A lesson in steampunk from your friends at Damnation

well, if the steampunk era is assumed to be the period of her reign only, that that was prime time for the Wild West, which of course used most of the same technology. There's no reason Steampunk has to ONLY be Victorian England, steam technology was used all over the world

I agree that there's not enough Victoriana here, or in video gaming in general. But steampunk westerns can be cool too.


But not Wild Wild West. Never Wiki-wiki-Wild Wild West.

You better go and read some books by Jules Verne... real steampunk.

I never said that defined "steampunk", did I?

And how is Jules Verne's work steampunk? He was a science fiction writer.
HE LIVED IN THE STEAM PERIOD!

A lot of the devices and machines described in Jules Verne novels had heavy steam machinery influence. Just read 20,000 Leagues sometime.

Also, I hate to harp on about this but if you were a TRUE Science Fiction enthusiasts beyond a very narrow view, you'd realize most science fiction written essentially takes the science of that era and pushes it dramatically forward. The popular stories of that era as technology marches forward determines the view of the future. For Jules Verne's era, it was a very steam driven world. For our era, it's very much computers and the ideas of virtual worlds.

But just because it had steam influenced technology, doesn't make it steampunk.

From what I understand, the term "steampunk" describes modern day technology in a destinct historical period.

Also, when Jules Verne wrote "From The Earth To The Moon" (1865) there weren't any true airplanes just gliders that flew a couple of meters at best. The famous Wright Brothers flight happened on December 17, 1903.
So your argument about it being based on technology from that era and pushed drastically forward, doesn't hold up either.

technically speaking, i would think a glider flying to the moon would be a drastic push forward, imho.

but my drastic may be too drastic for you.

No you don't.

shhhhhh, dont want Blue Omega sending their steampunk Ninjas to kill you now, do you?

Downranked? I suppose I'll see what you think when it goes to market.

I mean, a man can dream, can't he?

Yeah, the engine has nothing to do with the colour palette.

If they were using something else I bet it would look shitty as well.

You're right, blkant. Your game looks much better with all that pink and purple.

An engine is something that tells the system how to handled the information given. UE3 has many distinct disadvantages, color palette isn't one of them. Seriously, look up a list of games using UE3. If you're going to tell me Mass Effect, The Agency, Lost Odyssey, and American McGee's Grimm all look like Gears of War, I'm just going to disregard your existance as some cosmic mistake.

You guys keep forgetting, on the internet, it's cool to make fun of the Unreal 3 engine. Give the guy a break.

Regardless of what engine is being used, it can't be denied that the brown-grey color scheme is getting reeaaaalllly old. I still pop in Halo 3 once in awhile just to play a shooter that isn't afraid of using colors like blue or green.

Hopefully this game can either brighten up a bit, or offer some gameplay that will overshadow the dreary (But cool steamgearish) look. I mean, borderlands did it. And i'm actually pretty damn excited about that game.

You and me both.

Oh and DiRT 2.

apparently theyve done some really cool stuff with vertical environments, like youll be fighting on the ground and you get shot from above to look up and see enemies 30 floors above you

POINTS!

Gosh ppl stop comparing everything to gears and saying every game after the next is just a re skin. Im assuming you know little about the game ( Meaning the way it plays and what you can do ). Go play the only 2 games you play Halo and gears and shut up already.

they need to show some gameplay that differentiates Damnation from any other current-gen 3PS.

What about the power up / special abilities in the game and ohh also that your swinging and climbing jumping running and diving all over the place in this game?

And also the main thing... the steampunk twist??

Okay, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm ignoring the bliss the will come from this new vertical shooter variant of the Gears-style 3PS. As one of the editors noted in an article last year, it seems like Damnation is borrowing elements from Tomb Raider, Indiana Jones, and Gears of War, the "verticality" being derived mostly from Tomb Raider/Prince of Persia style gameplay.

Again, I'd like to be surprised, but my fear is we're going to get Gears of Civil-Steampunk Tomb Raiding, and none of the gameplay or setting elements is going to feel truly inspired or as good as its various inspirations. I'll keep my fingers crossed and hold my final judgment until I can cut my own teeth on some hands-on.

How can your future be so secure with a comment like that? I mean fucks sake, you couldn't even get my name right. Unless that was a pathetic attempt at an insult in which case "ZOMG, I never saw anyone do that to my name before eva... you are clever manchild."

First, We'd never compete. I'd gladly let you win "Village Idiot" everytime.

Second, you assume I'm not already IN the industry. I love that. "Nobody working in the game industry eva posts at these sites eva." I have my job and when it comes time for me to move on, I'll have roughly 6-8 years experience coming with me.

Third, you're right. The way UE3 handles Bllom lighting can be annoying. HOWEVER, the most common criticism between us game artist is not really how Bloom is handled in engine but more like how Bloom is being used to mask and cloud flaws within the environmental art. You can, in fact, turn bloom off in UE3. HOWEVER, Bloom is a quick and easy way to light a large area and to give visual "spice" to a screen that would look bland otherwise. Bloom is abused, but it's an option in the renderer that can be disabled. Also, you can make adjustments to the bloom however these adjustments are typically global meaning you cannot isolate these adjustments from scene to scene. Of course this might have changed, I haven't touched the version of UE3 that came out shortly after Gears 2 and I do know that was on the list of things they were wanting to fix.

Fourth, Unreal Engine, and the way it handles textures, is largely based off a combination of normals, materials, and diffuse properties. UE3 doesn't, by default, desaturate textures. That's something poor binding typically does or lazy lighting. In other words....

It's a cowards path to blame the tools. You work with what you have and do what needs to be done. But to avoid a "next generic" look, it takes a REALLY strong art direction and people willing to fight to maintain that vision. You do what you can with the tools that you have. Condemning an engine based upon the results in the last Turok game shows ignorance on your side.

Also, if you walk into a job interview with this same attitude, good luck getting the job. No studio wants primadonnas.

"I love it when dumbasses like you sit around the place feeling all high and mighty, people like you give me confidence that my future is secure knowing how little competition there is :)"

You need to look up the word "irony" in a dictionary.

I'm sorry to tell you that your 3 years of education seem to have been badly wasted. Your point was that somehow Unreal 3 limits the colour palette you can use for textures, this is BS. Point out all the other flaws you like (you missed texture loading btw), but that's not what your original comment was about.


Unoriginal art will be unoriginal in any engine.