I love that ghosts in the Two Point games are opaque. Such a smart design decision: No player will ever think less of the game because of it, but it saved the developers time and energy dealing with the pitfalls of translucency. No worries about sorting order, overdraw, culling inner triangles, translucency not being supported in deferred rendering, etc.
#gamedev
Tech Art POV: Artists often tell you that they absolutely NEED a certain rendering feature or the project will fail. These features usually end up being a) unused or b) unnoticed.
These ghosts are a reminder that you can skip more features than you think and no one will notice.
@haukethiessen although you can also see that on the tech art side when we get carried away with light bounces, shader features and whatnot and our users (the artists) not caring or never using (worse: never discovering!) the feature
@kwramm Regrettably, that's true as well.
And I'm definitely guilty of excitedly showing around comparison screenshots to artists, trying to prove that you can totally see the difference the improved motion blur makes, while just getting blank stares as a reaction.
@haukethiessen haha yeah. On the other hand, I as player, too notice that we're in an age where graphics aren't such a huge driver for selling games as they were 10 - 15 years ago. It's a bit odd being in the tech art space when this realization hit me, but then again, I was also more focused on artist productivity and unlocking workflows and possibilities for people than the hard core rendering stuff. And when it comes to efficiency and all that, there's still a long way we can go
@haukethiessen I'm currently at a point where I consider my feature-pipeline complete. I could add more things all the time, but I think there is true beauty in coming up with creative ways on how to stretch what you got into something more.