Digital Foundry tech analysis channel at Eurogamer

[DrJay24]

You seems to be venturing off into territories that you are not very knowledgeable in; AI, sound, DVD streaming. The reason the install is slower is well known and I don't think it has anything to do with Bungies streaming know how, it the fact they are caching and reading from the HD at the same time. If you could disable their level caching then the install would work fine.

I can understand you don't want to be one trick pony's with the frame rate counting, but the constant editorializing and now guess work in other non-graphic areas is making you look more amateurish than you probably want.

Just my opinion, feel free to ignore it.

 

[makattack]

You seems to be venturing off into territories that you are not very knowledgeable in; AI, sound, DVD streaming.

...

Just my opinion, feel free to ignore it.

Seems a bit harsh. Reading the blog entry, it sounds as if there was an interview with Bungie that wasn't referenced. I would say that maybe a citing of sources would be useful. That's my criticism.

 

[obonicus]

I do agree on the editorializing. The objective part of it is great, it's exactly what we need more of. 'In my opinion this is/isn't important' is not.

 

[holsty101]

I think Riccitello talked about this, essentially saying that Renderware wasn't suitable for their next-gen products. This may have been in 2007, before Burnout Paradise.

Oh right, I must've missed that ...

Yeah, looks like he was asked about it at last years DICE, but there's not much detail in what he said (on the links I can find anyway), just over investment in RW that caused slippage and that the team was still going & building physics engines. I'd still like to know what, if anything, the guys at Criterion have to say.

 

[AlNom]

You seems to be venturing off into territories that you are not very knowledgeable in; AI, sound, DVD streaming. The reason the install is slower is well known and I don't think it has anything to do with Bungies streaming know how, it the fact they are caching and reading from the HD at the same time. If you could disable their level caching then the install would work fine.

AFAIK, all of the info is available freely from Bungie on their publications. I suggest you peruse those.

 

[DrJay24]

AFAIK, all of the info is available freely from Bungie on their publications. I suggest you peruse those.

Spinning on behalf of Bungie is not journalism. If you are goiing to do an article on the graphics, then leave the Bungie PR about AI and such out, if there is no way to verify it or compare it to other titles (unlike rendering techniques) then why bother? Did Grandmaster look at the AI code or profile it? Did he compare it to KZ2's AI code?

 

[AlNom]

Spinning on behalf of Bungie is not journalism. If you are goiing to do an article on the graphics, then leave the Bungie PR about AI and such out, if there is no way to verify it or compare it to other titles (unlike rendering techniques) then why bother? Did Grandmaster look at the AI code or profile it? Did he compare it to KZ2's AI code?

Why would he want to compare the factual material? He's just stating some info that most people don't know about the Halo 3 engine itself. I think you're reading too much into it.

Granted, the mention of Killzone 2 was sensationalist, to say the least, but take the rest of the info for what it is. You're needlessly getting yourself excited.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Spinning on behalf of Bungie is not journalism. If you are goiing to do an article on the graphics, then leave the Bungie PR about AI and such out, if there is no way to verify it or compare it to other titles (unlike rendering techniques) then why bother? Did Grandmaster look at the AI code or profile it? Did he compare it to KZ2's AI code?

Did you even read the aritcle he even mentioned the AI behavior isn't as good as KZ2.

What he did comment on with regards to Halo 3 were purely technical details. As in how many disctinct AI units (30 I believe) as well as how many permutations per AI unit (10) can be tracked and calculated simultaneously.

Nowhere did he comment on saying Halo 3's behavioral patterns were better than such and such game.

I'd hardly consider that doing PR for Bungie.

Regards,
SB

 

[obonicus]

Why would he want to compare the factual material? He's just stating some info that most people don't know about the Halo 3 engine itself. I think you're reading too much into it.

Granted, the mention of Killzone 2 was sensationalist, to say the least, but take the rest of the info for what it is. You're needlessly getting yourself excited.

I'm not sure DrJay's vitriol is needed, but just mentioning the AI without putting it into context is, effectively, repeating the company line. It's not like there's not a lot of this information available. Alex J. Champanard, who in fact worked on KZ2's AI runs a blog and a semi-open to the public forum. They've talked about many many game AIs in different articles (including Halo 3's). I mean, Halo 3 has 290 behaviors. Is this good, is this bad? Maybe we could get a comment from Mr. Champanard on this to put it in context of KZ2, since that's the game the Halo article seems to focus on. Talking about AI the way that the article did seems to me like the equivalent of mentioning fillrate and expecting it to mean something on its own.

 

[Asher]

AFAIK, all of the info is available freely from Bungie on their publications. I suggest you peruse those.

Yep, all of that info is straight from Bungie's GDC powerpoints from a couple years back.

 

[Nesh]

grandmaster

Have you considered doing an analysis for Resistance 2?

I think that one deserves some attention since it is such a large scale game. And I think it is similar to Halo in some respects

 

[catisfit]

I do agree on the editorializing. The objective part of it is great, it's exactly what we need more of. 'In my opinion this is/isn't important' is not.

I agree.

 

[Rangers]

Did you even read the aritcle he even mentioned the AI behavior isn't as good as KZ2.

Well thats arguably false..and I've beaten both games..

Neither game has as good AI as Gears 1 imo..

Anyways I dont think it's exactly possible to objectively measure AI..

 

[obonicus]

Well thats false..I've beaten both games..

And this is exactly why comparing Halo to Killzone is a bad idea on every possible level.

 

[Rangers]

And this is exactly why comparing Halo to Killzone is a bad idea on every possible level.

Well what they said was pretty bland and non-provocative imo..hell they probably made too many excuses for H3 if anything..


Anyways though I've critized H3's graphics often, that said I was pretty pleased with ODST for whatever reason (given low expectations mind you). Since they didn't change the engine, the art must be why.

It's not KZ2, but I think it holds it's own with the likes of MAG, Resistance 2, MW2, etc. AKA most FPS outside of KZ2. I didn't look at ODST and think "that looks horrible" or anything this E3.


But on a different tack, can anybody say how much of performance hit the HDR method of H3 was? (Ie, a ton, not that much, etc)

I mean it sounds like it could almost be making the engine do twice the work.. (two buffers) but that cant be right can it?

 

[AlNom]

But on a different tack, can anybody say how much of performance hit the HDR method of H3 was? (Ie, a ton, not that much, etc)

I mean it sounds like it could almost be making the engine do twice the work.. (two buffers) but that cant be right can it?

There's a fairly substantial hit to fillrate, so you'll see framerate drops mostly when there are lots of explosions with overdraw.

 

[grandmaster]

Just popping in to say that I had a great meeting with Criterion on Monday, and an absolutely mammoth tech chat with Burnout's technical director and senior engineer. Both of these guys have worked on every single Criterion game from the first Burnout through to Paradise, so I had a chance to grill them on the entire Renderware to next gen transition, the evolution of Burnout through the DLC, plus the situation with internal code-sharing at EA, which uncovers quite a surprising fact about where else the Burnout level rendering tech has been deployed.

The entire interview weighs in at around 4,500 words which has had to be cut down substantially for the feature that will appear on Eurogamer this Saturday, but rest assured, the entire, unabridged version will be posted on the Digital Foundry channel over the course of a couple of days (perhaps) next week.

 

[tirminyl]

The entire interview weighs in at around 4,500 words which has had to be cut down substantially for the feature that will appear on Eurogamer this Saturday, but rest assured, the entire, unabridged version will be posted on the Digital Foundry channel over the course of a couple of days (perhaps) next week.

Thank you! I can't wait to check it out!

 

[FirewalkR]

Just popping in to say that I had a great meeting with Criterion on Monday, and an absolutely mammoth tech chat with Burnout's technical director and senior engineer. Both of these guys have worked on every single Criterion game from the first Burnout through to Paradise, so I had a chance to grill them on the entire Renderware to next gen transition, the evolution of Burnout through the DLC, plus the situation with internal code-sharing at EA, which uncovers quite a surprising fact about where else the Burnout level rendering tech has been deployed.

The entire interview weighs in at around 4,500 words which has had to be cut down substantially for the feature that will appear on Eurogamer this Saturday, but rest assured, the entire, unabridged version will be posted on the Digital Foundry channel over the course of a couple of days (perhaps) next week.

Good stuff grandmaster, can't wait!

 

[grandmaster]

The feature with exclusive video we produced is now up:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/tech-retrospective-burnout-paradise-article