Support NeoGAF

[Desi]

well did you see gamepro vid?

Spoiler

Poseidon looks very badass in gttv footage when he dive straight into a titan and summon leviathan. but in the end the way he died is just not befitting of a God. beaten to death, trying to crawl away from Kratos and finally died having his eyes gouged out by Kratos. all that and Kratos doesn't look like he broke even a sweat. I convinced myself that Poseidon is severely weakened by Gaia Punch just moment before he got killed by Kratos.

if you have noticed, none of the gods Kratos has faced died in ways that "befit a god".

Spoiler

Ares, Zeus, even none gods like Persophone and Charon have all pleaded and seemed unwilling to die.

Though Zeus isn't dead yet. The Heroes seem to fear death less than an immortal it seems.

 

[gofreak]

Don't Know if old:


"AA on the cpu is MLAA Morphological Antialising. We saved 5-6 miliseconds by moving it off the cpu's. Many props to our coder Cedric for making this happen and it looks way better!

And so 'that' Saboteur technique spreads. The game does look very clean in those recent vids

 

[JaseC]

And so 'that' Saboteur technique spreads. The game does look very clean in those recent vids

I wonder if SMS made any strides with the method. In The Saboteur, MLAA introduced artefacts on text overlays and had issues with colours of similar luminance. (See: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-saboteur-aa-blog-entry)

 

[LosDaddie]

I was told at the event that the average time it took to complete the game during the play tests was about 15 hours.

which is about what both GoWs took me to finish....on Normal.

 

[gofreak]

I wonder if SMS made any strides with the method. In The Saboteur, MLAA introduced artefacts on text overlays and had issues with colours of similar luminance. (See: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-saboteur-aa-blog-entry)

Hmm, that's interesting actually. Suggests they're not actually using precisely the same technique. That Santa Monica dude seemed to be at pains to point out that the Saboteur technique wasn't MLAA, yet they refer to the technique they're using as MLAA here...so I guess they are a bit different.

 

[Arkham]

<rambles>

Generic = gold45revolver?

 

[TTP]

Don't know if old:


"AA on the cpu is MLAA Morphological Antialising. We saved 5-6 miliseconds by moving it off the cpu's. Many props to our coder Cedric for making this happen and it looks way better!



For GoW3 we are not using screen space ambient occlusion. We are using a couple other versions of AO including baked for environments, AO texture maps and a pixel calculation that creates better shading on normal maps in indirect lit areas.



Number of dynamic lights - ALOT! that is one of the big features of our engine. We built it around being able to use up to 20 dynamic lights per game object. The light can be big or small, it doesn't matter. In the end, i believe we support up to 50 dynamic lights per game object. We are not using a differed lighting scheme. Our lead programmer Vassily came up with this amazing system during pre-production, us artists love it!!! We can place lights in Maya and have them update in realtime in the game on the PS3, its like being able to paint with lights. Lighting is fast and a very enjoyable artistic process.



Off the top of my head i don't remember exactly poly count numbers for the character. We use as many polys as it takes. My guess for Zues, Kratos and Hades is 25-30,000k triangles. Again, off the top of my head, texture sizes for these character is quite big. I think we are using 2048's for the lower, upper body and head. Each character gets a normal, diffuse, specular, gloss(power map), AO, and skin shader map. We also use can layer textures to create more tiling, and use environment maps were needed, etc."


http://forums.godofwar.com/t5/God-o...opers-on-Forums-Right-Here/td-p/30061/page/14

I love this guy. Does he have a twitter account?

 

[deepbrown]

I love this guy. Does he have a twitter account?

MLAA...so potentially upto the effect of 16xAA? Nice.

Tim Moss is on Twitter and he reveals stuff like this.

 

[TTP]

MLAA...so potentially upto the effect of 16xAA? Nice.

Tim Moss is on Twitter and he reveals stuff like this.

Ah Tim Moss? I'm following since he created his account. He should tweet moar.

 

[BeeDog]

By the beard of Zeus, how did they manage to add this MLAA technique? And all the other whistles and bells?!

 

[deepbrown]

Ah Tim Moss? I'm following since he created his account. He should tweet moar.

Oh...I'm not sure if that's Tim Moss - says it's "Ken" - but I think the info on there may be a joint effort.

Edit: It's Ken Feldman. There's one on Twitter...but don't think it's him lol.

Christer Ericson is on twitter and beyond3d

 

[thetrin]

I'm glad the game is about 10-12 hours. GoWII, if I remember correctly, was much longer, and it ended up being WAY too long.

 

[deepbrown]

By the beard of Zeus, how did they manage to add this MLAA technique? And all the other whistles and bells?!

They be the best, junior.

 

[Baki]

I've run out of space in the OP.

 

[Opus Angelorum]

By the beard of Zeus, how did they manage to add this MLAA technique? And all the other whistles and bells?!

It's the power of the Cell, it was foretold many many years ago...

 

[Callibretto]

if you have noticed, none of the gods Kratos has faced died in ways that "befit a god".

Spoiler

Ares, Zeus, even none gods like Persophone and Charon have all pleaded and seemed unwilling to die.

Though Zeus isn't dead yet. The Heroes seem to fear death less than an immortal it seems.

I feel like Kratos is getting too powerful, these Gods and Titans are not match for him. which makes him a little boring. I don't mean that Gods need to have grand death.

Spoiler

just show that they can put up a good fight and give some sense of real danger to Kratos

I always like the times when Kratos is shown a bit more vulnerable or struggling because that's when you got the feel Kratos' strong will surpasses any odds and obstacle he faced and I think that's the most enigmatic part of Kratos.

he explore mountains in search of Pandora's Box, when he find it, he had to drag it back to Athen only to get stabbed by Ares when he got to Pandora's temple gate. then instead of giving up, he still refuse to die and crawl back out of Hades and challenge Ares. only to get mindfucked by Ares when shown his family again. stripped out of his weapon and still Kratos rise again with Blade of Athena.

I also like his moment of death in GoW2. stripped out of his power. thrown across the city by giant statue, betrayed and killed by Zeus. and that's after witnessing Zeus killing his entire army except for 1 warrior.

lately he's been having this unbeatable aura around him. like he's not struggling much anymore. he's just that strong now.

 

[JaseC]

They be the best, junior.

BeeDog isn't a 'real' junior. :lol

It's the power of the Cell, it was foretold many many years ago...

1999?

 

[CrayzeeCarl]

...

I'm sure he'll get beat down at some point in III.

 

[gofreak]

MLAA...so potentially upto the effect of 16xAA? Nice.

In certain edge cases 64 samples per pixel would apparently be required to match the result MLAA gives.

Of course it also has its own ups and downs. But it sounds quite impressive overall. Its biggest problem seems to be performance to date (3Ghz Intel core = ~21fps for a resolution of 720p...and that's probably not factoring in communication overhead twixt gpu and cpu on PC)

And a GPU saving of 5-6ms over 2xMSAA? On a budget of 33ms per frame (for 30fps)? That's significant.

They should package this up and send it to all devs. It's entirely a post-process, so I presume it could be tacked on to any render pipeline with a minimum of fuss. If it works well, awesome, if not, no great loss.

 

[cgcg]

AA on CPU should be used in all PS3 games from here on. If the best looking PS3 game can do it there is no excuse!

 

[corrosivefrost]

I feel like Kratos is getting too powerful, these Gods and Titans are not match for him. which makes him a little boring. I don't mean that Gods need to have grand death.

Spoiler

just show that they can put up a good fight and give some sense of real danger to Kratos

I always like the times when Kratos is shown a bit more vulnerable or struggling because that's when you got the feel Kratos' strong will surpasses any odds and obstacle he faced and I think that's the most enigmatic part of Kratos.

he explore mountains in search of Pandora's Box, when he find it, he had to drag it back to Athen only to get stabbed by Ares when he got to Pandora's temple gate. then instead of giving up, he still refuse to die and crawl back out of Hades and challenge Ares. only to get mindfucked by Ares when shown his family again. stripped out of his weapon and still Kratos rise again with Blade of Athena.

I also like his moment of death in GoW2. stripped out of his power. thrown across the city by giant statue, betrayed and killed by Zeus. and that's after witnessing Zeus killing his entire army except for 1 warrior.

lately he's been having this unbeatable aura around him. like he's not struggling much anymore. he's just that strong now.

But you don't know the whole GOW3 story yet, do you? There could be moments of weakness where he has to persevere... unless you've already played the game. If that's the case, I hate you.

1999?

1999... can't believe it's been 11 years... feels like I was there not 3 days ago. :lol

 

[Lord Error]

I wonder if SMS made any strides with the method. In The Saboteur, MLAA introduced artefacts on text overlays and had issues with colours of similar luminance. (See: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-saboteur-aa-blog-entry)

It did, but really, those artifacts were practically nothing compared to ridiculous image quality gains they achieved with that technique. I'd be more than happy if GoW3 doesn't improve anything in that sense.

Hmm, that's interesting actually. Suggests they're not actually using precisely the same technique. That Santa Monica dude seemed to be at pains to point out that the Saboteur technique wasn't MLAA, yet they refer to the technique they're using as MLAA here...so I guess they are a bit different.

I didn't really get an impression that he was pointing technique in Saboteur was not MLAA. He was just saying that it wasn't the first game to use that technique I think.

 

[RavenFox]

They be the best, junior.

Beedog is as much as a Junior as I am lol
edit: beaten hard by the blades of chaos

It's the power of the Cell, it was foretold many many years ago...

Ahh Revelations...chapter 2 verse 28 I presume?

 

[JaseC]

It did, but really, those artifacts were practically nothing compared to ridiculous image quality gains they achieved with that technique. I'd be more than happy if GoW3 doesn't improve anything in that sense.

Absolutely.

 

[Kittonwy]

Don't know if old:


"AA on the cpu is MLAA Morphological Antialising. We saved 5-6 miliseconds by moving it off the cpu's. Many props to our coder Cedric for making this happen and it looks way better!



For GoW3 we are not using screen space ambient occlusion. We are using a couple other versions of AO including baked for environments, AO texture maps and a pixel calculation that creates better shading on normal maps in indirect lit areas.



Number of dynamic lights - ALOT! that is one of the big features of our engine. We built it around being able to use up to 20 dynamic lights per game object. The light can be big or small, it doesn't matter. In the end, i believe we support up to 50 dynamic lights per game object. We are not using a differed lighting scheme. Our lead programmer Vassily came up with this amazing system during pre-production, us artists love it!!! We can place lights in Maya and have them update in realtime in the game on the PS3, its like being able to paint with lights. Lighting is fast and a very enjoyable artistic process.



Off the top of my head i don't remember exactly poly count numbers for the character. We use as many polys as it takes. My guess for Zues, Kratos and Hades is 25-30,000k triangles. Again, off the top of my head, texture sizes for these character is quite big. I think we are using 2048's for the lower, upper body and head. Each character gets a normal, diffuse, specular, gloss(power map), AO, and skin shader map. We also use can layer textures to create more tiling, and use environment maps were needed, etc."


http://forums.godofwar.com/t5/God-o...opers-on-Forums-Right-Here/td-p/30061/page/14

Disappointed that they're not using SSAO but decided to bake it in, I guess some sacrifices had to be made to keep the framerate. I wonder what kind of HDR implementation they're using. >:|

 

[JaseC]

Disappointed that they're not using SSAO but decided to bake it in, I guess some sacrifices had to be made to keep the framerate. I wonder what kind of HDR implementation they're using. >:|

None, just to piss you off. Insomniac and SMS are in cahoots!

 

[gofreak]

I didn't really get an impression that he was pointing technique in Saboteur was not MLAA. He was just saying that it wasn't the first game to use that technique I think.

It seemed like his was making a distinction:

Firstly, the definition of MLAA isn't in keeping with the basic outline of the technique as it has been described by some Pandemic staff, and it is almost certainly an extension of the edge-filter plus blur technique seen in several cross-platform titles already. As Christer says, "the qualitative difference comes down to how you edge-detect and how you 'blur'."

The screenshots may not be showing MLAA

Now maybe he's being pedantic, but he did seem to be saying 'them thar be edge-detect+blur while this here be mlaa'. MLAA is afterall still pattern detection and blurring, but he seems to see enough of a difference in how you do those things to class them differently.

 

["IAMBEEFLESS"]

I feel like Kratos is getting too powerful, these Gods and Titans are not match for him. which makes him a little boring. I don't mean that Gods need to have grand death.

Spoiler

just show that they can put up a good fight and give some sense of real danger to Kratos

I always like the times when Kratos is shown a bit more vulnerable or struggling because that's when you got the feel Kratos' strong will surpasses any odds and obstacle he faced and I think that's the most enigmatic part of Kratos.

he explore mountains in search of Pandora's Box, when he find it, he had to drag it back to Athen only to get stabbed by Ares when he got to Pandora's temple gate. then instead of giving up, he still refuse to die and crawl back out of Hades and challenge Ares. only to get mindfucked by Ares when shown his family again. stripped out of his weapon and still Kratos rise again with Blade of Athena.

I also like his moment of death in GoW2. stripped out of his power. thrown across the city by giant statue, betrayed and killed by Zeus. and that's after witnessing Zeus killing his entire army except for 1 warrior.

lately he's been having this unbeatable aura around him. like he's not struggling much anymore. he's just that strong now.

Hmm. Didn't you see him getting fucked up by you know who? Besides that, I know of one kinda major spoiler so i'm gonna tell you that your fears are unfounded.

 

[Kittonwy]

In certain edge cases 64 samples per pixel would apparently be required to match the result MLAA gives.

Of course it also has its own ups and downs. But it sounds quite impressive overall. Its biggest problem seems to be performance to date (3Ghz Intel core = ~21fps for a resolution of 720p...and that's probably not factoring in communication overhead twixt gpu and cpu on PC)

And a GPU saving of 5-6ms over 2xMSAA? On a budget of 33ms per frame (for 30fps)? That's significant.

They should package this up and send it to all devs. It's entirely a post-process, so I presume it could be tacked on to any render pipeline with a minimum of fuss. If it works well, awesome, if not, no great loss.

Can't they keep SOME dev techniques to themselves or at least share it among first-party only? I find that first-party devs are already overly generous with their own development techniques.

 

[DihcarEM]

lately he's been having this unbeatable aura around him. like he's not struggling much anymore. he's just that strong now.

Which being the last of the trilogy is exactly how he's supposed to be now.
And it does make sense him not having much trouble with the other gods, he already defeated

Spoiler

Zeus

at the end of part 2.

 

[Callibretto]

But you don't know the whole GOW3 story yet, do you? There could be moments of weakness where he has to persevere... unless you've already played the game. If that's the case, I hate you.



1999... can't believe it's been 11 years... feels like I was there not 3 days ago. :lol

No I haven't played the game. it's just gut reaction from watching gamepro video. anyway, there's scan for PtOM reviews out there and if I read the hint correctly, seems like my fear of Kratos being too powerful is unwarranted. so that's great.

 

[daxter01]

Disappointed that they're not using SSAO but decided to bake it in, I guess some sacrifices had to be made to keep the framerate. I wonder what kind of HDR implementation they're using. >:|

baked AO is good enough for a game with fixed camera

 

[JaseC]

Can't they keep SOME dev techniques to themselves or at least share it among first-party only? I find that first-party devs are already overly generous with their own development techniques.

MLAA is a rather cheap* but amazing AA method. While other first-party studios employ 2xMSAA or 4xMSAA, a great number of third-party titles have none at all or decide to use QAA (ugh). SMS's MLAA method being thrown out into the public could change that. It's best to share the tech around.

* As far as Cell is concerned.

 

[gofreak]

Can't they keep SOME dev techniques to themselves or at least share it among first-party only? I find that first-party devs are already overly generous with their own development techniques.

:lol Selfish kitton If it meant lots of games having better IQ, wouldn't you want it to be shared?

Anyways, it probably isn't a huge deal to implement on your own...but it could be a nice easy win if an existing optimised set of code was available.

 

["IAMBEEFLESS"]

Heh. That gamepro video hardly contained spoliers at all. If you beat GoWII and actually cared to watch the ending you would have seen that Mr. Water was going to be in the game. Plus, they chopped up the whole boss fight. I don't want to be spoiled on any major story points myself but some of you guys are a little ridiculous. Everything else shown in the video was taken out of context.

Anyways, that glossy floor finish looks marvelous.

Edit: ND and SMS need to share their shit with SP. Infamous looked like shit.

 

[jmd494]

**All spoilers relate to the E3 demo on the PSN. If you played the demo, I'm not spoiling anything**

One thing I don't get from playing the demo...are the

Spoiler

titans on your side or not?

In the demo, you

Spoiler

kill Helios to help that one titan out and he kinda gives you a little look of appreciation and carries on climbing.

Then, later in the demo, you come out of that

Spoiler

steam vent

and the demo ends as you

Spoiler

are about to stab that same titan

...what gives?

 

[zoukka]

It's possible that you just latch on to it and carry on upwards.

 

[Kittonwy]

Heh. That gamepro video hardly contained spoliers at all. If you beat GoWII and actually cared to watch the ending you would have seen that Mr. Water was going to be in the game. Plus, they chopped up the whole boss fight. I don't want to be spoiled on any major story points myself but some of you guys are a little ridiculous. Everything else shown in the video was taken out of context.

Anyways, that glossy floor finish looks marvelous.

Edit: ND and SMS need to share their shit with SP. Infamous looked like shit.

At the time Infamous was a pretty good looking open-world game, keep in mind neither ND nor SMS make open-world game, the shadow quality is not going to be as good, AA-wise obviously they can use this new technique, Infamous actually has very good lighting and the lighting is pretty dynamic, characters and objects have proper real-time shadows +self-shadows) for the most part.

 

[AAK]

Infamous looked like shit.

No it didn't. Not at all. Especially how it maintained its framerate despite the chaos.

 

[GoutPatrol]

Since I don't wanna bump a month old topic, I just tried the Kratos slurpee at 7-11. It was damn good.

 

[JaseC]

Since I don't wanna bump a month old topic, I just tried the Kratos slurpee at 7-11. It was damn good.

Did you find chaos at the bottom?

 

[badcrumble]

I want anything that can get inFamous 2 to run at 60fps.

 

[black_vegeta]

I'm glad the game is about 10-12 hours. GoWII, if I remember correctly, was much longer, and it ended up being WAY too long.

It wasn't that bad mang.

 

[Wandering Leopard]

MLAA is a rather cheap* but amazing AA method. While other first-party studios employ 2xMSAA or 4xMSAA, a great number of third-party titles have none at all or decide to use QAA (ugh). SMS's MLAA method being thrown out into the public could change that. It's best to share the tech around.

* As far as Cell is concerned.

So wait, if this was employed in say Killzone 3 it would be less blurry than KZ2?

 

[JaseC]

So wait, if this was employed in say Killzone 3 it would be less blurry than KZ2?

That's the idea. GoWIII certainly doesn't seem to be suffering any drawbacks whatsoever as a result of utilising MLAA.

Edit: The deferred rendering presentation GG whipped up for GDC 2007 specifically mentions "more efficient anti-aliasing" as a planned feature. I can't see Kz3 employing anything but MLAA.

 

[Denzar]

So wait, if this was employed in say Killzone 3 it would be less blurry than KZ2?

Probably.

KZ2 use the dreaded "QAA" but the results were actually not that bad.

 

[JaseC]

Probably.

KZ2 use the dreaded "QAA" but the results were actually not that bad.

The amount of detail lost greatly depends on how well QAA is implemented. Some (most? ) devs just slap it on and call it a day, while others are more meticulous. UFC 2009 is a great example of a third-party doing it right.

 

[Ploid 3.0]

You are a good poster with valid criticism in most cases (or criticisms I understand but don't agree with), but you have a habit of dropping into topics and backing up posters that clearly seem to upset the other posters in the topic (e.g. GhaleonQ in the Heavy Rain recently, and Generic in this topic). It has happened quite a few times, and I bet most people refer to that when they want to reprimand you. No offense man.

Seeing this quite often it's more like he's sponsoring those posters. I can see how some would think of him as trolling by encouraging those characters, keeping himself safe in case that character gets out of control and banned (Vennt laying down the law in the HR thread with Rez trying to clear GhaleonQ so he can see if it's ok for him to continue). It just seems like it.

 

[Trevelyan]

Infamous looked like shit.

Infamous was actually running off PS2 code iirc. If they take their time with 2 and make a proper engine and utilize the PS3 architecture I have no doubt Infamous 2 will look pretty stunning.

 

[black_vegeta]

Beedog is as much as a Junior as I am lol

And me. :lol

Man, this game needs to be in my possesion NAO!!!!!!