Vinsanity.
Member
Thanks
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
GPU-based procedural placement in Horizon Zero Dawn
- Thread starter vivekTO
- Start date
Thanks
In this case, the procedural generation was used by the level designers to quickly, er, generate areas of the game. It's much faster than hand designing every square inch of the map. As far as I know, Zero Dawn doesn't do any significant procedural generation at runtime.
And yeah, Star Citizen is being developed with similar tools. It's the only way they'll be able to map out all of those planets.
Pancake Mix
Copied someone else's pancake recipe
I plan to get this for my OG PS4 later. I hope it's still up to the task.
Guerrilla truly are amazing.
Guerrilla truly are amazing.
SolidSnakex
Member
Have you seen SunhiLegend's gifs of the game? They're all from the standard PS4
poodaddy
Member
Extremely interesting read, thanks for the thread OP. I had no idea that procedurally generated games could actually support amazing art directions and still look like they have quite a lot of personality. The technology for this stuff is just mind blowing, and it seems like artists are using more sophisticated tools than ever to substantiate their imagination to the limits of an engine. Really interesting stuff.
You're correct, except the bolded. The procedural generation does happen at run time but will always produce the same results. It doesn't need to be "baked". Saving on-disc data.
Pancake Mix
Copied someone else's pancake recipe
Oh my god. Guerrilla Games is just insane, considering the hardware. Talk about coding to the metal.
In this case it is baked, What is procedural is object placement, which is interpreted off texture height/distribution maps. It isn't generating new tree models or foliage textures. However where procedural enters into the picture is the ruleset it uses to populate and paint objects. Such as:
You had the ground foliage tool, on the dirt it populated with grass, but once the brush moved on top of the rocks the same layer instead populated it with moss. On the same distribution texture it would all be a black blob, but because the layer underneath was a rock it can tell what type of texture/object should go on the layer above.
Yeah, all the objects are fixed in place and "baked" in that sense. The analogy I was trying to make was the difference between a real-time and baked Global Illumination system, where you don't actually change any of the parameters at run time.
Just clarifying that I do understand and agree with you.
Sora the Cat
Member
I have no way of doing that atm, luckily other gaffers have cleared it up.
Tripolygon
Banned
I think that is done to prevent the Dull moments in between the Transition of Lighting.
That's why we don't have dark nights as there is no lights in the Open environment except for the towns and tribal city.
Thanks.
DesmondGreer
Neo Member
They finally cracked middle out.
I think the confusion arises due to some misunderstanding regarding deterministic values. However, deterministic random number generators are used extensively in most procedural generation engines as it allows for "controlled randomicity"
PLASTICA-MAN
Member
Imagine if Horizon had a map editor or a modkit to generate quests.
This is not impossible since many games had that on consoles like Far Cry.
Now imagine the ease to create maps and new quests for the game to increase its length like many rpgs.
This is not impossible since many games had that on consoles like Far Cry.
Now imagine the ease to create maps and new quests for the game to increase its length like many rpgs.
scoobs
Member
Guerrilla Games' engineers are beasts*
PLASTICA-MAN
Member
If only its on PC
Like I told you it is possible to do this on consioles since Far Cry games added a map editor on consoles too so nothing is ruled out.
miller.skippins
Banned
this is way too technical for me....LOL
What is too technical? See you just need to Click and voila Magic happens
Like I told you it is possible to do this on consioles since Far Cry games added a map editor on consoles too so nothing is ruled out.
Hopefully by the time i get a Pro they will add this feature , finger crossed.
Callibretto
Member
Who knew making video game is so easy.What is too technical? See you just need to Click and voila Magic happens
Hopefully by the time i get a Pro they will add this feature , finger crossed.
PLASTICA-MAN
Member
Who knew making video game is so easy.
I feel the pain of the programmers who coded this feature to make such ease possible to generate landscapes.
I also feel sorry for the programmers Cory Barlog forced to code Krato's axe to be thrown and kept on a tree or rock then continuing the whole game with punches or other weapons, then when you reach the middle of the game and you want to call it back, it doesn't just magically appear, but instead you can see it coming from where you left it especially if you are on a higher grounds. :/
Programmers are hidden soldiers behind the successs of many games.
It's the prettiest game you'll ever lay your eyes on even on an OG PS4.
Aren't the ICE team and ND one and the same?
Shpeshal Nick
aka Collingwood
This sound like an awesome foundation to make future development much easier, faster and more efficient.
Fredrik
Member
Sounds like randomized item placement, not procedurally generated terrain like we see in the OP. Odd that they didn't have a check if there are any terrain at the same spot when placing the herbs though.
ICE team is at ND, but ND is much larger than just them.
These are Procedural generations, Think of all the possibilities!!
I so want a sim city game with this tech
I don't think it does. It might be *more* of a burden on the hardware because the GPU has to generate the landscape in realtime as you move around. If that was predefined geometry etc that was loaded in, it would be less effort because you just have to draw it.
The benefits would seem to be memory saving - less memory needed for storing level data because you generate it on the fly, which can mean faster loading times and/or more memory free for other things like textures and models
Usually with vegetation placement that is done algorithmically, it will he random in the first case, but then the artists work on the areas that need it the most. Any changes that have been manually made then go back into the math and are then present within the next procedural run.
Do it will have been "random" but the randomness is based upon known variables , such as altitude , angle of the ground, proximity to water and those types of things. All to ensure a realistic distribution of plants and plant types
KCroxtonJr
Member
So this is how they were able to get the game to have such short load times. Amazing.
Maybe , Because you don't need to load or build lightmaps etc each time you visit to an environment or respawn.
mikezilla2
Member
Neat tech !
Hopefully they can put out sequel in less than 2.5 years due to these tools.
MasterOfPastures
Banned
From the presentation, it just seems to be a faster editor tool to automate placement of authored assets while retaining some artist agency with its placement. Editors have been doing this (albeit mostly for just foliage) since the early ue3 days.
We really need some form of videogame-tech literacy thread so people dont get carried away by buzzwords such as "procedural".
We really need some form of videogame-tech literacy thread so people dont get carried away by buzzwords such as "procedural".
Hopefully they will take their time. Spring 2020 or later, I don't want to see it sooner.
I would think the project and mental model changes a lot between 2.x years and a 3 year plan.
Let's not have another Killzone 3 (while Good, it wasn't quite at the level of KZ2).
Yes, but this procedural generation is done real-time on gpu instead of in editor on developers pc. I'm pretty sure other games also do it, but maybe on cpu instead of gpu (I may be wrong).
I wonder, what's the advantage of this? Is generating placement info realtime faster than just loading it from disc? I imagine geometry doesn't take that much data.
Hopefully they will take their time. Spring 2020, I don't want to see it sooner.
I would think the project and mental model changes a lot between 2.x years and a 3 year plan.
I think it will be the same case like Tlou , it will release on ps4 and then remastered on ps5
so i think its safe to say this game will be out in 2019 holiday/2020 march and then Ps5 version 2020 fall.
Maybe , and i am just making a guess. they don't need to load the whole map in one go. the just generate the map around you for the first time and as you play they will generate the rest of the map. that's why it is so much quicker to load the maps and saving it.
Herr Starr
Member
Dude, you are completely off the mark. Reading your posts in this thread it sounds to me like you aren't a software developer, so I can see how this could get confusing, especially since random numbers on computers aren't random at all but merely pretend to be. Let me explain:
A computer needs a seed to start creating a series of "random" numbers, and this seed is usually derived from the current time (down to a ridiculously exact moment). However, if you provide the seed manually you will always get the same series of random numbers with absolutely no variation. It doesn't matter which computer you're running this on, the numbers will always be the same, with no exceptions
I can pretty much guarantee you that Guerilla uses a manually created seed for Horizon's procedurally created content, which means that anything created using this will always be in the same exact spot no matter what. There is no variation, not even for the smallest details, because there's no need for there to be. The placement of the tiniest little tuft of grass is determined by a specific seed, and when you play the game on your PS4 using that same seed, that very same tuft of grass will be "randomly" generated so that it's in the exact same spot.
The only thing that would feel random with this kind of approach is the drawing of these assets on the terrain in the level editor. Once the assets are drawn they will never change unless the procedural generation algorithm is modified or the seed is changed.
In other words, if two players take a screenshot of the same location, they will see every tree, bush, rock and tuft of grass in the same spot. There is no variation, however small.
Edit: To clarify, I'm mostly responding to your earlier posts in the thread and not specifically to the one I quoted. I just quoted it since it was the last one.