Forza 5 [XO] *large pics inside*

[Silent_Buddha]

It just sounds like a simple case where their entire development cycle was pre-planned with the expectation that everyone with an Xbox One would have an internet connection.

Once you make that assumption then there some adjustments to your development cycle that you can make. You don't have to rush to get all content ready for pressing and duplication in time for a retail launch. Basically what you end up getting is an extra month or two to work on content/polishing/whatever that you wouldn't have if you were basing your development cycle on a typical retail launch with gold master.

It could be that in the product planning that they had it was decided that getting the engine, tracks, etc. done had precedence over all the bits and bobs that connect all that together. Makes sense, it's likely a lot easier to QA and debug the bits all the bits that tie things together than the tracks, AI, physics, whatever. Saving those until last is likely doesn't have as much potential to screw you over as it would if you saved content until last.

So, up until sometime after gold master is released to duplication they might only have very rough placeholders for all the things that keep track of rankings, player stats, UI, navigation between tracks, career mode, etc. Things without which the game would be unplayable for your average gamer, but aren't necessary for development and testing of the core game.

Extra content will be there as with an original assumption of an always online console, they would likely have had content being produced past the gold master anyway (which for a traditional retail release means Day 1 DLC for all that content generally for X price unless you preoder). All of which you get for free rather than having to potentially pay for it.

Regards,
SB

 

[Cyan]

It just sounds like a simple case where their entire development cycle was pre-planned with the expectation that everyone with an Xbox One would have an internet connection.

Once you make that assumption then there some adjustments to your development cycle that you can make. You don't have to rush to get all content ready for pressing and duplication in time for a retail launch. Basically what you end up getting is an extra month or two to work on content/polishing/whatever that you wouldn't have if you were basing your development cycle on a typical retail launch with gold master.

It could be that in the product planning that they had it was decided that getting the engine, tracks, etc. done had precedence over all the bits and bobs that connect all that together. Makes sense, it's likely a lot easier to QA and debug the bits all the bits that tie things together than the tracks, AI, physics, whatever. Saving those until last is likely doesn't have as much potential to screw you over as it would if you saved content until last.

So, up until sometime after gold master is released to duplication they might only have very rough placeholders for all the things that keep track of rankings, player stats, UI, navigation between tracks, career mode, etc. Things without which the game would be unplayable for your average gamer, but aren't necessary for development and testing of the core game.

Extra content will be there as with an original assumption of an always online console, they would likely have had content being produced past the gold master anyway (which for a traditional retail release means Day 1 DLC for all that content generally for X price unless you preoder). All of which you get for free rather than having to potentially pay for it.

Regards,
SB

I think it would be dumb making that on purpose. I personally think that any game that comes on a disc should be 100% complete.

And the most likely explanation is that it is a launch game and they want to have as much content as possible when the Xbox One is released.

Even so, I just hope the disc is playable without a patch and that they release a new disc when all the content is out. Early adopters are going to have an internet connection at home, most likely, so that's not a problem at all.

So long as you go online for the first time when the console is launched, you should be able to play offline every single game.

I think it is the way the industry is going with day one title updates which allow developers to work to the last minute.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I think it would be dumb making that on purpose. I personally think that any game that comes on a disc should be 100% complete.

Why would it be dumb if the expectation and guidelines from Microsoft themselves when you started project planning for launch titles indicated that every single Xbox One user would have internet connectivity?

At that point you KNOW that the end user won't have a problem with a day 1 patch and you can adjust your development schedule accordingly.

The only thing that now makes it look weird is that Microsoft has unfortunately deviated from the original plan.

Regards,
SB

 

[messyman]

My guess is that the day 1 online requirement is the result of MS changing their policy at the last minute, screwing up developer's game design.

 

[Billy Idol]

Is Gold needed to download Forza Driveatars?

 

[Arwin]

Ha ha, you can pretty much guarantee that for this first patch it won't be. I don't know about getting new ones from Friends though later on, you never know. I would consider that a-synch online mulitplayer, and would hope it wasn't behind Gold ...

 

[Cyan]

I think that all the DRM changes have caused some problems to the developers which focused the design of their games in the pre-non DRM Xbox One era, but Turn 10 are clearing up any questions regarding the recent news and people can enjoy the game from day one whether they are online or not.

After all the growing concerns in regards to the subject Dan Greenawalt has explained that you don't need to patch the game at all if you don't want to, nor Forza 5 will require a one time content download at launch.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/07/18/forza-motorsport-5-install-offline-details-clarified

 

[Cyan]

A very nice article from Edge about Forza 5 where the author talks about its unique features, as well as the missing aspects of the game like weather and night racing.

Despite the absence of weather, if they follow on their masterpiece Forza 4 -my favourite Forza game to date-, the foundations are truly excellent.

When you talk about a game whose predecessor is Forza 4, you realise most of the other racing games out there have it worse off, a lot worse off.

http://www.edge-online.com/features...pgrade-but-a-spectacular-launch-window-racer/

 

[joker454]

http://www.edge-online.com/features...pgrade-but-a-spectacular-launch-window-racer/

Thanks for the link, although oddly more so because it let me know about a car game I hadn't heard of called Project Cars which actually sounds more interesting than Forza 5. It's nice to see a new player in the mix, GT and Forza could really use the competition.

 

[Cyan]

Thanks for the link, although oddly more so because it let me know about a car game I hadn't heard of called Project Cars which actually sounds more interesting than Forza 5. It's nice to see a new player in the mix, GT and Forza could really use the competition.

Odd... I thought it was a pretty known game (glad it helped you to know a new game and a cool one it seems). I have heard of Project Cars before and it seems to be really good and look good, but I am not totally sold on it for now, -just cautiously- curious about it.

On a different note, Forza 5 team says that Xbox One delivers 600% better AI performance, and it's not because it's using a mysterious force, but the cloud servers!

http://www.ubergizmo.com/2013/08/fo...oud-servers-deliver-600-ai-performance-boost/

 

[DrJay24]

However, with Xbox One’s cloud servers handling the AI elements in Forza 5, it was capable of handling a whole lot more complexity, and Greenawalt was quoted that they managed to achieve a boost which was equivalent to “600 percent” of the actual Xbox’s brains. Hopefully the theoretically freed up 20% or so processing power of the console would be able to be put to better use elsewhere.

Hum, so the game isn't playable offline? What about the latency of a sudden turn and the AI response? I'm guessing they are talking about offline AI bot training, in which case it doesn't free up anything, it was never done in real-time. Sounds like PR.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Sounds like it's awesome!

 

[RenegadeRocks]

Hum, so the game isn't playable offline? What about the latency of a sudden turn and the AI response? I'm guessing they are talking about offline AI bot training, in which case it doesn't free up anything, it was never done in real-time. Sounds like PR.

Yup, misleading marketing everywhere. They are premade AI routines, nothing realtime, so can't free up anything.

 

[warb]

Yup, misleading marketing everywhere. They are premade AI routines, nothing realtime, so can't free up anything.

It's continually updated and worked from a huge amount of player data. If they wanted to achieve the same complex and dynamic AI offline, well they probably couldn't.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

It's continually updated and worked from a huge amount of player data. If they wanted to achieve the same complex and dynamic AI offline, well they probably couldn't.

Yes, but doing it on the server isn't freeing up anything on the console, is it? cos if it all it would be done the console, it wouldn't be done in realtime.

The feature is good and ipad games are doing it too, but it is not something that is freeing up realtime resources in any way, as even if they did it on the console hardware itself, it would still not be a realtime process. Hence, my post.

 

[joker454]

Odd... I thought it was a pretty known game (glad it helped you to know a new game and a cool one it seems). I have heard of Project Cars before and it seems to be really good and look good, but I am not totally sold on it for now, -just cautiously- curious about it.

Funky, I honestly had never heard of it, go figure.

Yes, but doing it on the server isn't freeing up anything on the console, is it? cos if it all it would be done the console, it wouldn't be done in realtime.

Think about how it would have to be done in a non cloud compute setup compared to a cloud compute setup.

There's a mountain of user data to process, with cloud compute the cloud servers churn through all the data on their own time and whenever the user plays a given track the game simply downloads the pre-computed data and off you go, you have custom ai ready to go every time you play.

In a non-cloud compute setup you have two choices:

One, you abandon the feature and don't support it at all instead sticking with traditional predictable bland ai.

Two, the game has to wait until the user selects a given track and starts to play it. Only then does the game know which set of ai data it needs to parse and process. After loading that track the game would have to collect all that user data from the internet connection and then it would have to create the ai routines on the spot. If could do this in two different ways, first it could create them before the user starts to play on the track but that would required putting up a "Please Wait" notice while the console downloads all the raw user ai data and parses it all, however long that would take. For all we know it could take minutes to download that raw data if the raw data set is very large, meaning a chunk of memory would have to be reserved for that. The other option is to let the user start playing the game with old predictable crappy ai routines and while they play in the background the game can download that mountain of ai data and reserve some memory and cpu time to parse it all to create the ai routines. So while you are racing around the track against typical canned ai the game is downloading data and crunching though it in the background using whatever memory and cpu cycles the console would have to spare. Once that is complete only then could it activate that ai and make it available to the player.

It may sound counter intuitive but yes indeed pre-processed cloud data can actually save a game real time processing power and memory.

 

[expletive]

I wonder if there's any chance they add weather or day/night as part of a reveal prior to launch. Whats stopping them from adding it at this point?

 

[scooby_dooby]

Funky, I honestly had never heard of it, go figure.
Think about how it would have to be done in a non cloud compute setup compared to a cloud compute setup.

You're making this seem like alot more than it is. All of this could easily have been done in the previous generation, on any of the consoles.

* As you race, collect data and save it to disk.
* Once in a while, upload that data to a web server, where it can be analyzed.
* Once in a while, download the latest AI routines from the server and save them to disk.

Voila, you have "cloud" based AI, and it all could've been done 10yrs ago.

It's much more feasible now, cause it's cheaper, and more people are connected, but can we stop pretending this is some huge new thing?

 

[joker454]

You're making this seem like alot more than it is. All of this could easily have been done in the previous generation, on any of the consoles.

* As you race, collect data and save it to disk.
* Once in a while, upload that data to a web server, where it can be analyzed.
* Once in a while, download the latest AI routines from the server and save them to disk.

Voila, you have "cloud" based AI, and it all could've been done 10yrs ago.

It's much more feasible now, cause it's cheaper, and more people are connected, but can we stop pretending this is some huge new thing?

...and yet no one has done it in the past 10 years, in the most connected console generation gaming has ever seen. I'm not pretending cloud is new, but subsidized servers of a consistent/predictable power configuration with default api support from day one all managed and supported by the platform owner is new and highly more conducive to being used by 3rd parties. "Could have been done" type arguments are useless because without proper backing, standardization and support all such arguments are a waste of time in the real world. That's why you've never seen ai farmed this way in a driving game today, yet will magically see it in a few more months from now.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

You're making this seem like alot more than it is. All of this could easily have been done in the previous generation, on any of the consoles.

* As you race, collect data and save it to disk.
* Once in a while, upload that data to a web server, where it can be analyzed.
* Once in a while, download the latest AI routines from the server and save them to disk.

Voila, you have "cloud" based AI, and it all could've been done 10yrs ago.

It's much more feasible now, cause it's cheaper, and more people are connected, but can we stop pretending this is some huge new thing?

Download a few million different AI to disk? From what I gather this could randomly choose from millions of AI per race. Although I'd guess there might be a setting to prefer people on your friends list.

In other words, there's the possibility of never racing the same AI for more than a few races.

And even if you could say limit it to your friends list. The AI one or two months later for friend X may not longer be the same as their skill has evolved and hence their AI has evolved. Heck, the potential is there for that AI to change overnight if your friend decided to play the game for a few hours to improve his skill versus your AI.

So yes, it could have been done in the past, but wasn't. Everything (tech, gamplay mechanic, etc.) that is used in games could be been done earlier. But wasn't until some game decided to do it. That doesn't make it less innovative or exciting. I mean heck, there isn't a single thing that the upcoming consoles will be doing that couldn't have been done years ago. Doesn't mean some of it won't be any less amazing. And the only reason it is happening is because some of the things they use will now be standard across millions of machines and millions of users instead of being optional to a few users.

Regards,
SB