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First Alan Wake: Night Springs Screenshot [XBLA, Revealing December 10th At VGAs]

B

Biggzy

Member
DieH@rd said:
alan-wake-003.jpg


Its such a shame that AW1 did not come out on PC. Fantastic light engine.
Click to expand...

I have played a lot of games in my time, but I have yet to see a game with a more unique lighting engine than Alan Wake- perfectly sets the mood of the game.
 
P

plagiarize

Banned
derFeef said:
I really doubt we get a smooth IQ like that. I would be happy though if they improved the engine a bit and maybe raised the resolution. The game was gorgeous, but blurry.
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often in early screens they clean up the worst looking edges, but miss a few. i'd expect that.

if they've not got loads of trees to render they should be able to increase the resolution, as my hazy memories of digital foundry analysis tell me that the resolution they went for had something to do with alpha blending all that foliage.

the game was running in 720p on 360 at one point. we had what were clearly direct feed videos, but performance wasn't perfect (tearing and such). the drop in resolution happened pretty late. i'd be highly surprised if they're running anything like as low an internal res this time, espescially after all the flack they got.
 
A

amdnv

Member
Biggzy said:
And like I said look at the neon sign and even look at the lamppost. If this is a bullshot then it's not a very good one.
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Alan Wake, his drop shadow and his light beam have all been inserted as a composite.

Reasons: Alan Wake is of much higher definition than anything else. The flashlight beam is not quarter res. The lighting on Alan Wake does not match the scene. And the shape of the drop shadow is physically impossible.
 
B

Biggzy

Member
xbulletholes said:
haven't remedy gone on record as touting their new motion-capture technology? saying it betters l.a noire's. was that right?
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Yep I believe Edge also saw the new animation system.
 
Z

ZombieFred

Unconfirmed Member
Biggzy said:
Yep I believe Edge also saw the new animation system.
Click to expand...

The question is if that's going to be used for this game or "Alan Wake 2", but my bets are that the animation for character movement and cloth simulation is going to be mind blowing (I hope).
 
D

derFeef

Member
xbulletholes said:
haven't remedy gone on record as touting their new motion-capture technology? saying it betters l.a noire's. was that right?
Click to expand...
By the looks of it (facial model is unchanged so far), we will not get this for Night Springs.

amdnv said:
Alan Wake, his drop shadow and his light beam have all been inserted as a composite.

Reasons: Alan Wake is of much higher definition than anything else. The flashlight beam is not quarter res. The lighting on Alan Wake does not match the scene. And the shape of the drop shadow is physically impossible.
Click to expand...
The flashlight beam looks more like the construction-spotlights we got in the game a few times to hold of the Taken, like you can see here at this spot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=nFwpMcPk_iI#t=514s
 
S

scently

Member
plagiarize said:
often in early screens they clean up the worst looking edges, but miss a few. i'd expect that.

if they've not got loads of trees to render they should be able to increase the resolution, as my hazy memories of digital foundry analysis tell me that the resolution they went for had something to do with alpha blending all that foliage.

the game was running in 720p on 360 at one point. we had what were clearly direct feed videos, but performance wasn't perfect (tearing and such). the drop in resolution happened pretty late. i'd be highly surprised if they're running anything like as low an internal res this time, espescially after all the flack they got.
Click to expand...

From the paper they released, the culprit was the use of 4xMSAA. It was, at one time, running at 2xMSAA 720p, but they had to reduce the resolution to accommodate 4xMSAA. But they are apparently evaluating FXAA and Ryoku's MLAA.
 
B

Biggzy

Member
ZombieFred said:
The question is if that's going to be used for this game or "Alan Wake 2", but my bets are that the animation for character movement and cloth simulation is going to be mind blowing (I hope).
Click to expand...

We will have to wait till the VGA's where the first trailer is going to be shown before we can decide whether night springs will have the new animations.
 
Z

ZombieFred

Unconfirmed Member
derFeef said:
By the looks of it (facial model is unchanged so far), we will not get this for Night Springs.
Click to expand...

I'm wondering if Remedy is using a small portion of their team (DLC team perhaps?)to work on this while the rest are working on Alan Wake 2 with the new technical updates on their engine. We will find out soon enough anyway.
 
S

scently

Member
derFeef said:
By the looks of it (facial model is unchanged so far), we will not get this for Night Springs.
Click to expand...
They don't have to change the facial model in order to implement the new motion tech. I am not saying that they are using it or not, we just have to see it in motion first to be sure either way.
 
P

plagiarize

Banned
scently said:
From the paper they released, the culprit was the use of 4xMSAA. It was, at one time, running at 2xMSAA 720p, but they had to reduce the resolution to accommodate 4xMSAA. But they are apparently evaluating FXAA and Ryoku's MLAA.
Click to expand...
4xAA meant they could use a better alpha blending technique as I understood it. There's no way they did what they did just to get 4xAA. I think I remember DF saying it meant they could use alpha to coverage. Will double check. Alpha is everywhere in the game, kind of how some of us prefer the look of crysis with edge AA rather than MSAA.

edit: yeah...

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-alanwake-tech-analysis

digitalfoundry said:
So, resolution dropped since then, but it also appears that anti-aliasing has been bumped up from the more standard 2x MSAA. Why? The footage displayed some performance issues, which is perhaps not so surprising. Alan Wake's heavy use of alpha must surely be a massive drain on the GPU. But bumping up to 4x MSAA means that Remedy can make use of the "cheaper" transparencies afforded by using "alpha to coverage", safe in the knowledge that the sub-pixel multi-sampling offered by the 4x would blend away almost all of the "screen door" effect that you get with this implementation. Look closely and you can see that Remedy even used alpha-to-coverage on Wake's hair.
Click to expand...

So not quite like I remembered. It didn't let them use a better alpha technique but a cheaper one. Still, less alpha should mean we get 720p.
 
D

derFeef

Member
scently said:
They don't have to change the facial model in order to implement the new motion tech. I am not saying that they are using it or not, we just have to see it in motion first to be sure either way.
Click to expand...
They said the face modeling was part of the problem that the animation capturing did not look as good on them in the first game. I will gladly get surprised, though :)
 
F

Feindflug

Member
plagiarize said:
often in early screens they clean up the worst looking edges, but miss a few. i'd expect that.

if they've not got loads of trees to render they should be able to increase the resolution, as my hazy memories of digital foundry analysis tell me that the resolution they went for had something to do with alpha blending all that foliage.

the game was running in 720p on 360 at one point. we had what were clearly direct feed videos, but performance wasn't perfect (tearing and such). the drop in resolution happened pretty late. i'd be highly surprised if they're running anything like as low an internal res this time, espescially after all the flack they got.
Click to expand...

Yeah from what I remember Eurogamer & DF said that they had videos from the game less than a year before release that were 720p but with heavy tearing and frame-rate issues...I have to ask though. is it that easy for developers to change the res of the game? From what I've read it's not that easy so is there a chance that these 720p were never really running at an actual 360? who knows...

Either way they will possibly get rid of the 4xAA and replace it with FXAA or MLAA on this new game which should free some resources and might give them the power to increase the resolution and hopefully improve the ugly shadows.

Really curious to see the game in action and especially the new facial animation. :)

plagiarize said:
So not quite like I remembered. It didn't let them use a better alpha technique but a cheaper one. Still, less alpha should mean we get 720p.
Click to expand...

Interesting find - so the "problem" with their engine is the heavy use of alphas...now I'm more curious to see if there will be any new improvements on the new game IQ-wise and how they will make it happen.
 
P

plagiarize

Banned
Feindflug said:
Yeah from what I remember Eurogamer & DF said that they had videos from the game less than a year before release that were 720p but with heavy tearing and frame-rate issues...I have to ask though. is it that easy for developers to change the res of the game? From what I've read it's not that easy so is there a chance that these 720p were never really running at an actual 360? who knows...

Either way they will possibly get rid of the 4xAA and replace it with FXAA or MLAA on this new game which should free some resources and might give them the power to increase the resolution and hopefully improve the ugly shadows.

Really curious to see the game in action and especially the new facial animation. :)
Click to expand...
MLAA does a good job on alpha too, though that might not be relevant relevant to Night Springs. DF were certain that those videos from late 2009 were running on real hardware. They sure looked like it with the tearing and such.
 
A

aDDiKt24

Banned
Am extremely excited for the reveal on December (10th?). So many questions and looking a little concerned about the environment from the pic. I was one of the people that loved the forrest from 1.

Hopefully we get back to the forrest at some point (Im sure we will). Looking forward to seeing how Alice is coping.
 
B

Buttonbasher

Member
aDDiKt24 said:
Am extremely excited for the reveal on December (10th?). So many questions and looking a little concerned about the environment from the pic. I was one of the people that loved the forrest from 1.

Hopefully we get back to the forrest at some point (Im sure we will). Looking forward to seeing how Alice is coping.
Click to expand...
I liked the forest, but I feel that Alan Wake kinda gave me all the forest I need. The majority of that game takes place in a forest, all the while the town of Bright Falls keeps teasing how interesting it is before Alan wanders back into the woods. I'm all for Wake getting out of the forest whenever he can.
 
O

op_ivy

Fallen Xbot (cannot continue gaining levels in this class)
derFeef said:
Yeah I hope they go all out with the craziness. Night Springs seems the right lead feature for that.
Click to expand...

i expect a tv with an eye quickly looking right and left somewhere in this title
 
D

derFeef

Member
DarkChild said:
Moderator at B3D said its native 720p, not bullshot. Hmm...
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Yep.
This isn't the thread for that. In terms of IQ and pixel counting, the presence of aliasing on the neon sign and the lower resolution in the light ray suggests the screenshot is taken from in-engine, and hence is a legitimate representation of the game's rendering resolution and AA amount, although JPEGing makes that hard to discern acurately. But looks native 720p to me with some form of AA.
Click to expand...
But Alan is pasted in. Really exciting anyway.
 
D

DarkChild

Banned
I know one of their programmers was saying something about MLAA in their official boards so maybe it could be that. Certainly cheaper than whopping 4xMSAA on deferred rendering engine, that thing killed 360.
 
D

dragonelite

Member
derFeef said:
Yep.

But Alan is pasted in. Really exciting anyway.
Click to expand...

You sure about that Alan part.

And does anyone has Link to how they render stuff in Alan Wake because dropping 4xMsaa gives you alot of extra bandwidth and memory. Im just a beginner with the more advanced 3D stuff. So i find it interesting how those AAA devs do their stuff.
 
D

derFeef

Member
Skimming through my Alan Wake archives, I found this interesting picture:

6673bc42.jpg


I can't remember, but was Bright Falls really called Night Springs once?

dragonelite said:
You sure about that Alan part.

And does anyone has Link to how they render stuff in Alan Wake because dropping 4xMsaa gives you alot of extra bandwidth and memory. Im just a beginner with the more advanced 3D stuff. So i find it interesting how those AAA devs do their stuff.
Click to expand...
It certainly has some hints like the lighting, higher res textures (could also be scaled down), and the shadow.
 
S

scently

Member
DarkChild said:
I know one of their programmers was saying something about MLAA in their official boards so maybe it could be that. Certainly cheaper than whopping 4xMSAA on deferred rendering engine, that thing killed 360.
Click to expand...

Exactly what I was saying. In one of their papers they stated that they were using a deferred renderer and that it has difficulties with MSAA talk less about 4xMSAA. Whatever DF said, they were simply speculating on the possible cause for the drop in resolution.

I think at the end of the day, the fact that they needed lots of light and the need for lots of alphas on screen inevitably lead them to the choices they made.
 
B

barkers crest

Member
derFeef said:
I can't remember, but was Bright Falls really called Night Springs once?
Click to expand...

Not sure, but the names are direct inverses of each other.

Bright => Night ( Dark )
Falls ( Fall Season ) => Springs ( Spring Season )
 
Vorg

Vorg

Banned
Just had a crazy idea. What if that guy isn't Alan Wake but
Thomas Zane? Isn't it implied in AW that one of them might have been written into existence by the other? Maybe they look the same.
 
adamsapple

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
derFeef said:
Yep.

But Alan is pasted in. Really exciting anyway.
Click to expand...

Lest people forget the original E3 demo that revealed Alan Wake for the 360 a year before release was also 720p, digital foundry confirmed that it was 720p but ran with lower anti aliasing. Something that they changed during then till the release of the game.

edit : This was already mentioned above, my bad.
 
D

derFeef

Member
chandoog said:
Lest people forget the original E3 demo that revealed Alan Wake for the 360 a year before release was also 720p, digital foundry confirmed that it was 720p but ran with lower anti aliasing. Something that they changed during then till the release of the game.

edit : This was already mentioned above, my bad.
Click to expand...
That demo had quite a few framerate problems and it got called out for that. But if AW had not such good alpha quality, the game would look much worse so let's hope they worked on that a little bit.

barkers crest said:
Not sure, but the names are direct inverses of each other.

Bright => Night ( Dark )
Falls ( Fall Season ) => Springs ( Spring Season )
Click to expand...
Nice. Love those little things you do not notice, and when someone points it out you go "ohhh, sure!".
 
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