[PS3] Uncharted 2

[Rys]

It's probably easier to make a game like Uncharted 2 run at 60fps on a Gameboy than sorting out Virgin Media's services.

Off topic, but I think that was l-b's 15000th counted post

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Bet he wishes he didn't blow it on such a casual post!

 

[patsu]

Uncharted 2 post-mortem in GDC 2010:
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/12/gdc-among-friends-an-uncharted-2-post-mortem/

An important pre-production phase dominated the first six months of Uncharted 2's 22-month creation. "Messing it up often means messing up the whole project," Lemarchand noted.

...

A single image would portend much of the game's direction: A photograph of the Tiger's Nest Monastery in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.

...

After these ideas had been fleshed out with rough pre-visualization animations, positioned, shuffled and finally pinned down, a macro view of the whole game's structure was established.

...

The extravagant set pieces triggered alarm bells early on -- Naughty Dog accurately predicted that they would be "enormously time-consuming" -- but confidence was high enough to push on into full production mode. "We did our best to hit the ground running with Uncharted 2."

However, the quick leap into the next phase blurred the lines between the end of pre-production and the start of proper production, and this would eventually escalate into a "seat-of-the-pants" design process.

...

Lemarchand warned of the dangers of this approach, highlighting the game's monastery level as a point where several problems were narrowly averted (or lessened) in the nick of time. The story hadn't quite taken shape at the tail end of the adventure, but by the time a sluggish pace had made itself known, too much final art had been committed the environment. From the sound of it, Naughty Dog was not entirely satisfied with its effort to pull the plot and characters together at that point.

..

The game's iconic train level, which would later highlight nearly all of Uncharted 2's most exciting features, started out as a "headache for everyone involved." Nate's grenades become deadly boomerangs and exploded right in his finely modeled face. Enemy weapons flew off into the distance, aiming went awry and navigation systems became confused every time the train teleported. Yes, teleported. "We had to do a lot of weird stuff," Lemarchand said, only vaguely capturing how difficult it must have been to keep a man and his pursuers on top of a moving train. And that's before you bring in the helicopter.

Unsurprisingly, beating the train level turned out to be much harder for the developers than the players. But victory brought with it rewards for every aspect of the game, including visual effects, physics and animations. As the team grew fond of saying, "If it works in train, it must work everywhere."

etc. etc. etc. [read it yourself ^_^]

 

[Lycan]

I'm at the train's level in Uncharted 2 ! God, This is the most impressive game I've ever seen ! The use of motion blur, the animations, the attention to details...Simply godly !

 

[patsu]

Evan Wells interview:
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/13/interview-naughty-dog-co-president-evan-wells/

How about PlayStation Move? They showed it off here. It's been in development. We saw it at E3 last year and it's been in development long before that. We've seen it as early as PlayStation 2, variations of it. The question for you would be: How long have you guys known about it, been working with it? Have you guys done any consulting with it, in terms of helping them create hardware peripheral that works for developers, that works for designers and artists?

Yeah. Sony's really good about getting the developers involved in the process, the development of all of their initiative software or hardware and getting our feedback early, showing us prototypes and different ideas that they have and directions they could go. And just listening to our feedback. So yeah, we have been able to take a look at it in its early days. I'm really happy with where it ended up. I missed the conference, the keynote here at GDC, but I caught some stuff online. And yeah, there's a bunch of really cool games that I had never even seen.

But going back to what you were saying, whether we'd ever want to do a smaller project. I think that would be a really fun way to have Naughty Dog do a downloadable game or something with PlayStation Move. It's not something that I feel we could easily incorporate ... well, we could, but I guess I would rather us build something from the ground up than trying to apply it to a game that's sort of organized, with it's controlled methodology established.

Can't believe I missed Tim Schafer's post about Nathan's half-tuck shirt.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

Well, I recieved the free Uncharted 2 from a generous B3Der and I put it in happily to complete the game, but it doesn't recognise save games from my previous playthrough(I had played till the monastery level) !
Why?

The only difference I can think of between the two discs is that I had played a PAL version earlier, and this one must be a NTSC as it arrived from the US.
Are saves region locked? Why would they be? To region lock DLC? Is there anyway I ca make the game see my old save game. I want to finish the game once before replaying the campaign !

 

[nightshade]

Yes its the issue of region, well even i dont understand why they region lock the save games & DLC.
I guess you can just use a savegame from someone & play from the level you want to.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

Reached the Nepal part today ! Man, the game took a lot of time to open up , Istanbul then Borneo, but when it does open up completely in Nepal, its just Awesome !
Can't wait to reach Tibet again. Every level feels as if it is the best of them all, ...............and then you get to a new area and your jaw drops open again ! !

 

[Npl]

Reached the Nepal part today ! Man, the game took a lot of time to open up , Istanbul then Borneo, but when it does open up completely in Nepal, its just Awesome !
Can't wait to reach Tibet again. Every level feels as if it is the best of them all, ...............and then you get to a new area and your jaw drops open again ! !

Its actually quite frustrating if you just completed Uncharted 1 and want to jump straight into more action... instead you get dumped in some constrained levels where you have to sneak around.
IMHO you should be able to skip everything before Nepal after a full playthrough (the jungle-level is a tame introduction to the real action but everything before that is way too slow)

 

[RenegadeRocks]

Its actually quite frustrating if you just completed Uncharted 1 and want to jump straight into more action... instead you get dumped in some constrained levels where you have to sneak around.
IMHO you should be able to skip everything before Nepal after a full playthrough (the jungle-level is a tame introduction to the real action but everything before that is way too slow)

I agree !
I have played Uncharted 1 many times and when I started U2 , it was as if"Why isn't the game starting ?" Istanbul is boring as stealth is not so full fledged in this game. They could have added that level later to give a breather in action. It makes the starting very very slow. In fact, I was pretty surprised when I got the game and started playing as people had said it has an explosive start. The opening sequence is fabulous, but Istanbul and Borneo are plain boring. What saves the day is the brilliant graphics.

In Borneo, when they introduced grenades, I was like "They are still introducing stuff ! " In fact, just before, my little nephew was asking, "Don't u have grenades, yet?" and I realised, hmmm....the game is still not done with introducing mechanics !
Its enjoyable after that though. Nepal is where the fun starts and then it keeps going till you reach that Caves section where its more about just platforming !

 

[patsu]

In-Depth: How Planning Derailed, Playtesting Redeemed Uncharted 2

Another U2 studies:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...Derailed_Playtesting_Redeemed_Uncharted_2.php

"The most important lesson that we took away from making Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was one we had to learn the hard way. We spent too long making plans and not enough time simply getting on and building things. This led to a crisis that resulted in a mid-project production reset.

"We’d lost sight of the fact that theorizing about process and tools can only take you so far, and that it’s only when you build something—whether it’s a game mechanic, a tool, or a level—that you make the really valuable discoveries about what you’re doing.

Sounds like B3D posters (post based on theories).

 

[London Geezer]

You know a game like Uncharted 2 has really hit the right spot when...

... you dream that you're Nathan Drake all night, trying to get away from some beautifully rendered african village with lots of vegetation where everyone seems to want to kill you. And helping you is a dark-ish very fit girl with a red top and dark hair.
Crazy.

 

[Billy Idol]

Wow, how cool is this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvhOh3Vy_6o

 

[Billy Idol]

Maybe someone is interested in this?:
http://www.ballisticpublishing.com/books/uncharted2/

Eww, I just recognized that it is ultra expensive...

 

[novcze]

I used to love Uncharted 2, but after I encountered serious bug I just quit with this game. I completed game on hard but never recieved trophy for this and I'm not able to choose crushing difficulty. And my save file looks like this

 

[RenegadeRocks]

I used to love Uncharted 2, but after I encountered serious bug I just quit with this game. I completed game on hard but never recieved trophy for this and I'm not able to choose crushing difficulty. And my save file looks like this

Oh ! Poor you ! That must've hurt. A similar thing happened to me when I completed Uncharted 1 on hard for the trophy(I had already finished UC 3 times before the trophy patch came in) but the trophy, though it kept popping up during gameplay, never got registered on my trophy list !
But it was due to my ps3 getting changed when i was just about to end the game. It had got SOD and I had got it replaced. SO, When I redownloaded the patch, it continued on the previous save game, even kept showing me I am earning trophies, but they never got registered in the list. it was awful !

Yours an even extreme case !

 

[patsu]

Wow, how cool is this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvhOh3Vy_6o

OMFG, this is so awesome. ^_^

Okay, this is where Natal may get interesting actually. The 3D imaging capability may allow them to capture and recreate us (complete with approximated shadow) in the game.

I used to love Uncharted 2, but after I encountered serious bug I just quit with this game. I completed game on hard but never recieved trophy for this and I'm not able to choose crushing difficulty. And my save file looks like this

Have you tried calling Sony support ? Every trophy is recorded online and cached locally. May be something's foobar'ed with your PSN user profile.

 

[Arwin]

It's probably more fun to have Natal take animation data from your actual movements rather than use it to recreate you. I don't know if it's going to be very good at that in any other than a very crude manner.

I'm wondering if you could use two Move controllers, hold them to either side of your face with them shining in two different colors, and then take a picture with the PS Eye and use that input to analyse your face or any other object in 3D with some accuracy ... ?

 

[patsu]

New DLC on April 22nd:
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/04/09/uncharted-2-multiplayer-adds-new-mode-with-siege-expansion-pack/

The "Siege Expansion Pack" is its second premium gameplay add-on, following February's patch. The new pack adds a brand new co-op game type, two new multiplayer maps, six new skins and eleven new Trophies.

"Siege" mode is an expansion of the "Survival" game type, in which a team of two or three players must defend a territory and survive against an ever-increasingly difficult set of enemies. In addition to the new mode, two new maps will be added for competitive play: "The Highrise" features a series of destroyed and under-construction buildings, based on the Nepal map from the single player campaign. "The Museum" is based on the tutorial level from the story, featuring a number of secret climbing routes to get a better vantage point.

The add-on will be available on April 22nd on the PlayStation Store.

 

[N_B]

Like the sound of that Highrise map. Nepal is my favorite part of the game and I always found the lack of MP map based on it to be odd.