I don't see how the lighting tech has anything to do with the ability to make a stealth game. You certainly wouldn't want to simulate and measure the actual light levels in real time. You'd use an entirely separate information system in world space to define stealth areas, points, volumes, gradients between them, etc. The gameplay designers need total control here. You can't rely on emergent properties in the engine's lighting system for a good stealth game experience.
Additionally, no one is actually forcing anyone to use ray tracing or real time global illumination schemes. These are self-inflicted wounds. If you want to make a stealth game and you think baked lighting is the best supporting technical direction, then what is stopping you? Every modern engine still offers this technology and it's incredibly mature. You could make a hell of a splinter cell game if you just got started and stopped coming up with wild excuses about how new, non-mandatory tool features sometimes dont do what we need them to.
This is so obviously untrue. The stealth games that "define stealth areas, points, volumes, gradients between them, etc" are not fun. e.g. think of grass in an Assassin's Creed game: clearly defined, but the mechanic feels cheap and unrewarding because grass functions as a black hole.
Contrast that to a classic stealth game like Chaos Theory, that uses actual visibility and sound, that keeps you immersed and challenged through the whole game.
> clearly defined, but the mechanic feels cheap and unrewarding because grass functions as a black hole
This is a game design problem. This has nothing to do with the engine. Just remember the bikes in GTA:Online. Utter bullshit from the start, removed, added back because people wanted the utter bullshit of these bikes.
> You certainly wouldn't want to simulate and measure the actual light levels in real time. You'd use an entirely separate information system in world space to define stealth areas [...]
Issue of readability still applies for manually defined stealth areas. You want to indicate these in-game to the player somehow, and more complex lighting does so less clearly than a sharp cut-off would.
> Additionally, no one is actually forcing anyone to use ray tracing or real time global illumination schemes. These are self-inflicted wounds.
Some of the lighting techniques mentioned (like ambient occlusion) are relatively basic by modern standards - it's not just ray-tracing. While there is a market for games that put readability above all else, there is also a pull for games with some level of visual detail, both externally from reviewers/consumers and internally.
> [...] just got started and stopped coming up with wild excuses about how new, non-mandatory tool features sometimes dont do what we need them to.
Hocking just seems to be discussing the challenge faced ("there would be some learning if we wanted to really use these modern lighting techniques"), not using it as an excuse to stop making games.
Additionally, no one is actually forcing anyone to use ray tracing or real time global illumination schemes. These are self-inflicted wounds. If you want to make a stealth game and you think baked lighting is the best supporting technical direction, then what is stopping you? Every modern engine still offers this technology and it's incredibly mature. You could make a hell of a splinter cell game if you just got started and stopped coming up with wild excuses about how new, non-mandatory tool features sometimes dont do what we need them to.