The studios are pushing hard on this. In order to get actors on the performance capture bandwagon, they have to convince the Academy to give an Oscar to a person for a virtual performance.
You see this in every frickin' video of Avatar where Cameron or the actors talk about the production. It's almost akin to a Bush-era media blitz how they parrot the same sentences again and again.. "This is not an animation --it was me!"
We cannot give an Oscar for best performance to a virtual actor.
This is a slippery slope. One of the entire reasons to use performance capture is to leverage the fact that it's all data. In a split second you can take the smile from take 6 and blend it into the nice squinting eyes from take 8.
Even the mere 'mapping' of a performance onto a character of different proportions alters it.
We shall see if their millions in marketing pay off, but I hope that there is no best actor or supporting nominee that didn't actually show up in a single frame of a film.
I had 20k of stolen tech. The thieves played my xbox on xbox live for weeks. The SFPD only had to fax a single sheet of paper to Microsoft to get the ISP/IP addy of the people, they refused.
I know a dev who made a PC only title last year, who also thought tech like this was intrusive and heavy-handed; they did not use it.
They were cracked 6 days before release, and have held a top 3 spot (number of dlers/seeds) on bit torrent sites for games across all platforms for the past 6 months.
Epic has also said a week or so ago that within weeks of UT3 launching, there were 40 million attempts to connect online to play with pirated keys. (I'm sure they weren't all unique)
PC piracy is a serious issue. People say WoW shows us that you can make a buck and piracy is not an out to blame for your low sales, but let's all be honest, WoW is completely Orwellian, you play it online so they get away with server checks of course, but people have complained about their EULA before, it checks everything on your PC, has the right to delve into any file, any process, etc. People ignore this because they like WoW, and they don't want people cheating to ruin the experience.
So many gamers throw their arms up at these oncoming security measures, but they are only necessary because so many gamers pirate PC games. At FMX last week, I heard a guy from MS at the 'Game Maker's Round Table' say that the Gears and Halo 2 PC versions did not even make back the money they cost to port. This is an interesting paradox that I think no one really comments on. Gamers need to understand that because of piracy, unless a game can connect to a server and make sure you paid for it (like WoW), PC games are not going to exist much longer. Except for quick ports of console titles, and maybe Peggle.
As someone presenting at GDC who works Crytek, a very tech heavy developer that many believe sometimes defines the 'cutting edge'. I would like you to know that there are some companies who work hard to foster understanding of 'cutting edge' tech, and share knowledge with others, even when it can be detrimental to them.
We are doing lectures and tutorials. Our graphics/programming tutorials are very in depth and not only offer a behind the scenes look, but code examples as well. We also author articles in many shader/game programming texts to offer a decent level of transparency in the work we do. Lastly, when we released Far Cry, it came with an SDK and many of the assets on their non compiled forms (3dsmax files).
Though yes, this hurts us sometimes. For instance, another large developer has mirrored a lot of the feature set we have shown in the past two years, with only about a 6 month lag, then put the R&D money into a large marketing campaign, to make people think that the features (renamed) are original, and their own.
The game development community, and sharing knowledge matters a lot to us. Game developers don't have to act in the manner you described; many just choose to. We are presenting some really great stuff this year, if you are in SF you should check it out!
Guys, this was pulled off by the whiz kids at one of the best film-effects studios there is. It is not in engine, and it was done in a very short timeframe. Please don't perpetuate another Killzone incident.
Crysis was shown on a BrightSide monitor at SIGGRAPH. These monitors hook up to commercial off-the-shelf hardware. The price should drop dramatically in the future when better production processes are in place, much like any new product.;)
This is just a joke, as Red Octane made their name copying Konami game products and controllers. Guitar Hero is just a rip off of Konami Guitar Freaks, 8 years too late. People tend to forget that Red Octane existed for years selling knock of DDR dance pads...
Guys, if you have read some of the press related to the game type 'Power Struggle', you would understand that it runs on a basic economy. You do things that garner points, and these points allow you to buy items or research new technologies. The person running the server decides the pace of this economy. Right now at GC the economy is sped up to the amount that players start with Nanosuits, and someone can buy a nuke within ~10 of playing well.
10 hour games are for the really hardcore guys out there, Crysis will support their every ambition. That's not to say that every game will last 10 hours.
Where did this no hardware assumption come from?
ExtremeTech: It seems like nobody has actual DX10 hardware yet.
Crytek: We cannot comment though under which DX10 development conditions we are working, since it would infringe NDAs.
That kind of sounds like hardware.
A good rule of thumb is for every 10 degrees Centigrade rise above maximum temperature specification the chip's reliability is cut in half. Notebook vendors fudge temp spec. Many have altered BIOS's that allow them to perpetually run hot, even beyond normal shutdown temp.
I have a PCMCIA SATA card on my laptop and get 85MB/sec on it. The PCMCIA card is basically an SATA adapter, then i plug in an external SATA HD. It completely blows away firewire; why do we need a new standard? Check out the cards here.
Good, consistent lighting - does everything cast a shadow? do characters have self shadowing? Does everything have a stupid lens bloom (the new lens flare), Any SH or PRT support? Realtime SSS?
Good view - Good framing, something interesting going on.
Next gen tech - do objects have motion blur? skinned characters/objects too? Does the engine support soft particles? Does it look like things clip through one another? What is the view distance like? How does the engine appear to handle fog/distance fog? Refraction?
Characters - How is the weighting? How do the faces look? Are the poses/animation realistic? Are the feet oriented to the ground normal?
Art - Do the assets share the same basic (consistent) texel resolution? Are the proportions right? Is everything normal mapped? Are the models as high resolution as they can be for the given platform? (Was this a game ported from a weaker primary platform, or was it built top down and rez'd to match secs)
There's a lot more, but I am tired. What do you look for in game screens?
Valve licensed a Popular physics engine right off the shelf. Many companies do write their own Physics engine from scratch, but Valve didn't, so I find it funny they talked about this, shouldn't Havok have spoken instead?
I am a bit late in this thread, but I actually pirate software I have paid for.
That's right, I pay for a license, then download pirated copies. Why?
Because the copy protection schemes are so intrusive, I just cannot stand them. I do a majority of my 3d work ona laptop, and I don't have USB ports to spare for my 2+ dongles, much less want to run the risk of the dongles being stolen, OR should I mention the fact that the laptop won't even fit in the fucking case with the dongle on OR the fact that the sentinel driver software for the dongle is unstable and I don't want another 3rd party service running. Games too.. I grab a NO-CD crack for every game I own. All the data is on the HD, why should I have to have the damn disc in my cd drive constantly spinning up and spinning down eating my battery power? Not to mention that it *renders the optical drive useless*. It's so obnoxious.
Why just benched against another Mac?
on
MacBook Pro Benchmarks
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Given that many of the same apps run on both Mac and PC platforms, why don't more people bench Mac vs. PC? I mean we are even talking about virtually the same architecture, the mac is now just another OS running on x86 hardware like Linux et al. I know it's interesting to see how the latest Mac stacks up against last years model, but how bout someone bench the latest Mac against it's contemporaries? The reason this isn't often done is because they usually get thrashed pretty bad, and feathers get ruffled (see: Adobe "PC Preferred" ad campaign, or Apple's SPEC processor benchmarks that were rejected because they were not completely legit). Windows always gets put against Linux, but Mac never seems to get benched against other platforms, and it is much, much closer to PC, as both platforms run many of the same apps. Just my two pennies...
Far cry plays fine on highest settings on my laptop.
www.sagernotebook.com
Do you like Far Cry?
Do you think 3D graphics will enhance gameplay?
on
Ask The Civ IV Dev Team
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
As a long time Civ player, I would have to say that I really didn't understand why it moved to 3D graphics. The 3D rendered sprites weren't really comparable to the 2d artwork, and it didn't really feel like a needed addition. Will having the engine be entirely 3D actually add to the gameplay in any way, other than have objects occlude one another?
When I say 'add to the gameplay' I mean, add to the game experience in a way 2D sprites couldn't. For example: Physics, multipls views, wind, etc.. (I have only really seen the 3D globe, and like the idea)
As a 3D game developer, I have seen so many of my favorite games rehashed into 3D versions just because the developers thought that a 2D sprite-based game cannot make it in this market, and that annoys me. From Pirates! to Monkey Island, it seems developers would rather make a 3D game without any real need for 3D art or gameplay elements. Do you feel this pressure, or do you feel that a 3D game is inherently better because it has a new dimention? (Even if it still has the same locked off camera angle and usually poorer quality art assets)
You guys kinda missed the point. Default standards in the EU are better than in the US. I wasnt saying this company was spectacular when compared to other companies in the EU, but it is when compared to the US. I also do not care about Sundays because here in Germany *NOTHING* is open on sundays. I would gladly trade a Sunday for a comp day anytime.
Left the US, and loving it!
on
Pay vs. Happiness
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I would like to say that I left the USA and went to work for one of the best Game Developers in the EU: and I f*cking love this company. They seem to honestly care about the workers. We get ~25 days paid vacation, and OT is compensated with paid vacation days. (which is unheard of in the US) When they wanted to make a move to a larger city, they actually polled the workers to determine which city to move to! Sure, it's a Game Developer, so we stay long hours to finish things for deadlines, but it's so much nicer when you are working on a Sunday, being compensated; you get an email asking what you would like for lunch, and the CFO later walks around handing out ice cream bars to people saying "thanks for coming in on sunday, we will try to only ask you to come in on weekends when it is really needed." It really makes me want whats best for the company as a whole, and I would stay longer hours and work harder to make a better game and do better for the company I enjoy working at.
Slashdot Mirror
The studios are pushing hard on this. In order to get actors on the performance capture bandwagon, they have to convince the Academy to give an Oscar to a person for a virtual performance.
You see this in every frickin' video of Avatar where Cameron or the actors talk about the production. It's almost akin to a Bush-era media blitz how they parrot the same sentences again and again.. "This is not an animation --it was me!"
We cannot give an Oscar for best performance to a virtual actor.
This is a slippery slope. One of the entire reasons to use performance capture is to leverage the fact that it's all data. In a split second you can take the smile from take 6 and blend it into the nice squinting eyes from take 8.
Even the mere 'mapping' of a performance onto a character of different proportions alters it.
We shall see if their millions in marketing pay off, but I hope that there is no best actor or supporting nominee that didn't actually show up in a single frame of a film.
And I have worked on performance capture films.
I had 20k of stolen tech. The thieves played my xbox on xbox live for weeks. The SFPD only had to fax a single sheet of paper to Microsoft to get the ISP/IP addy of the people, they refused.
I used to feel the same way: Orwellian bullshit.
I know a dev who made a PC only title last year, who also thought tech like this was intrusive and heavy-handed; they did not use it.
They were cracked 6 days before release, and have held a top 3 spot (number of dlers/seeds) on bit torrent sites for games across all platforms for the past 6 months.
Epic has also said a week or so ago that within weeks of UT3 launching, there were 40 million attempts to connect online to play with pirated keys. (I'm sure they weren't all unique)
PC piracy is a serious issue. People say WoW shows us that you can make a buck and piracy is not an out to blame for your low sales, but let's all be honest, WoW is completely Orwellian, you play it online so they get away with server checks of course, but people have complained about their EULA before, it checks everything on your PC, has the right to delve into any file, any process, etc. People ignore this because they like WoW, and they don't want people cheating to ruin the experience.
So many gamers throw their arms up at these oncoming security measures, but they are only necessary because so many gamers pirate PC games. At FMX last week, I heard a guy from MS at the 'Game Maker's Round Table' say that the Gears and Halo 2 PC versions did not even make back the money they cost to port. This is an interesting paradox that I think no one really comments on. Gamers need to understand that because of piracy, unless a game can connect to a server and make sure you paid for it (like WoW), PC games are not going to exist much longer. Except for quick ports of console titles, and maybe Peggle.
As someone presenting at GDC who works Crytek, a very tech heavy developer that many believe sometimes defines the 'cutting edge'. I would like you to know that there are some companies who work hard to foster understanding of 'cutting edge' tech, and share knowledge with others, even when it can be detrimental to them.
We are doing lectures and tutorials. Our graphics/programming tutorials are very in depth and not only offer a behind the scenes look, but code examples as well. We also author articles in many shader/game programming texts to offer a decent level of transparency in the work we do. Lastly, when we released Far Cry, it came with an SDK and many of the assets on their non compiled forms (3dsmax files).
Though yes, this hurts us sometimes. For instance, another large developer has mirrored a lot of the feature set we have shown in the past two years, with only about a 6 month lag, then put the R&D money into a large marketing campaign, to make people think that the features (renamed) are original, and their own.
The game development community, and sharing knowledge matters a lot to us. Game developers don't have to act in the manner you described; many just choose to. We are presenting some really great stuff this year, if you are in SF you should check it out!
Guys, this was pulled off by the whiz kids at one of the best film-effects studios there is. It is not in engine, and it was done in a very short timeframe. Please don't perpetuate another Killzone incident.
CE
Crysis was shown on a BrightSide monitor at SIGGRAPH. These monitors hook up to commercial off-the-shelf hardware. The price should drop dramatically in the future when better production processes are in place, much like any new product. ;)
(as long as the software supports HDR/their DLL)
What a weird cookie/cache error, this was posted to the guitar hero lawsuit thread.
This is just a joke, as Red Octane made their name copying Konami game products and controllers. Guitar Hero is just a rip off of Konami Guitar Freaks, 8 years too late. People tend to forget that Red Octane existed for years selling knock of DDR dance pads...
In recent years, AOL Instant Messenger and MSN have had widespread outages. Have no fear, people will not stop screwing things up any time soon.
Guys, if you have read some of the press related to the game type 'Power Struggle', you would understand that it runs on a basic economy. You do things that garner points, and these points allow you to buy items or research new technologies. The person running the server decides the pace of this economy. Right now at GC the economy is sped up to the amount that players start with Nanosuits, and someone can buy a nuke within ~10 of playing well.
10 hour games are for the really hardcore guys out there, Crysis will support their every ambition. That's not to say that every game will last 10 hours.
Unfortunately, I cannot comment about which DX10 development conditions we are working, it would infringe NDAs.
Where did this no hardware assumption come from? ExtremeTech: It seems like nobody has actual DX10 hardware yet. Crytek: We cannot comment though under which DX10 development conditions we are working, since it would infringe NDAs. That kind of sounds like hardware.
A good rule of thumb is for every 10 degrees Centigrade rise above maximum temperature specification the chip's reliability is cut in half. Notebook vendors fudge temp spec. Many have altered BIOS's that allow them to perpetually run hot, even beyond normal shutdown temp.
It's hard for AT&T to cater to so many millions of users *AND* filter/direct all of their customer data illegally and directly to the NSA.
I have a PCMCIA SATA card on my laptop and get 85MB/sec on it. The PCMCIA card is basically an SATA adapter, then i plug in an external SATA HD. It completely blows away firewire; why do we need a new standard? Check out the cards here.
Good, consistent lighting - does everything cast a shadow? do characters have self shadowing? Does everything have a stupid lens bloom (the new lens flare), Any SH or PRT support? Realtime SSS?
Good view - Good framing, something interesting going on.
Next gen tech - do objects have motion blur? skinned characters/objects too? Does the engine support soft particles? Does it look like things clip through one another? What is the view distance like? How does the engine appear to handle fog/distance fog? Refraction?
Characters - How is the weighting? How do the faces look? Are the poses/animation realistic? Are the feet oriented to the ground normal?
Art - Do the assets share the same basic (consistent) texel resolution? Are the proportions right? Is everything normal mapped? Are the models as high resolution as they can be for the given platform? (Was this a game ported from a weaker primary platform, or was it built top down and rez'd to match secs)
There's a lot more, but I am tired. What do you look for in game screens?
Being part of the testing process of Physics engine someone else is making is not the same as creating one... sorry.
Valve licensed a Popular physics engine right off the shelf. Many companies do write their own Physics engine from scratch, but Valve didn't, so I find it funny they talked about this, shouldn't Havok have spoken instead?
I am a bit late in this thread, but I actually pirate software I have paid for.
That's right, I pay for a license, then download pirated copies. Why?
Because the copy protection schemes are so intrusive, I just cannot stand them. I do a majority of my 3d work ona laptop, and I don't have USB ports to spare for my 2+ dongles, much less want to run the risk of the dongles being stolen, OR should I mention the fact that the laptop won't even fit in the fucking case with the dongle on OR the fact that the sentinel driver software for the dongle is unstable and I don't want another 3rd party service running. Games too.. I grab a NO-CD crack for every game I own. All the data is on the HD, why should I have to have the damn disc in my cd drive constantly spinning up and spinning down eating my battery power? Not to mention that it *renders the optical drive useless*. It's so obnoxious.
Given that many of the same apps run on both Mac and PC platforms, why don't more people bench Mac vs. PC? I mean we are even talking about virtually the same architecture, the mac is now just another OS running on x86 hardware like Linux et al. I know it's interesting to see how the latest Mac stacks up against last years model, but how bout someone bench the latest Mac against it's contemporaries? The reason this isn't often done is because they usually get thrashed pretty bad, and feathers get ruffled (see: Adobe "PC Preferred" ad campaign, or Apple's SPEC processor benchmarks that were rejected because they were not completely legit). Windows always gets put against Linux, but Mac never seems to get benched against other platforms, and it is much, much closer to PC, as both platforms run many of the same apps. Just my two pennies...
Greedy music organizations everywhere are pulling this crap. Here is an article about Finland's version of the RIAA charging taxi drivers to leave the radio on, in the US, stores are not allowed to play music or the radio, they have to license special music streams. lame.
Far cry plays fine on highest settings on my laptop.
www.sagernotebook.com
Do you like Far Cry?
As a long time Civ player, I would have to say that I really didn't understand why it moved to 3D graphics. The 3D rendered sprites weren't really comparable to the 2d artwork, and it didn't really feel like a needed addition. Will having the engine be entirely 3D actually add to the gameplay in any way, other than have objects occlude one another?
When I say 'add to the gameplay' I mean, add to the game experience in a way 2D sprites couldn't. For example: Physics, multipls views, wind, etc.. (I have only really seen the 3D globe, and like the idea)
As a 3D game developer, I have seen so many of my favorite games rehashed into 3D versions just because the developers thought that a 2D sprite-based game cannot make it in this market, and that annoys me. From Pirates! to Monkey Island, it seems developers would rather make a 3D game without any real need for 3D art or gameplay elements. Do you feel this pressure, or do you feel that a 3D game is inherently better because it has a new dimention? (Even if it still has the same locked off camera angle and usually poorer quality art assets)
You guys kinda missed the point. Default standards in the EU are better than in the US. I wasnt saying this company was spectacular when compared to other companies in the EU, but it is when compared to the US. I also do not care about Sundays because here in Germany *NOTHING* is open on sundays. I would gladly trade a Sunday for a comp day anytime.
I would like to say that I left the USA and went to work for one of the best Game Developers in the EU: and I f*cking love this company. They seem to honestly care about the workers. We get ~25 days paid vacation, and OT is compensated with paid vacation days. (which is unheard of in the US) When they wanted to make a move to a larger city, they actually polled the workers to determine which city to move to! Sure, it's a Game Developer, so we stay long hours to finish things for deadlines, but it's so much nicer when you are working on a Sunday, being compensated; you get an email asking what you would like for lunch, and the CFO later walks around handing out ice cream bars to people saying "thanks for coming in on sunday, we will try to only ask you to come in on weekends when it is really needed." It really makes me want whats best for the company as a whole, and I would stay longer hours and work harder to make a better game and do better for the company I enjoy working at.