Trials: evolution. [xbla]

[Acert93]

How about something fast and pacy like Titan's Graveyard? I'm no good at these frigging technical challenges.

If either of us won this week then Titan's Graveyard it is (unless someone pulled off a midnight last minute run!) I will post times shortly.

 

[Acert93]

Results are in:

Trials Challenge Week 3 (Mon May 14h - Sat May 19th): RedLynx Moto-Jam (Cutting Edge Category, Hard)

1. Acert93     00 faults   0:59.3
2. Robert      01 faults   1:12.7
3. Gerry       01 faults   1:25.0
4. Scott_Arm   06 faults   1:41.4
5. Rotmm       07 faults   1:55.5

Sebbbi, Trials Evo needs an export to YouTube option As an aside I notice that Trials appears to use VSM and has some overlapping penumbra shadow edge issues. I mention this as a thumbs up--I notice it (I am a shadowing geek) but I really dig the shadowing in Trials Evo. Crawling, jagged edges shadows (especially when they lack a dynamic character across objects) drive me nuts. I mentioned way back in 2005-6 when VSM's were mentioned here on B3D that I would happily live with the small overlap issue and I am happy to report that I like the decision. It may not work as well for a slower paced game where the shadows could forward project into the players view but in Trials Evo it works great. If the new consoles are a real advance I cannot wait to see what RedLynx pulls off in terms of IQ! Evo looks great.

This week Gerry gets the honors of selecting a track:

Trials Challenge Week 4 (Sun May 20th - Sat May 26th): Titan's Graveyard (Terminal Velocity Category, Medium)

Preview:

 

[Acert93]

Wow, so this weekend my son throws down a 1:13 something on Titan's Graveyard. He was like, "Dad, I beat you." I come into the room and he is #1 on my leader board. I didn't expect him to beat me... at 8. First it was Forza and now this. Solution? I spent a good 2 hours on this track on Sunday and another hour tonight. I want to see the look on his face when he sees my new score. Of course he will probably beat me again. Now I know how my dad felt.

How about something fast and pacy like Titan's Graveyard? I'm no good at these frigging technical challenges.

Ooooohhh Eeeeewww but Titan's Graveyard *is* a frigging technical track. It just depends on how you run it. A Platinum run will require at least a couple, preplanned approaches as a straight "full throttle run" is a about 12-15 seconds off of a perfect run (which is currently 1:02). Mastering even a couple "tricks" on this track can shave off a couple seconds each. The biggest parts to gain time on this track are:

1. @ 0:03s At the very beginning bunny hop the ramps so your back wheel hits the down slope of the last ramp.
2. @ 0:11s. Lean forward going up the ramp before this dip and make sure you land in the dip, back wheel on the downward slope of the half pipe. I like to lean forward and stop accelerating at the end of the half pipe to jam myself over and start my free fall.
3. @ 0:18s. I slam my breaks at the end of the 2nd large block and lean forward. If you do it just right your head may even graze the apex of the ramp. Tumble quickly over the top of the jump instead of catching massive air. In this video the rider gets far too much air.
4. @ 0:36s. Tap your breaks right before the end of the ramp so you don't shoot too far onto the next series. It is important to try to land before the grass @ 40. The driver in the video does a good time except they don't land on their back tire.
5. @ 41s. I lean forward right in this area so that I have enough lean and speed to leap over the entire next jump. The video shows the rider hopping onto the landing--this is too slow. Instead if you nail 4 & 5 you can literally leap over the entire area.
6. @ 0:53s. I have found doing a flip (or two) and landing on your back wheel but leaning forward gets you a nice fast thrust forward. But this is hard. I have ruined a LOT of runs where I did 1-5 perfectly and goofed on this. The video shows the rider doing the reverse but a nice quick take off. Whatever you do don't get your back tire stuck behind the landing as you lose a lot of time with hang ups.

I was able to drop down to 1:08.5 tonight (cracked the top 1000). I started a little slow (I almost reset going down the big hill) but I absolutely nailed 5 (my #1 hard spot as I only clear the top of the ramp once ever 5 attempts or so) and had a solid landing at 6 (my best was a double flip here and I just rocketed out but is also very hard and I can land it only 1 out of 5 times or so as well and since it is so far down track if I make it there with a great time I am hesitant to go all in!)

And if you really want to shave off another 4 seconds: See this video from 1:00 tom 1:12. Instead of launching over the ramp into the half pipe the rider, somehow, gets enough speed to launch OVER the half pipe through the down track and rides his back wheel to the ramp and does one of those nasty lean & launch moves and propels himself ACROSS the chasm of the huge dip "crash landing" on the rock on the top. I spent over an hour trying to do this and I only handed a handful of times over the first gully, and only a couple times on my back wheel where I promptly crashed. I have no clue how to consistently launch over the first half pipe. If I could do it 50% of the time I would practice landing on my back wheel but this is just way above me.

At 1:33 of that last link he launches himself over that last ramp (#5 above). Well worth investing some time into. A lot of people do a flip and catch their back wheel.

@ Robert: Throw down a killer time so I have to sweat this one out.

 

[RobertR1]

I would but I've been Diablo'd for the past 2 weeks I will try though!

 

[Gerry]

Ooooohhh Eeeeewww but Titan's Graveyard *is* a frigging technical track. It just depends on how you run it. A Platinum run will require at least a couple, preplanned approaches as a straight "full throttle run" is a about 12-15 seconds off of a perfect run (which is currently 1:02). Mastering even a couple "tricks" on this track can shave off a couple seconds each.

OK. A less frigging technical track then.

Took a couple of seconds off my best today, within a hair's breadth of platinum, but still miles away from your best.

I did check out some of the top times for the track (no 1 is remarkable). I love the way they completely skip out one of the large dips.

BTW I HATE this game, yet love it at the same time. Must be a sign of sebbi and co hitting the mark. The bastards.

 

[Acert93]

I would but I've been Diablo'd for the past 2 weeks I will try though!

All we ask is 1 hr of your time, Sir.

 

[sebbbi]

Week 4 after release, and still in top 20 most played games list. Thanks everyone for participating

LIVE Activity for week of May 7th

Xbox 360 Top LIVE Titles (based on UU’s)
1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
2. Call of Duty: Black Ops
3. Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition
4. FIFA 12
5. Battlefield 3
6. Halo: Reach
7. Modern Warfare 2
8. NBA 2K12
9. Skyrim
10. Gears of War 3
11. GTA IV
12. Trials Evolution
13. Forza Motorsport 4
14. Mass Effect 3
15. NHL12
16. Madden NFL 12
17. Halo 3
18. Red Dead Redemption
19. Saints Row: The Third
20. Call of Duty 4

The first patch (title update) for the game will be out really soon, it will mainly fix problems in multiplayer game modes (and critical bugs).

 

[Acert93]

How did it rank only 12? I have put more time into Trials Evo than I did maybe all games in 2011. I blame Robert and his Diablo obsession! Nice job sebbbi, I hope Evo continues to climb the charts!

I am very curious what your next non-Trials game will be. Trials has some really, really great concepts all rolled into one and I hope RedLynx doesn't abandon these going forward as it is the combination that really sucks me on:

* Technical & Accessible. Trials is awesome because the gameplay doesn't spit in the face of core gamers. I cannot think of a more technical, demanding, and challenging game on the market when we are talking about "playing with the big boys." I know the floatiness of other platformers drives some mad--or platformers that totally abandon any skill in the platforming. Yet on the flip side of the same coin Trials is 100% accessible. My 6 year old is good at the game; my 8 yo is very good (ranked 3rd in this weeks B3D challenge behind Gerry and ahead of Robert!) RedLynx accomplished maybe the most difficult task in gaming by doing this and I think it was a good understanding the a concept and execution can be simple (which Trials is) but also pay serious homage to the core of gaming (the gaming!!!) while designing a games scale of difficulty and reward/feedback system to give a fair assessment. I know people who are super happy to just pass a race while others who expect nothing but perfect runs.

Everyone should take notes on how RedLynx is able to meet such wide gaming tastes. The fact the game is extremely nimble and responsive to the delight of core gamers but also accessible -- without compromising that chasm -- is amazing.

* Not a Pass/Fail Platformer. It isn't really fair to call Trials a "platformer" without qualifications. The big difference between ol' school platformers and Trials is the ol' school typically had very generous timers, the gameplay was "loose-y" and the result was pass/fail. Trials is VERY focused: get to the end and basically has no exploration or whatnot but what it does is the timer is cut throat and the gameplay is the tightest I have EVER seen yet the result is a very generous graduation of "Bronze-Silver-Gold-Platinum". So in one sense Trials is a platformer (get to the finish line by avoiding obstacles) but in another sense it is a totally different animal, a racing game with full fledged penalty system that appeals to the most visceral of gamers.

* Humor. The new themed tracks are cool (reminds me of a toned down Conker's BFD with all the homage to other games and movies) as are the endings but the real core is I can imagine back at the first game the eureka moment: people LOVE ragdoll. How do you put that into a game and make it FUN? How about we go on a motorcycle (dangerous!) and do crazy jumps at high speeds (insane!!) and put all sort of deadly obstacles in the way (psycho!!!) and then put ragdoll physics into the game so people can appreciate the crazy crashes! It is hilarious and the "Bail" button allows for all sorts of chuckles. It actually keeps the "tone" just right because the game can get tense and the ragdoll humor and avatar screams and yelps break the tension remind you of the lighter side of Trials.

* Social. The leader boards are just brilliant. The mix of Trials and Skill games and global leader boards, and now all the custom content and online gaming, create this amazing package of social gaming. Lately I have had no time to coordinate and play with my friends but the core of Trials allows you to play socially but on your own schedule without losing anything from the experience. It is a great example of bridging SP and MP limitations without harming the experience.

* Load times. RedLynx copied the Bungie 30 seconds of fun wash-rinse-repeat and amped it up to 11. The load times (minimal) and instant resets (pure awesome) totally raise the bar for what a good game can, and should, do.

* Rewards. I am not a completionist gamer. I do not chase gamerscore or achievements at all. I won't replay for them or double back for such. So in Evo I have very few achievements. And yet it keeps drawing me back in to do better. e.g. I achieved Platinum in all Beginner and Easy tracks which was not an easy task. I have my heart set on doing the same for Medium (I have like 18 plats to go... oy vey!) but after looking at the Hard times to hit Platinums across the boards I don't think I could EVER do that. The guys who do that I just have to tip my hat to: you are amazing Trials masters. Anyways, Trials has a perfect setup that the Rewards reflect your improvement so by nailing a reward, like a Plat, it reflects your gameplay. Better it balances all sorts of races and challenges so in Trials HD Robert was a bit better so I would pick certain races I was good at and try and pass Robert and then get as good as I can to make it a challenge for him. Trials has the best elements of competitive gaming in a SP package. It isn't a Mario game of, "Hey, I finished all 50 levels" but a "I finished 50, and then I no faulted all 50, and now I am picking my friends off 1 by 1!"

I am sure when Ubisoft made a play for RL they saw a developer who could tackle existing concepts and genres and weave in a tight tapestry of some of the most well through, balanced, engaging, and addicting gameplay on the market. Trials really, really shines in a lot of categories but it is the constellation of such puts it into that elite AAA category--which sales are backing up. Again. RL has made 2 of the top 10 digital titles this gen--every game developer should be doing a post mortum and see what they are doing so well and how they can, even just symbolically, incorporate the many areas Trials kicks ars.

Btw, I really wish Evo had a "Rivals" feature like FM4 where every time you beat your friends it sent them messages

 

[antwan]

They should use the engine for other 360 games. great graphics

 

[sebbbi]

...

First of all, thanks for the positive words! You have to thank our designers of many of the things mentioned. The best thing in working at RedLynx is that we listen to everyone's opinions. So we coders (and artists too) can affect design decisions. In the end everyone in the team feels like the game is their own and is highly motivated to create the "perfect game". Of course we always fell a bit short of the "perfect game" goal, but the 91 metascore tells us we succeeded pretty well this time. It's actually the highest metascore of any Ubisoft game

Game play and physics:
The physically modeled gameplay feels so responsive and natural, because the game runs at constant 60 fps, and because we spend lot of time in fine-tuning the physics response and reducing the input lag. I spent almost a year just optimizing our engine. Huge outdoor world (2 kilometer view distance) + 60 fps + fully dynamic lighting and physics wasn't an easy thing to achieve. Still, when you play the game, you don't even notice there's a lot of high end technology behind the game play. But that's the goal, isn't it

Load times:
We hate loading screens with passion! Our original goal was to completely mask out all loading times (load behind transitions and menu screens), but at the end we had to settle to 3 second loading screens at track startups. In the bike selector screen we hid the loading time with a "lights out" animation. The menu screen is completely operational during the loading. We used lot of similar tricks in other cases as well (loading as much as possible in background, so that the user doesn't even notice it). We actually spent several weeks just profiling our track loading code, and optimizing it.

Virtual texturing was actually the key ingredient to the fast loading times. When a track starts, we have to only load the texture surfaces that are visible in the start camera. And I am not talking about whole textures, we need to only load the areas that are visible (not occluded) and at the exact mip level requested. That's only around 10 megabytes of data. Many games that completely load all the required textures at level startups are loading more than 200 megabytes of data. This is of course not possible to do in a short time. Fine grained streaming is required.

 

[Acert93]

Thanks sebbbi, I was going to mention the 60Hz in the responsiveness area because I could not imagine the game w/o it. Oh, and we had company yesterday afternoon and I demo'd Trials (they had never heard of it), took them through the driving tests, and then the company played Trials 4-way for about 2 hours. The kids did not want to quit. Later that evening after they left I see this little notice "Friend is playing Trials Evolution". Chalk up one extra sale! Trials: it sells itself They seem to play a looot of games so I was a little surprised it went under their radar. They knew about quite a few Arcade titles as well as Minecraft so I am a little concerned Trials Evo has not quite got the exposure it should. The game sells itself though. One of the kids kept crashing, on purpose, over and over and said he would never tire of it

That said here are some tweaks that would be like putting awesome sauce on top of your total awesome-title-ness:

* A "practice mode" where you could skip forward & back between check points. I can understand why we cannot do this in the regular game but there are just some areas that give me fits and I would love to practice these without the errr trial of just getting there.

* Replay Rewind. Replays are total Trials ownage. It is one of the things that make it great. It is a great aid when trying to nail the better times. One problem is on longer courses the plays just take so long for that 3 second clip you want to see. Without rewind I find it pretty tedious to get video replay help on these parts.

* YouTube Export. I would pay an extra $5 for this feature Great marketing, too!

* Cut & Paste (editor). I would love to be able to "copy" sections of my favorite tracks and paste them into my own, e.g. make a compilation of all my "hardest" parts and create my own practice track of difficult obstacles. An idea in the same "vein" would be a "collection" of prefabbed challenges. Maybe the real problem is I am not good enough with the editor to re-create obstacles

* Search. This may be in there, but I cannot find it. I would like the ability to search by the name of user created content. e.g. Someone created a cool arcade flight sim but I cannot seem to find it for my son as the search tools seem limited.

 

[Acert93]

@ Everyone: What track this week? First non-extreme track suggestion it is. When I kick the kidos off the Xbox I will post this weeks times.

 

[Acert93]

Results are in:

Trials Challenge Week 4 (Sun May 20th - Sat May 26th): Titan's Graveyard (Terminal Velocity Category, Medium)

1. Acert93     00 faults   1:08.2
2. Gerry       00 faults   1:10.6
3. Robert      00 faults   1:13.3
4. Rotmm       00 faults   1:16.1
5. Scott_Arm   00 faults   1:21.8
6. Arwin       02 faults   1:19.0
7. Bad2B       04 faults   1:28.0
8. Alex        05 faults   1:42.7

Btw, thanks for those who added my son. He was pretty exited about his 1:13.2 time and kept jumping up and down, "I bet Robert!" He has heard me say quite a few times, "I cannot beat Robert on this course" so that made his day/week/month lol.

Trials Challenge Week 5 (Sun May 27th - Sat Jun 2nd): Tree Hugger (Collateral Damage Category, Medium)

Preview:

And with a different bike: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovXVoT7Wrqo

Platinum times are achievable with two bikes so if you prefer the faster/more stable bike or the more explosive/nimble bike you should have a fighting chance either way. I got some work to do. Robert, Gerry, Scott and I think Rotmm all have better times than I do on this one.

 

[BadTB25]

4 1/2 weeks to go before I'm back.
I hate being away from my systems

 

[Gerry]

Results are in:

1. Acert93     00 faults   1:08.2
2. Gerry       00 faults   1:10.6
3. Robert      00 faults   1:13.3
4. Rotmm       00 faults   1:16.1
5. Scott_Arm   00 faults   1:21.8
6. Arwin       02 faults   1:19.0
7. Bad2B       04 faults   1:28.0
8. Alex        05 faults   1:42.7

Tried my hardest and managed to chop around 1-2secs off my best yesterday. Reckon there was probably another 1-1.5sec of fat to be cut but there was no way I was going to get under 1:09:00.

 

[sebbbi]

* A "practice mode" where you could skip forward & back between check points. I can understand why we cannot do this in the regular game but there are just some areas that give me fits and I would love to practice these without the errr trial of just getting there.

We thought about this. Actually this feature is available in the editor when you test your own tracks (bumpers switch checkpoint). However we also wanted to leave the bumpers unused for real game play, so that user created tracks and skill games could use them for other purposes (we didn't have many other unused extra buttons).

* Replay Rewind. Replays are total Trials ownage. It is one of the things that make it great. It is a great aid when trying to nail the better times. One problem is on longer courses the plays just take so long for that 3 second clip you want to see. Without rewind I find it pretty tedious to get video replay help on these parts.

Rewind is a b**ch to implement for a heavily physics based game. Our replays only record controller state. The physics simulation has to be fully deterministic (same input always results in exactly same output). Physics engine has many acceleration structures that automatically optimize themselves. If you would rewind back the state, you would need to store considerably more state than just previous object position+rotation+speeds+accelerations, because the physics engine state contains additional structural data (that is not actually easy to fold back to previous state without rebuilding the structures again and again every frame, killing the performance). Naturally you cannot just simply run the physics simulation backwards either. Forces and impulses and integrators do not work properly that way... and even if you could implement backwards running physics, it wouldn't stay in sync as evaluating (inverse) floating point equations in backwards order causes slightly different results (caused by floating point rounding errors, and lower precision SIMD estimates used).

* YouTube Export. I would pay an extra $5 for this feature Great marketing, too!

Unfortunately YouTube support for Xbox 360 came too late for Trials Evolution (the project started in 2010). I agree with you that it would be an awesome feature. That doesn't seem to stop our fans however. Still there's almost 100 new Trials Evolution videos every day coming up to YouTube.

* Cut & Paste (editor). I would love to be able to "copy" sections of my favorite tracks and paste them into my own, e.g. make a compilation of all my "hardest" parts and create my own practice track of difficult obstacles. An idea in the same "vein" would be a "collection" of prefabbed challenges. Maybe the real problem is I am not good enough with the editor to re-create obstacles

Cut & Paste works inside the editor (and we have grouping as well). You can also save your groups to favorites. Favorites are the last category of the object selector, and work just like any other objects / groups. This is a good way to transfer object groups from one track to other (and also boost productivity a lot if you want to use same obstacles repeatedly).

* Search. This may be in there, but I cannot find it. I would like the ability to search by the name of user created content. e.g. Someone created a cool arcade flight sim but I cannot seem to find it for my son as the search tools seem limited.

Search isn't perfect, I have to admit. Press X button to do a custom search. You can search by tags, difficulty, track type, etc. You can also search by gamertag, but beware that many players have silly gametags with random letters replaced with number like "R1CK" or "Jorm4", but often that's not enough, the gamertags have extra decoration as well such as "_*Gre4T*_" or "xx PwN Y4 xx", so it can be a bit hard to get the gametag search to match the names

 

[RobertR1]

Results are in:
Btw, thanks for those who added my son. He was pretty exited about his 1:13.2 time and kept jumping up and down, "I bet Robert!" He has heard me say quite a few times, "I cannot beat Robert on this course" so that made his day/week/month lol.
.

I'll do my best to demotivate your child this week!

 

[Acert93]

Good, he needs someone to take him down a few pegs

Btw Robert I am struggling to just pass those Flat Line (Insane) tracks. Good job on completing them all--they are not easy by any stretch of the imagination. It feels like RL made them shorter this time around (??) but they are super challenge packed. So if you master them you can complete many of them in about a minute but for us mere mortals just passing with 100 faults within 7 minutes is an accomplishment. Still waiting for me new controller to arrive in the mail sebbbi

 

[Gerry]

Platinum times are achievable with two bikes so if you prefer the faster/more stable bike or the more explosive/nimble bike you should have a fighting chance either way. I got some work to do. Robert, Gerry, Scott and I think Rotmm all have better times than I do on this one.

Not much work to be fair. The current times are awful. Managed to take off a couple of seconds without even trying. Reckon the 250cc is by far the better of the two bikes on this track. Think something sub 48s will win this.

Rewind is a b**ch to implement for a heavily physics based game. Our replays only record controller state. The physics simulation has to be fully deterministic (same input always results in exactly same output). Physics engine has many acceleration structures that automatically optimize themselves. If you would rewind back the state, you would need to store considerably more state than just previous object position+rotation+speeds+accelerations, because the physics engine state contains additional structural data (that is not actually easy to fold back to previous state without rebuilding the structures again and again every frame, killing the performance). Naturally you cannot just simply run the physics simulation backwards either. Forces and impulses and integrators do not work properly that way... and even if you could implement backwards running physics, it wouldn't stay in sync as evaluating (inverse) floating point equations in backwards order causes slightly different results (caused by floating point rounding errors, and lower precision SIMD estimates used).

That's fascinating, and makes perfect sense when you think about it. I did wonder a) why there was no reverse and b) how you save the replay efficiently. Very clever.

 

[Acert93]

I have not run Tree Hugger in a couple weeks and I see there are like 5 people above me as my time is almost 60 seconds. Ouch! I better get to work!

Idea for rewinds: Why not have rewind to check points or rewind that is really just starts from wherever the engine needs to and quickly fast forward. So from my perspective the game replay leaps back 10 seconds but in reality the game went back to the beginning and fast forward 40 seconds. Don't know if either of those would work?