Uncharted : Drake's Fortune*
- Thread starter JardeL
- Start date
Betanumerical
Veteran
Does anyone know what they are doing on the SPU's?, like clipping, etc?. I'm really interested to know, even more so with that 'only using 1/3 power' claim.
I find the animation to be, at times very impressive but generally to be good (not evolutionary). To be honnest, I haven't seen many gameplay videos...
I think that something is off with the way that he interacts with the world. Especially when the camera is pointing at the action from a place far away. I'll have to play the demo to make up my mind on that.
Up till now, I'm very impressed with Uncharted as a package. The graphics look excellent, the gameplay very intersting and the animation great. I guess the demo will answer all our questions.
I think that something is off with the way that he interacts with the world. Especially when the camera is pointing at the action from a place far away. I'll have to play the demo to make up my mind on that.
Up till now, I'm very impressed with Uncharted as a package. The graphics look excellent, the gameplay very intersting and the animation great. I guess the demo will answer all our questions.
In the au.ign article they say 30-50%, which is at least a bit more nuanced. And for the rest, well, at the very least the animation layering technique is there.
Mighty impressive but is that from a cut-scene?
I was refering to the enemy animations and Jakes animations when playing, judging from the latest videos I´ve seen.
I´ve seen better animations in-game, but I´m not saying that the animations in Uncharted are bad.
Joke post confirmed.
This is not a comparison thread, but you seem to say you've seen better animations in-game. I think you're lying to prove your point.
I'd love to ask you to create another thread, and actually prove that point. You can't, though.
The animation is good for a few reasons, mostly because it's subtle. It's not about 'oh god that looked really realistic'. It's about 'wow...he just ducked when that bullet shot by his head' or 'do you see him reloading while he's running and reacting to bullets?"
Completely different.
NeoGAF vibes confirmed....
There are games that most likely are on par or maybe even better but that is for another thread not located in B3D. The thing is transition between animations is different between cut-scenes (real-time) and in-game play IMO.
It is interesting seeing Drake duck to avoid the bullets in the gif (cut-scene or ingame?) and yet he does not do it on other videos when those have clear gameplay... what is up?
If so, those games deserve their own threads here. It would be something (for the devs) to write home about.
Yeah, I want to know too. Would be interesting if it's gameplay.
I am not sure if 3,500 animations is enough though. One possible explanation is the dodging we saw is when he did not fire back. Perhaps if he's returning fire (like we saw in most/all gameplay videos), the system does not layer the cringing animation because it would shift the aim.
EDIT: Similarly, some of the animations look abrupt probably/partly because the player is twitchy during gameplay. They have to compromise between instant response and smoothed/filled-in animations. It's an interesting problem. I still wonder whether some form of speculative layering can be done (may be already done !) to moderate shaky control movement.
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I think you just haven't been following development of this game and watching the clips we've seen. Most stuff released has been gameplay footage, inclusive of dodgy animations as Drake 'levitates' up and down. The blending of motion in the running has its faults, due mostly due to an irregular ground that no-one has yet solved. On top of that though, you have reactions and variations. You have Drake ducking, dodging, grimacing, loading his gun different ways, standing in different ways - if you take cover behind a rock and repeatedly peep out and then retreat, Drake will take a different position each time. Whenever you see Drake running or jumping around (most of the videos out there) you're seeing the game, not cut-scenes. There's no way to confuse the two. The cut-scene anims are clearly scripted, full of dialogue, close-ups, telling the story. Everything else, Drake moving and shooting, is gameplay. I suggest you check out the numerous videos at GameTrailers to see what everyone's talking about, before you say it's no better than such-and-such a game! Then if you still see issues, you can point us to the same videos and say 'looking at this, is it better than...'
Which cutscenes Nebula? WHICH cutscenes have you seen better transitions of him running from bullets? There are no cutscenes of him running from being shot at. The only cutscenes we've seen are of the characters talking to one another, or jumping out of a plane. Everything else is gameplay footage. Get that in your head...because saying it isn't just sounds foolish, and your "IMO" is flawed.
You haven't seen the gameplay of him ducking from bullets? Well I have...go watch the 1up video special...there's plenty of it there. There are also moments of him running from an explosion and flinching when it explodes. It's all there fo ryou to find. But I doubt you can be bothered, you're just killing time and deliberately trying to get on people's nerves.
All this bull saying that the game doesn't have any great animation, and then as soon as I show you some...it's "in a cutscene", just shows you how good the ingame animation is.
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Well he does duck bullets during gameplay...we've seen it time and time again. We've seen him flinch from explosions... And saying 3500 animations isn't enough is a bit mad...since when you can layer upto 24 (?) of those animations on top of one another...that number of animation grows quite considerably.
I suggest you do not take things out of context and calm down a bit. The talk is about animations and their transition in cut-scenes vs gameplay (you control the character) or did I miss something?
Im talking about in general cut-scene animation transition vs in-game play. And note im talking about when you have the control not small story driven bits where you are not in control of Drake/character.
And I certainly have not said that it does not have good animations, just not completly realistic and hard to differ fro other games in certain cases.
As asked about earlier about providing videos from where those gifs come from, did you find them or the others in neogaf? then it could be completly concluded that they are ingame or if it is cut-scene (real-time of course). :smile:
Well where is the hud that was visible in the other gif at neogaf you posted. Why is it not seen in the other gifs why such a strange camera position. Does he use this detection system for incomming objects/pressure in gameplay to in same full detail? You understand why one would question it but nowhere have i confirmed it is cut-scene but it suspect it... I may be wrong!
Look I prefer the movements in ICO...but we're not talking about that at all.
Yes if you want videos watch the 1up special, or just realise that anything that doesn't have the characters talking...or is running and jumping is all gameplay animation.
Sorry for being so forceful, but surely you can see how frustrating this is. People saying the animation isn't impressive...and then showing them gifs that blows them away, and them saying back to you "well well...it only looks good because it's not ingame...uh".
Plus the game has to be responsive...you don't want to have to wait until the end of the animation to continue, so jerky movements are an inevitability.
Well, I haven't been "blown away" by any of the animations. The blending is definitely the way things should be going, and I appreciate the attention to detail having him look around and flinch or duck as bullets pass or explosions go off.
I'll pass judgement when I actually play the game, which probably won't be for a long time. 3500 animations is a lot, but some of them may be so subtle that you wouldn't notice them.
There was a physics demo for some Lucasarts Indiana Jones project that showed characters reacting to physics, and I found that far more interesting than what's been shown of this game.
Thanks, but I've already been watching the game very closely.
My complaint with the animation is common to all key-frame based animation: no motion overshoot, no momentum interaction between bones. Physically-animated ornaments such as flowing hair, cloth would help mask these issues.
Aye... if so, it probably happens too fast and there are more activities/details than what people can recognize in a small video.
They are orthogonal though. If they want to, I supposed they could overlay 24 animations out of say, 5000 in the library. I don't know whether 3500 is enough because I have no idea if the variation is sufficient to match Nathan and the girl's life-like performance (in cutscenes). They have set the bar pretty high there for their layering animation to reproduce on-the-fly (seamlessly in all gameplay scenarios).
It's something they are going after, I'm sure we will continue to see improvements beyond this first game. The great thing is this technology is accessible by other studios too (if they are serious about sharing).
phat said:
This reminds me: The clothes will wrinkle on the fly too.
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The smoothness between the animations isn´t so good right now, this can be noticed on the enemies especially.
I like animations that are realistic, I rather have 100 realistic animations than many that are not.
The smoothness between the animations and the speed of the animations is two factors that makes the animations more realistic IMO.
So when I say that I have seen better animations I do not mean that I have seen a game with more than 3500 animations, I prefer qualtiy infront of quantity.
I like animations that are realistic, I rather have 100 realistic animations than many that are not.
The smoothness between the animations and the speed of the animations is two factors that makes the animations more realistic IMO.
So when I say that I have seen better animations I do not mean that I have seen a game with more than 3500 animations, I prefer qualtiy infront of quantity.
The smoothness between the animations isn´t so good right now, this can be noticed on the enemies especially.
I like animations that are realistic, I rather have 100 realistic animations than many that are not.
The smoothness and the speed of the animations is two factors that makes the animations more realistic.
So when I say that I have seen better animations I do not mean that I have seen a game with more than 3500 animations, I prefer qualtiy infront of quantity.
It's the blending that's the neat part. If you showed the animations one at a time, I don't think they'd look very remarkable. The blending is what makes it interesting.
I´m not sure about that, from what I´ve seen the blending isn´t anything special or maybe it´s the speed of the animations that makes the blending look worse than what it is?
They are gameplay. There are no cutscenes that look like this. All the cutscenes (that we've seen) are story mode people talking or doing Hollywood style whatnots.
As for a HUD, there's never been a gameplay HUD in this game. We've seen a recent addition in gameplay footage of a gun icon and ammo, but in most gameplay footage it's been absent. Whether it's switch on and offable, I don't know, but you can't rely on a HUD in this day and age to tell you when something's gameplay or not!
I think one of the problems for those not seeing the good animation is a lot of the gameplay vids are showing running and gunning. Sometimes you even get noobs playing who stand behind a rock and don't use the cover button. When running and shooting, there's not going to be much variety in animation, though it looks to me like his arms swing around a bit more naturally when running than the single canned animation. However, when he gets to duck into cover, you really see the animation shine. This GT vid has a few cover anims, and a lot of the variety in the CQC.
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The best place to see it was a magazine article that showed about 8 different cover positions. Still, natural motion isn't about things you can detect, but things that are imperceptible on a conscious level. If you can see the animations, chances are they're not subtle enough to do their job. Thus the run cycle might be blending loads of animations, but the overall effect if you're looking is that he's just running. Perhaps some people aren't sensitive to this? Could be that some people see the motion as natural, whereas other see it as 'samey'?
As for physics based animation, that would be ideal, but at present we've only seen it (AFAIK) on NPCs. Player characters who don't react to the gamer's instructions because they are in a compromised animation phase might make for very frustrating gameplay. An interview with ND said this was one of their concerns.
