NeoGAF

MrOogieBoogie · 06:35 AM

This game kind of blows my mind. I've played Red Dead Redemption, Skyrim, Oblivion, Fallout, Grand Theft Auto IV, Assassin's Creed--most of this gen's big "sandbox" titles. I hated Just Cause so much that I never bothered with the sequel. However, I've watched videos of it and have always been absolutely floored by how good it looks considering its size. I caved in and bought it on sale a little while ago and played it for myself and was even more impressed. The sense of scale is virtually unmatched. It really feels like it takes forever to get from one place to another.

I mean, it takes eight real life minutes to fly from one end of the map to the other in the fastest plane in the game.

But it's the close-up details as well. You'd think the game would sacrifice a lot of assets for its huge map, but forests look lovely and detailed as if they were made for a much smaller game. Mountain textures look great both from a distance and up close. Draw distance seems to go on forever compared to similar titles. Pop-in (at least on PC) isn't very apparent.

Then you consider that the game has a full airspace to explore (you can go so high up you start to see space) as well as a full ocean, and everything in between. And again, everything seems so well scaled. Oftentimes in games you might see a "huge" mountain in the distance, but climbing it somehow makes it feel a lot smaller. Not so in Just Cause 2. Mountains look huge and would take forever to scale were it not for the awesome grappling hook.

I don't know, the game seems to do shit on a technical and performance level that no other sandbox title has really emulated. Hell, most linear games don't achieve the visual fidelity of Just Cause 2.

HOW?

lol What other game takes nearly two minutes to free-fall?

Pepboy · (06-30-2012, 06:35 AM)

Just 'cause.

(sorry I couldn't resist)

Oreoleo · (06-30-2012, 06:38 AM)

I don't know the technical stuff behind it, but I remember hearing that rendering land geometry is much, much less complex than rendering buildings and things like that. Which would certainly explain the performance disparity between JC2 and GTA4, for example.

TheCongressman1 · (06-30-2012, 06:38 AM)

I often wonder the same thing. It's quite a magical game.

Collider · (06-30-2012, 06:39 AM)

But, JC2 as a game, was not that awesome for me.

Prophane33 · (06-30-2012, 06:40 AM)

Originally Posted by Orellio:

I don't know the technical stuff behind it, but I remember hearing that rendering land geometry is much, much less complex than rendering buildings and things like that. Which would certainly explain the performance disparity between JC2 and GTA4, for example.

There is a rather large city area in this game as well. I really liked the first one, the sequel was the best 5 dollars I've ever spent on a game.

hillsighed · (06-30-2012, 06:40 AM)

Beautiful game. I spent so much time just flying around, admiring the mountains and clouds.

MrOogieBoogie · (06-30-2012, 06:41 AM)

Originally Posted by Collider:

But, JC2 as a game, was not that awesome for me.

Oh, I couldn't care less for the story or main game. For me, it's a sandbox title in its purest form.

I just need someone super awesome mods to make it even better!

Like this Superman one.

Why would you do that? · (06-30-2012, 06:43 AM)

Note that I'm no graphics expert.

A lot of areas in the game look very similar to one another (a complaint I have about the game). With little need to swap out and load textures, there's not much of a loading time and everything draws faster. Despite my criticism with the variety of the in-game environments, I too am impressed by how large the world is and how well it runs.

Originally Posted by Prophane33:

There is a rather large city area in this game as well.

Performance in the city (at least on my PC) is also much worse than anywhere else in the game.

Dice · (06-30-2012, 06:44 AM)

Originally Posted by Orellio:

I don't know the technical stuff behind it, but I remember hearing that rendering land geometry is much, much less complex than rendering buildings and things like that. Which would certainly explain the performance disparity between JC2 and GTA4, for example.

Yeah the "city" areas do scale somewhat decently but it's not like descending into GTA or anything. It is still impressive to me how smoothly it does everything. Flying around high and low with the superman mod I can't really spot where detail scales and there is never a hitch or slowdown.

John Rabbit · (06-30-2012, 06:45 AM)

there's a ridiculously high number of re-used assets and several LOD tricks in play.

just watch the trees closely when para-sailing, if you're more than a few dozen meters away, they all look like doom sprites (always facing you). it's just a lot of clever visual trickery.

JaseC · (06-30-2012, 06:46 AM)

The engine also scales well to hardware. I was getting ~30fps on my C2D system and had a blast with the 49 hours I put into the campaign over the course of about a month (wrecking havoc has never been so fun). I then decided to put the game down until I upgraded, and now that I have an overclocked 2600K, I've been meaning to get back into it.

Being a completionist, I can see my total play time being well over 100 hours.

Bear · (06-30-2012, 06:59 AM)

Originally Posted by John Rabbit:

there's a ridiculously high number of re-used assets and several LOD tricks in play.

just watch the trees closely when para-sailing, if you're more than a few dozen meters away, they all look like doom sprites (always facing you). it's just a lot of clever visual trickery.

This + very simple geometry/textures for everything in the distance.

It's very smart engine design, but a lot of it is just visual tricks and strong environment art. It helps that the environments are almost all very large and sparse, which is less taxing to render than most of the games you listed.

Neiteio · (06-30-2012, 07:01 AM)

Originally Posted by Pepboy:

Just 'cause.

(sorry I couldn't resist)

Flawless victory. XD

I have this game on Steam but only booted it up to configure the settings and oogle the title screen. Haven't played it yet...

LiK · (06-30-2012, 07:03 AM)

Originally Posted by Pepboy:

Just 'cause.

(sorry I couldn't resist)

Another great first post today lol

TheOGB · 07:29 AM

edit: nah

Gez · (06-30-2012, 07:04 AM)

Because they ditched DirectX 9 support and made it Win Vista/Win 7 only.

Jac_Solar · (06-30-2012, 07:05 AM)

Same as with Fuel, procedural generation. They really need to further explore the possibilities of procedurally generated worlds (Combined with manual editing to varying degrees.)

vixlar · (06-30-2012, 07:27 AM)

yeah, procedural and tricks and shit and blablabla... but you can see the upgrade boxes from really far away (is just a box, but is amazing and helpful)

FyreWulff · (06-30-2012, 07:34 AM)

Extensive LOD tricks and streaming. The game only has the immediate world around you loaded at any one time. When you're up in the air, you're just basically seeing low-res mattes and things that hint at the actual geometry in distant locations, and I imagine only the land immediately under you is actively loaded while diving from the sky.

SalsaShark · (06-30-2012, 07:37 AM)

it plays a toooon of tricks

and it's a fucking amazing engine. Renegade Ops runs on a modified version of the same one. You should check that out if you havent.

Neiteio · (06-30-2012, 07:38 AM)

Watching that video of someone using the jet to traverse the world in eight minutes, I really want to see someone make a Pilotwings mod of this game, approximating the vehicles, adding in the music, etc.

brain_stew · (06-30-2012, 07:42 AM)

Humus:
http://www.humus.name/index.php?page=News

abracadaver · (06-30-2012, 07:54 AM)

The engine is amazing. Cant wait to see what just cause 3 looks like.

Dead Island and Day Z should have used the engine.

LaserBuddha · (06-30-2012, 07:55 AM)

Originally Posted by abracadaver:

Dead Island and Day Z should have used the engine.

I'd be happier if they both used my favorite, Frostbite 2. :)

CTE · (06-30-2012, 07:59 AM)

Best 5 bucks I've ever spent on a game. Would have bought for 60 looking back, but didn't realize it's greatness. Plus, I didn't have a decent PC to play it on until this past month. Kind of a big factor since I was holding out for the PC version because it looks that much better and it has mods.

zon · (06-30-2012, 08:00 AM)

I think it's an amazing engine too, it's a shame it wasn't used for many other games.

Karak · (06-30-2012, 08:05 AM)

Originally Posted by zon:

I think it's an amazing engine too, it's a shame it wasn't used for many other games.

This is how I feel. Who knows maybe, for whatever reason, their tools aren't really set up for that. But The ability of that engine, tricks or not(everyone uses tricks), is almost second to none at times.

Atruvius · (06-30-2012, 08:06 AM)

You can't enter any of the buildings and almost all of the structures are copypasted. Also, you can only see, at least on the PS3, a maximum of five, or was it eight, vehicles at once. When you see those vehicles and then turn around to see new vehicles, the older ones will have disappeared.

Krappadizzle · (06-30-2012, 08:06 AM)

Space Magic? It's the only thing that makes sense in my mind. Play with the Superman mod. There is not better way to get around in that game, it is so friggin' good.

general_garcia · (06-30-2012, 08:27 AM)