Rain

It's pretty risky

We all have those little quirky things we love that we can't explain. The kind of things that make you smile internally for some unexplainable reason that no one else shares. When it comes to games, I like to think of it as that little piece of love that you share with the one developer who worked on that. An inside joke that the two of you share and always bring up in conversation. Judging from the title you can likely see where this is going so I'll just out and say it; I like rain.

Being a Brit, one could make a sound argument that such an affirmation is a manifestation of Stockholm syndrome, but whatever the case I am a rain connoisseur. (Purely in video games, you understand. Can't stand the stuff in real life.) Anytime a video game boasts dynamic weather changes I'm always excited to see how they handle that most common of phenomena. Radiation storms are cool the first time, I guess. Snow blizzards are usually more annoying than fun. And hurricanes always sound more exciting in concept than in person. (Sorry, Just Cause 4.) I prefer to dedicate my escapism fantasy experience to the fun activity of staying out of the rain. Or rather, I would, but I have quests to do and stuff so I just have to grin and bear it. (Kind of like in real life.)

If I were to take a psychoanalytic angle to this predilection I may conclude that these feelings stem back to my days indoors as a child. Oftentimes in the autumnal months, the heavens would open up on a nearly daily basis, and in Britain when it rains it absolutely pours. During times like these I often liked to wrap up in a cover and sit by the window sill, observing the uncomfortable, cold downpour outside whilst basking in the warmth and comfort of the indoors. Perhaps there's a little bit of sadism involved in it too, as I have lived up the road from a train station most of my life, so I often got to see commuters, fresh off the train, suffering the consequences of being ill-prepared for the cloud's wrath. (It's always satisfying when it's happening to someone else...)

Something about watching my video game avatar bear the same struggles is infinitely endearing and relatable for me. I may not posses the upper body strength to wear plate armour, the charisma to make friends, the intelligence to solve crimes, or the immortal spirit of Akatosh within which I can consume the souls of slain dragons; but I can stand in the rain. (Heck, I've done it before!) Maybe me and the video game guy aren't so different after all.

"But you didn't call yourself an 'enthusiast', you specifically said 'Conisseur', which implies some critical consideration." Very astute, dear reader, yes I did. That is because I am such an individual who takes great interest in the way that rain works in video games and am always eager to ensure that there are some carnal sins of rain implementation that are not broken. (Feel like I misplaced the term 'Carnal', but what's done is done.) I won't say that poor rain implementation is enough to break my immersion from a game, that would be silly. But I would, undoubtedly, be immeasurably disappointed and have my day be ruined. So allow me to take you through the weird things that I check whenever I encounter a game with the hubris to imitate Zeus.

One of the most important aspects to consider is one that so many games ignore, does the rain fall where it's supposed to. In order to understand this, there is something I must established. Rain falls from the sky. Discounting the affects of velocity, cloud angle, and wind, that would mean the rain would fall in a downwards motion and a straight manner. Being that those facts are solid and immutable, can someone explain to be why in 'Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories' I get rain that falls on me whilst I'm inside my garage?

Of course, this comes down to the fact that some developers can't be bothered to program rain that reacts to collision boxes. (Maybe that would cause too much strain on the system. Whatever Dev excuses they want to use.) The result is rain that effectively ghosts surfaces and hit the player anywhere as long as they are in an outside wordspace. As a rain lover, this absolutely ruins the potential to stand in shelter and watch everyone else deal with the sky's tears, which is an absolutely damnable crime to the depiction of rain. Oh yeah, it's also deeply unimmersive and makes it feel like weather effects were haphazardly slapped onto the game as an afterthought. (Which, honestly, may be close to the truth.)

Those proud games that do go that extra mile to ensure that rain reacts to solid surfaces do earn my respect. Games like 'Witcher 3: Wild Hunt', 'Red Dead Redemption 2' and 'Watch Dogs 2' showcase how at least one Dev on the team cared about this as much as I do. In these games you can have those moments when you stand under an awning, close your eyes, and just listen to the rhythmic patter of rain drowning out the ambiance of civilization. Something you can't do in person because it's always too chilly in rain season and you're vulnerable to splashback when you stand under awnings, it's just not worth it. (Plus, if you stand in the middle of a busy street with your eyes closed you're pretty much asking to get pickpocketed. Or is that just my area?)

This here's a real new age technique. The kind of stuff that wasn't possible with game engines back in the day. I like to look out for whether or not the rain forms into puddles. I'm not implying that the game should dynamically create puddles to match the force of the rain, because at that you'd just be making a rain simulator game. (That would be awesome but I don't think the world's quiet ready for it yet.) Instead I'm referring to those times when the world crafter's have gone in meticulously to designate spots in the world that would accommodate puddles so that such can form when the heavens open.

Games like 'Red Dead Redemption 2' and 'Spiderman PS4', real gems of the market, like to show off how this technology works and the results are astounding. Even 2002's Divine Divinity boasted reflective puddles in it's gorgeous hand drawn sprite art. This here isn't even really an immersion factor for me as games haven't yet reached the universal level where such an absence would be brow-raising. More so, puddles serve as an atheistically pleasing tool to show of a particular game's reflection tech. (A process that is typically a lot more intensive to the processing memory than one would think.) Just seeing light bounce off of tiny mud lakes on the ground is enough to transform a soggy morning into something serene and beautiful.

Here is an issue focusing more on immersion. One that betrays the nature of game design in a way that I can accept, but still don't want it shouted at every time I look up. This particular point of contention relies on if the rain is centralized on me. Now, I understand that it is unreasonable to load an entire game world at once, no game has, or would ever have, the memory to accommodate that. Instead, games will load relevant data in chunks and have the audience's viewing point loaded whilst unloading everything around them. This works with rain too, obviously.  It would be imprudent to have a rain effect engulf your entire gameworld if the player can only see the space around them, so developers would have it only displayed where it's necessary.

The problem here, is that some games take this to it's lazy conclusion and have it so that rain literally follows you around as though you're Little Misfortune. (Yikes forever!) To understand what I mean by this, load up Minecraft and wait for it to rain, then look up and move around. Notice how, no matter where you move, you're always perfectly between the same strands of rain particles? That's centralized rain. Minecraft isn't the only the game that does it either, despite the fact that, given it's visual flair, it is the only game that should be allowed to. If rain falls through the scenery then that blunder is often accompanied with this in some form. A constant reminder that weather effects for this world were an afterthought and you are stupid for caring about their implementation. This is a feature that I find supremely immersion breaking, contrary to my earlier affirmation, and I hold particular distaste for any who choose to subject their audience to it. (For shame, sir.) 

Let's go back to the cool little Easter eggs. Rain effects that aren't really new, but which impress me when I see them every time. I'm talking about games in which my clothes react to the rain fall. Games with particular care given to their visual flair, like 'Red Dead Redemption' (Again) and 'Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain',  recognize that it is just as important to have fabrics react on the player model as it is to have rain interact with the world. This goes further than just adding a lingering drip effect, too. I'm talking about moments in which players are treated to dynamically damping clothing material that reflects how much liquid you just interacted with. That also goes for dipping in the drink.

Many games have model variations that they subtly blend together when you enter the rain, but they feel like the bare minimum in this department. Rockstar had John Marston's trousers get more soggy for the further he wades into the sea, that's despite the fact that John couldn't even swim in Red Dead 1 and drowned if he went in as deep as his hat. (His entire face could be submerged and he would still be fine as long as his hat was dry. Weird, I know.) Having Big Boss' clothing react the same way was also a very neat immersion tool as players spent quiet a lot of time sneaking through rain, crawling across damp marshes and summoning sound dampening rainstorms through experimental chemical drops. (Oh that's a 'chem trails' joke isn't it? Oh Kojima, what are you like!)

Now we approach territory that could be considered somewhat subjective. What I find acceptable in this field may not reach your standards and vice versa, the only thing for it is to judge for yourself. You see, I always pay attention to whether or not the rain looks like rain. Let me explain. Oftentimes, the hardest things to recreate in a digital medium are the effects that we see everyday in the real world. Can computers create an electrical tornado? Sure. No one knows what the look like so their brains will judge what you show them and just go "Yeah, that looks about right." But when it comes to animating water, or the ocean, then we enter whole new territory. How do you simulate something that billions of people see each and every day? How do you predict it's randomness, it's rise and fall or the way that waves come in and leave the shores? More pertinently, how do you portray the rain?

You see it everyday but stop and think for a second, how do you draw it? Take a look in most comics and you'll see it as a collection of black lines across the page, but that isn't really what rain looks like, we just kind of get the message. Making rain actually look like rain requires so much effort that it usually isn't worth it for the dramatic tension, might as well just have Spiderman and Kraven the Hunter duke it out indoors. The same goes for video game developers, only they often don't have the luxury of going the lazy route. It's often posited that every rain drop is unique (or is that snowflakes?) so designers have to ensure that it moves fast enough for you not to see the droplets but not so fast that it doesn't appear to be rain anymore, or harms the picture quality. Every aspect of rain design must take these factors into account to truly create something believable.

That doesn't mean that there aren't those that still go the lazy route. As much as I adore the game, 'The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim' features some of the worst vanilla rain in modern gaming. It doesn't fall hard enough to look like rain, the strands are so thin that you hardly notice it and the atmosphere doesn't adopt the damp ambience that one would expect. (Yeah, I'm taking that into account too.) Altogether, the visual design is key to selling the effect and everything else can fall apart depending on how much care was put into this process.

For the last point, I want to address what I consider to be the most cathartic part of rainfall, the sound. When I sit at home and relish in the suffering of those outside who forgot their umbrellas (It sustains me) I love to hear the pitter patter of the droplets clattering into the street. The more rain there is, the more satisfying the sound. Few natural wonders derive as much genuine pleasure out of me as wrapping up and listening to the cacophonous orchestra of a flash flood. (The shop at the end of my road, which is also lowered to street level, might not share my enthusiasm there.) All that means I am someone who takes it very seriously when they hear ingame rain, either get the sound right or don't try at all.

Sound design isn't something we talk about too often on this blog, as it is a process that is mostly alien to me, but what snippets I have seen always do impress me. Oftentimes sound designers go out of their way to construct devices that create sounds identical to the ones you are trying to portray. If push really comes to shove, they just go outside with sound equipment and try to capture the raw sound, but I'd imagine the level of control that needs to go into such expeditions make it unappealing. With such a variety in potential methods, it's hard for me to explain what makes a 'good' sound for rain and what doesn't. It's one of those things that you just know in your heart of hearts. I'm not qualified enough to spell this one out for you, just to encourage you to pay attention for yourself.

I don't know whether or not anyone else pays as close attention to Video game rain as I do, or even if they should. There are so many large scale issue I can forgive in game's design that should turn me into a joy hating shrew if I were to apply the same level of critique there as I do to this inconsequential feature. (This blog is 20 paragraphs long, for goodness sake!) I suppose we all just have those lines in the sand that we draw and mine is in the shape of a puddle that better collect rainwater or so help me... I should probably wrap this up before I start to give away just how neurotic I really am, although that's likely already out of the bag considering today's topic.

I'm not seeing enough movement!

I'm walking here!

I would argue that the ability to move is a rather integral part of our function as human beings, heck, as animate beings. (I don't think anyone is going to fight me too hard on that front.) It allows us to transport the rest of our fleshy sacks to the places we need to go. (God, I'm literally describing the utility of movement.) but despite the fact that everyone is familiar with methods of movement, or perhaps because of it, representing transit in media can be difficult. Simply writing the sentence "I walked down the road", conveys the result but not the action. You know what I did but you have no idea how long that road was, how long it took me to go down it or if I walked in the street or on the pavement. Movies often have people move from location during cuts rather than show you their journey through traffic (Unless your director is James Nguyen). You do still get some great, ponderous shots of people journeys like the sweep across the desert in 'Gallipoli' but those are usually to establish the desolation of a scene or allow the audience to admire the shot.

"But we don't need to every step in the characters day." You are rightly thinking. And of course we don't, if it irrelevant to the story being told, it doesn't need to be there. I'm sure there is some art-house film that dedicated itself to capturing the struggle of the average transit to work, but you won't be seeing that crossing over to the mainstream anytime soon. We don't have time for that, our time on this earth is limited, is it not? So why am I even bringing up this inane line of thought? because in many video games the protagonist's mode of transport is a carefully considered concept. How fast will they walk? Can they run? Should we add vehicles? Can we add Vehicles? What about planes? Therefore I thought it might be fun to break down the main modes of transport as the are represented gaming and talk about the struggles that developers have to keep in mind in order to realize them.

Firstly, we have the most common form of transport available; Ambulatory movement. Humans and animals have been putting one foot in front of the other in order to propel themselves for millennia, so you'd think that bringing such a concept to video games would be a 'walk-in-the-park' (See what I did there? I'm not proud, either.) but you would be wrong. Walking is an unavoidable part of many games so it is imperative that developers makes sure that it feels right. We humans may not mind walking down the street to the shop but try walking in GTA and see how long it is before you want to gouge out someone's eyes. Therefore developers need to think about the speed the player moves, ensuring it is both believable and fun; the weight of the movement, making players feel grounded in their world but not rigid; and the consequence of walking, how much will the camera bob and sway. etc.

There are too many games to count that feature some form of walking and running, but I think it is the likes of the openworld Rockstar games that consistently nail this aspect. Rockstar have been creating third person action openworld games for decades and therefore it should surprise no one that they are good at doing it. As their games have progressed, Rockstar have managed to improve upon the weight of the character immensely. Compare the floaty nature of GTA 3's Claude with Red Dead Redemption 2's Arthur and there are several solar systems worth of difference. It is part of their dedication to the construction of a believable gameworld to ensure the player feels rooted in it, movement is the glue that fixes all of that together and Rockstar practically own the patent for that stuff.

Next we have another popular mode of transport, vehicles. According to figures from the US department of energy, at least 16.5% of the world's population know how to drive a car. (Or at least have a licence, there's no current way to account for mental acuity.) this means that just about everyone in the world has at least seen an automobile. Humans have been hitting the roads in motorized vehicles since the 1800's and we'll likely continue to do so until the things start flying.

Obviously, many games have a handle on driving mechanics too, but few games handle them well. Saints Row and GTA have a vast selection of fun-to-drive vehicles in their repertoire but they don't handle particularly realistically. Play an actual racing Sim (Or just drive a real car like a weirdo) and you will notice how heavy and cumbersome those steel beasts can be. This is because video games often find themselves torn between the realistic versus the fun. If Grand Theft Auto's cars weighed anything like they should (Which you can achieve by messing with some gamecode.) suddenly you won't be able to pull of the ridiculous jumps and flips that people love to do. If Saints Row's cars were as flimsy as real cars, then every car you own would burst into flames within a minute. Creative liberties are taken for the good of the overall product.

Here's a fact you likely knew, 71% of the planet is covered in water. That means it was inevitable that mankind would figure out some way to traverse the thing, they had to get around to it eventually. Swimming is now a popular activity amongst people who are not me, and they've even gone and turned it into an Olympic sport. Personally, I can't think of a single thing that would encourage me to cross a body of water, but then I'm an introvert shut-in who hisses at the daylight, so I'm basically a vampire. (There's a thing about vampires and running water, isn't there?)

For whatever reason, Video games have always had a tough time whenever it has come to depicting
swimming. It has always been associated with the dreaded 'underwater level' and so it was a longtime until anyone managed to perfect underwater movement. (Rockstar still aren't there yet.) When it comes to recent games, I would say that the ideal example for underwater transit would be in Subnautica, but then again that is out of necessity. The entire premise of Subnautica is about being stranded on an ocean planet, so they needed to make the swimming feel weightless and effortless. Practised swimmers may point out that real swimming is actually neither effortless not weightless, but I merely direct them back to my 'realism versus fun' point from earlier.

But swimming isn't the only way that humanity has devised for travelling over bodies of water. Recently, we've come up with the idea of strapping people inside of metal death machines and launching them into the air. (Yeah, I'm not a big fan of planes.) Orville and Wilbur Wright famously established the path to air travel at the turn of the 20th century with their Wright Flyer. Nowadays commercial flights are a part of everyday life, and we're stuck with it until 2077 when aerodynes will become a thing. (I'm already saving up for mine.)

Flying has found a home in many video games. It's hard to mess up, really. Air resistance is more of  a bother for actual pilots and technicians; when you are merely simulating flight, things become a whole lot easier. There are great flight-capable vehicles all over gaming such as; Star Wars' starfighters, Far Cry's handgliders, GTA's planes and Just Causes' Grapple hook. (Yeah, Rico's hook is only 'technically' flying but I'm including it anyway.) Some games avoid implementing flying for presentational reasons. Despite featuring dozens of winged lizards, Skyrim had no flying mounts when it launched in 2011. This was explained by the assertion that if people could fly, they would spend their time looking through the land and not at it. Skyrim revolved around making players feel like a part of the world around them and therefore it was in Bethesda's best interests to saddle the player with more conventional means of transport. Then Bethesda released 'Dragonborn' and revealed that the real reason that they didn't add dragon-riding earlier was because the mechanic sucked.

The video gaming medium has a lot of issues unique to it, and solving the presentation of movement is one of the key ones. Fidelity in gaming comes to odds with creativity and fun all to often, making the establishment of a believable environment difficult. So much consideration goes into every single step that you take ingame, ultimately to ensure that you never notice that hard work. To most it is one of those irrelevant background details that never enters their sphere of conscious thought, but to me it is the foundation of solid gameplay. (the 'legs' if you will.)