scooby_dooby
Legend
Well you're calling alot of people on these forums fanbots then...
As for bitchy tirades? Take a look in the mirror (and yes I caught your post before you deleted 80% of it)
Where the hell did the graphics and animation for MGS4 go?
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Well you're calling alot of people on these forums fanbots then...
As for bitchy tirades? Take a look in the mirror (and yes I caught your post before you deleted 80% of it)
The MGS2 "tech-demos" were from near complete sections of an actual game, and were not tech demos, the same goes for MGS3 - They were not designed to eat up the entire computing budget on a simple scene, the MGS4 demo was (it wasn't from the game, because like it's already been said, there was no game at that time). The 2005 wasn't even from an early build, it was from an early engine build, and nothing more (that engine by the way was scrapped for the most part, as was already mentioned). The current tech build allows for the same effects, lighting, etcetera, no change, and finally, WHO said they were representative of final material (final-isn engine tech, yes, but otherwise, no)? Because I'm pretty sure joe-blo on the corner by your house is NOT a Konami official.
I didn't delete any of it. The only edits I made were additional, not subtractive (If anyone removed any of it, it was a moderator, not myself). And no, I know a lot of these people personally, and they know what does and does not apply to them. Your little adventures out to OPA and Gaf and elseworlds are what I refer to - Get it straight.
Furthermore, you're attempting to egg this into a flame-war, and the thread has been over since page three. Threads of this type don't belong here.
scooby_dooby
Legend
Going by old MGS4 discussions, it is no surprise to see the bad reaction to this downgrade(models, framerates, animations, effects). MGS fans take too much unbridled pride in Konami technical "prowess" that history becomes a fact rather than just a lesson. The whole confidence thingy about "The gameplay will look like the in-engine movies."
They were expecting MGS4 to look better than the very first trailer not only match it! The train of thought was going from 2.4Ghz Cell/6800U/PCIe to the real deal will unlock significantly better graphics muscle the next time we see it. Kojima gave us his word.
Instead of crying over spilled milk, why not analyse what caused the downgrade? The move to 1080p at Sony's request which i read from EGM? The drop in raw rendering capacity after they went from nVidia former flagship GPU to a more modest refresh, impressions which i got from Watch Impress? The decision to bring it to 360 which means they have to leverage how much PS3 optimisation they could do?
Konami finally gave a formal announcement either today or yesterday. The X360 port conjecture was only speculation, and there are no current plans YET to do a 360 version... Means things could change some day, yay. I'll put it right next to Gears of War 
.
But anyway, we can scratch that off the reasons for the downgrade.
I'm tellin ya, it's more than likely due to shifting from a tech-demo type situation, where you really don't have much to spend all your resources on to a dynamic gaming situation.
. But anyway, we can scratch that off the reasons for the downgrade.
I'm tellin ya, it's more than likely due to shifting from a tech-demo type situation, where you really don't have much to spend all your resources on to a dynamic gaming situation.
Yes, that is exactly how I remembered it too. I think they even said something about only using the PPE or PPE + 1 SPE at the time.
Um I agree with Motorstorm, but Resistance and Gears of War? Gears of War, as far as I can tell, has looked more or less the same throughout the whole dev. process. It did change its look slightly in the final version, but that happened like 6 months before it was released, and I'm not sure it could be called "better". Just different. Resistance did improve, but when the released an unfineshed batch of screenshots, they would attach a statement saying "hey, there a bunch of assets we haven't included yet so don't worry". Particularly, they released a few screenshots saying, "hey, this looks a bit worse than final, we haven't added final lighting in" a few months before release. MGS4 has no such disclaimer, and that is worrying for those who believe the graphics need improvement.
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Great post. The upgrade to 1080P could certainly be a reason, but I'm wondering why the lighting took such a hit. It looks like a terribly flat lightmap in some of the shots. No self shadowing, normal mapping, or dynamic lighting need apply. There are many shots where objects that are in the shadows are totally lit. Never mind the awful contrast. Reminds me of COD3's contrast problem, except worse. If that was the result of an upgrade to 1080P, they need to downgrade pronto. Methinks something else is at work.
I'm guessing its due to difficulty with Cell. I mean it certainly wouldn't be problems with RSX, unless they can't figure out how to acces XDR and therefore the texture res hit (that's a joke). I'm guessing some of those textures are placeholders, but to be fair there isn't any reason why FN3 (which was in development since 2005) should have the crowd LOD problems either.
Umm how was the TGS 2005 demo simple? I'd suggest you watch it again. Nothing in the 2006 TGS video was more complex in my eyes. Certainly the SS on page 3 was no more complex than the "simplest" (and that depends on how well they're occluding their geometry) scene in the 2005 demo.
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First of all its Kojima not Konami. And second of all "joe-blow" happens to be Kojima themselves. Google is your friend.
Where is the source that says the engine was scrapped? Here is the only official quote (from Kojima) that I could find:
"Showing off the new TGS 2006 trailer, Kojima confirmed that all the scenes were created with real-time rendering, similarly to the trailer from last year's TGS. He also mentioned that the Electronic Entertainment Expo trailer from May (also done in real time) will be used as a part of the game's opening sequence when the game is completed. " - Kojima (gamespot source)
Another one:
"We've finally started to figure out the PS3, and we've decided on [MGS4's] game systems," said Kojima. "Back with last year's TGS trailer, we were still trying to learn the PS3's potentials. Now that we've figured out what we want to do, all we have to do now is to create it." - Kojima (gamespot source)
Both of those came from Kojima post E3 2006. Consider that this game is slated to be released this year, and the only words about the games graphics are that "we've finally tapped the potential of the PS3 in relation to last year". I would expect, just by reading those statements, that the graphics were improved over the TGS 2005 trailer (not the other way around). He certainly doesn't give the impression that the engine is still in development. All trailers released thusfar were realtime, and if anything should have been getting better, not worse. Engine re-write? Show me the source of that info.
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I think his got a point about GOW. First there were some LOD issues, some textures in some areas had some blurriness which then imporved if I recall correctly and lastly the most noticable imporvment was the framerate and animation which from choppy, robotic and ugly went to a next level with smooth realistic and fluid animation at constant 30fps ( sometimes i cant make out the difference between 30fps and 60fps in this game. Animation is that well made). This game certaintly delivered as much as promised
Abour tesistance it alseo got better. Remember how it looked during 2005? The I-8 E3 demo? There is no relation between what was shown before and what was shown later. It wasnt just the assets that changed. Overally everything was improved and they added more and more things to it and the improvement went even further than just the directly noticable static detail quality, but on the AI, physics and the total things happening on screen at once too
Yeah, I definetely agree about the framerate and animation, but I would beg to differ about the graphics unless you have something to show me that says otherwise. The textures certainly did see some upgrading, but there were no sore thumbs in the earlier builds (textures were pretty good). The certainly didn't downgrade the textures, which is what happened with MGS4.
And I never said resistance didn't look better (btw, the I-8 demo blew the final game out of the water, but that was CG just fyi), I said it didn't recieve a major revamp (early levels, the ones that were shown to us in the first builds, looked very similar). And we were certainly told by the devs along the way that the graphics would improve, and in which ways they would improve. Again, the parallel drawn to MGS4 falls flat.
And sure, I'm not arguing that animations, or AI didn't improve. Kojima stated that some animations in MGS4 were placeholders from MGS3 in 2006, but made no mention on the graphics.
Overall, I'm not arguing that it isn't possible for the graphics to improve. I could certainly believe texture res's will improve by final release, because that is an asset that is not computationally intense (just a bandwith issue, but we know that isn't a problem for PS3 as far as texture reads go). I'm more worried about lighting and shadowing, lack of the great normal mapping and detail on snakes suit. It looks like some of the polygonal detail was replaced with textures. Not cool
edit: forgot to drop this in
http://www.gametrailers.com/umwatcher.php?id=905
That's from TGS 2005. Looks like a tech demo, but isn't. That is the same model that was in the TGS2005 MGS4 video, the same model which was in that detailed battle field with a bunch of characters, and metal gears running around.
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You could be right about GoW.
But about 1-8 are you sure we are talking about the same demo? Because I remember perfectly it wasnt CGI at all. It was actually the only Sony licensed game showing real time gameplay footage
This is i-8
Slowdown, blurry textures, image tearing, low polygon models, ugly animation. The slowdown and tearing were edited out of the video later
http://streamingmovies.ign.com/ps3/article/614/614849/i-8_trailer_051605_wmvlow.wmv
I-8
http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/614/614799/i-8-20060117011954787.jpg
http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/614/614799/i-8-20060117011953709.jpg
http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/614/614799/i-8-20060117011952194.jpg
Resistence
http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/740/740512/resistance-fall-of-man-20061019042346883.jpg
http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/745/745206/resistance-fall-of-man-20061110064419046.jpg
http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/745/745206/resistance-fall-of-man-20061110064420358.jpg
http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/745/745206/resistance-fall-of-man-20061110064421561.jpg
The problem with that is people know what they see, and on the whole have no appreciation of potential. If you show a rough looking first rendering of a WIP game a year from launch, everyone will look at it and go 'meh, lokos rubbish.' You can't rely on them to fill in the blanks and predict 'wow, this'll look amazing with a year's work.' And when all your rivals are showing fantastiv looking mockups too, you look really crap by comparison.
So either you don't show a game at all until it's ready to launch, where you haven't managed to build any interest at all. Or you give people a taster of what to expect from the final product.
Whether you like it or not (and I'm one that doesn't like it much either), simulations are inevitable and necessary from a business POV. It's used in every single field. No-one shows a rough looking WIP because first impressions tar the appreciation for the eventual final product.
First, no, it is Konami, Kojima is just one man (if google told you otherwise, it is not your friend), not a group (He has a group - KP exists within Konami). Nobody at Konami has stated the video from 2005 to be actual gameplay footage, only that it is realtime (which it is).
Second of all, I think you're missing my point. I do think the game will look better than the last demonstration did. It's a work in progress after-all. Where the hell you're getting the opposite idea is beyond me.
Third, the original tech shown off in 2005 was in pre-alpha state, which means that it has been worked on continuously since then, hence the statement that the engine has undergone a pretty substantial bit of tinkering, optimisation, and work in general.
Fourth, the 2006 demonstration was indicative of rediculously early, alpha-stage gameplay, the 2005 demonstration was not. The downgrade, visually from 2006 vs 2005, is if anything, only geometric, and a very slight downgrade if any. The downgrade from 2007 vs 2005, again, if anything, will only be geometric(again same as before), to allow for a greater number of characters/objects within the scene. There will be upgrades... It's a work in progress, and I will not be surprised in by the end of 2007 the game looks as good or better than the 06 or 05 footage, but people have to understand that things change - budgetts are worked out and adjustments are made.
Anyway... I've been awake for two days. I need some sleep.
Well, whatever people say, i choose to believe that the latest MGS4 shots are from a build that it's so early it almost looks like an Xbox game - just at slightly higher res. Those wall textures are just embarrassingly low res. I've seen better on Xbox.
I mean, we're talking about a machine capable of this http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/751/751774/ninja-gaiden-sigma-20061219064546979.jpg
I mean, we're talking about a machine capable of this http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/751/751774/ninja-gaiden-sigma-20061219064546979.jpg
I cant remember an interview in which every developer in a team was "interogated" for a game.
As far as I can remember its always the "head" of the team who will talk.
And what are you trying to say there? That Kojima would know less than his team, have a different opinion from his team or lie?? He is the one responsible for the game. If he wants it "this" way it will be "this" way and his team will do it "this" way. He wont have other things planned and his team will do otther things. What he said expresses exactly what his team does and will do
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