Capcom's Deep Down

Compared to other over promising games, Deep Down still holds well for what has been shown. The dragon looks really up there. Destruction, physics and fire effects are the areas it has to proove itself. These were the most prevalent features in the initial tech demo. These are what excited us about this title

We still havent seen direct feed to conclude. Although I am a little suspicious they showed only off-screen footage compared to other presentations

The fire effect in the gif though is underwhelming and I hope what we get will be much more impressive. Those fire effects were the best looking real time fire effects we had ever seen in a game title when it was announced. The fire had volume. Whereas now it looks flat and not as pronounced. It doesnt light the environment as much as it did either
 
3rd person games can be fantastic in VR, many have tried them with current Rift devkits.

I with to replay Alan Wake with HD version of Rift. Hopefully devs will support it with native game adaptations [HUD, more than one camera control scheme].
 
looks great to me. Just about all of Capcom's games do. I'm more concerned about the whole randomization thing. I'm hoping it'll be more like in Dragon's Dogma's Dark Arisen add-on. The environments were fixed, but the enemies were not. How random can you get given that kinda scale anyway. It's not like you can fit a Dragon into a hallway.
 
Balance and fun will be a huge concern.

Whether a dragon can fit in the hallway should be rather easy to solve !

I do hope they will patch in user-generated or at least user-controlled monster and level design later. :devilish:
 
It's not really about solving problems (that's certainly easy enough). It's just when you have to deal with such a large disparity in enemy size, you can't really populate certain areas with certain enemies to begin with, and suddenly your random factor becomes an awful lot less random. Renders the whole thing a little pointless and isn't worth sacrificing hand-crafted level designs for in my opinion.
 
Wow what an downgrade to graphics especially the lighting and particles.
Makes me scarred of the division next year :'(
Still it looks like the game i want to get an ps4 for.
 
It's not really about solving problems (that's certainly easy enough). It's just when you have to deal with such a large disparity in enemy size, you can't really populate certain areas with certain enemies to begin with, and suddenly your random factor becomes an awful lot less random. Renders the whole thing a little pointless and isn't worth sacrificing hand-crafted level designs for in my opinion.

For a single player game , sure. But as a co-op game where Players will likely go through episodes several times it`s not a bad move to keep it fresh . I guess it will not be as random as it may sound now, probably a bit like Resistance 2 co-op with parts of Levels arrangened in different patterns.
 
The downgrade in the fire effect is more than apparent, making me wonder if people were right about that certain part being faked.

Also noticed the lack of human faces, all PCs wear helmets and the monsters are kinda getting away without detailed animation and such.
 
It's not really about solving problems (that's certainly easy enough). It's just when you have to deal with such a large disparity in enemy size, you can't really populate certain areas with certain enemies to begin with, and suddenly your random factor becomes an awful lot less random.
Large monsters are only an option in large spaces. Everything else goes everywhere else. Easily accommodated in the dungeon creation algorithms, and randomised levels are a key to loot-and-level RPG longevity. When the levels and encounters are known on the third, fourth and fifth playthroughs, a portion of interest is lost. D3 has handled this in a very interesting fashion by putting randomised events and levels within randomised levels. When you explore an area, there's a chance of encountering a cave or NPC you haven't met before. You can design a game with 50% more content than the player experiences on one play through and shuffle in 10% into every game for variety.
 
Yeah, even the minimalist randomnisation of Diablo 3 works wonders for replays. You know everything's the same but the difference in position makes everything feel new enough for the exploration to feel rewarding again. Randomisation isn't problem, in fact, I think its a great plus for the game. They are even randomnising monster appearances, which is another plus and something new for gaming in general.


And , yes,we can all see the downgrade, but then didn't we all know it was running on some pc at the feb event? I am just happy that the Dragon still seems to be out of Jurassic park and the skin shaders have that surreal feel to them. Lighting also seems great , though I guess they can't bake GI due to randomn nature of the levels,and destructability was also present but he just broke pots :p !
And they have got time. With time they can focus more on the fire and its dynamics.Ono did say their whole focus is on liquids. Its not a launch game , let them delay it as long as they want. If Sony enggs are actually helping them out, then I am sure tech from other Sony studio will also reach them to help them out.
 
New screens

Deep-Down_2013_09-12-13_001.jpg


More at the link.

http://gematsu.com/gallery/deep-down/september-12-2013/
 
Yeah that looks pretty good, unfortunately it's zoomed too far out to see much detail. That doesn't look like a gameplay camera perspective unless of course it's from a second player looking at another player or NPC. The other pic zoomed up close doesn't look so good.
 
Reasonable art direction.

Monsters could be more grotesque (a la Demon's Souls and Berserk). Wondering about animation. That's the department that makes Demon's Souls monsters come alive, especially the skeleton warriors.

The environment should be more aggressive or despair. The face here is not angry or sad enough:
http://gematsu.com/gallery/albums/deep-down/september-12-2013/Deep-Down_2013_09-12-13_004.jpg
[size=-2]Is he yawning ?[/size]

May need to tune the lighting so that the mood is more oppressed (Think Tower of Latria). Ah, that's why dynamic level generation is tough. Should use warm, flakey light, not white light. Eerie blue light might work better in some scenarios too.
 
Shadow maps are going to be the bane of this generation. They are just so damn hard to get right, the bias and resolution and other parameters, especially when you want to cover great distances with the same light.

I really miss the incredible displacement and texture filtering of Pixar's Renderman, but it was such a relief when we moved to raytraced shadows (first Mental Ray, then Arnold). You don't need to tweak or hack anything, shadows just work.

Case in point, light leaks through that warrior's armor. So damn hard to get stuff like that right.
 
As for the art direction, interesting to see relatively accurate gothic plate armor in a video game. Most art directors chose to stylize, fake, overemphasize, break historical context and mix different ages and so on. It's sort of a realistic take on fantasy, I find it kind of hard to recall any other recent game that chose this approach. Maybe the Darklands RPG from like ~20 years ago?
 
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