What is "Too hard for hardware" ?

[AzureBlaze]

Perhaps a technical question?

I'll freely admit that my "programming" ability extends to...the VCR. I don't know specs or codes or hax or really much internal stuff of PCs or playstations. Perhaps someone here can set this streight. To what use? Well, peace of mind. Knowing WHY something happens won't fix it, but maybe I'll agitate less.

We all know PSU is a big game. It has lots of complicated things like talking, cinemas, big levels and lots of customizable characters. You would think this could be hard for PCs to show you/run. But some things seem a bit "off".

*How many fingers am I holding up?
If you were on PSO, the answer was ALWAYS 2 or 3. You only had 3 fingers. NPCs sometimes had just 2. Sure, the fingers had LINES on them to make them look like more fingers, but if you counted actual fingers of polygons...you got 3.

Now in PSU, the fingers never animate. No fists, no nothing. You can do all gestures, and even watch Ethan gyrate around as he 'converses' offline, but the hands are frozen.
Is this too hard?
Totally suspicious: In the -CINEMA- portions, the hands don't move either. They shift a little sometimes, but they're really static a lot, unless something is a total hand focus. I thought these guys were rendered? I think other games feature hands that could move the fingers in a cinema situation.

*I'm in a paper-doll world:
This really annoys me. The stupid "ghost people" all over the place. Yes, they're meant to make the place look unlike a ghost town--ironic, because the effect is opposite! These generic paper people with their beige color wasting my loading processor power or whatever it is. Forget the ghosts, give me faster loading for people I'm standing near! It's so bland and stupid looking when you're standing waiting on something with gobs of "generic man" and "Paper Girl" around you.
-Couldn't they have done a "Load Radius" or something?
-Why does it take so long for people to stop being a "blue glow monster" in a game? PSO didn't take this long, are the models here too difficult?
-I hate having to "Focus" on each person to make it load--and then it UNLOADS if they walk 2ft away or behind you. My disk grinds more then a starbucks coffee maker!

All the generic "folks" and ghosts around just makes the game look stupid/boring. Part of the enjoyment/realism of these places is looking at all the interesting people, and you can't.

*Help me iron my hair!
Hairs are always a problem in video games. Hair is very hard to render. It takes up a lot of memory perhaps. Either way, they didn't figure it out here either. I have a longer flat/streight hair, and when I look down it sticks out like a fin. But when I strafe sideways, it'll "Blow" to one side. Hair also clips through your torso like crazy, but I don't think they'll ever prevent that.
-Can you "hinge" hair? Is it too hard?
-Is there a limit on polygons you can have per dude? (well obviously--but how close is it?)
-Did they already go over the limit and that's why no one will load?
BUT
Watch any maidens offline. Their costume has this really sweet "fluttering in the wind" effect on it. As you know, material will billow in the wind, but the tips tend to flutter quickly. They bothered to work that in. It looks very realistic and nice. It also seems contradictory to the "I can't do anything about the hair".

*Peter Pan needs...
To sew his shadow back on because it turned into a blurry dot. This one I don't actually care about, because realtime shadows are supposed to be impossible and eat load times for breakfast. I'd rather have a blurry dot then some collection of goo-balls like on ep3, too.

*Screw in a lightbulb?
Does the lighting seem somewhat generic online? I thought even PSO had more 'lights' that were...different. Like some blinked or were colors or did those rising lines or something and you could stand in 'em and they'd "Shine" on you. If they could do it before, why is it too difficult now?

Those are all I can think of at the moment, and I bring them up because they seem vaguely contradictory to other things I see directly in PSU or the PSOs that came before it. What do you think? Do you see any others? I know the game has to be "dumbed down" to run on the PS2, but I think it's been seen to handle things a bit 'above' what psu does sometimes. Just curious. And wordy.

[Dj_SkyEpic]

I Think I will have to read this like 3-4 times before I can understand it ><;;;

Ahh... Rants >.>;; I see what you mean by the ghost ppl. I kind of wish they would load into their skins quicker. Taking pictures for fun and etc. while waiting for all the skins to load really sucks http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime2.gif

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Dj_SkyEpic on 2007-01-05 23:34 ]</font>

[Nani-chan]

I read it, belongs in rants.

[MaximusLight]

In before rants.... but seriously it takes a ton of power to run it graphically already added more might, oh I don't know, limit it to an all out gaming counsel and maybe a very expensive computer set up.

[Sinue_v2]

Simple truth: It was dumbed down horribly for the PS2. Can your PC handle a more robust and graphically intensive PSU? Yeah, probably - but it doesn't matter since they were making it for 6 year old hardware that was crippled from the word go. Unfortunately it is also the most popular platform - and therefore it was produced with that platform in mind. Everything else is just a port.

[Ether]

PSU is poorly coded, end of story

[Kent]

Yeah, the coding is overall, generally bad.

However, I'm going to have to agree with the whole "VCR" thing... Ancient technology, and whatnot.

[IceBurner]

Simple fact of the matter, AzureBlaze, is that PSU did not aim very high.

[etlitch]

We all know PSU is a big game.Actually not, compare it to other games that has been released recently.


talkingWow and that's supposed to be complicated?

cinemasPre-rendered stuff, pretty much like any cartoon or anime - animation of pictues + sound. Here, it's even easier for PSU since people did'nt have to draw every "picture" or frame.

In-game sequences are just, characters moving and doing pre-determinded animations. Notice that most of those animations exists in the lobby commands list.


big levelsThey're not big and it's even less impressive that level rendering- and packet optimization was at such a low level that they had to split the levels into different "blocks", especially for a present game that you paid a monthly fee for.


lots of customizable charactersThere's 8 different templates total in character creation, you just move the "slider" to change size and shape, all clothing simply comes as either changed textures or slightly base model. You would think this could be hard for PCs to show you/run. But some things seem a bit "off".


the fingers never animateThe developers simply attached the whole hand into a single "bone" instead of creating multiple bones and joints to match the one of an hand for animations. Or they attached the palm into 1 bone, all 4 fingers into 1 bone and the thumb into another bone; the hand have the restricted amount of movement like a thumb glove.

It's not hard, it does'nt take much more(well animating "realistic" hands has always been a pain)


Forget the ghosts, give me faster loading for people I'm standing nearIt does'nt really do much difference, all those "ghosts" are simply using a model with low polygon count and texture with low resolution that's always in your computers memory once it loads the game. Sort of like if you're making dolls, have to make a doll for each guy you see, but there's always 2 "basic dolls" ready that can be changed into any size at no time for the ghosts.


I hate having to "Focus" on each person to make it load--and then it UNLOADS if they walk 2ft away or behind you.You'll notice in the game options -> graphics that there's something called "high-LOD models", well you can change the number there to decide how many of the other players in your area/screen that the game will make real models of and the rest will look like "ghosts".

Mine's set on max, (minimal is 6, so that none of your party members will look like a "ghost" during missions. I can pretty much see all players on parnoob outpost if I stand there for abit. Just watch out to not set it on too high, will cause game to lag depending on your computer once it renders too many characters. (too bad game discards all that once you enter a mission)


Why does it take so long for people to stop being a "blue glow monster" in a game?The blue glow is the same thing as the default "ghost" model just even more basic, only used on your character and your party members instead. Focus and let the game render, same thing.


Their costume has this really sweet "fluttering in the wind" effect on it.There is'nt anything like that. It's just animated so that "when character moves left, parts of costume goes right". Hair and stuff was completely disregarded during most of the animations, that's why it looks both stiff and clips through your body.


This one I don't actually care about, because realtime shadows are supposed to be impossible and eat load times for breakfastTry counterstrike:source, or any of the "present" games. Shadows are no problem.


lightingThey somehow managed to screw up this one big time, it's because of that it's screwed up that most weapons show white instead of their proper element in most areas with post-effects off.


On 2007-01-06 00:38, IceBurner wrote:
Simple fact of the matter, AzureBlaze, is that PSU did not aim very high.QFT. Actually, most of the recent SEGA games have'nt been that good in that area. Just check out the character movements and gestures in that new sonic game.

Only thing that really causes my game to lag would be when I'm messing around and overdoing the anti-aliasing, when I'm running too high resolutions, or when larger TECHs are cast behind my character right on my in-game camera view.

But 2 of those are my own problems and the third one is due to STs cheap(read: bad) optimization.

[drizzle]

It's so easy to complain about someone else's optimization. Fact is that objects that are as customizable as PSU's character graphics are very hard to optimize well. You can't compare this to other games where the character models always look the same - these can be optimized much better.

There's no real limit to what a PC or console can render, but there is a limit to how fast it can do it. At some point you just have to stop adding details if you want anything playable =)

[PJ]

On 2007-01-06 05:03, drizzle wrote:
It's so easy to complain about someone else's optimization.

QFT.

If PSU, "Didn't aim very high," for you, why are you still playing? Cause clearly that's an opinion-based statement.

[etlitch]

I've done my share of modelling and texturing for some halflife mods before, I was'nt really that good at modeling but people did call me poly nazi for being so picky at poly counts and other stuff. TECH effects are just models, textures and abit of additive effect.

Makes me wonder how that's supposed to make my computer lag big-time just because someone casts lv21+ radiga and it happens to appear close to my in-game camera location when running the game with low-resolution and low-quality settins and in parnoob maps.

I've got no problem and no framerate slowdowns when running at 1280x1024, forced 16x anisotropic, 2xQ anti aliasing, max quality options, and some other "performance-lowering" setting on mizuraki runs.

Customizeable?

All polygons are connected to bones, character size sliders in character creation only changes the position of the bones and the textures should still apply to the same area of faces. It should'nt affect game speed at all(2 apples close to each other, or 2 apples distant to each other- still 2 apples) the whole thing should'nt apply the game at all.

Different faces? Looks? Just change texture.

Different clothes? Just change model, but keep the altered bone positions assigned to polygons of respective location.

By "not aiming very high" we meant something like
Sega staff 1:
hey man, let's make some money
ST guys:
k whatever, as long as we get paid for it.
Sega staff 1:
make it quick, here's some budget and I want it done XX months later
ST guys:
hey, budget is too low... and how comes we only get 2/3 of the time we usually get for developing games?
Sega staff 1:
Look, just make something- I don't care about quality, people are going to buy it if previews looks good on E3 and whatever other places, fans are going to buy it either ways.
ST guys:
sure, if you say so.

Now, I can't really see where the OP just simply states "oh shit this game sucks, I hate it". So replies such as "hey then why are you playing this in the first place" sounds- well unfitting.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: etlitch on 2007-01-06 11:29 ]</font>

[Blitzkommando]

PSU is about as technologically advanced as PSO was, meaning it could basically run on the Dreamcast, a system that wasn't even top of the line nearly a decade ago. The game, visually, is terrible for 2006-2007. I was seeing very similar visual effects in Half-Life way back in 1998 (static lighting, low-resolution textures galore, low-poly models, small BSP limited maps, etc.).

Sega seems to think, for whatever reason, that they can use the same methods they developed for Dreamcast in today's consoles and computer games, no matter what system the game is made. The only reason these games are at all tasking on today's computers (which by the way are as powerful, if not more powerful than Deep Blue was in 1994 as the supercomputer that specialized in playing chess) is because the games are so terribly bloated and poorly coded that they waste the majority of the processing time using, say 40 lines of code where with today's optimizations could be lowered to less than five lines.

Yes, I play PSU and I do find it more enjoyable than I initially thought I would. Even so, with all the wonderful latency spikes, the constant 100% CPU usage (only on one core albeit, still it's noticable), and the poor position coding (of you, your team, and the enemies constantly flying every which way even with cable internet at 5Mbps/384Kbps) has drastically affected the 'fun' factor of working together playing.

[HUnewearl_Meira]

On 2007-01-06 17:04, Norvekh wrote:
PSU is about as technologically advanced as PSO was, meaning it could basically run on the Dreamcast, a system that wasn't even top of the line nearly a decade ago. The game, visually, is terrible for 2006-2007. I was seeing very similar visual effects in Half-Life way back in 1998 (static lighting, low-resolution textures galore, low-poly models, small BSP limited maps, etc.).


They traded higher polygon counts for somewhat fewer visual effects.

Plus, it's worth keeping in mind that the game was designed to have a high population. Sure, games like Doom 3 have incredible, photorealistic graphics, but you've also only got a handful of wet, warm bodies on screen at a time, compared to the dozens that PSU is designed to handle.

Graphically speaking, I submit that PSU is every bit on par with World of Warcraft and even a bit ahead of PSO. Maybe they're using fewer tricks in PSU than they used in PSO, but PSU has more polish by far.

[DonRoyale]

One thing I think your forgot, AzureBlaze:

* Wh-What? S-s-sorry...

Isn't it funny how when people tone down their graphics, with or without lag, the cutscene speech is always delayed? Usually, the scenes entail action before movement, but really, nearly every scene I played, the voices came in about 2 to even a full 10 seconds after they should have, and therefore have ruined what made PSU's graphics so great-its cutscenes.

Also, if you lag, one of two things can happen: it can lag entirely, or the more annoying thing can happen: the voice will lag, but the scene won't. For instance:

Captions: "So what about the A-Photons?"
You hear: "So what-so what-so what (repeating)"

I found the voice in this game to be thoroughly disappointing. I'm infact amazed you didn't put this in, AzureBlaze.

Oh well, just thought I'd add to the rant =

[Blitzkommando]

On 2007-01-06 18:03, HUnewearl_Meira wrote:

On 2007-01-06 17:04, Norvekh wrote:
PSU is about as technologically advanced as PSO was, meaning it could basically run on the Dreamcast, a system that wasn't even top of the line nearly a decade ago. The game, visually, is terrible for 2006-2007. I was seeing very similar visual effects in Half-Life way back in 1998 (static lighting, low-resolution textures galore, low-poly models, small BSP limited maps, etc.).


They traded higher polygon counts for somewhat fewer visual effects.

Plus, it's worth keeping in mind that the game was designed to have a high population. Sure, games like Doom 3 have incredible, photorealistic graphics, but you've also only got a handful of wet, warm bodies on screen at a time, compared to the dozens that PSU is designed to handle.

Graphically speaking, I submit that PSU is every bit on par with World of Warcraft and even a bit ahead of PSO. Maybe they're using fewer tricks in PSU than they used in PSO, but PSU has more polish by far.


Well, Doom 3 is hardly an example of modern computergame graphics. It itself is 3 years old and it was never photorealistic itself what with all the wonderful plastic shiny textures everywhere.

World of Warcraft, out of the very short stint that I saw, and played, had a number of effects that PSU simply doesn't have. The one that I remember most clearly is reflective textures. It also supported at least some primative form of a bloom effect and pseudo-dynamic shadowing. (versus the simple circles of PSU which was a step backwards from PSOGC and PSOBB even) World of Warcraft, as much as I disliked it, and the graphics style (far too cartoony for my tastes), is graphically superior to PSU.

The final things that rather annoyed myself, and apparently a large group of the community, was the lack of resolution choices in PSU. Widescreen monitor sales have absolutely boomed in the last year and a half and the fact Sega released a version of the game that requires widescreen resolutions (Xbox360) yet didn't bother to allow that for the PC version is a bit of a slap to the face. (Though, EA has had the same record with the Need for Speed games lately as well but even Unreal and Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Half-Life have widescreen support and resolutions above 1280x1024) This makes aliasing even more noticeable, to which there is no cure forced, through game, or otherwise. Even PSOBB could have anti-alias forced through the drivers, why PSU blocks the ability to force anti-alias is beyond me. At least texture filtering can be forced, which did help with the random hiccups. I'm surprised that Trilinear filtering isn't even enabled which in itself is at least better than no filtering. (All of these can be enabled in-game with World of Warcraft by the way at varying levels based on the performance)

If the number of bodies on the screen is important, take a look at Guild Wars. It has far more characters on screen and much more realistic effects as well as higher resolution textures and is fairly easy to run maxed out without breaking computers.

[etlitch]

On 2007-01-06 22:25, Norvekh wrote:
If the number of bodies on the screen is important, take a look at Guild Wars. It has far more characters on screen and much more realistic effects as well as higher resolution textures and is fairly easy to run maxed out without breaking computers.

bam. pwned.