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Uncharted 4 preview thread. New footage/info

Frozone

Member
People please, this is (these are?) caustics

caustics.water_.jpg

Kaustik.jpg

Yea, I wouldn't call those water FX in UC4 'caustics'. You can't even see below the water where light has to pass through and hit the bottom.
 

zsynqx

Member
Actually RoTR has most of these game mechanics (save the superior animation in UC4). Wet characters, snow on hair (that's actually real hair fibers), footprints in snow (that's actual dynamic deformation), splashes, etc.. It just doesn't look anywhere near as good as UC4.

Gotta love that snow on hair game mechanic. :p

Btw, none of the things you listed are game mechanics
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Actually RoTR has most of these game mechanics (save the superior animation in UC4). Wet characters, snow on hair (that's actually real hair fibers), footprints in snow (that's actual dynamic deformation), splashes, etc.. It just doesn't look anywhere near as good as UC4.

Shit, Battlefront has these 'mechanics' as well.

Dust builds up on Stormtrooper armor on sandy planets, as well as Rebel clothing with different intensity. Snow hits, 'slowly' melts, and sizzles on sabers and blasters. Clothing and armor gets wets in rain, and in water, as well as mud splatters build up on the blasters and clothing in wet/muddy areas when explosives go off spreading debris, or if you roll around in it, etc..

I am glad developers are paying attention to 'the little things' that ND wow'ed people with, with the first Wet to Dry Drake in 2007.
 
Actually RoTR has most of these game mechanics (save the superior animation in UC4). Wet characters, snow on hair (that's actually real hair fibers), footprints in snow (that's actual dynamic deformation), splashes, etc.. It just doesn't look anywhere near as good as UC4.

Those aren't game mechanics.
 

gamerMan

Member
Shaders, not texture maps.

You might be right, but I wish that they animated the shader then to make it look like the mud is dripping. It looks like a simple swap with the mud magically appearing when the jeep goes through the mud and disappearing when water touches it.

HStmNrn.gif
 
Bit late 31 pages in, does anyone can answer this.

There was a small debate in other thread about the way a player aproached the outpost in the preview. Someone pointed out that Uncharted 3 could be stealthed or Ghost played as Ubisoft has coined up. i have played 3 but it didn't even occured to me beyond the cases were devs intentioanlly wanted the player to do so.

So can you stealth Uncharted 3 and has Naughty Dog my any claims about aproaching 4 in that way?
 
This is the most nitpicky thread I've ever read lol. I don't mean that as an insult but there are so many conversations and arguments about the most minute details. Then again I love the look of hd ps2 games so it's no surprise this is all going over my head lol.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
This is the most nitpicky thread I've ever read lol. I don't mean that as an insult but there are so many conversations and arguments about the most minute details. Then again I love the look of hd ps2 games so it's no surprise this is all going over my head lol.

The mere fact that tiny little things like that are being nitpicked, is a testament to how great and detailed the series is. ;)
 

zsynqx

Member
Bit late 31 pages in, does anyone can answer this.

There was a small debate in other thread about the way a player aproached the outpost in the preview. Someone pointed out that Uncharted 3 could be stealthed or Ghost played as Ubisoft has coined up. i have played 3 but it didn't even occured to me beyond the cases were devs intentioanlly wanted the player to do so.

So can you stealth Uncharted 3 and has Naughty Dog my any claims about aproaching 4 in that way?

You can kind of stealth in Uncharted 3 but it's not that viable. Once you have been seen then your are just in combat. There are no sections where you can go through without killing.

Uncharted 4 has a greater emphasis on stealth, although you can still go in guns blazing if you want. The mechanics are more fleshed out with marking and visible enemy state indicators. Once in combat you are able to reset stealth if you break line of sight and remain hidden. According to the devs, some sections can also be completed by not killing like certain parts in TLOU.
 
Actually RoTR has most of these game mechanics (save the superior animation in UC4). Wet characters, snow on hair (that's actually real hair fibers), footprints in snow (that's actual dynamic deformation), splashes, etc.. It just doesn't look anywhere near as good as UC4.

Yes, these can't be considered as game mechanics. However, I do agree that some traversal mechanics from Uncharted 4 can be seen in Rise of the Tomb Raider. The climbing axe (similar to Nate's spike) and the rope (swing) mechanics are the ones that come to my mind. Though, I would say that these aren't as well implemented, especially the latter.
 
This is the most nitpicky thread I've ever read lol. I don't mean that as an insult but there are so many conversations and arguments about the most minute details. Then again I love the look of hd ps2 games so it's no surprise this is all going over my head lol.

I'm with you on appreciation of the aesthetic of previous gen games (some of the games that wowed me the most were even on SNES). I think ND invites these arguments, because they spend so much obsessive time on minor details, and tend to try and highlight them in media they release. And some of that work is genuinely impressive! But there's no way to account for everything (see jank on those jeep/waterfall gifs). That stuff is always going to get brought up when so much of the conversation is already on minutiae.
 
You can kind of stealth in Uncharted 3 but it's not that viable. Once you have been seen then your are just in combat. There are no sections where you can go through without killing.

Uncharted 4 has a greater emphasis on stealth, although you can still go in guns blazing if you want. The mechanics are more fleshed out with marking and visible enemy state indicators. Once in combat you are able to reset stealth if you break line of sight and remain hidden. According to the devs, some sections can also be completed by not killing like certain parts in TLOU.
All the information i was looking for thank you ____________ insert name her.

Your name is hard to write, im having a hard time saying it out laud.
 
No one said there is any fluid simulation.

There is no fluid simulation in Uncharted, in any Uncharted (maybe the drinks they have in cutscenes count but even then it's not really a fluid simulation).

We were talking about the ripples in the water. That is what the shader is simulating. Troughs and peaks.

wave-interference.jpg


Same thing happens with light which is very strange and cool.
 

Henkka

Banned
Yeah, an actual fluid simulation would murder the framerate. It's not really a real-time thing. Real-time graphics is about faking stuff to avoid actually computing it.
 
Yeah, an actual fluid simulation would murder the framerate. It's not really a real-time thing. Real-time graphics is about faking stuff to avoid actually computing it.

It isn't that nothing is computed, the simulation of the wave trough and peaks, though upon a "flat" shader, still has to be done in real-time and shaded accordingly.
 

Henkka

Banned
It isn't that nothing is computed, the simulation of the wave trough and peaks, though upon a "flat" shader, still has to be done in real-time and shaded accordingly.

Yeah, sure. I just feel like people sometimes mix up real-time graphics terms with stuff that isn't real-time. Stuff like global illumination and caustics aren't done in real-time in any game as far as I'm aware. ND's games often have caustics like this: https://youtu.be/IhQVivTiT94?t=1m20s But it's just an animated texture, it's not actually computing how the light is reflected(Because that's utterly impossible on modern hardware).
 

Venom Fox

Banned
Yeah, sure. I just feel like people sometimes mix up real-time graphics terms with stuff that isn't real-time. Stuff like global illumination and caustics aren't done in real-time in any game as far as I'm aware. ND's games often have caustics like this: https://youtu.be/IhQVivTiT94?t=1m20s But it's just an animated texture, it's not actually computing how the light is reflected(Because that's utterly impossible on modern hardware).
Light passing through water calculation isn't possible on today's hardware?
 
Bit late 31 pages in, does anyone can answer this.

There was a small debate in other thread about the way a player aproached the outpost in the preview. Someone pointed out that Uncharted 3 could be stealthed or Ghost played as Ubisoft has coined up. i have played 3 but it didn't even occured to me beyond the cases were devs intentioanlly wanted the player to do so.

So can you stealth Uncharted 3 and has Naughty Dog my any claims about aproaching 4 in that way?

I'm sure this has been covered, but U3 doesn't have stealth in a traditional sense, and certainly not to the extent U4 allows. Some sections of the game allow for a stealth approach to take down enemies but then forces you into PvE situations to create a setpiece of sorts.
 
Yeah, sure. I just feel like people sometimes mix up real-time graphics terms with stuff that isn't real-time. Stuff like global illumination and caustics aren't done in real-time in any game as far as I'm aware. ND's games often have caustics like this: https://youtu.be/IhQVivTiT94?t=1m20s But it's just an animated texture, it's not actually computing how the light is reflected(Because that's utterly impossible on modern hardware).

Yea those are animated textures, really good example.

I mean it's not impossible, just all the performance budget is surely going elsewhere (e.g. the models, animation, AI, etc, and all the shaders everywhere else too).
Perfect, we can have in a browser a better water simulation and not in a game! I don't pretend fluid simulation but at least deformable model for water...

Yea it would've been cool, but again even when it's running smooth in your browser it doesn't mean it won't use a lot of computing time in a game situation.

Again some games do use deformable ones (e.g. Dark Cloud I mentioned earlier) but they are extremely simple iterations. In terms of how they look Uncharted's shader solution is miles ahead of those, even without the deformation.

Also that browser example is only using a single flat surface and creating ripples within it, it's not using particles throughout the whole "fluid layer" that you see, so it's a lot less intensive and it is faking stuff.

Just like you won't see droplets of water separate from the surface layer, it's just emulating the ripple effect.

Ripple effect simulation, even when deforming the surface, is wayyy cheaper than fluid simulation by a ton. Even if you only fluid simulate the top layer of a "water body" it's still far more intense to use particles over exclusively ripples.

At least that is my guess, I don't make games :p

If you want to see how intense actual fluid simulations are you can run these demos on your computer here (the second one you have to register on Nvidia's website). The files are very small, but the computations are hella intense :)

https://mega.co.nz/#!C4JgFTDa!Il-mbUTBGF6DLMDATAPnvO3Qhh5oEJMJPVI_-d62umc (same demo but older version)

https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworksdownload#?dn=nvidia-flex-0-8-0 (download the 03-14-2016 Flex 1.0 demo, must register, free)
 

Henkka

Banned
Light passing through water calculation isn't possible on today's hardware?

I doubt it, at least not like it's done in CG movies. Almost everything in videogames is "fake", to my understanding, whereas CG actually attempts to mimic how light and materials work in the real world, according to real physics. As an example, there's a part in Frozen where a single frame took around 132 hours to render. That's because they make materials that actually mimic real-world ice and the computer has to calculate how light reflects and refracts off of it. Naughty Dog's artists could probably make a real-time scene at 30FPS that looked nearly identical to that scene when you squint, but it wouldn't actually do nearly any of that calculation. It's all just baked lighting, normal maps and glossiness maps and so on.
 

aravuus

Member
Not to derail the current conversation, and this was probably posted on here before...

But a pretty neat "Did You Know Gaming?" video Uncharted, with some cool Easter Eggs, etc., from the 1-3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLRJE3uVook

Makes me more excited to see what is packed in this adventure from the whole series added up.

Spoilers? Currently going through the HD Collection

Finishing the second one, to be precise. Couple of chapters to go.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Spoilers? Currently going through the HD Collection

Finishing the second one, to be precise. Couple of chapters to go.

Nothing on story, no. But I would hold off, unless you were somehow miraculously able to avoid certain set pieces over the years.

So definitely hold off.
 
This is a cool WebGL example of caustics and also wave simulation.

http://madebyevan.com/webgl-water/

It's mesmerizing to say the least, especially once the gravity toggled. It will be interesting to see how the light from the water surface will be reflected and refracted onto the surface beneath in that scene [location spoiler] depending on Nate's movements. Although limited in term of interaction, the PSX demo featured a convincing effect on the cave walls and ceilings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLRJE3uVook

Makes me more excited to see what is packed in this adventure from the whole series added up.

Nice.
 

luca_29_bg

Member
Yea those are animated textures, really good example.

I mean it's not impossible, just all the performance budget is surely going elsewhere (e.g. the models, animation, AI, etc, and all the shaders everywhere else too).

Yea it would've been cool, but again even when it's running smooth in your browser it doesn't mean it won't use a lot of computing time in a game situation.

Again some games do use deformable ones (e.g. Dark Cloud I mentioned earlier) but they are extremely simple iterations. In terms of how they look Uncharted's shader solution is miles ahead of those, even without the deformation.

Also that browser example is only using a single flat surface and creating ripples within it, it's not using particles throughout the whole "fluid layer" that you see, so it's a lot less intensive and it is faking stuff.

Just like you won't see droplets of water separate from the surface layer, it's just emulating the ripple effect.

Ripple effect simulation, even when deforming the surface, is wayyy cheaper than fluid simulation by a ton. Even if you only fluid simulate the top layer of a "water body" it's still far more intense to use particles over exclusively ripples.

At least that is my guess, I don't make games :p

If you want to see how intense actual fluid simulations are you can run these demos on your computer here (the second one you have to register on Nvidia's website). The files are very small, but the computations are hella intense :)

https://mega.co.nz/#!C4JgFTDa!Il-mbUTBGF6DLMDATAPnvO3Qhh5oEJMJPVI_-d62umc (same demo but older version)

https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworksdownload#?dn=nvidia-flex-0-8-0 (download the 03-14-2016 Flex 1.0 demo, must register, free)

i have an amd gpu 7950 and i'm dying to try some fluid simulation for my gpu, but flex works only on nvidia! Anyway i know that dark cloud example is pretty basic, but there are also puddle used in ico on ps2, one ratchet and clank game on ps3, resistance 2, with deformable waves, they are so much better than shader based waves because they are really 3D and make water so organic! Yeah ok i remember that water in resistance 2 was a little too much jelly but i can't believe that something like the water used in watch dogs can't be tweaked and used in uncharted 4 or other games, or something similar. The day that shader based water waves will die in games, i will be very happy! For me this kind of water looks like a more liquid mercury fluid! Hope on ps5 we can start to see a better water in every game!
 

hesido

Member
Not to derail the current conversation, and this was probably posted on here before...

But a pretty neat "Did You Know Gaming?" video Uncharted, with some cool Easter Eggs, etc., from the 1-3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLRJE3uVook

Makes me more excited to see what is packed in this adventure from the whole series added up.

Finally, that original Elena concept art I've been seeking ALL over the place, which can also be seen in the game's (Drake's Fortune) extras... Dayum, I like that much, much better than the Elena that made it into a game (I remember it being in colour, though, the way I saw it in the game's extras..

Here's what I'm talking about:
https://youtu.be/eLRJE3uVook?t=39s

Much better... I find it unfortunate they didn't go that way.
 

Memento

Member
I feel like this is the most hyped Sony first party title ever. It even managed to win twice the "Most Antecipated" award of NeoGAF lol.
 

Alcander

Member
Looks great. This was the game I was waiting on to buy a PS4. Not sure if I should jump in quite yet though with the 4.5 rumors... Grr.
 
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