Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2010]

Status
Not open for further replies.
Frankly, it's the same for all titles here.

For Halo water, even if they use the same code (nothing has changed), it could still be a regression due to undiscovered bugs, or changed CPU allocation pattern -- assuming people saw a difference.

Then again, unless the player swim and fight in the water, it's not an issue at all.

I think it has more with them going for a more realistic (rather than fanciful) look. Similar to how some people didn't like the change to material shaders on the armor and weapons. They wanted ultra shiny weapons, but Bungie went for a more realistic military application. The same goes for the water.

I found the water more impressive in Reach just due to the fact that it was appropriately designed, colored, animated, etc. depending on the location and source of the water. In New Alexandria you have very calm blue Carribean like waters. In the mission "The Package" you have very rough (highly tesselated), dark, arctic look waters. In a couple of the first missions you had dirty/muddy looking water with high tesslation near the base of a waterfall that calms down significantly as you go down the streams. I'd imagine many people probably aren't impressed by muddy looking water, but I found it highly impressive.

People are probably wanting a more fantasy oriented or fanciful "pretty" water. Something appropriate to the more colorful Halo's of the past, but wouldn't fit in with the more realistic look they were going for with Reach.

And yeah, as someone mentioned throwing a grenade into the water and watching it explode is quite fun. :D

Regards,
SB
 
I thought they said the water code didn't change ? People seem to be "complaining" about interactivity than colors.
 
I thought they said the water code didn't change ? People seem to be "complaining" about interactivity than colors.

I haven't really noticed that myself in situations where interactivity would be more noticeable (calm water). The relatively fast moving streams featured in the first few levels shouldn't show much, unless a large disturbing force is introduced, like a grenade. And it does, perhaps a bit too much, IMO. But at least even there the ripples from the grenade explosion appeared to be affected by the fast flow of the stream itself.

The one time I experimented with calm water it seemed to react well to my player movements. And I'm willing to bet that if I were to throw a grenade into the very rough and choppy water of "The Package" that it would have a relatively minimal influence on the water, as it should be. And what influence it did have wouldn't extend very far.

I mean toss a stone into a calm pond on a windless day. Do the same on a windy day. Do the same with a fast flowing stream and storm tossed waters. The influence of the stone's impact grows progressively less and less as the energy in the water itself grows more and more. Where in a calm pond you may have ripples that might actually reach shore and "bounce" back out, in a storm tossed sea, you'll be lucky to have ripples that extend more than a foot.

I can understand where people coming from past Halos with exaggerated and sometimes cartoony animations and art direction might think it's a downgrade. Myself I look at it from the realism perspective which seems to infuse Bungies' art direction in Reach.

Regards,
SB
 
The water does interact with the player played around the water when waiting for tank to spawn on paradiso.
But it is really subtle not as strong as valhalla.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Yea I did notice some interaction in the SP (like when you go to sword base the 2nd time), you see some really subtle water movements when you move backwards, but its considerably short lived compared to Halo 3, same for ripples formed from gunshots they have a shorter life as well. Either ways the interaction was close to nil for NPCs unlike Halo 3
 
I keep seeing this mentioned, where exactly did they say this? Unless Halo 3 used tessellation, how could the code not change from Halo 3 -> Reach?

I assumed by "exactly the same", they meant no changes:

You can never please everybody.

Btw the water tech is still exactly the same as on Halo 3. If you read the Halo thread on Neogaf you would know that.

Yep, it's the same as previous Halo games. http://www.nobleactual.com/post/550158968/water. Folks can also start here @ 2/26/2007 http://www.bungie.net/News/Blog.aspx?mode=tags&tag=1&dfilter=&page=7. Just look for water. And go through every weekly update up to the launch of halo 3. You'll see that Reach water is indeed the same, and items they prototyped for Halo 3 that didn't make it (muddy water?) made it to Reach. Further, if you can find the Legendary Edition commentary, you'll hear them joke about the water in the 2nd level of Reach. In one playtest during tuning, spartans were swept off the map when they stepped into the waterfall. :)
 
Heh, it looks so much better in motion. :)

I think the water interactions in Halo Reach are also more constrained (IE - made more realistic) by the new physics engine. There appears to be a lot of factors that influence how the water reacts to things (depth, water source - rough, calm, in motion, etc).

Regards,
SB
 
The visual aspect of water in Halo Reach could be much better.

I also noticed some image ghosting issues and tearing.
 
Ok, let's try it this way. On the engineering blog from April 25 Marcus posted that he added water to the 2nd mission and that he jumped in because there's only about 3 people in the entire studio that can do water. Around June 6 they hit their zero bug release and they went gold on August 5th.

So 3 people out 100+ devs can do it because it's so complex, it wasn't even implemented for entire levels until 3 months before the game went gold and by the creative director no less, and they stuck to their deliberate build schedule/milestones to not have the feature creep nightmare that was Halo 2.

So is it the same tech placed here and there throughout the game and required one of the 3 or so devs to port into large levels like the 2nd mission? Or did the other 3 or so people stop what they were doing, rewrote water, didn't bother to include it for entire missions and only dotted it in other smaller areas, had marcus come in 3 months before ship to implement their all new rewritten water for a game that absolutely could not slip.

Well one, I didn't know there was an engineering blog, link please? :D

Also, I would have to see what context Marcus is talking about when saying only 3 people can "do water". That can't mean develop water tech, just going by what you said, it sounds like only 3 people can properly handle inserting and editing water in the levels. I'm sorry but to me that doesn't mean that the tech behind said water is untouched or the same.
 
Indeed. It is unbelievable what MLAA can do and an especially remarkable alternative for AA implementation considering that it has such an unbelievably clean result in most cases and is not held by the AA limitation in the GPU. Truly outstanding. I hope it becomes the standard by most third party developers since the QAA or 0xAA they have been using isnt a good option when MLAA can be used. Especially for multiplatform games
 
Gah, if that's MLAA, I have to say, I'm less than impressed. Definitely better than Quincunx certainly, but not much to write home about. Still a jaggy mess, just less of a jaggy mess.

Regards,
SB
 
I'm not sure how that first shot could be described as a "jaggy mess". They're almost completely eradicated. Perhaps the almost-horizontal bright white against black of the second shot shows something not much better than the original though, but isn't that a worse case scenario?

By the way, what was the AA in LBP1?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top