[NGP] Uncharted

[DieH@rd]

"Uncover the dark secret behind the 400-year-old massacre of a Spanish expedition as Nathan Drake follows the murderous trail of an ancient and secret Spanish sect. Caught in the middle of a rivalry between Jason Dante - his old friend - and Marisa Chase - the granddaughter of an archeologist who has mysteriously vanished without a trace - Nathan Drake races into the treacherous river basins, undiscovered temple ruins and karst caverns of Central America in search of a legendary lost city, only to find himself pushed to the edge of the Golden Abyss."

Also comes with: 2hrs of cutscenes [same production as with PS3], every imaginable control method known to man, Nolan North.

Uncharted Golden Abyss is the best reason, but certainly not the only one, to buy Sony's still-codenamed Next Generation Portable.

It is a game that delivers what you'd expect from a console, it cuts no corners, offers no excuses. This is gaming on the go without the need to make do. This is the reason you'd want to carry around something that is made for gaming, rather than something that is merely able to play games...

...Uncharted Golden Abyss certainly isn't the sort of first-person shooter experience that will completely stress test the abilities of the NGP's dual thumbsticks, that will have to wait for a Battlefield or Call of Duty, but it requires enough shooting and moving to prove what gamers have been saying for years: Shooters just don't work with a single thumbstick.
http://kotaku.com/5805966/

Bullshots of Uncharted NGP.

http://www.abload.de/img/13067567645j6e.png
http://www.abload.de/img/13067567653nwx.png
http://www.abload.de/img/1306756766bura.png
http://www.abload.de/img/1306756767vnle.png

 

[ShadowRunner]

Wow that is impressive. Am at work and one of the guys over my shoulder thought it was Uncharted 3, and still thought it looked good for a PS3 game . Bullshots indeed but still very impressed regardless.

 

[Prophecy2k]

Bullshots of Uncharted NGP.

If what i hear from my dev friend working on an NGP launch game is correct, basically due to the size of the OLED screen and the pixel density, it's quite possible that we'll never need to use the word "bullshot" again when talking about NGP ;-)

 

[patsu]

If what i hear from my dev friend working on an NGP launch game is correct, basically due to the size of the OLED screen and the pixel density, it's quite possible that we'll never need to use the word "bullshot" again when talking about NGP ;-)

Oh yeah ? What game is he working on ?

 

[DieH@rd]

 

[TEEDA]

Behind the scene PSblog video
http://www.viddler.com/explore/sceablog/videos/1842/

 

[(((interference)))]

Apparently they're pushing around 260k polygons per frame vs the 1.2m in Uncharted 2
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-06-02-uncharted-golden-abyss-preview-preview

 

[patsu]

I can't remember what the 1.2 million includes. Makes more sense to compare with other portable devices:

Some simple numbers underline that fact: Resistance Retribution pushed some 50,000 polygons per frame, whereas Golden Abyss is throwing around 260,000.

If you want to compare with PS3, then it's more fair to normalize the numbers to power usage and screen size. There is a lot of consideration and tech going into keeping the power lower for battery life and heat reasons.

I suspect some of the early NGP demoes were done without worrying about battery life (They ported some PS3 shaders over with little/no changes). For a real game, the developers will need to be more careful.

 

[nightshade]

You also have to consider the number of pixels that the game is pushing, 720p has nearly 1 million pixels and hence pushing ~1 million polygon is a fair choice. in contrast the NGP runs at a lower resolution and has a smaller screen size so it shouldn't matter all that much.

 

[ultragpu]

Cant believe we're seeing Uncharted DF level of visuals on a handheld already, well almost. NGP is a sure buy for me at this point and this is only a launch title.

 

[Gitaroo]

all the texture from ps3 or 360 ports can be at half size for the native res correct? I guess the rumor ram downgrade doesn't seem too bad. Still hope the system has a really good web browser with flash support.

 

[AlNom]

Cant believe we're seeing Uncharted DF level of visuals on a handheld already, well almost. NGP is a sure buy for me at this point and this is only a launch title.

First of all... 960x544 vs 1280x720 (55% of the resolution). This applies to depth, colour, lighting... They'll likely lower the shadowmap resolution as well. Drake's Fortune also utilized FP16 for a few buffers as well.

Second of all, the hardware is TBDR by design...

Don't discount the quality of art either... They won't be needing as high resolution textures.

 

[ultragpu]

First of all... 960x544 vs 1280x720 (55% of the resolution). This applies to depth, colour, lighting... They'll likely lower the shadowmap resolution as well. Drake's Fortune also utilized FP16 for a few buffers as well.

Second of all, the hardware is TBDR by design...

Don't discount the quality of art either... They won't be needing as high resolution textures.

Yeah if we're comparing raw numbers then I'm sure it's not technically there yet but what really excites me is how close the game looks to its ps3 counterpart. I can imagine on a 5" OLED screen one can easily get away with a lot of shortcomings such as AA, low res textures, low poly models and etc, not sure what kind of lighting Golden Abyss uses though looks HDR-ish to me but somehow not as good as PS3 versions.
I'm interested to see how far devs can push NGP for graphics.

 

[patsu]

What's the pixel density of the screen ?

 

[RudeCurve]

Any info about the size of the game and what storage media they'll be using?

 

[ultragpu]

What's the pixel density of the screen ?

960x544 on a 5" screen so almost retina display quality.

 

[Gitaroo]

I wonder if they have any AA, if MSAA is dirt cheap like IMG has claimed, most NGP games should looks quality good on the screen.

 

[patsu]

960x544 on a 5" screen so almost retina display quality.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Any info about the size of the game and what storage media they'll be using?

All retail games are sold on 2-4GB flash-based carts. Every game will also be available from the PS Store for download to flash-based mass storage. Given the amount of voice work and graphical quality expected in Golden Abyss, I'd assume we're looking at a 4GB cart.

 

[RudeCurve]

Thanks for the info. I wonder if they will use Memory Stick as the "cart".