Any rational gamer will say gameplay is more important than graphics. A lot of game makers, frustrated at the attention to cosmetics, form themselves into groups which make graphics a very low priority. They just want to make fun games. This won''t happen in commercial games because ugly games don''t sell. Even gameplay-first magazines criticise graphics that would have been incredible three yeays ago. Arguably, the attention of commercial games needs to be re-balanced, but both extremes of the argument have loyal supporters. What if... A graphics engine is created for a game which is intially only good enough for testing gameplay, but supports the fancy graphics when you''re ready to plug them in The game is built using that state of the engine. When a highly playable, highly optimised, bug-free (well, almost) game is finished, the remaining development time can be prioritised to making the graphics as good as possible. The point being the graphics can still be good, the gameplay will be better simply because it got priority, and the only thing to suffer from deadlines is a few cosmetic toutches as opposed to losing bug-testing time. ******** A Problem Worthy of Attack Proves It''s Worth by Fighting Back

The challenge I see is making sure the models and textures are top-notch for the state of the art. If low resolution textures and models are initially made, they would need to be reworked, which would take time.

Animation techniques would have to remain similar, otherwise that code would have to be reworked too.

[edited by - Waverider on April 17, 2003 2:49:33 PM]