Hands-on with Revolution in the next GameInformer - Ubisoft's Red Steel, aka "Katana"

[StefanS]

The ES models look great.The difference is that in CoD2 you can see vast open areas with many models on sight both rivals and friendly(and in high def).In ES,well what is there to add about this game's open-endness??

Here we see tiny rooms and 1-2 characters on screen and at SD.It seems to me that will be a problem with revolution games,smaller-scaled games.

Well, according to rumours there's a CoD2 version in the making for Rev. However, there's no solid info on it so far.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Needless to say, I see some issues with this control scheme.

But the people who have actually played it didn't experience these issues. Your inability to imagine it working doesn't negate the fact that the control scheme exists and has been confirmed to be working quite well. Remember that there are several buttons to play with; holding a button while you move the controller may change what it does. Also, it may be sensitive enough to tell the difference between a jerk and simply pulling something back smoothly.

I think the screenshots look very "in-engine," i.e. there's more than a little bit of extra FSAA, some of them are obviously not from gameplay, and in the shots with guns, the bad guy models are in the same poses, which would indicate to me that they constructed those areas specifically for the screenshots. But nothing looks unreasonable at all; it's not like they're filled with blatant SM 3.0 effects or anything.

And given the incredibly low system requirements of COD2 (you can crank stuff way down and still play it on a DX7 card and a Pentium III), I don't think there will be a problem with having open areas on Revolution (esp. since we already saw them on current-gen consoles). Rev open areas just won't look half as good as X360/PS3 open areas.

 

[Teasy]

The ES models look great.The difference is that in CoD2 you can see vast open areas with many models on sight both rivals and friendly(and in high def).In ES,well what is there to add about this game's open-endness??

I'm only saying that compared to the first person games I've seen so far on 360 its a big stretch to call the models in Red Steel low poly. I mean just because we only see a couple of models on screen in those screen shots doesn't mean that's as many as you ever see in the game, and just because we're seeing in door area's doesn't mean there aren't large outside areas in the game.

 

[Ooh-videogames]

Didn't GI claim they've played RedSteel in their article?

Blogger is full of it, one minute he speaks as if there is no doubt, then when someone mentions P911 who supposed to be a Ubisoft employee that post in IGN Revolution Insider board said that they are in-game, he slightly changed his tune.

If it turns out he is wrong he'll admit to being pwned.

Personally I think when the game is done, it will look better then what we have seen in those images, which weren't scans at all. Remember they don't have final hardware, its expected in June.

 

[Ooh-videogames]

But the people who have actually played it didn't experience these issues. Your inability to imagine it working doesn't negate the fact that the control scheme exists and has been confirmed to be working quite well. Remember that there are several buttons to play with; holding a button while you move the controller may change what it does. Also, it may be sensitive enough to tell the difference between a jerk and simply pulling something back smoothly.

I think the screenshots look very "in-engine," i.e. there's more than a little bit of extra FSAA, some of them are obviously not from gameplay, and in the shots with guns, the bad guy models are in the same poses, which would indicate to me that they constructed those areas specifically for the screenshots. But nothing looks unreasonable at all; it's not like they're filled with blatant SM 3.0 effects or anything.

And given the incredibly low system requirements of COD2 (you can crank stuff way down and still play it on a DX7 card and a Pentium III), I don't think there will be a problem with having open areas on Revolution (esp. since we already saw them on current-gen consoles). Rev open areas just won't look half as good as X360/PS3 open areas.

Their shots from training portion of the game, also Nintendo has a patent involving AA(supersampling). I'm not saying its definite that it translate into the smooth images we se from RS, but I wouldn't say its not a possibility.

Is supersampling used on the GC?

 

[pc999]

I think the screenshots look very "in-engine," i.e. there's more than a little bit of extra FSAA, some of them are obviously not from gameplay, and in the shots with guns, the bad guy models are in the same poses, which would indicate to me that they constructed those areas specifically for the screenshots. But nothing looks unreasonable at all; it's not like they're filled with blatant SM 3.0 effects or anything.

It may be the case that they do not have enought animation work done to make a good presentation of the game yet.

BTW thanks and welcome sfried.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Personally I think when the game is done, it will look better then what we have seen in those images, which weren't scans at all. Remember they don't have final hardware, its expected in June.

Though I expect IQ to take a drop with the reappearance of jaggies, unless they've made an effort to provide very high AA, which wouldn't be too demanding at SDTV res if the GPU is sufficiently meaty.

 

[Ooh-videogames]

Though I expect IQ to take a drop with the reappearance of jaggies, unless they've made an effort to provide very high AA, which wouldn't be too demanding at SDTV res if the GPU is sufficiently meaty.

Consider this aswell, this quote is from Julian of Factor5(below this paragraph), also I believe Nintendo has implemented stronger AA considering the patent that extensively mentions super sampling(Revolution).

I have read theories on the net about Flipper not being able to do cube-mapped environment maps, fur shading, self-shadowing etc... That’s all plain wrong. Rogue does extensive self-shadowing and both cube-maps and fur shading are not anymore complicated to implement on GameCube than on X-Box. You might be doing it differently, but the results are the same."

"The TEV pipeline is completely under programmer control, so the more time you spend on writing elaborate shaders for it, the more effects you can achieve. We just used the obvious effects in Rogue Leader with the targeting computer and the volumetric fog variations being the most unusual usage of TEV. In a second generation game we’ll obviously focus on more complicated applications."



What happend did developers miss this, it seems to me that most devs assoiciate everything shader to MS pixel shader and PC hardware. You can't achieve normal mapping in a less taxing manor if your trying to implement it similarly to MS pixel shader.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Consider this aswell, this quote is from Julian of Factor5(below this paragraph), also I believe Nintendo has implemented stronger AA considering the patent that extensively mentions super sampling(Revolution).

This is the second time you've mentioned this. I don't remember such a patent. Have you got a link? There's only one way of doing supersampling though, rendering the while scene oversized and shrink, and you'd need 16x supersampling you get that promo-shot quality. For 640x480, that means rendering 2560 x 1920. That's 2.5x 1080p. If the graphical complexity isn't much beyond current gen, maybe that's doable.

 

[OtakingGX]

This is the second time you've mentioned this. I don't remember such a patent. Have you got a link? There's only one way of doing supersampling though, rendering the while scene oversized and shrink, and you'd need 16x supersampling you get that promo-shot quality. For 640x480, that means rendering 2560 x 1920. That's 2.5x 1080p. If the graphical complexity isn't much beyond current gen, maybe that's doable.

Could you do edge super-sampling? If a pixel is at the edge of a polygon and adjacent pixels are on a polygon that does not share vertices with the first, then render more pixels there.

 

[Asher]

Blogger is full of it, one minute he speaks as if there is no doubt, then when someone mentions P911 who supposed to be a Ubisoft employee that post in IGN Revolution Insider board said that they are in-game, he slightly changed his tune.

The Ubisoft employee said they are not concept art, not that they are in-game and undoctored.

They are likely in-game, with the typical screenshot doctoring.

FWIW, I don't think the Killzone 2 stuff is considered "concept art" either.

 

[Ooh-videogames]

This is the second time you've mentioned this. I don't remember such a patent. Have you got a link? There's only one way of doing supersampling though, rendering the while scene oversized and shrink, and you'd need 16x supersampling you get that promo-shot quality. For 640x480, that means rendering 2560 x 1920. That's 2.5x 1080p. If the graphical complexity isn't much beyond current gen, maybe that's doable.

http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph...=Nintendo.ASNM.&OS=AN/Nintendo&RS=AN/Nintendo

There's your link, also does the GC do supersampling or is that something software driven?

 

[fearsomepirate]

If you look at the screen with the man in gray blowing something away with an automatic handgun, you'll notice that the smoke around the gun is very PS2-gen in appearance. You can also see definite polygon edges on the front of his jacket. I'm calling in-engine at the very least. There's also some very nice lighting in the top right screen from that same page.

If they pull this off right, it may make shovelware impossible to market on Revo, much like the AAA titles on DS have made the shovelware look even worse by comparison. One "disadvantage" of Nintendo's "new-gen" controls is that they take quite a bit of creativity to use well. A competent graphics engine and a tepid storyline with standard ABXY/dual-thumbstick controls just won't cut it.

 

[sfried]

If they pull this off right, it may make shovelware impossible to market on Revo, much like the AAA titles on DS have made the shovelware look even worse by comparison. One "disadvantage" of Nintendo's "new-gen" controls is that they take quite a bit of creativity to use well. A competent graphics engine and a tepid storyline with standard ABXY/dual-thumbstick controls just won't cut it.

I think it's going to be the "low-end" hardware and vastly different architecture that will prevent devs from just making shovelware. Some third parties are already learning their lesson on the DS by handing titles to experienced developers like Vicarious Visions.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=5&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=Nintendo.ASNM.&OS=AN/Nintendo&RS=AN/Nintendo

Thanks. That's new to me. However, I don't think it's a new and clever AA method. They're talking about a weighted 2x2 SSAA it seems. There could be improved quality over a straightforward 2x2 downsize, but the information density will be no better, and that's what antialiasing is all about. It won't make for promo-shot quality. I think BGA on GC had 2x2 supersampling. I know SnowBlind studios current gen engine has 2x2 SSAA on PS2, so you get an idea of the quality. It is very nice, but far from jaggie-free.

 

[pc999]

I put this on the other thread, any thoughts?

"

The very fact that Rev CPU is rumoured at sub 800Mhz clocks pretty much leaves no doubt that it's from the same 750x family as Gekko, so any performance differences between the two (outside clock speeds) would be trivial.

I guess that it is dependent of the term extention of Gekko (as they speak about Broadway), but they (Ubi/RS) said that they want to surpasse F.E.A.R. AI (I guess that this is only possible with, at the least, the same features of fear or features that surpasse fear AI features, yet Monolith stated that performance is a problem with their AI (in the begining), should that mean that is something more in this CPU than a just a clock/minor features/ tweaks update, after all you said that for a game like HL2 would be needed 5-10x what the Gekko can offer and this game seems to be give more than HL2 (this also come with features that, at the moment, I dont remember to have seen in any GC games (or at least not all in one) like destructible environments, a good deal of fxs like the little explosions, more physics objects, new animation system for the player(s)...) (yes I know that isnt because I never saw it dont meant it is impossible but I never saw all of this in any other console too)


Unless this is possible because of 1T-Sram (wouldnt in that case fear get a good deal of gain in performance with P4EE and the like?, which IIRC it dont get that) I dont see that if Gekko cant do that why would this one do?"


PS: I wrote this after I saw the new images/read the features, althought I still think that the gfx is what I would expect from a well used overclocked/more Ram GC/flipper.

 

[Teasy]

Thanks. That's new to me. However, I don't think it's a new and clever AA method. They're talking about a weighted 2x2 SSAA it seems. There could be improved quality over a straightforward 2x2 downsize, but the information density will be no better, and that's what antialiasing is all about.

The anti aliasing technique described in that patent is a programmable method, which only super samples the pixels that need to be anti aliased. So it could be very fillrate/bandwidth efficient. Also it certainly seems new in comparison to GameCube's anti aliasing support at least.

 

[pc999]

I had saw in a lot of places that in April 20 we should see some video (the NDAs (part) will finish or something), can anyone comfirm if this is from a reliable source or not?

 

[Titanio]

I had saw in a lot of places that in April 20 we should see some video (the NDAs (part) will finish or something), can anyone comfirm if this is from a reliable source or not?

I think this springs from comments made by a GameInformer staffer who said they'd have liked if this didn't get out til the 20th - the date it was supposed to be out, and he seemed to suggest there'd be more from others on or after that date also. Beware raised expectations though

 

[pc999]

Thanks.