Scalability of ND's Uncharted engine *spawn

[Scott_Arm]

Open world:
Fallout 3, Oblivion, Crysis, GTA4

You can walk in any direction you please, at any time. This type of game is very different than what Uncharted 2 offers. If you had branching paths in Uncharted 2, it would still not be the same as an open world game. I think "open world game" is a pretty well understood concept, even though there isn't a textbook definition.

Uncharted 2 is the best looking game on consoles so far, but you have to be accepting of the fact that having detailed backgrounds in unreachable areas is not the same thing as having an open world game.

Laa-Yosh has made a really solid argument, and I don't think there's any reason not to accept it. It isn't like he's attacking the game in any manner. It's a pretty rational description of the difference between streaming an open world game and streaming a linear game. To say that Naughty Dog wouldn't have to make compromise to make an open world game is basically ignoring real issues.

 

[Scott_Arm]

...
I agree that Naughty Dog is the only one that can give a clear answer to the limits and bounderies of their engine, though that surely also includes your remark about what the engine apparently can't do.

We're all just making reasonable guesses and sharing ideas and thoughts, and perhaps trying to point out some things that you may have missed, given you evidently have not played the game for a reasonable period and are judging a lot on videos posted - which is why I took the liberty to point out some things that at the very least raises a few questions here and there as well as hinting to some of the possibilities and the potential of the engine.

Laa-Yosh is pretty much the only person to present a real argument in this thread. He described the memory and streaming issues involved in switching to an open world game, and what compromises would have to be made. He also described how streaming in a linear game differs from streaming in an open world game, and how they might be loading/unloading their assets.

I'm not really sure what your argument is other than trying to change the meaning of a clearly understood concept - open world games.

 

[semitope]

Laa-Yosh is pretty much the only person to present a real argument in this thread. He described the memory and streaming issues involved in switching to an open world game, and what compromises would have to be made. He also described how streaming in a linear game differs from streaming in an open world game, and how they might be loading/unloading their assets.

I'm not really sure what your argument is other than trying to change the meaning of a clearly understood concept - open world games.

Since you so clearly understand it, why not explain it for the rest of us?

 

[archangelmorph]

Open world:
Fallout 3, Oblivion, Crysis, GTA4

/off topic

Is Crysis *really* an open world game???

I recall the game loading in distinct areas for each level and while I've never tried "going anywhere at anytime" in the game, I'd be hard pressed to believe one could for example, return to the first beach area from level 3 for example. I'd love to be proven wrong however...

 

[Neb]

Laa-Yosh already did it. Why not backtrack discussion a bit as everything can be served on silver plates?

 

[Neb]

/off topic

Is Crysis *really* an open world game???

I recall the game loading in distinct areas for each level and while I've never tried "going anywhere at anytime" in the game, I'd be hard pressed to believe one could for example, return to the first beach area from level 3 for example. I'd love to be proven wrong however...

I would call it open world as in each level in itself due to humongous sizes and pretty much free non-restricted traveling within level (or pretty much vista). However you cant traverse island to what would be place for say mission 4. Though each level is huge but there is one where you enter a cave and you cant backtrack. Think thats it!

Maybe pure correct term is semi-open world.

 

[archangelmorph]

UC2's engine will not be able to implement even this severly restricted approach just because some people here say so. That's something only the ND devs can tell for sure - all we can do is make up theories and present some explanations to back it up. This reasoning is what's completely missing on one side of the argument.

Personally, from a technical standpoint I don't see any reason why Naughty dog's tech couldn't handle an open world game fine.

From a rendering perspective they have culling, data streaming & all the conventional technologies in place in order to do open world and so as far as I can see the argument isn't even relevant to engine capability & is much more an issue of game design...

We understand that Uncharted 1/2 simply is not an open world game and so ND obviously haven't implemented there AI systems, static & dynamic object systems, physics systems, gameplay systems etc with that in mind. In the same way I'm sure they would have re-balanced there geometry/texture/effect/particle/lighting load requirements appropriately had they decided to make an open world game.

Beyond that though there really aren't any firm technical differences between what they are already doing engine-wise and what they would be doing given a larger game-world scope. It's mostly a matter of maximizing your memory/processing constraints given a fixed hardware platform and fixed technical requirements from a game design perspective. (which is pretty much what Laa-Yosh is saying).

Could ND make an open world Uncharted with the same degree of visual fidelity?

I'd say an increase in game-world scope would force some concessions to be made (such is obvious) but exactly where and what would be cut/reduced is a question no-one on on here can answer unless they work at naughty dog and have hard metrics on:-

- exactly what their tech (engine+game) is doing now (more importantly *how* they are doing it)
- how much process/memory room they can still squeeze out of the hardware through further optimizations
- what they'd need to add and how fast/small/optimal they could get it to run

All obviously under the constraints of time/budget (since no-one except for Valve or Blizzard can freely develops games in a vacuum)..

 

[goonergaz]

That's exactly what I was talking about when I said that you keep bending the meaning of the term 'open world'.

If this, and that, and that too - then it's an Open World Game! Why not call Super Mario Bros or even Space Invaders one as well?

IMveryHO you yourself have probably muddied the water by mentioning Halo 3!!

My 2p, Uncharted 2 is much like Halo 3 - it's loading game 'parts' in chunks - smaller but far more detailed, and with no loading screens.

So, to say Halo 3 is open world but then say U2 engine can't be used for an open world game is a little contradictive.

I agree there's definitely massive (probably unpassable) issues with using U2E in an open world game, but by the same token with very clever design and a drop in quality maybe it is possible...they'd need to break the game up into even smaller chunks to achieve it, but why not?

Remember your grid? Why not make it:

ABC D E F
GH I J K L
MNOP Q R
S TUV W X
Y Z01 2 3
4 567 8 9

So here I've split each 1 part of your grid into 4.

So, in my example player standing in grid O would have H,I,J,N,P,T,U & V loaded and as he moved to P - K,Q & W would load and so on.

Is this a totally unrealistic idea?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

There are more then a dozen kinds of implementations for 'data streaming' and each has its strengths and weaknesses. Saying that UC2's engine 'has it' is like saying Mario Galaxy has 'lighting'. You seriously oversimplify this issue. And it's just one part of the engine...

Nevertheless even you seem to understand the scope of systems that would have to be changed. But it's not like flip a switch here or there - more then likely all these systems would have to be completely re-written to handle an open world.

Could it be called the same engine after all these modifications? I don't think so.

 

[ihamoitc2005]

Memory

Personally, from a technical standpoint I don't see any reason why Naughty dog's tech couldn't handle an open world game fine.

From a rendering perspective they have culling, data streaming & all the conventional technologies in place in order to do open world and so as far as I can see the argument isn't even relevant to engine capability & is much more an issue of game design...

My friend I think memory will be the challenge. For open-world you need multiple LOD for all the surroundings, not just where you are going. I think this can have great memory issues.

IIRC, PS2 games like Jak/Ratchet had a very clever background rendering system. I do not know the details but by looking it seems they do not update background every frame and also use perspective/lens curve to reduce LOD requirements. Maybe a dev can tell me if i am right or wrong in this thinking.

 

[archangelmorph]

My friend I think memory will be the challenge. For open-world you need multiple LOD for all the surroundings, not just where you are going. I think this can have great memory issues.

IIRC, PS2 games like Jak/Ratchet had a very clever background rendering system. I do not know the details but by looking it seems they do not update background every frame and also use perspective/lens curve to reduce LOD requirements. Maybe a dev can tell me if i am right or wrong in this thinking.

But again what does that have to do with engine capability?

Obviously memory constraints are an issue..

Obviously more world in view means more geometry/textures/gamelogic/physics to render/process per frame but the question is still an issue of load balancing using systems already in place to cull, mipmap and re-scale the maximum memory/process footprint per visible frustrum per frame into the *required* set. These technologies are already in place and so that issue is still not one of whether they could do it (they already are to some degree), more how much they need to given the game they are working on..

 

[Laa-Yosh]

IMveryHO you yourself have probably muddied the water by mentioning Halo 3!!

I've mentioned before that Halo is a bit different - but within the sectors of its levels, the player is theoretically able to go wherever he wants.

Also, the games allow for serious amounts of backtracking (one of the main complaints about the first one and keeps the level persistent, you can usually find weapons dropped on the ground and other stuff even if there aren't many parts of the scenery that are destructable.

But you are right that it's still more similar to UC then GTA.

they'd need to break the game up into even smaller chunks to achieve it, but why not?

Is this a totally unrealistic idea?

The issue is that one has to build each of these chunks to fit within a certain memory budget. This means that the artist would have to constantly check his work, optimize texture utilization and so on - and also make sure that it fits with the surrounding chunks. These kinds of tasks can't really be automatized because they require complex decision making or artistic choices.
It makes a LOT of difference if the level artists have to spend more and more time with technical tasks and checks instead of actually building and polishing content. One of the reasons why Epic can push such ridiculous amount of detail in the Gears games is because their workflow is highly optimized, they waste as little time with technical issues as they can.

Then there's the LOD issue, in most open world games you need to see parts of the level that may be miles away (think GTA4 as the extreme case) so you need several differently optimized version of those areas. Not to mention that smaller chunks mean you can't get away with just 1-2 LOD versions as the view distance could be too small for heavy optimization.
But once again you can't trust the computer to distinguish between important landmarks and such, so once again you start to pile up technical issues that complicate the workflow. So it does matter if you use n or 4n chunks for your game world.


I'd also like to add that we don't know how any of these games actually implement data streaming except for Saints Row. But it's reasonable to assume that general approaches are similar, knowing that each dev will have to deal with the same bottlenecks and restrictions (optical storage, limited RAM etc etc).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

We have to be clear here on openess though and the streaming tech used to overcome RAM limits, as large open sectors on their own aren't at all difficult if you don't sweat content! The trick comes in creating large, open ares, free to explore, but with the detail of U2. There's no question that U2's engine could create huge worlds in the current engine if the assets for the worlds were all present in RAM at the same time, leading to repetition galore.

The argument isn't really 'can U2 do large worlds' because it can, just with all the detail hacked out. The real question is 'can the current U2 engine maintain the quality of visuals while also providing large worlds.'

Also, the games allow for serious amounts of backtracking (one of the main complaints about the first one and keeps the level persistent, you can usually find weapons dropped on the ground and other stuff even if there aren't many parts of the scenery that are destructable.

That only needs a small HDD file to record item drops and locations. Destroyed buildings would need to record the state of the building to reload/reconstruct the damage.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I'm not saying it's hard to implement, just noting a feature that the current UC2 engine may not have.

Although it could also simply be a design decision to limit backtracking, in order to keep the game's pace from slowing down. Although the effect is that the player has to hoard ammo to prepare for upcoming battles (because he can't go back for it later), spending extra time in each area after a fight is finished

 

[obonicus]

Haven't we sorta reached consensus at this point? It seems that everyone is saying 'with modifications* ND could make a really fancy open world engine out of U2 tech'.

* Which could mean anything.

 

[DieH@rd]

Does anyone know what is current [or at least last known] memory footprint of the XMB OS in PS3? I remember reading a while ago that its modular, devs can use only the "plugins" that they want [with spelling dictionary being >20mb ].


Also, kudos to all for great thread.

 

[Prophecy2k]

Haven't we sorta reached consensus at this point? It seems that everyone is saying 'with modifications* ND could make a really fancy open world engine out of U2 tech'.

* Which could mean anything.

I'm gonna have to agree with the above... I think the thread is just going back-and-forth now with Laa-Yosh and everyone else and we're all in effect saying the same thing, yet still getting hung up on subtle nuances of individuals' posts.

I'm not really sure there's much to add to this thread than the following:

1) ND Uncharted 2 engine is a beast!
2) ND U2 engine seems to be using a streaming and LOD system which gives the impression that the engine tech could be used to do an open world game.
3) The U2 engine could certainly be modified * to be used to do an open world game**. (* - to an unknown degree. ** - certianly with graphical concessions being made)
4) It's highly unlikely that the ND U2 engine could be used to make an "open world" game with the same visual fidelity as U2 on the PS3*. (* - PS4 who knows?)
5) Laa-Yosh has given some very insightful explanations of how an open world game streaming system works.
6) Prophecy2k doesn't want Uncharted 3 to be "open world" rather to stay with the same awesome formula as U1/2 (added for emphasis).

Is anything else worth arguing?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

This isn't true:

ND U2 engine seems to be using a streaming and LOD system which would give the impression that the engine tech could be used to do an open world game.

 

[Prophecy2k]

Of course it's not true... it's an observation and summation of many of the posts on this thread.

People that say, "based on what we see in Uncharted 2, it seems as though the engine tech could possibly be used in an open world game"

Of course there would be a whole lot that would be implied if it was true, but that was all summed up in the other 5 points.

it's not a statement... it's an observation

 

[Laa-Yosh]

it's not a statement... it's an observation

No, it's just an opinion of some people, but nothing supports it.