Child of Light - The Bear and Badger

Escape

Cruddy RPGisms and generic story aside, it's the prettiest game I've seen in years and I love its music. I wish it was out for Christmas (it's not).

ICO, Colossus, Okami and Journey influences are fairly obvious, but it's said to be inspired mainly by Grandia.

LazyGunn

Ha, it is pretty but its a perfect example of quite a simple and easily reproducable look that means you can churn out content like nobodies business and people go 'thats pretty' rather than 'that looks like a childs drawing'. Its no bad thing, i think probs a lot of the best games ever made have relied on this principle but it's funny seeing how it's developed.

Escape

I'm a child of Rotoscope.

Bollockoff

I'd give it a wallop in the old game player.

dynamiteReady

"A bearded race of healers, who enjoy smoking mint out of long pipes..."

...

Anyway... You're right, E'... It's very pretty game. I didn't think it was until I saw the vid.

dynamiteReady

LazyGunn wrote:

Ha, it is pretty but its a perfect example of quite a simple and easily reproducable look that means you can churn out content like nobodies business and people go 'thats pretty' rather than 'that looks like a childs drawing'. Its no bad thing, i think probs a lot of the best games ever made have relied on this principle but it's funny seeing how it's developed.

Also, the engine behind that game might prove to be Michel Ancel's masterpiece...

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2013/08/22/more-ubiart-framework-games-in-development_2c00_-licensing-still-possible-says-ubisoft-ceo-yves-guillemot.aspx

Hope Ubisoft open sources it... That would be extremely cool.

Brooks

Nah.

dynamiteReady

We'll have to see how much mileage they get out of the engine, before I acquiesce on this one, but I'm very impressed by the tech. Ancel himself is very happy with the work too, by the sound of things (all the interviews where he talks about open sourcing it).

To be honest, the first thing that attracted me to the game, was the idea of all the dialogue composing a rhyme. The engine's a bonus.

LazyGunn

dynamiteReady wrote:

LazyGunn wrote:

Ha, it is pretty but its a perfect example of quite a simple and easily reproducable look that means you can churn out content like nobodies business and people go 'thats pretty' rather than 'that looks like a childs drawing'. Its no bad thing, i think probs a lot of the best games ever made have relied on this principle but it's funny seeing how it's developed.

Also, the engine behind that game might prove to be Michel Ancel's masterpiece... http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2013/08/22/more-ubiart-framework-games-in-development_2c00_-licensing-still-possible-says-ubisoft-ceo-yves-guillemot.aspx Hope Ubisoft open sources it... That would be extremely cool.

It looks nice enough but you know me and my Unity fanboying, well it is a very simple truth that nothing in that video couldnt be achieved in Unity without even having to thing very hard about it whatsoever, all the flashy transitions and little 'parallax' animations are the most simple thngs in the world, and if you've got an army of children willing to do your artwork then its all terribly straightforward, technologically. However a bit of middleware that catered exactly for that kind of game could provide the focus the ocd creative type might enjoy and create some really cool things, even though all the functionality I can think of is in place or can be gotten for a small sum in existing well developed middleware

dynamiteReady

Escape

dynamiteReady wrote:

What was Noxy saying about standing back from fires?

Engine's t'thing, Dyn. Here's another:

I'm not a fan of Unity's lack of inertia, Laze.

dynamiteReady

Yeah... That looks interesting too.

I think this engine is brilliant.

What's it's doing, is taking the complexity of game creation out of the hands of the programmer, and giving it to the artist. Skerret would probably be the the best person to expound on the subject, but think about how Nintendo work...

They had cottoned onto empowering their art staff from the start, but there's a big cost to that, because programming even the most simple and trivial stuff is as hard as fuck... I'm guessing that at Nintendo, for every single visual artist they have, they'd probably need at least 2-4 programmers to get the best out of their ideas, which is a huge financial risk.

What this engine does, is allow studios to experiment with 'art heavy' teams. In the majority of cases to date, I'm guessing the spread was about 50-50 at best. This engine could probably bring that balance closer to 70-30... Possibly even 80-20. That in itself would be a massive change to the way games are made.

I haven't played Rayman Legends yet, but everyone makes it out to be a GOTY candidate...
Judging by that engine demo, this framework thingy is definitely a big part of it.

If the output turns out to be 'samey', as Brooks and Gunn suggest, then the tech will die an easy death...

Time will tell.

Brooks

Rayman, fuck. Forgot about that one.

LazyGunn

I actually think programming teams on games tend to be quite small in comparison to the art staff, and the mysterious tech guys who just 'do things'. The biggest credited people are of course the managerial staff, their friends and families and anyone else managing something somewhere on the planet cause thats the real work, QA out on the mean streets, none of this monkey work making the game. Game creatives don't even understand how hard it is and how much the boss of the minor models sweatshop deserves it

dynamiteReady

LazyGunn wrote:

I actually think programming teams on games tend to be quite small in comparison to the art staff.

You might be right, actually.

But can you count a 3D artist as a tech worker?
What do you think?

Like, I admire Bay Raitt as much as I do Quentin Blake, but while you might find another Bay Raitt at the right price (a fucking high one), Quentin Blake is priceless.

That's what I see in the Ubi Framework. A tool for attracting fine artists to the medium, and making them productive.

LazyGunn

I think artists are becoming more technical than ever, as they have to understand their software and in a competent setting, at least write their own MEL scripts and wotnot

Worth adding that shader creation is a very artistic process, and it can invole a pile of code (not just the shader script but the cpu based handling of it), and I would hope competent artists could at least understand and modify shaders, and ideally worth things out for themselves, given the context and material needed

hylian_elf

dynamiteReady wrote:

LazyGunn wrote:

I actually think programming teams on games tend to be quite small in comparison to the art staff.

You might be right, actually. But can you count a 3D artist as a tech worker? What do you think? Like, I admire Bay Raitt as much as I do Quentin Blake, but while you might find another Bay Raitt at the right price (a fucking high one), Quentin Blake is priceless. That's what I see in the Ubi Framework. A tool for attracting fine artists to the medium, and making them productive.

Interesting you say that. I was annoyed when they started to do digital sculpts at Pop Culture Shock for the Street Fighter statues. It no longer felt like 'art' to me. The hand sculpt for, say, (Shin) Akuma is what made it so great. So much more impressive. It's why I think it's a work of art and worth the £1,275 I'm selling it for having bought it for £160.

dynamiteReady

Woah... Far out!

cosmicjellybean

Having seen the last few promo vids for this, this has fast become one of my most anticipated titles this year. The last video on sound design was really nice:

http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/child-of-light-s-developers-discuss-the-making-of-/2300-8738/

Pre ordered the collectors a while back as I really liked the look and RPG mechanics (plus that Amano poster obviously) but the more i hear about it, the more excited I am to actually play it.

Curtis

I'm looking forward to this. I hope there's enough meat on the bones given its a 12-quid download.

Sasukekun

I grabbed the Deluxe edition off of Amazon for £15.99
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Child-Light-Deluxe-Edition-PS3/dp/B00J04X9DM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397133646&sr=8-1&keywords=child+of+light

hylian_elf

Same here. That Amano poster looks crazy. Love his artwork.

dynamiteReady

Ouch!...

http://www.edge-online.com/review/child-of-light-review/

Sasukekun

Actually the review didn't put me off, for the most part it was pretty positive.
I'm still looking forward to it.

[Deleted User]

Do post your impressions Sas... I'm on the fence about it after that review.

Skade

The reviews have generally been very positive except from edge and polygon.

I'll be picking this up by the end of the week I reckon.

b0r1s

When is it out on PS4?

Couldn't find it on the store.

Chief

Tomorrow.

Sasukekun

My stepson got his code today.
Can't use it til tomorrow though.

fullspectrum

Edge gave it a real kicking. I wonder if that's because they didn't start on hard which everyone else recommends.

hylian_elf

I've read a couple of other reviews like Eurogamer and from the text it doesn't sound great. They still gave it an 8. Got delivered earlier, I'll give it a whirl for myself and see.

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