Uncharted 4: A Thiefs's End

[owen]

There will always be demand. i'm just trying to explain to noobs why more companies don't make games like Naughty Dog. Because it takes 5000 people to make all the assets and backgrounds and animations. Aint nobody got time or the money to do that. Might as well they just made a movie with actors. Its getting to a point where its cheaper to make an actual movie that to make these games.

[Makkah]

It's not just about money. EA, Activision and especially Ubisoft (who seem to employ half the free world) are filthy, but they don't come anywhere near that level of graphics fidelity, especially at that performance level. You could have all the money in the world, but if you don't have talent to utilize it, it's not going to help you. I doubt many devs were willing or able to code in binary like ND did for some aspects of The Last of Us to squeeze every last ounce of power from the PS3. This woman alone has enough gfx programming prowess to put most studios to shame.

The only other studio that comes close to ND is Sony Santa Monica.

[semitop]

It's not just about money. EA, Activision and especially Ubisoft (who seem to employ half the free world) are filthy, but they don't come anywhere near that level of graphics fidelity, especially at that performance level. You could have all the money in the world, but if you don't have talent to utilize it, it's not going to help you. I doubt many devs were willing or able to code in binary like ND did for some aspects of The Last of Us to squeeze every last ounce of power from the PS3. This woman alone has enough gfx programming prowess to put most studios to shame.

The only other studio that comes close to ND is Sony Santa Monica.

she came on late in november last year still.

those devs are able to make games as good, but they work in different conditions. ubisoft can do better. EA definitely already has good looking games and good tech with DICE etc. Crytek doing good work as well. Being exclusive is good for putting out the best you can imo but there are some impressive multiplats

As far as that uncharted game, I'm waiting to see what it really looks like. They will need to innovate in the gameplay and variety of graphics effects.

[owen]

I understand that yall don't know much about video games and binary. But you don't need 5000 people to write binary. You need them to make little trees and leaves, mountain scapes, sound, motion capture and unique 3d models and cars and animations and textures. These are the things that tons of money and time. Other studios just can't aford to make pretty games like that risk it being a flop. (especially if it's multiplat or not a sequel)

[BNOVA]

Well EA and the like are publishers and that's where they make their money from hence why most games are rushed and shipped with bugs. Some developers like ND do not have such problems...they are committed to shipping a game finished and polished. Of course they have less debugging to do since they stick to one platform at a time and get preferred treatment with regards to tools and the lot. However they build games to sell a platform i.e PS4 in this case unlike Crytek which ships to multiple platforms but are currently having financial issues.

[Makkah]

she came on late in november last year still.

True, but I'm just talking about the kind of talent that they tend to attract there. I don't know anyone else by name, but I heard that even in the PS1 days they had a compression algorithm that essentially doubled the PS1's bandwidth for Crash.

As far as that uncharted game, I'm waiting to see what it really looks like. They will need to innovate in the gameplay and variety of graphics effects.

That IS apparently what it looks like. That's what's so crazy. If I thought it was CG I wouldn't be making a big deal about it at all. But yeah, I agree, we need to see what changes were made to the gameplay.

I understand that yall don't know much about video games and binary. But you don't need 5000 people to write binary. You need them to make little trees and leaves, mountain scapes, sound, motion capture and unique 3d models and cars and animations and textures. These are the things that tons of money and time. Other studios just can't afford to make pretty games like that risk it being a flop. (especially if it's multiplat or not a sequel)

Let's just get a few things straight here. First, yes, I know you were exaggerating, but no single dev team consists of 5000 people. At the very extreme end of the spectrum you have Ubisoft which uses around 900 people per project these days. A massive game like Destiny has around 400 and Call of Duty is 125 (Infinity Ward).

Second, you could have all the pretty little trees and mountains you want, but they will all look dull and flat without a good graphics engine behind it to provide proper lighting and post processing effects, which is really what I'm talking about here. Good 3D modelers sound designers and whatnot are a dime a dozen, but finding people that can create efficient rendering pipelines at the level of ND is a different story. Most devs optimize with assembly, which is a big enough pain in the *** to work with, and I think it's pretty cool that ND would be willing to go right down to 1s and 0s. Personally, I don't go beyond whatever scripting language the engine I'm using utilizes.

Lastly,the reason that I brought up Ubi, EA and Activision is because they *do* have the money, but their console games, while quite beautiful, are not at this level. Also, multiplats are less risky because they are available for purchase to a much larger audience. This is why pretty much everything is multiplat these days.

[owen]

Those 5000 people aren't on the dev team, they are outsource, they are contracted. ND is working on one platform and one console it offers then room to optimize everything. A game is 10% engine and 90% art assets, especially 3d games. Now take a look at uncharted it's one engine and thousands of assets and animations - do you think 50 programmers coded all those textures in binary? The engine is like a movie player that plays scripts.

Exclusive games are always gonna look better and cost more to make than multi-plates. Its pretty because it's exclusive and ND is rolling in doe. Not allot of other game development studios are in the same position which is why other devs don't make games at such a hi fidelity.

Somebody has to plot every ledge that Jake can climb onto. If it's not marked he can't climb unto it. Everything is meticulously laid out and play tested. Its not like Mario or other free roaming games where you can find glitchs and things the devs over looked. Everything is scripted to the last drop of water.

[owen]

And there is this other thing about Uncharted games; the way the game works by destroying sections of the stage as you pass through them to keep you going continuously forward so that it can stream more and more data into view. This doesn't work well for other types of games and complicates the story telling for other developers who's games do not revolve around a one man demolition team.

If other studios made games like this it would totally cause the industry to collapse. Not only with the costs but some games would be so large that you could not even compress all the information to hold on the disk. Not to mention development time.

At the end of the day you can't just keep making games prettier and prettier. Why some games benefit from the prettiness other games have bigger issues that they need to tackle.

[Makkah]

Those 5000 people aren't on the dev team, they are outsource, they are contracted.

And they would have been taking into account when devs talk about the size of their teams. They may not be at the company full time, but they are still a part of the team. No where near 5000.

ND is working on one platform and one console it offers then room to optimize everything.

True, but Sony has a lot of first and second party studios making exclusives. Aside from Santa Monica Studio non of them are close to ND, and I'm sure they have comparable budgets.

A game is 10% engine and 90% art assets, especially 3d games.

If all we're talking about here are time and money, then that's fairly accurate. Assets are time consuming to create. If we're talking about what makes a game look and perform well then it's more evenly split. I'd wager that it skews in favour of the engine though because lighting, and code optimization plays a HUGE part in that. MGS5 uses relatively low poly models to get 1080p/60FPS, but the lighting is incredible.

do you think 50 programmers coded all those textures in binary?

You don't code textures to binary, period. You could code the pixel shaders, bump mapping and other such tech to binary, however, which would make things far more efficient. This would allow you to pile on more effects with a reduced performance hit.

Exclusive games are always gonna look better and cost more to make than multi-plates. Its pretty because it's exclusive and ND is rolling in doe. Not allot of other game development studios are in the same position which is why other devs don't make games at such a hi fidelity.

See my second point.

Somebody has to plot every ledge that Jake can climb onto. If it's not marked he can't climb unto it. Everything is meticulously laid out and play tested. Its not like Mario or other free roaming games where you can find glitchs and things the devs over looked.

Collision masks are handled by the engine and are essentially painted onto various objects once the tech behind it has been established. That sort of thing isn't time consuming at all. Mario, 64 aside, is in no way free roaming, and is as linear as everything out there. I'm not sure how the bolded section is a negative either. I like my games polished.

Everything is scripted to the last drop of water.

And it makes for a good cinematic experience.

And there is this other thing about Uncharted games; the way the game works by destroying sections of the stage as you pass through them to keep you going continuously forward so that it can stream more and more data into view. This doesn't work well for other types of games and complicates the story telling for other developers who's games do not revolve around a one man demolition team.

If other studios made games like this it would totally cause the industry to collapse. Not only with the costs but some games would be so large that you could not even compress all the information to hold on the disk. Not to mention development time.

If your engine handles streaming and destruction well, like Frostbite 3 does, then you don't have a problem. This is not what every game is about either so it's a non-issue. It doesn't force you forward just so they can stream assets in, it's to provide tension, much like Mario's fixed scrolling levels.

At the end of the day you can't just keep making games prettier and prettier.

Yes, you can as long as it makes money. Especially as hardware becomes more powerful and sophisticated global illumination techniques become a thing. Games will look better, dev times will shrink and they will be cheaper to produce as a result of no longer having to bake shadows and other such trickery. Or reduce the need for it at least.

[owen]

You are still not getting it. What ND does is unique because of the type of liner games they make and the money they have. The games are not getting cheaper to make - they are getting more complicated and more expensive. Dev times are not getting shorter they are exploding. No other company can do it and publishers are not going to pump money into a studio to do it unless they know that the game will sell.

Next time you wonder why other studios don't do it look at this list; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...mes_to_develop

I'm sure you completed Uncharted 3 the ending credits is 14 minutes long; You should be able to see who's apart of the dev team and the many areas of the game which were outsourced to other companies;