*spin-off* Next Gen Gameplay and/or Graphics Differentiators
- Thread starter ERP
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Graphics wise I think very complex lighting, high level tessellation on characters and very advanced physics and volumetric particles should define the wowness of a true nextgen title.
Gameplay wise just give me more freedom and choices than ever before, also much more interaction with the environment.
Personally I think we're looking at the traditional business model on its way out, so gameplay will be entirely down to compulsion loops and their respective social/service ties.ERP said:
Ie. I think differentiators for first few years will be on tech outside the core-game software.
Graphically I'd like to see more overall consistency in presentation, especially image quality which largely went to toilet this gen despite the resolution increases.
I'm not confident all of it can be delivered by typical practices in large teams today though - there will be a lot of catchup to play on content creation processes.
I certainly agree with your last point, I think we will see an even wider gap between the AAA titles and everything else because of it. Some developers will struggle with the transition because what they are currently doing is at the limit of scaling.
My expectation, is for bigger, more open, more interactive experiences, but I have to wonder if the market can sustain the budgets required to develop such titles.
I used to believe it was all about social, and I still think it's a big driver to selling the platforms, I'm just not sure that translates directly to game sales.
Next gen might start a new and perhaps final wave of consolidation, but that depends on many factors.
Valve can still take its time to develop a new title properly. Blizzard just as well, and even though Diablo 3 is practically confirmed for consoles, the baseline is still the average PC for them. Id is an interesting question - Rage apparently failed to sell that well, so their future is probably going to be decided by Doom 4. I wonder if they'll course correct (and if we'll ever find out if they did) based on Rage's reception.
Activision's biggest money maker depends on Treyarch and Infinity Ward; they may have a little trouble adjusting to new hardware, but then again they'll probably stick to 60fps and thus efficiency will be their main focus.
Ubisoft, EA, and a few other giants are already as stable as it can get. If they need more assets, they'll staff up their Shanghai, Bucharest and other studios to produce more content at low costs.
Also, the really big question is still unanswered - just how much more powerful will the new hardware be, and how will it's performance be used? One could go with slight detail increases and a LOT more content and variety - or the same length and depth, but with even more realistic assets. Where's the point of diminishing returns? We're already pretty close to that line, IMHO.
Valve can still take its time to develop a new title properly. Blizzard just as well, and even though Diablo 3 is practically confirmed for consoles, the baseline is still the average PC for them. Id is an interesting question - Rage apparently failed to sell that well, so their future is probably going to be decided by Doom 4. I wonder if they'll course correct (and if we'll ever find out if they did) based on Rage's reception.
Activision's biggest money maker depends on Treyarch and Infinity Ward; they may have a little trouble adjusting to new hardware, but then again they'll probably stick to 60fps and thus efficiency will be their main focus.
Ubisoft, EA, and a few other giants are already as stable as it can get. If they need more assets, they'll staff up their Shanghai, Bucharest and other studios to produce more content at low costs.
Also, the really big question is still unanswered - just how much more powerful will the new hardware be, and how will it's performance be used? One could go with slight detail increases and a LOT more content and variety - or the same length and depth, but with even more realistic assets. Where's the point of diminishing returns? We're already pretty close to that line, IMHO.
This should be its own thread
Per gameplay... my head hurts so I will be short: I and hoping for larger "living" worlds with more stuff to interact with. I also am hoping hardware, as a limitation, can be shuffled back as an excuse and just general gameplay design and mechanics become more stable (something I have noticed more and more this gen; maybe it is because I only tend to play quality arcade games and AAA titles but I find fewer and fewer games that are broken in design... this may be due to the larger budgets, less risky design choices, and more repetitive refinements but I not so fondly remember how many broken games I have played in the past. Now the issue is blandness and so much similarity more-so than outright broken mechanics).
Graphics... I agree about IQ. I think this gen, especially as it has matured and certain techniques have been used this has either come at the expense of using other approaches with better IQ, by using techniques that have poor IQ to begin with, or by using techniques that the consoles cannot use with quality IQ levels.
For me though I am hoping next gen brings... grass. Or at least something that is a fair representation of the stuff. Ditto dirt, dust, mud, etc. Huge jumps in Lighting/Shadowing hopefully as well. For me a lot of games have a decent level of detail in the textures and normals (ok, often they do) but the odd lighting (sometimes makes it hard to even SEE the game), jaggy shadows that crawl and pop all over, and just not a very good balance of low and high tones. In many ways I would be pretty happy with a game, like Halo Reach, where the game got a bump in resolution, a lot of AF and proper AA applied, proper dust and grass and such, with a robust lighting and shadowing solution. I think taking what is there now and moving in that direction would do a ton for the visuals. I think from there the really big issues, graphically, switch over to the animation and interaction side with the world. Hopefully the new consoles will provide enough power AND enough quality tools to ease the burden of making a *consistent* image. I expect, if we get quality consoles (I am not sure we will?), that we will see a LOT of out of balance titles--especially a lot of high detail main characters roaming around essentially this gen worlds (it sounds like a lot of titles already have hugely detailed main character source material so it will be easier to get out 10 uber detailed models than 10 hours of detailed worlds).
I wonder how much of "next gen" planning has been put into place for addressing quality asset creation issues as well as expediting technologies. Heck, I wonder how MS is going to come out of the gate with such a small internal number of first party devs if the WiiU launches first and Sony co-launches (hasta la vista defacto exclusives).
It is hard to speculate about stuff like poly counts and character quality on new consoles that we don't even know what hardware and software strategists companies will have.
steampoweredgod
Banned
Diminishing returns is where prerendered CG is, wherein you've trouble telling reality from some cg, and the difficulty on getting from 9X% to 100% indistinguishable is probably not worth it most of the time. While the gap between realtime and cg has in some areas grown closer, in others it has widened(most noticeably hair, clothing animation).
If the baked-clothing shown for the luminous engine can be implemented in cutscenes and some ingame scenarios, it would also go pretty close to photo-real especially once tweaked by a professional.
In some areas realtime software and demos has exceeded many cg of the 90s, and I could see for example a realtime faked-SSS skin shaded face with mocap highrez facial expressions trouncing the results of say the 'final fantasy spirits within' faces.
Some realtime textures have such fine detail that they look to be pretty close to the limits one can discern if they're not there already.
Though, prerendered CG took a ridiculous jump during the 2000s from where it was in the 90s. Clothing, hair, lighting and animation became basically photorealistic and even directors had trouble telling the difference between real and cg elements.
The latest bluray drive can get 16GB from disc in a few minutes, with streaming that should allow for interesting possibilities. Assuming a good SSD was included, you could stream 16GB into memory in less than 1min.
With 2-4GB of ram, and that massive exponential increase in streaming bandwidth, things may be fine memory wise.
EDIT:
Wow, was replying to original thread and my post ended up here somehow.
EDIT 2: Expanding to relate to gameplay opportunities
Since before Ocarina of time, I've been waiting for a zelda with a seamless world ala nes zelda
1. The previews for Skyward Sword gave me some hope this might finally be the case(talk of blending dungeon-overworld more seamlessly), but alas those were dashed by the final game, wherein that's not the case and things are divided in chunks.
I finally hope high quality seamless worlds become a possibility. Not filled with random low quality procedural infinite stuff(one day procedural may surpass the quality of the best human designers, but that day's not yet here), but high quality designed set pieces, nooks and cranies.
2. I hope destructibility finally returns in full for some genres(ala original red faction), let one destroy not just buildings but the ground and make holes and stuff, divert bodies of water, lava, etc.
3. Hopefully an rpg is finally made were the overworld and town/dungeon transitions are seamless but resemble old-school style having properly designed easy to navigate connections, and we don't get filler-chunks between areas with pointless 10s of minutes walking ala most mmorpgs. And finally a seamless transition to airships is implemented wherein it zooms out, and the ship can land anywhere and you get a close-up view.(IIRC, hironobu sakaguchi hinted that one could zoom in from outer space, to upper atmosphere, to a forest, and then a tree and finally a leaf in realtime this generation... alas don't recall that being done much.)
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Tessellation on characters is kinda useless without displacement mapping, it'll only smooth out features but in general it'd make more sense to model everything manually - it'll make for a more efficient distribution of detail.
For most 'regular' characters, as in humans, displacement won't make much sense. With next gen's resources I think a fully modeled character could consist of 100-300,000 polygons and that's good enough for a lot of detail.
Where tessellation and displacement could work well is the realm of all kinds of monsters - scaly, spiky, horrible things that don't have nice, smooth features like human beings.
If they have to target both a lower level Wii U, PS3, 360 SKU and a higher level PS4/XB3 SKU as well that developers will simply resort to differentiating the more powerful versions with 60FPS and/or 3D instead of remaking assets for a smaller market.
I doubt that. It's not like they haven't been disabling various features for slower performing hardware on PCs for years.
I very much doubt you'll see many high end titles developed this way, especially in the US.
The was dev resources are typically split, you'd have a core team working with the high end hardware, and a team "porting" (and I use the term very loosely) to the lower end SKU.
It is not atypical for the port to be done by external resources.
The AAA teams want to work on the new platforms and that's usually what happens.
You will see a few games in already in development when the platforms become available to devs getting half assed versions with "improved" graphics etc. But that usually doesn't last very long.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
I highly doubt most companies will continue to try pushing 3D. The momentum for it is already petering out as it has done everytime 3D has attempted to break into the mainstream.
60 FPS will be a start. But alternatively we may see better forms of AA than the FXAA/MLAA compromises we currently have. With more power it should be possible to utilize better AA methods that don't compromise IQ for speed.
As well, tesselation of world and scene geometry can be a huge differentiator. Crysis 2's Dx11 version with tesselation + POM makes for a 100% better (IMO) experience than the base Dx9/10 version which is already better than the current console version. All of which should be possible with the next gen Xbox/Playstation.
Imagine for example if Base PC Crysis 2 was the Wii U version, while PC Crysis 2 with Dx11 ultra + high res texture pack was the Xbox/Playstation next version. And I still consider Crysis 2's (and BF3's as well) use of tesselation to be first gen experiementation trying to find good ways to use it.
But right now, every single other game on the market feels incredibly flat and unrealistic after C2 Dx11.
BTW if C2 normal is what a poster above describes as 9x% realism then that 1 or 2% better that C2 Dx11 is, is hugely noticeable. But I have a feeling he was off a bit. With the absolute best console game currently out "maybe" approaching 50-60% realistic. With some things obviously better than others. Lighting has come a long way. But texture detail hasn't progressed much. Worlds and geometry thus still feel very flat and unnatural.
Regards,
SB
What about the extra development costs? If developers are struggling with costs at present, wouldn't it be cheaper to target a higher frame-rate and lower visuals than it would be to target maximizing visual impact on what are already tight budgets? It seems like a good tradeoff when they already have to target weaker hardware already to simply add features rather than artwork to take advantage of the extra performance.
As they are hitting diminishing returns on art, why not return to simple performance and gameplay ideals?
3d would effectively be 'free' for any game targeting 60FPS so it'd be a good checkbox to have even if 90-95% of your potential audience doesn't care. If you can do better than Crysis 2 @ 60FPS then why push the art budget further into astronomical territory unless it can be justified with a known franchise? We've had a lot of talk here about diminishing returns on investment in visuals so why not predict that 60FPS would start to become a more attractive option, especially for the 99% of games which cannot be AAAA titles?
You make the best looking game you can, that can achieve the game play you want within your budget and scale it back for weaker hardware. COD (and its many clones and racing games) will probably still be 60FPS on the weakest platform for which they develop. Slower paced games won't gain much benefit from a higher frame rate, so what is the benefit? 3D support? I'm not sure enough will care to make it worth a serious effort.
What if your budget isn't enough to build assets to tax already fast hardware? If art is expensive and programming tricks and techniques are relatively cheaper then you'd expect developers to try to get the highest return for their effort.
In any case the most successful FPS franchise in history targets 60FPS on consoles. If nothing else the extra performance available will be tempting for other developers to try and copy this performance metric.
Animation and player/npc interaction with environments and other players/npc's.
Decent CGI is pretty common these days but what separates the great stuff from the average is second rate animation - Especially for the human form, which people will naturally be critical of. Games like L.A. Noir, and to an extent even older titles like Mirrors Edge pioneered what we should expect as a basis for next gen titles. I expect many initial release games to neglect animation and interaction and these games will likely look very dated a couple of years into the generation.
Decent CGI is pretty common these days but what separates the great stuff from the average is second rate animation - Especially for the human form, which people will naturally be critical of. Games like L.A. Noir, and to an extent even older titles like Mirrors Edge pioneered what we should expect as a basis for next gen titles. I expect many initial release games to neglect animation and interaction and these games will likely look very dated a couple of years into the generation.
The interesting thing is we get certain "standards" to be adopted visually, but rarely do we get these standards adopted for gameplay.
The closest I can think of recently would be the widespread adoption of the cover system in FPS.
Other things though like facial & walking animation quality(LA Noir, GTA4, Red Dead), game-world interactivity(Oblivian, Fallout, Skyrim), Destructibility (Red faction) all seem to be limited to a franchise or individual company.
As for destructible/deformable worlds, waaaay back when the original Pentium came out, a little game called Magic Carpet came out which had deformable terrain (along with support for 3D).
Yet we still don't see this as a standard feature. It can't be that demanding as it was running on the original Pentium architecture almost 20 years ago (typing that makes me feel old
)There should be a standard of quality for gameworlds. Expected features.
Much like most games these days make use of AA, SSAO, Shadows, and Texture Filtering. A game which doesn't have these is frowned upon as not being up with the times ... well if I see a cup in the game world, I should be able to pick it up, and throw it, fill it, break it, stack it, paint it, shoot it, etc.
If I throw a grenade it should create some reaction to the wooden fence and the ground where it lay.
If I see a human walking, he shouldn't be doing the moon walk as he's traversing the ground.
And if I see a building, I should darn well be able to take a hammer to that sucker and watch it fall!
It's about time we start expecting a certain standard of animation and interactivity in gameworlds.
Oh god no. 100,000 times no. Plus infinity 'no's.
Not only would that demand power, memory, development time be taken away from game specific ideas (and in a humongously staggeringly large way) it would prevent certain types of gameplay and level/map balance even being possible. It would be a creative disaster.
And I really wish some screen space effects would go away. And die.
Not only would that demand power, memory, development time be taken away from game specific ideas (and in a humongously staggeringly large way) it would prevent certain types of gameplay and level/map balance even being possible. It would be a creative disaster.
And I really wish some screen space effects would go away. And die.
That's impossible because different games have different demands. Magic Carpet had deformable terrain beause that's all it had. the complexity of full deformation in something like Uncharted would render the visuals impossible. You can't bake gorgeous lighting into scenery and have that scenery destroyable. You can't have deep worlds that are fully deformable without massive memory consumption and very different game engines to one streaming known parts.
In an ideal case you'd be able to combine all aspects together, and when we have virtually unlimited processing power that'll happen. Until then there's be lots of compromises, and in lots of games priorities will not favour interactivity because they aren't core to the experience. eg. Full dynamic skeleton simulation may work in Backbreaker, but it'd be lousy for a very tight fighter which needs to forego realism for gameplay.
upnorthsox
Veteran
But getting something to run in 16ms is hard, what about the assets that have to be thrown out because you end up unable to fit them in your time budget? 2nd to that is memory constraints which have plagued Devs this entire gen and again more assets cut or downgraded to fit in memory. IMO a distant 3rd is art expenses which are managable from a project management perspective.
Now from a project overview perspective, efficiencies in the asset pipeline are very desirable but reduced costs or assets are not always a priority. Some Devs who may benefit from asset creation efficiencies will choose to use that benefit to create more assets instead.
The most successful FPS franchise in history doesn't run at 60FPS but somewhere over 45FPS. That extra 6-8ms per frame is huge and which begs the question what's wrong with 40 or 45 FPS? It's more (as much as 50%) than 30 FPS.
