I like working with professionals too, but generaly the publisher gets in the way of innovation by enforcing marketings idea of what gamers want. Problem there is that most research is based on games that are already exist determining whats doing well and is going to sell. So more often than not you end up with more of the same old games. Kind of like your generic hollywood action movie, or the 40 almost identical FPS that come out each year.
At the end of the day a successful indie will often end up going where the money is, kind of a shame really :(
I thought HL2 looked better than Doom3 despite not having that much in the way of fancy lighting tech. What it did have was some nice GI type static lightmapping that added a lot more subtle depth to the scenery, rather than the harsh high contrast look of the d3 engine. It's the harsh contrast lighting that gives the ID games a plastic amature animation studio lighting look. If like me you spent a fair ammount of time at university in the film studio and played around with claymation, you will probably know what I mean.
With doom 3 I found that turning up the ambient light in the console to as much as 1.4 or 1.6 gave you far more believable realistic lighting.
At the end of the day a successful indie will often end up going where the money is, kind of a shame really :(
I thought HL2 looked better than Doom3 despite not having that much in the way of fancy lighting tech. What it did have was some nice GI type static lightmapping that added a lot more subtle depth to the scenery, rather than the harsh high contrast look of the d3 engine. It's the harsh contrast lighting that gives the ID games a plastic amature animation studio lighting look. If like me you spent a fair ammount of time at university in the film studio and played around with claymation, you will probably know what I mean.
With doom 3 I found that turning up the ambient light in the console to as much as 1.4 or 1.6 gave you far more believable realistic lighting.