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GTA V had a 200 million budget but the models terrain don't even look impressive?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by WillModelForFood, Sep 23, 2013.

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  1. SteveB

    SteveB

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    I couldn't quite tell just how serious this thread was, but my goodness GTA5 (RAGE engine) is by far the most technically sophisticated engine I can honestly say I've seen. Every bit of detail working in concert is mind boggling, as is this talk of the 'fogging'. Their atmospheric scattering, diffuse sky lighting/global illumination/SSAO is utterly stunning. What you're calling fogging is actually the rendering of the atmosphere at that great a distance. Standing in the desert just after sundown is now one of my all time moments I've had in gaming in some time. Standing there, soaking in the lighting, the stillness and the ambient sounds...wow.

    Carry on gentlemen!! :D

    -Steve
     
  2. SteveB

    SteveB

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    ...just to add I've been in the industry for 16 years, having been on all sides of asset creation, from working in a studio, contract work and working with contractors and in-house artists overseeing production and art direction. It's so far from being an equation that can be thrown at a whiteboard that the cost of creation is not simply time and money; boy do I wish it were that black and white!
     
  3. deram_scholzara

    deram_scholzara

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    What confuses me is that it's supposed to look like southern California, but they sky is blue near the horizon... I've never seen a sky like that in all the time I've lived there.
     
  4. Daniel-Talis

    Daniel-Talis

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    It's called 'Artistic Licence'.
     
  5. derkoi

    derkoi

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    Those of you dissing GTA V make me laugh, have you even made a game before or just created assets? Sure, creating assets requires skill but making everything work together on something of the magnitude of GTA V in my opinion is nothing short of amazing.

    Now excuse me while I hang out with my homies and steal some cars... :)
     
  6. SubZeroGaming

    SubZeroGaming

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    don't be that guy...
     
  7. JamesArndt

    JamesArndt

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    Some screenshots of GTA4 captured at 4K resolution on a PC.
     
  8. JamesArndt

    JamesArndt

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    Just want to add some salary info. East Coast US a 3d artist with 3+ years experience would avg. between $35k-55k. This also depends very much on the size of the studio. I would think due to cost of living adjustments, California would be a bit higher.
     
  9. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    Those figures are more in line with what I was expecting.
     
  10. TylerPerry

    TylerPerry

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    With ICEnhancer?
     
  11. WillModelForFood

    WillModelForFood

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    Lets not argue, I share many of your thoughts. I love the rage engine and I can see a good portion of budget going to that, with so much AI and so much on screen going on at once for old hardware, yes thats impressive I agree. But I wasn't talking about the engine itself. I'm talking about the art that was put into it.

    For example, if gta5 were to be completely moddable, including the ability to import custom assets- I can see a few talented indie artists making a world within the rage engine that is much better than what rockstar themselves has made. Especially for the outdoor portion. If they supplied an in depth editor, I know I could make the country side 5 times better myself right now within a week or two and still run on the older consoles. I expected people from this forum to agree on that, you should all expect more from a budget this big. I guess I'm more so let down by the outdoor part of the map, but even many of the buildings on the ground level dont even have an interior and are just textured like they were in the previous games, not hand modeled in many places they should have been.

    And this is not a matter of "people will always find a reason to complain about how it can be better". These aren't just small issues. I've played the game for 2 days and thats it, I probably won't even enjoy online at all and will simply not play it because the environment was not designed properly to actually be an immersing world that I can wander through over and over. One journey through those mountains and 1 plane ride over the city is all I needed before I was completely bored just because of the map. I just feel deep down a huge lack of imagination that went into the environment.
     
  12. WillModelForFood

    WillModelForFood

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    Please don't get me wrong, I am impressed as well on the technical side, that what they do have is even running on the consoles at all, but as an artist whos been working on open world big environments for years, I am just very disappointed. The hardware engine limitations wouldnt have stopped them from spicing it up and living up to the hype. Honestly aside from a developer I feel robbed as a gamer (and many others do too according to gta forums)
    The map was suposed to be this huge world to explore and its just not. With this budget it seems they should have 5 maps instead of just 1 at this quality and scale, even if they had to split them up into different scenes and use loading screens.

    I don't think many people who responded to this thread even ventured through the mountains in gta5, because if you did, and made detailed terrain yourself before, you would know exactly why I made this thread. Its just unacceptable. I didn't even mention anything else such as hair cuts and beards and tattoos. I mean did you guys even see how limited those are? 1 novice modeler could have made 20 haircuts, but yet they only gave us like 4 bad ones per character. Do you even know how easy it is to model human clothes too? And that is very limited as well, something that should be a huge part of a game like this.

    Rockstar knew next gen consoles were coming, and increasing the detail of the current art will not change the fact that the map itself is just extremely limited on what it could have been. Am I really wrong in what I'm saying? Aren't we all correct? Can't we all get along? Maybe rockstar will take that huge profit they made and expand the online world into what I think it deserves. We can only hope that is the plan, but they better learn to put more of their budget into the art side, which they did not, and I think that is the truth.
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2013
  13. BTStone

    BTStone

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    Would you be so kind and show some work you did? I'm especially interested in your large terrains :)
     
  14. WillModelForFood

    WillModelForFood

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    I think a better example is Michael Orkisz of Manufactura K4 since many people have bought his assets. Weather its me, him, the point is that an individual / indies can make this quality so I'd expect more from a huge company like rockstar

    http://u3d.as/publisher/manufactura-k4-michael-o-/1YC

    ^Imagine if he was hired to do the terrain and parts of the city for gta5. Employing just him alone for several months would have made it much better. And thats just one extra artist. The budget could have allowed for 5 of him if not more

    When you see talented artists like that, or other artists on the store / 3d forums who do impressive work by themselves, only then will you start to question big budgets from game companies. Is it not odd that individuals are creating stuff that almost rivals a whole teams work from a big studio? It makes you wonder. That is what inspires me to compete as an indie, the reassurance of what 1 talented person is truly capable of
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2013
  15. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    1. the art put into it by large, cannot be improved due to memory budgets on the last gen consoles. You could get 100 Michael O's and it would not improve one bit. You would need to control the actions and budgets of every single artist in the team and extend development times for another 5 years to get a meaningful improvement. Therefore, within reason, it can't be improved with better assets.

    2. your comment of improving it if it was modded cannot exist, it is a console game. Had you a last gen console dev kit, you would do worse, not better. You have no understanding of how streaming works. Indeed your posting history has you struggling with understanding even simple concepts. In time you will understand why some of the comments you made are ridiculous and this will come with experience.

    3. if it was on desktops then there's a number of AAA games and so forth which demonstrate better terrain. Anyone can do better with an i7 and 16gb of ram - with pretty much any engine and software given some time.

    With Far Cry 3 on desktops, you have a pretty stunning view of a sandbox island. The same game on last gen consoles struggles with framerates and has to have a lot of corners cut. It's easier to have duplicate foliage than it is all the unique textures in a GTA game (billboards, etc) but it was still a difficult feat which cut large corners for the console versions even with aggressive dynamic skybox rendering - something GTA doesn't actually resort to. Plus the Far Cry 3 islands are around quarter of the size.

    4. you constantly harp on about rockstar could have done better than they did. And they DID - all the terrains, models and so forth are millions of polygons, decimated by the toolchain into a memory footprint that can be managed by the target hardware. The source meshes are Z brushed and have 2048 to 4096 texture/spec/normal maps. These assets undergo a retopo and resize process until they meet memory and render budgets.

    Your comments have no value or meaning and your refusal to post your work as an environment artist and link to another, is also telling. If I were you, I would be a bit more humble. To be honest at this point, I'd say you'd be starving if you had to really model for food.

    I am not attacking you, I am refusing to accept that you fully understand the subject you have put up for discussion here.
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2013
  16. BTStone

    BTStone

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    I don't want to see the work of Michael Orkisz, I already have seen that work. I want to see YOUR work, since you claim you can do better :)
    Isn't it just fair to show the community some proof you CAN do better? You just have to show some screens or a video of your terrains and modells on a X360/PS3 devkit.

    Looking at your Topic-History you only have screens like this:



    I'm not impressed :(
    Maybe it was just for testing, but you I think you do not understand some points here:

    - did you ever work in/with a big team?
    - did you ever work in/with a big studio with a Publisher?
    - did you ever work on consoles?

    If not, how dare you to say or claim such things? Don't you get it? Here are some experienced developers and artists telling you that you are wrong, and yet you think you know it better? Is this kind of escapism?
    I mean, I'm developing together with an artist a game for mobile devices, though I think we are doing a good job for our circumstances, I would never EVER think about claiming such stuff, especially not when we're talking about experienced devs from Rockstar.

    You just can't come up with that: "Oh, I made a way more cool terrain in [insert 3D Modelling-Tool here]. Rockstar is dumb, they should have let me do the job, I would made it for half the costs. They won't have any problems that I don't have any experience with console-development, I guess..."

    You should revise your attitude about this.
     
  17. SmellyDogs

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    To be fair to OP I actually think he is correct that GTA is not as good as it could be. Whether its as good as it should be...well...I have not played GTA V. But a dose of healthy criticism is good, right?

    As far as engineering anything goes, including software, there is a cut off point that must be made on carrying out improvements.

    I suspect the GTA V artistic team would have indeed wished to improve "fringe" areas of the map, but sooner or later their EP is going to say: "Enough is enough guys, this has to ship. Lets get 99% of it right, or we will be here forever".

    Some posts here are implying that the GTA V crew have worked to within full capacity of the RAGE engine. I'm not convinced. Although there is no denying these guys gave the PS3 a run for its money, I seldom read about a dev team admitting, er...bragging, that they pushed an engine 101%.

    Now getting back to OP feels (I am assuming you feel this way), I can relate. I recall the impact that Oblivion had on me was profound - it shook my senses. So when I heard Skyrim was to be released my senses geared up for a battering. Well, it got released, I played it and that never happened, Oblivion spoiled that me. Skyrim was great but I had since grown accustomed to open worlds and whatnot. Maybe its the same for OP with GTA 4 in contrast to GTA 5?

    With all that said, from what I've seen in the video on youtube I think they have done an outstanding job, arguably its the best looking PS3 game ever? If I had not sold my PS3 last week (saving for PS4) I'd certainly be playing it now.
     
  18. BTStone

    BTStone

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    It's a difference in stating: "GTA V crew could have done better" and "I could have done better, though I have no experience with consoles and on developing a game with that scope."
     
  19. WillModelForFood

    WillModelForFood

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    I suppose people on this forum are more interested in 1 up'ing others and proving that they know more 'technically', when in reality they are just being negative nancys and not having an open mind.

    And thanks for posting a picture I threw together in 5 minutes because I was wondering why 'fantasy ai' was getting poor performance where as other AI is much better. There is obviously no real art in that picture..that wasnt the purpose..
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2013
  20. I am da bawss

    I am da bawss

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    All I heard so far is this :

    ".....Yada yada yada I can click together a better looking terrain than that S***ty GTA V's with my elite WorldMachine skillz!! GTA V SUCKS !! They should have just give me the $200 million dollar and I will clone 100 Michael O as my slaves and I will deliver a better looking GTA V at fraction of the cost! BOOM! I AM AWESOME !!I I ROCK !








    ...

    I am just trolling you :D
    To be honest, this kind of thing happens a lot more than you think. And it always comes down to trade-offs.... consoles usually have smaller texture memory so they have to do massive trade-off on texture resolution whenever they can, which results in the lower resolution terrain you see, and even lower resolution textures everywhere for unimportant objects. One example I can remember is Crysis 2 - when it first came out it was billed as the "BEST" graphical engine bars none! And yet these are what the "best" graphical engine delivered when you look closely :




    There are a lot more examples of this like if you zoom in on the distant skyscrapers, or zoom in the ground texture, the litters/garbage, the door handle, the door, the emergency signage...etc etc...

    I think you should take this as a lesson in how to optimize your game - majority of the people don't care about ground objects, or terrain, or trees or bushes for that matter. Our brain automatically disregard the visual details of these objects - in fact, I WILL CHALLENGE ANYONE right now to DRAW ME A REALISTIC LOOKING TREE OR MOUNTAIN WITHOUT LOOKING AT REFERENCE PHOTO. I will bet none of you here will be able to do so, and many professional artists won't be either.
     
  21. JamesArndt

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    Sounds like a lot of folks have never worked on console titles in a studio. If they had, they would understand that it has very little to do with the talents of the individual artists on the teams. You can guarantee each environment artist over at Rockstar is top notch at what they do. In fact they are probably some of the best in this industry. You have to grasp that it's technical limitations of hardware that usually hold back features and quality. It's also the input of producers, publishers, art leads, art directors, etc. They will prioritize things for the game, and the artist has little say (other than input on how it will impact the rest of the game). Let say for example they prioritize having more AI in a world or more geometry for a hero building or asset...well that means cuts elsewhere in the world. Another thing to note is, the textures and such for 360/PS3 are half the size of what they are on a good PC. What they have managed to get running on an Xbox 360/PS3 is nothing short of astounding.
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2013
  22. ScottyB

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    What an absolutely ridiculous statement! There is no way that anyone with any sort of major game development history would say this statement unless you are talking about targeting high-end computers and not PS3/Xbox 360s. And if you are talking about targeting high-end PCs, please wait until Rockstar release GTA V on PC where you're more likely to see all the high-end graphics that they have created and then had to downscale to make it work on the PS3/Xbox 360.
     
  23. I am da bawss

    I am da bawss

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    I will be brutally honest with you.
    You can guarantee all you want, until you actually prove to us - eg. deliver a game of GTA V scale with BETTER looking graphics - I think EVERYONE here think all your points are moot or invalid.
     
  24. WillModelForFood

    WillModelForFood

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    Listen I'm not sure how old you two are, BTStone and hippocoder, but you are obviously not mature enough to see the true point I'm trying to make which is motivation and inspiration. Big budgets like this for what was made creates a delusional discouraging misconception to indies.
    Some may look at this budget and say, wow almost 300 million and this is all they made? I better not even attempt to make a big open world or bother designing a large scale city for my own game, because how can I if it costs Rockstar this much to only make such a bland world?

    I'm working on my own game, combined several assets, and I already have 80% of GTA coding wise, vehicle physics, character controller / combat mechanics, AI, everything, and its even networked with photon. But we're not talking about coding, only art-

    Your whole argument is basically saying, if they werent limited by the tech and designed it for pc directly, the art would be much better. This is NOT true. They would have the same lack of creativity, because you can have the same draw calls and the same poly count and work within the same limits if you just interchanged and swapped out certain models for others, as long as you stayed within the same limits of the current design.

    Using me as an example instead of Michael O is not helping my heart, or this thread. I want people to look at a true artist like him and say "look what he has made and look at what rockstar has made". Something is just not right there. If you can't see my point by now I have to leave this forum because when an individual has over 8 thousand posts and makes such ignorant statements, that is a very bad thing.

    Can you please be more positive instead of redirecting my thoughts into a blackhole? I'm trying to inspire motivate myself and others because when you really break it down, the art in gta5 is no where near what it should be for the budget. You probably never stopped to think about how many people dont even get into game design because of the misconception on how much time and money it really takes. Many people see these budgets and think games of this caliber are only possible to be achieved with huge teams and funding, which is not true.

    I guarentee a team of less than 10 michael o's can make a better world than rockstar has with unity.

    So now I'm leaving this thread feeling more discouraged instead of inspired thanks to you guys. You do not have a 'realist' point of view, you are saying NO with a closed mind when you should be saying YES. I would advise re reading what I'm saying with a more positive attitude because its true, rockstar didn't put enough effort into their new environment and it clearly shows. I seriously think the only real factor in why it didnt turn out the way I think it should is very simple, they lacked 1 extra terrain artist to run that second pass over it. They didnt have the guy that said, hey this whole outdoor area doesnt really feel too playable or immersive. Can we touch it up a bit?
    And no, that wouldnt require a team of 20 people, just a few people could have done it. You know that!
     
  25. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

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    This. And as someone who love high quality in his own work, this game is high quality, sacrifices and all...
     
  26. WillModelForFood

    WillModelForFood

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    I dont see how adding more play-ability to the terrain mountain region so it doesnt just feel like its only meant to be a background instead of something that can be walked on and explorable requires more advanced hardware?? Or a whole avengers team assembled to enhance it? Many of you are exaggerating, this is absurd!
     
  27. I am da bawss

    I am da bawss

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    James, that's becauser XBox 360 and PS3 only run at 720p natively. That means they don't have to use as higher resolution textures as the PC version where as the PC monitors for the past 5 years are all 1080p, plus when you play a PC game you sit close to the monitor, where as if you play a console game you will be sitting at least twice to three times the distance to TV compare to a PC gamer, which means for console games they do not need to show as much details as the PC version.

    Also most of the AAAA titles run an aggressive LOD and culling algorithm so their draw distance are actually considerable shorter than the PC counterpart. For the things that matter they will try to keep as close to the highest resolution possible, but for everything else, they will aggressively downgrade its resolution.
     
  28. WillModelForFood

    WillModelForFood

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    See this is the confusion people are having in this thread. I'm not talking about higher resolution textures, higher detailed LOD's, higher draw distance, less fog, or any optimizations. You can increase all of this but its still the same world design.

    I'm talking about why wasn't the terrain designed to be more playable? Why does it feel like im walking on a background element instead of exploring a true mountainous open world region? Why are many of the buildings the same size and only 5 of them stick out making the city look very flat with no character from a sky view? Why when I set the speed of a flying vehicle 3x to what it should be I am already at the other end of the map in no time? If the map is so small, why didnt they make multiple cities and connect them instead of such a small world that thousands of people are already bored of? Why didn't they add more than 4 crappy haircuts per character and a laughable amount of bad clothing? Why did they not hire 2 extra vehicle modelers to add 10-15 more vehicles so the traffic doesnt look so repetitive? Why do I feel like I'm walking on a mountain created by a terrain generator with minimal hand texturing or any effort in actually making it seem like you should be even standing on it ? Why is one individual who doesnt even work at a studio have these questions and nobody at rockstar bothered to ask them so the game would have a longer life span?

    All these questions I am asking have NOTHING TO DO WITH HARDWARE. FFS!
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2013
  29. ScottyB

    ScottyB

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    The perfect GTA game might need to fulfill these requirements:
    1. Have amazing graphics no matter where you look or how far you look
    2. Have a huge open world
    3. Have hand-crafted content everywhere to make every part of the world interesting, unique and fun to play
    4. Run on 8-year-old hardware
    5. Be created by a small team and therefore cost less to make
    6. Be completed in a short time-frame
    Fulfilling all of these requirements at this point in time is almost impossible (or completely impossible depending on who you ask) so you're always going to have to cut corners somewhere.

    For example, if you want to fulfill points 1 and 2 then you can't fulfill point 4 because the limitations of the hardware won't allow it (of course that depends on what you classify as "amazing graphics").

    Or, if you want to fulfill points 1, 5 and 6 then you're not going to be able to fulfill point 2 because there would be just too much content to create for that small team in a short time-frame. Unless you do something like procedurally generate the content or world, but then you wouldn't be able to fulfill point 3.

    Game development has always been about cutting corners and creating the best product with whatever limited resources that you have (be it computation resources, staff resources or time resources) and I see that trend continuing for a while yet. AAA developers and indie developers alike can create amazing games but corners need to be cut.
    Because Rockstar had to choose a point where they had to call the game finished. You can keep adding more content to any game and all you will do is add more and more years to the development time and there is no garunetee that the game would be any better because of it. If you keep developing a game forever you'll just end up with a game like Duke Nukem Forever.

    Also, everything you just described has A LOT TO DO WITH HARDWARE. Every new piece of art that is displayed on screen needs to be stored in RAM and/or VRAM to be displayed on screen. GTA V is already pushing the PS3/Xbox 360 to their limits so you can't just easily add more stuff. Every new piece of content that you want to display on screen at the same time means that either something else can't be displayed at the same time or everything needs to be of a lower quality. Maybe if they wanted to show more different stuff on screen at the same time they could reduce draw distances even more but then you would just complain about that instead. Companies need to cut corners somewhere to make their games work at all and that is not a bad thing, it is a necessity. This is how working with restricted hardware that you're pushing to the limits works. To argue otherwise is being ignorant of facts.
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2013
  30. Dabeh

    Dabeh

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    Yeah because having dozens of unique cars, haircuts and clothing has nothing to do with hardware. The fact you don't know this makes me wonder how much experience you have exactly with making mobile games, this is basic knowledge for optimizations.


    EDIT: ScottyB beat me to it :(
     
  31. WillModelForFood

    WillModelForFood

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    ^models like those are not loaded unless they are necessary so they are just stored as space on the discs...how contradictory and clueless are you? Haircuts and clothing dont even exist until you call them..
    Unique cars could be done by replacing the duplicates (which are taking up the same memory)
    All the materials are still shared..
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2013
  32. I am da bawss

    I am da bawss

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    Not trying to be negative, but have you actually work in a studio environment? You don't seem to understand the basic concept of "budget".

    This isn't about hiring 2 extra vehicle modelers, or 1 extra terrain modeler to look over things or one extra pass. They have 300 of the world's best full time artists and art directors and this is the best they can afford in the span 5 years. And I found it incredible you would think they simply finished the game without questioning their own design. What they have is what they must have gone through HUNDRED maybe even THOUSANDS of prototype, passes, playtesting, rewrites, redesigns, and this is the end result.

    They may have their own reasons to keep the outdoor environment as they are but we will never know unless they do a postmortem at Gamasutra, but I could guess maybe they just want to keep the focus on the storyline. And why didn't they make the city larger? Maybe because that's all the budget and time they were allowed and can afford? GTA San Andreas is by far the largest GTA (way larger than GTA IV) and you can clearly see they traded the resolution for detail (it takes time to create detail characters, detail terrain, detail everything you know?). Of course they can make more cities and connect them, but then they would need to put more money, hire more people, taking more time to push out GTA V, which could risk becoming a "Duke Nukem Forever" that eventually burnt out everyone involved. Most of your critiques and questions can be answer with that simple word - BUDGET.

    Like I said to you before - you can be ambitious, but if in the end you end up a "Duke Nukem Forever", its only a vaporware.



    PS. Michael O! We need your hair sample!!!!! Apparently, if we clone 10 of you, we can haz better graphics than GTA V !!!! If you don't mind donating your hair sample to us, we will create the bestest game ever!! And solve world hunger and cure cancer!!
     
  33. Dabeh

    Dabeh

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    I wish it was that simple.
    GTA struggles enough as it is with loading stuff from the disk/harddrive. How do you suppose they "slowly" introduce this new unique car into the environment? Do they remove car and have less cars in the environment and then when all versions of that car are no longer being used, they introduce a new type of car? Do you suggest they do the same thing for hair and clothing too?

    I'm not going to go into the discussion of poly counts with their cars and if they have some that are higher poly count etc, as I have no clue how they did it, but I'm going to assume it's not as easy as "take this car out and replace it with another". Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so get to it ;)
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2013
  34. WillModelForFood

    WillModelForFood

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    Bawss You must be very young, why do you keep deleting your posts so you are after mine? Its annoying and childish...
    Please stop replying, you arent even reading my posts it seems. I already answered the ultimate question of WHY.

    The answer is simple Rockstar didnt care enough to, they got their huge profit without needing to. Do you recall when you were dissapointed from the 'hype' from some media? They just wanted to create something to get your money, not something that lasts. If it keeps you busy for a few days, and then an extra week or 2 with the online version, thats probably enough for them. It ultimately just doesnt seem like they cared enough to make an environment that can be played over and over for a long period of time. That is the answer my trolls
     
  35. ScottyB

    ScottyB

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    It has already been shown (through links in this thread to articles about installing/not installing the DVDs to the Xbox 360 etc) that GTA V is already very much at the extremes of what they can do with the streaming of content. I'm sure that simply adding more content is not a simple addition to that problem

    That is not entirely how memory usage works AFAIK. Model data (vertices, normals etc) tends to be loaded into memory and then pointers to that model's data is used for every instance shown. Having 100 cars with the same base model does not use up the same amount of memory as 100 unique cars.

    Well done belittling all the hard work that the 300+ employees of Rockstar have done over the last 4+ years. 4 years is a long time to work on something and if you think that that many people would throw away their time on something they didn't care deeply about, I don't think I can continue this conversation. I need sleep anyway so I bid you a good night.
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2013
  36. WillModelForFood

    WillModelForFood

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    I am aware of how batching works...we're all unity users here. The cars arent custom textured, they all share the same materials and are just 1 color. 10-15 extra car models could have been added well within the limitations. Rockstar even said they will eventually be adding more cars, clothes, models, and all kinds of extra content for online. So that there disproves your theory anyway. So we will see, maybe a year from now the online interconnected maps will have progressed to take care of what I'm complaining about.

    Lets end this thread before some of you make more of a fool of yourselves :)
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2013
  37. ScottyB

    ScottyB

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    Wow. Just wow.

    We are not the ones making fools of ourselves and you don't seem like you think you need to learn anything and know everything about how and why Rockstar did what they did so I'm out.
     
  38. I am da bawss

    I am da bawss

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    Alright, you win. We are all clueless idiots here and you are awesome, better than all of us and 1000 Rockstar artists combined.

    I for one will be eagerly awaiting your GTA V beating sandbox game.
     
  39. WillModelForFood

    WillModelForFood

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    Huh? You just told me "GTA V is already very much at the extremes of what they can do with the streaming of content."
    But yet rockstar plans on adding a TON of extra content for online.
    And then you don't even post an actual technical response? Just "I'm out" ?
     
  40. BTStone

    BTStone

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    Streaming from disc/hdd and streaming from their servers are different things, wouldn't you agree?
     
  41. WillModelForFood

    WillModelForFood

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    The extra content will still be downloaded to your consoles hard drive and streamed from where it already is being streamed from. This isnt second life. You really think the extra whole maps they are planning will be loaded from the cloud?? You are the one in the clouds..I doubt vehicles / clothing / props will be either
    And with this realization maybe we are also discovering that the streaming excuse was just that, an excuse, a reason to make up for the lack of content that should have been there at launch.

    "Hi we are rockstar and we can't add any more content because we are already pushing our streaming limits, but heres another whole dvd full of content a few months later anyway that will be downloaded to the same spot, magic."
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2013
  42. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

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    @WillModelForFood I think you should change your name to WillModelForKnowledge, because there are guys in here who HAVE actually worked with consoles and KNOW the inherently inevitable limitations on them (the most obvious ones being age and hardware restrictions). Now a game like GTA 5 or any open world game, it takes a LONG time to get them to be this populated... I have been playing through the game and exploring the world in it, especially the desert. Do I know it looks limited? Yes... Am I aware that the textures are not crisp on some of the in engine assets? VERY aware. Do I care? NO! I don't even care about the number of repeat vehicles in the game, or how small the buildings feel... NO DEVELOPER is gonna traverse an ENTIRE state to get things accurate like that... IT COSTS MONEY.

    I am working on my own game right now, and I wouldn't even DARE make a game like GTA 5 without a dedicated team. The work that I am doing, it would take over 50 people to work on it if I had my own company, but I am learning, which is something we ALL should be doing each time. I'm a perfectionist, but I do have to move on to other aspects of the game development.

    Rockstar is among the best of the best... veterans, in their craft. I actually admire these guys because of the meticulous detail that is in their work! I get more impressed every time I play RDR or GTA5. it is like the old doctrine, "Work with what you got...with the time you are given." And belittling them is borderline disrespectful, considering you have not shown any of your work or proved your work quality. And not to insult you or anything, but I saw an image posted earlier of something you made, and I was not thrilled. For some who wants to nitpick, you should spend time improving your work, learning new techniques, and unfolding skills for making a game.
     
  43. gsokol

    gsokol

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    @WillModelForFood Have you ever worked on a current gen console game? No? Then stop, you don't know how it works.


    That being said...GTAV was quite an accomplishment on current gen hardware.
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2013
  44. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

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    This.
     
  45. I am da bawss

    I am da bawss

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    Where is Farfarer when you need him......;)
     
  46. WillModelForFood

    WillModelForFood

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    I dont understand why you are thinking that I dont agree that it is impressive that its running on current gen consoles. I must have said multiple times I am not arguing this. But the responses as to why my suggestions couldnt be done are technically just not true. No one has really told me why exactly the terrain wasnt hand modeled more in certain areas instead of feeling like your standing on a background prop. Thats just one issue.

    You guys are just not getting it, do you not read threads or what? We are just repeating ourselves at this point.

    Technically, it is an achievement. Visually, its not stimulating enough. Especially the outdoor area. And for the last time, this is not a hardware limitation! They will even be adding more content! Do you want another answer from me since none of you are supplying one?
    Mountainous outdoor terrain is obviously not rockstars strong point. They put in terrain thats good from a distant view, and flying over, but to actually play on it, they didn't put in enough work in that regard. They literally lacked 1 extra artist that should have said "you know what this area doesn't really feel playable. I dont feel like I should be walking here". "Not a problem, lets get our terrain artist to add in some trails and sculpt in some areas to make it more interesting and add some rocks in a way to be more immersing. We can use assets that are already in the game too, just place some here, here.." "Whats that? The console is about to combust in flames because we threw a couple extra poly's at it? Well just remove / optimize that other unnecessary area a bit more"

    I'm not saying to make the terrain look extremely realistic like cryengine can handle. I'm saying gameplay design wise, it has no features to really be a combat area. It doesnt require much more memory or anything, things like this are very minor technically. That is the whole point of my discussion. These are minor things technically that have a big impact visually.
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2013
  47. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

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    Probably tinkering with Python, or building some kick ass tools.
     
  48. Dabeh

    Dabeh

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    I would be offended by this thread if I was him.
     
  49. gsokol

    gsokol

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    I was specifically referring you you trying to explain streaming or why assets look low poly etc. You seem to bounce back and forth between the technical part and the art part a bit, so I'm not sure which point you are actually arguing. Your first post was "I can make higher quality terrain in world machine, why doesn't it look like this in GTAV." Also, basing off the title of the thread...I would assume that was your initial argument.

    As far as why it doesn't seem "playable" seems to me like thats a design choice. They focused the majority of gameplay in the city and the small surrounding areas...so the area in between largely serves as a means to get between them for the most part. Could they have done more to make the terrain tied more to gameplay? Maybe, but that is a different point altogether.
     
  50. WillModelForFood

    WillModelForFood

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    Not bouncing, just being polite and not ignoring the technical people that are chiming in. I want to reply to everyone, the thread doesnt really get thrown off course because its all tied together.

    And "Could they have done more to make the terrain tied more to gameplay" is not a different point. That is my main point.

    Yes they could have, but they didnt need to. For the 10th time. They could have done everything I suggested well within the limits. I said this a few pages back. They simply didnt need to. Was there a point where someone said, "Hey I don't think this area is good enough to play on, but its inviting me to climb on it. Can we sculpt in some more trails and throw in some rocks that are already in the game to make it more appealing to actually have places to take cover and run through"?
    Yes I'm sure several artists said it. But what was their response?
    Well we could....
    But why should we? This will not make or break our sales, no one is going to withhold from buying the game because the terrain wasnt good enough. 99% of people will be happy and impressed just with what they even got. (It will probably take a few weeks longer for most people to realize it once they start engaging in battle in the country side online)
    So they didn't. If only they had someone who was really encouraging about it, and made it a bigger deal, which is what I think they needed. But they didnt have that person or just didn't wan't to.
    End of story. Close the thread
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2013
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