Scalability of ND's Uncharted engine *spawn
- Thread starter Rotmm
- Start date
Why so serious?
You just sounded like: "LODs are so time-consuming for artists, we are doomed". I wanted to point out that we are not doomed yet. When some tools get public, the other ones - do not, that doesn't mean that they do not exist.
Most of your contentions have more to do with art budget and asset creation than anything else, many buildings in Uncharted 2 you get to see from different angles, interior as well as exterior has to be consistent, what they're not modelling are mountains and trees that are MILES away, but much of the surrounding real estate are in fact PLAYABLE areas, whether it's a bunch of distant rooftops or streets down below, sure you can't go everywhere but the environment is much more cohesive and consistent than just a cardboard-type movie set.
Do you honestly think that when you're climbing a ladder in GTA IV that they're NOT streaming stuff you'll see on the roof? Or that when you're flying the helicopter you're even getting anything remotely detailed when they basically LOD the crap out of every single building? AC uses aggressive LOD just about all the time. Maintaining the same kind of detail would be costly from a content creation standpoint rather than what the engine can render, because culling is much more dynamic than what we had last generation with fixed camera games like God of War 1/2, LOD/DOF would obviously have to be used for distant objects/buildings but that's par for the course.
Last edited by a moderator:
Please read my posts again because you don't understand what I've been talking about. It's not just simply LOD stuff.
It'd be far too late to stream stuff at that point, and it would take way too much time to split the game world up into that many segments.
I can say the same to you: read my posts again. I've tried to explain the issues as best as I can.
L. Scofield
Veteran
Here's Volition's presentation on Saints Row and streaming, everyone should read it before further comments, really:
http://www.volition-inc.com/gdc/GDC2007_HayesThompson_SaintsRowCityscape.ppt
http://www.volition-inc.com/gdc/GDC2007_HayesThompson_SaintsRowCityscape.ppt
One final post, now with images/movie to illustrate my points - the first large scale ingame presentation of the game, a helicopter fight on city rooftops in Nepal.
Here's the movie, in case someone hasn't seen it:
http://www.gamersyde.com/stream_uncharted_2_among_thieves_e3_trailer-11587_en.html
[gs]11587_en[/gs]
and some shots from it:
http://www.gamersyde.com/gallery_10873_en.html
So, on to my notes.
This is obviously a huge open area, several square miles. The city is surrounded by mountains, has lots of buildings and so on. But of all those buildings seen from the vantage point in the beginning, you can visit only a few.
You slide down on the cable to the first, get shot at while trying to cross the 'bridge', jump through to a second one; then you move on to a third one and drop down into a hole. You can not go back at all from this point to any of the previous places and you will stay within the buildings from this point on.
(Later through the level you get back to the rooftops to deal with the Mi-24, but those buildings aren't visible from the vantage point at the start - you might be able to see the vantage point itself, as it is a tall tower, but that can be a reduced LOD version).
All the rest of the buildings, the hillsides, bridges, river etc. in the vista are completely noninteractive and uncreachable.
You can zoom in a bit (4x maybe) if you have a scoped rifle, but that's as close as you get to the elements of the vista. A few 512 texture maps are perfectly enough to cover the area and all the shading and lighting can be completely baked into the textures, so no need for normal/spec maps (except maybe the river). This is a huge win in efficiency, creating the illusion of a very large scale background with very limited resources.
Also, these pieces of the background and skybox can be kept in memory during the entire level, so the actual chunks don't have to contain them.
Notice the sequence at 2:00-2:10 where Drake rolls on the ground trying to evade the shots from the copter. This takes precious seconds that the engine can use to stream in the next chunk, because the player can not move around at all.
Also, the player won't notice it because he's trying hard to stay alive... And since he's dropped down from the roof, he probably can't backtrack at all, so the game can also discard the previous chunk at this time.
There's another similar sequence near the end of the movie, where the building collapses and the player is constrained into the room for several seconds, so the engine can once again discard the previous chunk (there's no way to go back) and stream in the next one.
Considering that the game uses memory for the game code and framebuffers, the player character data (model, texture, animation, sounds, weapons), a limited number of NPCs' data; and that a lot of the data is shared between chunks of the same level (skybox/vista, music, more sounds), I'd say that the chunk size probably has to be around 64 megs. 8-10 seconds should be enough to stream in a complete chunk from the HDD, and then the game can copy more data from the BR disc to the HDD while the player passes through the current section.
I'm not entirely sure how frequent 'events' like the ones in this movie are through the game, but it's reasonable to assume that they happen quite often. A single level may be broken down to several dozens of such chunks, so it can use hundreds of megabytes of unique data in total. The entire game is probably at least 10 GB of level data alone, probably even more, whereas GTA4 and AC1/2 has to fit on a single DVD (and GTA4 has unbelievable amounts of voice and music too). Thus there can be about an order of magnitude of difference in texture detail and variance, but the price of that is a very linear, although very exciting and carefully tuned gameplay.
Here's the movie, in case someone hasn't seen it:
http://www.gamersyde.com/stream_uncharted_2_among_thieves_e3_trailer-11587_en.html
[gs]11587_en[/gs]
and some shots from it:
http://www.gamersyde.com/gallery_10873_en.html
So, on to my notes.
This is obviously a huge open area, several square miles. The city is surrounded by mountains, has lots of buildings and so on. But of all those buildings seen from the vantage point in the beginning, you can visit only a few.
You slide down on the cable to the first, get shot at while trying to cross the 'bridge', jump through to a second one; then you move on to a third one and drop down into a hole. You can not go back at all from this point to any of the previous places and you will stay within the buildings from this point on.
(Later through the level you get back to the rooftops to deal with the Mi-24, but those buildings aren't visible from the vantage point at the start - you might be able to see the vantage point itself, as it is a tall tower, but that can be a reduced LOD version).
All the rest of the buildings, the hillsides, bridges, river etc. in the vista are completely noninteractive and uncreachable.
You can zoom in a bit (4x maybe) if you have a scoped rifle, but that's as close as you get to the elements of the vista. A few 512 texture maps are perfectly enough to cover the area and all the shading and lighting can be completely baked into the textures, so no need for normal/spec maps (except maybe the river). This is a huge win in efficiency, creating the illusion of a very large scale background with very limited resources.
Also, these pieces of the background and skybox can be kept in memory during the entire level, so the actual chunks don't have to contain them.
Notice the sequence at 2:00-2:10 where Drake rolls on the ground trying to evade the shots from the copter. This takes precious seconds that the engine can use to stream in the next chunk, because the player can not move around at all.
Also, the player won't notice it because he's trying hard to stay alive... And since he's dropped down from the roof, he probably can't backtrack at all, so the game can also discard the previous chunk at this time.
There's another similar sequence near the end of the movie, where the building collapses and the player is constrained into the room for several seconds, so the engine can once again discard the previous chunk (there's no way to go back) and stream in the next one.
Considering that the game uses memory for the game code and framebuffers, the player character data (model, texture, animation, sounds, weapons), a limited number of NPCs' data; and that a lot of the data is shared between chunks of the same level (skybox/vista, music, more sounds), I'd say that the chunk size probably has to be around 64 megs. 8-10 seconds should be enough to stream in a complete chunk from the HDD, and then the game can copy more data from the BR disc to the HDD while the player passes through the current section.
I'm not entirely sure how frequent 'events' like the ones in this movie are through the game, but it's reasonable to assume that they happen quite often. A single level may be broken down to several dozens of such chunks, so it can use hundreds of megabytes of unique data in total. The entire game is probably at least 10 GB of level data alone, probably even more, whereas GTA4 and AC1/2 has to fit on a single DVD (and GTA4 has unbelievable amounts of voice and music too). Thus there can be about an order of magnitude of difference in texture detail and variance, but the price of that is a very linear, although very exciting and carefully tuned gameplay.
from that vid it seems the question is answered... looks open world to me. Looks exactly as the open world games mentioned here would render distant geometry. The fact that you can't reach certain places doesn't verify that you would not be able to reach and interact with those places should a method to do so be included in the game. Also you can see in the power point that they mention the max speed of the fastest car in the game as a streaming target. In AC the highest speed the player can travel at is even less than that (likely) and in a UC open world game it could be even less. Streaming target is highly dependent on how fast the user can change location basically.
Btw why are we assuming that the mentioned methods of streaming are the only ones available to developers and that ND doesn't use a combination of what was mentioned or something totally different?
Btw why are we assuming that the mentioned methods of streaming are the only ones available to developers and that ND doesn't use a combination of what was mentioned or something totally different?
corduroygt
Banned
The helicopter sequence makes it pretty obvious to me that cinematic techniques were used to mask loading times. Maybe if the PS3 had a super fast SSD as standard, they'd be able to load much faster and swap data in and out of memory quickly, and do an open world game. I believe even if you put a fast SSD in the PS3, the controller is the bottleneck and it doesn't add much speed, not to mention devs can't count on everyone spending $$$ on a SSD on their PS3.
So maybe PS4/720 will have 32GB super fast SSD to assist with loading times, not to mention the chance to offer a HDD-less SKU for cheap since the SSD would be soldered on to the motherboard.
So maybe PS4/720 will have 32GB super fast SSD to assist with loading times, not to mention the chance to offer a HDD-less SKU for cheap since the SSD would be soldered on to the motherboard.
MazingerDUDE
Regular
Yeah there're just too many people here at B3D nit picking on games that they didn't even play
Last edited by a moderator:
I wouldn't give up just yet though I will say that many of the newer members seem to be very new to the concepts that are being talked about here. Currently this is the hottest game on the block so it will take people awhile to calm down and look at things objectively rather than defending things that don't really need to be defended because it's not bad at all. It's just smart. They may have played games using the techniques you are describing but they can't tell and still don't get how they work. Give them sometime they will either get it or...
Last edited by a moderator:
They did it then with the least powerful hardware, now with the most powerful hardware at their disposal...the results are telling. It is fair to debate how UC2 maximizes the graphics by concept designs...but that is not too polite to the talents at ND and the potential of PS3 hardware. There is definitely a more positive way to put it instead of knocking on them.
Should UC3 take a turn and played out in an open world hub style, i expect it to look better than the best then....and you know ND reading this thread might be tempted to run with part of it...they are cheeky geeks with a touch of humor at disrupting the stability...remember bald space marines and hdr bloom in game jokes ...
Prophecy2k
Veteran
I think I've lost the flow of the conversation and the point of debate in this thread entirely 
Laa-Yosh, I very much appreciate your thorough explanations and very detailed decription of how open world game design differs from more linear experiences. I've learned quite a lot actually
What I'm a tad confused about is where the disagreement lies? Are we saying that ND couldn't use the UC2 engine (without heavy modification) to make an awesome open world game with the same visual fidelity as UC2? If so i agree with that statement at least... I'm sure that by heavily modifying their engine they could make an open world title that could most definitely compete visually with the best of them out there, however the game would most obviously not be on the same level aesthetically with UC2.
I think what most people are trying to get across here is that the current UC2 engine as is, does an excellent job of making you believe that it "could" be an open-world game if it wanted too... I'm very sure that if ND decided to go open-world with their next game then they would certainly not be able to ustilise alot of their technical and design tricks that they used in UC2.
What I think they would be able to achieve though, would be to design a game with an open-world "focus" from the onset, using a myriad of clever ninja coding tricks to get the best out of the hardware for said hypothetical game. Would such a game look better than UC2?... Probably not, but I'd argue that they would probably design it in such a way as to have it being the best looking open world game out there on consoles (or at least one of).
Ultimately, I'm not sure we can look at Uncharted 2 as a game and realistically infer whether or not the engine itself would be suitable for any other certain type of game. There are so many factors to considers and ways/tricks a dev can use to overcome particular design issues that it really all comes down to the fundamental focus of the design of a game.
Uncharted 2 is designed to be a linear game, and so the ND exploited it as such. If they decided to make an open world game, they would work that into their engine tech and design the game as such.
Laa-Yosh, I very much appreciate your thorough explanations and very detailed decription of how open world game design differs from more linear experiences. I've learned quite a lot actually
What I'm a tad confused about is where the disagreement lies? Are we saying that ND couldn't use the UC2 engine (without heavy modification) to make an awesome open world game with the same visual fidelity as UC2? If so i agree with that statement at least... I'm sure that by heavily modifying their engine they could make an open world title that could most definitely compete visually with the best of them out there, however the game would most obviously not be on the same level aesthetically with UC2.
I think what most people are trying to get across here is that the current UC2 engine as is, does an excellent job of making you believe that it "could" be an open-world game if it wanted too... I'm very sure that if ND decided to go open-world with their next game then they would certainly not be able to ustilise alot of their technical and design tricks that they used in UC2.
What I think they would be able to achieve though, would be to design a game with an open-world "focus" from the onset, using a myriad of clever ninja coding tricks to get the best out of the hardware for said hypothetical game. Would such a game look better than UC2?... Probably not, but I'd argue that they would probably design it in such a way as to have it being the best looking open world game out there on consoles (or at least one of).
Ultimately, I'm not sure we can look at Uncharted 2 as a game and realistically infer whether or not the engine itself would be suitable for any other certain type of game. There are so many factors to considers and ways/tricks a dev can use to overcome particular design issues that it really all comes down to the fundamental focus of the design of a game.
Uncharted 2 is designed to be a linear game, and so the ND exploited it as such. If they decided to make an open world game, they would work that into their engine tech and design the game as such.
I think that's the point. There appeared to be some folk of the opinion that a truly open world game could look as good as U2 does. Laa-Yosh's point is that U2 squeezes as much detail in as it does by carefully managing what is loaded when, meaning you only have in RAM stuff you are looking at, rather than stuff you may look at in a moment. His case study shows where the engine gets a 'breather' to swap out assets. A fully streamed engine wouldn't have time to load the next set of sceneries to the detail of U2.
For anyone still disputing this, they'd need to showcase one of the more open-ended levels that show lots of detail and lots of freedom of motion.
There was a moment where talk shifted to artist work, though, when discussing LOD. I'm not sure how relevant it is to discuss how difficult/expensive it would be for artists to do the work, not for a game with U2's budget. Especially when we're considering what the engine can do.
