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Days Gone [OT] Days Gone B Gud

S

scalman

Member
Well because couple people are nowhere to found after ending in camps they must be in DLC then. So no date yet for DLC or i missed it? Is it june?
 
Nitty_Grimes

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Game just won't load anymore, don't know whats happened. The white bar on the bottom just fills to the end and it just sits there. Tried powering on and off etc. Don't really want to sit and re-install cos' god knows how long that will take.

Pissed off.
 
Nitty_Grimes

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Well, it updated to 1.08 last night and its been happening since then. I've uninstalled, disconnected from internet and installed off disc version 1.0 obvs and of course it works perfectly.

So I don't know if this patch has fecked something for me?
 
Ozymandias013

Ozymandias013

Banned
Once you're able to deal with Sawmill horde it means you're able to deal with any horde,still if you're reckless you can die easily,but that Sawmill horde is the point where the game tells you that you're ready to deal with anything
 
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Doom85

Doom85

Gold Member
Dragon_Rocks said:
Do you get anything special for 100% completing everything? Like all collectibles, hordes, items etc.
Click to expand...

I heard if you get the platinum trophy it gives you a PSN avatar and menu theme, but you might want to have someone confirm this. I'm going for the platinum but I only just passed the 50% point myself.
 
Raven117

Raven117

Member
WindomURL said:
Agreed. Some of the characterization in this game is absolutely top notch, better than anything I've see before. The pained look in Deek's eyes during some cutscenes is very compelling and sympathetic. We've made our way out of the valley of the shadow of the uncanny.

However, there are numerous, galling moments of stilted puppetry littered throughout that are in odd contrast. All the merchants have big creep factor and Tucker ha wth is up with Tucker? You can really tell what they spent time on and what was pushed out the door half dressed.
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Hahaha. Yup. Well spotted. It’s definitely uneven in some places. Deacon is a great character and protagonist. He is flawed in such a human way. And his arc is not necessarily smooth. He goes back and forth on things. Makes bad decisions after making good ones. Even some of the other characters...
especially Sarah
are equally as confused and complex.

I really wasn’t expecting such a good character game. (The story is spotty as well.... and really takes too long to get going).

Really a nice job by Bend and sadly didn’t get near the critical recognition they deserve with this. Good that sales is rewarding them!
 
Dragon_Rocks

Dragon_Rocks

Member
Doom85 said:
I heard if you get the platinum trophy it gives you a PSN avatar and menu theme, but you might want to have someone confirm this. I'm going for the platinum but I only just passed the 50% point myself.
Click to expand...

I already have the platinum and the avatar. You don't need to 100% the game to get the platinum trophy. I have unlocked few guns by doing about 60% of the hordes and about 80% of collectibles. So wanted to know what happens if you get 100% on hordes and collectibles.
 
Dragon_Rocks

Dragon_Rocks

Member
~Fake said:
You get weapons, bike skins and clip upgrade. Some camps you get recipe for bombs.
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Clip upgrades are based on Trust level in the camp right? And recipes are from the marauder/ripper ambush camps right? I have trust level 3 in all camps and have cleared all ambush camps so I think I have all of those. Its only the post game hordes and collectibles like landmarks, characters etc. that is not at 100%.
 
Fake

Fake

Member
Dragon_Rocks said:
Clip upgrades are based on Trust level in the camp right? And recipes are from the marauder/ripper ambush camps right? I have trust level 3 in all camps and have cleared all ambush camps so I think I have all of those. Its only the post game hordes and collectibles like landmarks, characters etc. that is not at 100%.
Click to expand...
You only can upgrade clips of the weapons you buy in camps. If you buy a weapon you need to reach the trust level in that particular camp for get the clip upgrade. The weapons you get from those '100%' don't have a option for clip upgrade on camps, but they get a free upgrade clip by complete others missions, sometimes don't even need 100%, just close. One of those horde missions you get a weapon with unlimited silence attach, after feeding the mission you get the upgrade. They are very good post game and you don't even use the bike with that weapon.
Recipes are for prox mine, close weapons and pipe bombs only for cleaning all camps.
 
Dragon_Rocks

Dragon_Rocks

Member
~Fake said:
You only can upgrade clips of the weapons you buy in camps. If you buy a weapon you need to reach the trust level in that particular camp for get the clip upgrade. The weapons you get from those '100%' don't have a option for clip upgrade on camps, but they get a free upgrade clip by complete others missions, sometimes don't even need 100%, just close. One of those horde missions you get a weapon with unlimited silence attach, after feeding the mission you get the upgrade. They are very good post game and you don't even use the bike with that weapon.
Recipes are for prox mine, close weapons and pipe bombs only for cleaning all camps.
Click to expand...

Oh nice then. I have the permanently silenced Primary weapon though it has a smaller clip compared to the Chicago one. I will clear everything then to see what else I can get unlocked. Thanks for the info.

PS: The Days Gone proposal dynamic theme is one of the best PS4 dynamic themes I have got so far in terms of music and background.
 
Fake

Fake

Member
Dragon_Rocks said:
Oh nice then. I have the permanently silenced Primary weapon though it has a smaller clip compared to the Chicago one. I will clear everything then to see what else I can get unlocked. Thanks for the info.

PS: The Days Gone proposal dynamic theme is one of the best PS4 dynamic themes I have got so far in terms of music and background.
Click to expand...
Just keep doing for get more weapons and bike skins. Yeah, that dynamic theme is great. If you plat, you get a avatar gift from Playstation.
 
autoduelist

autoduelist

Member
I've been playing this game since it came out. I've never spent so much time in an open world game before, just wandering around. Early on, it was careful stealthing of areas, now I'm armed and dangerous. I've spent entire sessions just exploring.

Hoards are the best thing since the nemesis system. So much fun.

Love the story. They balance politics well, at times liberty oriented, at times 'woke', depending on where you are.

Top notch. I do t remember the last time I enjoyed a game this much. Horizon zero dawn?
 
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D

DanielsM

Banned
FYI, apparently patch 1.09 is out in the wild and its 12gb+. People talking about it on reddit, no notes by bend yet on reddit though.

On another note, I'm still not done with the game, and going on a month... played every night but one. :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
JareBear: Remastered

JareBear: Remastered

Banned
DanielsM said:
FYI, apparently patch 1.09 is out in the wild and its 12gb+. People talking about it on reddit, no notes by bend yet on reddit though.

On another note, I'm still not done with the game, and going on a month... played every night but one. :messenger_tears_of_joy:
Click to expand...

Hmmmm that's a big patch, must be more than just big fixes???

Maybe putting the content in place for timed releases in June?
 
Fake

Fake

Member
Its for receive the future DLC. Maybe the other for fixing the ps4 turn off or still bugs here and there.
 
Shakka43

Shakka43

Member
I went back to check my email and found the Platinum theme waiting for me! 😎
4Z1tT3s.png
 
D

DanielsM

Banned


Ama with the dev on Reddit.

Ron Allen]
We went through lots of iteration with the motorcycle, including a look back camera not only for the motorcycle, but for on-foot as well. For the motorcycle specifically, we started with it on the R3 button but as the game developed, Survival Vision turned out to be a higher priority for that particular button. This was specifically because we show you pickup item locations, which means allowing you to drive near a building, hit the R3 button and then you can see if there are any items around that you would want to get off your bike and go get. We tried it on the L3 button, but as you are backing up, loads of players pressed this accidentally while trying to use the left stick to turn. This ended up with more frustrated players than happy ones. For a long while we had it on the circle button, but that lost out when we created our ‘drift’ button. The biggest issue for us with the look back button (and the main reason we didn’t include it) was that it not only caused you to constantly run into things in our dense world (trees, cars, stumps, rocks, etc), it took away tension. There is something to be said for not being able to see what is behind you and we thought it was the right call for the game. :)​
Click to expand...

[Paul Deakin] This question came up in another AMA, so I’m going to provide the same answer:

Open world games are challenging to make, due to the very nature of them being open world and unpredictable. It’s really difficult to predict every players’ decision and play style. Having said that, we’re constantly looking for ways to improve how sound is delivered in-game, based on player actions, and that includes dialog. Days Gone is a big game, and there are over 50,000 lines of dialog. We spent time working with Sam Witwer for delivering context-appropriate dialog and in most cases, it works! There are certainly occasions, like the ones you’ve noted, where you wish Deacon would be a little more conscious of his surroundings and scenario! Having said that, one of our goals was to make sure the player feels a sense of anxiety in situations like stealth… so, Deacon yelling a little louder than expected may keep some players on their toes! Haha!​
Click to expand...

what was the most challenge thing that was build in days gone and how does it feel to make such a wicked outstanding game​
[–]BendStudioBend Studio[S] 10 points 6 hours ago
[Russ Severe] Wizard Island, The Ripper Compound (Pre/Post Flood states) and Iron Mike’s due to the state changes and handling things like cinematics, player paths, design/population that had to work in the same space for multiple missions and multiple environmental states.
[Elyse Lemoine] Wrangling such a massive story! From asset management to localization, this game has a beast of a story and everyone did such a great job implementing it. Also, it feels awesome! Seeing everyone’s reactions to the game online, seeing the gifs and videos and everything, just makes me so indescribably happy. I’m so glad people are having a great time with Days Gone! <3
[Rom Rodriguez] The most challenging aspect of the game for mission design were the buddies in combat. Getting buddy combat missions to where they are now required a tremendous amount of collaboration between engineering, animation and design. Each buddy had a unique character that we needed to portray through gameplay. There was a lot of iteration on how the buddy performed in combat. We didn’t want the player to feel like they were constantly babysitting a vulnerable buddy but at the same time we didn’t want the buddy to be too powerful and take away from the player’s opportunity to engage.
[Eric Jensen] Getting all of the open world systems to work together nicely was the biggest challenge. There is a lot of overlapping open world content that requires different systems to communicate with each other and/or account for each other along with layers and layers of tuning. We built systems to control pacing of both dynamic encounters and global enemy spawns so the player doesn't encounter too many of the same things within short periods of time. User testing was super important with this process to ensure that all the tuning was solid on long playthroughs.​
Click to expand...

What is the thing that you are more proud of your work in each one of your specific areas (open world design, audio, mission design, UI/UX, etc)?​
[–]BendStudioBend Studio[S] 10 points 6 hours ago
[Shay Casey] My favorite UI feature in Days Gone is definitely the Touchpad based menu system. It’s super easy to swipe any direction and open a specific menu without having to tab through a bunch of panels.
[Eric Jensen] The thing I'm most proud of is how diverse and dynamic we were able to make the open world with such a small open world design team (5-6 people). We had to think smart and efficient with all of our design choices knowing the man power limitations. Seeing all of the crazy videos and screenshots that people have posted of the open world coming for Deacon or even interacting with itself has been incredibly cool for our team to see!​
Click to expand...


[Graham Aldridge - Lead Rendering Programmer (Guest Appearance)] The micro shadowing in the game is something we’ve worked hard on. We weren’t sure how much people would notice it, but we are extremely pleased that people do. I remember first showing the early prototype to the art team. They were very happy :)

For how it works, it’s a global part of our material system – any material can define height information, which directly affects how the surface’s depth is represented in the renderer (we do this in such a way that it costs almost no GPU time). This depth variation automatically produces these awesome micro shadows from our screen space shadowing system (and lots of other nice effects, like defining how puddles accumulate, etc). I won’t go in to the specifics of how the screen space shadows work (it’s very sneaky, using ~100 samples per pixel J) but it actually costs a very small amount of GPU time, around 2% of our frame time – and can often be effectively ‘free’ due to async compute.

I’m glad you like the eyes. Eyes are hard to get right, as it’s all about the subtleties so you don’t notice them. As examples, we have a tear line in our eye rendering – an effect to represent the buildup of liquid between the eye and lower eyelid. It’s a surprisingly difficult effect to render, but without it the character just looks wrong somehow. We have control of this too – it’s surprising how much adjusting the tear line can change your perception of a character. Another subtle example is iris/pupil dilation; we change the size based on how bright the scene is. It’s super subtle but when you see a character in a dark space with a small iris it just feels wrong.​
!?
Click to expand...

[Bend Studio] Thank you! We really tried to make the environment as authentic as possible, but it's a game so we had to make a few adjustments for gameplay and narrative. Some of the spaces we created, such as Iron Mike's are a sort of combination of several of our favorite places around the state. So while most of it is not a one-to-one replica of the state we really strived to capture the overall feel.


[Eric Russ] When we started on the world initially we knew the motorcycle and the horde was going to be a big part of it. So we picked a number of locations that we felt offered something unique in terms of our gameplay, and helped us capture the history and feel of Oregon. One of our greatest challenges was getting the scale of the world right so it was fun to ride around on the bike, while being in that not-too-big but not-too-small zone. In the early days we threw out the whole world and started over three times, but it was really necessary to get the scale right and the spacing between different points of interest and I think we ended up in a good place with that. It took a lot of back and forth between art and design to find that sweet spot.​
Click to expand...

[Elyse Lemoine]
For me, it’s worldbuilding and story implementation. I learned so much working on this project and I’m excited to take that knowledge onto whatever we do next. Getting a story to work across a massive open world is a huge challenge, and that was a huge challenge but also a really exciting success.​
Click to expand...

[Elyse Lemoine]
The Walking Dead and Sons of Anarchy were a huge inspiration for Days Gone, and this inspiration helped inform a lot of the decisions we made, from some of the game mechanics down to the drifter bike. After all, an outlaw biker’s bike is everything, which was perfect for an open world game where the roads are destroyed, bloated with cars, or blocked by Hordes. For Deacon, it was really about the story we wanted to tell and the world we wanted to tell it in. Deacon, at his core, is an outcast looking for his place in the world, and he has the skills and tools to survive in the tumultuous climate of the post-apocalyptic Farewell Wilderness (with his Mongrels MC background and his time in the armed forces). Sam Witwer also brought a lot to the character too! As for the world, Central Oregon and the High Desert were the perfect environments for an open world. The diverse biome of the High Desert really does vary as much as it does in the game, from the arid desert of Belknap to the snowy mountains of Crater Lake. It’s picturesque but deadly.​
Click to expand...

[Elyse Lemoine]
The Walking Dead and Sons of Anarchy were a huge inspiration for Days Gone, and this inspiration helped inform a lot of the decisions we made, from some of the game mechanics down to the drifter bike. After all, an outlaw biker’s bike is everything, which was perfect for an open world game where the roads are destroyed, bloated with cars, or blocked by Hordes. For Deacon, it was really about the story we wanted to tell and the world we wanted to tell it in. Deacon, at his core, is an outcast looking for his place in the world, and he has the skills and tools to survive in the tumultuous climate of the post-apocalyptic Farewell Wilderness (with his Mongrels MC background and his time in the armed forces). Sam Witwer also brought a lot to the character too! As for the world, Central Oregon and the High Desert were the perfect environments for an open world. The diverse biome of the High Desert really does vary as much as it does in the game, from the arid desert of Belknap to the snowy mountains of Crater Lake. It’s picturesque but deadly.​
Click to expand...

[Eric Jensen] We wanted to have signs of NERO outside of the NERO storyline missions so we occasionally have helicopters fly through the regions. Where they fly isn't random though, they are actually patrolling Horde feeding and sleeping areas as a continued part of their research into Horde behaviors.

Good luck with wrapping up your Platinum run!​
Click to expand...


[Paul Deakin]
  • First of all, I'm a big fan of the audio. A lot of love went into it.
​
Thank you! Really appreciate that :) Yes, love was abundant in the creation of Days Gone’s audio!
  • When people outside of the industry even mention the sound, you know you've done an excellent job.
​
Indeed. It’s nice to see so many positive comments about the sound design in Days Gone. It’s especially gratifying when players notice the finer details we added. Some examples: rain on Deacon’s leather jacket (more noticeable when aiming, since the camera moves in closer), the bike’s exhaust pinging as it cools down after the player dismounts, the way wildlife ambient sounds react to game states, weather, day-night cycle and region. Have you noticed the insects in Belknap are slightly different to the ones heard in Lost Lake or Iron Butte? There are many more little subtle details like these that we hope players hear
  • I am a big fan of the debris falling around you during the explosions, are these original assets or a combination of libraries and original?
​
Almost all of these were recorded (probably 90%) with just a few library sounds peppered in as sweeteners. They sound best in surround (5.1 or 7.1), as pieces of the debris are panned to ‘land’ around the player.
  • Were there any recording sessions for explosions, guns and of course, motorcycles?
​
Of course! Recording this kinda stuff is a lot of fun for sound designers (right?). All our motorcycles in the game were recorded specifically for Days Gone.
  • Deacon yells a lot when I hide in bushes and so on, which while funny is very immersive breaking, is that something that'll be fixed later on or is it a hindsight lesson? That might sound a bit negative, but I've been there before myself when time ran out, so I didn't have the budget or time to fix that in the game, so we've all been there.
​
Open world games are challenging to make, due to the very nature of them being open world and unpredictable. It’s really difficult to predict every players’ decision and play style. Having said that, we’re constantly looking for ways to improve how sound is delivered in-game, based on player actions, and that includes dialog. Days Gone is a big game, and there are over 50,000 lines of dialog. We spent time working with Sam Witwer for delivering context-appropriate dialog and in most cases, it works! There are certainly occasions, like the ones you’ve noted, where you wish Deacon would be a little more conscious of his surroundings and scenario! Having said that, one of our goals was to make sure the player feels a sense of anxiety in situations like stealth… so, Deacon yelling a little louder than expected may keep some players on their toes! Haha!
  • Do the tunnels use impulse response plugins or something the audio engine came within it. It sounds quite good.
​
Thank you! We recorded some of our IRs. We also used some existing in-house and commercial ones. The reverbs in our tunnels, caves and mines went through a number of iterations, with various IRs being tried, until we found the right ‘feel’. After that, much tuning of the reverbs and sends for all sound types was needed. We’re pretty happy with how the tunnels turned out
  • How was the horde handled with sound emitters? I imagine it was a nightmare to figure out the footsteps and vocals not being overwhelming and still making it possible for the group to split into smaller numbers without causing audio bugs.
​
Definitely a lot of work went into the horde, not just on the audio end, but across many departments at the studio. It was certainly challenging to have the sound of the horde scale, based on the size (and number of swarmers) without maxing out our voice count… oh, wait… we did max out our voice count with the horde once or twice! About a year ago, we made some optimizations to keep it under control, while still sounding optimally populated, from a 500-strong horde down to a few stragglers on the periphery.
Did you have an invisible sound emitter smack in the middle of them that checked the number around it or something? If only it were that simple
  • I'm a big fan of the Screamers, the humming they do when idling. Is this due to narrative reasons or just a sound designer with an "AHA!" moment?
​
I’ll personally take the blame (credit?) for this one! There wasn’t much direction for audio on the screamer other than that she screams to bring in a small ‘swarm’ and then runs to hide. We needed something for her to do when she’s not aware of the player, to let the player know she’s lurking in the shadows somewhere. But I wanted to make sure she would sound different from a regular swarmer. I thought it would be creepy to have her hum some tunes, kinda like how an old lady might hum, to hint at the idea that there’s still some human element in there. We then recorded our voice actor making some little ‘twitch’ noises and peppered them into her vocal script, as a way to break away from that human element, and sound more freaker-like. So, the final outcome is like there’s an inner soul fighting the infection (or vice versa).
  • Finally, is there a favorite weapon, creature, ambiance, or anything outside of that you particularly love to hear over and over?
​
Hands down, the rager bear and the newts. It was SO much fun recording those. For the rager, I wanted to start with a sound that wasn’t a bear (since I knew we would have regular bears in the game, too) and then layer in other elements during processing to come up with something unique. We worked with a voice actor who has an amazing, deep TV/trailer voice, kinda like Don LaFontaine (the “In a world…” trailer guy). He was perfect for giving us the foundation for the sound of the rager (and it was also fun watching and hearing him in the studio!). With some post-magic work, we ended up with a pretty mean-sounding rager, that wasn’t too demon/monster-like but also not “just another bear” J
  • Bonus question: Is the team hiring? :D
​
You never know! ;) Keep an eye on our website…​
Click to expand...

[Graham Aldridge - Lead Rendering Programmer (Guest Appearance)] The way the weather works in the game I think is quite unique: At any time, there are thousands (often tens of thousands) of clouds moving through the world. Each cloud defines a number of states about not just how the cloud looks (density, shape, etc) but also the weather conditions below the cloud: Be it rain, snowfall, mist, wind, etc. This is how the weather feels so dynamic, as it moves through the world the weather below the clouds gets accumulated dynamically through the world (it’s possible to have one part of the world wet and at the same time another snowy, etc – it all depends on the clouds and where they are). We have systems to control how these accumulations blend and combine in to the world as the clouds move through it, this also controls visual and gameplay transitions too: e.g. as snow melts it will typically puddle then turn mud. Sun shining on damp ground is more likely to produce evaporation fog, the motorbike splashes through puddles, etc.

Creating the visual look of a snowy day is quite challenging because it’s not a single effect – it’s a combination of multiple interacting systems. If it doesn’t look right, it’s often because there is a missing element in the simulation (Only applying a snow layering effect to surfaces wouldn’t be enough). We decided early on that trying to eyeball and emulate these effects wouldn’t feel right and we’d struggle to make it as dynamic as we wanted - so we would always try and figure out what combination of physical systems produced the look of snow in the real world and try and emulate those as best we could. We didn’t want to fake it.

As examples, it meant making sure how light scatters through the volumetric fog was accurate. Having world lighting react accordingly too was really important (e.g. effective bounce light off the ground changes a lot to reflect the predominantly white snow). A really subtle system we have always running in the game is an automatic white balance system – just like a camera, this makes sure the image colour balance looks right and is incredibly important to the look of the game because it helps to keep more extreme circumstances (such as snow, sunsets, etc) from feeling out of balance​
Click to expand...
[Darren Chisum]
The Freakers being alive, I think, makes a big difference. The fact that they have needs, daily cycles, can run at you full speed, and can be killed by other ways besides headshots, makes the more than your average zombie. We also wanted to make an Open World that was heavily story-driven. It’s difficult to weave a complex, but ultimately linear, story in a world where you have so much freedom to explore and do things your own way. The story lines really helped here.Finally, making the bike important to the player, with a deep upgrade system, gives you a unique way to get through this dangerous world, and it becomes vital to your survival​
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[Shay Casey]
Thanks Matt! The look and feel of the UI was based on a super cool early marketing image for the game. The stark background speaks to the loneliness and desperation of the world. The contrast black elements shows that they is not much room for indecision in Days Gone. The minimal use of color is to show that there is a small amount of hope for the future.​
Click to expand...
[Ron Allen]
We are currently working on a few different aim improvements to help players customize the way they want to aim. These include a deadzone adjustment, splitting vertical and horizontal aiming into separate sliders, giving players more fine-tuned adjustment over aim magnetism and how sticky the aiming is when you are aiming over something, plus we are working on ways to invert vertical/horizontal aiming separately.​
Click to expand...

Our original pillars for the game were the Horde and the Motorcycle and so we spent a lot of time getting those both to feel great in a large open world environment. Finally getting those experiences into the hands of the players was incredibly exciting!​
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[Darren Chisum]
It was definitely a challenge getting the physics and collisions of the bike just right. There are actually multiple collision objects involved: for collisions with bullets and enemies, there is a boxy representation of the bike chassis. There are capsule-shaped colliders for terrain, and then various spheres, capsules, and boxes for tracking overlaps. An overlap may be for triggering the prompt to get on the bike, or for making humans jump out of the way.​
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