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[Daviii]

Crackdown I believe. Spencer tweeted that Cloud Compute in that destruction demo from a year ago was early Crackdown stuff.

I will cut my fingers off of there is significant processing power being handled in "the cloud" with any Xbox one game.

Such a massive, without any return, unreliable and inherently stupid scenario is not gonna happen. It's a PR gimmick of epic proportions.

 

[Chris1]

I wish more games took advantage of the RTA for achievements

I will cut my fingers off of there is significant processing power being handled in "the cloud" with any Xbox one game.

Such a massive, without any return, unreliable and inherently stupid scenario is not gonna happen. It's a PR gimmick of epic proportions.

Ehh I think they can do what they say with it and we'll see for ourselves what they can do with crackdown, I can't imagine Phil talking up the cloud when he can just simply ignore anything regarding it or use current examples (Titanfall AI) if it won't amount to much. He's built a 'good guy' rep I think just talking crap out his ass to make the xbox look better isn't his style.

Kampfheld also posted on here that the cloud will help, he's apparently to be working on Crackdown...

 

[SEGAvangelist]

Ah, interesting. I'll be curious to see what it substantially adds to the game, and it if means the game will require an always online connection, even for the SP stuff (assuming there's a SP option).

I'm guessing it'll be always online and likely may even require multiple players in a session kind of like the way Destiny works. A decent-sized number of people sharing the same world being destroyed should be less load on the servers than 1 person per world.

One developer on here mentioned that they are building two versions. One with internet and one without. Physics significantly cut back when internet is down.

I thought that was for his own game and not Crackdown.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

dp

 

[JaggedSac]

Creating server sessions using thunderhead looks pretty simple:

Matchmaking Flow for Thunderhead-based Games

Here are the high-level steps that take place to get a user (or party) matchmade into a Thunderhead-based game. A similar flow should apply for games hosted by third parties.

One client (the scout) from a group of clients that want to make a match creates a ticket session (ticketSession) to represent that group. This session contains a list of potential datacenters, located in the session configuration in /constants/system/measurementServerAddresses. It comes from either the session template, if the datacenter list is static, or from the client writing it up at session creation after getting it from Thunderhead first. This session also contains gsiSetId, gameVariantId, and maxAllowedPlayers values in the targetSessionConstants/custom/gameServerPlatform object.

All other clients in the group join the ticket session.

All members of the group download the measurementServerAddresses values from the /constants/system object for the ticket session, ping them using the platform API, and upload an ordered list of preferred datacenters to the session, as defined in /members/{index}/properties/system/serverMeasurements. Note
If the session is appropriately configured and is registered with the party, the shell automatically performs this step.

The scout calls the MatchmakingService.CreateMatchTicketAsync Method, passing in a reference to the ticket session. Note
There's a potential bug here if the ticket session objects have mismatched constants. This is easily avoidable with a rule on the hopper.

If the MatchTicketDetailsResponse.PreserveSession Property is set to Never, the matchmaking service copies the server measurements from each member into the internal representation of the ticket. It flattens the server measurements of the members of the ticket into a single server measurements collection for the ticket, stored in the internal representation of the ticket as a "special" ticket attribute.

If MatchTicketDetailsResponse.PreserveSession is set to Always, the server measurements are not used. Instead, the matchmaking service copies the /properties/system/matchmaking/serverConnectionString value for the session into the internal representation of the ticket, probably as a serverMeasurements collection of size 1 with latency zero.

The matchmaking service matches the ticket session with others representing other groups, taking the server measurement collections into account. It tries to match the group with other groups that have the same datacenters preferred highly.
Once a matched group has been found, matchmaking creates a target session and adds all the players from the ticket sessions that are matched together. The service writes the final flattened server measurements for the matched group into /properties/system/serverConnectionStringCandidates. It writes the originally submitted server measurements for each newly-added member in the target session to /members/{index}/constants/system/matchmakingResult/serverMeasurements.

All clients join the target session.

Some or all clients call the GameServerPlatformService.AllocateClusterAsync Method. The first one triggers the allocation, while the others receive only an acknowledgment. The method gets the target session from MPSD and chooses a datacenter based on the datacenter preferences in the target session, as well as load and other Thunderhead-specific knowledge.

All clients poll the target session for connectivity information. When the information is available, they join the session and play.

 

[GunslingerVit]

I thought that was for his own game and not Crackdown.

That was my understanding as well.

 

[gamechanger87]

I'm guessing it'll be always online and likely may even require multiple players in a session kind of like the way Destiny works. A decent-sized number of people sharing the same world being destroyed should be less load on the servers than 1 person per world.



I thought that was for his own game and not Crackdown.

I didn't mean he was on that game I just meant how he was thinking about it.

 

[Chris1]

One developer on here mentioned that they are building two versions. One with internet and one without. Physics significantly cut back when internet is down.

He never said that, he said they're considering it because peoples are skeptical about always online and they want to show the difference, but it would effectively be doubling the workload they have to do so it's not guaranteed.

 

[Zedox]

I will cut my fingers off of there is significant processing power being handled in "the cloud" with any Xbox one game.

Such a massive, without any return, unreliable and inherently stupid scenario is not gonna happen. It's a PR gimmick of epic proportions.

Well after seeing a guy eat a hat, I guess I'm gonna see a guy cut off his fingers...smh.

 

[Garrett 2U]

Interesting stuff:

Sounds like it pretty much works as expected.

Games request a VM (worker role) from the service, Azure allocates it.
Cloud games can store 20TB on Azure.

Additional services are available, but not included.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

I didn't mean he was on that game I just meant how he was thinking about it.

Got it. I doubt Crackdown will do it this way if the destruction is such a significant part of the game, though, and the trailer makes it seem that way.

 

[gamechanger87]

He never said that, he said they're considering it because peoples are skeptical about always online and they want to show the difference, but it would effectively be doubling the workload they have to do so it's not guaranteed.

I was just trying to point out how one developer was thinking about it in general. I agree that would be terrible to try and implement, but you may need some sort of backup plan for hiccups right?

This is what I am allowed to share.

Running in real-time on XBO. Very early wip, so don't care for the lighting and so on. It is a very basic frequency test where the grass splines update 12 times a second. This is nothing special so far. The cool thing is tho that the start and endpoints of our splines influenced by wind and objects are being calculated by Azure. This means: the physic calculations you see are costing us pretty much no local power (excluding GPU ofc). We can use the saved power for other things - like AI, animations and so on. We are very proud of it - especially since we completely eliminated any chance of clipping. I just wanted to add that here.

Spoiler

And no, this won't be a golf/grass/whatever simulator - I just thought maybe it is interesting to see

I know GAF "in general" is very pessimistic about the cloud. And yes, somehow I can understand that - because so far, there weren't that much games that really took advantage of server calculations. To be honest, no new-gen so far really did (Titanfall touched 5% of the possibilities ...). And this is also why I try to be very careful about the words I choose.

No. You can not boost your games resolution with Azure. And no. You can not create better lighting effects with Azure. But, if you focus on it, you can still boost the overall graphical look of your game by a mile. We are currently creating a game. But in fact, we are kind of creating two-in-one. One with Azure available, and one for offline only. Everything you code, you need to code for two scenerarios. This is a ton of work. if online = dynamic grass; if offline=static grass ... To say it very simple. And so on.That's why we are currently thinking about going "online-only". But to be very open to you, we have some fear about that. Obviously. The gaming community is very careful when they hear "online-only" ... Games like Sim City simply ... Well, did it wrong.

If I could show you a screen comparison of our latest build right now - Azure on/off (no, sorry, I can't ...), you would understand what I am talking about. Wind, dynamically moving vegetations, footprints that stay for hours and even wildlife nearly without losing any local CPU power. This is just awesome in the right situations.

I know MS has some own projects in the works, too, that will go all-in with the Azure servers. Crackdown is the already known example.

That's all I can say for now. Really. I'm out here!

Arg. Actually, it was not the plan that this will become a big deal. What you see there is really just a super small-scaled, super simple, super basic test. In reality, we are far more ahead with the tech than what you see there. However, at least some of the comments here motivate us even more to really show what is possible with server calculation

I hope we will be able to share more with you guys next year.

For posterity

Yep, he's okay. Carry on.

 

[JaggedSac]

Sounds like it pretty much works as expected.

Games request a VM (worker role) from the service, Azure allocates it.
Cloud games can store 20TB on Azure.

Additional services are available, but not included.

Based on this document, looks like it is free too if all a dev needs is the free allotments.

 

[gamechanger87]

Got it. I doubt Crackdown will do it this way if the destruction is such a significant part of the game, though, and the trailer makes it seem that way.

Yeah I think Crackdown will be online only.

 

[JaggedSac]

This whole document is fascinating. So much content.

Looks like they are going to push harder on the Smart Match and reputation concepts. Titles have direct access to the Reputation API and can file their own reports. Team Killing and Early Quitters can be detected by the Title and automatically reported if the developer pushes it.

Yeah, this is great reading. Looks like they have done very well in making the APIs intuitive to use as well.

 

[Chris1]

I was just trying to point out how one developer was thinking about it in general. I agree that would be terrible to try and implement, but you may need some sort of backup plan for hiccups right?

Honestly, I don't think it's needed tbh. Would a backup be nice? yes, but it's not needed. By the time Crackdown comes out we will have got Titanfall, Destiny, The Division and ESO(this is online only, right?) that are online only games. As much as people here may not like it, that's the future we're headed towards.

If they know that they need the cloud computing to make the game the best they can, then I say go for that only, don't waste time duplicating the game for offline play and releasing it half assed or nowhere near as good as online.

If they want to show the differences or how the cloud will help games, then work with MS to show examples of it through other methods but don't waste development time and stuff creating the same game for the same platform if it's gonna turn out to be vastly inferior.

In the end, if the online is fucked like MCC then it's their rep at stake and it's their game that will tank sales wise. But after MCC I don't think we will have much to worry about, MS is going to be extra careful regarding their online focused games in future I reckon.

Edit: Just re read kampfhelds posts, he did say they were making it online and offline but considering going online only, so you were correct. I got mixed up. I do agree that it does sound like he was talking about a different game other than crackdown, interesting.

 

[gamechanger87]

Honestly, I don't think it's needed tbh. Would a backup be nice? yes, but it's not needed. By the time Crackdown comes out we will have got Titanfall, Destiny, The Division and ESO(this is online only, right?) that are online only games. As much as people here may not like it, that's the future we're headed towards.

If they know that they need the cloud computing to make the game the best they can, then I say go for that only, don't waste time duplicating the game for offline play and releasing it half assed or nowhere near as good as online.

If they want to show the differences or how the cloud will help games, then work with MS to show examples of it through other methods but don't waste development time and stuff creating the same game for the same platform if it's gonna turn out to be vastly inferior.

In the end, if the online is fucked like MCC then it's their rep at stake and it's their game that will tank sales wise. But after MCC I don't think we will have much to worry about, MS is going to be extra careful regarding their online focused games in future I reckon.

Edit: Just re read kampfhelds posts, he did say they were making it online and offline but considering going online only, so you were correct. I got mixed up. I do agree that it does sound like he was talking about a different game other than crackdown, interesting.

If you see my earlier posts, I think MCC is messed up because they rolled out the 2015 Multiplayer system into it, and it failed miserably. The SDK details the differences between 2014 multiplayer and 2015 multiplayer and parties and matchmaking are handled differently. MCC was likely the first title to try the 2015 Multiplayer Preview and it did not work.

Based on other stuff I read, I think the reason they put the p2p matchmaking in as a backup was because the p2p system would serve as the backup if the 2015 multiplayer failed. I can't see why else they did it.

I don't think MCC will be fixed until MS figures out why their new system isn't working. I think there are issues in the QoS section.

 

[FordGTGuy]

Ah, interesting. I'll be curious to see what it substantially adds to the game, and it if means the game will require an always online connection, even for the SP stuff (assuming there's a SP option).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm6QfLIn97U

Already confirmed by Phil Spencer that this is a tech demo for Crackdown.

 

[gamechanger87]

Well after seeing a guy eat a hat, I guess I'm gonna see a guy cut off his fingers...smh.

I prefer him eat his fingers. Just saying.

 

[FordGTGuy]

I prefer him eat his fingers. Just saying.

You're not the villain from Jack Reacher are you?

 

[JaggedSac]

If you see my earlier posts, I think MCC is messed up because they rolled out the 2015 Multiplayer system into it, and it failed miserably. The SDK details the differences between 2014 multiplayer and 2015 multiplayer and parties and matchmaking are handled differently. MCC was likely the first title to try the 2015 Multiplayer Preview and it did not work.

Based on other stuff I read, I think the reason they put the p2p matchmaking in as a backup was because the p2p system would serve as the backup if the 2015 multiplayer failed. I can't see why else they did it.

I don't think MCC will be fixed until MS figures out why their new system isn't working. I think there are issues in the QoS section.

Yeah, this is probably the case. Bold strategy though.

 

[Garrett 2U]

If you see my earlier posts, I think MCC is messed up because they rolled out the 2015 Multiplayer system into it, and it failed miserably. The SDK details the differences between 2014 multiplayer and 2015 multiplayer and parties and matchmaking are handled differently. MCC was likely the first title to try the 2015 Multiplayer Preview and it did not work.

Based on other stuff I read, I think the reason they put the p2p matchmaking in as a backup was because the p2p system would serve as the backup if the 2015 multiplayer failed. I can't see why else they did it.

I don't think MCC will be fixed until MS figures out why their new system isn't working. I think there are issues in the QoS section.

That would actually explain why Frankie said they didn't see the issues before launch.

They could have used the API flawlessly and have it not work if the Xbox systems were broken

 

[Face it Tiger..]

Wasn't the XDK supposed to be on the Xbone from launch?

if so not a bad way to get what you were promised.

 

[gamechanger87]

That would actually explain why Frankie said they didn't see the issues before launch.

They could have used the API flawlessly and have it not work if the Xbox systems were broken

That's why I think the issue isn't as much 343 as it is MS and 343. This is taking awhile to fix and it seems to be issues on the MS side as well. Frankie said that there are a lot of issues at fault here and the only thing that would make sense to me is that all the different handshakes here are not working and it is throwing everything off in game.

Maybe the system works fine when not run through Live but they rolled this out too early. The netcode should be fine. The new multiplayer system doesn't work yet.

I would be very proud of myself if Frankie agrees when he gives us a post mortem. I think the fact that MS is redoing the system and it is supposed to be a secret is why they haven't been specific on stuff. It also explains a little about the server side tweaks that are continually made.

 

[gamechanger87]

Wasn't the XDK supposed to be on the Xbone from launch?

if so not a bad way to get what you were promised.

The SDK documentation would never be on the console in this format.