[HN Gopher] Deus Ex - Alpha Terrain
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Deus Ex - Alpha Terrain
Author : mariuz
Score : 146 points
Date : 2023-05-29 12:49 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (simonschreibt.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (simonschreibt.de)
| thih9 wrote:
| I think I prefer the results from the other approaches listed in
| the examples, e.g. material blending:
| https://orikmcfly.artstation.com/projects/9zRna
| ummonk wrote:
| Am I the only one who thinks the translucent blurring looks bad?
| unholiness wrote:
| It looks bad when you look at it, but unlike a harsh polygonal
| border, it doesn't call attention to itself when you're not
| looking at it.
| EliasWatson wrote:
| I think you could produce the same effect without worrying about
| overdraw/sorting and without translucent materials:
|
| 1. Render the terrain to a separate buffer
|
| 2. Copy the terrain's depth buffer to the main depth buffer
|
| 3. Render all non-terrain objects normally
|
| 4. Smoothly blend the terrain buffer into the main buffer based
| on depth
|
| This sounds similar to the method used in BotW, but allows for
| depth culling since the terrain is rendered first. I'm not
| familiar enough with Unreal Engine shaders to attempt making it
| there, but I made a demo in ShaderToy:
| https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ct3SDN
| tempodox wrote:
| For anyone wondering, the images are from the Penley T.
| Housefather Prison, in the greatest DLC of any game ever
| ("Criminal Past" in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided).
| nailer wrote:
| Upmodded pre-emptively on the assumption you'll do a followup
| explaining your justification. But I disagree.
|
| I think the best DLC was Minerva's Den, a Bioshock DLC about a
| man becoming obsessed with his work to the point he destroys
| his family, which is relevant to anyone that's career-minded
| and particularly to founders.
| Yoric wrote:
| I personally enjoyed Criminal Past, if only because its final
| image finally justified the entire story of DX:MD. Before
| playing through this story, I had enjoyed DX:MD with the big
| caveat that there was a huge gaping plot hole. Not anymore :)
| boosteri wrote:
| Ok but what's with that fence? Looking at that makes my eyes
| hurt. Is than an artefact of the video compression or the game
| itself?
| squarefoot wrote:
| I never played Deus Ex, so I'm judging solely by the published
| videos and frames. The effect seems quite bad and unnatural to
| me. In the 1st side by side comparison, for example, the block
| blends with the terrain in a way that it shows its corners
| reflection on the terrain. Shouldn't be there some hierarchies
| coded so that the sand blends with the block base without looking
| like the block is penetrating into the terrain? Also, the 2nd
| video example shows some evident perspective errors wrt parallax.
| If this is the alternative, I would choose any day the basic
| hard-intersection version.
| epolanski wrote:
| As everything in engineering it comes down to trade offs. It
| looks "bad" and "unnatural" mostly because you're given
| screenshots and gifs at specific angles that make the blending
| effect the focus and thus more obvious, but during gameplay the
| overall effect is positive and you wouldn't notice:
|
| https://youtu.be/aAmXuQmsAAg?t=787
| simonschreibt wrote:
| haha, that's true. in fact, sometimes i wonder if we game
| devs spend too much time into details which maybe, nobody
| notices at the end :D
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Isn't the real world actually so that there's a black border
| in the "seams" between real objects, from ambient occlusion
| and shadows.
| taneq wrote:
| I'm not sure about doing this with arbitrary objects... but it
| should be mandatory for particle dust/fog/smoke effects.
| smcl wrote:
| Was wracking my brains trying to figure out the location here.
| There's not too many in DX:MD - Prague, Dubai, Switzerland and
| London - but I didn't recall encountering a scene like this in
| the only one that fit the terrain (Dubai). Turns out this is
| actually from an expansion called "A Criminal Past" set in
| Arizona that I wasn't aware of -
| https://deusex.fandom.com/wiki/Penley_T._Housefather_Correct...
|
| I enjoyed the game, interesting depiction of future Prague too.
| There's some slightly iffy voice acting and interesting
| pronunciations (pronouncing Vaclav as "Vaklav" instead of
| "Vatslav"), which is interesting since there's _clearly_ some
| Czechs involved (see "Picus") :D
|
| edit: I should explain the "picus" thing for non-DX and/or non-
| Czechs. There is a media company in the latter two Deus Ex games
| called "Picus". This is close to a rude word in Czech:
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/p%C3%AD%C4%8Dus. Also fun fact, I
| was told "cus, picus!" (pron _choos, peechoos_ , first word is a
| loanword from German "tschus") meaning roughly "hey, ya fucker!"
| was how you say "cheers" when I first arrived here. It _can_ be
| how you say cheers, but only to good friends who you know enjoy
| talking like that :)
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >interesting depiction of future Prague
|
| one major success of the franchise is its depiction of a future
| that feels genuinely forward oriented. I think they dubbed
| their art direction 'cyber renaissance' (HR in the remaster
| comes with a great developer narration) and it genuinely
| manages to seem novel.
|
| There's also a lot of very smart world-building and writing in
| the ebooks scattered around the game. From tensions in
| Australia caused by wildfires and draughts to the antagonists
| backstory in MD featuring Ukrainian separatism in Belgorod it
| seemed eerily relevant at times having replayed it last summer.
| hallux wrote:
| There are also a few moments where Alex's voice actor
| pronounces the a in Prague like the a in brag.
|
| A Criminal Past is a decent expansion by the way! I recently
| re-installed the game just to play through the expansion again.
| smcl wrote:
| Hm both the 'a' in "Prague" and "brag" are the same for me,
| might be an accent thing.
|
| I'll give it a whirl, I promised myself no new games until I
| finish Elden Ring but maybe I can bend the rules a bit, after
| all it's a DLC not a "game" ;)
| sho_hn wrote:
| I played DX:MD just before Cyberpunk, and it made Cyberpunk
| feel so dead and barren in comparison. The levels of
| interactivity and exploration in MD's Prague were crazy off the
| charts in direct comparison.
|
| Discovering an entire underground little civilization in the
| sewers and tunnels I could have equally just easily missed etc.
| really made me feel like I was discovering things just for me.
| Cyberpunk instead felt like clinically crossing off items on
| the map/quest tracker todo list; aside from the fantastic
| visuals, just looking around on your own offered basically no
| rewards at all in the game.
|
| Similar feelings around NPC interaction and AI.
|
| Add the fact that Cyberpunk's "hand-holding you through the
| environment" approach feels more and more lacklustre and grindy
| as the game develops, as they clearly ran out of resources to
| do all of the custom animations and setups they have in the
| first couple of hours to at least make it feel big and
| cinematic. The emergent/more sim-heavy/sandboxy approach of the
| DX games is more even there, and things tend to feel deeper
| rather than shallower over time, I think.
| cubefox wrote:
| Deus Ex (like Thief) is a classic example of a genre called
| "immersive sim" or "systemic game". Basically games with an
| unusually high environmental/NPC interactivity. Not many of
| these games have ever been made. Apparently they don't sell
| so well. Cyberpunk 2077 is just a fairly normal RPG, so you
| can't really compare them.
| asmor wrote:
| Having high detail vertical slices of worlds is not an
| imperative in immersive sim games, but practicality often
| dictates it.
|
| There's a lot of arguing about what constitutes an
| immersive sim (i.e. NPC interactivity is not one), but the
| two common concise definitions are "if you can open a door
| in several inventive ways (including bypassing it) and more
| generally, if you have so many complex systems in a game
| that they interact in unexpected ways. Purists also require
| first-person perspective, but others would also count
| Hitman or EVE Online.
| cubefox wrote:
| There are also "sandboxy" games like the open world
| Zelda, with a chemistry/physics system and multiple-
| solution puzzles, but wouldn't quite fit the prototypical
| immersive sim, as there is still fairly limited NPC
| interaction. Maybe those count just as systemic games in
| the wider sense.
| theK wrote:
| I never really got how I.mersove Sims fail to capture a
| market considering the sheer number of people that enjoy
| similarly detailed SciFi/fantasy work.
|
| Can it just be tragedy of the commons?
| asmor wrote:
| They're very expensive games to make and the audience is
| comparatively small. The audience might also just be hard
| to capture since it's not too easy to explain an
| immersive sim and the appeal to someone.
| cubefox wrote:
| Another problem is that people absolutely love large open
| world games. Which can't really be combined with a
| meticulously designed immersive sim. So designers have
| not much choice if they want to sell things.
|
| Perhaps immersive sims would need one real block buster
| to make the genre more widely known? (Similar to Elder
| Scrolls 3 or GTA 3 for open world games, Dark Souls for
| Soulsborne games, Super Metroid for Metroidvanias, etc.)
| There wasn't ever a real immersive sim blockbuster.
|
| Or maybe it's just not for the masses. Like point-and-
| click adventures.
| sho_hn wrote:
| I love games that try to find the right set of
| compromises to have their cake and eat it, too, in terms
| of combining open world feel with linear, tight narrative
| and deeply simulated environments.
|
| To me Gothic was one of the milestones: One of the first
| large 3D open world RPGs that had a chapter structure. As
| you progressed the main quest line, you would eventually
| cross chapter boundaries that would toggle major changes
| in the game world, e.g. whether a given city was in front
| of or behind the frontlines of a conflict, altering
| massively who you would find there or what it looked
| like. While some side quest opportunities would persist
| over the chapter boundary, other doors would close and
| new ones would open. All of this did a lot to feel like
| the game world was meaningfully progressing alongside
| you, and to show the impact of your own actions on the
| game world.
|
| As for Deus Ex, even the original had these "hub"
| locations like Hell's Kitchen, maps you'd return to more
| than once, in different circumstances, while also taking
| you all over the world to mission locations. A lot of
| missions had "establishing locations" where you'd e.g.
| walk around in a new city a bit before breaking into a
| corporate HQ found within it. This gave you just enough
| freedom to make it feel like more than a linear corridor
| shooter with sim elements, while in reality being planned
| out and guided enough you had your narrative arcs and
| peaks. The sequels of course expanded on this with
| Detroit, Prague, etc.
|
| There's fantastic game design artistry in blending and
| balancing these concerns. With DX, people usually comment
| on the sim elements, emergent gameplay, multiple
| approaches to mission goals, etc., but its story and map
| structure is IMHO another thing that made that game so
| groundbreaking and memorable. The immersive sim it got
| from Ultima Underworld and System Shock, but this careful
| orchestration of alternating linear and more free-form
| stretches, of having character arcs, of circling back on
| itself and revisiting locations, of having narrative
| beats was new to 3D/FPS games and showed the way.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Everything got more expensive. They pumped out Deus Ex in
| under 2 years with a staff of less than a hundred FTE.
|
| As a child I was ecstatic when I learned the gaming
| industry had eclipsed the movie industry. Now I know what
| that meant: we went from Reservoir dogs to Marvel
| Endgame.
| djur wrote:
| > the sheer number of people that enjoy similarly
| detailed SciFi/fantasy work
|
| I'm assuming you mean books here. SF/F book sales
| generated $590 million in revenue last year. Video games:
| $56.84 billion.
| reaperman wrote:
| Can you explain how this would be a "tragedy of the
| commons"? I'm not sure I understand how there's a limited
| resource which each individual is incentivized to extract
| more than their sustainable share of.
| Psyladine wrote:
| I asked Spector about his 'immersive simulations' comment
| some years back:
|
| "I just prefer games that are less puzzle oriented or
| "single-solution" oriented and games that offer deeper
| simulations. Simulations allow players to explore not just
| a space but a "possibility space." They can make their own
| fun... tell their own stories... solve problems the way
| they want and see the consequences of their choices."
|
| Maybe precursors to todays sandbox game environments then.
| Semaphor wrote:
| I'll recommend the original here. It doesn't come close in
| looks, looking like the 20-year-old game it is, even with the
| fan made HD patches, but the world design, story, and
| interaction are great.
|
| And FWIW, I spent very little time with Cyberpunk before
| shelving it.
| sho_hn wrote:
| I'll second that. It's my favorite game of all time.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| _insert HongKong or UNATCO music here_
|
| I still listen to the soundtrack from time to time. It is
| just great music and makes me wish I could "unplay" and
| play again for the first time.
|
| I hope they do at some point make another Deus Ex game. One
| as good as the first one, Human Revolution or Mankind
| Divided.
| smcl wrote:
| I played them the other way round (well Cyberpunk, _then_
| Human Revolution and then Mankind) and had the same feeling.
| Cyberpunk is enormous but relatively hollow in comparison to
| both in my opinion.
| 9dev wrote:
| On the other hand, DX has such intricate details precisely
| because it isn't enormous, but rather constrained (still
| big, don't get me wrong, but definitely way smaller). You
| can feel how someone poured attention to every nook and
| cranny, something just not possible on the scale of
| Cyberpunk. On the other hand, there's Red Dead 2...
| asmor wrote:
| RDR2 is the most confused game I've ever played. They
| have this great open world and a lot of systems and
| "immersion" that very clearly years of work have went
| into, yet very few of those systems interact with each
| other (or the main plot) in interesting ways and the
| story is still the typical tired half cutscenes + half
| linear, highly choreographed gameplay with little room
| for creativity (no deviating from the exact text on the
| bottom) that Rockstar has been using mostly unchanged
| since at least GTA IV.
| sebazzz wrote:
| > Discovering an entire underground little civilization in
| the sewers and tunnels I could have equally just easily
| missed etc.
|
| Remind me, what was that? The original DX had the mole people
| under the New York City metro.
| MutableLambda wrote:
| Probably SM02: Cult of Personality
| sho_hn wrote:
| Yup!
|
| I mean, there was a lot going on down there. If you ever
| find yourself browsing Prague real estate, definitely
| inquire about secret doors in the basement, trap doors,
| tunnels, and the like! If there's stuff missing in the
| pantry, you want to be able to rule out your neighbors.
| simonschreibt wrote:
| Yes :) The extra levels are quite nice! But the original
| locations are very cool as well. Need to play it again! <3
| smcl wrote:
| Nice to see you here! I really enjoyed the article :)
| simonschreibt wrote:
| thank you! <3 that's great to hear!
| shdon wrote:
| To be honest, I find that in most of the screenshots, this is not
| an improvement, but it looks worse. For the box in the first
| comparison videos, I definitely prefer the sharp edge. For a few
| things like the dust storm, the foggy circle, or even the
| accumulated dirt around the base of the large rock in the hero
| image, it does look good. For pretty much everything else shown
| in the article, it feels unnatural and overdone.
| karmakaze wrote:
| When I first looked at the images, I had the same reaction that
| they don't look realistic. Thinking about it in context though,
| I think they would be more suitable. The goal of these
| renderings isn't specifically to have properties that are
| realistic. The main goal should be for them to make the world
| seem natural and provide context. In that sense they are better
| than the sharp renderings which are a bit distracting. In a way
| I would consider them a bit impressionistic to give the player
| the right impression more so than an accurate frame-by-frame
| renderings. The true test should be playing the game with
| different renderings and deciding which one feels better.
| pluijzer wrote:
| I wonder if anybody can relate to my experience. Maybe it is
| just me showing my age but though I agree the visuals of modern
| games have become, much, more impressive I much prefer the
| older style. Deus Ex is a good example. The original, maybe my
| favorite game, shows it age. Even at the time it wasn't the
| most impressive looking game. The environments are simple, must
| edges perpendicular etc. But it made everything very clear etc.
| It seems it was more easy to parse for me. Deus Ex:MD looks
| gorgious, but there is so much going on, everything looks so
| complex and cluttered that it feels way to busy for me. Also
| there is often a bluriness to modern games, I cannot quite put
| my finger on it but it seems it was filmed with a lense covered
| in petroleum jelly. I much, much rather see jagged edges.
| onli wrote:
| That bluriness might actually be the anti-aliasing, TAA
| specifically. Pcgamingwiki often shows how to replace it with
| smaa because of that. Doesn't annoy everyone, but some it
| does.
| MutableLambda wrote:
| Yeah I had the same feeling around the time MD was out, I
| think it was fixed by 4k and a bigger TV
| polytely wrote:
| I agree that it looks bad close-up, but then if you think about
| the gameplay in that area, you are mostly just walking around
| and talking to other inmates and not doing much sneaking there,
| so you aren't up close with the edges at ground level, because
| you are mostly upright. I remember that area feeling very sandy
| while I was playing it so I guess the goal was achieved.
| simonschreibt wrote:
| I agree with both arguments: In my examples it doesn't look
| natural (and having such a boring box is really a worst-case
| but serves well to show the effect very clearly), but on the
| other side it must be seen in context (like others said
| before). While nature doesn't have "translucent" materials,
| this soft edge can be interpreted as a transition you can often
| see in the real world: be it, that a little bit of sand and
| dust from the ground sticks on the base of the object or just a
| variation of the ground-height which avoids an unnatural
| straight line between the two "elements". It is of course a
| hack, and it doesn't work perfectly fine when looking so close
| at the box, but in my eyes it works very well for e.g. the
| stones. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to overwrite the shader to
| disable the blending in the game. I'd have loved to show how
| Deus Ex looks Without this effect.
| izacus wrote:
| Video games are all about visual tricks that make them look
| more pleasant and not as much about physical realism. This
| looks much better in context when moving vs. the jagged
| original approach.
| ElongatedMusket wrote:
| It definitely looks worse and unnatural, because in real life
| we don't see rocks or trees gradually morph into the ground on
| a gradient (unless we're on drugs). Where it looks better is in
| motion, when the harsh rigid angles would otherwise show off
| their jagged pixels. This blend technique is used where your
| eyes are hopefully not focused. If only seen in your periphory,
| the effect is quite nicely done.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I've never liked the sharp object transitions typical of video
| games, but yes, I think that this technique only really works
| in specific circumstances.
|
| I think it'd help a lot of the terrain geometry were distorted
| such that it looks like it's physically interacting with the
| object it's blending with (e.g. sand resting against the side
| of the object). If that were added to this technique I think
| it'd be a lot more convincing.
| mLuby wrote:
| What I see in that first image is the two rocks are the same
| shape, just rotated and scaled.
| Marcan wrote:
| Good observation. We reuse a lot of the same assets in video
| games.
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