Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

remedygames.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 274 posts

Re: Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

#111

Post by _kulang »

ux-app wrote: post #110
jordanthoms wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the problem there is pretty fundamental - in reality you'd be tensing muscles and shifting your weight etc before the snappy movement, but the game only knows that you want to move when you move the stick or push a button - so it either has to show that realistic motion after your button press and introduce latency, or sacrifice the realism in the animations.

>I guess the problem there is pretty fundamental yes absolutely, you can't have both realism and snappy response times.

Considering you walk around and don’t have a problem with it, I’d wager that putting a more realistic walk model into a game and changing the control scheme to be a bit more natural would lead to a learnable system for control that would achieve both goals. Say ZMP

Re: Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

#112

Post by [deleted] »

holoduke wrote: post #8

Its refreshing to see something different than another unreal engine based game. It must be extremely challenging to have your own inhouse engine. The engine is one thing. The tooling to build levels, animations etc is maybe even harder. I guess it also gives some advantages. More control over low level architecture gives you more opportunities to optimize. Harder with a all purpose engine like Unreal. Cant wait to p…

[deleted]

Re: Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

#113

Post by Asooka »

Man, all these graphical enhancements and they still can't design a proper camera. Off-centre camera systems, aka "over the shoulder" cameras make me motion sick. I need the player to be in the centre of the screen or everything feels lopsided. By all means, do the RE4 zoom thing when the player aims a gun or similar, but while moving the camera should be horizontally centred. Halo tried something similar with giving the crosshair a vertical offset and while it didn't bother me personally, a lot of people complained it made them sick, so they added an option to move it back. The visual system in a lot of folks really doesn't like being off-centre compared to the body it's tasked with moving.

Re: Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

#114

Post by 4hg4ufxhy »

_kulang wrote: post #111
ux-app wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I guess the problem there is pretty fundamental yes absolutely, you can't have both realism and snappy response times.

Considering you walk around and don’t have a problem with it, I’d wager that putting a more realistic walk model into a game and changing the control scheme to be a bit more natural would lead to a learnable system for control that would achieve both goals. Say ZMP

It would still feel unresponsive in comparison. Just like normal physics would feel if you got a taste of breaking them in real life.

Re: Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

#115

Post by mcbrit »

From the first few sentences of the article:

"ECS meant that iteration was quick because adding new or modifying existing systems or game objects was easy, and performance gains were clear when saving and loading the Case Board."

and there's an accompanying screenshot with perhaps 20 objects on a case board.

I scanned through the rest of the article with one question in mind: what the hell? ECS is not a solution to putting 20 photos on a case board. You're pushing 100Ks or Ms of objects and need performance and are willing to suffer for performance = ECS. Not this.

So, despite world class developer, I did not find the article credible. The main cause of the lack of credibility is the author of the article did not anticipate the reader glancing at the case board and the ECS claim and saying: bullshit. Alternatively, they did anticipate the claim, and were told to ship the article anyways.

Re: Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

#116

Post by kylebenzle »

_kulang wrote: post #111
ux-app wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I guess the problem there is pretty fundamental yes absolutely, you can't have both realism and snappy response times.

Considering you walk around and don’t have a problem with it, I’d wager that putting a more realistic walk model into a game and changing the control scheme to be a bit more natural would lead to a learnable system for control that would achieve both goals. Say ZMP

I can't see how zero moment point (ZMP) is relevant here? I think what you are saying is why don't we use the same algorithms to control game characters as robots? If its a robot or game character the issue is the same. You can try and predict the next movement but if you are wrong you again have the same problem and the response time suffers even more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_moment_point

Re: Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

#117

Post by notjoemama »

_kulang wrote: post #111
ux-app wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I guess the problem there is pretty fundamental yes absolutely, you can't have both realism and snappy response times.

Considering you walk around and don’t have a problem with it, I’d wager that putting a more realistic walk model into a game and changing the control scheme to be a bit more natural would lead to a learnable system for control that would achieve both goals. Say ZMP

I played RDR2 and was very happy to walk away from the molasses like movement once finished. It was realistic in both its behavior and cadence and I can emphatically say, give me fantasy (better/faster) movement in a playable fantasy world. Imagine waiting for a real time washer and dryer cycle in a video game because it’s “realism”. There are limits…

Re: Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

#118

Post by kylebenzle »

ReactiveJelly wrote: post #78
SirMaster wrote: post #26

In the first example it's still really jarring how much their feet slide around on the ground, or sliding in place as they walk into an object without moving. I wonder when this will ever be solved. Don't get me wrong, the engine is incredible and the visuals and systems are some of the best we have seen.

I'm surprised it's still a problem. Years ago a basketball game franchise bragged that the PS3 allowed them to do foot planting with inverse kinematics. Years before that, Shadow of the Colossus shipped on PS2... with IK foot planting.

Inverse kinematics is used but, again, that does not solve the problem of the trade off between response time and realistic movement. It simply "snaps" the feet to the ground.

Re: Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

#119

Post by ekianjo »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #75
Tade0 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen a demonstration of a solution on the YouTube channel Two Minute Papers - it was actually about an algorithm that blended animations so that the transitions looked natural.

I wonder how long it will be before we stop using animation and switch to an actual bipedal physics simulation where the agent actually knows how to walk and jump and run.

It seems like never because we had the tech before and everyone seems to be lazy about using it

Re: Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

#120

Post by itishappy »

_kulang wrote: post #111
ux-app wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I guess the problem there is pretty fundamental yes absolutely, you can't have both realism and snappy response times.

Considering you walk around and don’t have a problem with it, I’d wager that putting a more realistic walk model into a game and changing the control scheme to be a bit more natural would lead to a learnable system for control that would achieve both goals. Say ZMP

> Considering you walk around and don’t have a problem with it...

I think humans are worse than this than you might think. Give it a try! Walk around and try to change directions on the fly, maybe have a friend shout suggestions to you. I can make maybe 2 or 3 adjustments per second, which gives about 400ms response time. That's about where RDR2 sits, and players criticized it for being unresponsive.

Post reply on HN