Cross platform development hasnt gone that great so far, especially for the PS3. .
Hmm, wait what? Total opposite, cross platform development goes pretty well, specially now that we are getting the hang of it. Beginning of the generation was a bit bad, but nowadays?
Being an artist and as a gamer, question is do we really need all that eye candy. more more more real thing in games when the stories are same, like some country fighting with another country or you are top assassin who can turn off lights and people cant see you. While the real fact is that when once 30 AK 47 rounds fly over your head your shell shocked and hiding behind cover. IMO Next Gen should involve more creativity in terms that people can actually learn some thing out of them instead of just wasting 100+ hours of their time getting prestige .
I know games are entertainment a time pass after hard work for some but seriously in my 11 years of gaming i am tired of seeing same stuff over and over again but with better graphics and new hardware, and people investing load of money into updating new GFX.
yes i agree for the most part... that will be where the biggest extra spends will be, needs to be as my girlfreinds says " it looks good but he moves like robot" @uncharted 3 which lets face it is deffinatly above the curve in character movement
i think this next-next-gen will be the generation of soft surfaces or non-surfaced objects, nice alpha, sub surface lighting, soft/3d particles really good fog and volumetric techniques which are nearly there anyway
Hmm, wait what? Total opposite, cross platform development goes pretty well, specially now that we are getting the hang of it. Beginning of the generation was a bit bad, but nowadays?
I suppose from the perspective of development but it doesnt seem like it from the end result on certain games especially from the PS3 perspective.
But thats not really my point, a console having its own well built default engine could make cross platform development for that console easier.
You can't have ubiquitous engine technology. You will always have developers with particular needs who invest in proprietary tech. Properietary technology is also equity.
Well... the first round of titles on new hardware normally looks only slightly better than on the last generation of hardware so some studios will take what they have now and polish it up for launch others might create it something specific from scratch but that's a pretty big gamble. However they do benefit from a limited library, less choices means more people buying your title.
I personally think they need to carefully manage the hardware overlap and make sure that you can get on their network with whatever system you have. What hardware you have determines what games you can play but I don't think they should separate the pools of customers and force people to start over on a new network, that would be suicide.
From an artist/animator standpoint, I say bring it! I welcome new hardware, new specs and new ways to work.
Super Awesome Attitude!
Realtime radiosity, precise dynamic self-shadowing soft Shadow compositions, polygons, resolution, tessellation, synched aural foley landscapes orchestrated as intrinsically as the score.
Screw the implications of what realism brings to the table...
because every passionate ARTIST should have the ability to be inspired by FIDELITY and all the promise a technologically blessed future offers.
I am betting the talented and courageous here make this gen seem like a tacky plastic 8 track nightmare?
Tired of being layed-off,
what a community of game artists should be doing with the writing on the wall apparent as it were...
Would be to grow some buisness savvy this time around.
Now is definitely the time to invest in breaking launch cycles with a wallet emptying next gen 2.0 certified porn strategy for a next gen release that sells that hardware!
It's not as if we do not know what technologies are emerging. AND
it is not as if we are not aware of where the future 22nm hardware roadmaps lead?
For what my 2 cents are worth? The next gen 2.0 threads that actually flesh out the best pipelines strategies will make the biggest community difference.
speaking of engine strategies...
I am really hoping that awesome minds are at Autodesk taking part in Project Skyline...
Even if the Proprietary methods serve individual developers better, then even more reason for a "common" path an army of creatives could be familiar with to realize graphic/gameplay asset fidelity at DCC stages. http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/stevenr/project_skyline_at_siggraph
Biggest possible drawback to progress I can imagine might be net bandwidth. I suppose hoping for the best of all worlds with a new world next gen Broadband realized in a big way to be released soon-ish with new shiny consoles is asking fer to much? .
Or it could mean more games like Uncharted, Gears, and Arkham City.
I think we're going to do away with reactionary development methods, and be forced to be VERY VERY smart and efficient with it. I predict something similar to Pixar/Valve, where it seems like 75% of the development is spent in Pre-Production. Iterating happens early, not towards the end.
How many professionals here have made a full character, just to have the AD change the direction of the character, then do something that changes the system you do the hair, then add a new piece of tech 6 months before shipping that requires a complete redo of certain parts (thus leading to inevitable bugs, rounds of QA, and delays?)
I think almost every development I have ever been a part of had some kind of organic management that would make decisions that required massive overhauls quite late in a project.
How many professionals here have made a full character, just to have the AD change the direction of the character, then do something that changes the system you do the hair, then add a new piece of tech 6 months before shipping that requires a complete redo of certain parts (thus leading to inevitable bugs, rounds of QA, and delays?)
I think almost every development I have ever been a part of had some kind of organic management that would make decisions that required massive overhauls quite late in a project.
Oh god, this is so true, and so f'n annoying when it happens. Which seems to be almost always. I can't even count how many times I had to waste time basically redoing shit that didn't need to get redone. They don't research this stuff properly, just go off of a gut feeling as to what's cool, then after it's all done they come up with some "small" change. Small to them, but it means a complete re-do in a lot of cases.
So many wasted man-hours... could have done stuff that's either twice as good, or twice as many things, if it were just thought out beforehand.
Not only that, but lords of shadows has a locked camera and thus a focus of detail (and lack of it elsewhere) due to that, if you would be able to turn around in that game it would break completely, much like god of war series.
The witcher 2 has a free camera.
But yes, one can argue art styles.
I'm talking execution, not style, in this case.
I would make the case that castlevania's team makes MUCH better use of the technical limitations -- they're getting more bang for their buck in terms of shapes, surface details, material definition, lights, and shadows to convey the scenes they want to make. The things we look to tech to achieve are being better achieved in los than in the witcher.
Yeah, they had to make compromises and specific decisions to achieve that, but that's exactly the point i'm trying to make -- The teams with good technical and artistic direction will continue to make gorgeous games on whatever tech they've got, and it's always been that way. The scary part is getting good enough as an artist to get hired onto those teams
It's probably because i'm NOT already in the industry, and as such i lack the experience of having to deal with whatever who i'm working for tells me to do, but as far as i see it the secret to dealing with tech is to become a great artist. I never see any of the GIANTS in concept, character, or environment art around forums posting in threads like this -- they seem pretty confident that they're going to get to work on awesome shit and get paid well regardless of where the tech goes. And the tech artists/programmers posting in this thread dont seem too worried either, so... Shouldn't we be spending our time EITHER getting better at art or learning programming, instead of hemming and hawwing over what might happen if we can't change with the times?
Oh god, this is so true, and so f'n annoying when it happens. Which seems to be almost always. I can't even count how many times I had to waste time basically redoing shit that didn't need to get redone. They don't research this stuff properly, just go off of a gut feeling as to what's cool, then after it's all done they come up with some "small" change. Small to them, but it means a complete re-do in a lot of cases.
So many wasted man-hours... could have done stuff that's either twice as good, or twice as many things, if it were just thought out beforehand.
It was brought up in the Crunchcast, all the superstar studios have a very iterative development cycle, that means changing and redoing stuff until it's awesome.
I don't like the idea of rages ultra textures, because it means more baking, I'd be happier if we stayed away from that, though painting the terrain that way looked fun. Completely real time lighting really excites me, I just hope we get more options for shaders, more real time reflections, minimize popping, ssd drives with less loading, better streaming. I really hope for a ssd hdd hybrid system.
You figure the ps3/xbox 360 came out over 7 years ago!? Meanwhile, tech has been in development, Witcher is a fantastic example of this. I don't believe the jump from this gen to the next to be that big of a deal. Really what it means is now devs, will have more lavish budgets. I can`t even tell you how many times I`ve had a super sad face realizing the constraints that the current gen brings to the table.
Are there any dx11 features that are going to require a vast amount of understanding? Mesh tessalation uses a simple height map no?
I`d say just be glad you aren't making the leap from 2d spritebased sega/nes -to- the 3d n64 playstation. Thats such a game changer I imagine many people back then straight rage quit.
It was brought up in the Crunchcast, all the superstar studios have a very iterative development cycle, that means changing and redoing stuff until it's awesome.
I think people sometimes might interpret this incorrectly (not saying those guys did, haven't watched it) as in its a mad rush and everyone is redoing everything 30 times over for 4 years and I don't see that as the case. Normally those studios are really good at planning and visualizing what it is they want to do, but they aren't totally married to the idea and the creative people keep their egos in check and are willing to toss things out if they aren't working.
I look at smart iteration like sketching or thumbnailing before committing the time and resources to flesh something out fully. You can spend a little bit of time testing part of an idea that's cheap and easy to crank out. Also because its such an early idea and no one has really invested much time in it, there will be less people married to it and less tantrums thrown when it gets tossed or changed. What do I care if a gray box level gets tweaked I spent 3hrs making it.
I also think it makes for much more stunning concept art that matches the actual environments if the "finalized" concept art is drawn over the gray boxing. It also takes the pressure off the concept guys to be game play gurus and it helps the environment artists because they have a much more clear picture of how the vision translate to their specific environment.
Also I hear that some concept artists like to paint over a simplified gray box environment, it helps them handle things like perspective and scale.
So instead of getting a super vague concept and using it as a style guide for 5min then barely bothering to check it again, the "keepers of the vision" now have a much more effective way of directly inspiring their team in meaningful ways. It also leaves the environment team less room to fuck up the vision while still giving them the creative freedom to add to it.
Next gen will be less about a graphical leap than ever before. Sure, the hardware will be much better, but the initial graphical leap in game tech and art will be imperceptible next to current PC games like Battlefield 3.
So what's the selling point? Certainly Sony can't put out a $900 PS4 and expect anybody to buy it on the back of "MOAR GRAPHICS."
Next Gen will be defined by the declining retail market more than anything else. MS/Apple/Sony understand that they are making a platform for digital content delivery, not just big AAA games, but also small XBLA games, free to play games, social games, but potentially more importantly: TV and Movies. A new way of interacting with your tv/games, that's the selling point.
Apple *is* doing this which means MS and Sony need to strike preemptively or be disrupted. Believe it or not, there are lots of people that would happily never own another "game box" if their TV played Wii Sports and Just Dance. The PS2/Wii era market penetration is the realm of iTV.
I work at Bethesda so please don't remind me that AAA blockbusters aren't going away. I know, I know. I like those games too. Yes, we will always have them and they will get more uber. It's great.
But that's not the highest end of the market. The highest end is $100/month TV & Movie subscriptions that people currently pay to the likes of Comcast and Verizon. The highest end of the games market is not even MW3, it's WoW.
The next gen is about making and owning the living room software & services *platform*. Look at how well Apple and Google have done on the backs of iOS and Android. Everybody wants to do that in the living room. The competition is not between Xbox 720 and PS4, the competition is between:
- iTV platform
- Xbox Live platform
- PSN platform
- Google TV platform
- Steam platform (which is remarkably well positioned to be relevant in the living room)
That is what matters and is what will define the next gen.
It was brought up in the Crunchcast, all the superstar studios have a very iterative development cycle, that means changing and redoing stuff until it's awesome.
Mark already said it.
But yeah, I'm not talking about a few years where a clear vision gets refined over and over.
I'm talking about projects that run for under a year, where there's less than 5 minutes of pre-production done. Then when you finally finish a character, and they see it, they decide that it's no good and then change it completely. In a 9 month project it can be devastating to change something like that a couple of months before launch. And it happens so much. It's purely due to a lack of pre-production.
Yeah I think thats the one thing with hardware it doesnt matter too much about processors and graphics(as long as latest), its got to have at least 4gb of dedicated non shared ram.
Hair is something that I feel even film doesn't quite get right. So I'm not sure what kind of tech the next generation could give us that would work really.
What I'd like to see is better alpha overall. Alpha is always such a performance hit, and always has tons of sorting errors and whatnot. You could even do decent hair if your engine handles alphas properly.
But yeah, I'm not talking about a few years where a clear vision gets refined over and over.
I'm talking about projects that run for under a year, where there's less than 5 minutes of pre-production done. Then when you finally finish a character, and they see it, they decide that it's no good and then change it completely. In a 9 month project it can be devastating to change something like that a couple of months before launch. And it happens so much. It's purely due to a lack of pre-production.
Sometimes im just shocked to find out some games took 4+ years to make.
I dont know how many of those games i swear seemed like 1-2 year developments
Sometimes im just shocked to find out some games took 4+ years to make.
I dont know how many of those games i swear seemed like 1-2 year developments
I thought you were aware of the fact that it also depends on the company's investment(s)?
Like if they dont see any progress or "epic" reviews via their "leaked news about the games that are in development." They are either pushed to the very bottom of their game development's list or they just discard and start over.
Hair is something that I feel even film doesn't quite get right. So I'm not sure what kind of tech the next generation could give us that would work really.
What I'd like to see is better alpha overall. Alpha is always such a performance hit, and always has tons of sorting errors and whatnot. You could even do decent hair if your engine handles alphas properly.
Don't expect a giant leap any time soon. Hair, along with cloth is still a nightmare for us film guys.
Sometimes im just shocked to find out some games took 4+ years to make.
I dont know how many of those games i swear seemed like 1-2 year developments
As with most things, you're looking at the end result and thinking it's a 2 year project at best when in reality you're missing all of the iteration and thrashing that goes on.
It's like when I was making Quake levels back in the day ... I can look at some of those levels now and think, "I could do that over a weekend!". Which is true from a tech point of view but from a creative standpoint, it takes a lot longer than that.
Another example is drumming. I see comments all the time from people who comment on drum solos on YouTube saying they could totally play that and therefore the drummer isn't that great. Sure, you can play it ... but could you write it?
Don't expect a giant leap any time soon. Hair, along with cloth is still a nightmare for us film guys.
I dont think anyone expects it to be photorealistic, but now we might actually HAVE cloth and hair, and not just static/hax. Nvidias hair-tech demos are pretty nice, so is apex cloth : )
I dont think anyone expects it to be photorealistic, but now we might actually HAVE cloth and hair, and not just static/hax. Nvidias hair-tech demos are pretty nice, so is apex cloth : )
I remember Alice 2 having great hair. Was that a prebaked simulation or was it purely dynamic?
But yeah, I'm not talking about a few years where a clear vision gets refined over and over.
I'm talking about projects that run for under a year, where there's less than 5 minutes of pre-production done. Then when you finally finish a character, and they see it, they decide that it's no good and then change it completely. In a 9 month project it can be devastating to change something like that a couple of months before launch. And it happens so much. It's purely due to a lack of pre-production.
i can assure you that this isn't only a problem to small or short productions, 5 years of development you#ve got a lot of time for redesign :P
more breathing room to allow skin hair and clothing advancements would be nice ( free to implement any self collision, muscle systems, more bones, new bone technologies, complex morph blending, ik blending )
Having an advanced final skin and it's system's end results as the final sculpt I think would add as much to the end result ( animated and rag-dolled ) than detailed tessellated lod.
Regardless of the CG arts through out the generations. I am sure if the game has crappy (previous gen graphics) and it is fun as hell, it will sell in the current generation.
Like World of warcraft and warcraft that is like what, 3 generations behind in terms of graphics, but their game pay and story lines covers it.
I still want to know what changes will be made as far as asset creation, i mean you guys have said that polycounts and such arent going to change that much, i still believe they are going to change, for all we know asset creation and implementation could change drastically, im excited to see what happens the use for normal maps may drop majorly and it may all be about building the asset to look good and then the normal map just adds that little extra polish, who knows though, maybe it will just be rendering and shading
I hope better tools and 100% real-time lighting will make things a lot easier. You don't need to sculpt the shit out of every brick in an environment, that's bad workflow imo, you just need to know how to (re)use your assets intelligently and specially know where to put your focus on. I see a lot of newcomer environment artists these days spending countless hours sculpting the shit out of props, while they should be learning architecture, texture reusability, lighting, composition, etc... no point in having all the shader power on your hands if you don't how to use them properly!
I think the next thing everyone will have to get used to and adopt into the pipeline will be dynamic and even animated tessellation. I think its going to be difficult to pull off at first because there aren't many tools that allow artists to iterate quickly and test how things look. So the uses will be limited and restrained to what can be done easily. Hopefully over time the uses will progress past just up-resing rock walls and dirt paths and we'll see some really creative things done with it.
I HOPE that we get to see some advancements in animation, specifically the incorporation of vertex animation for faces instead of the clunky bone based systems we use now.
I HOPE that we are allowed to animate the scale on bones and that we can increase bone counts significantly.
I HOPE we can use more dynamic solutions on characters for secondary motion, or sliding skin or muscle bulges.
Fighting games With only two hero characters can afford to experience some next gen 2.0 joy on not only poly/joint texture res budgets but git to play with muscle systems. One might draw inspiration from good examples of as much.
In action on fight night 4 does anyone know the process they used for this muscle system?
this:
Fighting games With only two hero characters can afford to experience some next gen 2.0 joy on not only poly/joint texture res budgets but git to play with muscle systems. One might draw inspiration from good examples of as much.
In action on fight night 4 does anyone know the process they used for this muscle system?
this:
Seems like not just joint transform/blend movement/morph and jiggle but I see some nice self collision as well?
I'm not an animator, but I've spent some time day dreaming blending 2 normal maps to get the muscles to tense up and flex during movement and animation. Metal Gear Solid 4 did something similar with wrinkles,
So how did they express the wrinkles on Snake's face? They used a technique that blended two normal maps; one with wrinkles and one without. The team also used this animation with blended normal map values in other facial animation work, as will be described later in this article.
Basically how I image it would work; you do 2 sculpts of the character, one tensed up and flexing, one normal. You would do some sort of tension map that animates vertex colors areas depending on how much an area is stretched, and use that as the starting point, and some how have it animated able by hand.
That's one way of doing it. Another quick and dirty method would be to use bone rotation values to drive blending between two maps via expressions (maya)
I've been curious about muscle simulation lately. Found a pdf that describes a way to procedurally animate extra bones that represent muscles. Linked it in this thread here:
Replies
Hmm, wait what? Total opposite, cross platform development goes pretty well, specially now that we are getting the hang of it. Beginning of the generation was a bit bad, but nowadays?
I know games are entertainment a time pass after hard work for some but seriously in my 11 years of gaming i am tired of seeing same stuff over and over again but with better graphics and new hardware, and people investing load of money into updating new GFX.
Woa now, that CoD2 screenshot is from the last-gen port to PS2 and such.
Looked more like this:
I suppose from the perspective of development but it doesnt seem like it from the end result on certain games especially from the PS3 perspective.
But thats not really my point, a console having its own well built default engine could make cross platform development for that console easier.
Skyward Sword has an amazing art direction, but looks like ass on my Wii. Playing it on Dolphin @ 1080p is the way to go.
That said, unreal is very popular.
Super Awesome Attitude!
Realtime radiosity, precise dynamic self-shadowing soft Shadow compositions, polygons, resolution, tessellation, synched aural foley landscapes orchestrated as intrinsically as the score.
Screw the implications of what realism brings to the table...
because every passionate ARTIST should have the ability to be inspired by FIDELITY and all the promise a technologically blessed future offers.
I am betting the talented and courageous here make this gen seem like a tacky plastic 8 track nightmare?
Tired of being layed-off,
what a community of game artists should be doing with the writing on the wall apparent as it were...
Would be to grow some buisness savvy this time around.
Now is definitely the time to invest in breaking launch cycles with a wallet emptying next gen 2.0 certified porn strategy for a next gen release that sells that hardware!
It's not as if we do not know what technologies are emerging. AND
it is not as if we are not aware of where the future 22nm hardware roadmaps lead?
For what my 2 cents are worth? The next gen 2.0 threads that actually flesh out the best pipelines strategies will make the biggest community difference.
speaking of engine strategies...
I am really hoping that awesome minds are at Autodesk taking part in Project Skyline...
Even if the Proprietary methods serve individual developers better, then even more reason for a "common" path an army of creatives could be familiar with to realize graphic/gameplay asset fidelity at DCC stages.
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/stevenr/project_skyline_at_siggraph
Biggest possible drawback to progress I can imagine might be net bandwidth. I suppose hoping for the best of all worlds with a new world next gen Broadband realized in a big way to be released soon-ish with new shiny consoles is asking fer to much?
it means longer hours and worse pay. nobodys going to pay double for a game just cos it costs twice as much to make.
Could be the cynic in me talking though....
I think we're going to do away with reactionary development methods, and be forced to be VERY VERY smart and efficient with it. I predict something similar to Pixar/Valve, where it seems like 75% of the development is spent in Pre-Production. Iterating happens early, not towards the end.
How many professionals here have made a full character, just to have the AD change the direction of the character, then do something that changes the system you do the hair, then add a new piece of tech 6 months before shipping that requires a complete redo of certain parts (thus leading to inevitable bugs, rounds of QA, and delays?)
I think almost every development I have ever been a part of had some kind of organic management that would make decisions that required massive overhauls quite late in a project.
Oh god, this is so true, and so f'n annoying when it happens. Which seems to be almost always. I can't even count how many times I had to waste time basically redoing shit that didn't need to get redone. They don't research this stuff properly, just go off of a gut feeling as to what's cool, then after it's all done they come up with some "small" change. Small to them, but it means a complete re-do in a lot of cases.
So many wasted man-hours... could have done stuff that's either twice as good, or twice as many things, if it were just thought out beforehand.
I'm talking execution, not style, in this case.
I would make the case that castlevania's team makes MUCH better use of the technical limitations -- they're getting more bang for their buck in terms of shapes, surface details, material definition, lights, and shadows to convey the scenes they want to make. The things we look to tech to achieve are being better achieved in los than in the witcher.
Yeah, they had to make compromises and specific decisions to achieve that, but that's exactly the point i'm trying to make -- The teams with good technical and artistic direction will continue to make gorgeous games on whatever tech they've got, and it's always been that way. The scary part is getting good enough as an artist to get hired onto those teams
It's probably because i'm NOT already in the industry, and as such i lack the experience of having to deal with whatever who i'm working for tells me to do, but as far as i see it the secret to dealing with tech is to become a great artist. I never see any of the GIANTS in concept, character, or environment art around forums posting in threads like this -- they seem pretty confident that they're going to get to work on awesome shit and get paid well regardless of where the tech goes. And the tech artists/programmers posting in this thread dont seem too worried either, so... Shouldn't we be spending our time EITHER getting better at art or learning programming, instead of hemming and hawwing over what might happen if we can't change with the times?
It was brought up in the Crunchcast, all the superstar studios have a very iterative development cycle, that means changing and redoing stuff until it's awesome.
again with the penis talk...what is with you guys. >.<
BEHOLD!! The next, next, next, next, next, next, next, next, *takes a sip of the tea*, next, next, next, next, gen game developing studio.
You figure the ps3/xbox 360 came out over 7 years ago!? Meanwhile, tech has been in development, Witcher is a fantastic example of this. I don't believe the jump from this gen to the next to be that big of a deal. Really what it means is now devs, will have more lavish budgets. I can`t even tell you how many times I`ve had a super sad face realizing the constraints that the current gen brings to the table.
Are there any dx11 features that are going to require a vast amount of understanding? Mesh tessalation uses a simple height map no?
I`d say just be glad you aren't making the leap from 2d spritebased sega/nes -to- the 3d n64 playstation. Thats such a game changer I imagine many people back then straight rage quit.
QFT...also my vote for actually edible games
I look at smart iteration like sketching or thumbnailing before committing the time and resources to flesh something out fully. You can spend a little bit of time testing part of an idea that's cheap and easy to crank out. Also because its such an early idea and no one has really invested much time in it, there will be less people married to it and less tantrums thrown when it gets tossed or changed. What do I care if a gray box level gets tweaked I spent 3hrs making it.
I also think it makes for much more stunning concept art that matches the actual environments if the "finalized" concept art is drawn over the gray boxing. It also takes the pressure off the concept guys to be game play gurus and it helps the environment artists because they have a much more clear picture of how the vision translate to their specific environment.
Also I hear that some concept artists like to paint over a simplified gray box environment, it helps them handle things like perspective and scale.
So instead of getting a super vague concept and using it as a style guide for 5min then barely bothering to check it again, the "keepers of the vision" now have a much more effective way of directly inspiring their team in meaningful ways. It also leaves the environment team less room to fuck up the vision while still giving them the creative freedom to add to it.
So what's the selling point? Certainly Sony can't put out a $900 PS4 and expect anybody to buy it on the back of "MOAR GRAPHICS."
Next Gen will be defined by the declining retail market more than anything else. MS/Apple/Sony understand that they are making a platform for digital content delivery, not just big AAA games, but also small XBLA games, free to play games, social games, but potentially more importantly: TV and Movies. A new way of interacting with your tv/games, that's the selling point.
Apple *is* doing this which means MS and Sony need to strike preemptively or be disrupted. Believe it or not, there are lots of people that would happily never own another "game box" if their TV played Wii Sports and Just Dance. The PS2/Wii era market penetration is the realm of iTV.
I work at Bethesda so please don't remind me that AAA blockbusters aren't going away. I know, I know. I like those games too. Yes, we will always have them and they will get more uber. It's great.
But that's not the highest end of the market. The highest end is $100/month TV & Movie subscriptions that people currently pay to the likes of Comcast and Verizon. The highest end of the games market is not even MW3, it's WoW.
The next gen is about making and owning the living room software & services *platform*. Look at how well Apple and Google have done on the backs of iOS and Android. Everybody wants to do that in the living room. The competition is not between Xbox 720 and PS4, the competition is between:
- iTV platform
- Xbox Live platform
- PSN platform
- Google TV platform
- Steam platform (which is remarkably well positioned to be relevant in the living room)
That is what matters and is what will define the next gen.
Mark already said it.
But yeah, I'm not talking about a few years where a clear vision gets refined over and over.
I'm talking about projects that run for under a year, where there's less than 5 minutes of pre-production done. Then when you finally finish a character, and they see it, they decide that it's no good and then change it completely. In a 9 month project it can be devastating to change something like that a couple of months before launch. And it happens so much. It's purely due to a lack of pre-production.
I feel like I can make anything I want in the current generation. I just can't make it as dynamic and as interactive as I want.
I want to make awesome graphics without having to bake anything
What I'd like to see is better alpha overall. Alpha is always such a performance hit, and always has tons of sorting errors and whatnot. You could even do decent hair if your engine handles alphas properly.
Sometimes im just shocked to find out some games took 4+ years to make.
I dont know how many of those games i swear seemed like 1-2 year developments
I thought you were aware of the fact that it also depends on the company's investment(s)?
Like if they dont see any progress or "epic" reviews via their "leaked news about the games that are in development." They are either pushed to the very bottom of their game development's list or they just discard and start over.
Don't expect a giant leap any time soon. Hair, along with cloth is still a nightmare for us film guys.
As with most things, you're looking at the end result and thinking it's a 2 year project at best when in reality you're missing all of the iteration and thrashing that goes on.
It's like when I was making Quake levels back in the day ... I can look at some of those levels now and think, "I could do that over a weekend!". Which is true from a tech point of view but from a creative standpoint, it takes a lot longer than that.
Another example is drumming. I see comments all the time from people who comment on drum solos on YouTube saying they could totally play that and therefore the drummer isn't that great. Sure, you can play it ... but could you write it?
I dont think anyone expects it to be photorealistic, but now we might actually HAVE cloth and hair, and not just static/hax.
I remember Alice 2 having great hair. Was that a prebaked simulation or was it purely dynamic?
Brickmaps!
i can assure you that this isn't only a problem to small or short productions, 5 years of development you#ve got a lot of time for redesign :P
Having an advanced final skin and it's system's end results as the final sculpt I think would add as much to the end result ( animated and rag-dolled ) than detailed tessellated lod.
Like World of warcraft and warcraft that is like what, 3 generations behind in terms of graphics, but their game pay and story lines covers it.
The other one is minecraft.
just a thought.
I think it was a nifty shader of some sort.
Bad management? Terrible publisher requests? Useless vertical slices?
Fighting games With only two hero characters can afford to experience some next gen 2.0 joy on not only poly/joint texture res budgets but git to play with muscle systems. One might draw inspiration from good examples of as much.
In action on fight night 4 does anyone know the process they used for this muscle system?
this:
The kind of power that beefier than Maxwell inspires, Or an army of these:
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Seems like not just joint transform/blend movement/morph and jiggle but I see some nice self collision as well?
I'm not an animator, but I've spent some time day dreaming blending 2 normal maps to get the muscles to tense up and flex during movement and animation. Metal Gear Solid 4 did something similar with wrinkles,
Basically how I image it would work; you do 2 sculpts of the character, one tensed up and flexing, one normal. You would do some sort of tension map that animates vertex colors areas depending on how much an area is stretched, and use that as the starting point, and some how have it animated able by hand.
http://freesdk.crydev.net/display/SDKDOC3/Creating+Wrinkle+Maps
Basic stuff should apply to other engines as well, pretty sure you can do that in UDK? (correct me if Im wrong)
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=65874
But I guess nobody has any experience with it yet.