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Assassin's Creed 2 lead accuses Shadow of Mordor of reusing code/anims

SJRB

SJRB

Gold Member
Rewatching the trailer, the little segment at the start where he climbs the red guardtower is frightningly identical to basic Assassin's Creed climbing. From the "run up the wall and grab the ledge" to the ledge shimmy to the quick climb.

Man, that guy might be right haha. This is weird.


edit: watch this youtube video of the Florence tower climb. The ledge grab at the start, the fluent fast climb.
 
S

soultron

Banned
Xpliskin said:
This guy is right.


It REALLY looks like they've reverse-engineered AC animation files to use them in their own game.
Click to expand...

You can reverse-engineer and recreate gameplay systems without having any code. Some things you'd need someone (designers, programmers, etc.) with experience of all the things happening under the hood in order to understand how certain things are accomplished, of course. For example, you might need a designer or AI programmer to analyze footage/play themselves to guess that sometimes in FPS games enemies that aren't shown in the player's view do less damage or have a lower chance of hitting the player.

Take my opinion with a grain of salt since I'm not a programmer or designer myself. I could be entirely wrong here.
 
N

Nome

Member
That's some Matrix shit, knowing if someone stole your code based on a gameplay video.
Only way to even suspect that is if he spots the same bugs in both games.
 
F

Forsaken82

Member
If any code and assets are being used, its Rocksteady's engine for the Arkham games (I am 90% sure that Rocksteady is sharing code in regards to the combat engine, if not the entire open world engine). As for the animations, in my opinion, there are only so many ways you can traverse environments and if you are going to take inspiration for that sort of thing, AC is a good starting point.
 
S

soultron

Banned
Forsaken82 said:
If any code and assets are being used, its Rocksteady's engine for the Arkham games (I am 90% sure that Rocksteady is sharing code in regards to the combat engine, if not the entire open world engine). As for the animations, in my opinion, there are only so many ways you can traverse environments and if you are going to take inspiration for that sort of thing, AC is a good starting point.
Click to expand...

Agreed 100% about the AC bits. If Monolith didn't have WB publishing, I'd make the same argument about reverse-engineering Batman's combat system. Remember Me seemed like a case for that, though I've not played enough of either game (maybe 30 mins of each game) to really say that for sure.

Remember Me and Batman could've been a case of both devs starting at similar times, coming to the same idea, but one obviously releasing before the other. That happens too. AC has been around too long to really suggest that in relation to Shadow of Mordor, of course.
 
M

MYeager

Member
The climbing, rope walk, areal lunge, and a couple of the sword execution animations looked very similar to AC2.

Just made me more interested in this LotR game.
 
J

jett

D-Member
Error404 said:
then watch the rest you chump. How can you formulate a worthwhile opinion after 90 seconds
Click to expand...

I watched the whole video actually, but 90 seconds was enough to call a spade a spade. Eagle vision was just too much. Sux that you got banned tho.

Grief.exe said:
After the first 90 seconds is where it honestly starts to deviate from the AC formula into more of the Akrham games territory.
Click to expand...

It's mostly AC though. They must have their reasoning for making the game like this, but I think the amount of stuff they borrow is a bit ridiculous. They're not even trying to make it look different.
 
D

Doc Holliday

SPOILER: Columbus finds America
I doubt this is true, a couple of things could have happened...

1. They both hired the same guy/studio to do mocap

2.Somehow mono got their hands on animation files...doubt it unless an animator was able to leave ubi with a usb drive. Even that would be extremely risky for Monolith.

3.Art director tells his animators, I really dig Assassin's creed animations, copy it!

I vote for 3.
 
A

Azure Dream

Member
Haven't seen the trailer yet, but if they really are the same, my money would be on "they stuck them in as placeholders to get the game working and the flow down, and forgot to pull them out in time for the trailer, or their animation work isn't ready yet." Again, that's only if they are actually the same.

Nome said:
That's some Matrix shit, knowing if someone stole your code based on a gameplay video.
Only way to even suspect that is if he spots the same bugs in both games.
Click to expand...

It really isn't. As he said, when you spend two years staring at an animation, tweaking, retweaking it, seeing it in other contexts every workday, you can usually pick that sort of thing out of a crowd. Especially because you can see every little flaw in it, every mistake you made, and they bug the hell out of you.

Besides, it's not Matrix shit to be able to pick out stolen textures from some indie RPG, is it? Roughly the same thing.
 
M

Mr Fahrenheit

Member
They're clearly trying to bank on the popularity of AC, but saying it copies animations from AC? Nah. You could say it copies any climb-y game because that's just how people climb irl so they make the animations as such.
His walking animation is hilarious though. Dude's walking like he accidentally used IcyHot instead of deodorant.
 
Muffdraul

Muffdraul

Member
ReaperXL07 said:
It's also not something ass creed invented either. I mean if it were Ubi soft would have lots of lawsuits on their hands. Toukiden uses a vision system that is similar, as does soul sacrifice, and a ton of other games from past and present.
Click to expand...

There's a difference between multiple games sharing the general concept of "hyper vision" or whatever you want to call it... and the wholesale lifting of the "look and feel" of one particular game's take on it. This case certainly seems to fall under the latter.
 
D

dreamfall

Member
Whoa, this definitely is using something from the AC engine.

I mean, the parkour animations, the mini-map, even the button prompts to attack- it's all eerily reminiscent.

The "Wraith world" vision is Eagle Eye- it's so blatant!
 
S

scitek

Member
Ninja Scooter said:
I mean, I guess so many hands and eyes go through an AC game that it's possible someone who went on to work for Monolith took something with him, but it seems like a pretty big accusation to be making on twitter. Maybe twitter dude should have taken it to his bosses or something instead of potentially defaming a company to the masses if it turns out not to be true.
Click to expand...

Yeah it's pretty unprofessional.
 
X

xxracerxx

Don't worry, I'll vouch for them.
Those ropes spanning two structures are straight out of AC games and the climbing does look similar.
 
S

SketchTheArtist

Member
If the dude worked on the game's navigational coding, he probably picked up on some stuff in that video. A certain angle the character lunges at, the end and the beginning of an animation blending into another, etc.

It's quite plausible. It's one thing to ''copy'' a feature/mechanic and it's another re-using the same stuff.
 
F

FantasticMrFoxdie

Mumber
Yeah the traversing and some of the combat definitely looked like it. So I wonder how it did actually get across the two games. lol


On another note though, LTTP on the Shadow of Mordor gameplay and wow it looks pretty damn good.
 
K

KorrZ

Member
I sincerely doubt this is actual stolen code/animations. AC has some of the best traversal animations for parkour/freerunning so if I was making a game based on that, I would try to copy AC animations as closely as possible as well. I can't blame them for that.
 
C

Chris_C

Member
The game sounds and looks awesome!

Not sure how folks can't see that the climbing animations are taken directly from Assassin's Creed though.

That said, it's in pre-alpha so it's possible some animations are only placeholder.

EDIT: To be clear, I have no issue with derivative gameplay systems as long as they feel good and work in context. Eagle vision is not unique, even if the visual effect used here is overly similar. The same goes for the AC combat system.
 
X

XANDER CAGE

Member
We're in that awkward zone where Assassin's Creed is still unique enough that anyone using or iterating on its mechanics are automatically "ripoffs," not just part of the same genre. Feels like the early 2000s all over again with the GTA clone finger pointing.
 
J

J-Man

Member
I was surprised at how similar some of the traversal look. Even some of the art assets look the same; the cables connecting buildings together look identical! However, unless WB and UBI have some sort of monetary arrangement, I highly doubt it's using the same code or assets. I guess we could wait and see if there is anything in the credits of the game.

I think this game looks interesting, depending on how those systems connecting player actions to the world/enemies actually work.
 
N

Naminator

Banned
The animations are obviously very similar to those in AssCreed games, but I'm more interested to know how the fuck can that guy see game code through a video?

Is he The One?

edit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmiF-_7PX3c

I just saw that video, the gameplay looks great, graphics and animations are good too.

I don't know, this game kinda looks better than AssCreed to me.
 
Macmanus

Macmanus

Member
g80xFEW.png


You'd think software devs would know that animation and code aren't synonymous.
 
Q

Quadraphonic

Member
Naminator said:
The animations are obviously very similar to those in AssCreed games, but I'm more interested to know how the fuck can that guy see game code through a video?
Click to expand...

As a programmer, you can look for a lot of things.

Things like:
Camera behavior (How it swoops up after hitting a ledge)
Animation blending (How one animation fades into another)
AI behavior (Idle animation timings, combat responses, etc.)

Even things like lip movement or particle effects can be dead giveaways. If you spend a good 2 years of your life working on a project, you see lots of things that no one else ever would catch.
 
S

smik

Member
Just when i get pumped for a new IP and even possible franchise this comes up, it does certainly look like some animations a really similar, just hope it doesnt effect the development/release.

regardless will be buying this on release and im not even a LOR fan
 
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