Comments on: Color Me Bad

By: anon

anon — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 14:29:38 +0000

It’s because the lighting works better when the colors are desaturated. It’s not that there aren’t a lot of colors, it’s just that they’ve been desaturated to the point of nearly being gray so that the lighting is more apparant. Games render lighting in a fast, non physicaly correct approximation. As far as I know, which isn’t very far btw, physicaly accurate rendering is so prohibitavly time consuming that only a few offline renderers even go that route. Maybe a graphics programmer could explain exactly why this is…?

By: Steve Napierski

Steve Napierski — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 03:31:51 +0000

Yeah, I remember that one. I look at it like “Your Princess Is In Another Castle”, similar premise, different joke.

I expect you to return tomorrow then and post a link to certain Super Effective strip after you see tomorrow’s comic. But once again, similar premise different jokes.

By: Scott Hall

Scott Hall — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 01:54:15 +0000

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=222

By: Mirenheart

Mirenheart — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 06:06:42 +0000

Fallout 3 was all about the greens and greys.

By: gameguy245

gameguy245 — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 05:18:42 +0000

I once read on an article (I forgot where it was) that the reason the colors are so dull in modern games is because of technical reasons. It’s not that newer technologies can’t “handle” bright colors, it’s that they still have realistic enough lighting, particularly a lighting effect called Global Illumination. Global Illumination takes into account how light bounces off surfaces and reflects colors onto other surfaces. Without that effect, scenes tend to look blocky and unrealistic. Developers cover that up by creating very detailed texture maps and, you guessed it, dull colors.