Current Generation Games Analysis Technical Discussion [2023] [XBSX|S, PS5, PC]

[iroboto]

Agree here although one could make the claim for both. Gaming industry is really a booming "luxurious" endeavor. They may pay little compared to the other tech industries but there's no denying it's a highly coveted industry (especially for younger people). The older people (like my age) find it way too fast, hectic and with very little returns. There are indeed more industries combined that are realtime but not gaming out there and a lot of those companies are way more relaxed and stable.

Lol. welcome back.
Agreed.

AAA games industry is pretty terrible place to work imo. Little stability and maximum grind right now and lots of disappointment in sales.

 

[iroboto]

On PC, We've had nothing but problems with Single Player/Co-Op games, Callisto Protocol, Gotham Knights, Hogwarts Legacy, Last of Us, Gollum, Redfall, Jedi Survivor, Forespoken, Dead Space Remake, Wild Hearts, Deliver Us Mars, Wo Long Fallen Dynasty, Witcher 3 Next Gen, Elden Ring, Saints Row 2022, and too many others to count.

On the contrary, multiplayer games tend to work well out of the box because they are targeted towrads a much wider audience.

Single platform!

I’m talking about reducing as much scope as possible. Single player helps. Single platform helps even more.

Redfall is designed to be a GaaS! From first appearance. It still incorporates MP.

 

[davis.anthony]

On PC, We've had nothing but problems with Single Player/Co-Op games, Callisto Protocol, Gotham Knights, Hogwarts Legacy, Last of Us, Gollum, Redfall, Jedi Survivor, Forespoken, Dead Space Remake, Wild Hearts, Deliver Us Mars, Wo Long Fallen Dynasty, Witcher 3 Next Gen, Elden Ring, Saints Row 2022, and too many others to count.

On the contrary, multiplayer games tend to work well out of the box because they are targeted towards a much wider audience.

On PC?? Pretty much all of the games you listed have/had issues on console too.

 

[I'mDudditz!]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1662053052956778498

I think it will be a huge problem because studios need to ship games and do big modification of the engine is difficut.

Well much of this can be automated with middleware - matrix demo and insomniac spider man games both use Houdini to generate the cityscapes. To be frank I don't understand this comment from John. We celebrated the Matrix for pushing geometric detail across a dense cityscape. It was incredible at the time. Spiderman 2 has elevated the bar exponentially, with rasterization spanning some 10+ miles into the distance. All at 4k with a playable framerate. Not to mention noticeably better raytraced reflections and speedy traversal. The promises of the SSD and I/O are really coming into fruition in this capture. This is why I say memory will be just as important as GPU for determining what can be rendered onto the screen.

 

[cwjs]

Well much of this can be automated with middleware - matrix demo and insomniac spider man games both use Houdini to generate the cityscapes.

As somebody who does this stuff professionally, I don't think it's right to call it "automated" -- this is lengthy, difficult dev work that requires a team. It's more scalable than placing everything manually, but hardly cheap.

(But also, yeah, johns wrong -- aaa can easily ship content like the matrix demo. Epic is a top 10 studio, but there are 9 others!)

 

[I'mDudditz!]

As somebody who does this stuff professionally, I don't think it's right to call it "automated" -- this is lengthy, difficult dev work that requires a team. It's more scalable than placing everything manually, but hardly cheap.

(But also, yeah, johns wrong -- aaa can easily ship content like the matrix demo. Epic is a top 10 studio, but there are 9 others!)

Apologies! Didn't mean to downplay and thanks for the knowledge.

 

[arandomguy]

One thing to consider here is I'd guess that existing stock assets, references and tools that can be leveraged for a contemporary setting game in a major urban environment is extremely prevalent. While the further you move away form that especially to more unique fantasy and sci-fi genres/worlds you're likely going to have to work with more bespoke solutions.

This would mean there's likely a significant difference that has to go into art/design work relative to world size/density/complexity given the genre/setting.

 

[Below2D]

Agree here although one could make the claim for both. Gaming industry is really a booming "luxurious" endeavor. They may pay little compared to the other tech industries but there's no denying it's a highly coveted industry (especially for younger people). The older people (like my age) find it way too fast, hectic and with very little returns. There are indeed more industries combined that are realtime but not gaming out there and a lot of those companies are way more relaxed and stable.

It's highly ironic that the gaming industry generates billions but is notorious for underpaying and overworking its people. At least from what I've heard.

 

[iroboto]

It's highly ironic that the gaming industry generates billions but is notorious for underpaying and overworking its people. At least from what I've heard.

You get paid more when people are trying to poach you though. I'm hearing a lot of people getting poached into studios owned by Tencent and Netease.
Once those people get poached (if they are in a team lead position or leadership position) they will promote from within to make sure the projects get completed.

So you're really seeing a lot of shuffling happening within studios as well, making project work pretty chaotic if you'd in the middle of something and you lose a highly experienced team lead and then you're promoting someone junior up.

 

[troyan]

It's highly ironic that the gaming industry generates billions but is notorious for underpaying and overworking its people. At least from what I've heard.

You have to invest billions... Gollum had a 15 millions € budget. They have expected to sell one million+ copies within a year. It is easy to ruin your company when your budget gets bloated...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

You get paid more when people are trying to poach you though. I'm hearing a lot of people getting poached into studios owned by Tencent and Netease.
Once those people get poached (if they are in a team lead position or leadership position) they will promote from within to make sure the projects get completed.

So you're really seeing a lot of shuffling happening within studios as well, making project work pretty chaotic if you'd in the middle of something and you lose a highly experienced team lead and then you're promoting someone junior up.

Part of the problem sounds like breaking up teams. Maybe development studios need transfer windows like sports...

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Well much of this can be automated with middleware - matrix demo and insomniac spider man games both use Houdini to generate the cityscapes. To be frank I don't understand this comment from John. We celebrated the Matrix for pushing geometric detail across a dense cityscape. It was incredible at the time. Spiderman 2 has elevated the bar exponentially, with rasterization spanning some 10+ miles into the distance. All at 4k with a playable framerate. Not to mention noticeably better raytraced reflections and speedy traversal. The promises of the SSD and I/O are really coming into fruition in this capture. This is why I say memory will be just as important as GPU for determining what can be rendered onto the screen.

View attachment 8959

View attachment 8960

Wow, that just shows how the top picture looks almost a generation ahead of the bottom picture. Building detail extends far farther with higher geometric density and the lighting and thus shadowing are just massively better.

That makes me even more excited for the first UE5 titles from the really good developers (versus more indie budget developers).

Regards,
SB

 

[iroboto]

Part of the problem sounds like breaking up teams. Maybe development studios need transfer windows like sports...

I would love to see it. It would be silly season like formula 1; but for video game development

 

[VFX_Veteran]

Well much of this can be automated with middleware - matrix demo and insomniac spider man games both use Houdini to generate the cityscapes. To be frank I don't understand this comment from John. We celebrated the Matrix for pushing geometric detail across a dense cityscape. It was incredible at the time. Spiderman 2 has elevated the bar exponentially, with rasterization spanning some 10+ miles into the distance. All at 4k with a playable framerate. Not to mention noticeably better raytraced reflections and speedy traversal. The promises of the SSD and I/O are really coming into fruition in this capture. This is why I say memory will be just as important as GPU for determining what can be rendered onto the screen.

View attachment 8959

View attachment 8960

Umm.. not true. Spiderman's building assets (as well as most games trying to render a city) have low polys compared to Matrix's nanite assets. I can guarantee you that wireframe mode in Matrix will show more dense meshes than Spiderman's wireframe mode. That makes rendering higher density buildings with further depth feasible. It does NOT make it elevate the bar because of this. Cyberpunk's city is more unique than both when you consider how many unique buildings it has but with much smaller scope and simple geometric buildings too. Surely a compromise for pathtracing the entire world.

The square rectangular buildings are pretty cheap with several instances of the same geometry thereby taking up much less bandwidth.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

Wow, that just shows how the top picture looks almost a generation ahead of the bottom picture. Building detail extends far farther with higher geometric density and the lighting and thus shadowing are just massively better.

That makes me even more excited for the first UE5 titles from the really good developers (versus more indie budget developers).

Regards,
SB

Likely not this generation as it's definitely not plug-n-play and consoles have to sacrifice alot. Matrix demo wasn't even a real game and they blew their budget on 1440p/30 - something I don't personally see developers doing but I could be wrong.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Likely not this generation as it's definitely not plug-n-play and consoles have to sacrifice alot. Matrix demo wasn't even a real game and they blew their budget on 1440p/30 - something I don't personally see developers doing but I could be wrong.

Oh, I'm not expecting anything in particular (Matrix demo or otherwise). I'm just really interested to see what a really good developer can do with UE5.

Regards,
SB

 

[VFX_Veteran]

Oh, I'm not expecting anything in particular (Matrix demo or otherwise). I'm just really interested to see what a really good developer can do with UE5.

Regards,
SB

You and me both.. too bad the project I'm working on isn't a game.

 

[I'mDudditz!]

Wow, that just shows how the top picture looks almost a generation ahead of the bottom picture. Building detail extends far farther with higher geometric density and the lighting and thus shadowing are just massively better.

That makes me even more excited for the first UE5 titles from the really good developers (versus more indie budget developers).

Regards,
SB

What on earth are you looking at? The opposite is true. Building detail falls off on forefront structures in the Matrix demo.
Spiderman 2 maintains the building detail much better, the camera is much further, and it is rendering at ~3x distance of Matrix if not more. Sounds like trolling.

Umm.. not true. Spiderman's building assets (as well as most games trying to render a city) have low polys compared to Matrix's nanite assets.

Not from this distance it doesn't. Spiderman 2 is drawing much more geometry in this scene than the Matrix. I've checked the triangle view myself, it falls off the cliff at such distance. In fact this isn't even a fair comparison for Spiderman because Matrix camera can't be pulled further back for a more fair comparison.

Likely not this generation as it's definitely not plug-n-play and consoles have to sacrifice alot. Matrix demo wasn't even a real game and they blew their budget on 1440p/30.

The matrix demo was 1080p and an unstable 30fps.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Spiderman 2 maintains the building detail much better, the camera is much further, and it is rendering at ~3x distance of Matrix if not more. Sounds like trolling.

Discuss properly or not at all. Having checked the images, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be looking at to prove which is better. Please highlight specific points (red rings and zoom are the classic method) and present a technical comparison highlighting the difference you notice.

To my eyes, both collapse pretty quickly into looking like textured boxes, but the top image has a lot more detail on the detailed buildings up front and the difference from buildings casting shadows on each other is immense, although it's not a comparable TOD and POV. I can see a significant detail advantage to the bottom image at distance in terms of 'windows' where the top image textures get blurry to the point of being solid grey.

 

[Riddlewire]

Good to see the Spider-Man and The Matrix have finally caught up to Crackdown 2 on the Xbox 360.