Epic's Mark Rein about UT3, Users Mods and DVD Space on Xbox 360 Options

[WarriorSan]

I don't beleive this bullshit that they are running low on drive space.
They're not trying hard enough (i am NOT claiming that I could do better) but,
take a gander at what theprodukkt did with debris in only 170kb
http://212.202.219.162/debris/
These are the same guys that did the .kkrieger first person shooter in 96kb

Exactly, Blu-ray, HD-DVD, DVD etc. are only the mediums...Compression baby!

[skarekr0]

I don't beleive this bullshit that they are running low on drive space.
They're not trying hard enough (i am NOT claiming that I could do better) but,
take a gander at what theprodukkt did with debris in only 170kb
http://212.202.219.162/debris/
These are the same guys that did the .kkrieger first person shooter in 96kb

I love this argument because its always the same "look what they did with this game!". Chances are, you havent attempted to play the demo. The loading screen for the demo alone is approximately 30 minutes long, Now imagine that on an optical format.

Ive always said "compression comes with loss" and I stand by that statement, even with MS' top of the line tools, youll have to suffer excrutiating load time, not to mention that the 360 isnt equiped with the current standard gig of ram most pc's come with today, let alone the luxury of having the availability of having the HDD there at all times.
There are some instances where Compression would be a good descion, say for instance, a gig or two could easily be compressed without too much loss or loading times, but when were looking at 20 gig games (just an example) its going to cause a problem.

Of course it really doesnt matter, Ms has no problem using more than one disc, but im interested in what their games are going to be like in about a year.


This post has been edited by skarekr0: Aug 17 2007, 04:57 AM

[asspants]

I love this argument because its always the same "look what they did with this game!". Chances are, you havent attempted to play the demo. The loading screen for the demo alone is approximately 30 minutes long, Now imagine that on an optical format.

Ive always said "compression comes with loss" and I stand by that statement, even with MS' top of the line tools, youll have to suffer excrutiating load time, not to mention that the 360 isnt equiped with the current standard gig of ram most pc's come with today, let alone the luxury of having the availability of having the HDD there at all times.
There are some instances where Compression would be a good descion, say for instance, a gig or two could easily be compressed without too much loss or loading times, but when were looking at 20 gig games (just an example) its going to cause a problem.

Of course it really doesnt matter, Ms has no problem using more than one disc, but im interested in what their games are going to be like in about a year.

Apparently you really don't understand this argument.

this really is not compression we're talking about here, it's called procedural texturing. The textures are generated using mathematical formula in RAM. so the CPU and the MEMORY are the bottleneck for load times, it's generally going to actually improve loading times because you don't have to deal with loading textures from a optical drive to the memory, the CPU generates the textures into the memory.

Then you mention that "the 360 isnt equipped with current standard gig"

It won't matter if you're loading the textures from a fucking blueray disk, or from procedurally generated textures, the ones from the disk will still take up the same amount of video memory when they're loaded.

Now what?

This post has been edited by asspants: Aug 17 2007, 07:26 AM

[ConteZero76]

I don't think you can "procedural texture" an artist made texture, not without some heavry loss.
And, if either it's possible, it won't solve anything, they are talking about MAPS, maps are mainly geometry often with recycled textures (<- so they didn't taek any more space).
And you canno "procedural texture" maps.

[dvsone]

I don't think you can "procedural texture" an artist made texture, not without some heavry loss.
And, if either it's possible, it won't solve anything, they are talking about MAPS, maps are mainly geometry often with recycled textures (<- so they didn't taek any more space).
And you canno "procedural texture" maps.

I agree it may not be the ideal solution this generation. Many other techniques can be used and it's amazing what developers and programmers can do when pushed to the limits. The 360 will generate ten of millions of dollars for publishers so if they need to spend time and resources on a dedicated team to create better compression techniques they will. If they are having problems with the speed of the PS3 Blu-Ray drive, cell architecture or split memory then they will dedicate time and money to that. That is the way the industry works. We have yet to see the 360 holding back the creative genius of the developers and don't expect it ever will. DVD has proven itself a strong medium and the advantages of Blu-Ray don't balance the other problems the PS3 is currently having. Having a larger install base is going to bring more bigger and better games than having a larger disc medium. And the DVD is more than capable of delivering first class gaming entertainment in high definition (i.e. Bioshock) this generation.

This post has been edited by dvsone: Aug 17 2007, 02:27 PM

[asspants]

I don't think you can "procedural texture" an artist made texture, not without some heavry loss.
And, if either it's possible, it won't solve anything, they are talking about MAPS, maps are mainly geometry often with recycled textures (<- so they didn't taek any more space).
And you canno "procedural texture" maps.

yes, you can, and yes you can.

i'm having a good chuckle at this:
you said
"maps are mainly geometry" (math)
and "you canno [generate using math] a map."
WTF dude, did you even read before you posted?

This post has been edited by asspants: Aug 17 2007, 04:05 PM

[ProfDrMorph]

I love this argument because its always the same "look what they did with this game!". Chances are, you havent attempted to play the demo. The loading screen for the demo alone is approximately 30 minutes long, Now imagine that on an optical format.

.kkrieger takes less than a minute (yes, I used a stopwatch) to load on my system. The time measured is from double-clicking the .exe in WinRAR to the moment I can start to play. Thus this minute includes stuff like decompressing the .exe from the .zip file (WinRAR), loading the file to memory and start executing it (Windows), etc. My system specs: Athlon XP2700+ (2.16Ghz), 1GB DDR-RAM (Dual Channel), 7200rpm HDD. The GPU is irrelevant because AFAIK it isn't used for the procedural synthesis process (generating meshes & textures during loading). The reason for this is simple: because of differences in the GPUs of different developers (nVidia, ATI/AMD) the same code executed by different GPUs might result in a slightly different outcome.
What's so important about this? The loading time of a .kkrieger port to the Xbox360 could be greatly decreased because a) compared to my system the 360 is clocked 1GHz higher and has two additional CPU cores and b) the GPU can be used for generating some of the textures/meshes. All Xbox360 GPUs are equal and thus the outcome is always the same.
And btw: when using procedural synthesis your DVD drive will mostly be idle as it it isn't used most of the time. Even while loading it's only used for the fraction of a second. Thus reading the input data which is used for procedural synthesis from an optical disc format has nearly no effect on loading times. The only thing that's different to loading it from HDD is that the time between the request of input data and the first bytes being sent by the drive is a shorter for HDDs than it is for any optical disc drive. We're talking about time differences of less than a second (usually around 100-200ms depending on HDD and ODD being used for comparison).

BTW: have you ever played RoboBlitz? It uses procedurally generated textures.

Ive always said "compression comes with loss" and I stand by that statement, even with MS' top of the line tools, youll have to suffer excrutiating load time, not to mention that the 360 isnt equiped with the current standard gig of ram most pc's come with today, let alone the luxury of having the availability of having the HDD there at all times.
There are some instances where Compression would be a good descion, say for instance, a gig or two could easily be compressed without too much loss or loading times, but when were looking at 20 gig games (just an example) its going to cause a problem.

Depending on the formats used by the game higher compression rations are realistic. E.g. the files used by the Unreal Engine 2 (Unreal 2, UT2003/4, Unreal Championship, UC2 (uses a modified Unreal Engine 2)) can easily be compressed to less than 50% of their actual size (aside from the music which is already compressed using Ogg Vorbis. This is similar to MP3 compression). Especially the map files compress insanely well.
You also have to consider that the Xbox360 has a lot of processing power (three CPU cores at 3+ GHz each & a programmable GPU) so I don't expect loading times would increase that much (if at all) by using compression algorithms similar to what ZIP files use (and remember: those are LOSSLESS algorithms. The exact same data is reprocuded by decompression!).
I agree with you that the "missing" HDD might be a problem though. Maybe already today, maybe in the future.

And before someone "smart" thinks about mentioning that using compression AND procedural synthesis at the same time will increase loading times greatly: not it won't. The data that has to be decompressed so that the procedural synthesis algorithmus can use it as input is VERY SMALL. Look at .kkrieger: it's only 96kb in size. Decompressing such a small file can be done in milliseconds. When using both compression and procedural synthesis at the same time the system will spend 95-99% of the time in the later process (procedural synthesis). So you won't really notice the small decompression step before that.

I don't think you can "procedural texture" an artist made texture, not without some heavry loss.
And, if either it's possible, it won't solve anything, they are talking about MAPS, maps are mainly geometry often with recycled textures (<- so they didn't taek any more space).
And you canno "procedural texture" maps.

You can "procedurally texture" maps. The whole process of procedurally generating content is called procedural synthesis. E.g. .kkrieger uses procedural synthesis for textures AND geometry.
And no, you don't take pre-made textures and apply some form of "compression" on it and when "decompressing" it use something called "procedural synthesis". Think of it (procedural synthesis) as a program you use instead of Photoshop, Maya, whatever. In this program you create your content like you're used to but the program itself doesn't store the final result (texture, geometry data, etc) directly but the steps you used to create the final result! Storing the steps takes far less space than storing the final result. When loading the files stored in this way the game "only" has to perform each step again while loading to reach the final result which it then keeps in memory and uses during gameplay. This "following the steps to create a <textures/mesh/whatever>" is called procedural synthesis.
Of course there are some other limitations aside from not using Photoshop/etc (e.g. you can't just take picture of a tree leaf and use it as a texture ingame because the only thing you then have is the final texture but not the steps nature followed to create that leaf ;)) but the general idea is as I explained: instead of storing the final textures etc only the steps used to create are stored (and followed each time during loading). And this can be applied to more than just textures but also other forms of content. Of course there's no "loss" (from compression; like when you use JPEG for images) either.

This post has been edited by ProfDrMorph: Aug 17 2007, 04:09 PM

[ConteZero76]

Asspants, geometry cannot be procedurally generated, you can find efficient way to store a map (and compress it too) but that's all about it.
ProfDrMorph, so we're here... you cannot use captioned images or artist made images (hand designed images).
Or, in the best case, you can (provided that the procedure is "smaller" than the resulting image, and that's not always true), but you cannot "load" them runtime because "calculating" the final image from the procedural requires too much work.

This post has been edited by ConteZero76: Aug 18 2007, 11:52 AM

[ProfDrMorph]

Asspants, geometry cannot be procedurally generated, you can find efficient way to store a map (and compress it too) but that's all about it.
ProfDrMorph, so we're here... you cannot use captioned images or artist made images (hand designed images).
Or, in the best case, you can (provided that the procedure is "smaller" than the resulting image, and that's not always true), but you cannot "load" them runtime because "calculating" the final image from the procedural requires too much work.

Actually you can procedurally generate geometry. Aside from the already mentioned .kkrieger Bethesda's Oblivion uses procedurally generated geometry. They licensed a software library called "SpeedTree" (specifically SpeedTreeRT). Here is the official website of that library: http://www.speedtree.com/html/speedtreert.htm. In the description of SpeedTreeRT right on top of that website it says that it 'converts the procedural definition into 3D geometry'.

Also you misunderstood what I said about "artist made images": what I said was you can't just take any image you have as an bitmap (like a picture you took with a digital camera or some final/rendered image an artist made) and convert it into a format using procedural synthesis (or procedural generation as some call it). From the ground up (and that's what artists do! They build things from the ground up.) you have to use programs designed for taking advantage of procedural synthesis. And even if something is too complex to be build from the ground up by an artist still a lot of disc space can be "saved" by using a hybrid solution (procedural synthesis for some content, traditional ways of storing for other content).
Depending on the complexity of the algorithms and generated content procedural synthesis may take some time to calculate but as you can see from software using it already it's possible to create content using procedural synthesis in a reasonable amount of time.

People still bashing procedural synthesis not knowing how it does work and what it can do should check out what some people did in just 64kb (yes sixty-four kilobytes):
http://www.theprodukkt.com/demoscene
http://www.farb-rausch.com/productions.php

Also Wikipedia has a nice article about the technology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation
Especially the section "Software using procedural generation" might be interesting for gamers.

This post has been edited by ProfDrMorph: Aug 18 2007, 02:44 PM

[asspants]

Actually you can procedurally generate geometry. Aside from the already mentioned .kkrieger Bethesda's Oblivion uses procedurally generated geometry. They licensed a software library called "SpeedTree" (specifically SpeedTreeRT). Here is the official website of that library: http://www.speedtree.com/html/speedtreert.htm. In the description of SpeedTreeRT right on top of that website it says that it 'converts the procedural definition into 3D geometry'.

Also you misunderstood what I said about "artist made images": what I said was you can't just take any image you have as an bitmap (like a picture you took with a digital camera or some final/rendered image an artist made) and convert it into a format using procedural synthesis (or procedural generation as some call it). From the ground up (and that's what artists do! They build things from the ground up.) you have to use programs designed for taking advantage of procedural synthesis. And even if something is too complex to be build from the ground up by an artist still a lot of disc space can be "saved" by using a hybrid solution (procedural synthesis for some content, traditional ways of storing for other content).
Depending on the complexity of the algorithms and generated content procedural synthesis may take some time to calculate but as you can see from software using it already it's possible to create content using procedural synthesis in a reasonable amount of time.

People still bashing procedural synthesis not knowing how it does work and what it can do should check out what some people did in just 64kb (yes sixty-four kilobytes):
http://www.theprodukkt.com/demoscene
http://www.farb-rausch.com/productions.php

Also Wikipedia has a nice article about the technology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation
Especially the section "Software using procedural generation" might be interesting for gamers.

Oh snap, it looks like someone who knows what the fuck they're talking about backed me up. Thanks, guy I don't even know!

[ludacrisvp]

The game doesn't use it so get over it.
The space is limited by the MS specs so get over it.
The developers made the game how they wanted it made so get over it.

Have any of you guys played that game that you speak of?
I played it and it is VERY buggy I got stuck all over the map and had to teleport constantly just to move.
Oh and the graphics that are obtained using this method are not next gen at all.

All this procedurally generated crap is OFF TOPIC anyways.

This is about how the Maps will be limited on the 360 because of the size of the disc, and the use of user mods on the console.
They may have the extra maps be downloadable but that is up to Epic, Midway, and MS.
They will most likely not change any compression settings this late in the game.

[asspants]

This is about how the Maps will be limited on the 360 because of the size of the disc, and the use of user mods on the console.
They may have the extra maps be downloadable but that is up to Epic, Midway, and MS.
They will most likely not change any compression settings this late in the game.

No, it's about how the maps will be limited on the 360 because the programmers are trying to shove a round peg into a square hole.

You mention bugs, and directly from the website:
download .kkrieger: chapter 1 beta here (96k)
but remember this is a beta version, and there are a lot of known bugs.

Did you think that was a finished version? They did it to prove that it could be done.

And the next-gen-pretty-pictures it produces is only limited by the artists imagination and the hardware it's running on, and even *gasp* size limits (theirs was 96k) NOT the storage medium in question DVD

Procedural synthesis can do the EXACT same stuff you can pull off your leet as shirt blueray drive at least for a good while. I won't say forever because then I would be like the guys who said we would never need more than 640k of memory.


Anyway, I think either you must be trolling, or you're just incredibly stupid.

I can't seem to figure out how to teleport in .kkrieger
I tried pressing all of the buttons, and checked the documentation.
I even did a google search to see if someone else had mentioned it before, but they had not. Maybe I'm using the wrong search terms.
Or, you found the secret undocumented trick!
Or, were you running a debugger in the background and happened to isolate the specific address in memory that is the hero's location and then changed it in real time? You must be some kind of virtual motherfucking pimp.

Or do you know these guys and they hooked you up with a special version of the game they use for testing?

Whats the trick to "teleporting constantly just to move"? Post it in your reply or I'm gonna call shenanigans on you and your whole stupid post.

Next, you'll tell us that the earth is flat, and the sun revolves around us.

This post has been edited by asspants: Aug 19 2007, 08:12 AM

[ludacrisvp]

No, it's about how the maps will be limited on the 360 because the programmers are trying to shove a round peg into a square hole.

Sorry but that analogy sucks.
This is not an Epic forum asking people how they should make the game that they are producing.
They decided not to use Procedural Synthesis when they created the game, it was their choice.
If you want to make a game with it go ahead, how many years will it take for a team to create something with the procedural synthesis that will even come close in comparison to the beauty of UT3, GoW, or any of the other games that are using the Unreal engine? Or other games like Heavenly Sword or R:FOM, Gran Turismo 1 had better gameplay and graphics than the procedural synthesis game can create.
Oh and wasn't the development started on the PS3 first for this game as a PS3 exclusive?
Just be happy they are making the game for your 360.

You mention bugs, and directly from the website:
download .kkrieger: chapter 1 beta here (96k)
but remember this is a beta version, and there are a lot of known bugs.

Did you think that was a finished version? They did it to prove that it could be done.

No, I can read. When it says BETA on it I expect it to have issues.

And the next-gen-pretty-pictures it produces is only limited by the artists imagination and the hardware it's running on, and even *gasp* size limits (theirs was 96k) NOT the storage medium in question DVD

Well the hardware it is running on is a AMD Athlon X2 64 5600+ 2.8Ghz with 4GB DDR2-675 and a GeForce 7600GTOC on Vista 64 Ultimate, this machine is about as next-gen as you can get without spending a fortune. It is a 5.7 of 5.9 on the Vista experience index so I know that what they made can't get any better than it was. The graphics were pre-Unreal Tournament 1.

Oh and about that 96k game, you want to know what the real shame is? When it is running it uses MASSIVE amounts of RAM! 309,000k + or 301.75MB while showing the "intro video" and after sitting at only the menu it was steady at 320,998k or 313.47MB. Now thats what I call efficient.

Procedural synthesis can do the EXACT same stuff you can pull off your leet as shirt blueray drive at least for a good while. I won't say forever because then I would be like the guys who said we would never need more than 640k of memory.

I'm sure that you are one that thought it was absurd that the PS1 went to CD-ROM format back in 1994 (if you can remember back that far, besides at that point you were most likely a N64 fan) and you had the same fight when PS2 went to DVD-ROM, and you had the CD based Dreamcast, now that the PS3 is on Blu-ray and you are on the 360 fanboy bandwagon, so you are upset once again.

Oh and learn HOW TO SPELL! It is not Blueray. It is Blu-ray.

Anyway, I think either you must be trolling, or you're just incredibly stupid.

Um okay. That really hurt me.
Oh and how am I trolling?
As you can see I do own a 360 as well.
What evidence do you have that I am "incredibly stupid"?
All I see is some rambling from a pissed of fanboy that just can't handle that there are limitations to the 360 optical storage format. 6.80GB is all there is room for. Maybe M$ shouldn't have wasted so much space with that stupid layer break setup they chose to use.
Oh and before you decide to me about the 6.80GB amount please take time to search on the site, that is the accurate amount. Image size is 7.05GB then the other security features waste the other .25GB.

I can't seem to figure out how to teleport in .kkrieger
I tried pressing all of the buttons, and checked the documentation.
I even did a google search to see if someone else had mentioned it before, but they had not. Maybe I'm using the wrong search terms.
Or, you found the secret undocumented trick!
Or, were you running a debugger in the background and happened to isolate the specific address in memory that is the hero's location and then changed it in real time? You must be some kind of virtual motherfucking pimp.

Or do you know these guys and they hooked you up with a special version of the game they use for testing?

Whats the trick to "teleporting constantly just to move"? Post it in your reply or I'm gonna call shenanigans on you and your whole stupid post.

CODE

.kkrieger, chapter I - Beta Version
.a game in 96k
by .theprodukkt
(released at breakpoint 2004)
www.theprodukkt.com

2. controls
-----------
W - forward
S - backward
A - left
D - right
[Space] - Jump
Left mouse - shoot
1-5 - switch weapon

Press M1 - M9 to respawn at the different respawn points (also helps when caught in collision;)

So what documentation were you reading?
Do NOT pass Go. Do NOT collect $200.

Next, you'll tell us that the earth is flat, and the sun revolves around us.

You really are as dumb as your gamer tag suggests, aren't you?

This post has been edited by ludacrisvp: Aug 19 2007, 10:59 AM

[ProfDrMorph]

Sorry but that analogy sucks.
This is not an Epic forum asking people how they should make the game that they are producing.
They decided not to use Procedural Synthesis when they created the game, it was their choice.

This thread is meant as means to comment on news. And if people feel like commenting on how solve one problem mentioned in the news it's NOT off-topic. Whether Epic reads our comments or not is totally irrelevant as it's not the intention of this thread. This thread is purely meant as means to express ones opinion.

Or other games like Heavenly Sword or R:FOM, Gran Turismo 1 had better gameplay and graphics than the procedural synthesis game can create.

Gran Turismo 1 has better trees than Oblivion (procedurally generated using SpeedTreeRT) and better textures in general than RoboBlitz (procedurally generated using ProFX)? No, I don't want an answer to this question.

Oh and about that 96k game, you want to know what the real shame is? When it is running it uses MASSIVE amounts of RAM! 309,000k + or 301.75MB while showing the "intro video" and after sitting at only the menu it was steady at 320,998k or 313.47MB. Now thats what I call efficient.

This is proof that you don't understand what procedural synthesis is about and thus commenting on stuff you don't know about (or don't understand). Because procedural synthesis is NOT about reducing memory usage while the game is running at all!

[asspants]

Oh and learn HOW TO SPELL! It is not Blueray. It is Blu-ray.

Gotcha!

CODE

.kkrieger, chapter I - Beta Version
.a game in 96k
by .theprodukkt
(released at breakpoint 2004)
www.theprodukkt.com

2. controls
-----------
W - forward
S - backward
A - left
D - right
[Space] - Jump
Left mouse - shoot
1-5 - switch weapon

Press M1 - M9 to respawn at the different respawn points (also helps when caught in collision;)

So what documentation were you reading?
Do NOT pass Go. Do NOT collect $200.
You really are as dumb as your gamer tag suggests, aren't you?

Yup missed that, I take it back I do feel stupid.

Oh and about that 96k game, you want to know what the real shame is? When it is running it uses MASSIVE amounts of RAM! 309,000k + or 301.75MB while showing the "intro video" and after sitting at only the menu it was steady at 320,998k or 313.47MB. Now thats what I call efficient.


Well the hardware it is running on is a AMD Athlon X2 64 5600+ 2.8Ghz with 4GB DDR2-675 and a GeForce 7600GTOC on Vista 64 Ultimate, this machine is about as next-gen as you can get without spending a fortune. It is a 5.7 of 5.9 on the Vista experience index so I know that what they made can't get any better than it was. The graphics were pre-Unreal Tournament 1.

It was released early 2004.
adding to what ProfDrMorph said, do you have any clue what it is that's in that memory? It's the textures. The memory usage will be the same with a blu-ray disc full of textures. We're not talking about saving RAM memory. This is not a programming revolution, but it is an evolution, what I'm trying to get at is that
They are blaming the hardware as an easy scapegoat for their slack programming ethic.

you also said "I know what they made can't get any better"
yeah, you're right they hit an absolute ceiling , they hit it 4 years ago, when they released this game, it could never get any better.
what the hell are you basing this claim on?

have you ever used photoshop? maybe applied some filters to an image? well procedural synthesis kinda works like that. instead of designing for the sake of the argument a green leaf texture using photoshop, then saving the image as a .png or whatever and storing that texture. the only thing that gets saved in procedural synthesis is the procedure commands (define the size of the canvas/green paint fill/ apply a couple brush strokes/and then a mosaic filter) that was used to create the texture, it can be expanded to any resolution. and produce the EXACT same output. these commands to create the textures are executed at runtime then stored in memory as the textures to use.