[PS3] God of War III Pre-Release

[obonicus]

Yes, but did you have to break into my house to take a picture of me in my sleep?

Very clever, aren't you, trying to get me to admit to a felony. Catch me twice, shame on me.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Please stay on topic

 

[patsu]

Updated gameplay footage for the same demo in ComicCon:
[gt]53200[/gt]

I wanted to see if they changed the violent scenes, but the video is too short. Didn't get to see Helios at all.

The Centaur's walking animation looks a little weird to me (like a walking human instead of a horse).

 

[JPT]

The Centaur's walking animation looks a little weird to me (like a walking human instead of a horse).

Have you seen a Centaur walk? I think not.....

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It has the body of a horse though...

 

[ultragpu]

Santa Monica take hints from Narnia?

 

[Arwin]

It has the body of a horse though...

But the brain of a human probably ... So the question is, is walking on hooves nature or nurture?

 

[patsu]

When the centaur first showed up (with close up camera), the swing of his arm and his walking legs didn't quite match up. It looked like he's cat walking. That's based on my perception, but I have been browsing certain modelling site very often lately.

 

[AntShaw]

Went to a big music festival in Chicago this past weekend (Lollapalooza) and they had this on demo there. Got to see the battle with the Centaur. Game looked pretty amazing, but the entire battle was marred by framerate drops. I only got to see this individual fight, but at least every 10 seconds I would see them. Looked like it was only occuring when Kratos was doing the majority of the attacks.

On a side note, they also had Uncharted 2 multiplayer tournies going. Looked fun.

 

[patsu]

GoW3 new screens:
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/60050

Looks better than first shown. I can begin to appreciate the screens.

 

[patsu]

http://www.jeuxvideo.tv/video/god-of-war-iii.html

Extended trailer of the same segment. This time it shows how Kratos ripped the Centaur, slaughtered the Cyclop, and finally beheaded Helios (after about 4:40). My God, this man needs anger management.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Excellent stuff, seems like no holds barred this time. Not a long wait anymore and plenty of games to keep us busy before this ships. I bet this will have some epic scenes and places in it.

 

[djskribbles]

Rumor: GoW III Demo + I & II on Blu-Ray?

God of War III is set for 2010, but it's possible that a demo will be out this year.

According to a Tweep called MarkPlayStation, who PSX Extreme claims is a manager for Sony Mexico, a special God of War package is on its way this December.

The package will reportedly consist of a Blu-ray stuffed to the brim with God of War, God of War II and a demo for God of War III; all exclusively playable on PlayStation 3s.

An odd initiative that would surely cause a positive stir among PS3 gamers and especially God of War fans. It could even cause a bigger push to purchase the newly announced PS3 Slim.

The news is especially exciting for gamers who own a PS3 without backwards compatibility, since Sony would have to make the effort to get the franchise's first two games to work on their latest system.

link

I'd totally buy that if true.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Some behind the scenes info here...

 

[AlNom]

Cool, thanks for the link.

Hm...

“The dynamic shadow system utilizes a deferred rendering solution and the dynamic lighting system uses a forward rendering solution. From the start we wanted the ability to have a lot of dynamic lights. We did not want frame rate to suffer with each light in the scene.

I'm not sure I understand the last two sentences in context... Certainly they'll be able to do more complex material lighting, but the performance hit with increased number of lights is precisely why one would go deferred there...

50 lights per game object while not using the graphics processor. All dynamic lighting is done on the PS3’s SPUs.

Interesting.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah, it's even more confusing because they also mention light probes generated in Turtle that they use to light the characters...

 

[patsu]

Cool... thanks for the link.

We have a lot of graphical features at our disposal including camera and object motion blur, depth of field, godray/lens flares, full screen color correction, distortions, dynamic lights, a robust shader system, dynamic muscle blending, skinned dynamic collision, etc. Our goal is to use each of these features in meaningful ways that add to the game play and story we are trying to tell.”

The environments in the first two installments of 'God of War' were amazing and dwarfed Kratos to a relative ant size. Kratos would literally traverse through huge levels that were mounted on the backs of giant gods called Titans. A lot of production tricks were used to give the player the sense of environme nt size within the first two games but in 'God of War III', no tricks were required. “I know this word gets thrown around a lot when discussing 'God of War' and I don’t mean to be cliché,” Feldman explains, “but the best way I can describe the environments for 'God of War III' is ‘epic.’ We are now building full environments on Titans. What was a level in the first game would now fit on a Titan’s arm. We no longer need to do camera tricks to make an environment seem like its moving. We now have dynamic skinned collisions, so the play field is no longer static.

The programmers were able to create a system that allows the artist to use up to 50 lights per game object while not using the graphics processor. All dynamic lighting is done on the PS3’s SPUs. We separate direct light (dynamic lights and baked shadowing light) from indirect (ambient, skylight, bounce).

“We animate all of Kratos’ facial animation in-house, and several other main characters as well. For some of the secondary characters, we use Image Metrics’ performance capture system to record the voice actor’s performance and apply the pixel-by-pixel facial changes to the 3D model. Once these are implemented, our animators refine the animations further.”

 

[eloic]

Cool, thanks for the link. :smile:

Cool... thanks for the link.

Sorry, I had to do it.

On topic, not very detailed information, I must say. It just gives a hint on what they did. I suppose that they will further explain their methods.

 

[ultragpu]

The way I understand it, they used every graphic or rendering methods imaginable it's almost like they combined the best of Killzone2 and Uncharted2 together into one massive pipeline with new features to boot. I still wish they would enable the self shadows on enemies though.

 

[Ether_Snake]

They use no SSAO, they don't mention depth of field either but maybe they do use that one.