Tired of realism.

Part of the charm of Bientôt l’été is how it evokes memories of the seaside in me. While it is not photographically or audibly realistic, it plays with certain associations in your brain that trigger recollections of experiences.

I deeply enjoy feeling the effect of such a simulation. But the care I have to take to maintain everything within the sphere of the real is getting on my nerves a bit.

While programming, I encounter many interesting effects that are the result of the logic that runs the game: glitches, errors. These effects are not realistic in the sense that they do not match with our expectations and knowledge. But they are real: they are triggered by the real code that runs the simulation. They are only errors in the sense that they are involuntary effects of (bad) programming. But logically speaking, they are perfectly correct.

It’s tiresome to pretend that the character on the beach is a real person. I know he’s not. And it doesn’t diminish my fondness for him. I like him as an artificial creature. So why could he not behave artificially?

I know. Because that’s not what this project is about. But after this, I think I’m done with realism. Synthetic creatures are different. And that should be ok.