Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2010]
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Undoubtedly the biggest strength of RAGE engine.Plus there are some awesome physics and animations in R* games...lots of a.i,lots of cars,hundreds of light sources and that was their first next gen title,3 years old,made by 3rd party.Good job if you ask me
You could climb the tallest tower in the city and get a good view in Infamous. Also the city is build using hexes which allows them to easily duplicate the stuff and every street intersection was "Y" Shaped.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27638/GDC_Infamous_Open_World_Trickery.php
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I was wondering...looking at Infamous(and Infamous 2),it seems like the game was designed so there was not much draw as in GTA for example.View distance was quite small.Building blocks were placed so that you cant really get to see whole city,they always blocked your view,than less geometry has to be rendered.It is probably their design choice,but R* made different one.
Looking back on GTA IV it was never the case...You could get in to heli at night and you could practically get a view on whole city,sure buildings had lower LOD but there was still a lot of polygons and light sources to draw,eh?Plus there are some awesome physics and animations in R* games...lots of a.i,lots of cars,hundreds of light sources and that was their first next gen title,3 years old,made by 3rd party.Good job if you ask me
PS3 exclusives are tailored to workaround/avoid situations regarding the HW weakness and expand on the strengths. In multiplatform games it seems devs try to find an average in the strength/weakness ratio between both platforms and try to make both versions run it as good as possible.
Also for GTAIV add that particles had both dynamic and static collision detection with physics for atleast the sparks. Some other nice stuff is the 3D deformable water, cars reflecting the environment (some building windows to in PC 64bit version), 24 hour clock cycle with shadows moving correctly against sun aswell as having same updaterate as framerate. And more.
But didn't the heavy use of DOF at quite close distance make it hard to notice that beyond DOF blur barrier it was very low detail?
Yes, except that you can in fact climb to the tallest building and look around.
In one of the levels, you're required to take down unmanned flying crafts throughout the city. So you DO get to see the skyline and the cityscape from all rooftops.
I always take the rooftop route anyway. That way you take down the enemies instead of taking high-ground hits from them.
Whatever effects they put in place does not prevent me from seeing far away flying objects too (since I have to notice them from a distance and then platform near them to shoot). The far far away buildings are indeed blurred probably to hide aggressive LOD. The effects are done rather well. Only hear people complain about jaggies.
In one of the levels, you're required to take down unmanned flying crafts throughout the city. So you DO get to see the skyline and the cityscape from all rooftops.
I always take the rooftop route anyway. That way you take down the enemies instead of taking high-ground hits from them.
Whatever effects they put in place does not prevent me from seeing far away flying objects too (since I have to notice them from a distance and then platform near them to shoot). The far far away buildings are indeed blurred probably to hide aggressive LOD. The effects are done rather well. Only hear people complain about jaggies.
Well truth be told GTA4 had it as well, infact they blurred the whole screen with a blur filter along with a DOF filter for the scenery. Though the last episode (BOGT) removed that blur filter from consoles but I can't recall whether they removed the DOF filter or not.
But it still has compromises as pointed out. The LOD switching is also very aggressive.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/infamous-how-high-can-you-try
Whether they blur the distant objects or not doesn't really matter. The LOD has them reduced to very simple objects. Unless one engine is maintaining details tat the other isn't rendering, or even is using 2D cutouts, DOF is an artistic choice rather than a technical one. ie. You can't not render the distant objects and then apply blur to conceal the fact!
The fullscreen blur is their ghetto AA and the DOF is quite subtle at distance. I actually wanted more strength for the DOF and had to up the strength multiplier greatly and yet it ended up being a soft DOF effect softer than most other games that use distant DOF.
DOF is excellent to hide uglies and very noticable compromisses at distance. I mean try to focus on the blurred out scenery and make out texture resolution, shadowmap res (if applied at such distances), detail.. would it have been easier without the blur?
Compromise what ? As long as I can see and shoot far away enemies, it should not affect gameplay. I can platform and climb to any building I want. There is no hiding of your line of sight when you go to the rooftops. It's an open world game.
You can climb to shorter skyscrapers (though stiil tall) and jump down if you want to see the details. There are a few such buildings in the city. The one in that video is unnaturally tall. [size=-2]Play the game ![/size]
Yes, it is a good choice. But that doesn't mean DOF in one game means it is doing less distance work than another game without DOF. If GTA4 renders low-res, simply textured boxes up to 3 miles away and doesn't blur them, and Infamous also renders low-res, simply textured boxes up to 3 miles away but does blur them, that doesn't make Infamous a weaker engine. By that same token, the presence of DOF doesn't denote lesser distance work, and the game without DOF is working harder at distance rendering. We just don't know, unless the differences are apparent even under the blur, such as lighting and stuff (I haven't played either title!).
Can't wait to go home and read the Reach article.
Edit: Great interview indeed! Great questions and better answers than I expected.
It's been asked before, but does this quote mean they are actually using a low res buffer like many games on the ps3 (and 360 I know)...
IIRC DF thought Bungie used a full res alpha buffer for transparencies, does this quote say otherwise? If true, I know stupid question since the quote indicates a low res buffer, I just know DF are right 99% of the time which is where the confusion is from.
While I get what you're saying, and agree, the fact that Bizarre was able to make so many improvements to their engine proves that there was still a lot of room to grow between PGR4 and Blurr.
DF tech interview with Bizarre:
I'm sorry but there is no way anyone can claim Banjo N&B does not push the 360. That game is gorgeous and looks as good as just about any platformer on the market IMO.
Edit: Great interview indeed! Great questions and better answers than I expected.
It's been asked before, but does this quote mean they are actually using a low res buffer like many games on the ps3 (and 360 I know)...
IIRC DF thought Bungie used a full res alpha buffer for transparencies, does this quote say otherwise? If true, I know stupid question since the quote indicates a low res buffer, I just know DF are right 99% of the time which is where the confusion is from.
While I get what you're saying, and agree, the fact that Bizarre was able to make so many improvements to their engine proves that there was still a lot of room to grow between PGR4 and Blurr.
DF tech interview with Bizarre:
What some of these guys may be saying, unless I'm mistaken, is you have to wonder whether or not Bizarre would have made such advancements or optimizations if their games/engine were still 360 exclusive?
I'm sorry but there is no way anyone can claim Banjo N&B does not push the 360. That game is gorgeous and looks as good as just about any platformer on the market IMO.
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Almost every game "pushes" the console. Do you really think the developers just sit there leaving a core idle or something?
However, as a developer becomes more familiar with an architecture, they can work out optimizations and hardware tricks that allow them to squeeze a little more processing out of the system. In the 360, we tend to update the XDK to take advantage of these things as we discover them, so every developer gets to take advantage of them.
The optimizations are two kinds, algorithm specific, such as noticing you don't have to draw some geometry because of how your world is set up, or rewriting a shader to do almost the same thing in less cycles, and hardware specific, such as tricks to keep the CPU pipeline full, or maximizing the GPU throughput.
The Bungie article illustrates this very well, a lot of their changes had very little to do with hardware optimizations, it was them changing their algorithms to get a similar or better result using less CPU/GPU.
It's also pointless, because getting an extra light source doesn't magically make your game more fun. Some of the most fun games on the 360 could probably have been run on the original xbox, and would still be just as fun, like, say Geometry Wars.
At the moment I'd say both consoles are memory bound. If we doubled or quadrupled the memory and left everything else the same, we could create even more impressive games. There are a lot of cases where you can reduce CPU by using tables, especially for AI.
However, as a developer becomes more familiar with an architecture, they can work out optimizations and hardware tricks that allow them to squeeze a little more processing out of the system. In the 360, we tend to update the XDK to take advantage of these things as we discover them, so every developer gets to take advantage of them.
The optimizations are two kinds, algorithm specific, such as noticing you don't have to draw some geometry because of how your world is set up, or rewriting a shader to do almost the same thing in less cycles, and hardware specific, such as tricks to keep the CPU pipeline full, or maximizing the GPU throughput.
The Bungie article illustrates this very well, a lot of their changes had very little to do with hardware optimizations, it was them changing their algorithms to get a similar or better result using less CPU/GPU.
It's also pointless, because getting an extra light source doesn't magically make your game more fun. Some of the most fun games on the 360 could probably have been run on the original xbox, and would still be just as fun, like, say Geometry Wars.
At the moment I'd say both consoles are memory bound. If we doubled or quadrupled the memory and left everything else the same, we could create even more impressive games. There are a lot of cases where you can reduce CPU by using tables, especially for AI.
Not sure if this is directed at me since I posted last, but I do agree with you and Al about the systems being pushed. Just like the rumors that launch 360 games were only running on one core, I knew that was BS. I was just trying to give an idea of what the others were possibly saying, though I could be wrong.
On the other hand, while I don't think any developer slacks (no such thing as a "lazy" developer IMO), I do think that the easier-to-code-for architecture of the 360 has given some leeway for developers to achieve a desired level of performance which may slow some advancements. On the ps3, it's different, from everything I've read it sounds like you have to develop that highly efficient code in order to get the desired performance which may also push for more apparent advancements.
This is why I used PGR4 as an example above. Of course there is no way to know for sure, but I think it's still a valid question to ask if Bizarre would have developed a multi-threaded renderer for PGR5 if they were still developing exclusively for the 360 and instead further pushed and optimized for what gains they could achieve with the single threaded renderer they already had written. Outside of hitting the limit with cars and dynamic objects, to me it looks like developing on the ps3 has pushed them into recoding their rendering engine. Of course one also has to consider the allowed time and budget a team has as well.
Honestly I would think most members here should know at least about the basics of how advancements are made with game development.
:smile:
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The important thing is that you don't see the low res upscale artifacts from overlapping effects.
But regarding the particles themselves, I thought what was really interesting was the following:
GPU simulation and it's using the information that they already render. Pretty elegant.
This is why I used PGR4 as an example above. Of course there is no way to know for sure, but I think it's still a valid question to ask if Bizarre would have developed a multi-threaded renderer for PGR5 if they were still developing exclusively for the 360 and instead further pushed and optimized for what gains they could achieve with the single threaded renderer they already had written. Outside of hitting the limit with cars and dynamic objects, to me it looks like developing on the ps3 has pushed them into recoding their rendering engine. Of course one also has to consider the allowed time and budget a team has as well.
Honestly I would think most members here should know at least about the basics of how advancements are made with game development.
Didn't some other team recently state they went back to a single threaded renderer in order to decrease latency or something?
Yup, Criterion did that for Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. It would be an interesting case for study if we could get figures from various studios who have had to make a decision regarding the issue.
(((interference)))
Veteran
I love Banjo Kazooie N&B - have finished it - very underrated in my opinion and it really is gorgeous - Rare should give Lionhead lessons in how to pull off a cartoony look.
So I agree, Rare are possibly the most technically capable MS first party studio (I don't know about 343 Industries) but the full post was:
Which is true, they're definitely not like studios like Guerilla, SCE Santa Monica or ND where the cutting edge tech is almost an end itself.
And anyway Rare are MS's Kinect studio so we're likely not going to see a Perfect Dark 2 or similar soon
I disagree Geometry Wars on Xbox was definitely not as fun as the 360 renditions - for one, the thousands of particles flying everywhere make the game what it is and stuff like the grid gravity simulation in GWRE 1/2 which causes things like black holes falling into orbits around each other and messing around with your stream of fire - that wouldn't be possible on Xbox:
http://www.bizarrecreations.com/games/geometry_wars_retro_evolved/interview.php
Games like Banjo Kazooie with huge game worlds, with suprisingly deep vehicle physics wouldn't be possible either, nor would Halo's Firefight mode which can throw 40 or so AI at you.
And of course a game like Alan Wake just wouldn't work on Xbox as so much of the atmosphere relies on the tech - same with KZ2, Heavy Rain, Uncharted etc.
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