Heavy Rain: New Screenshots and development footage*

[patsu]

Do Indian gamers often import games from Middle East ?

 

[RenegadeRocks]

No but Sony released KZ2 early cos the grey market gets flooded with games from Middle East . Don't you remember me playing KZ2 before you ?
For once, I was telling you guys how the guns feel very very right !

 

[patsu]

Yes, I remember you received KZ2 earlier than us. That's why I asked.

Ars has an article showing the Heavy Rain characters and the corresponding voice actors side by side:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/02/heavy-rain-characters-and-actors.ars

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yikes, some of those creeped me out. Particularly the second CG guy's scream...

By the way, there were some earlier, higher resolution images that showed the resemblances as well. They had some small portable digitizer to scan the actor's faces and obviously used photo textures as well.
(which is why many shadows and speculars are 'baked' into the color texture; capturing the reflectance via a Lightstage setup as EA probably does it for their sports series should give a simple diffuse texture instead)

I dunno, I still really don't like this approach - it looks more like someone made a paper mask from a printed photo of the character, instead of the character itself...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

By the way, there were some earlier, higher resolution images that showed the resemblances as well. They had some small portable digitizer to scan the actor's faces and obviously used photo textures as well.

That's just plain broken. It shouldn't be hard to create a portable white-screen box for head-shots at least, to capture diffuse colour only.

 

[Crossbar]

I particulary liked the faces shown during load sequences. They looked pretty real and what more I think they reflected the emotional state of the character in a very good way.
It felt like a natural part of the story telling.

No doubt this game will be a milestone mark in the interactive entertainment business, regardless if it will sell well or not.
I hope it will be a success, it would be really encouraging if more first/third person games didn´t depend heavily on guns to give the player a rewarding experience.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

That's just plain broken. It shouldn't be hard to create a portable white-screen box for head-shots at least, to capture diffuse colour only.

The only reliable way seems to be to use the polarized light approach from Debevec's stuff. Skin is highly reflective and even if you have a very large white box to light the face, it'll still create a reflection... Then again it'd probably be considerably better.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I woudn't expect a perfect solution from a portable on-site capture method, but ellminating localised light-sources seems a minimum requirement to me, for any reasonable facemap. TBH I'm gobsmacked anyone could overlook that and actually embed local shadows in the diffuse map!

 

[_phil_]

That's not the case in heavy rain anywway.

 

[Billy Idol]

I particulary liked the faces shown during load sequences. They looked pretty real and what more I think they reflected the emotional state of the character in a very good way.
It felt like a natural part of the story telling.

Yeah, I noticed this as well: during loading, the face was photorealistic. I also had the impression that in general the face of the old Detective was much better than for instance the face of the whore. And the comparison of the real life actors and the CG pendant clearly shows that the old detective (the first comparison) fits the real life model best...weird that some of the main characters are captured good, whereas others look very different in the game.

 

[MfA]

The only reliable way seems to be to use the polarized light approach from Debevec's stuff. Skin is highly reflective and even if you have a very large white box to light the face, it'll still create a reflection... Then again it'd probably be considerably better.

Or alternating strobe lights and high FPS cameras, or a couple of point light sources and a number of cameras significantly larger than the amount of light sources (either way to create an overdetermined system so you can separate diffuse from other components).

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah, well, we just had this discussion several times now, either the tech/artwork isn't as good or it's just not fit for my tastes. Uncharted and Mass Effect and even some of the MW2 characters look just better to me.

 

[patsu]

Besides personal preferences, it probably depends on the art style and character. I Madison but hate Shelby. The latter gives me the creeps, but the former is able to hold my attention throughout the trailers.

U2 has stylized models to tame the uncanny valley effects.

By the way, there were some earlier, higher resolution images that showed the resemblances as well.

Do you happen to have the link ? This is the first time I see other voice actors in the game.

 

[patsu]

Last Serial Killer game from David Cage:
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/02/17/heavy-rains-david-cage-done-with-his-thriller-trilogy/

Speaking with Eurogamer, Cage revealed "that Heavy Rain is the end of my personal trilogy trying to tell the same type of stories with serial killers and stuff, in the thriller genre." It does appear that Cage has had a certain fixation with the morbid, with his previous works -- Omikron: The Nomad Soul and Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy) -- all centering around serial killers.

 

[patsu]

Another article on Heavy Rain:
http://blogs.ign.com/SCE_HeavyRain/2010/02/17/137923/
It's about User Testing, and IMHO, happens to be the most interesting article on Heavy Rain yet.

User Tests are the most sophisticated form of torture. It consists of shutting yourself up behind a two-way mirror and observing people play your game in groups of ten throughout the day. You see them not understanding anything, doing the first thing that comes into their heads, getting stuck for twenty minutes on actions that should take one. We see them not reading the instruction, not remembering what they did in the last scene, doing everything except what they're supposed to do. So we scream behind the soundproofed glass, we insult them, curse them, foaming at the mouth, we shrivel up, we beg to be released.

And as if that wasn't enough, then we listen to them talking about the game, still hiding behind a two-way mirror (real FBI-style). And we hear all sorts of things and nothing in particular, generous compliments, sound criticism, players who are affected by the game and those who got the wrong game, the ones who thought for ten scenes that they controlled only one character, the ones who missed all the sequences but who found the game easy, those who stuck to the story and the characters, those who wanted Ethan to have a gun. You really hear all sorts of stuff in this sort of test. I suppose that's the object of the exercise. And it's not easy to know what to think about it all, between the things that really don't work and the rest.

...

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Do you happen to have the link ? This is the first time I see other voice actors in the game.

Flip back a few pages in this topic for one of the links, NeoGAF forum thread around page 10-11.
And there's been more but I'm too lazy tonight

 

[patsu]

I think those are high res capture of the game, but they don't show the voice actors/actresses for comparison.

e.g.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=19729081&postcount=264

and

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=19729344&postcount=266

 

[Laa-Yosh]

That's not what I've meant; it's in the browser history of my office computer, I'll paste it for you tomorrow

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Another article on Heavy Rain:
http://blogs.ign.com/SCE_HeavyRain/2010/02/17/137923/
It's about User Testing, and IMHO, happens to be the most interesting article on Heavy Rain yet.

Very painfull. And something I think should be present throughout the entire development cycle of a title, because there's no way of knowing how the general public will respond. Typically developers are a degree smarter than Joe Public, which means they will make logical connections that some of the users won't. And even then, as a designer you'll know what you are doing, but maybe make wrong assumptions about other users. I was shocked out how much people missed in my LBP creations. What I'd rather do now is testing during development, creating an idea and gaining feedback, refining it, releasing a better targeted variation, dropping ideas that clearly aren't going to work.

This is something I feel DD would really benefit. A developer could release a minigame of a new idea and see how people respond (in this case, a variation of the HR interface). Following feedback and analysis, the final game can be tuned, while at the same time generating a little revenue from DD sales.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah, the perfect example is the Grunt panic reaction in Halo. Even with this over-the-top form of comical, hand-waving, shouting running around, only about 20-30% of focus testers noticed that they should kill the Elite leading the group to make the lesser aliens run away in fear.

Game design is a very interesting line of work.