Gears of War 12min Xboxyde

it's always been shipping on the 7th.

12th was "retail emergence day"

 

CliffyB has nothing to do with the art design, they have there own director for that (whom does the art design for both UT and GOW). Besides, I think the art style for GOW is pretty good, scenary is good, enemies are pretty good, Marcus and Dom have their own look.

 

http://i128.photobucket.com/albums/p177/blubbernalgas/P1010060.jpg

Pretty expansive environments.

 

WOW, just WOW

 

I dunno if this is a bad attempt to troll or if its just stupidity.

GoW is technically a first generation game (second generation begins 22nd Nov) and its running on a MIDDLEWARE engine. An engine thats not taking advantage of a number of x360 (or PS3 ) features.

It may be the best looking UE3 engine game that will come to the X360 (altho with some heavy updates - who knows, UE2 was heavly upgraded), and that comment is only based on the fact that Epic is developing this, and if anybody should know how to use the Unreal 3 engine, it would be epic.

 

That pic looks like one of the videos they released..? if it is than the environment there isn't that big at all. Those buildings are all background.

 

not
depth looks ~80meters vs ~40 meters wide
hint, u can see the walls where the area finishes
comon im not even breaking a sweat

 

CliffyB is the Lead Designer of Gears.

Yes with the difference that the area doesnt finish to the walls
Have you seen this video ? What is behind is not background but part of this level. If you walk till the end and turn slightly left you will see another 80x150 distance.



Still this is only the second floor of the camp if you watch down you will see a even bigger part of the level.


Overall Gears seems to have a similar active distance like Resistance (into the city) which is a very impressive thing if you think the graphic requirements of Gears.

 

Yeah, I know. What I meant is, he doesn't actually make or generate the art. In the Major Nelson podcast there is a Q&A with Mark Rein and the guy in charge of art. Saying that I'm sure CliffyB probably gives the nod or not to what goes in and what doesnt.

 

Exactly so he definately does have a major role in the art design seeing as he's probably the final signoff on everything. If he doesn't like it he'll have the art director try something else.

 

At first I was a little worry about the size of the level. However, after watching the video, I'm really impressed! We're not only getting quality, but quantity too!!! I'm glade they didn't revealed everything about this game. I wonder what other stuff they haven't shown us yet.

 

Just 2 more weeks!

 

Luke on the 1up yours talked about the multi-player maps from the Hollywood event where all ten were playable, he basically said many are a lot more impressive graphically and feature much farther draw distance than what we have seen so far. He even asked some technical guy if they "faked" the far off scenery in some manner and the guy said no, it was all in engine.
________
Wong Amat Tower Condominium

 

true some of those look bigger ( wouldnt quite put it in the scale of resistence though )
http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2006/261/reviews/928399_20060919_screen010.jpg
http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2006/261/reviews/928399_20060919_screen008.jpg
http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2006/263/928399_20060921_screen001.jpg
http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2006/261/reviews/928399_20060919_screen006.jpg

i cant see what ppl rave about the graphics theyre using static lightmaps in gear of war ( the also are in resistence as well which is also terrible )
next gen has lightmaps?

its gonna be amusing to see which of the two games scores higher in gamerankings

 

What is the problem with light maps? If the lights are fixed and if the environment is static, it is always better to use very high quality light maps than lower quality dynamic shadow.

 

lightmaps are usually static (used since around quake2 ie quite old)
the problem are with lightmaps
A/ the light cant move, thus u can stand in a level for 1/2 hour yet the sun wont move a single degree across the heaven
B/ the environment cant be destructed, eg else u will have disual problems where a wall is still casting a shadow on the ground even though youve blown it up, solution - u cant blow up the wall, thus its a major gameplay limitation
C/ different quality shadows eg watch the gears of war videos, a player casts a much different shadow to objects in the scene, theres parts where a player is standing next to a wall casting a shadow yet the wall aint!!, major visual error's caused by not going the unified lighting path
D/ u need unique texturing on the lightmap static objects which require quite a bit of memory + usually are quite low resolution accordingly thus ->'very high quality light maps' aint used

lightmaps do have a benifit that theyre faster to render

there is a reason more + more games are ditching the old fashioned lightmaps its mainly for the points i made, the only reason a game would be using lightmaps is it hasnt got the graphical performance ability to handle a unified solution.
thus u can see why i + others shake our heads when uninformed ppl say gears 'best graphics ever'

 

zed, how do you know they're using lightmaps exclusively in GoW? Do you have a reference?

 

Lightmaps also allow for GI shading for very realistic scenery. There's no alternative other than flat dynamic lighting which makes everything look computer generated and ruins convincing composition.

 

Or, plausibly, for their art design + gameplay choices, light maps return the best Image Quality. UE3 actually uses a variety of techniques depending on circumstance, but most of the technology was developerd pre-360/PS3 as a guestimate of the consoles and in general where GPU strengths would be, in particular with DX9 SM2.0 as the baseline fallback.

They could do so. A couple Xbox1 games do just this. But the question is did Epic feel it was the best choice for quality visuals in UE3. By going with a unified solution what would they need to cut and downgrade and what would the difference be? And would the tradeoff be a win for the art pipeline and the envisioned game designs that would use UE3? And importantly: Will such techniques work well on DX9 SM2.0 hardware? Put Simply for ya'

Does Dynamic = Better End Result

IMO some of the best looking games are much more art / asset quality focused. TF2 and Trusty Bell are two really nice examples where technically there is nothing new, but the end product on screen is outstanding.

Art is a major aspect of "best graphics". You can do some snazzy realtime raytracing and radiosity and have an austhetically poor game. There is a fine line of technology, art direction, art asset quality, and variety. A rendering technique that looks great with one art style may not mesh will with another; nor will every gameplay/design decision work as well with said points.

The bottom line is that as a game designer you often have to choose: more traditional technique with higher quality /or/ newer technique used more sparsely. Depending on your game design and artists which you choose may differ.

It seems pretty clear by the above comment you are suggesting best technology goes hand-in-hand with best graphics, which seems to artificially ignore how art+technology are used to compliment eachother plus the issue regarding quality v. newer techniques. Rarely has there EVER been an absolute "this is the best game ever, hands down" due to genre and artistic differences, but I think it is safe to say that anyone putting down GOW visually compared to contemporary titles in regards to execution of graphical techniquesy and general art quality (regardless of like/dislike of the theme) has an agenda. The game looks great -- even if the characters are homages to extremely redundant gaming clichés. The choice of voice actor and dialogue for Marcus... generic... very ugh. But that doesn't stop them from looking like really good clichés!

 

Well, I suppose Halo 3 does not use ligihtmaps, yet people seem to like Gears of War's graphics better.