the ignoramus
Regular
Maybe next time you can link us to some 1280x720 framebuffer grabs of both games, rather than unflattering offscreen shots.:smile:
Motorstorm 2
- Thread starter Antan
- Start date
http://www3.telus.net/public/dhwag/unchartedground.jpg
not just PS3 for sure
That does look good for ground texture but I tend to look on it on the average. Sideparts, selective places looking good but how does it do on average?
Most games have parts which stand out extra and lots ofparts that dont do it. anyway this is getting offtopic. :smile:
But then they have tracks with ~large draw distance and moderate amount of vegetation. There is bound to be large sacrificies on other areas to achieve a decent looking "mini-jungle" track. I would that the physics also seems quite weak. The bike doesnt slide when it should on the mud. A fast speed jump sideways and yet it gets perfect grip o nthe ground as seen i nthe videos on the rpevious page.
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SedentaryJourney
Regular
Those screens you depict as average seem to be screen caps from low res video. Uncharted's textures are almost always uniformly excellent, except for the instances where they haven't loaded completely.
Uncharted has fairly detailed textures on everything except polygonal vegetation. The normal maps however, are faded out with small view angles (possible a simple dot product).
So if you see a bad ground texture, it's either bad angle or bad image compression. You can stop looking now.
Regards the rubber-band AI (which I've never experienced, barely playing the game), I can see the want to keep everyone packed together to preserve a challenge. Otherwise one wipe-out and you'd be far at the back and lost...unless everyone else wipes out, I guess. But also you don't want someone lucking their way to victory. Perhaps rubber banding for the intial half/first few laps would work, and then come the final lap or whatever, it's toned down?
The problem with rubber-band AI period, is that its incredibly unfair and frustrating to those of us that are good drivers. You can drive perfectly and be in the lead for 4 laps, while the people behind you are catching up while crashing wich eachother and generally sucking, and not only that, you cannot prevent them from catching up!
Its ****ing ridiculous, no matter what you do you can get catched up. Its bogus. With very good drivers in a race with rubber-band, nobody wants to be in first place for until very closely to the finish, because its practically impossible to stay in first place,
I have seen it in many many games with rubber-band, if the players in front are good (drive close to perfectly), you dont race 100% all the time, you race as fast as you can until you are in 2nd or 3rd (depending on how close 2nd place is to fist, and how stable the driver in 1st is). Then you just keep your place until there is little left of the race, and you get to first and try to hope for the road to run out until somebody behind you catches you, because you will get catched no matter what, if all of you know how to take corners properly.
This is just generally speaking, not in particular regard to motorstorm.
Easy solution; MP Options:
* Rubber Band: Off
* Rubber Band: Slight
* Rubber Band: Aggressive
Slight = on for first 50%-66% of laps (lap # should be completely user driven), disabled thereafter; primarily slightly slows down (-5%) players in places 1-3, speeds up (+10%) players in 12-16. This will allow the laggards to catch up and prevent the better racers from running away from the pack too fast (although if they do, TOUGH LUCK because with a 5% speed penalty they deserve to pull away if they can).
Aggressive = on for 100% of laps (or 90% to allow last 10% to be all skill based); tiered speed (& boost, damage, etc) modification:
1-3 = -10%
4-6 = -5%
7-9 = 0%
10-12 = +5%
13-16 = +10%
Aggressive would allow the first place racers to compete on a level field but also draw the pack in. As you get "better" or race better you will be given fewer assists. Of course watching the videos the game appears uber forgiving in regards to corners and such.
This same principle can be carried over to boost & damage (more boost, ability to take more damage in the rear, etc). GRID does an ok job at this when enbabled (and can be disabled).
I shake my head at 2 gen old features that cater to a broader mass of consumers, simple in concept (and seemingly in implimentation; the game does recognize "place" afterall), allow flexibility and adjustment when dislikes are found (or balance issues), and prolongue replay value ... and they are ignored. This goes for about every racer on the market mind you.
I need to start my game design document thread soon. That way all the game designers here can laugh at me along with all the technical developers
@ Ostepop: There are some really bad Rubber Band AI solutions out there, no doubt. Hence the ability to enable/disable, as well as "amount" would be a nice way to allow designers to allow the gamers to choose how the game is played. Put the control in the gamers hands. e.g. In Mario Kart 64 the rubber banding was CRAZY. There was little point being in 1st place if you were a great driver. I had 2 friends who were almost as good at driving as me (almost!) but their strategy was to sit in 5th/6th place until the last lap, get a lightning and star (etc), use the lightning at a strategic point (e.g. make you miss a jump, redo half a lap) and blast the star, pick up another good weapon, and be on your way to first place. It was a great strategy but it killed the racing part. DD! solved this problem slightly by allowing "basic" weapons but it was not an ideal solution. The SNES version, ironically, had the most "skill driven" driving model as well as better balance for weapons with skill based avoidance. You can see in the MK series how "fun" for everyone trended the series away from skill based gamers--INSTEAD of giving players the option to choose HOW they would like to set the game up, thus appealing to more potential consumers. I agree that bad Rubberbanding can really ruin a game of its potential ... but it need not be that way. Of course some games have such poor AI that rubberbanding is essential, as well as cheating, to make the game remotely competitive. Others have such poor AI it is too good and needs to give the player assists to overcome the simple, but "mistake free" AI. Nothing worse than seeing AI who has perfect aim and such but do stupid, stupid stuff to give the gamer a chance.
That's all true, but is a problem of mixing abilities and trying to keep it fun for everyone. If a lot of people entered races being worse drivers and knowing they could never win...well, would they enter? If Warhawk server had a few awesome players murdering all the newbies, would any newbies stick around long enough to learn the game...?
The rubber-band or other cheap fixes (pickups from cart games that blast the leader) are a way to try and level the playing field, and I've played casual kart games where the 'non-gamers' enjoyed them because they still had a chance to win, so it's certainly something a game wanting a wider appeal would have to try and land. But of course that then reduces the skill component of the competant drivers. Ultimately you'd want either tiered races that groups people of similar ability, or some handicapping system, like other sports use to ensure everyone taking part is taking part in something on their level. Pitting Woking FC against Chelsea makes no sense for either team, which is why it doesn't happen. If the original MotorStorm lacked any of these and just relied on racing aids, then it was broken.
Joshua's felxible system makes sense to me, for casual play. For proper racing games you'd want ranked events with no aids. This would cater to everyone. Like WH, setting up private games with rank limits would help too. The only problem I can see at the moment is how a player would get a rank? If they come first on newbie servers with lots of aids, that's hardly a testament to their racing skill! Maybe rank would have to come from solo races against the AI so everyne is measured by the same standard?
What is this kindergarden? If you make a game that good enough, people will have fun even when they are loosing. See all those people playing shooting games? About 95% of console players suck at fps games, they dont know how to strafe shoot, they are not good at firing while running etc etc. Yet they all play.
On some occasions where i have played FPS games online for an entire day, its usually just me and 2-3 other people that ever has a chance in hell of winning. The 10+ other people tend to have negative kill ratios or at best close to neutral. Yet they play...
Yes they would, there is an incredible amount of absolutely terrible drivers that play GT5P and Forza 2 that never ever has a chance of winning an online race, yet they compete and race.
If the game is good enough, people will play it, wether you loose or win.
Hell, i reckon that 80% of all the people out there that has bought GT4 and Forza 2 doesn't know how to even take a corner properly. Otherwise i dont understand how i'm on the podium 70% of the time in online races in these games, 20% of the time i get spun out by some jackass, and 10% of the time the drivers are just better than me. I dont have a steeringwheel and i usually smoke a fat one before i play video games so im rather stoned.
Further, ever heard of match making? Much more preferable solution than giving penalties to the good drivers. Aspecially when it makes it impossible to win if you drive perfectly.
Have you tried Mario Kart on Wii? Its totally ruined by rubberband. Every single person i have had over that has played this game agrees with this, as you pretty much have 0% chance of winning if your in first place. Which is ridiculous. Even non gamers notice this and get bored pretty quick.
If there is no challenge, your interest is going to die of rather quickly.
jandlecack
Banned
I did notice the poor ground textures now. Looks like lack of AF to me. Slap 4x or 8x on that to make it look incredible all of a sudden. Anyway, it's only really apparent at the beginning of a race at the countdown. It actually looks pretty decent when you're racing.
Totally beside the fact that they still are poor, I mean, in gameplay at least you don't notice it due to the speed. Anyhow I hope they bump them up a few notches in the final version.
Made me wonder...what if they thought the same, that in motion it doesn't look as bad, and then thought they could just skip AF? I mean, even if that's their intention, at least make it variable AF and enable it in the beginning / replays / still images. Would make it much less apparent if it was only 0xAF during movement.
Totally beside the fact that they still are poor, I mean, in gameplay at least you don't notice it due to the speed. Anyhow I hope they bump them up a few notches in the final version.
Made me wonder...what if they thought the same, that in motion it doesn't look as bad, and then thought they could just skip AF? I mean, even if that's their intention, at least make it variable AF and enable it in the beginning / replays / still images. Would make it much less apparent if it was only 0xAF during movement.
I think the rubberbanding only applies to AI, SP only.
If you're wanting to reach non-gamers, then yes. I don't know who Evolution Studios are/were aiming for.
Eh, yes? That's why I mentioned it in my reply?
jandlecack
Banned
Everyone who enjoys racing games and enjoyed Motorstorm 1...they deliver to MS-fans and racing fans, simply put. I don't see this as a target audience sort of thing. It's a game for gamers. We're not talking about Cooking Mama Nexgen.
Damn, I hope you are wrong because I hated the first Motorstorm
Incidentally, where in heck are you guys getting the demo for MS2 from? I can't seem to find it in the store, is it out only outside the USA?Damn, I hope you are wrong because I hated the first Motorstorm
You can get it if you buy Qore episode 4.
jandlecack
Banned
Damn, I hope you are wrong because I hated the first Motorstorm
Hey, I wasn't a big fan of it either, and I think it only served well as a launch title. That doesn't mean I'm not enjoying the hell out of this tiny Motorstorm 2 demo!
Don't worry, if you liked at least the premise or concept of Motorstorm, you will love this one. It's actually executed brilliantly on it, instead of trying to be a graphical showcase with annoying load times.
(They still should knock up the AF or improve the ground textures, they ARE an eye-sore when you start a race and in cinematic views)
But it will come at the cost of other things. Really perhaps they should perhaps have done pre-baked shadows for most things.
I just came back from friends house. We played 2-player split screen in a 1080p projector screen (game is a native 1280x720p but still). Gorgeous game and runs without hicups. Demo track is a short and somehow reminds me of the MS1 track. But this game definitely delivers what was promised. Well done Evolution.
I have had done a game sharing on five separate machines already. I could not download PSN purchase games to my friends PS3, but Motorstorm2 I was able to download from the history list.
I have had done a game sharing on five separate machines already. I could not download PSN purchase games to my friends PS3, but Motorstorm2 I was able to download from the history list.
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