The Game Technology discussion thread *Read first post before posting*

[AlNom]

Neat bit on Infamous world creation: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27638/GDC_Infamous_Open_World_Trickery.php

The entire city in Infamous is made up of hexes where Sucker Punch's artists would place roads, buildings and other environmental pieces. Roads meet perpendicularly at the center of a hex's side, which allows artists to rotate hexes to create different configurations, as roads would line up from piece to piece. This meant less work for artists, but there is still good variation in the environment thanks to different hex configurations.

Another trick Fox and his team implemented was restricting player sightlines. By doing this, buildings and other obstructions hide the geographical limitations of a world. In Infamous, all of the street intersections are "Y" shaped -- this is a natural effect of the hex-based layout, but it also means players can't look straight down a long street. "If we provide really long sightlines, you get bored running down the street," Fox said.

 

[Toaddio]

Neat bit on Infamous world creation: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27638/GDC_Infamous_Open_World_Trickery.php

Reminds me of the layouts of the cities in Assassin's Creed.

 

[Kittonwy]

Neat bit on Infamous world creation: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27638/GDC_Infamous_Open_World_Trickery.php

That's pretty smart how they saved themselves a lot of labor, it also reminded me of how much variance in height in terms of the buildings to block out the sightlines, very clever.

 

[patsu]

Reusing assets, and reusing them often, is something that developers shouldn't shy away from when making an open world game, Fox said. For instance, in Infamous, the team only used two different car models for the entire game. "What really matters with the cars is that they blow up well," said Fox.

Sucker Punch also reused buildings in the game. "We were surprised how little people cared about repetitious buildings," he said. He thinks there's a reason for this. "Gameplay is where players' attention goes, not really the art. ... Focus your expressive art on where players are going to be spending their time." He added, "Reuse in a way that people don't see."

Fox also said that creating diverse environments is also key to making a successful open world game. He used Disneyland and its many different themed sections as an example. Failing at diversification can make even the biggest world seem repetitive.

I didn't notice the repetition partly also because the city was rather dense, and the combination/cluster of hex tiles look different from different directions. In general, I didn't bother to single out one building (because they all look "normal"). I only paid attention to landmarks (e.g., fountain, bridge, large gas station with unique structures, extra tall building) from far. After a while, I forgot about the buildings because the enemies on the rooftops were trying to kill me ! I can also climb up and down the buildings compared to just walking, doing nothing on the GTA streets.

I agree with the diversification remark.

 

[Shoujoboy]

Not sure if I can ask this here but does anyone have any information on Square and their game engine ?
I'm not much of a tech person but I really would like to learn more about this stuff and how it all works.

 

[Ruskie]

Splinter Cell Conviction

To hell...why dont they use tiling?Is there any specific reason?Pain in the ass,engine...what could it be?Wondering how does Remedy and Capcom succeed at that plus they reached 4xaa in games that arguably look better then SCC.

I dont know sub hd just leaves bad taste in my mouth...

 

[nightshade]

My best guess is engine limitation. What's the HDR format in this game anyways ?

 

[MBDF]

Hope we get the slides from GDC. That'll be far more enlightening.

Where's a good place to keep an eye on for material like this?

 

[AlNom]

Check one of the stickied threads.

 

[Alucardx23]

Is anyone here working on a game that uses Object based motion blur for 360? After playing GOW 3 and comparing it to the demo is surprising to see the difference it makes, it helps a lot making the image more fluid and helps hide when the framerate goes down, the only game that I know of that uses this technique on 360 is Tekken 6 and even on PS3 only Uncharted 2, GOW 3 and Killzone 2 use it. So why is this effect not used more since for me the benefits are really big.

 

[nightshade]

Is anyone here working on a game that uses Object based motion blur for 360? After playing GOW 3 and comparing it to the demo is surprising to see the difference it makes, it helps a lot making the image more fluid and helps hide when the framerate goes down, the only game that I know of that uses this technique on 360 is Tekken 6 and even on PS3 only Uncharted 2, GOW 3 and Killzone 2 use it. So why is this effect not used more since for me the benefits are really big.

Well for one, the Xbox 360 version of Tomb raider Underworld has Per Object Motion Blur. [PS3 ver & PC ver don't have this feature]. Infact this is one of those effect that isn't just illusive from console games but from PC games too. There are only a handful of games in total using this feature.

 

[AlNom]

Dead Rising, Lost Planet, and RE5 had OMB. Perfect Dark Zero had it too, but I can't remember if it was only used on the view weapon during reloading or if the threshold 'velocity' was higher than most objects were moving in the game (A.I. was kinda slow).

 

[Alucardx23]

Well for one, the Xbox 360 version of Tomb raider Underworld has Per Object Motion Blur. [PS3 ver & PC ver don't have this feature]. Infact this is one of those effect that isn't just illusive from console games but from PC games too. There are only a handful of games in total using this feature.

Thanks didn’t know about Tomb Raider. That’s the kind of thing that bothers me, why not include something that in my opinion makes life easier, taking GOW 3 again as an example, they didn’t try to make a game that is locked at 60 frames from start to finish like Dante's Inferno, I think is an easier and better route to unlock the framerate, make the game that you want to make with less restrictions and let triple buffering, motion blur and vsync take care of the rest, GOW 3 could have been locked at 30 frames, but why waste when the game goes higher.

 

[Alucardx23]

Dead Rising, Lost Planet, and RE5 had OMB. Perfect Dark Zero had it too, but I can't remember if it was only used on the view weapon during reloading or if the threshold 'velocity' was higher than most objects were moving in the game (A.I. was kinda slow).

Um I thought that does games only used camera motion blur, thanks.

 

[nightshade]

Dead Rising, Lost Planet, and RE5 had OMB. Perfect Dark Zero had it too, but I can't remember if it was only used on the view weapon during reloading or if the threshold 'velocity' was higher than most objects were moving in the game (A.I. was kinda slow).

Oh yea those games use it too...how can I even forget the capcom games, RE5 probably has one of the best OMB out there. I don't remember anything about Perfect Dark Zero as its been a long while since I played it for the last time.

 

[sebbbi]

Is anyone here working on a game that uses Object based motion blur for 360? After playing GOW 3 and comparing it to the demo is surprising to see the difference it makes, it helps a lot making the image more fluid and helps hide when the framerate goes down, the only game that I know of that uses this technique on 360 is Tekken 6 and even on PS3 only Uncharted 2, GOW 3 and Killzone 2 use it. So why is this effect not used more since for me the benefits are really big.

We used object motion blur (pixel motion blur exactly, as it was saved to g-buffer) in our previous technology and it was used for a short period of time in Trials HD during development (but was not in the final build). I like good motion blur a lot, but the extra storage space required to store the motion vector in the g-buffer was a bit too much for us. And sampling up to 4 samples per pixel along the motion vector at post process shader costs some performance. Especially since whe chose to render at vsynched 60 fps, basically doubling the motion vector cost compared to 30 fps scenario, and halving the benefit. But it's a good technique for 30 fps games for sure. It's just a bit hard to fit the motion vectors to your g-buffers (limited memory budget and BW).

 

[Dr. Nick]

Here is some technical stuff from the game. Hopefully someone here is willing enough to translate it for us. It would be greatly appreciated.

http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/series/3dcg/20100401_358445.html

 

[nightshade]

Here is some technical stuff from the game. Hopefully someone here is willing enough to translate it for us. It would be greatly appreciated.

http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/series/3dcg/20100401_358445.html

Here's your translated version...all you need is Google

 

[Dr. Nick]

Here's your translated version...all you need is Google

It's not as good as a person translating it. I already read it through Google translate and it barely makes sense. While I am grateful for machine translation it's still better to have a person there to clean up the sloppy translation and turn it into something suitable for consumption by most English speakers.

 

[PARANOiA]

Ordered this from Zavvi today. Both versions can be picked up for ~$AUD50.

WKC is also on there for about $AUD40 too if you're interested in that. Yay for the sliding pound