L. Scofield
Veteran
Some people are impressed by the moving levels in GoW3, so technologically, what's impressive about that? I don't mean it as a rethorical question, I really have no clue 
Moving Level
- Thread starter L. Scofield
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Maybe collision detection on a moving object though that should not be that hard with such little amount of 'loose objects'. Dunno though what would set it apart from say a huge moving ship or other large object where the player is fighting on. Also is it the giant or the surroundings moving to give impression of movement and how much does the giants body flex as in "soft flesh"?
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Jedi Knight had a moving level. It was annoying as hell.
Not holding out much hope that other moving levels won't also be annoying as hell to me. So I'm kinda curious why other people find them impressive also.
Regards,
SB
Not holding out much hope that other moving levels won't also be annoying as hell to me.
So I'm kinda curious why other people find them impressive also.Regards,
SB
Some people are impressed by the moving levels in GoW3, so technologically, what's impressive about that? I don't mean it as a rethorical question, I really have no clue
What does being impressed have to do with technology? I would guess that something out of the norm leads to being impressed. I was impressed with the train level in UC2. Thew train turns while you are running and jumping, the scenery is going by in the background. It is cool. We have all played plenty of levels running through streets with static scenery.
I'm not sure what from GoW3 the OP is even specifically referring to, but if it is something like a level on a giant's body, then it's not hard to imagine what kind of cool stuff could happen. The level is organic and moving while you are playing it.
"Nerve-Damage"
Regular
Some people are impressed by the moving levels in GoW3, so technologically, what's impressive about that? I don't mean it as a rethorical question, I really have no clue
I don’t think it’s the moving level (err, Titan ride) per se, but rather the overall presentation, interaction, scope and depth that makes it feel brand new.
i_am_interested
Newcomer
its all of that plus the titan ride
other games have had moving levels, but nothing ive seen like this, some games feature moving levels where youre constantly going either up or down or left or right but your character is pretty much staying iand facing n the same direction - like the train ride in uncharted 2 for instance, nate was continually moving forward
if you look at the new GoW3 shots, youll see in some shots kratos is running on the forearm and back hand of gaia to attack the crab/horse enemy and other shots youll see how kratos is having to hang from the other side of her arm and palm by stabbing his blade up because she most likely had to rotate her arm in order to continue climbing - all this is happening in real time while kratos is having to fight the crab/ horse
as for technologically, its animating and physics collision detection thats tough about it, other games have also featured large characters (SotC) although nowhere near as large as the titans - but a lot of times these characters have very slow robotic animations and arent interacting with any environments, mostly theyll just stomp around flat grounds - the titans in GoW3 dont move like robots but rather creatures, and theyre interacting with the environments and the mountain, collision detection is important for making sure that their body parts interact with the sets and mountains properly without major clipping issues and they have to be animated properly so that they appear to be climbing the mountain smoothly rather than just looking like theyre sliding up the mountain
Jedi Knight had a moving level. It was annoying as hell.
Not holding out much hope that other moving levels won't also be annoying as hell to me.
Regards,
SB
Shadow of the Colossus. The bosses are the moving levels, not only moving platforms/train. At some point, Krato will need to face the Titans, either to help them or destroy them in the process.
Compared to SotC, the GoW3 Titans are so big that they host other large monsters too. So there is some gameplay twist. You (Both you and the smaller monster) can fall from one limb and land on another swinging body part as the Titan moves.
EDIT: I think the physics and AI of such a dynamic and "open-ended" environment can be very interesting.
Some people are impressed by the moving levels in GoW3, so technologically, what's impressive about that? I don't mean it as a rethorical question, I really have no clue
We've been over this topic a million times. Clever/good design trumps tech. There may not be anything technologically impressive, in which case you can expect a whole bunch of future games to have moving levels.
Some people are impressed by the moving levels in GoW3, so technologically, what's impressive about that? I don't mean it as a rethorical question, I really have no clue
There's nothing tech special about it, your character just gets locked to the nearest bone on the skeleton of your terrain (it becomes your new coordinate system more or less) and moves with it, that's it, you then just collision check with the few poly's attached to that bone to offset your character appropriately.
Design wise though it's very cool if done right. Many games have done this in the past so it's nothing new, but I figure many PS3 gamers are coming from a PS2 so to them it may be something totally new. I guess they aren't done often because they can be confusing/disorienting if they aren't designed quite right.
Enemy AI in a changing environment is an interesting exercise though. Just like the ModNation Racer AI for user generated levels. They can't know ahead of time what the final environment would be like. So a more general approach has to be taken.
The physics is also interesting if they don't want to cheat.
The physics is also interesting if they don't want to cheat.
Well, one struggle is animating the character based on the movement of the level and your actions. Its probably even a restriction for gameplay mechanics if movement of the level can "disable" some of your moves.. maybe even while you are executing them.
If you look at U2, not particulary at the train-level (which is nice but nothing special IMHO) but when you scale obstacles that move and rotate its impressive to see how Nate realistically grabs for new ledges to compensate for it - and you still can move at the same time. This is very sophisticated to me and surely is very hard to do, nothing like just sticking the player to the next object like every other game did before (down to 2D Plattformers).
The only other game that did anything remotely comparable was SotC, and this was just a couple canned animations.
A moving platform doesn't actually add much complexity to that. If you are running and jumping along a monsters arm, then that monsters arm is your new coordinate system and all actions are based off that, so not much changes compared to if you were running along the ground. It seems deceptive I guess since you are running around on a living thing, but it's really not much different than running around on any moving platform, and not much different from running on the ground. There is always a base frame of reference, it just happens that in some cases it's moving. But since the math is recalculated each frame anyways off the new position/orientation of the frame of reference, not much changes. Make sense? I guess a simple example would be when you are driving around in a car. Does your animation change when you stick your arm out? Not really, it all feels the same since to you your frame of reference is the car, the fact that the car is moving along at 88mph on hills and valleys doesn't change anything. In the monster case, it can get twitchy if the monster you are running around on is small since then your frame of reference might be frequently changing as you run along different bones. But it's easy to deal with that simply by making the monster huge so that way different parts of his skeleton represent large sections of terrain. I presume that's what Gow does? As a bonus you get lots of culling, so that big monster (your terrain) is effectively one big optimization, but one that looks really cool.
That's a different issue, and yeah that is more complex but it's not that bad. You just use ik to position destination bones, and work back along the skeleton adjusting bones (up to their limits) to fit where your destination bones need to be. Again though many games have done that. Examples similar to U2 would be Tomb Raider Underworld for example which does it a bit smoother than U2, and AC2 which does it better than both by letting you grab, crawl and shimmy around far more stuff. Other examples that are similar although may not appear so would be wrestling games, like when you get into a grapple. You can't use canned animations for that since different wrestlers are different sizes, so instead you ik it in a way similar to what AC2, etc do just on a smaller scale. So you position one wrestlers hands in place on the others shoulders, and ik the other bones in the chain in place.
The old Splinter Cell games did it also, but I haven't played them in ages so I don't remember if it just used canned animations or if it used ik to move limbs to where they need to be.
I believe it extends much more than. What you suggested here were already been done in GOW2 which is why the new engine has made everything all 3d with soft collision. The camera pans out and sweeps in all the way from the orbit to Kratos, it tells me they do have to render and calculate everything at once at some point and that's something very impressive in my book. Everything is dynamic and happens in realtime, now when you take into account of everything else getting affected by the level when shifting its orientation, plus the ludicrously detailed Gaia herself, does that not add to the technical challenge presented here? Of course just from my own observation, I might be totally off.
I thought the Uncharted 2 train level was meant to be technologically impressive because it did things the "hard" way - every other train level in games has a static train while the world moves around it, greatly simplifying the physics needed for the characters.
http://playstationlifestyle.net/2009/12/31/evan-wells-talk-uncharted-2/
http://playstationlifestyle.net/2009/12/31/evan-wells-talk-uncharted-2/
Nope wrong.
Is there a gameplay video out of this level/section?
You'll get slammed by the railway signs and die, or get shot to death by the enemy. You need to avoid (incoming) obstacles, dispatch private army, and take down a helicopter while on the moving train. They either happened concurrently, or in tight sequence. The train track is curved in sorts, so you'll have to compensate for your aiming. It's possible to miss the enemies because the train turns at the wrong moment, causing the chain of carriages (and enemies on top of 'em) to adjust their paths accordingly. The enemy soldiers will find their way to you at the same time. I repeated 4 times. Nice scenery though.
i_am_interested
Newcomer
other than the recent pictures, the closest thing is the original trailer which was "in engine" realtime but wasnt actual gameplay
That's the video we've all been waiting for but apparently the press who seen it described exactly that. My observation came from the "Epic trailer" released awhile back.
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