Looks like Ubisoft has the right idea and has spent the time, money and effort in getting the TOOLS and engine right for the teams, so no wonder the can crank out a game or 2 per year! If only most games companies where so forward thinking!
Looks fab! I might actually play a AC game if it ships looking this good!
I just want to know if this is actually representative of what it's going to finally look like, or if it's just bullshots like almost every AAA "gameplay" trailer before it.
I just want to know if this is actually representative of what it's going to finally look like, or if it's just bullshots like almost every AAA "gameplay" trailer before it.
Adam says that this is how the game actually looks, and he's one of the art leads (and a well-respected member of the forum who wouldn't lie about such a thing), so I think it's true.
Adam says that this is how the game actually looks, and he's one of the art leads (and a well-respected member of the forum who wouldn't lie about such a thing), so I think it's true.
I want to believe, but it's just happened so much before. If he says no bullshit, and is truly as trustworthy as you say than I'll believe him.
Justin, I agree with Cowking. I don't think he meant any disrespect, he's just showing the skepticism our industry has shown to be necessary in the past.
I wouldn't really say that Watch Dogs went through some "serious downgrades." Of course the final product is going to look worse than the demo simply because when the demo was shown off, it involved a small fraction of the gameplay systems that existed. Between the time the demo was shown off and the time that "ugly" trailer was shown off, there have likely been hundreds of thousands of lines of code, if not millions, related to many new systems written for the game that are now running in the background and taking up system resources.
From the new trailer they revealed, it is clear the the game still looks beautiful, and so I think it's safe to say at least the PC version of the game will look incredible, even if the console version somehow ends up poorly.
I find it hard to believe that somebody could honestly believe that a game like Watch Dogs looks bad. As somebody who occasionally visits reddit, nothing pisses me off more than reading some of their ignorant comments about game development. The people there compare game engines like middleschoolers at a lunch table, how much credibility could they even have?
The best is when they say "as a game developer myself, I believe *inserts stupid comment about how all devs are lazy and greedy assholes and that all games are made to steal your money*"
Anyway, I think this discussion got derailed a bit. Personally, I'd love to see a breakdown of some of the assets shown in this video although unfortunately I'm not too sure if that would be allowed until after the game gets released. Since adam works on the development team, maybe he could also chime in on the story a bit. The only AC game I played was AC1 and I enjoyed it, would I still be able to understand the story or would I have to finish every other AC game?
Well done Adam! The artistic creativity and joy shows through, I hope you all had a great time bashing through the hours and keeping each others back through the internal deadlines. Just ride on the wave of accomplishment dude, enjoy it, you've earned it!
its looking absolutely stunning, cracking job. the crowd shot at the end looked super impressive. It looks like one of those awesome digic pre-rendered trailers!
alright, bringing this thread back on track. This looks great Adam, you guys at Ubi should be super proud of what your putting out art wise. I was hoping to get your opinion of the amount of work necessary to get to this level of fidelity. Would you say it's an extreme jump from last gens pipelines? There's been a lot of talk about content taking either no more extra time twice as much or ten times as much, personally i'm thinking it will take slightly more time. I am hoping and seeing that art tools are improving at a rapid pace which is, i think, the right solution.
Through your experience so far on this project, what are your thoughts on this? If you can, in a quick broad sense, talk about some of the pipeline improvements that speed things up for you guys at Ubi? Thanks
This is nice to see, AC4 BF on PS4 is pretty disappointing in terms of visuals, especially the character skin shading. We're not seeing any skin here, let's hope that's improved too!
This is nice to see, AC4 BF on PS4 is pretty disappointing in terms of visuals, especially the character skin shading. We're not seeing any skin here, let's hope that's improved too!
Yeah come on, show us some skin adam haha
Would be interesting to know if this is using physically based materials/lighting/stuff like most other engines are now.
The coop video for ACU is out now. The team here has been hard a work on this for a long time, so happy its finally out. (And yes, it's in-game.)
Amoung many other things, my team in particular is responsible for Neo-classic landmarks found in Paris. Palais du Luxembourgh, featured in the coop demo seen below, is one of ours. Really proud of the team and meticulous they are with their details, and more importantly, story telling.
I'm not sure how deep the character customization system is going to be but that seems kind of ridiculous. I'd imagine the developers didn't get together and say "Hey, let's screw over female gamers!" but I'd also imagine they could have recycled a lot of assets from previous AC games.
I'm not sure how deep the character customization system is going to be but that seems kind of ridiculous. I'd imagine the developers didn't get together and say "Hey, let's screw over female gamers!" but I'd also imagine they could have recycled a lot of assets from previous AC games.
That sucks, but recycling it or "half assing" it in any way would be met by similar complaints of "wow so female characters are not worth as much time???!?!!". Better to put as much work as possible into one to make it shine imo.
I'm not sure how deep the character customization system is going to be but that seems kind of ridiculous. I'd imagine the developers didn't get together and say "Hey, let's screw over female gamers!" but I'd also imagine they could have recycled a lot of assets from previous AC games.
Considering the very style of the characters is completely different now that the game is set in a newer Era, they can't really recycle all that much, what they can recycle may as well be redone from scratch. Another thing to keep in mind is that the entire workflow has changed to suit the new rendering engines use nowadays. Textures aren't the same, nor are shaders, higher specs = higher rez textures, more maps, etc.
Despite the fact that Ubi has a huge budget, they're also developing several games at once. I think it is a fair reason to not have female characters, not sure what everyone is so upset about.
I'm not sure how deep the character customization system is going to be but that seems kind of ridiculous. I'd imagine the developers didn't get together and say "Hey, let's screw over female gamers!" but I'd also imagine they could have recycled a lot of assets from previous AC games.
No they didn't say "let's screw them over". They said " eh they aren't worth our time/ money and giving more clothes options is more important than gender options". It's a crappy excuse especially coming from a company that's pulling in over a billion dollars a year. They can certainly afford female characters they just deemed them unimportant.
EDIT : I misunderstood how mulitplayer was implemented. I thought you would control a custom avatar when you played with friends. Apparently that is not the case you will only ever get to see yourself as the main character. So I understand why they cut female characters still kinda sucks.
People are really blowing that gender thing out of proportion, and many have no idea what it takes to add a gender to a game.
Although its not nearly as much work to do as Ubi has said in interviews (you wouldnt have to double your animations, for instance. Retargetting works for 90% of animations), It's also not as little work as Jonathan Cooper says. It would certainly take more than 2 days to add a female assassin. Maybe 2 days to adjust some core animations (walk/run/idle, mainly), but to create the assassin, rig her, implement her into the game, and do all the testing... WAY more than two days. Not to mention all the custom stuff you would have to do for in-game cinematics, custom tracks to adjust contact points and such.
People hear "resources" and think of only money. But it's so much more than just money. The game has to be done by a specific time. Time is a resource, and when there isn't enough time, things get cut. It really is as simple as that. I highly doubt they made that decision lightly, either.
It sucks for the people who want to play as a female character but I suppose these things are inevitable in game development. A lot of people seem to be trying to turn this story to make Ubisoft look sexist which is unfortunate.
I don't really do a whole lot of work with animation so my knowledge of the topic is quite limited. I think it's quite fair to assume it would be a ton of work to implement a fully functional female character given the fact that there won't even be unique characters to choose from in the multiplayer mode since they seem to have the same system as Watch Dogs where you always see yourself as the protagonist character (most likely because he would be one of the most detailed characters in the game in terms of graphics.)
I hope the game will be successful though, it looks great!
The only reason people are making an issue of it is because the way it was originally phrased, made it sound like, from a cost perspective female characters in co-op didn't make sense and was cut from the game. Basically, making your game inclusive costs too much.
I'm also guessing if the game is currently content locked adding a brand new character is pretty much impossible, unless it's day one DLC. And if they do that, even for free, people will spin and piss on it anyway
I don't think it makes Ubi look sexist ... but it sure goes to show that the producers in charge were not exactly planning things properly if, *indeed*, having playable female characters was a planned feature which eventually got cut because of a lack of "resources".
Had it been really planned from day one/preproduction, it certainly would have made it to the game without problems.
Even FPS games like Blacklight and CoD:Ghosts have playable female characters now ; yet before these got added, a lot of people were assuming that female characters in competitive FPSes were "not possible" because of unsolvable hitbox problems or incompatible animation rigs. Turns out, it works perfectly fine when done well, and looks very cool and refreshing.
Replies
Looks fab! I might actually play a AC game if it ships looking this good!
Just to clarify: You think Watch Dogs looks like garbage?
It is currently a reddit fad to hate on Watch Dog's original graphics vs. the latest gameplay videos. It's a PC master race thing, I think.
Both look gorgeous to me. The teams are kicking ass!
classy
I don't go on Reddit, so I don't really know what you're talking about.
Oh, sorry, I guess I should just get hyped for graphics that I will never see.
Why are you here?
Then go to reddit and wallow away
People that will appreciate you. Now that you've come and laid your stinky turd in this thread, move along and bother someone else.
Adam says that this is how the game actually looks, and he's one of the art leads (and a well-respected member of the forum who wouldn't lie about such a thing), so I think it's true.
To quote a great man:
Maybe we should all just calm down here.
Yeah, I'm sorry, you really stuck it to Adam, good job! We're all very impressed.
You're mistaking my skepticism for hostility.
AC:U is looking tasty!
From the new trailer they revealed, it is clear the the game still looks beautiful, and so I think it's safe to say at least the PC version of the game will look incredible, even if the console version somehow ends up poorly.
I find it hard to believe that somebody could honestly believe that a game like Watch Dogs looks bad. As somebody who occasionally visits reddit, nothing pisses me off more than reading some of their ignorant comments about game development. The people there compare game engines like middleschoolers at a lunch table, how much credibility could they even have?
The best is when they say "as a game developer myself, I believe *inserts stupid comment about how all devs are lazy and greedy assholes and that all games are made to steal your money*"
Anyway, I think this discussion got derailed a bit. Personally, I'd love to see a breakdown of some of the assets shown in this video although unfortunately I'm not too sure if that would be allowed until after the game gets released. Since adam works on the development team, maybe he could also chime in on the story a bit. The only AC game I played was AC1 and I enjoyed it, would I still be able to understand the story or would I have to finish every other AC game?
its looking absolutely stunning, cracking job. the crowd shot at the end looked super impressive. It looks like one of those awesome digic pre-rendered trailers!
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-11-13-epic-expects-next-gen-game-costs-to-double
Through your experience so far on this project, what are your thoughts on this? If you can, in a quick broad sense, talk about some of the pipeline improvements that speed things up for you guys at Ubi? Thanks
Amen to that, didn't seem to get into AC3 a whole lot, AC:BF is awesome though, artwork is amazing too
Yeah come on, show us some skin adam
Would be interesting to know if this is using physically based materials/lighting/stuff like most other engines are now.
Amoung many other things, my team in particular is responsible for Neo-classic landmarks found in Paris. Palais du Luxembourgh, featured in the coop demo seen below, is one of ours. Really proud of the team and meticulous they are with their details, and more importantly, story telling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2l96w7tw5s
I'm not sure how deep the character customization system is going to be but that seems kind of ridiculous. I'd imagine the developers didn't get together and say "Hey, let's screw over female gamers!" but I'd also imagine they could have recycled a lot of assets from previous AC games.
That sucks, but recycling it or "half assing" it in any way would be met by similar complaints of "wow so female characters are not worth as much time???!?!!". Better to put as much work as possible into one to make it shine imo.
Considering the very style of the characters is completely different now that the game is set in a newer Era, they can't really recycle all that much, what they can recycle may as well be redone from scratch. Another thing to keep in mind is that the entire workflow has changed to suit the new rendering engines use nowadays. Textures aren't the same, nor are shaders, higher specs = higher rez textures, more maps, etc.
Despite the fact that Ubi has a huge budget, they're also developing several games at once. I think it is a fair reason to not have female characters, not sure what everyone is so upset about.
No they didn't say "let's screw them over". They said " eh they aren't worth our time/ money and giving more clothes options is more important than gender options". It's a crappy excuse especially coming from a company that's pulling in over a billion dollars a year. They can certainly afford female characters they just deemed them unimportant.
EDIT : I misunderstood how mulitplayer was implemented. I thought you would control a custom avatar when you played with friends. Apparently that is not the case you will only ever get to see yourself as the main character. So I understand why they cut female characters still kinda sucks.
Although its not nearly as much work to do as Ubi has said in interviews (you wouldnt have to double your animations, for instance. Retargetting works for 90% of animations), It's also not as little work as Jonathan Cooper says. It would certainly take more than 2 days to add a female assassin. Maybe 2 days to adjust some core animations (walk/run/idle, mainly), but to create the assassin, rig her, implement her into the game, and do all the testing... WAY more than two days. Not to mention all the custom stuff you would have to do for in-game cinematics, custom tracks to adjust contact points and such.
People hear "resources" and think of only money. But it's so much more than just money. The game has to be done by a specific time. Time is a resource, and when there isn't enough time, things get cut. It really is as simple as that. I highly doubt they made that decision lightly, either.
I don't really do a whole lot of work with animation so my knowledge of the topic is quite limited. I think it's quite fair to assume it would be a ton of work to implement a fully functional female character given the fact that there won't even be unique characters to choose from in the multiplayer mode since they seem to have the same system as Watch Dogs where you always see yourself as the protagonist character (most likely because he would be one of the most detailed characters in the game in terms of graphics.)
I hope the game will be successful though, it looks great!
Had it been really planned from day one/preproduction, it certainly would have made it to the game without problems.
Even FPS games like Blacklight and CoD:Ghosts have playable female characters now ; yet before these got added, a lot of people were assuming that female characters in competitive FPSes were "not possible" because of unsolvable hitbox problems or incompatible animation rigs. Turns out, it works perfectly fine when done well, and looks very cool and refreshing.
I know the devs aren't to blame, hopefully the suits start to notice.