Starfield accidentally ignites another dev discussion about how games lie to players: "Gamers found out about the rain box - pack it up boys, it's over"
After Starfield players had the revelation that the in-game rain system is actually just a box developers place around environments to simulate an actual weather event, game developers from a bunch of different studios are sharing other dirty little secrets they use to deceive us.
In case you missed it, an explosive Reddit post was shared the other day absolutely blowing the lid off of Starfield's phony rain façade. As you can see just below, it looks like Redditor thelastfastbender was able to play around with Starfield's photo mode enough to see that rain is nothing but a confined collection of raindrops falling on a localized space, as if it's all coming from the same source.
...Wait.
In seriousness, this is actually a common technique developers use to make it look like it's raining everywhere without having to render the amount of rain drops it would take to *actually* cover a big area - especially where the player can't even see.
Tom Francis, lead VFX artist over at Red Hook Games, pointed out that Bethesda could've avoided this whole scandal if it had just attached the "rain box" to the POV camera instead of the character model, which apparently would've made it it nigh-impossible for the player to step out of bounds and spot the trickery.
Gamers have discovered our secret lol.. Could have been avoided if you parented the rain to the camera Bethesda pic.twitter.com/U0sTNgGQwHSeptember 25, 2023
The creator of Iron Lung, one of the scariest indie games of 2022, is proper freaked out that the masses have discovered the big, wet lie.
GAMERS FOUND OUT ABOUT THE RAIN BOXPACK IT UP BOYS, IT'S OVER https://t.co/Y8oqsh22zcSeptember 26, 2023
Did you know that, Mario 1-1 uses the same image for both clouds and bushes?
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