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How to make an AAA game in Unity (or fail badly)

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Billy4184, Mar 10, 2016.

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  1. Billy4184

    Billy4184

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    Here on the Unity forums we all have different opinions about what sort of games indies can realistically make in Unity. There's often a lot of discussion about what kind of graphical fidelity a small indie team - or solo dev - could aim for while still being able to ship a game in a reasonable amount of time. There are different (and strong) opinions on whether MMOs are feasible, whether devs should aim for an MMO on a small budget at all. Whether we should stick to niche games that take advantage of an indie's ability to exercise creative freedom, or whether we should try to mimick AAA studio games, with semi-realistic graphics and cinematic stories.

    My personal point of view is that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with trying to produce the sort of games that AAA studios make. My own intention in game development is to produce a character-driven game with plenty of cinematics, high-quality graphics and a highly interactive, large world. In the same vein as Uncharted or Metal Gear Solid series, though in an entirely different setting - space. Does this sound crazy? Of course. But I have some ideas.

    SCOPING THE PROBLEM


    As is always a good idea, I think the best way to approach it is from the standpoint of first principles.
    • What makes an AAA experience, to begin with? Is it good post-process effects? Is it zbrushing wrinkles into your characters? Is it a good rendering engine? 10 million polys on screen?
    • What are the things that take the longest/are the hardest/take the most people?
    • What are the most efficient ways to approach these difficult aspects of development?
    • What tools can we utilize to optimize workflow on difficult aspects of game development?
    • What is the low-hanging fruit, and what are the things that take the most effort relative to the quality that they add to the game?
    And most importantly:
    • What are the common mistakes that indies make when trying to approach AAA-scale projects, and how can we avoid them?
    APPROACHING THE PROBLEM

    I've spent a long time thinking up and testing approaches to different aspects of high-end game development. Generally speaking:
    • Avoid programming your own tools at all costs. Shell out some money for proven, high quality tools that enable you to speed up your workflow by orders of magnitude. If we're competing with games that take tens of millions of dollars, what is a few thousand, or tens of thousands?
    • Optimize workflow. This means creating a pipeline for code and art so that new stuff can be added as quickly and seamlessly as possible. This is what will make or break a game of this scale. It is the difference between two years and ten years (which is effectively never).
    • Avoid unnecessary art time. Buy a materials library, like Substance Database. Buy untextured models for art assets that are part of the background (crates, weapons, vehicles, things like that). Even characters, especially background npcs. Untextured models have very little 'character'. Buy mocap animations and sound effects libraries, there's an incredible amount of stuff out there.
    • Utilize rapid asset creation tools where possible. Procedural texture creation tools, terrain creation tools, character editors.
    • Utilize workflows that make things faster. Such as fully-modelled geometry (no normal bakes) with deferred decal shaders for details and tiling texture arrays, using tricks such as face-weighted normals to keep polys down. It depends a lot on what kind of game you're making though, some of this kind of stuff is better for hard-surface models and won't be so good for organics or busy art styles.
    • Learn to create and use modular kits.
    • Make a demo first. Get feedback and build support, possibly get funding. Make changes according to feedback.
    TOOLS

    Here's a list of stuff that I will be using for my game:
    • Unity for creating the game (of course!) - since it is an easy engine to work with for me, and makes work faster.
    • Substance Database for boatloads of quality PBR textures;
    • Daz3D or something similar for character creation.
    • World Machine for terrain (yes for my space game there will be some planetary stuff).
    Not sure where I find these, some of them I haven't looked into yet, but I will certainly be using them if they exist:
    • Facial mocap software, preferably something which includes the ability to easily apply it to a standardized facial rig.
    • Good cinematics/cutscene creation tools.
    I'm going to add stuff as I think of them here.

    CONCLUSION

    With all these optimizations, I believe I will be able to create something of an AAA experience, if my game design skills hold up.

    Will I be able to surpass the big-budget studios with the content/graphics of my game? Of course not! Not even close! It isn't about trying to beat them, it is about creating a quality, all-round game that doesn't have a massive deficit in terms of the scope, the visual experience and the content.

    The question is where can you take a drop in quality without compromising greatly the quality of the overall game?

    If such a project was planned out well enough, if the correct corners were cut from the beginning, if the correct approach was taken from the very beginning, if the plan was stuck to and not left in a drawer, and most importantly, if the developers maintained a consistent output over the course of a couple of years, I really do believe it is possible, even for one person, to make a game that fits most people's definitions of an 'AAA' experience.

    In any case, I'm going to find out.

    Please discuss :)
     
    Last edited: Mar 13, 2016
  2. Deleted User

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    As we all discussed, AAA isn't possible. But if you're aiming for "AA" or A battery quality, even if you're doing it yourself first and foremost you'll need a boat load of money. For things like tools as you said, it's all about time and time is more important than money is if you ever want to release something.

    So expect to dig hard into the asset store and third party tools, Modo and mArch / w/ mesh fusion is pretty good for architecture work or of course Maya with a lot of bolt on scripts. There are plenty for Blender too, like arch viz tools and procedural city generators.

    I'd invest in IK solutions, if you really want a proper HUD system you'll need something like scaleform or noesis. AI again, it might be worth setting up a BT system, try to re-target animations and use cluster AI profile selections as much as you can. Don't ever try to do single components one after the other..

    Dialogue systems are quite generic and there are some good one's on the asset store, I'd probably lean towards a database formed inventory system. For Music Native Instruments Komplete is a good one, a lot of sound FX you might have to buy or outsource .

    Then it's a matter of forming the art, coding the systems. Try to get a framework for your specific type of game, as much as we're all proud coders here to attempt a game like this you should KNOW all the fundamentals. So you're just saving time.

    People will notice art, so that's up to you. As for shaders, again there is pretty much something for every type of material surface.
     
  3. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    He's maybe aiming for well polished indie title. Other titles which are well polished indie probably include firewatch and no man's sky.
     
  4. Billy4184

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    I don't even know what AAA means. I think most people will get my drift. We're trying to make a game that at first glance doesn't look different from the stuff the big boys make. Something that gives a complete experience in every respect, even though you wouldn't go getting it confused with something Bungie makes.

    I've been considering Modo as I will be making a lot of hard surface stuff and Tor Frick's videos show the incredible speed and quality that the software (and he!) is capable of. It costs a lot of money but it seems like the best tool out there for what I need.

    I'll try and find some good info on dialogue and AI systems, although I haven't looked into them much. Optimizing asset creation has been my main focus as I can try to sell stuff on the store as I go.
     
  5. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    I'm going to guess mass effect 3 is your main inspiration.

    Is Unity the right engine for this?
     
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  6. Billy4184

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    Something like that, although I want to try something a little different. I want to make a sort of detective story set in a period of early colonization/industrial expansion into the solar system. Something a little more realistic in setting, without aliens or anything like that. The kind of setting that would be possible in the next few decades (although probably unlikely!).

    I don't mind taking artistic freedom though, I admire a lot the way Kojima put all that semi-supernatural stuff into MGS without breaking the gritty realism. But I'm not sure if I want to do it for my game.
     
  7. Deleted User

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    Well AAA has nothing to really do with what sort of game it is, it's the amount of money they have. Which is a lot, we just say AAA "game" because it's usually associated with the highest quality and largest projects, but that isn't always true (in terms of both size and quality :D)..

    Modo is pretty good, although I still prefer Maya TBH.. But lets not get into that in this thread :D..
     
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  8. Steve-Tack

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    Yeah, I think the term AAA maybe isn't what the OP is going for. The expense of big budget game concept art alone would drain the entire budget of most indies I'd think.

    I'm not sure that any amount of diligent planning, purchased texture libraries, efficient workflow, or software is going to help you build several characters of this quality on a typical indie budget:
    https://cdn1.artstation.com/p/asset...ge/alexis-belley-acs-eviefront.jpg?1447775000

    The worst part is that if you got close, you'd be compared directly to the big boys and probably come up short.

    @Billy4184, what size team and budget do you have in mind? A lot of us on the forums are part-time "team of one" hobbyists. I can't really imagine doing 1% of what a high budget game does. I've seen titles with budgets likely in the 2-3 million dollar range that went with an abstract style since they didn't have the resources to do a realistic style.
     
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  9. Billy4184

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    That's a good question. For me as a solo dev at the moment, and since I've already spent a lot of time with it over the last couple of years, and because of the slight change in focus of Unity 5 toward becoming more graphically capable, I will continue to try to work within it. If I have to switch to Unreal I will, and in any case I'm going to spend some quality time with it in the coming months. There's no doubt it looks better.

    That's exactly what is relevant to the thread. What are the strengths and weaknesses of all the possible tools? We don't have to get into the nuts and bolts but a general discussion of modelling tools is extremely relevant. I haven't used Maya though, I had no trouble with Blender although it might not be the fastest place to get things done. We'll see.

    @Steve Tack I'll consider changing the title/OP, but for now I think we all get the drift.

    The question is, can I make some characters that are close to that quality, without breaking the experience? Can I give them some more simple attire, like in Eve Online:

     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2016
  10. GarBenjamin

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    AAA to me is all about polish and going over the top on presentation. That's it basically in a nutshell. They certainly do innovate in other areas too (at least from time to time) but the one thing you can count on from a AAA title is they polish everything on the presentation side to it all sparkles. They hire the voice actors and otherwise generally go all out on the audio visuals.

    In my opinion, they do not put nearly the same level of money & time into the other aspects of games.

    Anyway, @Billy4184 I think you can possibly reach your goal but it really depends on what your goal is. If you said your goal is to create a AAA quality Arkanoid style game I'd say absolutely you can do it. AAA quality Berzerk game. Sure. A bullet hell shmup again I think you can do it. Heck, I think you could even pull off a AAA quality version of the original NES Legend of Zelda game.

    Beyond those I think it is very iffy. Really all depends on the exact scope of your game and the amount of money & time you will dedicate to it.

    I just think this is very important to define up front. I could see even myself focusing on making a highly polished Breakout/Arkanoid style game for example. That is definitely doable. However, I am more interested in bigger games so for me I automatically think of keeping the presentation side as basic as possible. Basically for me the formula is...

    Raise the overall game scope = Lower the presentation quality
    Raise the presentation quality = Lower the overall game scope

    It's just embedded in my brain.
     
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  11. Billy4184

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    Guys, the graphical quality I am aiming for is something like Mass Effect 3, or Eve, or something like that. I will cut corners where I must, but that's what I'm looking for.

    masseffect3texture0.jpg




    Call it what you will, that's about where I want to be.
     
  12. Deleted User

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    @Steve Tack

    I think this is all really about making a good looking quality 3d game that's similar to old AAA games with a fresh coat of paint / reduced scope. Now @Billy4184 said Mass Effect 3, there's no chance.. MMMM no way.!

    BUT!, if you aimed for small(ish) 8 - 10 hour RPG (like mass effect on slimfast) with modern graphical concepts (if you have the skill / time and money). That's perfectly do-able, start by making it like a quake game or a corridor shooter.. Then add quests with no voice acting etc. Just see how far you can get within three months..

    A lot of learning first time around, but after the first go. Let's say you can do 30 minutes worth of basic gameplay in three months, you'll be able to do maybe an hour or two extra gameplay in the next three months. In the space of a year you could probably get through 8 hours, then you'd have to go back and add all the dialogue back in after and polish stuff off. Which would take a fair amount of time..

    I'd be tempted to add compulsive stuff like looting and a tiny bit of grinding to span things out a bit (nothing excessive so it's boring) but makes transitions a little easier.
     
  13. Billy4184

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    When I spoke of Mass Effect 3 I was talking about graphics. We'll see if I can turn it into a space opera...

    And that's the idea, something like Mass Effect 3 or Eve from a few years back, reskinned with Unity's new post effects and stuff, should look good enough for what I want.

    And when I say a 'make a demo first' I don't mean a 2 hour demo, 15 minutes or half an hour tops is all you need to know if your concept is solid and you're going to be able to carry it through.

    EDIT: never mind if you saw part of a message I meant to delete. I was going to post some of my own art but I want to make this general and conceptual, not personal. I can post it if anyone wants to see it though.
     
  14. Deleted User

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    TBH with you chief, there's nothing too difficult about that picture. There's a window material which is emmisive (textures for that you can get from anywhere), the terrain looks flat as hell you could just use a proper terrain shader and it would look better, as for the building itself. There's not even that much detail on it..

    You have a cylinder in the middle, two cubes as a clamp with some poly's cut out and the edges beveled. Extrusion inwards for the glass, then just potentially beveled zig zag cubes going up and down (yes I know there's more, but that's the basis of it).. Texturing, well you could just assign material groups in Modo, then bake out a colour ID map.. Do all the overlay and blending work in Quixel, or you can do it in substance designer too..

    Not seeing anything particularily hard there, the most impressive bit has to be the armour for the character model. That will take a lot of work, some baking, many materials (for the emmisive bits and the rest, probably baked into an atlas), probably needs re-topologising (which Modo will do as well). But still a lot of it is just hard surface modelling..

    As for the actual scene setup, seems like a lot of it is IBL from the skybox to give it a "look".. Then some post / colour grading etc.

    I know I'm jumping around all over the place here, it;s because I don't want to go through every single bit as digital tutors would cover it all in great detail.. But it's quite simple, so why not try and replicate it? Then once you have the know how, you can have at your own ideas?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 10, 2016
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  15. frosted

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    I'll be sharing some details on my more recent experiences when I get a chance.

    In my experience (one man band) the real limits have to do with the amount of stuff that you can manage mentally. This involves how many systems you can keep track of, your assets, your future asset needs, the code, the project goals, the raw number of hats you need to wear and the raw number of things on the list.

    The problem with high quality presentation is that it expands the scope and the requirements of every other piece. As you improve the presentation, you also raise expectations. Those expectations need to be met across all of your systems. And as those expectations go up, the tolerance for flaws goes down. Meaning that not only are you adding significant complication and additional effort, you're forcing more of your systems to evolve from half baked hacks to precise, robust, full fledged systems.

    AAA, by virtue of their budgets can meet all those expectations. They are the guys who set those expectations in the first place. If you look at real AAA production from almost any era, you can still see the quality of the craftsmanship and the attention to detail if you look for it. It's in Mario's slide when you change directions, it's in the 45 visual and audio effects that went into sliding into cover in Gears of War, or the revolutionary animation in assassins creed.

    AAA is not just amazing visuals, it's the attention to details and the 'completeness' of their treatment of the game. A few months ago I fired up Castlevania Symphony of the Night on my old xbox360. This game is old. But even though it's ancient and even though it's visuals are nothing to write home about - that game still feels AAA. When you compare it to newer indie titles that try to recapture retro feel, the experience is wholly different. The indie titles still feel smaller, emptier.
     
  16. frosted

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    Since it's already 7pm and I have entirely avoided real work today I figure I would just add an anecdote I dealt with last week.

    The single AAA feature I want most for my game is to rip the AI collision handling from Assassin's Creed (or all the recent big AAA) - you know the feature, where your guy reaches out and pushes away the other character gracefully. It makes the whole environment seem so much more real and alive.

    So a week or so ago I was considering giving it a shot. I think I have a shot at doing the IK well enough to generally give it a spin and possibly get decent results. All you really need is a half canned animation and a little IK to make sure you hit the shoulders. It wouldn't be perfect, but I think if I give it some time I can get it pretty close.

    Then I really thought about it. The real ramifications of that feature are going to be massive. Not only do I need treatment for different velocity in impact (walk, run, sprint), I need to handle different facings. I also need to handle the response on the other character, both the visual/animation, the IK, but also the AI steering and navigation. Then I need different kinds of response routines for like 'peasants' as well as armed men. So this needs deeper integration with the AI. Finally, to do a really good job, I really need quite a lot of audio, and that audio must be varied minimally according to gender.

    There's more even, that list isn't complete, but you get the idea. Even though I can probably do any isolated item on that list, it's the totality of the effort required in order to make the presentation really excellent that's just beyond me.

    As a small indie, what I will probably end up doing is still trying to achieve something. Maybe just that when you run into a guy he sort of stumbles back. It isn't the same, but it's a solution within my means that will still bring a small slice of life the characters.

    I think that this is the indie way, we should be inspired by the best examples - but at the same time, if we want to succeed, we also need to keep aware of the costs involved and we need to try to find creative means that help get us a little closer, even if we never reach anywhere near true AAA.
     
  17. Billy4184

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    That's it really, the main thing in AAA games is a well-made, complete experience involving visuals, gameplay and a most of all great design.

    I decided to post a few things I've made, mainly because I like seeing examples and I think it benefits the thread. My modelling skills still aren't good enough but I'm getting there.

    Here's a quick scene I made to work on my modular building skills (ground texture from Substance Share):

    Building.png

    Here's some character doodles, took about 1-2 hours each, one in blender and the other in sculptris.

    Character1.png

    Screenshot1.png

    And here's some ships I've made (different style from what I want in my game):

    Screenshot1.png

    screenshot5.png

    It isn't there yet, but by the time I get to making the bulk of my assets I hope to be a fair bit better and faster. Main problem is textures, but I don't plan to make them myself.

    To put it in perspective, the first time I ever thought of game development or opened a 3D modelling program was about 1.5 years ago. And in that time, I've spent far longer programming than doing art. I practice a lot, every chance I get, and I feel good about where I'll be in a year or so.

    Look forward to seeing other people's experiences, and don't be afraid to show off the stuff you've made.
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2016
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  18. Deleted User

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    And that's why you avoid that sort of thing like the plague.. A simple turn their head as they walk past you and smile or something does the trick.

    That's one of many examples where they do it, just because they can.. It's a lot of work as well, but ultimatley if it wasn't in a game I wouldn't really notice.

    @Billy4184

    Was the advice on the Mass effect scene useful?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 11, 2016
  19. frosted

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    Here's a little video of the direction that my project has taken as I redesigned the combat system.



    There are a lot of inspirations, but the main one is the recent City of Mordheim with an honorable mention to Valkiyra Chronicals. Here are some videos of those games if you aren't familiar.





    My spin on the system is kind of interesting, I think I have a shot at maybe building one of the most visceral turn based / party based rpgs I've ever played. Is it AAA? Not by miles, but I'm really pleased.
     
  20. Billy4184

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    That scene was from early today, but I didn't make it on the spot, in fact I had the Mass effect pic handy as it was an inspiration for it.

    Yeah, modelling buildings isn't all that hard, but the sort of difficult thing at the moment is building modular kits, it's harder than it seems to design them for a minimum number of pieces. You find you need a 0.5 piece just for some sticky situation, and then a bit later you find that if you redesign the whole lot you don't end up in that sticky situation at all. I've got an interior on that building as well, as well as staircases and windows and some props but it's kind of all over the place as I just adjusted the texture and redid all the walls you see there.

    Also the whole building is just using a single texture at the moment, inside and out, for all props as well. It's a test case I might put on the store at some point.

    I also made a simple editor prefab brush and a script to lay out floors and such, I hope to figure out something to make it faster, like a 2D floorplan editor that gets created with a button click. I have hopes that I can use some procedural generation here and there but I don't want to depend on it.
     
  21. zenGarden

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    You could change your title "Approaching AA mmo games in Unity"
    Because it is about mmos, that is a very specific game, while racing is another specific game.

    For many lonewolfs of us i agree making tools can quickly make your project over sized.
    But you can make some small tools depending on your specific needs.
    http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/frameshift-post-apocalyptic-sci-fi-survival.353656/#post-2547764

    Fuse is most popular, still i don't know the cost of these tools and license for commercial use ?
    Anyway your characters will stay generic, it's good for your game mmo. But you won't make six arms alien or spiders and very custom characters proportions and faces details.

    Did you used Gaia plugin for Unity , it is lot better for Unity use.

    Anout mmos, how will you deal with authentification, database storage, servers, game networking ?
    This is a huge part.
    Anyways you didn't talk about graphics, that will play a big part , with Unity this is Plugins, lot of Plugins
    (rtp3,water, vegetation shaders, alloy, ubber, ssao, motion blurr etc ... ) :rolleyes:


    I agree.

    You made a very good game start. The main work on that games style is on level design to make it a real small village.
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2016
  22. Deleted User

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    Seriously, there seems to be some sort of fanatical artist and coder thing where everything MUST be well optimised and low poly count in minimal pieces. In the actual real world, it's never generally anywhere as important as anyone thinks.

    Never over optimise, you're wasting time you simply don't have. You'll never build something as large as Witcher 3, so be smart about what you spend your time on. If you are doing an openworld game then foliage / trees is a given, that stuff needs LOD'ing hard and I'd recommend lod'ing the terrain (if you can get simplygon, then do it).

    Most mesh artwork unless you're a complete muppet (as you need relative experience anyway) who sticks 5 million poly sculpts into the scene then you deserve whatever you get. What you DO need to be concerned about is shadow casters, material complexity and to a lesser extent draw calls (because I hope you'd know how to share materials).

    Another downside of deferred rendering is it has performance issues with alpha cutout objects and things like transparent materials, so you have to be VERY careful what you put in the frustrum in any one direction. Ample use of culling using walls etc. will save you more performance overhead than adding a LOD that cuts 300 Poly's from a mesh item ever would.

    In fact in some instances, having wayyy too many LOD's in a scene can have the opposite of its desired effect when it starts stutering away as you're crossing a massive LOD boundary.

    In short, know what REALLY impacts performance and use some common sense. Our game's min specs is a GTX470 and I will admit I could probably tweak it to run well on slightly lesser hardware, but it would NEVER be worth the effort. It runs 60FPS on our base test setup (with half decent quality settings), it's good enough for me.!
     
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  23. zenGarden

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    Don't say that to Naughty Dog :rolleyes:
    I never put attention , Unity uses Umbra (heavy used in Witcher 3), what uses Unreal 4 about culling ?
     
  24. Deleted User

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    If I ever make games as large as ND I'm sure I'd care much more.. Easier to copy and past the answer:

    " Unreal Engine 4 uses an automatic process for culling that uses Scene Depth and the bounds of an object.

    When using the Wireframe viewmode, this is not a good method for testing if an object is occluded in UE4. You can use the (Editor only) console command r.visualizeOccludedPrimitives 1 to view the occluded objects. This will render a green bounds box for any objects that are occluded. Adjusting the bounds scale will increase the green bounding box and can cause the mesh to be rendered even when it's not in view."
     
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  25. frosted

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    These things are pretty subjective, but I really disagree.

    One of the dividing lines between real AAA is not just the static beauty of a given screenshot, it's the interactivity. Why is Skyrim such a success when it has so many visual flaws? Because it's chock full of stuff to do, stuff to interact with, things to find. It's part of why even that old Castlevania game still feels AAA, it's because there's so much to discover and play with. So many choices to make, things to do, places to go.

    I want to make this little village feel alive, the route I need to take to get there isn't to increase the visual fidelity, the route is to increase the interactivity and responsiveness. The village needs to communicate to the player their role in the world, and the way that characters respond to you is one of the best tools to do that.

    I want to make that scene feel like your presence inspires terror in the peasant population, because, I think in real life - when groups of armed men decided to fight to the death over some tiny farming hamlet - the normal unarmed population would actually be terrified.

    If I can really communicate that feeling then the scene won't be empty. Hopefully (knock on wood) the fact that my assets are stock unity store assets won't really be the thing people notice, instead they'll hopefully be engaged with the world.

    Handling collisions gracefully may not be the most important element to making all this happen, certainly, but it's another thing that contributes to making the world feel interactive and responsive. And to me, that interactivity is a critical ingredient in why many of those big AAA games feel so good.
     
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    We're talking about two seperate things here, there are many "small" touches that can make a world feel more "interactive" Skyrim didn't have the hands in the crowd setup, did it somehow flop because of it? Did Fallout 4 flop because of it? No!

    Having interesting story lines, a platitude of quests where an RPG player actually can engage in the world around them. Random events, anything moving away from a static world is a good thing to do and if you're smart about it then it's not huge amounts of effort either. Like DAO for example, the fetch quests / grinding and repetitive world didn't make it feel like a AAA experience. I've played indie games with which felt more "alive"..

    But doing things for the sake of doing things like AAA do for an indie is no more than a fools errand.

    I don't want to be a jackass, but as a combat system is generally one of the major components in a game. Why did you choose turn based if interactivity is important to you in the slightest?

    P.S some turned based games in the past have been some of my favourites, like FF7 and Baldur's gate. So I'm not saying it's a bad idea, I'm saying it goes against everything "interactive" and everything AAA.
     
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  27. frosted

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    I want to have a game with perma-death and more than one character (a party). I don't think you can feature perma-death and multiple characters without turn based control during combat. It would just feel terrible to permanantly lose a character because the AI did something stupid.

    So I need the precision of turn based control of your guys. But I also want to push the limits on how interactive a turn based game can be. I don't want it to feel turn based. So it's a sort of odd hybrid, which I think gives it the potential to be something really cool. I'm experimenting with more strict control over timescale and animation speed to communicate the rules of turn based, while hopefully minimizing the disconnected feeling that comes with turn based combat.

    As a side note, this is an interesting Kotaku article on some of the details in Witcher 3. The guy just spend a game day in a village and took note of everything that happened:

    http://kotaku.com/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-witcher-3-village-1724508601

    The level of detail is incredible, the fact that the AI routines are so affected by weather even kind of blew me away.
     
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  28. kB11

    kB11

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    I am not exactly an AAA developer but I thought it might be useful to someone if I shared that I like using makehuman as a basis for modeling human characters. It is completely free and relatively flexible when it comes to creating actually human looking characters with good topology.
     
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  29. zenGarden

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    I agree, amazing graphics but poor level design, static buiddings with no purpose and use of levels generator can't compare with hand crafted village.
     
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  30. Billy4184

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    Not sure I agree, at least not completely. Skyrim is an open world rpg with a looting being pretty much the basis of the game. But what about Call of Duty or something? No one is going to say it isn't AAA but there's very little interactivity there ... it makes up for it with great graphics and a lot of destruction going on around you that makes you feel that the world is not static. What about Splinter Cell Conviction or something like that? There's interactivity with enemies, there's interactivity with lights and shadows, but there isn't a lot of interactivity in terms of 'stuff to do'. There's more than one way, that's all I'm saying. You have to find a way to make the game feel interactive in a way that doesn't give you an enormous amount of work.
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2016
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  31. Billy4184

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    I agree completely, it's more about the learning process, I'm trying to make a well-optimised 'test-case' that can serve as an example to future kits. One thing I do want to do is have a go at making a massive, really massive level such as you see in scifi concept art - just for fun.

    Well something is tanking my performance with modular pieces. I'm using small tiles for everything which isn't optimal, but the polys and draw calls are still pretty low (everything is batched on one material). I think it's the shadow casters. Is there some way to 'batch' shadow casting without joining up all the meshes?
     
  32. Deleted User

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    Well you'd normally bake shadows and then have real time close distance (for moveable objects in frustrum) in openworld games it's not as easy (one of the many, MANY problems in massive outoor games) where you'd have to drop the quality of shadows and use real time GI.

    Umbra should occlude shadow casters too, so make good use of it.! Profiler is your friend though, should lead you to the issue.

    BTW you can combine meshes through scripts as well, I think there are a few asset store mesh combiners too.
     
  33. Billy4184

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    Ok cheers, I did dig into the profiler earlier but it was a bit cryptic, I'll get the hang of it soon ... I was pretty sure though that with hundreds or thousands of shadow casters that was going to be an issue.

    @kB11 great suggestion! I just downloaded makehuman and I'm trying to reproduce the japanese guy art I posted above, will post results and a little bit of a critique soon.
     
  34. hippocoder

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    How good are you at programming? Surely that has a huge bearing on how good your game is?
     
  35. tatoforever

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    Shadow casters aren't batched, it still produces one drawcall per shadowcaster. What you can do is limit the shadow distance and combine small meshes into large meshes to reduce drawcalls in the shadow first pass (where the shadow depth is constructed).
     
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  36. Billy4184

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    Cool, ok yeah I'm going to probaby write a combine script or maybe buy one, it seems to be the best way of doing things.

    Are you asking me? I'm self-taught but I started off at the deep end at a small company doing image processing, using OpenCV and C++ so C# and Unity API is easy by comparison. I've made mesh generator scripts, terrain generators with noise functions, and behaviour trees and stuff like that. I like programming more than art actually, but they're both fun in different ways.

    Probably the most difficult thing I've run into recently is architecture and logistics of a relatively large project (the space combat kit I'm developing for the store), as @frosted said earlier it can be hard keeping track of and organizing everything. But for me, as long as you stick to good simple rules like separating functions into individual monobehaviours, modularising systems (such as HUD) into mini-projects and such it's easier to break it all down in your mind.

    That said, I find my biggest problem overall in programming, is not knowing what I don't know, probably part of being self taught. I hadn't really used or known much about coroutines and static functions until recently, and they're both very useful.
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2016
  37. Billy4184

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    @frosted did you make the art and animations yourself for your game?
     
  38. Billy4184

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    Here's a comparison of my sculpted japanese guy and an attempt to replicate him in makehuman:

    CharacterComparison.png

    I don't think it is a great replication and it's down to lack of fine control. Head, mouth and eye shape were the biggest issues, no matter what I did the mouth retained that generic, rounded look, probably too few polys. The eyes also didn't go too well but I had less detail there on the sculpt. The head and neck had very little in the way of fine shape control.

    Also, it was hard to get a japanese look, it sort of ended up a mishmash between rounded chinese features and caucasian features.

    That said, the level of quality is pretty good if you're making background NPCs IMO. I would be reasonably happy sticking that into my game with probably a bit of detail added to the textures. But for main characters or sidekicks it would need to be a lot better, mainly in terms of definition in eyes and mouth.
     
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  39. GarBenjamin

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    @Billy4184 Glad to see you're doing experiments. And more importantly sharing them. I am always messing around experimenting with something or other too and knew there had to be others who did. People just rarely seem to share their experiments for whatever reason. Anyway thanks.
     
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  40. Billy4184

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    That's why I ended up posting my own art and stuff, I don't want the thread to beat out the same old themes that a hundred other "Unity...AAA...whynot?" threads have, i.e. generic opinionated answers where people don't learn anything. I want people to show off their work, their experiments, the tools they use, workflows, explanations of how to achieve things in Unity, and whatever else might be useful to people thinking of aiming at this sort of game.

    If you've got stuff that you want to share go ahead! :)
     
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  41. kB11

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    I agree that using MakeHuman characters as they appear in the program itself is not a good idea. But using them as a basis for your actual characters is quite useful, imo. (Especially if you are bad at modelling / sculpting human characters from scratch like me).

    MakeHuman models are supposed to be subdivided a few times which makes them look a lot better. If you use that model as a basis for sculpting / modeling, you can get high quality results more quickly because you already have a solid foundation.

    I attached an example of what a character that looks kind of similar to yours looks like subdivided (and I sculpted it a little bit, but I was never good at that and haven't done it for like a year :D).
     

    Attached Files:

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  42. GarBenjamin

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    Alright thanks.
     
    Last edited: Mar 12, 2016
  43. Billy4184

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    That could be useful, since the hardest part is starting. Overall I'd like to have a character generator that does all the work for me, at least to a certain level anyway. Eve has an in-game character creator that would be exactly what I'm looking for. I might try out some of the better, probably more expensive character creators soon if they have free trials.

    @GarBenjamin I hate to discourage people sharing valuable experience but it would be good to keep this thread focused on more AA or AAA or whatever type games or it will lose focus. I noticed you're posting a lot of stuff about retro games so maybe create a thread about it - the forums certainly need some more sharing of actual experience and results as you say.
     
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  44. zenGarden

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  45. Billy4184

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    Last edited: Mar 12, 2016
  46. hippocoder

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    Check Daz studio small print. There's the indie and commercial license. You're not allowed to use Daz content in your game without a license for it. This applies to Daz originals. 3RD party brokered content is unlicensed unless it specifically states ie you can't use that stuff either, without entering into a specific license with the artist.

    Very far from free for game dev. Should really be the first thing you do, check to see if you can actually use output.
     
  47. Billy4184

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    Cheers for that.

    Well that's confusing. Yeah I see you can't use the content in a game unless you pay the license fee, but can you play around with it on your computer? It says that the user must pay license fees prior to or concurrently with the delivery of the content. What if I download it and play around a bit to check it out? I'm a bit uncomfortable with this one.
     
  48. Billy4184

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    I had a look at Mixamo Fuse, it seems like it just got acquired by Adobe (Adobe Fuse now) and everything is free for a limited time, yet there's no telling what will happen afterward in relation to content you've bought/modified and are using in your game ...
     
  49. frosted

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    I made absolutely none of it. Almost everything there is from the asset store. Although the only asset store code that's running there is the dynamic sky, textmeshpro for the text and final ik which smooths out the foot placement. I'm using FMOD for the audio.

    In general, I am really not a fan of most asset store code, and I try to stay away from most of it for anything runtime. But those 3 packages are doing quite a lot of work. I'm also considering RTP (I really hate the interface) and I'm not sure if the extra cost for POM is worth it (it kind of depends on how much grass I end up using).

    I also have messed around with Gaia for terrain, but I don't think it really suits my needs - although I do love the stamping. The main thing I wanted out of it was good grass placement, and I don't think it does a very good job with that.

    EDIT: as you mention Mixamo is all free. You can download hundreds of pretty damn good animations for free at the moment. I'd strongly suggest doing so before they change policy or close up that website.

    EDIT 2: UMA is really interesting. The main problem is that the videos and general presentation are so artistically poor that it's hard to tell how good the actual system is and what its capable of. All the samples are like these hideous purple elf goblins with giant ears. It may actually be much better than it looks, but I hesitate to dump time into it when there isn't a single really top notch example.
     
    Last edited: Mar 12, 2016
  50. Billy4184

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    Cool! I'm actually glad to hear that I'm not the only one trying to make a high-end game with third party assets.

    I haven't used much asset store code, but I wouldn't buy anything that I wasn't going to understand thoroughly myself, and never would I use a compiled plugin unless it was something really essential. It would usually be for seeing how something was done.

    Hmm terrains are not my strong suit at all, all the procedural stuff I did was just heightmap generation and splat map generation based on height/slope, but I never went too far with it. I'm mostly interested in space. Gaia looked pretty nice to me but I wouldn't know what it was like to use.

    Well that's good news! It seems you retain the rights to created and embedded content so I'm going to try it out.
     
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