[barnak]

Sorry if alreayd posted. Got it from Teamxbox topic by Zbox.

Five Ways the Playstation 3 Will Change Games

...Not every game will do this stuff, but the ability to will still exist for game makers with the time and creativity to tap into it. Let's take a look at just a few of the new gameplay experiences that PS3 will make possible

1. The End of the "disappearing act"

In theory: Everything that happens in or to the game world will be persistent.

In Action: You break it, it stays broken. You kill'em, they pile up. Even when you go back to previously visited areas later in teh game, you'll see that path of destruction you've left behind - enemies may even have decomposed or trees rotted. you definitely won't have to ask yourself "Have I been through this area before?"

2. Great minds think alike

In Theory: Enemies will react to what your character does and the situation they're in more realistically than ever. In fact, they'll be able to be nearly as smart and adaptive as the player.

In action: Enemies will run out of ammo and ditch their gun for another one- maybe even a better one. Maybe the gun you were hoping to grab. They might also dash for the same ammo pick-up available to you, abandoning their cover and opening them up for a clearere shot. Remeber shooting out lights and using night visiosn goggles to sneak up on enemies? Now they'll use that trick, too... so you'll have to make sure you can see in the dark as well.

3. Uncanned animation

In Theory: Motion capturing and traditional frame-by-frame character animation will give way to "smart" actiosn that take the character's physical attributes and their surroundings into account.

In action: If you're playing a platformer, your character will never leap or land using exactly the same animation twice. They'll "know" if they're exhausted from running and start to show it by a change in their stride. In a basketball game, the ball will never look like it's connected to your player's hand by a rubber band; in Madden, players will "know" their uniforms are dirty and brush themselves off at the line of scrimmage. Enemies wont' always fall down teh same way when shot, but they won't flail around like rag dolls either, if they're standing by a rail, for example, they'll "know" to try and grab it with one or both hands if you throw them over it. Even if they hang on, you can shoot their hands.

4. Never been there, never seen that

In theory: The immese capacity of Blu-Ray discs will overcome the limitations of even dual layer DVD and enable artisits to create game environments that never look repetitious. Their only limitations will be the amount of time they have to actually create objects and textures.

In Action: Games will be able to have many more types of environments, and more variety within each of them, without having to the areas in teh game any smaller to comensate. Objects won't just break; the extra room for textures on the disc will allow for almost limitless states of appearance - scorched, cracked, chipped, scratched. Heck, even sand that can turn to glass under the heat of a rocket thruster.

5. Interacting in newer, better ways

In theory: More processing power will take the capabilities of the EyeToy and voice recognition to new levels.

In Action: Your role-playing hero is having a heart-to-heart talk with their love interest. Only they're actually talking to and seeing you. Will you sound confident or cowardly? Have a happy face or a plain one? The very inflection of your voice and look on your face will determine his or her reaction. IN squad-based military games, when your team's back is up against a wall and the enemy's just aroudn the corner, you'll actually have to whisper your plan of attack to prevent being overheard= and that plan of attack can be very specific. "You, run across the street and take cover behind the red car!"

There is a picture and caption to number 5. It says, Sony is already working on a PS3 game called Eyedentify that combines advanced voice and face recognition. In it, you control a duo of crime fighting females that react realistically to your commands, tone of voice, and facial expressions.

Every Game Should Do This

We're not game developersm, and we dont' pretend to fully understand all of the hardships involved in making games, but as gamers, we know what we want - nay, demand - from our next-gernation games. Fair or not, the customer is always right, so listen up, developers!

60 Frames Per Second, Standard
A high frame rate can make an incredible difference in a game, especially fast-moving racing games and first-person shooters. It provides extra-smooth control and solid, quality feel. if triple-A PS2 titles like GT4 and God of War can run at 60fps, then why should we settle for anything less on PS3? If a trade-off has to be made, we'd gladly swap the last 5% of backround detail for a more enjoyable overall feel to the gameplay.

No Load Times
Since we're still dealing with disc-based games, we'll settle for "much improved" load times. Even though PS3 games will need to load up more polygons, more detailed textures and so on, BD-ROM will allow everything to constantly stream from the disc so we don't have to sit around staring at progress bars any more.

In-Game Memory Card Management
We've all done it - you play a game for, like, half an hour, only to find out that you don't have enough room left on your memory card to save. All you can do is reboot to the PS2's main menu and loose all of your hard work. Games need to let players access their memory card files from within the game. That way, you could quickly clear some space, save and continue playing.

Sleep Mode
Handhelds like the PSP and the Nintendo DS have this, and it's about time that consoles offer it, too. For too long, players have been unfairly penalized for having to stop their game. Something comes up, you've gotta run, but no - you're stuck searching for a save point or else you'll have to redo everything you've just accomplished. Game makers should recognize that players shouldn't be beholden to their games by inculding a sleep mode that will allow us to easily save our place at a moment's notice.

Than he posted what they said about MGS4

"that's the big question. PSM's sources have told us that Kojima was asked by SCE boss Ken Kutaragi directly to please prepare an MGS4 trailer for TGS. Mr. Kojima had previously told PSM that he was working on a trailer for the game to be debuted at E3 2006. Sony intends to have PS3 at CES in Januaary, but it's uncertian if Kojima will show another trailer then, or simply wait until E3. One thing is for certain: No matter how amazing it was, this was just a teaser of what's to come. The full grand MGS4 trailer will- in Kojima tradition- leave us more speechless and full of plot questions. Add to taht the fact that all of the MGS games have only gotten better looking between the trailers and final games and we couldn't be more excited.

I hope this is useful to someone. Some of its intresting.

[valioso]

it all seems like wishful thinking, specially the no loading, 60 fps, etc... not that I don't agree that is ideal.. but I doubt Sony would make that mandatory

[mckmas8808]

I hope 90% of that stuff does happen. I hope devs are thinking like this too.

[Bad_Boy]

im sure we will see a bit of 1,4,5...its the 2, and 3 that has me a bit worried we wont get. (or atleast the last sentence in 3...grabing the rail? maybe a bit too much wishful thinking)

[ShootMyMonkey]

1 ) No problem, just give us an infinite amount of memory, and we're golden. Seriously, though, getting things like destroyed environments to leave behind their debris is relatively easy compared to leaving behind dead bodies. At least a chunk of debris is a small model instance that will likely use only 2-4 low res textures and 1 transform. A dead body is a model instance that probably uses many more much higher res textures and a few hundred transforms. Simple ones will be on the order of 35-90 bone transforms and the complicated ones will be 300+. You can easily ask for it in a Tenchu where fewer than 20 characters will even exist in a level (I think it's actually already the case there)... Just don't ask for it in a 99 Nights type of game.

2 ) AI is full of holy grails, and the problem is that the Holy Grail is a fairy tale. "More realistic than ever"?? Eh, that's not saying much. But "nearly as smart as the player"... ummm.. well, the average gamer is dumb as a post, but still... I'd have to say never. Not on PS3, not on 360... Not even on PS12. Now things like the examples mentioned are easy, but making them do it in an effective way that could effectively suspend your belief that it's an AI -- not going to happen. That's why everyone will tell you that online play is generally the best.

3 ) To a certain extent, this will be possible, but never enough to satisfy people, and that's basically how it will stay for the next 5 or 6... millenia. The majority of what is brought up as examples amount to little more than further expanding the size of an animation library for a character. Things like IK-ing the feet... fine, whatever. Ragdolls are greatly misunderstood, because the real problem with them is not that they're physically wrong -- it's that everything ELSE is physically wrong. And preventing them from flailing around in a world where forces are massive and 1 bullet has a mass about 1/10000 that of a skyscraper... well that's kind of a problem.

4 ) People are stupid. It doesn't matter how much Bluray stores -- it matters how much data at once can be moved around in memory to and fro in 1/30 or 1/60th of a second. You want massively expansive and varied worlds, you might get it from a 100-hour RPG, but not from Halo.

5 ) Meh... nothing out of the question here, but expecting it to proliferate beyond a handful of niche titles is stupid and pretty much shows that gamers don't even know themselves as well as a financial analyst knows them. There are more ways for it not to make sense then there are for it to make sense. Maybe the Revolution will change that, maybe not. The only thing we can really do is wait and see.

60 fps -- Using AAA titles as a benchmark for all future titles? You really think even 10% of games that will be produced for next-gen will have the production value of AAA titles even of this gen? HA! The whole "losing 5% of detail in the background" thing kind of leads along the right path, actually... Doing that is not a skill or technology issue -- it's something that only comes by testing and refactoring over and over and over, making it a time and money issue. Spending that kind of time and money for something in a market where less than 5% of the product out there even breaks even is not financially responsible. If God of War qualifies as AAA, then the vast majority of games that will be made will be "B" titles that will hardly sell 5000 copies worldwide. If you, the consumer, are willing to pay any amount of money to see that happen, then fine. But otherwise, forget it.

Now in all fairness, this is far, far, far, far, far more likely to come out of Japanese developers because of the cultural difference. The US is simply not a gaming culture, and probably never will be. The approaches of publishers is infinitely more conservative and less likely to put money into arbitrary projects instead sticking to formulaic and/or proven SKUs. A much larger variety of games can sell in Japan, and hence, the risk is generally smaller. All the same, the cost of developing will go up with every new hardware transition, and higher risks will creep in further no matter where you are.

No Load times -- Goodbye. If you want your boom in content, then you will not ask for this. If you want everything, you will always get nothing. It's called reality. You'll get one or the other, never both. Anyone who thinks next-gen optical drives are super fast is unfortunately unable to count.

The other two -- Sorry, but those aren't really up to game developers. That's a complaint to direct to the console manufacturers and/or whoever writes the OSes. We're really not allowed to mess with anything that doesn't directly deal with that one particular title unless Sony/MS/Nintendo says we are.

[psurge]

ShootMyMonkey :
Taking just # 3 for the moment - my understanding was that IK still requires some kind of artist produced animation data: for example, if you specified a path followed by a character's hand, IK could be used to compute the position/orientation of attached bones (the arm), taking joint constrainsts etc... into account. That seems like a useful tool, but it doesn't really solve what seems like a much harder problem : how is the path of say the hand reaching out to a rail computed? How do you even identify that some piece of graspeable geometry is there in the first place. A precomputed hand path of some sort might work, but it would have to be adapteable to a character being in some arbitrary position/orientation relative to the rail to look realistic.

How can you address this with little more than an expanded animation repertoire? (serious question).

I will be completely blown away when I see a game where a charater walking/running up a flight of perfectly straight (not even twisting) stairs doesn't appear to levitate above or penetrate the steps, and, when stopped, places both feet squarely on a step.

That said, I don't see how any of these things, with the exception of improved AI and new interaction paradigms, really contribute much to actual gameplay.

[ERP]

Originally Posted by psurge

ShootMyMonkey :
Taking just # 3 for the moment - my understanding was that IK still requires some kind of artist produced animation data: for example, if you specified a path followed by a character's hand, IK could be used to compute the position/orientation of attached bones (the arm), taking joint constrainsts etc... into account. That seems like a useful tool, but it doesn't really solve what seems like a much harder problem : how is the path of say the hand reaching out to a rail computed? How do you even identify that some piece of graspeable geometry is there in the first place. A precomputed hand path of some sort might work, but it would have to be adapteable to a character being in some arbitrary position/orientation relative to the rail to look realistic.

How can you address this with little more than an expanded animation repertoire? (serious question).

I know of at least one title and I'm sure other games already do a lot of IK for animations that involve touching objects,other characters and parts of the character itself.

Ignoring the computational cost for a second, IK is difficult to work with for artists and it's hard to make it look consistent with the rest of the animation. It's only a win if it actually solves a problem, or at least resolves more problems than it causes.

There are some interesting algorythms that use captured or hand tuned poses to weight the results of IK solutions. Sort of like asking "I'd like you to touch this point with your hand and I'd like the final solution to look a bit like one of these poses I drew earlier". If I ever have any real time I think they're interesting to investigate.

[psurge]

ERP that sounds extremely cool, do you have any links? (Is the game you are referring to Half Life 2)?

Still (for this hand + rail example), I can't get past how one even specifies the IK constraints... At first glance I would be tempted to just tell the system that the hand is moving from whatever position it's in (A) to some position on the rail (B) (known to be comfortably within reach) in a straight line. The thing is, what happens when the character body is in motion (falling backwards after being shot)? Would you modify the desired grasping point / hand trajectory in response to the body motion? This would require AI for the hand similar to that of a heat seaking missile...

Also, are the actual "pick-up/grasping" points on objects pretty much artist specified (to within some degree of freedom)?

Sorry lots of questions I'm just kind of thinking out loud though...

[ShootMyMonkey]

I know of at least one title and I'm sure other games already do a lot of IK for animations that involve touching objects,other characters and parts of the character itself.

Yeah... Red Ninja comes to mind, at least with the feet on the ground. It's an interesting series of problems all right, but if it doesn't provide anything, it's rather pointless. The process of shifting character animation into the physical world and feeding back information from what would otherwise be the ragdoll into the animation state can actually solve some other problems depending on how deeply you actually integrate your sim into the game.

If the only problems you're solving are little aesthetic things like grabbing a raail when the guy dies... not really worth it. And it just makes more sense to direct your efforts where it really counts.

The thing is, what happens when the character body is in motion (falling backwards after being shot)? Would you modify the desired grasping point / hand trajectory in response to the body motion? This would require AI for the hand similar to that of a heat seaking missile...

Nah... the character just wouldn't grasp the rail if he's moving. You really don't need any sort of "Hand AI"... animation systems are really little more than gigantic state machines.

Similarly, the thing is that the AI for the character itself is what brought him near the rail in the first place. A simple little tag will be there that says stand with footing "A" "B" or "C" when near this rail, so he'll always have a pretty specific relationship with respect to the railing. Doesn't require any sort of IK solver feedback, and all you need are a few extra animations.

[Gollum]

Animation is an artistically challenging process and good animation is darned hard. It'd take some serious work to make a good looking, automated, real-time animation system and I personally doubt we'll see it become a reality this or even next generation.

Preventing feet from slipping through the ground on a relatively simple terrain isn't really going to be much of a problem as you can easily blend between the pre-animated motion and a real-time collision IK. But most situations that would require such systems are far more elaborate and complex and I have my doubts it'd be easy to find practical solutions.

IK chains can break easily even in comprehensive animation suites, without an artist to control them. Quality and consistency of animation achieved by game calculated IK would be my main concern. Plus that in most situations, pre-animated solutions will look vastly superior to anything even elaborate algorythms can produce.