Uncharted 4: A Thief's End [PS4]

[iroboto]

Is the debug station more powerful than consumer units? Because that would really slant opinions quick.

 

[Shortbread]

SSReborn @Gaf

Summary...

- They tried to get clarification about the Amy Hennig thing but that was thrown right out the window
- Animation system from PS3 games was scrapped and rebuilt to allow full analogue movement through 360 degress using real body physics
- Slip Events (like when he used to grab on handhelds and they break or come out of place) they are not mapped to scenery like in older games but instead are dependent on the angle and distance of the jump also less stable ones will break easier if they do you need to take another route
- Drakes Piton which is similar to Lara's Pickaxe from Tomb Raider differs from the latter because its designed to empower freedom
- The grapple points are fixed but allow Drake to swing, rappel, climb or run along and around cliff faces
- They say Uncharted's most linear system has become freeform and instead of pushing up on the stick and following a preditermined path path your making your own. They also compared it to solving a puzzle.
- The enemies have a similar traversal set to drakes and can clamber up ledges and leap gaps in pursuit of the player.
- Breaking the line of sight by using the foliage or by other means and the enemy will not return to normal patrol patterns and instead seek you out or stay in place while staying in constant communication with each other
- The combat is a mix of stealth, traversal, melee, and gunplay which is an evolution of what they began building from UC2
- Tremendous amount of The Last of Us blueprint in UC4 in regards to the combat alternating between stealth and combat is fluid
- Learned a lesson from Jak II where they designed a level where you Daxter rides a rocket, was kind of upset about how they spent so much time on something you only seen once in the entire game. Came to appreciate adding systems that flow throughout the entire game more
- Part of ND's evolution is getting comfortable with systematic approaches, wider layouts and the intergration of Story, Gameplay, music etc
-Edge thinks its the prettiest game the new gen has produced
-ND is pleased with the added memory and are taking advantage of it
T-exture resolution at least quadrupled from UC3
-Drake wakes to an island shore off the coast of Madagascar waking to a backdrop of procedurally tessalated water, Dynamic wind that moves trees, bushes, Drakes hair (Head and Chest)
- Up close a system developed by ND and Sony's Advanced Technology Group offers a more efficient way of making highly detailed surfaces without using performance adaptive tessellation while farther away the studio is relying more on background LOD algorithms more than ever before
- A physically based shader two years in the making makes materials look like their real world counterparts
- They were showed a wireframe wall with 100 handholds showing the shape of his body adapting to the shape of the wall as he climbed
- On PS3 Drake had 250 bones in his model on PS4 800 in his face alone
- They are over 30 but have locked at 30 for the demo they are gonna try to hit 60 but won't compromise if they have to lose something that can impact the player experience
- Druckmann says the adventure has to stand on its own with hints to Drakes character in the older games for people who haven't played if you have then you understand more of the nuances of Drake and his relationships
- UC3 ending gave them a clean slate dealt with all his present problems so that they could delve into his past
- 4 years after he's settled down and retired when he is lured back into the life by his brother sam who he last saw 15 years ago during that time they were bosessed with finding a treasure plundered by Henry Every who ammassed the largest haul over the space of two years in the 17th century its worth half a billion dollars by todays standards
- Drake moved on but Sam continued looking and came back into his bro's life with incentive for both of them he has a new lead on Libertalia, Every's pirate Utopia
- When they add new characters it has to reflect a facet of the protagonist in a unique way
- A brother allows them to ask who is Nathan Drake and how has he evolved into the person we see today
- Sam's arrival makes it seem as if there is no female foil, Elena is seemingly at home and not really happy with him coming out of retirement and Chloe and Drake when their seperate ways in UC3 third act
- The only known female in the game at this point is Nadine Ross the leader of the South African Private Military army that patrols the island she was hired by Rafe Adler, another treasure hunter in which Nate and his Bro have history with
- They're the enemy but ND doesn't like to think of them like that, when they are writing these characters they don't want to write them as cliches so they they just write it as if it were from their POV because those character's don't necessarily see themselves as the antagonist
- They are trying to look at all moments even between cutscenes as a scene; they are thinking in filmic terms but what's important is how much they can put on the "stick"

 

[VFX_Veteran]

I tend to think they'll do an Infamous (and others) and let it free to run slightly faster than 30 FPS, with the option to lock it down.

Would be silly not to.

You assume that they won't go *below* 30fps in some areas in the game.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

A physically based shader two years in the making makes materials look like their real world counterparts

Why would it take 2yrs to make a PBR shader?? I wish I had that much time making ours..

 

[HTupolev]

SSReborn @Gaf

Link:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=147633674#post147633674

Why would it take 2yrs to make a PBR shader??

Doesn't seem unimaginable that a shader might get made early on and modified throughout a game's development, hence "two years in the making."

 

[London Geezer]

You assume that they won't go *below* 30fps in some areas in the game.

Absolutely not. But I assume that the times it's above 30, they should let it go. Like Infamous.

 

[ultragpu]

You assume that they won't go *below* 30fps in some areas in the game.

If the game looks balls to the walls crazy good then I would allow, but only occasionally down to 25fps as long as it's still 1080p with decent AA.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

Doesn't seem unimaginable that a shader might get made early on and modified throughout a game's development, hence "two years in the making."

I don't know. That's a pretty long time especially if you set out to make it in the first place. It's not like you make a conventional shader and it undergoes revision after revision and then you decide to overhaul it.. Maybe that's what they are talking about.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

Absolutely not. But I assume that the times it's above 30, they should let it go. Like Infamous.

That would make it fluctuate too wildly. Having it unlocked only works well if the fps delta is pretty small.

 

[London Geezer]

That would make it fluctuate too wildly. Having it unlocked only works well if the fps delta is pretty small.

Which is why there's an option to lock it to 30 in infamous and KZ (I think?) for people who don't like that.
This has already happened in Sony's biggest first party games and it's a totally reasonable option

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It'll be the same hardware

Why would it take 2yrs to make a PBR shader?? I wish I had that much time making ours..

Also, it doesn't make materials look like their real-world counterparts. Uncharted isn't going for photorealism.
http://images.gamersyde.com/image_uncharted_4_a_thief_s_end-27127-2995_0011.jpg

Looks like painted artwork, not real rock and moss/algae/lichen. Which is as it should be!

 

[ultragpu]

I think their PBR lays down the foundation for how the materials should behave as per photorealism, then the artists tweak about on top of the base layer to get that stylized look. I have a feeling they want to emphasize the photorealism on certain subjects such as character models, natural elements such as water, fire while retaining the more vibrant look of foliage and mountains. I could be just seeing things tho.

 

[London Geezer]

It'll be the same hardware
Also, it doesn't make materials look like their real-world counterparts. Uncharted isn't going for photorealism.
http://images.gamersyde.com/image_uncharted_4_a_thief_s_end-27127-2995_0011.jpg

Looks like painted artwork, not real rock and moss/algae/lichen. Which is as it should be!

Let's not forget that real life can also look amazingly flat under the right (wrong) conditions!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Real life never looks like a painting though, unless it's a photorealistic painting, or real life has been decorated as such. That image I linked to wouldn't convince anyone they were looking at a photograph. I defy you to find a photograph that looks equally unrealistic.

 

[London Geezer]

Real life never looks like a painting though, unless it's a photorealistic painting, or real life has been decorated as such. That image I linked to wouldn't convince anyone they were looking at a photograph. I defy you to find a photograph that looks equally unrealistic.

Considering it's double the resolution - EDIT No, this is almost 4k res, so it's actually almost 4 times the resolution as a 1080p UC4 shot! - and it's from reality, this one is pretty flat and everyone out there would say it's low-res textures if this were a game

My point is, it would take very little to make the UC4 moss covered climbing rocks (good search!) look less flat. Just as easy as seeing 'flatness' in reality. Only no one really pixel counts and pixel peeps in reality.

This is a pretty bad picture, I must say.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I'm not talking about flatness though. I'm talking the colours and texture quality. The textures are hand painted and deliberately styled like a graphic novel. The foliage looks little like real foliage. It's a deliberate choice by ND, and a good one which gives UC its own visual identity, but as such, one questions the need for (2 years in the making) super-realistic PBR shaders. Or at least, the claim these shaders make things look realistic is bunk. They may enable the artists to achieve their desired art in a easier way, but if one of the objective of creating the shader was realism, it was a pretty pointless objective as the final result is deliberately avoiding realism!

 

[London Geezer]

I don't think I agree with the notion that ND are striving for a 'graphic novel look' in the textures, while wanting a very realistic look in the vegetation and pretty much everything else?

Those textures are kinda flat, and I think the main reason is a general low contrast of the source material - the 15 min gameplay video.

But hey, I stand to be corrected when we get more high quality footage, or the game itself.

 

[chris1515]

If I remember well they use some Disney PBR algorithm

 

[chris1515]

Real-time rendered in game. This is not CGI or pre-render, which means all the shading features for skin, hair, eyes need to be written in code.
Using Disney Diffuse model, GGX Brdf model and Screen Space Subsurface.
Hair is using Kajiya-kay Brdf model.
Frank Tzeng did the sculpting and texturing for his face and arms.

It is from the presentation of December

 

[AlNom]

Real life never looks like a painting though, unless it's a photorealistic painting, or real life has been decorated as such. That image I linked to wouldn't convince anyone they were looking at a photograph. I defy you to find a photograph that looks equally unrealistic.

Moss definitely

Effect of 20yrs of drugs on Moss