Natural Motion Football: "Backbreaker"
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Very interesting. It seems the creators of the Natural Motion engine are now creating a computer game! Not sure how wise that is, especially given the choice of game, with Madden dominating American Football and other established rivals. But it's nice to see this first application of a true next-gen feature.
Mintmaster
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I don't know if I'd call this a next gen feature. Not in terms of hardware, at least.
This is all software. You don't need gobs of CPU power to do this. It's just taken a lot of time and experimentation to iron out all the nuances of motion that we as humans are able to pick out as right and wrong. That's why, despite having access to gobs of cheap computational power, we can't get by without motion capture today.
Mintmaster
Veteran
Don't hold your breath. I expected EA to buy this kind of tech over 5 years ago, but they continue to have crappy animation technology.It's an interesting point. I guess they'd expect EA to buy the tech if they do well enough. It looks great though, and it's definitely the way to go. If EA don't buy the tech, I hope they pull a PES or better on them.
In the EA talk at SIGGRAPH, they demonstrated some rather nice animation, IMHO.
Isn't it beyond the power envelope for last-gen consoles? We're not just talking IK and ragdolls here, but, in theory anyway, according to the engine, behavioural responses to situations. That'd mean adding on top on the last-gen Madden implementation an animation layer that needs per-player computes of pysical responses, and in Madden you can't isolate that to limited area where you could with soccer as these sorts of crashes are happening all over the field at the same time.
Also if the techniques aren't that complex by past processing standards, why was the original implementation offline only and not realtime? Was it just a matter of refining a bloated algorithm down to it's bare bones?
Mintmaster
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Are you just talking about their products for offline renderers? I don't think that has anything to do with computational load. It's just a better market to start their business. Moreover, the physics engine they use has no need to be realtime either, so that could have been the limiting factor.
I think EA had too much of a monopoly over sports gaming, so they had no reason to license this sort of tech. Now they're slowly developing animation tech of their own as competition gets more recognition. Hasn't 2K sports, for example, been putting out superior products for years?
It's all about incremental benefit. Without brand recognition, smaller companies won't benefit enough from realistic motion to recover licensing cost. Larger companies don't have much marketshare to gain either. I talked to the CEO (or some other executive) of a company doing animation tech at Siggraph 2002 and she was rather disgusted with the efforts of EA at the time.
Anyway, behavioural responses aren't innately complex from a computational point of view. There's no real brute force needed here, and it's more of an artform.
It's about time. I noticed Madden '08 is notably better than their older products, but still not quite there.
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Mintmaster
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I heard a rather amusing anecdote from a graphics professor (he actually advised David Kirk for his PhD).
Some guys were using a genetic algorithm for walking, and they had a goal of getting from point A to B. It turned out that one of the creatures that evolved to accomplish the goal decided to jump and bounce off its head and then land on its feet again, repeating the cycle to get anywhere it wanted to.
Its interesting how nature - even artificial nature - finds any way possible given the rules it must abide by.
Some guys were using a genetic algorithm for walking, and they had a goal of getting from point A to B. It turned out that one of the creatures that evolved to accomplish the goal decided to jump and bounce off its head and then land on its feet again, repeating the cycle to get anywhere it wanted to.
Its interesting how nature - even artificial nature - finds any way possible given the rules it must abide by.
This company has been showing their football demos for awhile now, I think hoping to get EA to license it.
In the trailer, they show these over the top hits but the point is, these would be real-time and no two tackles would be the same, instead of the canned animations we get now. So not all of them would look like these kill shots.
Now, I wonder if this real-time nature would make for better or worse control responsiveness compared to the precanned animation approach. EA has shortened the animations to increase responsiveness with Madden 08 but will NaturalMotion be inherently more responsive? Or will the CPU demands to synthesize a tackle in real time cause any lags?
The CEO says it will be very simplified controls. So maybe you can't have separate controls for using your arms versus lowering your shoulder or wrapping up or launching your helmet high or low.
Would be cool if you can do that, kind of like a fighter game.
Anyways, they've licensed their tech to a couple of companies already. Was hoping since Take Two had licensed this presumably for GTA4, APF might consider using it.
EA seems to be more inclined to use existing tech and with Madden's market share, they have no reason to make a huge change like this. Or really push technology in general. Just be good enough to keep the sales going.
In the trailer, they show these over the top hits but the point is, these would be real-time and no two tackles would be the same, instead of the canned animations we get now. So not all of them would look like these kill shots.
Now, I wonder if this real-time nature would make for better or worse control responsiveness compared to the precanned animation approach. EA has shortened the animations to increase responsiveness with Madden 08 but will NaturalMotion be inherently more responsive? Or will the CPU demands to synthesize a tackle in real time cause any lags?
The CEO says it will be very simplified controls. So maybe you can't have separate controls for using your arms versus lowering your shoulder or wrapping up or launching your helmet high or low.
Would be cool if you can do that, kind of like a fighter game.
Anyways, they've licensed their tech to a couple of companies already. Was hoping since Take Two had licensed this presumably for GTA4, APF might consider using it.
EA seems to be more inclined to use existing tech and with Madden's market share, they have no reason to make a huge change like this. Or really push technology in general. Just be good enough to keep the sales going.
Man, that could get me into sports games again.
That's superb. That's what next-gen should be about!
Last I heard, there were going to be limitations in terms of features, if and when this game comes out.
I just heard a podcast interview (Gamespot/Sportsgamer's From the Bleachers) with an EA producer.
He was asked about physics-based animation for sports games. He said that's the general direction everyone is moving towards but that physics-based animation is unproven, at least for sports games.
He also said he was doubtful sports games with physics-based animation would be done in this generation until Fight Night 4, which apparently EA is trying to do with at least some physics-based animation.
Of course a cynic might say he didn't think it could be done using EA's own technology, not necessarily that it couldn't be done period.
Was The Force Unleashed the first console game using physics? That wasn't received too well was it?
I just heard a podcast interview (Gamespot/Sportsgamer's From the Bleachers) with an EA producer.
He was asked about physics-based animation for sports games. He said that's the general direction everyone is moving towards but that physics-based animation is unproven, at least for sports games.
He also said he was doubtful sports games with physics-based animation would be done in this generation until Fight Night 4, which apparently EA is trying to do with at least some physics-based animation.
Of course a cynic might say he didn't think it could be done using EA's own technology, not necessarily that it couldn't be done period.
Was The Force Unleashed the first console game using physics? That wasn't received too well was it?
Interesting, the last article on this was http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/901/901664p1.html late August, so it's not like it's disappeared from the radar ... so my guess it's still coming?
TFU obviously not the first console game to use physics - but that game did, I think use three different physics engines combined for the first time (not sure which three, but probably at least Havok and Euphoria?).
TFU obviously not the first console game to use physics - but that game did, I think use three different physics engines combined for the first time (not sure which three, but probably at least Havok and Euphoria?).
well the NFL and NCAA seasons are almost half over.
So their windows are closing. If they were to release say in March, they're not going to get too much sales, one would think. Most sports games try to align their release dates to the seasons of the sports they represent.
Then again, as a newcomer and huge underdog, maybe they need to appear at a time when the competition might not be so tough.
So their windows are closing. If they were to release say in March, they're not going to get too much sales, one would think. Most sports games try to align their release dates to the seasons of the sports they represent.
Then again, as a newcomer and huge underdog, maybe they need to appear at a time when the competition might not be so tough.
Havok, Euphoria and Digital Molecular Matter IIRC.
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