A Generational Leap in Graphics [2020] *Spawn*

[chris1515]

Personally I do not think it is a good idea to expect any of these things universally. AI? This is game Design more than computational complexity - Fear and halo 1 are ancient yet most fps still uses call of duty AI types that have very low dynamism and little to no systemic behaviours. That is unless you just mean the shere amount of npcs on screen or in memory. Regarding the rest of all the features, no game need to use them all at once - as project Design makes that a complete waste. Not every game Design needs constant streaming, mesh shaders, or etc. To me what makes a next gen game is doing just one aspect important to the game's existence that is not feasible in a real time manner or at playable quality on a previous Generation of technology.

But I expect big AAA openworld to use some of the functionnality at least Streaming, replace mesh/primitive shader little by little, having vastly improved dynamic lighting. I can't imagine how GTA 6 will look like. This is a matter of budget, some game cost 100 to 200 millions dollars to make.

One 343 industry dev think you can replace geometry rendering pipeline little by little games after games.

http://reedbeta.com/blog/mesh-shader-possibilities/

The other really neat thing about mesh shaders is that they don’t require you to drastically rework how your game engine handles geometry to take advantage of them. It looks like it should be pretty easy to convert most common geometry types to mesh shaders, making it an approachable upgrade path for developers.

(You don’t have to convert everything to mesh shaders straight away, though; it’s possible to switch between the old geometry pipeline and the new mesh-shader-based one at different points in the frame.)

The funny thing Nvidia are basically two years having all new features. Out of RT where the Nvidia advantage is so big, people could have made the R&D on Turing GPU but they were not knowing what AMD can deliver.

 

[Dampf]

Personally I do not think it is a good idea to expect any of these things universally. AI? This is game Design more than computational complexity - Fear and halo 1 are ancient yet most fps still uses call of duty AI types that have very low dynamism and little to no systemic behaviours. That is unless you just mean the shere amount of npcs on screen or in memory. Regarding the rest of all the features, no game need to use them all at once - as project Design makes that a complete waste. Not every game Design needs constant streaming, mesh shaders, or etc. To me what makes a next gen game is doing just one aspect important to the game's existence that is not feasible in a real time manner or at playable quality on a previous Generation of technology.

With AI I meant using neural networks to create a more believable world, like for instance using natural language processing to generate NPC text to prevent a NPC from saying the same stuff over and over again, or to create more believable animations without having to spend a ton of resources on it!

Sure, not every game needs all of these features, but I firmly believe next gen is about combining all these features to extract the maximum potential of the next gen consoles and PC. I mean, regardless of the type of game, you would want finer LOD granularity and higher geometric density in your game. Anyway, I can understand your point. Cyberpunk 2077 with its impressive set of RT features demonstrates this nicely.

As Chris said, I have high hopes for BF6, DICE were always about pushing technology and this will likely be no difference. So maybe in Late 2021/Early 2022 we will see games utilizing all the next gen technology. I bet this game will run very nicely on RTX and RDNA2 GPUs.

 

[Karamazov]

bring me battlefront 3 instead !

 

[BillSpencer]

AI and gameplay design of 2077 is very last-gen. PS3 era even. I am completely destroying everything and everyone and I am playing on hard. Just found out that silenced weapons can be used to change the direction an enemy walks (when you are about to be discovered), so have the enemy turn around, square, drag out of sight, triangle. You can use this during the whole first act

 

[pjbliverpool]

AI and gameplay design of 2077 is very last-gen. PS3 era even. I am completely destroying everything and everyone and I am playing on hard. Just found out that silenced weapons can be used to change the direction an enemy walks (when you are about to be discovered), so have the enemy turn around, square, drag out of sight, triangle. You can use this during the whole first act

Is there such a thing as "last gen gameplay design"?

 

[SumoSaki]

AI and gameplay design of 2077 is very last-gen. PS3 era even

We could go back further.

Cyberpunk 2077 (2020) Police A.I VS GTA 3 (2001) A.I - YouTube

 

[BillSpencer]

Is there such a thing as "last gen gameplay design"?

if during search noise heard in opposite direction of path, (motion match animate) turn head around into direction of sound, don’t walk towards it. At least not on hard.

For people like yourself that play on normal or easy, sure let it be last gen design. But for people who are up for the challenge, give some next gen “ai”

 

[chris1515]

There is no next gen gameplay. This is only game design. I expect CDProjekt to improve this like with the Witcher series.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Personally I do not think it is a good idea to expect any of these things universally. AI? This is game Design more than computational complexity - Fear and halo 1 are ancient yet most fps still uses call of duty AI types that have very low dynamism and little to no systemic behaviours.

Mostly, but if you want good AI then you need the AI to have the same capabilities and limitations as the player, ergo not cheating or approximating line of sight and what can be heard, and simulating these in complex environments can be computationally intensive, especially if there is a squad of AIs and the player is assisted by AI team mates.

These are both problems that GPUs are good that, meaning the core AI, as in individual NPCs reacting to these stimuli can be better.

 

[Vega86]

Does anyone remember an older article mentioning how realistic AI is NOT enjoyable by the tested players, making the players felt cheated? They had examples of AI baiting players while the other AI start flanking.

 

[jlippo]

Does anyone remember an older article mentioning how realistic AI is NOT enjoyable by the tested players, making the players felt cheated? They had examples of AI baiting players while the other AI start flanking.

Pretty sure this has been quite common problem in combat AI and seen in multiple articles.
Players have been conditioned that it is ok to wait an enemy to pop up their head from behind a cover every few seconds, instead of once checking player location and telling other NPCs the location for them to flank.

Would love to see games in which would have AI and player to try and survive for life outside combat.
More Violet Evergarden and stories of life during hard times and player impact in long run. (This really would only work for very selected kind of games, but in some small area/scale games it might be quite interesting.)

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Does anyone remember an older article mentioning how realistic AI is NOT enjoyable by the tested players, making the players felt cheated? They had examples of AI baiting players while the other AI start flanking.

Giving the AI more realistic sight and the ability to hear things doesn't inherently make the AI better or more enjoyable.

Unless there is a gameplay reason for it, you don't want your average cop in GTA to have visual and audio acuity of the terminator but your AI should be able to see reasonably well but not through walls - unless this is a specific gameplay mechanic. Few games model sound and hearing well and AI is often at its worst when it's either cheating badly and when the AI is so limited that it represents no challenge. There needs to be reasonable stimuli for AI to change it's default behaviour (guard, patrol, go shopping etc), including being able to see things further than 20 feet away equally many games basically make the player invisible if any object is between the AI and the player, regardless of whether that object really obscures the player. Likewise you want the AI to react when nearby allies just disappear.

There are a bunch of good books on game AI.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

December 1, 2022

The History of the Modern Graphics Processor

3D graphics transformed a dull PC industry into a spectacle of light and magic. TechSpot's look at the history of the GPU goes from the early days...

www.techspot.com

The Early Days of 3D Consumer Graphics
3Dfx Voodoo: The Game-changer
The Nvidia vs. ATI Era Begins
The Modern GPU: Stream Processing Units
Pushing GPU Technology Into New Territory