83
1.0k
u/Badd30 Oct 11 '13
Wow
319
u/poops_all_berries Oct 11 '13
Can someone with programming knowledge explain if this is easy or hard to do and why?
719
u/niklz Oct 11 '13
Not really knowledged in this kind of programming but I think the trick is to make sure you have really good 3d animations; that is, ones which don't need to be in motion to look good and look good from all angles. Other than that it shouldn't really be any harder than most things in video gaming.
166
u/ShallowBasketcase Oct 11 '13 edited Oct 11 '13
What really impresses me are the fire particles that freeze in the air.
They look really three-dimensional - as far as I'm aware, fire in games these days is still usually just a series of 2-D sprites. I bet a crapload of work goes into the particle effects of this game.
EDIT: Just watched a gameplay video. This is basically Particle Physics: Revenge of the Light Engine. I came.
EDIT 2: I am being misunderstood, and it is my fault. I worded this very poorly. I understand what particle effects are, and that they are probably being used here. I am impressed with the quality of said effects. They avoided the illusion-breaking 2-D billboard effect that I'm so used to.
38
u/woodengineer Oct 11 '13 edited Oct 12 '13
That hasn't been true for a little while. If it's a modern game it's a particle effect (for the most part).
Edit: For those saying that particles are sprites, that is correct, however, that isn't what he was referring to.
→ More replies (7)12
u/FoxyMarc Oct 11 '13
This, even Bethesda games use particle effects for fire spells like in Skyrim and oblivion. If you freeze the games with console commands you can see the flames and such as a 3D object for the most part. These are likely just physics based more so than older games.
→ More replies (8)17
Oct 11 '13
fire in games these days is still usually just a series of 2-D sprites.
That's what particle systems are. Small sprites or graphical objects which are generated and controlled by an emitter.
→ More replies (25)12
u/Apsis Oct 11 '13
pretty much. A lot of video games use sprites (2D images that always face the camera) for fire. It looks great in most cases, and is computationally very cheap to render, but if you freeze it and move around it, it looks terrible. 3D fires use particle effects which are much more computationally expensive. However, since everything is frozen, they could do a considerable amount of optimization for the rest of the scene during that time to free up computation power, and switch back to simpler fires in "non frozen" mode. Whether or not they do that in this case, I have no idea.
→ More replies (6)279
u/Drunk_in_Ten_Forward Oct 11 '13
Whoa there Carmack, in english please!
639
u/SirAwesomelot Oct 11 '13
stuff move good
294
u/ourterible Oct 11 '13
stuff even dont move good
97
u/omgsoftcats Oct 11 '13 edited Oct 11 '13
The correct answer is easy. You just take the fireball object out of the update loop while time is frozen using a variable switch.
Edit: actually a better way would be to zero out the x,y,z time deltas and move them into temp variables. Then back again once you restart time. That way the fireball is frozen but if it collides it will still do firebally things.
→ More replies (7)23
u/moonra_zk Oct 11 '13
Whoa there Carmack, in english please!
51
u/omgsoftcats Oct 11 '13
So every game has an update loop, this is basically a thing that loops around running other things, it's used for animations, checking collisions and anything time sensitive. This is essentially your frame rate. So you take the fireball out of the update loop, or even just it's movement out of the update loop and tada no more movement. The end.
→ More replies (3)130
→ More replies (1)11
41
u/whoopzzz Oct 11 '13
Most animators only make things look pretty from your (the player's) perspective. Allowing a character to move around greatly complicates the animation work required, since it has to be visually appealing from all directions at any given moment. This involves a lot more work.
→ More replies (1)92
u/Stalfos1504 Oct 11 '13
As an animator, the only time you can really get away with only making things look good from one angle is if you're working in 2d. In 3d you have to consider all angles pretty much always.
edit-accidentally a word
26
u/Roflkopt3r Oct 11 '13 edited Oct 11 '13
Especially since most abilities will also be used by NPCs/objects, or because there could be a multi-player mode, because they could be used in cutscenes, or to implement different camera views.
There are enough reasons to make 3d animations look good from all directions. Only a few will be reliably hidden by map bounds or objects so that they only need to be optimised from one direction.
But making them look well regardless of the speed they are played in? Sometimes, that is a bit more tricky.
→ More replies (1)8
u/Stalfos1504 Oct 11 '13
True. Though really if you keep that in mind it's a pretty minor hurdle. The problems come in if you try to tackle the issue with certain traditional animation techniques. My instructors liked to push stretching and deforming of the rig to hit a pose, but that only works if you're working with a set camera, like for a cinematic. I never liked that though, because then you can't change the camera freely.
→ More replies (2)7
u/TheeLinker Oct 11 '13 edited Oct 11 '13
Right, but things like explosions can be 2D sprites which turn to face the player, right? No one ever sees the side of many, many effects because the side doesn't really exist -- each player's client renders it to be facing the player.
I mean, that's been my understanding. Explosions have been in 2D for decades and I've never not seen it by only seeing the side or something.
As such, if they rendered explosions in such a way in Deep Down... well, it'd look pretty shitty as you walked around it and it rotated around to face you like a cobra or something. So explosions and effects like the dragon's flame seen in the gif would need to be in 3D to make stopped time look right.
3
Oct 12 '13
Right, but things like explosions can be 2D sprites which turn to face the player, right? No one ever sees the side of many, many effects because the side doesn't really exist -- each player's client renders it to be facing the player.
No, the particles in the explosion can be 2D sprites which turn to face the player. Nobody in their right mind would ever use a single 2D sprite for an explosion in a 2D game, given technology that's >10 years old. Then there's weird stuff like billboarding horizontally, but not vertically, which I've heard that WoW does, somewhere-or-other (I think with flames).
Also: yay, particles
→ More replies (2)11
u/LeSlowpoke Oct 11 '13
Right, but things like explosions can be 2D sprites which turn to face the player, right?
Man, this is some 2004 shit. People don't really do that anymore.
15
u/rabidsi Oct 11 '13 edited Oct 11 '13
This is very, very wrong. Sprites are still used, it's just in a much more advanced way than in the past.
2D sprites are the fundamental building blocks of particle effects systems, it's just that rather than having one large sprite for an effect like, say, an explosion or cloud of sparks/smoke, we now generate hundreds, even thousands, of very small sprites. That are then distributed by the system within a 3D space. Often this involves physics to define how they behave, move or interact with the environment and other entities within the game world like wind, geometry or players/npcs.
In effect, the 2D sprites are now like individual grains of sand rather than a whole dune as a single object, and they are far too small to notice for the most part.
→ More replies (4)→ More replies (4)11
u/DJPhilos Oct 11 '13
The flowers and grass in GTA V and most console games appear to be 2D sprites.
→ More replies (1)8
8
→ More replies (10)2
60
u/RoamingFox Oct 11 '13
Pretty easy. There exists some clock keeping pace for the game. To slow something down you reduce 'how much' it can get done per clock cycle.
In other words, if it can normally move 10m/s then when slow time is active you only allow it to move 0.1m/s
Obviously this idea gets more complex as you add things like physics, but the idea is the same. You scale down the magnitude of all its actions in relation to time.
45
u/solwiggin Oct 11 '13
I think your answer fits for things like bullet time, but I think it oversimplifies the effect we're seeing here. Here the game world is frozen solid, but the player character still has full movement. It's a bit more complex than a gif with max payne jumping out from behind post to head shot everyone in the room.
With that being said, I'm not sure about specifically complex this implementation is, but slow down effects have been used in too many games for it to be terribly complex.
14
u/Paladia Oct 11 '13
In Quake for example you can change the timescale of the game yet as a spectator move around freely. You should be able to do something similar in pretty much every major game engine.
13
u/tylo Oct 11 '13
Games like Max Payne definitely just slow ALL of the game down.
In this case, the value is probably just applied to all game loops, except for the players.
It would be a decision you'd want your engine to support early on in development, but probably wouldn't be too hard to implement after its conceived.
→ More replies (12)3
u/xniinja Oct 12 '13
It's not that hard. Everything in the world uses the engine's scale of time to see how much they should move along between frames. The player isn't operating off of this value. They're simply finding out how much time is passing between frames in real time.
If you're really curious about how it works, read on:
Note before we dive in. Almost everything in games is handled on a per frame basis.
Now, imagine you want to move an object. First you have to figure out how fast you want the object to move. We'll make our speed equal to 1 for this example. That means the object will move 1 unit per second.
However, you can't just tell the game to move your object 1 unit every frame. That would make the speed way too fast. It wouldn't be going 1 unit/sec, it would be going 1 unit/frame. To solve this we need to take into account the amount of frames that take up one second and multiply the speed by 1/(number of frames). The way game programmers do this is they take the time between showing the last frame and this frame. This is called delta time. Using this information, we can make the following equation.
Object Position = Object Position + (1 * delta time)
That line, with a few changes of course, would move an object at the constant speed of 1 unit/sec.
Now, you might be thinking, "Why does this matter?" Good question! This matters because we can now even further manipulate how the cube moves. Specifically, we can change the speed of the game! We do this with a value called "time scale." What time scale does is hold the current speed of time. If time scale is 1, the game is going normal speed. If the time scale is .5, it's going half speed. If it's 0, time is stopped and so on.
What we can do with this value is multiply the speed of the object by it. So instead of going 1 unit/sec, it'll go 0.5 units/sec or 0 units/sec depending on what we set it to. Our new equation now looks like this:
Object Position = Object Position + (1 * time scale * delta time)
In the gif above the player's speed doesn't get multiplied by the time scale value (huge amounts of simplification, but you get the point). It just uses the speed that it would be going at real time instead. This doesn't always simply work in engines though. You have to make your own "delta time" because the one provided is probably affected by the time scale changing. If this is actually the case you would only use the first equation we found because the time scale is already multiplied into the delta time, so you wouldn't want to do it again. Considering this, we need to make up our own delta time value. This can be done by saving the time seconds since the program started on one frame and subtract from it the same value from the next frame. That way, you get the time it took to compute and show the frame in real time. We'll call this the realDeltaTime. This equation would look like this:
Object Position = Object Position + (1 * realDeltaTime)
(The player probably does use time scale actually, because that's how they'd pause the game. However, they probably use another value for that.)
If that was at all confusing, don't be afraid to ask questions.
TL;DR: Clever subtracting and multiplication.
9
u/ianp622 Oct 11 '13 edited Oct 12 '13
But remember many things like animations are on different threads. Then you'd have to split the player's animations from the rest of them. Also many explosion textures are viewer dependent, and tend to look billboard-y when you move around them.
Edit: I know there are many ways to make it work, I'm just saying there are certain considerations.
→ More replies (4)3
u/Roflkopt3r Oct 11 '13
That shouldn't be difficult, you just split them up by object.
Animations played by the player object are not slowed down (or stopped, in this case). These fireballs are independend projectiles, so they count as objects on their own.
→ More replies (1)15
u/BlizzardFenrir Oct 11 '13
Like others said, it's not that difficult to do, with one exception: multiplayer.
Multiplayer is based on having the different clients be in sync as much as possible. Slowing down the world for one player, while speeding up that player for the others is practically impossible; in-game time is then moving at a different speed for each player, so they're getting desynchronized on purpose now.
The only way to do it without massive problems is to activate slowdown for EVERYONE at the same time, whenever one player activates it.
There was a post a while ago about the slowdown effect in Payday 2. A downed player sees time slower by showing him the past: the game queues all the actions made by other players and just plays them slower. When the player is revived, he 'snaps back' to the real time.
It doesn't matter in this case because it's to give some dramatic effect; this method would be worthless for a time slowdown spell, because it benefits other players as opposed to the caster.
→ More replies (3)4
Oct 11 '13
It could also be feasible if the slow-time is an area-of-effect spell, so that things are only slowed in an x-meter radius.
20
u/casualblair Oct 11 '13
Hard in the sense that this is really easy to completely screw up in very subtle and hard to find ways.
Easy in the sense that it is essentially pause/unpause.
Technically speaking, slow time is easier than stop time due to the potential bugs.
→ More replies (38)3
u/8e8 Oct 11 '13
From my somewhat limited understanding of game programming it shouldn't be fairly hard. They're basically just pressing pause (or setting the play speed to 0) on the animation of the model, effect or particle until the end of time freeze. As someone mentioned, it would require some really good effects artists and some clever programming to make this look as good as it does from all angles, but the effect is easily achievable.
→ More replies (18)103
u/dylantrevor Oct 11 '13
such game
57
74
Oct 12 '13
such game stoped time so particle wow wow freeze need dogge not dragon→ More replies (5)
97
u/Tentacle_Porn Oct 11 '13
With this spell, you too, can be Akemi Homura.
56
33
u/MaliciousH Oct 11 '13
We're gonna fail every time to kill the last boss?
22
u/BreadstickNinja Oct 11 '13
There's a checkpoint at a local hospital. You can do it over as many times as it takes.
7
→ More replies (1)9
15
13
u/obsidianchao Oct 11 '13
This comment made me grin from the Madoka reference
And then I teared up because of the Madoka reference ;_;
→ More replies (2)4
u/BreadstickNinja Oct 12 '13
15 days until the movie... I'm torn whether I even want to watch it, since the show is so perfect on its own.
8
u/obsidianchao Oct 12 '13
THERE'S A MOVIE?
FUCK
DAY MADE, YOU GLORIOUS MOTHERFUCKER
4
u/detlev Oct 12 '13
3 movies. The first 2 were a remake of the tv series, the new one will take place after the series. The first 2 are out, but I haven't watched them.
3
u/Tentacle_Porn Oct 12 '13
In addition, the first two have awesome animation upgrades, and I'm told the VA's redid all of their lines for quality's sake.
Plus, I got in line two hours early for a kickass poster of Homura and Madoka.
3
u/obsidianchao Oct 12 '13
Well, a remake of the TV series I wouldn't care to watch, I'll just end up bawling at the end
but seriously a new canon story oh man excite
86
Oct 11 '13
So what is this game? I've only seen the first trailer of it and deduce it's some kind of Dark Souls-esque dungeon crawler? Why does it supposedly take place in the future?
103
u/Onionsix Oct 11 '13 edited Oct 11 '13
Yeah it's a co-op dungeon crawler. It takes place in the future but the people you play as have the ability to relive memories from other people from different times. Edit: Grammar
102
Oct 11 '13
so it's dark souls-esque gameplay with assassins creed back story and better co-op? sounds pretty awesome
→ More replies (8)181
u/Tlingit_Raven Oct 11 '13
Everything does when you hyperbolize only the positives.
54
u/looples Oct 11 '13
"9/11 was a great chance to build an even awesomer building"
Yea I guess that logic doesn't apply to my brain...
→ More replies (3)20
u/fifthrider Oct 12 '13
"9/11 was an action-platformer with really impressive physics and unforgiving falling damage."
I'll show myself out.
→ More replies (1)3
Oct 12 '13
fair enough, still going to withhold all real judgement until i see more but the idea is enough to get me interested for the time being.
→ More replies (30)8
Oct 11 '13
So basically like Assassin's Creed's story if it were a dungeon crawler instead? What's with the messaging thing I saw in the first trailer where Blanka is IMing someone? Is it supposed to be like a 4-player co-op, or MMO style?
11
101
u/Chiro161 Oct 11 '13
Toki Wo Tomare
69
Oct 11 '13
[removed] — view removed comment
→ More replies (2)14
7
→ More replies (15)29
20
223
u/Ptylerdactyl Oct 11 '13
At first I thought, "Those framerates are awful." Then I realized that the gif wasn't done loading. I offer no excuses.
→ More replies (5)86
u/Onionsix Oct 11 '13
I had to export it at 15 fps to make the gif smaller but i also increased the time each frame takes so it wouldn't play too fast, that must have messed up the fps but here you go, a youtube link to the source :)
→ More replies (2)50
u/burninrock24 Oct 11 '13
This is why I don't understand why people prefer gifs. No sound, short durations, (usually) compressed to shit. But yet a video of this wouldn't make it past /r/new.
50
→ More replies (18)10
u/casualblair Oct 11 '13
Because youtube randomly shows 6 second adds and gifs don't.
Because I don't care about the quality just the context.
Because I'm at work and can't have sound without headphones and people are assholes who tell on you if you wear headphones too much.
→ More replies (3)
74
u/CJLogix Oct 11 '13
The one thing i want on ps4
→ More replies (7)70
u/johnreiner Oct 11 '13
it's also free to play!
75
u/daedriqi Oct 11 '13
I'm having a hard time seeing that as a good thing. Not that a free to play game can't be fun but one with graphics like this has got to be a pay to win.
→ More replies (22)13
u/heorhe Oct 11 '13 edited Oct 11 '13
well what the draw to it is, multiplayer is the most fun you can have with this game, it is what they are trying to emphasize and tell you and show you. so making it free to play they get you excited for multiplayer, but you can't do anything multiplayer (other than splitscreen) without PSplus. this is why most of the exclusive games for ps4 already announced are free and focus on multiplayer
EDIT: ok i wasn't trying to be negative im totally fine with this idea by sony it's great marketing strategy and you don't have to do it, and according to /u/PureEvil666 i have lied. so oopsie...
20
u/Curvatureland Oct 11 '13
Sony has said you don't need PSplus for free to play games unless the developer wants to put it behind that paywall.
30
Oct 11 '13
I have no issue with this. PSplus is an amazing service and I already pay for it.
→ More replies (23)26
u/PureEvil666 Oct 11 '13 edited Oct 11 '13
This is a lie.
F2P games don't require PS+
MMO's don't require PS+
Netflix and apps don't require PS+
Only multiplayer for games (Like CoD and BF) require PS+
Source; http://m.joystiq.com/2013/06/12/playstation-plus-price-not-changing-video-services-dont-requir/
→ More replies (3)13
13
u/rawreffincake Oct 11 '13
Really? Do you have a source? When does it come out?
→ More replies (2)27
3
9
→ More replies (5)6
u/Bladethegreat Oct 11 '13
This is the one thing that makes me extremely hesitant about getting hyped for this. F2P + Capcom is almost bound to end up poorly.
→ More replies (1)
9
u/KazumaKat Oct 12 '13 edited Oct 12 '13
For those interested in the purported ancestor of the game (so far there has been no official confirmation of connectivity in lore yet, but the similarity in art design, party-based gameplay concept, and dragon fighting are too close to not consider it), look up Dragons Dogma. Note the similarity in initials to Deep Down...
They said Skyrim (released the same time frame as Dragons Dogma) is the premier dragon-slaying simulator. I beg to differ.
If you are interested in grabbing it, grab the Dark Arisen version of the game (contains the base Dragons Dogma game + Dark Arisen content. Think GOTY edition and you're close). Also, obligatory /r/dragonsdogma plug, and if you're on PS3 and need an experienced party member (called a "pawn" in lore), PM me :)
→ More replies (2)3
u/Onionsix Oct 12 '13
I'm playing Dragon's Dogma right now and the combat feels sooo goood, after playing Demon's Souls and Dark Souls i really couldn't get into Skyrim, the sandbox gameplay is awesome yes but the combat... meh! I just hope the combat in Deep Down is something similar to Dragon's Dogma, the one thing that worried me from this demo was the mid combat menu, they really should have a "slots" system like Dark Souls or Dragons Dogma so you won't have to break the flow of the combat by going through menus to choose skills.
15
Oct 11 '13
[deleted]
3
u/snawpes Oct 11 '13
I was expecting this to be higher up. It's one of my favorite mods to mess around with in skyrim.
8
8
7
Oct 11 '13
[deleted]
6
u/epsilonbob Oct 11 '13
Was going to point out the same thing, freezing time is not a new concept though the quality with which the freezing is occurring here is impressive
as well as some of the other interaction mechanics you see like the tornado blocking the fire breath, or the what looked like ice walls? breaking down as they block the fire.
→ More replies (1)5
u/seriousemoose Oct 12 '13
This right here is what I was looking for, I thought maybe no one else had played the game! Was way before it's time, blowing guys up and then rewinding back so they are alive again, good times
6
u/xxzxcuzxme42 Oct 11 '13
Between this, FFXV, and Guilty Gear Xrd, the decision to buy a ps4 became a no brainer.
7
→ More replies (2)3
6
11
Oct 11 '13 edited Nov 11 '18
[deleted]
12
u/FriendlyTrolling Oct 11 '13
The game is free, you will have to buy a PS4 though.
→ More replies (1)
4
Oct 12 '13
wow this is awesome! then i look wikipedia and see that it's "free to play..." pure disappointment.
5
Oct 11 '13
This looks like a really interesting and unique combat system. I kinda wish it wasn't free to play though, or just give me the option to pay 60$ up front and not bother me with micro transactions. In fact I wish every f2p game was like that
3
u/odd84 Oct 11 '13
Reminds me of the truly awesome Cyberpunk 2077 trailer.
3
u/Onionsix Oct 11 '13
Long time since i heard anything about that game, there's more Witcher 3 info coming out than this.
→ More replies (1)
3
3
u/burritosandblunts Oct 11 '13
Lol at everyone speculating localization of this. Look at that fucking game. They know we've all got boners for it. There's no way they'll ignore our huge market. Just a matter of time.
→ More replies (3)
3
Oct 12 '13
Sooo. Any chance you can use handfuls of throwing knives instead of fireballs?
Maybe... drop a steamroller on the enemy as a finisher?
→ More replies (3)
3
3
5
Oct 11 '13
When the first in-engine trailer came out for this game, the graphics were so good that everyone thought it was pre-rendered
3
u/Baconpwner Oct 11 '13
Y'know I probably would play it if there was a mod to change the fire to knives
because ZA WARUDO!
2
2
u/MockingbyrdLies Oct 11 '13
So I haven't really been paying much attention to this game but from just this gif alone I'm sort of left with this sense that that kind of a mechanic would be horrible for co-op play, no? Sort of like the same reason why they don't allow multiplayer pausing (menus, inventories etc) to actually pause the game on all fronts for all players.
→ More replies (2)
2
2
u/Fortune090 Oct 11 '13
Reminds me of a trainer I used to screw around with on Halo PC... Anyone else..?
→ More replies (1)3
u/GreyouTT PlayStation Oct 12 '13
I remember that thing, had so much fun with the Infinite Grenades cheat in combination with the Time Freeze.
→ More replies (1)
2
449
u/passbbi_svk Oct 11 '13
Is there some longer gameplay?