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MGS4 realtime devkit demo (movie)

Daz
Daz
polycounter lvl 18
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Daz polycounter lvl 18
Some insightful (and sometimes amusing) stuff in here:

"As for the hair, I think you can actually see the streaming hairs in the demo, They are reproduced by 60,000 vertices primitives actually driven by physics simulation"

"The polygon amount for Snake's mustache is the same as one enemy soldier in MGS3...only in the mustache!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSDudPTOznE

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  • McIlroy
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    McIlroy polycounter lvl 17
    Wow MGS4 is very impressive real-time engine ! Looks like they are doing everything UE3 is doing ? Hard to believe such a massivly detailed model will be used in game ? Maybe that is just a higher LOD model used for the real-time cinematics ?
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    Yeah, whilst the engine clearly has all the appropriate bells & whistles, I think some stuff might have been lost and or exaggerated in translation. I would guess the enemy soldiers in MGS3 to be somewhere between 1000 and 1500 tris. To be putting those into a mustache seems excessive to say the least.
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    ooooooooooooold! smile.gif

    and i bet that this is indeed their cinematics model and if they really keep that overall level of detail for the final game and stick to their usual gameplay, then mgs4 might well offer less play-time than the first level of pacman.

    as for the hair and moustache - dunno. i have done 60k triangle haircuts for games in the past and that stuff ran realtime with skinning, alpha maps, et al on a PC, several characters on screen. if the ps3 is anywhere near they claim it to be, it should well beat that old opteron my stuff ran on.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    Oh, OK. If it's been posted already feel free to delete.
  • Toomas
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    Toomas polycounter lvl 18
    Remember most characters in MGS games wear masks, thats why they can blow insane amount of polys on the heads of non-masked characters.
  • Steve Schulze
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    Steve Schulze polycounter lvl 18
    Thats all well and good, but lets see how much of that fancy stiff actually makes it into a game engine where they can't afford to waste 60,000 polygons on the main character's moustache.
  • Gmanx
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    Gmanx polycounter lvl 19
    60,000 polies just to look gay? They could have done that with a pair of pink latex shorts on the texture sheet.. smile.gif
  • Sa74n
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    Sa74n polycounter lvl 18
    funny how long they praise the realtime lighting while the world shadows are still prerendered smile.gif hah doesnt look that revolutionary to me. even the sourceengine supports HDR, realtime lighting (afaik no selfshadowing tho) and camera+screens. and soon it will feature DoF, colour adjustments,motion blur and all this fancy stuff too.
  • rawkstar
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    rawkstar polycounter lvl 19
    actually it was 60,000 vertices for the hair... they never said how many polys the guy was, but i'm sure it was pretty high...

    it looked neat, i wish they showed more of what u could do with the devkit instead of just doing the usual wow look its got gazillion polys "yawn"

    the chick was really annoying to lol OOOOOOOH ... WOW... and then i don't know if its japanese etiquette or something, but she kept saying Hai after every sentence the dude said... lol that was a bit annoying.
  • Ninjas
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    Ninjas polycounter lvl 18
    Yeah. They say "hai" constantly. They do it about at the rate people nod when they listen to you (in the US).

    Yeah. Some cool shaders. The hair looks great, and a ton of polys on the character obviously. I'm interested to see some real gameplay footage. I don't think the quality will hold up so well.
  • Toomas
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    Toomas polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    but she kept saying Hai after every sentence the dude said... lol that was a bit annoying.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Its polite to let your conversation partner know that you are listening and understand what they are talking about.
    Its really awkward when you speak to someone and they dont let you know that they are listening but what the hell you tsurkas know about communicating anyways laugh.gif
  • swampbug
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    swampbug polycounter lvl 18
    The worst is in the phone, when someone doesnt occationally say.. "uuh huh.. ok,... yeah" I swear they've left and walked off somewhere.
  • rawkstar
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    rawkstar polycounter lvl 19
    but not every god damn sentence... HAI HAI HAI HAI HAI HAI HAI HAI ... DAMNIT SHUT UP!!! lol
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    well, on the subject of annoying phrases (i agree about the japanese "hai"-thing btw) my all time favourite must be "you know" as spoken a million times per interview on any US TV show (not sure, brits do not seem to use it that excessively?). really puts me off after a while.

    and as for MGS4: it's a demo. anyone working in the "biz" should know what this means. smoke and mirrors, especially with that console launch and all.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    and as for MGS4: it's a demo. anyone working in the "biz" should know what this means. smoke and mirrors, especially with that console launch and all.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Whilst being cautious is certainly valid in regard to pre-console launch demos, do not do the MGS team the disservice of forgetting that (whatever you think of the games themselves) they managed to squeeze more out of the PS2 than pretty much anybody, and certainly any western developer. Graphically their games always lived up to and often exceeded the hype. Their track record suggests there is no reason to believe MGS4 should be any different.
  • Toomas
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    Toomas polycounter lvl 18
    I doubt that Kojima would jump on the Sony hype wagon, they have their own reputation to worry about.
  • Joshua Stubbles
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    Joshua Stubbles polycounter lvl 19
    Especially when you look at the environments. You can clearly see that they are using rather low res textures and geometry, when compared to the characters. I think this could defineatly be what the end result will look like.

    Top notch work. Hideo has never let any of us down before smile.gif
  • Weiser_Cain
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    Weiser_Cain polycounter lvl 18
  • SouL
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    SouL polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]

    and as for MGS4: it's a demo. anyone working in the "biz" should know what this means. smoke and mirrors, especially with that console launch and all.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Looking at Metal Gear's track record, signs point to that the demo is "real"
    That particular team takes great pride in taking what's given to them and making the most of it. Everyone was super sceptical of the visual quality of MGS2. Particularly the in-game cutscenes shown throughout the game. A lot of people called them frauds and insisted that they were pre-rendered using in-game assets.
    After the game's release, Konami released a DVD documentary of MGS2 that featured the game's assets that could be viewed in real time. Upon close inspection... it's really evident that the character textures were low-resolution. But the way in which the characters were built and UV'd gave the textures such a sharp quality. The shoulder deformations, too, were fantastic given the polycounts of the characters.
    One of the coolest things I remember from that DVD were the usage of transparent ground textures to give the illusion of realtime reflections.
    The biggest wow factor of the DVD was when they would allow the player to control the camera during their in-game cutscenes. Done for no other reason than to prove that what they did was exactly what they claimed it was.

    The art direction of that game is absolutely fantastic. EVERYTHING looks like it was made by one guy. Something I've seen few games do. And I simply wouldn't credit the art director for it... the artists themselves get the majority of the credit for doing the actual work. Guidance is one thing, but execution is another.

    I'd be hard pressed to believe that any of the MGS4 stuff is fake. 60K verts for hair? Sure, why not? I wouldn't be surprised if that's the highest LOD model of snake that's called on screen whenever they have a close-up sequence.

    If you have to rely on smoke and mirrors to put together a demo, your game is guaranteed to fail, fail, F A I L-FAIL.
  • thnom
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    thnom polycounter lvl 18
    Soul is that DVD still available or whatever? It sounds rather interesting..
  • Fuse
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    Fuse polycounter lvl 18
    Soul, i agree with you completely, when watching the introducton of MGS3 i was blown away by how fantastic the work was, it was at another level compared to mgs2, despite using lowpoly characters and low res texture they still looked fantatstic, art direction is indeed one of the bset in the industry :
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    After the game's release, Konami released a DVD documentary of MGS2 that featured the game's assets that could be viewed in real time. Upon close inspection... it's really evident that the character textures were low-resolution. But the way in which the characters were built and UV'd gave the textures such a sharp quality. The shoulder deformations, too, were fantastic given the polycounts of the characters.
    One of the coolest things I remember from that DVD were the usage of transparent ground textures to give the illusion of realtime reflections.
    The biggest wow factor of the DVD was when they would allow the player to control the camera during their in-game cutscenes. Done for no other reason than to prove that what they did was exactly what they claimed it was.


    [/ QUOTE ]

    Bugger, you've just made me realise that I haven't seen my copy of the MGS2 document DVD since forever! You don't happen to accidentally have 2 do you mate? ;-)
  • SouL
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    SouL polycounter lvl 18
    The DVDs are no longer for sale, as far as I know. When I went to get mine, it was literally the last copy the store had. I even got the lame box that they use for display with sticker price and everything (ew).
    DaZ, I only have one. Have you checked all your boxes from work? Or maybe someone at work has it?
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    Anthony probably!
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll...o=&saprchi=

    This is an awesome thing to own If you're a fan and or want to pick up some tricks from one of the best PS2 dev. teams out there.
  • Toomas
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    Toomas polycounter lvl 18
    Is the DVD the same that was shipped with euro version of MGS2?
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    don't think so. seems, the euro bonus dvd is a french production. apparently you can get that document... thing bundled with mgs2 subsistence over here.

    as for the demo - believe what you want. i certainly will do so.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]

    as for the demo - believe what you want. i certainly will do so.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Haha! I don't wanna drag this out, but I just don't understand your point here. These people are amongst the best developers in existance. They have ALWAYS pushed the bar. No feature that they mention or demonstrate is at all unfeasible. It's all shown working, in realtime. I just don't get your cynicism in the context of this team. What *exactly* is it about the demo that you don't 'believe'?
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    i do believe that it is possible to pull it of technically. i said it in my first post way above. i do not believe that they can make a whole game out of it in any reasonable timeframe that offers any notable play time. and i have my doubts if they can pull it off in a real game situation with AI, several characters and all the other shebang that comes into play - at HD resolution. at the level of detail shown, of course. so i expect a watered down experience for the final title.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    i do not believe that they can make a whole game out of it in any reasonable timeframe that offers any notable play time.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Well that's suddenly a pretty nebulous set of requirements for measuring success! Define reasonable timeframe. Define notable play time.

    I never said that this was going to the best game ever made. I'm just peculiarly irked by your strange 'believe what you want' cynicism directed at arguably one of If not the best Playstation dev. teams in the world.

    I bet you $100 they produce a PS3 game that graphically blows their competition out of the water. I'm that confident that you're doing the developer a disservice in predicting failure. They never have before. Why would they now? Don't you think it's a little arrogant to think they haven't considered all of the issues that you cite for potential failure? That's what makes good development teams GOOD. Design, scope, plan, schedule, create. This isn't the shitty Killzone team commisioning a pre-rendered movie to lie because they can't cut it. These are the best there are. Weird!
  • Joao Sapiro
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    Joao Sapiro sublime tool
    they pushed ps2 graphics almost insanely , the cutscenes were incredible and with no framerate loss, even had depth of field and other cheesy effects, if they want they can, kojima-san is like that.
  • Weiser_Cain
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    Weiser_Cain polycounter lvl 18
    I can't 'believe' they gave him that cheesy mustache.
  • Toomas
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    Toomas polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    I can't 'believe' they gave him that cheesy mustache.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Well he allready had TEH MULLET...
  • Ninjas
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    Ninjas polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    ...whole game out of it in any reasonable timeframe that offers any notable play time. and i have my doubts if they can pull it off in a real game situation with AI.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Now that I have a wife and work, 8 hours seems to be my sweet spot for games. About 15 hours into RE 4, I was thinking to myself "man, will this ever stop"?
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    Yes but if seven of those eight hours are cutscenes you'd feel ripped off, right?
  • Ninjas
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    Ninjas polycounter lvl 18
    Depends on how awesome the cut scenes are... but yeah, probably. 7 hours of MGS 2 cutscenes would make me feel ripped off.
  • Joshua Stubbles
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    Joshua Stubbles polycounter lvl 19
    What is wrong with Snake's mustache!?
    You want him to have a goatee or something?
    He's old, obviously not healthy. If he wants a Tom Selleck, let him have one! smile.gif

    But yeah, doesn't look too good :P
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    yeah, 'cos I'm sure the Japanese are always completely enamoured with how westerners portray them ;-)
  • moose
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    moose polycount sponsor
    metal gear has for along time been my favorite games for their art style, everything just is technicly perfect in the art. I own two copies of every recent MGS game, because they always release the '!!ultranew!!' version later. the VR missions are just gorgeous... i love those things.

    ONLY THE MUSTACHE! WHOA THATS AMAZING

    lol

    //edit. god damn, was i really that out of it when i typed that?! god damn. thanks pior :P
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