low resolution, high end games

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I see a trend forming. Some games are using very minimalistic color palettes such as Minecraft, Sheltered, Unturned and Kingdom. They're like what you might find doodled on a PC in 1995.

I don't understand how they can look so simplistic but be such resource hogs on my computer. I can't play Unturned and I don't even want to try Sheltered and Kingdom. Minecraft plays okay but I have to turn down the chunks a bit.

Any idea of what I'm talking about?

I don't know about the other games, but Minecraft is programmed in Java, and isn't very optimized. I've also heard that because it uses Java, by the default settings, it will continue to eat up RAM until it runs out of it, instead of only using what it needs.

I know a lot of indie games these days also use things like XNA and Unity, which, unless you care and you know what you're doing, have pre-set sysreqs and the engine will use what it needs, even if the game itself doesn't need it. So you end up with a lot of ridiculous things like 8-bit style games that require pixel shader 2.0 >_<

I've seen some stuff though, like the original Spelunky done in GameMaker Studio, that has pretty reasonable requirements. Retro City Rampage also works well on older machines.

Minecraft has infinite worlds, the larger the world gets the more the computer is having to support. I imagine that can be quite hard on some computers. On consoles they made them limit world size.

Console Minecraft is re-written from scratch. Needless to say, it is then optimized for the given platform. On the PS4, Minecraft runs flawlessly. Now, due to the locked infrastructure on the console, you don't have the best view distance. But it's not bad. It's very good. in fact, I never notice it unless I actively look for it.

I have a 4K gaming laptop and I average 80fps in minecraft running the UHD resolution. Can't spot a pixel. Of course, the textures are pixelated because they are low res by default, but the edges of cubes and models? Can't spot a single pixel.

Graphics acceleration has sort of been at a halt, and will take a step back as VR become mainstream, since it needs to render every frame twice at the same time.

But there's only a matter of time before GPU technology has the next "Eureka" moment which bumps the processing power exponentially, like in the past. 4K is rolling out in gaming, and 8K is already in the works.

As for processing, in minecraft, imagine having a completely flat world. take one surface layer and calculate how many cubes must be drawn on a plane. This increases exponentially very fast as the horizontal plane grows. Now for each cube, there's a depth of 64 going down from the surface layer. I think there's also 64 going up to the sky limit also IIRC. You can see how this adds up exponentially very, very fast. Not just for what has to be stored in RAM temporary for access during the game, but also for the save file size of the entire map.

This explains how voxel engines usually don't get much more advanced than Minecraft unless the maps are microscopic in size.

You might want to take a look at the Euclideon engine. It's pretty interesting; they claim to have made polygons obsolete and work with something they say don't even classify as voxels, but more like atoms in the real world.

https://www.youtube.com/user/EuclideonOfficial

I'm doubtful, but I'll give them the benefit of doubt.