Trigger Happy
But though human beings do not actually look like this, they do move like this, and the tangible solidity of one leg sweeping in front of another, of a fist slamming into a chest, is a magic wrought by Plato’s four numbers.
Just as Timaeus argues further that the four numbers (or atoms) that make up the cosmos correspond to the four elements in ancient Greek cosmogony (earth, wind, fire and water), so modern polygons can be made to draw every kind of substance on the videogame screen: rocky outcrops, sure, but also lakes, blazing torches, grass, even snow. And games no longer have the chunky, android look of those in the polygonal vanguard, like Virtua Fighter 2. Usefully, the more sides you can afford to devote to a polygon— which can also be thought of as drawing a polygon with more and more basic
The more polygons a processor can draw on the screen at any one time, therefore, the more rounded and “organic” will seem the environments and the characters within them, as in markedly more “realistic”- looking games such as Zelda 64, Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation or Quake III: Arena. And
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