Rise of the Tomb Raider [XO, XOX, X360, PS4, P4Pro]

[hesido]

I thought this was the gaming thread? Can we keep the visual nitpicking to the tech threads? Thanks!

Tommy McClain

I may be getting this wrong, but is there any place to discuss title-specific technical aspects? I never thought there was such a clear-cut separation on Beyond3D..

 

[steveOrino]

This is the only aspect that disappoints. I could accept 2013's Lara in an origin story but a second outing is less appealing. I'd prefer they skipped ahead a few adventures where she was a lot more confident in her abilities.

For a person who has some familiarity with the older games its like watching Bruce Lee trip over his own shoelaces and cower in a fetal position when bad guys show up while talking to himself like a psychopath.

Who is this appealing to? Is it supposed to be more "realistic", like its somehow more believable that she can barely keep herself from going insane in situations where she looks totally out of her element? What the absolute shit are the writers thinking with this character?

Might as well rename the series the Misadventures of Lara Croft, the Unfortunate Archaeologist.

If they are going to make an Uncharted clone then why not keep the old confident, ambitious, thrill seeking Lara instead of someone from the Clock Tower series in a tomb setting.

 

[AzBat]

I may be getting this wrong, but is there any place to discuss title-specific technical aspects? I never thought there was such a clear-cut separation on Beyond3D..

I see a lot of people discussing image quality issues on a variety of unreleased games here...

https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...lpha-beta-e3-games-read-the-first-post.44654/

Tommy McClain

 

[Clukos]

Labs R&D: rendering techniques in rise of the Tomb Raider From SIGGRAPH

• We use a homebrewed SSAO technique we call Broad Temporal Ambient Obscurance (BTAO). It is inspired by SAO (Scalable Ambient Obscurance) and is greatly superior to the popular HBAO (Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion) in terms of both quality and performance. BTAO is temporally stable and provides both near and far occlusion.
• One of the game’s key features is procedural snow deformation. We present a novel technique that is entirely agnostic of the original snow mesh and instead leverages compute shaders and hardware tessellation for a fast and detailed effect. Due to the agnostic nature of our approach we believe it will have many other applications in the future.
• We use Sample Distribution Shadow Maps (SDSM) to get a perfectly tight fit on our CSM view frustum by analyzing the depth buffer of our scene. After the analysis, we render the CSM with a DrawIndirect call, thus eliminating latency. This algorithm allows for efficient shadow map rendering by adjusting itself to scene and camera position, thereby enhancing shadow quality.
• Rise of the Tomb Raider also features improved volumetric lights rendering. We use a resolution-agnostic voxel method. Volumetric lights are generated using async compute after shadow rendering and correctly handles transparency composition. It uses temporal reprojection and a Bayer-based dithering and blur in order to reduce banding

 

[Deleted member 11852]

BTAO is also the noise made when Lara shoots a gun!

 

[Ike Turner]

Labs R&D: rendering techniques in rise of the Tomb Raider From SIGGRAPH

Can't find the full PDF tho...

 

[L. Scofield]

Another thing I had noticed during my first time viewing is some animation problems. Compared to what we're seeing on Uncharted and The Order, this is a bit lacking:
http://imgur.com/UKMofGs
VS the Order:
http://imgur.com/xhk3YPZ

Please focus on the sliding feet on TR and well grounded feet on The Order. Ready At Dawn did an amazing job.

Any Uncharted game is floatier than what is seen in that GIF.

 

[Clukos]

Any Uncharted game is floatier than what is seen in that GIF.

Can't see that

 

[hesido]

Any Uncharted game is floatier than what is seen in that GIF.

It'd be nice to see some examples, I haven't noticed anything on the latest one, but I don't recall seeing such a thing in any Uncharted game either.

 

[L. Scofield]

Can't see that

I guess they finally improved on this but you can still see the "feet sliding into position" during melee encounters such as this one:

(1m57s)

It'd be nice to see some examples, I haven't noticed anything on the latest one, but I don't recall seeing such a thing in any Uncharted game either.

Let's take a look at the floatiness of U3:

(5m47s)

That's downright embarrassing.

It's also very easy to exaggerate a problem when you slow down the framerate to 3 frames per second.

 

[Nesh]

I guess they finally improved on this but you can still see the "feet sliding into position" during melee encounters such as this one:

(1m57s)

Let's take a look at the floatiness of U3:

(5m47s)

That's downright embarrassing.

It's also very easy to exaggerate a problem when you slow down the framerate to 3 frames per second.

Considering that the scenes involve more complex interaction (also case sensitive) between player and NPCs it is more excused than floatiness coming by a simple animation such as moving from a stopped position. A level of floatiness or strange animation transitions is common in many games that do something similar. Also U3 is a PS3 game. This is something we dont wanna see in new consoles

 

[hesido]

I guess they finally improved on this but you can still see the "feet sliding into position" during melee encounters such as this one:

(1m57s)

Let's take a look at the floatiness of U3:

(5m47s)

That's downright embarrassing.

It's also very easy to exaggerate a problem when you slow down the framerate to 3 frames per second.

I of course didn't watch the whole video at 3 fps, it was immediately visible to me at normal speeds. The slide to position problems in uncharted melee is indeed really bad, reviewing it, but I had honestly just compared player movement (walking / running) in my mind. Otherwise, Uncharted not only has feet moving to position during melee fights, you have entire model moving to place. Consider this having to cater to two objects interacting with each other to look plausible, both the NPC and the player, as opposed to player starting to move on plain ground (not even a corner case). It's also easier to have some physics modeled into your walk / run animation (stepping on different level ground affecting Inverse Kinematics) but much harder to do physics based combat, so those would have to mix into strictly pre-determined animation sets..

TR in that example seemed to not to be compositing different walk speed animations but just playing a set animation at a slower pace, which is pretty easy to do, compared to what the Order, and probably uncharted is doing, (matching phases for different speed animations, not rocket science but still harder)

 

[L. Scofield]

Considering that the scenes involve more complex interaction (also case sensitive) between player and NPCs it is more excused than floatiness coming by a simple animation such as moving from a stopped position. A level of floatiness or strange animation transitions is common in many games that do something similar. Also U3 is a PS3 game. This is something we dont wanna see in new consoles

It really has nothing to do with whether it's on a new console or an old one. I remember Rogue Leader having non-floaty animations on the hangars but on the sequel (which added IK) the same animations were now floaty.

I of course didn't watch the whole video at 3 fps, it was immediately visible to me at normal speeds. The slide to position problems in uncharted melee is indeed really bad, reviewing it, but I had honestly just compared player movement (walking / running) in my mind. Otherwise, Uncharted not only has feet moving to position during melee fights, you have entire model moving to place. Consider this having to cater to two objects interacting with each other to look plausible, both the NPC and the player, as opposed to player starting to move on plain ground (not even a corner case). It's also easier to have some physics modeled into your walk / run animation (stepping on different level ground affecting Inverse Kinematics) but much harder to do physics based combat, so those would have to mix into strictly pre-determined animation sets..

TR in that example seemed to not to be compositing different walk speed animations but just playing a set animation at a slower pace, which is pretty easy to do, compared to what the Order, and probably uncharted is doing, (matching phases for different speed animations, not rocket science but still harder)

Since when does Uncharted use physics based combat?

I wouldn't say that what the Order/Uncharted are doing is harder, just different. Non-floaty running animations are nothing new. We've had that since the N64 days.

 

[hesido]

Since when does Uncharted use physics based combat?

Since never. It doesn't. That's why it uses pre-set animations which has to mix into each other, with limited number of animations, hence the floaty nature.

Building on this, the order changes the camera position before scripted melee animations, this probably helps to hide the position changes prior to starting the animation. I wasn't fond of it but I can understand the devs doing this.

Non-floaty running animations are nothing new. We've had that since the N64 days.

I'm not talking about the history of non floaty running animations, but this information does little to help the situation of TR.

I'm nit-picking at best, the game is hitting a lot of notes right, but this stood out for me as a peeve.

 

[Gitaroo]

taking U3 as an example for floaty character movement is just wrong, U3 in particular has very heavy compare to previous games, especially when you play on moving and uneven levels like on the boat. What it looks like and what it plays like are not even close. Drake in U3 feels much more weighty than Lara ever did in the 2013 tomb raider reboot not the mention the animation are much more organic in Uncharted game. When looking at the new Syria gameplay for ROTR, it looks like Lara animation is finally catching up with the old uncharted games.

 

[L. Scofield]

Since never. It doesn't. That's why it uses pre-set animations which has to mix into each other, with limited number of animations, hence the floaty nature.

Building on this, the order changes the camera position before scripted melee animations, this probably helps to hide the position changes prior to starting the animation. I wasn't fond of it but I can understand the devs doing this.

Zooming in and not showing the feet certainly helps as well. RE5 and 6 and even TLoU all do this to great effect.

I'm not talking about the history of non floaty running animations, but this information does little to help the situation of TR.

I'm nit-picking at best, the game is hitting a lot of notes right, but this stood out for me as a peeve.

All I'm saying is that it's not a flaw unique to this game.

 

[AzBat]

Some of you had issue with all the violence & killing in some of the demos shown recently. So you will be happy to know that they released a new video with a no kill playthrough of the Gamescom demo...

Tommy McClain

 

[Clukos]

Stealth was never a part of Tomb Raider games but it's nice to see they've taken gameplay ideas from TLOU as well! And here it works best since there's no friendly AI oddly sticking out. I am pretty sure I'll enjoy this, as I've enjoyed TR 2013 but I still think it should have been it's own IP and not TR, it really doesn't resemble Tomb Raider anymore (from the demos shown at least).

 

[iroboto]

There may still be large elements of platforms get involved. CD hasn't done anything wrong by my books, it's not that far off from the TR movies. Except the brutal melee killinh

 

[AzBat]

The problem here is that it needed a reboot to stay relevant. The old way just wasn't enough to grow the franchise. They have said though that it does have more of the tombs & puzzles than the last game, but I suspect it may still not be as much as the older titles. Seems like it's basically 2 games in one(action-survival and adventure-puzzle). Hopefully they integrated to the 2 gameplay styles well.

Nice video here talking about the puzzle & tombs...

Tommy McClain