I can be annoying and hurts the eyes, but it's perfect for the setting.
So, I don't know how demanding it would be for the developers to create something like the above for a full 3D environment and how big the file-sizes would be. Don't know if Unreal 5 makes that easier or not.
Is it possible to have us run around in first or third-person, down on the planet, as we normally would, then, when we'd return to the main hub, it would suddenly switch to a perspective like the above? Not saying that could/should be in Em-8er or if it would even be welcome, I'm just curious if it's even possible.
RANT WARNING
The reason I hope they make MOAR games like this, with the overhead perspective (and in The Ascent the camera sometimes changes, zooms out and lowers, depending on where you are, which looks cool), is because, in my own layman understanding of game-design, it's less demanding on hardware and they can really go mental with the size and detail of the game-world, models and environment. Of course, there are games like the last three Assassin's Creed titles and Horizon: Zero Dawn, where the world is unbelievably huge, the graphics are great and my system can still easily run it, but I do believe, without any actual knowledge of the process, that there is a LOT of potential, in even just 2D side-scrollers, or 2.5D, 3D side-scrollers, Souls-like side-scrollers (like Salt and Sanctuary, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Dust: An Elysian Tail, Ghost 1.0, Dex...etc.), because they could pack so much into it, without bloating the Gigabytes.
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Pandagnome
