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Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

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Re: Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

#151

Post by sundvor »

capableweb wrote: post #13
kg wrote: post #3

Considering their size (a few hundred people for the whole studio AFAIK), Remedy consistently punches above their weight when it comes to graphics. Off the top of my head only Remedy and CD Projekt Red are able to compete with the big dogs (Unreal, Unity, EA Frostbite) when it comes to image fidelity and performance. Their GDC/siggraph/etc presentations are fantastic for anyone interested in computer graphics or tech…

> without having the 'every NPC has 10k-poly teeth in their mouth' problem that's currently sabotaging Cities Skylines 2's performance Sad to see an otherwise good comment end with a misconception. The problems with the performance is much grander than just "teeth rendered but not visible" ( https://blog.paavo.me/cities-skylines-2-performance/ ), although I guess it's a illustrative point. Missing LODs and lack of cu…

This article was just discussed here, might be a better link?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38153573

Re: Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

#152

Post by thomastjeffery »

ux-app wrote: post #106
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.

It's always a tradeoff between responsive movement and realistic movement. RDR2 has very realistic animations, with the tradeoff being slightly "floaty" controls. Personally I prefer snappy movement i.e. when I press left the screen character moves left immediately. A more realistic looking animation system introduces a delay while you wait for the feet animation to "catch up" to player input.

To elaborate on this, there is a third aspect being glossed over: the correctness of the animation itself.

They could alter the animation such that feet don't slide across the ground and keep responsive movement. The result would be a worse quality animation, because the movement of the legs would not appear to be pushing the rest of the body around. Instead, it would look more like the feet are following the rest of the body retroactively, while holding onto the ground.

A good example of this is Factorio's spidertron. When the spidertron moves, the legs follow with a walking motion that perfectly tracks the ground below. In this case, it's a great-looking tradeoff, probably because there are so many legs, and not much animation done to the body itself.

Re: Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

#154

Post by jebarker »

I always think glimpses of the custom tools used in game dev are really cool. I work in large scale ML systems and I wish there was similar effort put into tools for observability and debugging of neural networks.

I'd be tempted to work on game dev tooling one day if there were more remote work opportunities.

Re: Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

#155

Post by midnightclubbed »

ajdoingnothing wrote: post #132
Keyframe wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were there over a decade ago with Euphoria, but I think they've stopped selling/developing it? GTA 4 used it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HauN98naZ9U

GTA IV's tech was quite ahead of its time (2008), with the integration of Euphoria (which had to be integrated in-house by NaturalMotion engineers inside Rockstar's studio @ Edinburgh). The other comment correctly pointed out that NaturalMotion was acquired by Zynga, who in turn got acquired by Take-Two (parent of Rockstar Games).. So who knows, perhaps we'll still see an updated version in the sixth major instalment…

Euphoria was used for a subset of animations, for the most part traditional mocapped animations (and a lot of them) were used to drive character movements. I don’t know if motion matching was used on GTA4 but it was on other Rockstar games at the time and subsequently.

Characters blended to the hand written, custom, euphoria behaviors in certain situations… it handled falls, stumbles, deaths, etc. Generally it replaced ragdoll physics but wasn’t used during most character movement behaviors.

Re: Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

#156

Post by GreymanTheGrey »

firecall wrote: post #140
_kulang wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Of course there is already measurable lag from when your brain tells your hand and fingers to move, to when they actually move! An interesting personal anecdote I have: I damaged my back with bulging disc, which caused horrific sciatica nerve pain. When I was able to walk again, I had some nerve damage. This meant I had lag in my left leg! I’d tell the leg to move instinctively when walking and there would be a delay…

Complete tangent, but how did you treat your injury? Coming back from bulging discs and sciatica is rare, to my understanding.

Re: Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

#157

Post by ClimaxGravely »

Geee wrote: post #76
cubefox wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was actually a regress in this respect. Some ten years ago there was a "destructible physics" boom in many big games, but nowadays most games abandoned it. There seems to be a trade-off between graphical fidelity and the opportunity for physics-based manipulation of the environment.

Remedy's previous game, Control, had probably one of the most impressive destructive environments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12NORuGfcLc

Not to take anything away from Control. That game is a absolute masterpiece but the destruction in that game is largely cosmetic and often inconsequential to gameplay. So much that it could be pre-fractured offline.

Re: Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

#158

Post by badsectoracula »

Asooka wrote: post #113

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…

Yeah i agree but i think this ship has long sailed - over the shoulder cameras are pretty much everywhere these days. I avoided several 3rd person perspective games for this reason alone (some even had me feel nauseous) and eventually had to force myself to get used to it since i wanted to play some games that switched to it (e.g. Mass Effect 3). Nowadays i can play a game using it without feeling off but i still prefer it when games put the character at the center of the screen.

(also i yelled at more than one game that had an option to switch shoulder but not put the character at the center - if you are bothering to implement this why not also add the center option? :-P)

Re: Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

#159

Post by kylebenzle »

alpaca128 wrote: post #128
kylebenzle wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A lot of the problems occur during movement, when responsiveness doesn't even matter. I still have yet to see a game where it's impossible to get randomly stuck at a fence or rock that instantly stops one's movement for example. Making the character dynamically avoid such minor obstacles would make the game more responsive, not less. And games with fancy animations are often not just less responsive, but also less co…

I don't play any video games but it seems like you might be discussing a separate issue. A developer must choose between responsiveness and fluidity.

Re: Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2

#160

Post by beefsack »

ECS architectures are used in a number of young open source game engines, such as Bevy[1]. I haven't done game development for a long time, but hearing about an architecture that does away with the heavy and complex OOP you often see in games makes me want to dip my toes in again and check it out.

[1]: https://bevyengine.org/

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