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Assassin's Creed Origins pre-launch stream (9AM PDT - 12 PM EST - 18:00 CET)

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
They should have have a shot at this system again, or pack some kind of hybrid.

Facial animation and overall models were out of this world on Unity too, it wasn't only the lighting.
Having baked lighting and thus locked day and night times over having a cycle would kinda contradict aspects of their game design like having npcs who're on a schedule throughout the day. They did focus on improving the lighting for this entry.


We have a brand new color-grading feature that brings much more finesse in how we display colors, so we can create very specific and unique color ambiances for example, a sunset on the White Desert does not look the same as one on the Lake Moëris. We also used satellite images of Egypt to fine-tune the colors for the ground and the vegetation and make them as realistic as possible.
Lighting also plays a big role in the game and we pushed boundaries of what we did on previous
Assassin's Creed games. For instance, we studied technical documentation from NASA to better
understand how airborne particles impact lighting.
 
Why is this a good thing? The compass at the top of screen was the only bad thing about Horizon: Zero Dawn.
A minimap constantly draws your eyes to the corner of the screen so you pay less attention to the actual environment and focus predominantly on the minimap. They did eye-tracking studies and whatnot

And a cleaner HUD in general
 

Shredderi

Member
Am I mistaken or does it look worse than Assassin's Creed Unity?

The baked lighting they had going on still pretty much trumps everything else. Really shows how good things can look like that. I actually miss it. They really had ambition there and I hoped they would have continued to improve on that and optimize it further. Everything after that has seemed like a step back from them (in terms of visual fidelity).
 

Ahasverus

Member
Having baked lighting and thus locked day and night times over having a cycle would kinda contradict aspects of their game design like having npcs who're on a schedule throughout the day. They did focus on improving the lighting for this entry.
And it shows, it looks leagues above Syndicate.

Still I'm curious to see what Montreal 1 does with this engine and gameplay, they're the fathers of AC after all and they are technical masters, I suppose they'll make either Origins 2 or 3 which is fine by me.
 

Green Yoshi

Member
Maybe for you, but for me it was of the best thing in Horizon, and i've seen a lot of people praising it.

Mini-map need to die.

It was really annoying to constantly switch to the map in the menu. A compass would be superior if games had no collectibles, question marks and side missions but only the mission goal.
 

Ahasverus

Member
It was really annoying to constantly switch to the map in the menu. A compass would be superior if games had no collectibles, question marks and side missions but only the mission goal.
The problem still stands though, your eyes would still be glued to the compass. That's not good.

Floating markers are a godsend.
 

norm9

Member
A minimap constantly draws your eyes to the corner of the screen so you pay less attention to the actual environment and focus predominantly on the minimap. They did eye-tracking studies and whatnot

And a cleaner HUD in general

I was playing kingdom of amalur last night and the minimap is in the upper right corner instead of the usual bottom left for pretty much every game. Made a big difference somehow psychologically that I wasn't staring at the upper corner map at all.
 
It was really annoying to constantly switch to the map in the menu. A compass would be superior if games had no collectibles, question marks and side missions but only the mission goal.

If i remember correctly, optionals stuff appears on the compass, like bonfire in Horizon. Maybe they just need to implement a more flexible compass, to add or remove what information you want to see.
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
The baked lighting they had going on still pretty much trumps everything else. Really shows how good things can look like that. I actually miss it. They really had ambition there and I hoped they would have continued to improve on that and optimize it further. Everything after that has seemed like a step back from them (in terms of visual fidelity).
The ambition is still there, they're still doing things like 1:1 monuments for instance, and ofc are working with much larger environments since this map is just as big if not bigger than BF's. And ofc they straight up fixed one of the main weaknesses with the engine:draw distance. Origins fits really nicely in between Syndicate and Unity in terms of visuals. Looking forward to when the artists are allowed to post their work online.

And it shows, it looks leagues above Syndicate.

Still I'm curious to see what Montreal 1 does with this engine and gameplay, they're the fathers of AC after all and they are technical masters, I suppose they'll make either Origins 2 or 3 which is fine by me.
Can't imagine them going back to baked lighting anytime soon considering the new AI functions.
 

Stiler

Member
It likely does as Unity had baked lighting.
15638771200_91d921a424_o.png


Granted it's still gorgeous and packed with detail.

It's not that it's baked lighting (plenty of games have that) it's that it was global illumination. Which made it look far more realistic then most any other game when it came to the lighting system.

Baffles me why they ditched it, it was amazing.
 

sjay1994

Member
It's not that it's baked lighting (plenty of games have that) it's that it was global illumination. Which made it look far more realistic then most any other game when it came to the lighting system.

Baffles me why they ditched it, it was amazing.

Because Unity was a technical disaster.
 

Ahasverus

Member
It's not that it's baked lighting (plenty of games have that) it's that it was global illumination. Which made it look far more realistic then most any other game when it came to the lighting system.

Baffles me why they ditched it, it was amazing.
Is global illumination doable with the current dynamc lightning engine'? That should be their prooprity for origins 2 or 3 if it is.
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
It's not that it's baked lighting (plenty of games have that) it's that it was global illumination. Which made it look far more realistic then most any other game when it came to the lighting system.

Baffles me why they ditched it, it was amazing.
Cause they can't do prebaked GI with a day/night cycle.
 

Stiler

Member
Cause they can't do prebaked GI with a day/night cycle.


Granted, I am not a programmer or anything but couldn't they simply have a real time day/night cycle for the exterior and then use pre-baked GI for interiors, and simply have different "states" of it? Then simply switch them around depending on the time cycle of the exterior.

edit - it seems there are things that can do real time GI, at least on Unreal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=109&v=6Fs-4Kvp2nM
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Granted, I am not a programmer or anything but couldn't they simply have a real time day/night cycle for the exterior and then use pre-baked GI for interiors, and simply have different "states" of it? Then simply switch them around depending on the time cycle of the exterior.

edit - it seems there are things that can do real time GI, at least on Unreal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=109&v=6Fs-4Kvp2nM
You can create the most beautiful renders ever with an engine, but it's the part where it actually has to become a game with reasonable performance is where issues crop up with what you're proposing.
 
Granted, I am not a programmer or anything but couldn't they simply have a real time day/night cycle for the exterior and then use pre-baked GI for interiors, and simply have different "states" of it? Then simply switch them around depending on the time cycle of the exterior.

edit - it seems there are things that can do real time GI, at least on Unreal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=109&v=6Fs-4Kvp2nM
A game has to be playable. You can do whatever you want in a render (ie all those Unity/Unreal engine videos) but making a game that's playable, with an acceptable framerate, that doesn't crash is a completely different story
 
Game releases in less then 9 days. Time sure flies.

What is the chance of the reviews hitting upcoming Monday/Tuesday?

I have absolutely no idea if the other Ubisoft titles had reviews that dropped earlier than the initial release date.
 

emag

Member
Game releases in less then 9 days. Time sure flies.

What is the chance of the reviews hitting upcoming Monday/Tuesday?

I have absolutely no idea if the other Ubisoft titles had reviews that dropped earlier than the initial release date.

Ubisoft typically embargoes reviews until the day of release or possibly one/two days earlier.
 

CrazyDude

Member
I'm guessing if they think it will review bad they will wait till release day, and if they think it will review well they will do it a day or two before.
 
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