nextgeneration
Member
This is what I've been waiting for in games. Looks great!
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Crackdown 3: 10 minute pre-alpha gameplay demo
- Thread starter MauroNL
- Start date
The agency has always had an interesting take on the idea of "peace keeping"... Seriously... My civilian death count was through the roof in CD1
There is an offline mode, yes... But naturally you won't be able to take advantage of the online features...
When he described how it's possible to bore your way up, floor by floor, in a stealth scenario, I got very excited by the potential of this tech.
FunkyDealer
Banned
Looks really, really cool. There's some genuinely awesome potential with this.
I hope they'll improve their animations before release though, the character skitters about too much.
I hope they'll improve their animations before release though, the character skitters about too much.
RowdyReverb
Member
Looks responsive at least. It's like the opposite of movement in GTA V or The Witcher 3
GTAV is responsive. Difference is that it's using physics in every movement. Having weight in every animation is what makes it the king in terms of credibility.
Back on track though. I haven't watched the entire footage. So the cloud is actually processing the calculations for the physics demonstrated? Isn't it just storing tons of coordinates for buildings that have been destroyed?
It's isn't just 'storing coordinates' When the buildings go boom, multiple servers handle the calculations that determine how the pieces fall, the result of those calculations are sent to the console for rendering...
Refreshment.01
Member
On one hand this is quite amazing...
On the other the game is not doing anything interesting with it.
The fidelity of the simulation seems to be in order of what can be done on consoles by themsleves in this generation if the engine supported it. i would have been more impressed if we would be getting something like Flex level running on the server side while the console run an average open world game of the 8th gen in terms of complexity.
On the other the game is not doing anything interesting with it.
The fidelity of the simulation seems to be in order of what can be done on consoles by themsleves in this generation if the engine supported it. i would have been more impressed if we would be getting something like Flex level running on the server side while the console run an average open world game of the 8th gen in terms of complexity.
Pound_lb003
Member
He's stressed that it's entirely a tech demo and not a reflection of the final game.
I'm just skeptical still, I dunno - until it's out and working smoothly I'm taking it with a grain of salt. There's just so many variables involved in people's internet, we still struggle with lag nowadays. Or what happens when 300,000 people are asking for 5 Azure servers each - they're asking for a hell of a lot of processing power just for this game. I know that Azure literally has the capacity to support that, but financially, are they happy to let Crackdown account for that much of their cloud? This tech can be applied in the perfect conditions, but there's just so much to get in the way between here and release, especially if it's only being touted as a tech demo.
I'm just skeptical still, I dunno - until it's out and working smoothly I'm taking it with a grain of salt. There's just so many variables involved in people's internet, we still struggle with lag nowadays. Or what happens when 300,000 people are asking for 5 Azure servers each - they're asking for a hell of a lot of processing power just for this game. I know that Azure literally has the capacity to support that, but financially, are they happy to let Crackdown account for that much of their cloud? This tech can be applied in the perfect conditions, but there's just so much to get in the way between here and release, especially if it's only being touted as a tech demo.
What the are you basing this on... I haven't scene a physics simulation remotely close to this this gen... Not even on PC... The dev says they can use up to 20x the physics processing power that would be available on a xb1...
I find the gameplay implications of this to be very compelling... Firstly, the additional CPU power will potentially be used to run the AI routines as well... I anticipate the NPC and Traffic simulation will be impressive with this one... 2ndly, the destruction model, makes for a excellent progression of the "do it your way" mission structure Crackdown is known for.
Alx
Member
Since the cloud features are for multiplayer only, some of the server use will be shared, it's more a per-session use than per-user.
By the way I was thinking about it while rewatching the IGN video yesterday, since apparently on default settings the local console is handling the physics, but that could be true for all the players in that world ; it means that multiple players playing together would be putting their console resources in common for the session even before the external servers are needed. If that's the case then you'd have a micro-cloud made of only the players console, sharing the computation of physics in the session. It's somehow even cooler than having everything done by the external servers.
There's really no reason that this would be any more laggy than existing games... Your ping to their server is likely to be be better than your ping to a P2P host...
Most online gamers can play a P2P game that features destruction, and not have any game breaking lag issues... A faster ping is only going to reduce lag issues...
Bandwidth use will increase slightly, but there's no reason it would be remotely close to the amount of bandwidth required to stream an HD Netflix video.
As far as utilizing Azure's capacity... Surely MS has considered this and decided to run with it... As a consumer I don't see why this should be our concern... That said, the engine only uses additional servers during more intense scenes of destruction ... Based on the demo, they had to collapse 7 or 8 buildings simultaneously, in order to get the system to use 12x the local processing power... It would take a impossible amount of coordination and chance to imaging a scenario where 300,000 concurrent players are maximizing their load on the server simultaneously... Most of the time, a players load is going to be minimal as It takes time to get a building to fall. Then You have to figure that many of these concurrent players will be in the same MP session, which groups of 2-8 people will be sharing the same servers. Not to mention, a crackdown session is utilizing up to 20 virtual machines, not 20 whole servers... At last check, MS has 300,000 severs dedicated to Xbox... God knows how many VMs that ends up being. Capacity shouldn't be an issue...
Just because we haven't seen it doesn't mean it can't be done.
If the game does use up to 20x the power of what's available locally I doubt this will turn out smoothly thanks to all the factors that comes in the way network wise.
I honestly think Red Faction Guerrilla is close, but with larger and less detailed pieces being destroyed. That game on the other hand came out 6 years ago. Imagine the performance we have in Red Faction Guerrilla today with modern hardware and then make the simulations twice as demanding and detailed. Then we'd have cut the performance in roughly half which is still playable. I figure it would be about as impressive.
On What are you basing the idea that it can be done?
The The Red Faction argument has been beaten to death in this thread already... It's painfully obvious that the Red Faction simulation isn't remotely as complex or demanding as what we've seen in the crackdown demo. Even if you doubled the demand of RFGs simulation and halved the performance, you wouldn't have anything comparable to what crackdown has displayed...
The similarities between these two simulations begins and ends with : they both have falling buildings.
In RFG you have singular, relatively small buildings, breaking into far less convincing peices, many of which quickly disappear into oblivion.
How is that "close" to having 8+ massive skyscrapers, built physically, that convincingly collapse into into each other, responding accurately to external forces while every individual piece becomes an interactive part of the simulation.
The idea that a RF game running on the xb1's local hardware could come close to pulling this off is ill-informed at best... Disingenuous at worst.
And no ones been able to explain why networking will be an issue... People have been destroying things in online games for a long time... There's no lag issues with Battlefield 4, and that's P2P. This should have LESS lag, being as those the dedicated servers should generally allow for faster ping times...
Pound_lb003
Member
There's no way that's how it'll work. Making it p2p physics is just asking for lag. At least if it's coming from Azure servers it'll be down to your connection exclusively.
Aaahh! So 1 VM=/= 1 server capacity. The other thing I didn't account for, is given that they're shared sessions the calculations will be made for more than one player at a time.
Still, if this game sells 1 million, getting 300k people online won't be unlikely, and while a fair few will be using 1 VM, equally the main reason to play will be to blow shit up. So there will be 1 using 14 VMs (as Dave said was the record).
I dunno. Me being skeptical, or being concerned about things that I as a consumer shouldn't be - is purely down to this being a brand new amazing advance. And generally they aren't as simple as planned.
Alx
Member
Well there's certainly a requirement for a server in the middle, but since in the demo at least one of the console is doing part of the work, then why wouldn't multiple consoles ? In the end I wonder if the game engine makes a difference whether a "slice" of processing ressources comes from a console or Azure. That could be why they seem to count everything in "xbox units".
oldergamer
Member
People are still trying to diminish what has been done here, even after days of explaining reasoning and pointing out basic things that can be surmised by watching the video. For what reason are the questions being opened? Skepticism or Cynicism?
That latter being a poor reason for doubt considering people got a handson tech demo. people worrying about lag or response time need to take into account that the tech has been created to work on a element that can be processed in a environment that contains lag. Also the app isn't maintaining a connection with each individual server, its one connection to Azure which has a ridiculous amount of bandwidth.
That latter being a poor reason for doubt considering people got a handson tech demo. people worrying about lag or response time need to take into account that the tech has been created to work on a element that can be processed in a environment that contains lag. Also the app isn't maintaining a connection with each individual server, its one connection to Azure which has a ridiculous amount of bandwidth.
No people are tempering expectations : Don't be surprised if the final game's destructions don't work as good as demonstrated in a doctored environment with very few players.
It's multiplayer only.
Maximilian E.
AKA MS-Evangelist
You can still do it in SP mode. Destruction seems to be limited to MP.
Alx
Member
Yea. That might be a problem.
You could let her play the Screamride demo, at 3 I don't think she'd make a difference.
oldergamer
Member
Nonsense, this isn't tempering expectations. You don't temper expectations by making up false reasoning for GAF created potential issues, specifically without any basis for those claims. You also don't use arguments/statements like below when "tempering expectations"...
1. "This has already been done in red faction"
or...
2. "Just because we haven't seen it doesn't mean it can't be done."
Sorry, but "tempering expectations" is clearly NOT what is happening there. Those statements are designed to diminish what has bee accomplished or demonstrated.
Notice nobody is arguing with anyone that says " I bet it's toned down for release" nobody is arguing against that.
Then you haven't played RFG enough. The argument does NOT begin and end with "they both have falling buildings." RFG has a really detailed destructibility with massive amounts of action on screen at the same time. As of now RFG is still the most detailed game featuring destructible environments. Before having it in front of yourself you can't say that doubling the computations and doubling the destructible details wouldn't come close to C3.
"How is that "close" to having 8+ massive skyscrapers, built physically, that convincingly collapse into into each other, responding accurately to external forces while every individual piece becomes an interactive part of the simulation. "
Every building in RFG is built physically as well you know. With every piece reacting to external forces. Not all buildings are small in that game. The only thing different here is the scale. A scale that could easily be cramped up today. Point is don't praise physics calculations that depends entirely on network based computations.
I can explain why networking would and will be an issue. These are complex computations that needs to be calculated off-site and then sent back to the rendering unit. It's a lot of information that needs to be sent in realtime for anything to happen. If there's just a slight delay in the data packages you'll have a game breaking lag in-game. I've never said anything about RF running on X1 by the way.
I said that just because you haven't seen anything close to this before doesn't mean it doesn't exist or can't be done without the cloud. You mentioned PC as a platform and to say that it can't be done on that platform is what triggered me. You do realize that the processing power available on a modern PC today easily reaches 20x the performance of an X1 CPU?
oldergamer
Member
If it could be done in red faction they would have tried to do so. The problem of physics and objects breaking apart in a dynamic nature is a very difficult one. If it were easily solvable on last gen hardware, someone would have done it ( to use your argument ). The gating factor isn't the tech involved, it's the processing power of the hardware used. The cloud allows for MORE processing power IF leveraged in a smart way. Without the cloud we wouldn't see this in a game with the same level of destruction.
Red faction didn't come close to what crackdown 3 is doing in this regard. The buildings in red faction are NOT built physically. They were build to fall apart in the same way each time, meaning the shattering of objects was not dynamic and they don't handle intercollision between objects.For example if you hit the corner of a wall with a shot, one small piece won't fall off ( like dave jones showed in the crackdown demo.)
Refreshment.01
Member
You are responding to thinks you assume i said. The tech has lots of potential.
Well... there have been very impressive physics demos for years. i already mentioned the Nvidia Flex showcases. There's also things like those voxel experimental based engines from years ago made by small dev teams. Or the procedural destruction added to revisions of the Unreal tech engine. Things like that run locally.
You can just take away the most impressive showcases of the 7th gen in terms of physics and extrapolate how much the added processing capabilities available in the 8th one can do for physcis. Specially since developers are now more familiar with GPU based physcis calculations.
The thing is, it also comes down to priorities. At the start of the 7th gen we saw some emphais on the possibilities of running simulations. But since physics are not something that looks pretty in screens and press materials, the companies opted to center the efforts elsewhere. The short version of it, is that we could only judge when someone devotes itself to take advantage of the processing of an 8th gen console to make a game that heavily relies on physic simulations and then see how far it can go and how it would compare to the Crackdown demo.
That's the point. i already adressed this, the potential is indeed there however it wasn't shown to us in a new way. i can only judge from the demo and not from asumptions or dreams i could come up with.
Once they show something truly unique with this technology i' ll be here then praising them as much as anyone else.
Be careful there. Is not neccessarily CPU power what holds AI in games. It is indeed a factor but there are multiple ones.
TheStruggler
Report me for trolling ND/TLoU2 threads
if dice take advantage of this for the new battlefield, good god
I've played plenty of RFG... The scale of the destruction is several orders of magnitude greater in the crackdown demo... There's no flipping way the performance increase between the xb1 and the 360 could cover that massive increase in demand...
As far as networking is concerned, the complexity of the computations is irrelevant. The client requests a computation. The server performs the computation. Then the server sends the results to the client... That's how p2p games work now, except a gamer acts as a host, instead of a dedicated server... That's a relatively slow process, yet We have destruction in p2p games w/o a lag issue... Azure servers will give us better ping times...
Yes these computations in crackdown are more complex. That's why they are handled by multiple servers. They can compute more quickly. so long as the computations are handled quickly, and sent to the user with minimal ping. You have a smooth experience.
I love the Crackdown franchise but for some reason this destruction tech is not doing anything for me right now - the gimmick might die hours into the story.
I'm looking forward to the orbs though that made the first game so enjoyable hopefully we get some more details to get me excited for the new game.
I'm looking forward to the orbs though that made the first game so enjoyable hopefully we get some more details to get me excited for the new game.
I don't think the destruction plays a big part in the single player story... The cloud based destruction is a multiplayer feature only... Could make for some interesting dynamics...