Tomb Raider: Underworld

ConayR said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but it wasn't part on GTTV last Friday. Does that mean we have to wait till next Friday? :cry:

In other words: where's my trailer?
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Of course... other than the tombraiderforums people who started a new thread every week for "Trailer this week?!?" aspirations, nobody ever said anything about such a thing. This is the week of E3, and the first teaser trailer is due this Friday.

I'm also aware of some G4 coverage tomorrow that's supposed to go over various demos including TRU's, but when channels like that say they're going to show hands-on demos as part of a larger E3 coverage, I expect little more than a 2 minute interview with some total of 4 seconds of intermittent in-game clips each of which lasts less than a full second. And then 5 minutes of commercials.
 
So some crazy people decided to record the video stream off of Gamespot's E3 coverage and so here's a little something to tide you over until some decent quality video actually shows up. Yeah, the conversion from streaming video has made for something that's not too high quality, and looks a lot darker than it should be, but you at least get some in-game footage from the alpha build, however poor the video quality is.

[googlevideo]-2618203961010602881[/googlevideo]

There was a previous interview from IGN which showed most of the same footage (other than the Mexico scenery and the underwater snapshot stuff), but the video quality was many times worse.

EDIT : Here's the original from Gamespot, now that they've cut it as a separate video --
http://www.gamespot.com/video/944515/6194468/videoplayerpop?rgroup=e32008_videos
 
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You can probably download a better quality version of that video off the TR Forums site.
http://www.tombraiderforums.com/showpost.php?p=2867520&postcount=1

Last I heard, though, the rush for downloads among the members of those forums happened to crash their dedicated download servers... hence the mirrors on sendspace/rapidshare/etc. You're probably better off going to those mirrors since I doubt the site's own servers will be back up for more than a short stretch at a time.
 
The HD flash feed wasn't too bad for quality. :)

  • The framerate seemed a bit shaky in some parts or maybe my computer is too slow. :p Do you know if it was taken from the PC version (easiest)?
  • Nice shot of the ruins in the thunderstorm as she walks up the hill.
  • Animation looks really nice a little after half-way through the video - she's doing her climbing and jumping in the ruins. Nice motion blur as she does the cartwheel.
  • Anything interesting going on with the audio side? Good use of the surround and LFE channels?
 
Yep. It's the CG teaser trailer made by Blur. It's not in-game or anything, but just a little collection of imagery that leads up to a semi-spoiler. Premiered about an hour ago on MTV/Spike, and showed up on Gametrailers a little while ago. And there'll probably be about 8 copies on Youtube in the time it takes me to type this message.

[gt]37014[/gt]


AlStrong said:
  • The framerate seemed a bit shaky in some parts or maybe my computer is too slow. :p Do you know if it was taken from the PC version (easiest)?
  • Nice shot of the ruins in the thunderstorm as she walks up the hill.
  • Animation looks really nice a little after half-way through the video - she's doing her climbing and jumping in the ruins. Nice motion blur as she does the cartwheel.
  • Anything interesting going on with the audio side? Good use of the surround and LFE channels?
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Shaky framerate might be a few things -- could be your PC as my home PC is jumpy playing back the video in SD, but my work PC plays the HD stream just fine (home PC is a 500 MHz PC, while my work PC is a quad-core). It's also possible that you're seeing some buggy and/or incomplete animation transitions which show up as pops (and those pops also affect the camera), which were probably still there. I'm fairly sure though, that those captures are console version feeds.

On the sound side, we've got quite a few interesting things... FMOD is the base of it all, and we integrate it with our data path and scripting system. Post-processing filters, occlusion, echo, diffraction, etc. all over the place.
 
To be perfectly honest with you, in-game animation doesn't live up to my expectations. Animation blending is choppy and kills the otherwise nicely cleaned up mo-cap data (well, I assume it's a hand tweaked mo-cap based animation).
 
ConayR said:
To be perfectly honest with you, in-game animation doesn't live up to my expectations. Animation blending is choppy and kills the otherwise nicely cleaned up mo-cap data (well, I assume it's a hand tweaked mo-cap based animation).
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Have to agree that the transitions between animations are quite jerky. Not Uncharted standard that's for sure. Or Assassin's Creed for that matter.

And I've yet to see anything in TR:U to set it apart, to be something really new and exciting in the TR Universe. Is it just more of the same?
 
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ConayR said:
Animation blending is choppy and kills the otherwise nicely cleaned up mo-cap data (well, I assume it's a hand tweaked mo-cap based animation).
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deepbrown said:
Have to agree that the transitions between animations are quite jerky. Not Uncharted standard that's for sure. Or Assassin's Creed for that matter.
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... aaaaand this is the part where you look up a post or two. Or I simply point to it again, whichever you prefer.

ShootMyMonkey said:
It's also possible that you're seeing some buggy and/or incomplete animation transitions which show up as pops (and those pops also affect the camera), which were probably still there. I'm fairly sure though, that those captures are console version feeds.
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deepbrown said:
Yes but are the transitions going to be smooth and natural? How many animations does Lara have?
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Baseline fragment animations are somewhere in the 1800-ish range at the moment. My impression is that less than 75% of them have actually had any transitions defined at this point in time. Some of them have to be based on a full-body IK blend, and some of them are graphically defined or piecewise defined, and some of them may need accessory animation fragments.

I do wish I had a better metric than just looking at the anims folder and finding that it's about 17 GB.

We're still in alpha, FYI.

deepbrown said:
That's if it's lara
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whistling.gif
 
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ShootMyMonkey said:
Baseline fragment animations are somewhere in the 1800-ish range at the moment. My impression is that less than 75% of them have actually had any transitions defined at this point in time. Some of them have to be based on a full-body IK blend, and some of them are graphically defined or piecewise defined, and some of them may need accessory animation fragments.

I do wish I had a better metric than just looking at the anims folder and finding that it's about 17 GB.

We're still in alpha, FYI.


whistling.gif
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Good to hear that about the animations.

Whistling.gif aye? Not sure what that's meant to imply lol. I havent watched the teaser btw...don't want to spoil any of the plot.

*Edit* Just did. Don't think it's lara...think it's some other girl. Ps. Who's voicing Lara for the game? I liked the women in Anniversary. PPS. Why was it decided to go with the movie mansion, rather than the traditional mansion? (believe this change happend at the Legend stage. PPPS. Will we be able to play in the mansion?..I think that's one of the great features of TR. You can practice whenever you like.
 
deepbrown said:
Have to agree that the transitions between animations are quite jerky. Not Uncharted standard that's for sure. Or Assassin's Creed for that matter.
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Yeah, I agree with AC (for the most part - sword fighting animation in AC is terrible). As for the UDF characters, they tend to sway a little. Drake is moving like a supermodel on a catwalk and transitions between animations are hugely exaggerated. That however may be a conscious decission - UDF's art style i slightly cartoony. On the other hand I think that facial animation in UDF is one of the best in the industry.

ShootMyMonkey said:
... aaaaand this is the part where you look up a post or two. Or I simply point to it again, whichever you prefer.
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Shoot me, Monkey. ;>

AlStrong said:
Whoever modeled Lara's CG face should be shot. :p
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...by Monkey. :rolleyes:
 
deepbrown said:
Whistling.gif aye? Not sure what that's meant to imply lol. I havent watched the teaser btw...don't want to spoil any of the plot.

*Edit* Just did. Don't think it's lara...think it's some other girl.
Click to expand...
Maaaaaaybe....
:devilish:

deepbrown said:
Ps. Who's voicing Lara for the game? I liked the women in Anniversary.
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AFAIK, it's still Keeley Hawes -- same voice of Lara as in Legend and Anniversary.

deepbrown said:
PPS. Why was it decided to go with the movie mansion, rather than the traditional mansion? (believe this change happend at the Legend stage.
Click to expand...
That was before my time at Crystal, so I wouldn't know the specifics. AFAIK, there was never a real "decision" of any sort. The mansion was just deconstructed and reconstructed and it ended up the way it did by sheer chance over the course of time as the concept evolved.

deepbrown said:
PPPS. Will we be able to play in the mansion?..I think that's one of the great features of TR. You can practice whenever you like.
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It was already mentioned in some online previews before (e.g. CNET's preview), so I feel free to mention it at this point, but the game actually opens in the mansion with a quicky sort of training level... hardly 10 minutes of play here, but it is a training level, after all. The Mediterranean level is still the first *real* level of the game.

As far as being able to play in the mansion any time you want, well... the teaser should have given you a hint as to where the mansion comes in. :p

ConayR said:
Shoot me, Monkey. ;>
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Yay! I get to shoot people for real!
 
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