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Witcher 3 downgrade arguments in here and nowhere else

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D

Darg

Neo Member
Gbraga said:
image_the_witcher_3_wild_hunt-22509-2651_0001.jpg
Click to expand...

Someone sure went on a tree cutting spree.
 
L

Lunar15

Member
BigTnaples said:
Except IGN showed what settings they were running on and they had HBAO toggled off.

http://au.ign.com/videos/2015/05/13/...ign-plays-live

Same with Hairworks and Lightshafts.
Click to expand...

I wonder if the french stream of the PC version was on ultra. Do we know?

That said, I'm not putting much stock in the whole "THEY HAVEN'T SHOWN ULTRA!" stuff. Why wouldn't they show it? I dunno, the game's gonna look good, but it's not like those settings are going to dramatically change everything.
 
S

stabiliser

Neo Member
pakkit said:
Do you know how videogame development works? There's no way there was a playable version of this game from 2 years ago that looked better than what we have today. They likely used renders and what they had to make it look as approximate as they could to a final version. It's a shame that in order to build hype you have to show off a game before its finalized, but that's the AAA industry in videogames. This is hardly as egregious as, say, Ubisoft's bullshots of yore, or Dark Soul's II removal of lighting systems.
Click to expand...

That is not ture, your spinning this around to make the game indstry look bad and the gamers good. Just look at EA and Battelfront and how outraged people are that they did not show any gameplay footage. They are not forceing this upon us, we are forceing it upon them.

Look at every Witcher 3 interview and what is allways the first or last question? "Is there anything new about Cyberpunk." Then they show us stuff about Cyberpunk because we keep bugging them, but of course what they show us is "Work in progresse" because they have no fucking time time travel device to show us the finished game that does not exist yet. And then 2 yeas later when the game comes out and it does not look exactly the same, and certainly it will change, we turn around and blame them. "How dare they, why..." Why? Because we asked them to. It is not just to build up hype.

We are part of the problem too, if you even see it as a problem because i certainly don't. You might need a disclaimer that coffee is hot, you might get burned. But i and many other people won't. I know that coffe is hot, i know that an E3 trailer is not a binding contract, that stuff might change, nevertheless i want it. I want the information and i want to know wtf is going on with Cyberpunk. If you can not grasp the concept of trailers than stop watching E3 but don't ruin it for me.
 
N

nOoblet16

Member
CyberPunked said:
Witcher 2 had volumetric light shafts, so this almost certainly will do too.
Click to expand...

No it didn't it was just a 2D screen space effect. That would only exist so long as the camera is looking at the lightsource directly, it would disappear when the lightsource is out of view or when you view the lightsource from the side (meaning there is no actual volume, the shafts are just 2D and in screen space)

Dictator93 said:
I wonder if light shafts means boring old (and super cheap) crepuscular rays... or actually volumetric lighting.
Click to expand...

It's probably just a 2D effect and the setting turns it off and is there for people who don't like it, but then it could also be Nvidia "God rays" like Farcry 4 (although the poor implementation took away from the game's look in that instance)
 
K

Kalamari Rimbo

Banned
Darg said:
Wasen't the the one that had more tree's from the 2013? or am i mistaken? Or were both of them (more and lesser tree version shown within the same year?). I only really remember the more density one from 2013.
Click to expand...

Earliest source I could find for that image was 2014.
 
C

cryphicking

Neo Member
It's pretty Obvious to me that the 2013 footage was built on a linear content creation tool, such as cinebox. Such exaggerated cinematic footage was built for marketing propose. Just like 80% other games' depute trailers these days, nothing special.

Many rendering technology from cinema creation software aren't built for real time, and seems like CDPR devs decided to go for the shortcut when they didn't have time to finish most of their in game assets by their 2013 E3 depute deadline. And they believed or at least will try their best to build some alpha assets to match what their showcased in original trailers. but they can not. . So "downgraded" isn't the correct word to address it, since devs never cut down anything they built, and many alpha assets from the original trailers were indeed imported in game assets from what they had at time it's just they are unable to build the technology to reach their initial goals in the end.

Even a " in game footage" with UI can be done in playback format. My advise, no matter how impressive a trailer looked, if you don't see a person behind the controller/keyboard handling the action.... then adjust your expectation on graphic accordingly.

Also, that "downgrade PC for console" conspiracy theory sounds pretty laughable.
 
J

JoeyJungle

Banned
Gbraga said:
Holy shit that's a massive difference.

Wow.

I'll definitely try to run Wild Hunt with HBAO now, even if I have to make some sacrifices.
Click to expand...

I think the SSAO version looks better? The shadows in the HBAO+ one looks kinda strange to me.

Confession: I'm not a big graphics tech guy and don't know what I'm talking about
 
W

wanderingprostheyltite

Member
I know the experience of playing a game in front of me is always more visually pleasing than watching even hq streams/videos, so I'm hoping that will be a factor here, but I know miracles ain't gonna happen either in regards to things like foliage density/quality, lod and what not.

We even have any other open world games coming out by end of year that seems to be pushing things tech wise? Was really hoping this was gonna be a benchmark for some time to come.
 
V

Valient

Member
Are people honestly so offended about a perceive downgrade in graphics when compare to trailer use to hype the game and not buy the game?

I mean it seems like everyone complaining about the graphics difference will still buy the game but still want to make a thing about ia downgrade? I MEAN DO YOU WANT THEM TO TAKE THE GAME BACK AND MAKE IT ALL BETTER? Ok CDPR cancel the release and start over till its exactly like the trailers, right?

People are just looking to fault something that cannot be change at this point without going back and spending months on things that could not run on consoles or require crazy spec PC.
 
G

Gbraga

Member
Source for the pic I posted:

http://www.gamersyde.com/news_the_witcher_3_new_screenshots-14276_en.html

June 2013

JoeyJungle said:
I think the SSAO version looks better? The shadows in the HBAO+ one looks kinda strange to me.

Confession: I'm not a big graphics tech guy and don't know what I'm talking about
Click to expand...

Well, personally I thought it was a massive improvement in this game, but I've used lesser forms of AO in other games just because I preferred them as well, so I definitely see what you mean, just go with whatever you prefer.
 
T

tuxfool

Banned
cryphicking said:
It's pretty Obvious to me that the 2013 footage was built on a linear content creation tool, such as cinebox. Such exaggerated cinematic footage was built for marketing propose. Just like 80% other games' depute trailers these days, nothing special.

Many rendering technology from cinema creation software aren't built for real time, and seems like CDPR devs decided to go for the shortcut when they didn't have time to finish most of their in game assets by their 2013 E3 depute deadline. And they believed or at least will try their best to build some alpha assets to match what their showcased in original trailers. but they can not. . So "downgraded" isn't the correct word to address it, since devs never cut down anything they built, and many alpha assets from the original trailers were indeed imported in game assets from what they had at time it's just they are unable to build the technology to reach their initial goals in the end.

Even a " in game footage" with UI can be done in playback format. My advise, no matter how impressive a trailer looked, if you don't see a person behind the controller/keyboard handling the action.... then adjust your expectation on graphic accordingly.

Also, that "downgrade PC for console" conspiracy theory sounds pretty laughable.
Click to expand...

Given that journalists saw people playing the game all the way back to E3 2013 you can bet those scenes weren't renders.
 
R

RedSwirl

Junior Member
pakkit said:
Do you know how videogame development works? There's no way there was a playable version of this game from 2 years ago that looked better than what we have today. They likely used renders and what they had to make it look as approximate as they could to a final version. It's a shame that in order to build hype you have to show off a game before its finalized, but that's the AAA industry in videogames. This is hardly as egregious as, say, Ubisoft's bullshots of yore, or Dark Soul's II removal of lighting systems.
Click to expand...

You're forgetting that at the time, CDPR was still giving us a late 2014 release date. In 2013, the game was only a year away. At the time we got the Sword of Destiny trailer, the game was eight months away from its then-February release date, and just under a year away from its current release date.

Also,the assets in all the 2013 trailers -- the textures and character models, are the exact same assets we're getting in the final game (with the exception of the grass and some characters' faces). The only major change was the lighting system. Not to mention we've seen at least two locations that have exactly the same layout between 2013 and the final game.

Personally I think on some level, the 2013 trailers did indeed depict a game that was playable internally at CDPR. At worst E3 2013 and VGX 2013 were target renders with in-game assets. And even Ubisoft has been direct with customers whenever showing off target renders.
 
Y

Yasae

Banned
stabiliser said:
That is not ture, your spinning this around to make the game indstry look bad and the gamers good. Just look at EA and Battelfront and how outraged people are that they did not show any gameplay footage. They are not forceing this upon us, we are forceing it upon them.

Look at every Witcher 3 interview and what is allways the first or last question? "Is there anything new about Cyberpunk." Then they show us stuff about Cyberpunk because we keep bugging them, but of course what they show us is "Work in progresse" because they have no fucking time time travel device to show us the finished game that does not exist yet. And then 2 yeas later when the game comes out and it does not look exactly the same, and certainly it will change, we turn around and blame them. "How dare they, why..." Why? Because we asked them to. It is not just to build up hype.

We are part of the problem too, if you even see it as a problem because i certainly don't. You might need a disclaimer that coffee is hot, you might get burned. But i and many other people won't. I know that coffe is hot, i know that an E3 trailer is not a binding contract, that stuff might change, nevertheless i want it. I want the information and i want to know wtf is going on with Cyberpunk. If you can not grasp the concept of trailers than stop watching E3 but don't ruin it for me.
Click to expand...
It is just to build up hype. This is what I mean by people not actually knowing what they want. Even if "we" were to ask for super duper early footage - which "we" didn't - it's always the wrong choice. There's hardly anything of relevance in early media beyond the fact that the game exists at the time the footage was compiled. Those sneak peeks will become obsolete.

It's not that things become obsolete, it's that obsolete things become marketing because every big game has to be announced and shown 50 years early. Battlefront is a great example, and I'm glad they haven't shown much of it, though were I to be honest it'll probably look much worse than what they've shown now. But to go years without showing much of a game? Or alternatively, to go years showing bits and pieces of an unfinished game? That's really what consumers want? I mean wow, I guess I didn't get the memo.
 
C

Cave Johnson

Member
Lunar15 said:
For one thing, it helps when you're both the creator of every piece of tech in your engine (no middleware) AND you're the developer of the console and know exactly the power it's going to have.
Click to expand...

Quantic Dream is not the developer of the Playstation but their results mirrors the Zelda example. It's just incompetence on 3rd party's part plain and simple. They could've just gone the indie route and finish up the PC version before down-porting to consoles.
 
T

tuxfool

Banned
Cave Johnson said:
Quantic Dream is not the developer of the Playstation but their results mirrors the Zelda example. It's just incompetence on 3rd party's part plain and simple. They could've just gone the indie route and finish up the PC version before down-porting to consoles.
Click to expand...

It is cute that people keep suggesting this as a viable strategy.
 
E

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
The issue with the 2013 footage is that it seems to be a combination of the old renderer (which was more like The Witcher 2) and footage of what they were doing with the new renderer. The old renderer and screenshots, as far as I'm aware, lack stuff like PBR among other things, hence why the texture surfaces frankly look pretty poor compared to how it looks now. Lighting is uniform, flat, and all materials and surfaces look exactly the same.

What likely happened is that, due to being still very early in development, their prototype scenes used in trailers were more or less churning out a vision of asset density they thought looked good and maybe wanted to achieve. Like that big vista; no way that was filled out and fully designed that early. They probably wanted a wide shot to show the world, had the area in development, and filled it full of foliage so it'd look good. As the game continued development they either culled foliage for performance reasons, or it was too dense and didn't play as well as CDPR wanted, culling trees to give more play space.
 
I

icecold1983

Member
EatChildren said:
The issue with the 2013 footage is that it seems to be a combination of the old renderer (which was more like The Witcher 2) and footage of what they were doing with the new renderer. The old renderer and screenshots, as far as I'm aware, lack stuff like PBR among other things, hence why the texture surfaces frankly look pretty poor compared to how it looks now. Lighting is uniform, flat, and all materials and surfaces look exactly the same.

What likely happened is that, due to being still very early in development, their prototype scenes used in trailers were more or less churning out a vision of asset density they thought looked good and maybe wanted to achieve. Like that big vista; no way that was filled out and fully designed that early. They probably wanted a wide shot to show the world, had the area in development, and filled it full of foliage so it'd look good. As the game continued development they either culled foliage for performance reasons, or it was too dense and didn't play as well as CDPR wanted, culling trees to give more play space.
Click to expand...

i disagree with your opening assertion. lighting/shading/materials/textures all looked better to me in the old media on average
 
L

Lunar15

Member
EatChildren said:
The issue with the 2013 footage is that it seems to be a combination of the old renderer (which was more like The Witcher 2) and footage of what they were doing with the new renderer. The old renderer and screenshots, as far as I'm aware, lack stuff like PBR among other things, hence why the texture surfaces frankly look pretty poor compared to how it looks now. Lighting is uniform, flat, and all materials and surfaces look exactly the same.

What likely happened is that, due to being still very early in development, their prototype scenes used in trailers were more or less churning out a vision of asset density they thought looked good and maybe wanted to achieve. Like that big vista; no way that was filled out and fully designed that early. They probably wanted a wide shot to show the world, had the area in development, and filled it full of foliage so it'd look good. As the game continued development they either culled foliage for performance reasons, or it was too dense and didn't play as well as CDPR wanted, culling trees to give more play space.
Click to expand...

This is especially telling when you go back and look at some of the earliest screenshots released. They look weirdly different from the trailer, and definitely not super hot.

The_Witcher_3_Wild_Hunt_Geralt_fighting_multiple_opponents_in_a_village_in_Skellige.png
Click to expand...

Also, I'm curious as to how the game looks compared to the January 2015 footage. It looks largely the same as what we're seeing now, just with more of the PC bells and whistles. Didn't hear too many people making a stink back then. I mean, many of us knew it was down from 2014, but it still looked nice.
 
E

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
icecold1983 said:
i disagree with your opening assertion. lighting/shading/materials/textures all looked better to me in the old media on average
Click to expand...

Aesthetically you might prefer the old look, which is a lot more desaturated and grimier. But I feel that the lighting/material technology is definitely outdated, more or less using the same rendering as The Witcher 2. CDPR hadn't implemented their new rendered at that point. The Sword of Destiny trailer first showcased the improved renderer.
 
I

icecold1983

Member
EatChildren said:
Aesthetically you might prefer the old look, which is a lot more desaturated and grimier. But I feel that the lighting/material technology is definitely outdated, more or less using the same rendering as The Witcher 2. CDPR hadn't implemented their new rendered at that point. The Sword of Destiny trailer first showcased the improved renderer.
Click to expand...

their renderer was heavily degraded, not improved IMO. the only aspects that seem to show any effective PBR are certain character materials. the environment materials look quite poor, lighting is flat, ao is abysmal, water is ancient
 
E

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
icecold1983 said:
their renderer was heavily degraded, not improved IMO. the only aspects that seem to show any effective PBR are certain character materials. the environment materials look quite poor, lighting is flat, ao is abysmal, water is ancient
Click to expand...

I really cannot see how the lighting is flatter than the 2013 screenshots, which to my eyes is objectively worse on a technical level. That shot above Lunar15 posted is a great example.
 
R

Renekton

Member
Kinthalis said:
Optimization has always been 90% about downgrades.

Only console gamers think it's 100% about improving algorithmic efficiency.
Click to expand...
Aw come on, programmers can always improve the codebase.

Last year I was in a software project to improve the runtime of weekly batch programs. We managed to achieve 40%-150% improvements depending on process. As programmers we are definitely multiple tiers below the game engine programmers in skill level.
 
F

fastmower

Member
Kinthalis said:
Optimization has always been 90% about downgrades.

Only console gamers think it's 100% about improving algorithmic efficiency.
Click to expand...
Cut the PC Master Race bullshit. There is an intelligent way to talk about what developers mean by "optimization" and then this childish garbage. Please think before you post such hyperbolic and toxic comments.
 
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