Also, define "AI" -- cleverly scripted set-pieces can be argued to represent AI in the form of a sequential set of actions that represents what a "Real Intelligent" being would do... hence, AI.
An in-engine cinematic is essentially running a scripted sequence of events, right? Similarly, it would make sense that physics in the engine would be necessary for events in the engine to process correctly...
Halo does use significant CPU resources for its AI (mostly raycasting for visibility tests), so its sequels are probably doing the same. There are various kinds of high level stuff and scripting too, but the individual agents still need to have vision and such to function.
dragonelite
Veteran
Can you count the warthog jumping in the beginning of the trailer as physics.
ShadowRunner
Veteran
I thought it was generally accepted that cinematics have the ability to, and usually do, surpass the graphics of in-game?
While the game could well look as good as the trailer in the end, nobody knows yet, i do think that its most likely that the cinematics will look better, even if only slightly, it is the case with pretty much every other game so dont really see a reason for this to be the exception.
Hopefully the final gameplay will look even better than this cinematic, but even in that case i would be very suprised if the cinematics didnt look even better.
While the game could well look as good as the trailer in the end, nobody knows yet, i do think that its most likely that the cinematics will look better, even if only slightly, it is the case with pretty much every other game so dont really see a reason for this to be the exception.
Hopefully the final gameplay will look even better than this cinematic, but even in that case i would be very suprised if the cinematics didnt look even better.
COPS N RAPPERS
Regular
I'm guessing why we have some doubters of Halo Reach's graphical bar is cause of the usual scale most halo games have.
in quite a few cases the scale of the battles aren't little skirmishes, most halo battles take a good amount of terrain or a whole specific location.
it's this thought that i'm guessing that leads many to believe and hard to rectify that 360 or the engine doesn't have the horse power to handle all this new stuff we're seeing.
the thing is, is that we never saw this engine doing anything in the past to prove the developers wrong, nor have we really seen 360 fully utilized or in the hands of closer companies like bungie.
in many cases it's just been 3rd party developers proving a thing or two with borrowed engines or some with their own, and with some or most of these games in multiplatform purposes.
in the years 360 has been around (with halo3 being around 360's 3rd year.) we haven't yet really seen bungie getting very serious about graphics or make a new engine that really utilizes the console. (it's just been some expansions to the franchise using the same engine.)
it has only been recent in one of their comments is where they're showing they do want to.http://www.totalvideogames.com/Kill...ie-Dev-360-Could-Handle-KillZone-2-13933.html
in quite a few cases the scale of the battles aren't little skirmishes, most halo battles take a good amount of terrain or a whole specific location.
it's this thought that i'm guessing that leads many to believe and hard to rectify that 360 or the engine doesn't have the horse power to handle all this new stuff we're seeing.
the thing is, is that we never saw this engine doing anything in the past to prove the developers wrong, nor have we really seen 360 fully utilized or in the hands of closer companies like bungie.
in many cases it's just been 3rd party developers proving a thing or two with borrowed engines or some with their own, and with some or most of these games in multiplatform purposes.
in the years 360 has been around (with halo3 being around 360's 3rd year.) we haven't yet really seen bungie getting very serious about graphics or make a new engine that really utilizes the console. (it's just been some expansions to the franchise using the same engine.)
it has only been recent in one of their comments is where they're showing they do want to.http://www.totalvideogames.com/Kill...ie-Dev-360-Could-Handle-KillZone-2-13933.html
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^that
Halo Reach is one of the games I expect(ed) to shine in graphics. Mass effect 2 is looking good and so is
Alan Wake
COPS N RAPPERS
Regular
i don't know, we'll have to wait for mass effect2 and alan wake to see if it's the developers that are or aren't the major issue.
particularity with alan wake, out of 360's near 5 years being out, alan wake has been 4 years in development. and that specific game is pushing more than is usual.
from what i know, the major issue 360 games bump into i think is, exclusivity, funding, development time, and specific graphical interests.
out of 360's near 5 years being out it has actually one game that is 720p 2xaa, pushes characters over 31k polygons, uses a remarkable physics engine that calculates over hundreds of particle effects on screen, very high on pixel shader usage, and runs at a near 30 fps. that game is ghostbusters.http://www.cgw.com/Publications/CGW...uly-2009-/Ghost-Effects.aspx?largefonts=false
i know what many are thinking, this game is NOT a 360 exclusive what so ever, but the only way the game was to do any of that was because it got funding,http://www.kotaku.com.au/2009/07/newspaper-names-budget-of-ghostbusters-the-video-game/, 3 years of development time to progress,http://xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/...game-20090219051435422.html?page=mediaFulland and specific graphical interests.
also in it's near 5 years it has one game that is 720p 0-4xaa, pushes 4 million polygons on screen, and runs at a solid 30 fps; and that game is RE5, mentioned in here http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/face-off-resident-evil-5-article
while RE5 wasn't extremely funded it had plenty of development time for perfection.
So now, It should be obvious that bungie should be the ones to deliver for MS because it's one of the few companies that is close enough to get such funding, development time, resources, and is at the same time exclusive.
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There's been very few X360 exclusives so far, and even those are usually based on Unreal engine 3 (Gears, Mass Effect), no doubt carrying a lot of excess stuff from the engine's multiplatform origins.
In fact I'd be hard pressed to list any other big exclusives, apart from the Forza and Rare games...
In fact I'd be hard pressed to list any other big exclusives, apart from the Forza and Rare games...
Billy Idol
Legend
Too Human, is this game Unreal engine based? And it had like one million year dev time or so.
And the Splinter Cell game, irc
And Crackdown
...
Mistwalker games (LO was UE3, BD wasn't), Fable 2, PGR 3 and 4, Crackdown. These are all first-party, and it depends on what you mean big. There's more if we go 3rd party, but we probably shouldn't.
PGR3 & 4, Crackdown and the Mistwalker games are all second-party. The same goes for Too Human, GoW and GoW2. Fable 2, Halo 3, Halo Wars, Shadowrun, Forza 2 & 3 and the Rare games are just about the entire production from the stable of first-party MS studios. It has been MS's policy during this generation to fund external studios and publish their games as exclusive -the best examples probably being Mass Effect, GoW, Bioshock and Ninja Gaiden 2- and to make their first-party studios focus on a few successful franchises, namely, Halo, Forza, Fable, etc.
As far as I see it, the only MS fist-party studio that has pushed the 360 hardware so far has been Rare. BK N&B is, to me, the best 360 technical showcase, its only major problem being the terrible pop in seen in Showdown Town and some framerate inconsistencies. Viva Piñata & VP TiP are also great looking titles with lots of interesting techniques hardly used in other titles such as tesselation. The problem with those is that they tend to be overlooked on account of their art being often described as childish.
I expect Bungie to focus on fixing the obvious shortcoming of their previous engine -poor texture and edge filtering, subHD resolution- and their artistic low points -animation, human models-. If they manage to improve those whilst keeping Halo 3's scale and their superb lighting model, I'll be more than impressed. If the trailer we've seen is anything to go by, I think they're on track to achieve that.
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Why no love for Halo Wars? It definitely pushes the hardware, looks ace even by the standards of PC RTSes, and uses some very hardware-specific approaches (e.g. tesselation, DXTc compression on the GPU just in the terrain system). It sold a non-trivial amount (1.6 mln according to VGChartz).
It seems to be true that nobody cares about strategy games anymore - or even, about characters which are not character-based - even on a tech-head forum
It seems to be true that nobody cares about strategy games anymore - or even, about characters which are not character-based - even on a tech-head forum
Why no love for Halo Wars? It definitely pushes the hardware, looks ace even by the standards of PC RTSes, and uses some very hardware-specific approaches (e.g. tesselation, DXTc compression on the GPU just in the terrain system). It sold a non-trivial amount (1.6 mln according to VGChartz).
It seems to be true that nobody cares about strategy games anymore - or even, about characters which are not character-based - even on a tech-head forum
I love that game... but I think that 1.6M is a trivial amount sold in the Halo-verse...
Unfortunately, RTS is very much still a PC / hardcore genre. I personally know one friend who bought the game not really knowing it wasn't a FPS and ended up hating / reselling it after completing the tutorial and the first two levels -- in co-op with me, because he was having a hard time grasping the idea he had to collect/build/battle. It was frustrating to me as well trying to "teach" a casual gamer how to play a RTS when they had no previous experience with one. He actually said "it's almost like they asked guys who made sim city to make a halo game... and that game bores me to tears. So, when do I get to find a date for master chief and put them in bed?" At which point, I realized I would never be able to get him to appreciate an RTS...
He's happy playing Halo, FIFA, Madden, and Guitar Hero.
What they have shown looks great in my opinion, but I don't trust Bungie to deliver.
It has got nothing to do with the 360 hardware, but I think it is the "forza"-effect. Allow me to explain:
When the forza screenshots started coming in, people were expecting the game to look like that.
100's of thousands of polygons per car were promised, and so on.
Aside from the 12x AA and 24x AF, it all looked believable.
When the final game was released, it turned out that never once would you race with a car consisting of 100's of thousands of polygons, nor would you ever see one in a replay.
Photomode only.
Not to say that the game looked bad. But when compared to other games (PGR3/GT5P), the game lacked great detail in the replay- or gameplay cars.
I see the same happening to this title; great screens and "in engine" bullshot rendered footage, but toned down a lot eventually.
Not that it matters though, this is Halo we are talking about Even the Halo RTS sold millions. And the shooters have always been very fun in their own right.
It has got nothing to do with the 360 hardware, but I think it is the "forza"-effect. Allow me to explain:
When the forza screenshots started coming in, people were expecting the game to look like that.
100's of thousands of polygons per car were promised, and so on.
Aside from the 12x AA and 24x AF, it all looked believable.
When the final game was released, it turned out that never once would you race with a car consisting of 100's of thousands of polygons, nor would you ever see one in a replay.
Photomode only.
Not to say that the game looked bad. But when compared to other games (PGR3/GT5P), the game lacked great detail in the replay- or gameplay cars.
I see the same happening to this title; great screens and "in engine" bullshot rendered footage, but toned down a lot eventually.
Not that it matters though, this is Halo we are talking about
Even the Halo RTS sold millions. And the shooters have always been very fun in their own right.COPS N RAPPERS
Regular
Why no love for Halo Wars? It definitely pushes the hardware, looks ace even by the standards of PC RTSes, and uses some very hardware-specific approaches (e.g. tesselation, DXTc compression on the GPU just in the terrain system). It sold a non-trivial amount (1.6 mln according to VGChartz).
It seems to be true that nobody cares about strategy games anymore - or even, about characters which are not character-based - even on a tech-head forum
I have that game:smile2:
I haven't yet put an overly ex-stream amount of hrs into it, but i have beaten it though.
for me it isn't by any means a bad game, it does however get slow at times, (having to start over and over for each level.) it feels a little different from the norm of all the other halo titles.
since the levels aren't really all that lengthy, it would help if they made a way to not start from scratch so often, assembling your base or fort can take a majority of the time of the level...and it sucks a little when you get carried away, that's pretty much the only thing i'm not to fond of about it.
technically it does set bar for all console RTS's, it's probably the best one around the block i think, it's uses the same engine i think as halo3 but it's full 720p with 2xaa.
though RTS's aren't hugely my cup of tea i don't plan on giving up my copy up for the world, it has some of the best looking CGI movies I've ever seen and music to boot. halo war's movies are just all the more proof that they have the talent working with graphics.
It is true that they used an in-engine photo mode to touch up the shots and used them as advertising. however, the polygon budgeting that was used was for the 60 fps gameplay, and also the budgeting was done in a way that hardly any would notice anyway until they switched to replay mode.
why they didn't increase the LOD models during replays i'm not sure of, either way, the developers said them selves that they can still push more with their engine down the road. http://www.videogamer.com/news/360_has_not_been_maxed_out_claims_forza_dev_2.html
so more correcting I'm guessing is to be made on those specific aspects.
for Halo Reach everyone knows the amount of AA is isn't going to be that same amount.
if you examine all the specific aspects of the one minute cut-scene, it should look like a less impossible bar to reach to many of you. (look at the ground detail, the foliage, the amount of geometry and detail the warthog has at the beginning, the mountains, the amount that is used for main characters.)
anyways, i think Bungie already knows what the feeling was like before to receive comments of fans asking questions why they didn't match the first halo3 trailer, after their statement of killzone2's bar being reachable, i think they now know what goals need to be met.
with how close they are to MS and how MS is more than willing to both fund and market this title, i think they should be up to the task.
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