The screens above look like something out of Uncharted.
That’s exactly how it works actually. Since the gameplay is determined 100% by the developer, there’d be no point in having a game to demonstrate the GRAPHICAL abilities of a game engine.
Having a short game would make potential customers feel creatively limited. Shit, most people still assume that because Unreal engine games are mostly shooters, that the engine is shit with other genres and not worth anyone’s time. Anyone with common sense knows that’s not true, but it can still hurt the engine’s image to confine a demo to even further classification.
That’s the whole point. These tech demos may use cheats and tricks, but they’re IN ENGINE cheats and tricks. The game engine is shown at it’s top performance to show what can be done. That being said, Garth… You’ve already proven many many many times you have no idea how this shit works. When it comes to stuff like this just stay quiet.
Neither of you know what devs are actually looking for when they see demos like this.
This is a TECH DEMO, not a GAME demo.
Thanks… But narcissism? It’s my opinion man… Plus it’s a subject that comes up a lot. I figure I’d just save myself the trouble.
Plus, The full thing is out.
I will freely admit that I have no experience developing games and as such have no idea how to sell an engine, but don’t you want to be assured that all that pretty lighting and tech could be used in game (i.e. dynamically) and not just in a cutscene? Isn’t the reason why video games look so much worse than movies that they need to be dynamic? So why are we showing movies?
As I said, maybe there is some reason. If so, I’d be glad to hear it.
I don’t know what the best way to sell an engine is as well, but I know that Epic has been doing this kind of engine presentation for years and it has obviously been working quite well for them.
They’re selling the engine, not the games that could potentially be made on them.
In order to do that, they show the engine at it’s visual peak.
That being said, I really wish the subject of that demo was an IP. The characters/ environment just seem too fucking cool to be a once off thing.
Movies use extremely high quality rendering techniques to achieve photo-realistic quality. They need render farms to render the frames, they are not real-time.
Games on the other hand are all about speed, rendering as much stuff as possible with the best possible quality.
Yeah, they need to be dynamic.
Anyway, seems like a dev would want to know what the capabilities of the engine are when its not a scripted cutscene. Apparently they don’t.
May I add that those rendering times may add up to 15-48 hours for a single frame, while video game rendering times can be a handfull of milliseconds to render a single frame?
I think it’s impressive how close the real time rendering techniques are coming to the “real” ones quality all things considered.
Bingo. Though it’s more need than want.
A scripted cutscene is the best way to give every feature it’s close up. Hell, it’s the most elegant way to do it. Most other engine tech demos are just random clips cobbled together with no context and nothing that draws the viewer in.
But what kind of stuff would you show on a tech demo? This UE3 engine update was mostly visual stuff, not gameplay mechanics code and that’s stuff that is unique from game to game.
They were just showing off the new visual features of the engine.
I’m not talking about script stuff, I’m talking about dynamic stuff, i.e. graphical abilities useable during regular gameplay.
Well, as far as I know, they didn’t just show that video. They also probably did live interactive demonstrations of the engine.
You’ve been a little on the condescending side recently haven’t you?
And my entire point was that these are tricks and cheats that can’t be used in an actual game for whatever reason. In cinematic trailers they can do things to make it look better that they would never be able to do in an actual game. They make the engine look better than it ever will in an actual game. It’s like someone is selling you a camera and shows you a picture taken by the camera that is 14 megapixels but the camera’s settings only allow you to go up to 10 megapixels. That’s false advertising just like cinematic tech demos. Admittedly that’s more dishonest than a cinematic tech demo but it was the best analogy I could think of and I think it fits fairly well.
And you’re right, I hardly know shit about what the devs are looking for. But I promise you this, they do want to know what a game using this engine might look like not what a movie using this engine will look like. Because that’s what they’re trying to do with the engine; make a game. And really, I’m not arguing about whether or not this should be pleasing to the devs, I’m arguing about whether or not this is at all an accurate representation of what an actual playable game using this engine will look like.
And no, I don’t know how this tech demo works, but I do know that cinematic tech demos, in-game or not, just about always look better than the games themselves. And if the tech demo isn’t an accurate representation of what the game will look like then it’s nothing more than an animated short film.
It’s been working quite well because it makes the engine look better than it really is. Also, how the hell do you dislike maxey? His main defining quality as I’ve seen it is to be moderate and not to step on too many toes.
You’re missing the point. Tech demos serve to show off all of the features and capabilities of a game engine all at the same time and turned up to eleven. They are made for showing the absolute extent of what that engine can achieve.
Now, see, the engine itself is actually capable of looking like that in a game if you actually work for it.
However, in reality, most games are made with a performance budget and as such cannot achieve the same level of visual quality that is shown in the tech demos.
The point is, in order to sell something, you have to oversell it. You have to wow potential clients. If you show something that looks like every other game in the market, then you’re not doing your job properly.
Epic knows this very well and that’s why they’ve been successful in the engine market.
If thats the case my argument has been rendered irrelevant and I shall rest easy knowing the world is as it should be. Kinda.
In other words; in order to sell your product you need to rely on false advertising? I find myself agreeing with you.
And no, large budget or not games still wouldn’t have that visual quality. Both because the consumer can’t handle it and because the engine can’t handle it. Just because you saw it in a cinematic doesn’t mean it can be used in a real game where things are dynamic.
Dude, the spec for that tech demo was supposedly for the next next gen- PS4, NeXtBox, and probably DX11/12 PCs. So getting that real time is a few years out, but it’s definitely achievable.
the demo is realtime, but requires 3 GTX580 to run properly.
and there are also no cheats which wouldn’t be possible in a game, sure, the animations are maybe much better than they would be ingame but that’s it, they didn’t want to show off the animation system anyway, just the new shaders for better fake reflections and dynamic tesselation + displacement mapping.
btw, most effects shown can be seen in other tech demos from gfx vendors and in some games like Metro 2033.
arguing with walls makes more sense than with you, seriously…
I just don’t trust something that looks that good and isn’t gameplay…
Gameplay is irrelevant when selling an engine. Engine features and abilities, however, are not.
I know that. It’s just when something is cinematic and not dynamic gameplay I’m wary of tricks that make the engine look better but won’t work in an actual dynamic game.