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[Trup1aya]

well i pretty much dont care about MP/Coop/pseudo-social features in games at all (since my brother died) so those i dont count as "my gaming" and online-only requirement for a game with support of solo play is ]travesty.. (to name a few games ... SimCity at launch, AC2, Darkspore, Diablo3pc,...)
Also i have not so stable internet connection and really bad experience with some of those
to name a few in recent years ...Error 37 (still cant stomach that poeple on consoles can play it offline) and various deaths of HC characters in D3, unsaved cities in SC5 even though i save it quite often, fucked up save in NFSRivals thx to "server migration" while playing solo campaign whileconnected to online, various corrupted "Cloud" savegames (mostly Uplay and Origin)....
but i guess thats a downside of living on countryside where better connection isnt available

Travesty? really? I get that not everyone is in a situation where they could benefit from single player games with online required features... But that doesn't mean those types of games shouldn't exist... There's enough games to cover both ends of the spectrum I think...

Those that do have a stable internet connection might appreciate the types of experiences it could bring... I for one haven't disconnected my console from the Internet since I bought it. So I welcome games with such requirements, so long as it brings about some interesting quality.

 

[cm osi]

if this will influence only online gaming i'm fine.....cloud computing in single player? no thanks. i hope it stays there in the multiplayer.

 

[OEM]

GTAVI - Pedestrians and traffic , city management.

This makes lot of sense.

 

[Trup1aya]

Future gaming runs on chips so powerful that they can single-handedly stimulate all the computations by them-self; without the need of an external "computation" farm.

Cloud computing is maybe today's solution but its not the future of gaming.

No matter how powerful your chips are locally, an external farm will always be able to add to that capacity...

It'll be a while before we see a peice of silicon that can do the kind of processing we've seen in the Crackdown demo at a consumer friendly price.

 

[Chris1]

Kampfheld posted a few gifs with grass splines a while back.

He listed some other examples in which the cloud could be used but I can't remember what. I think wildlife footprints was one example he gave.

Edit:

This is what I am allowed to share.

Running in real-time on XBO. Very early wip, so don't care for the lighting and so on. It is a very basic frequency test where the grass splines update 12 times a second. This is nothing special so far. The cool thing is tho that the start and endpoints of our splines influenced by wind and objects are being calculated by Azure. This means: the physic calculations you see are costing us pretty much no local power (excluding GPU ofc). We can use the saved power for other things - like AI, animations and so on. We are very proud of it - especially since we completely eliminated any chance of clipping. I just wanted to add that here.

Spoiler

And no, this won't be a golf/grass/whatever simulator - I just thought maybe it is interesting to see

I know GAF "in general" is very pessimistic about the cloud. And yes, somehow I can understand that - because so far, there weren't that much games that really took advantage of server calculations. To be honest, no new-gen so far really did (Titanfall touched 5% of the possibilities ...). And this is also why I try to be very careful about the words I choose.

No. You can not boost your games resolution with Azure. And no. You can not create better lighting effects with Azure. But, if you focus on it, you can still boost the overall graphical look of your game by a mile. We are currently creating a game. But in fact, we are kind of creating two-in-one. One with Azure available, and one for offline only. Everything you code, you need to code for two scenerarios. This is a ton of work. if online = dynamic grass; if offline=static grass ... To say it very simple. And so on.That's why we are currently thinking about going "online-only". But to be very open to you, we have some fear about that. Obviously. The gaming community is very careful when they hear "online-only" ... Games like Sim City simply ... Well, did it wrong.

If I could show you a screen comparison of our latest build right now - Azure on/off (no, sorry, I can't ...), you would understand what I am talking about. Wind, dynamically moving vegetations, footprints that stay for hours and even wildlife nearly without losing any local CPU power. This is just awesome in the right situations.

I know MS has some own projects in the works, too, that will go all-in with the Azure servers. Crackdown is the already known example.

That's all I can say for now. Really. I'm out here!

 

[Triggerhappytel]

I haven't watched the videos yet - I'll check it out later when I'm alone in the office, but if the whole power of the cloud thing is real and tangible, why haven't more MS games used this? We're two years into this gen now and I think they only time they've used it was Forza 5's AI drivers? Was it implemented in Screamride too?

It's going to be fun to see what happens when the flood gates open and thousands of players start playing this, hehe.

I mean, the immense server power behind Battle.net consistently crumbles from just handling normal mulitplayer (way way less intensive for the server than this) when they have big new releases (wow expansions, diablo 3 etc).

Seeing this run in tech demos means nothing to me.

I imagine MS will be better prepared for this than most, but it will be interesting to see how the servers hold.

Enemy AI

Then all local resources can be used for render purposes

This is a good one. One area games truly need to move forward in.

 

[Lady Siara]

The problems with AI aren't a problem of processing power, though.

Not wholly, no, but designing an AI that has a multitude of realistic variables (taking into account its surroundings, foes, various equipment considerations, etc.) rather than just being good at killing you would start to get resource heavy, wouldn't it?

I'm out of my element here so feel free to correct me.

 

[Trup1aya]

I haven't watched the videos yet - I'll check it out later when I'm alone in the office, but if the whole power of the cloud thing is real and tangible, "why haven't more MS games used this?We're two years into this gen now and I think they only time they've used it was Forza 5's AI drivers? Was it implemented in Screamride too?

Because the middlewear used to make it work was still in development...

 

[Clear]

I don't care how well it demonstrates, lets see what happens when its rolled out to a large number of people with varying quality of service from their network infrastructure.

We've seen enough times already this gen with titles like DriveClub and MCC that unforseen problems can arise as user volume increases. Its not magic, its just data transfer - and that flow can get clogged and interrupted in numerous ways.

 

[Collateral22]

Think of MP features, can't see it being used in SP. DICE should look into using it for BF5 for better destruction.

 

[BeforeU]

NPCs

 

[Trup1aya]

The problems with AI aren't a problem of processing power, though.

Not wholly, we could definitely benefit from more complex sub routines, which is a matter of programming... But the more complex the routine, the more processing power it would take... And that processing part of the problem grows as the number of AI characters increases. That's why, typically, the more characters a game has on screen, the dumber those characters tend to be...

 

[LukasTaves]

The problems with AI aren't a problem of processing power, though.

But AI subroutines can require lots of processing, like visibility checks, path finding... Current games usually pre bake path find information and use in real time, and if the geometry changes they re-evaluate. With the cloud you could have possibly thousands of NPCs reacting to dynamic world changes. (Could be useful for a RTS with terrain deformation or something like that lol)

Edit: Another would be perfect for cloud: Procedural changes to the world, based on player input. Remember Fable's 1 trees? We could get that. If we destroy a city over time it could become ruins taken by vegetation. Or even more complex scenarios like launching a nuke over city and seeing the results later, or stuff like that.

Basically, anything that would be cool to have on all games, but could use too much resources (be it memory or processing power) could benefit from it.

 

[Bl@de]

In singleplayer games? I hope no use at all. Too easy for publishers to turn off servers and say "sorry game doesn't work anymore" when sequels arrive. Because you know ... it's too expensive to maintain cloud servers for people who play old games. Just buy the new one.

In multiplayer? Go crazy and use it for everything.

 

[rrc1594]

I wonder what other games MS has plan to use this with. Maybe Halo 6

 

[tokkun]

Neural networks and deep learning seems like one of the most likely use cases.

Contextual AI would also be a huge step forward for RPGs. Pretty much everyone who has ever played an RPG has lamented how townspeople don't really react naturally to context. This is especially jarring with more sandbox-like RPGs. For instance a Deathclaw might chase me to the gates of Megaton where I kill it with a mini-nuke in Fallout 3, and the dialog of the guy standing at the gate doesn't change at all afterward. Or how you can be jumping around like a madman in the middle of dialog with a character in Half Life 2 and you only get a momentary reaction at best. The state-of-the-art right now is like a binary switch between friendly and hostile that only flips with a fairly limited number of actions like attacking them or completing a questline. You can imagine a more sophisticated system that uses deep learning to analyze a player's actions from a character's perspective and assign more nuanced views (e.g. awed, frightened, curious, confused, wary, amused) which would be reflected in their dialog (probably only text-only for now until we have more advancement in speech synthesis).

 

[SEGAvangelist]

I want a Halo civil war game (humans vs. outer colonies) with 24v24 and fully destructible environments.

 

[prudislav]

Travesty? really? I get that not everyone is in a situation where they could benefit from single player games with online required features... But that doesn't mean those types of games shouldn't exist... There's enough games to cover both ends of the spectrum I think...

Those that do have a stable internet connection might appreciate the types of experiences it could bring... I for one haven't disconnected my console from the Internet since I bought it. So I welcome games with such requirements, so long as it brings about some interesting quality.

I guess you misunderstood what I wanted to tell. Travesty personally for me is what AC2 did , or Diablo 3 console vs pc did on this part ... or for example Darkspore which was ok-ish solo/coop game, but which is now dead(not sure if all server but here its dead even for solo)
I didnt say that there shouldn't exist SP games with online features, but there should always be an option to turn such a features off in games with singleplayer option ... like for example Dark Souls, which can be easily played solo/offline even though i has pretty great online layer

 

[FunkyDealer]

Something like Halo 5's Warzone mode could make use of the cloud for handling it's AI and matchmaking, maybe even some graphical effects, to give the local console more processing time for other aspects.

 

[Dabanton]

Kampfheld posted a few gifs with grass splines a while back.

He listed some other examples in which the cloud could be used but I can't remember what. I think wildlife footprints was one example he gave.

Edit:

I remember those posts. So Kampfheld got permabanned? would have liked to see what else he could talk about.

 

[Jacobi]

There aren't a lot of cool uses for this and this won't be relevant for VR (latency)

 

[Chris1]

I remember those posts. So Kampfheld got permabanned? would have liked to see what else he could talk about.

I'm not sure, Dave Jones posted here saying he isn't working on Crackdown which got him banned but pretty much everything he said lined up exactly with how it turned out to be so it would seem he's at Sumo Digital, not Cloudgine/ReAgent and Dave just didn't know that I guess?

Don't know if he's perm banned or if it's temp but I hope he's allowed back, would be interesting to see what he has to say now since I think most people are a believer of the cloud now after seeing the CD gameplay.

 

[EloKa]

There are games with a far better physical destruction than this Crackdown 3 demo. And those games are already some years old and didn't use "the cloud" in every 2nd sentence.

Calling dedicated servers The Cloud and acting like it is some magic stuff which will boost the game experience still reminds me of the blast processing.
I will keep looking at it like some marketing gag to fool some people unless they show something relevant some day.

 

[tokkun]

In singleplayer games? I hope no use at all. Too easy for publishers to turn off servers and say "sorry game doesn't work anymore" when sequels arrive. Because you know ... it's too expensive to maintain cloud servers for people who play old games. Just buy the new one.

In multiplayer? Go crazy and use it for everything.

Depends on how these systems are implemented. If the servers are all customized on a game-specific basis, you have a problem. However if Microsoft develop standard APIs for doing things like physics and AI - think like a "DirectCloud" they same way they developed DirectX - then it might not be a problem at all because the same servers can work for old and new games.

 

[Dabanton]

There are games with a far better physical destruction than this Crackdown 3 demo. And those games are already some years old and didn't use "the cloud" in every 2nd sentence.

Calling dedicated servers The Cloud and acting like it is some magic stuff which will boost the game experience still reminds me of the blast processing.
I will keep looking at it like some marketing gag to fool some people unless they show something relevant some day.

And what are those games?

 

[rrc1594]

There are games with a far better physical destruction than this Crackdown 3 demo. And those games are already some years old and didn't use "the cloud" in every 2nd sentence.

Calling dedicated servers The Cloud and acting like it is some magic stuff which will boost the game experience still reminds me of the blast processing.
I will keep looking at it like some marketing gag to fool some people unless they show something relevant some day.

What games?

 

[Trup1aya]

I guess you misunderstood what I wanted to tell. Travesty personally for me is what AC2 did , or Diablo 3 console vs pc did on this part ... or for example Darkspore which was ok-ish solo/coop game, but which is now dead(not sure if all server but here its dead even for solo)
I didnt say that there shouldn't exist SP games with online features, but there should always be an option to turn such a features off in games with singleplayer option ... like for example Dark Souls, which can be easily played solo/offline even though i has pretty great online layer

I get what your saying but I disagree... If a developer can't deliver their desired SP experience without online functionality, then I can't argue with them choosing to skip an offline mode altogether... I say, devote your time making the game you want to make, and just know that it may not be for everyone...

 

[AkelisRain]

I think the technology is interesting, but at what cost is my concern. I rather make use of local hardware. We will see in the coming future what kind of impact this will have.

 

[EloKa]

And what are those games?

for example the multiplayer shooter Breach from 2010. Didn't look as fancy but absolute everything was physically based and destroyable.

Also there are some voxel engines which are quite impressive.

 

[Trup1aya]

There are games with a far better physical destruction than this Crackdown 3 demo. And those games are already some years old and didn't use "the cloud" in every 2nd sentence.

Please name at least one of them...

Edit: beaten

breach is definitely not displaying a more complex physics simulation

I searched for Breach expecting to at least see a city block being leveled... Turns out you were BSing... Not even remotely close

 

[LukasTaves]

I'm not sure, Dave Jones posted here saying he isn't working on Crackdown which got him banned but pretty much everything he said lined up exactly with how it turned out to be so it would seem he's at Sumo Digital, not Cloudgine/ReAgent and Dave just didn't know that I guess?

Don't know if he's perm banned or if it's temp but I hope he's allowed back, would be interesting to see what he has to say now since I think most people are a believer of the cloud now after seeing the CD gameplay.

Well, he did teased Banjo at E3, and that didn't happened. But it does feel like Ms is holding back on some announcements, so I dunno...

 

[Chris1]

Well, he did teased Banjo at E3, and that didn't happened. But it does feel like Ms is holding back on some announcements, so I dunno...

Banjo was at E3 via Rare Replay, just not the one we all wanted or expected but he never exactly said new.

I hope that wasn't what he was referring to when he said Banjo, but technically he wasn't lying and it did come true.

 

[LukasTaves]

for example the multiplayer shooter Breach from 2010. Didn't look as fancy but absolute everything was physically based and destroyable.

Also there are some voxel engines which are quite impressive.

I saw that video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=38&v=G1NY2LpeIfY

And that is in no way "far better" than what they showed for crackdown.

Banjo was at E3 via Rare Replay, just not the one we all wanted or expected but he never exactly said new.

I hope that wasn't what he was referring to when he said Banjo, but technically he wasn't lying and it did come true.

Well, I guess that's right.

So yeah, bring him back

 

[Zedox]

for example the multiplayer shooter Breach from 2010. Didn't look as fancy but absolute everything was physically based and destroyable.

Also there are some voxel engines which are quite impressive.

Now did every single piece that was "destroyed" stay there for the entire session (not going into oblivion) and was intractable (with the player and each other) for that session on the same scale as crackdown?

Just because a game has destroyable places doesn't mean it can do it on the same scale as crackdown. BF4 has destructible buildings too.

EDIT: I just watched the youtube that Trup1aya posted. Please exit the building Eloka.

 

[EloKa]

Please name at least one of them...

Edit: beaten

breach is definitely not displaying a more complex physics simulation

I searched for Breach expecting to at least see a city block being leveled... Turns out you were BSing... Not even remotely close

They were leveling the whole map back then in 2010.
But yeah I guess you're right. Shiny physics is better than mathematical physics.

Now did every single piece that was "destroyed" stay there for the entire session (not going into oblivion) and was intractable (with the player and each other) for that session on the same scale as crackdown?

Just because a game has destroyable places doesn't mean it can do it on the same scale as crackdown. BF4 has destructible buildings too.

The stuff didn't dissappear and you could keep interacting with it. Ofc all players in the map did share the same environment.

BF4 has specific areas that can trigger the scripted destruction. That's something else than actually really destroying anything that you want.

 

[Tom Penny]

VR randomly generated maze simulators.

 

[Pokemaniac]

Game devs should really focus more on being able to make functional games before they even think of trying to incorporate cloud computing. Introducing networking to places where it didn't exist before is only going to introduce more bugs. If cloud computing becomes common for games anytime soon, y'all should be prepared for AAA games to reach new levels of broken.

 

[Horns]

AI and background pedestrians/traffic would be interesting.

 

[Cynn]

Perhaps a game where your actions have immediate ramifications across time or multiple dimensions. Pick up an item and watch the future change not having it in real time.

 

[Trup1aya]

They were leveling the whole map back then in 2010.

But yeah I guess you're right. Shiny pysics is better than mathematical physics.

What other physics is there besides mathematical?

It's all physics computations... The computations required to make Breach happen aren't nearly as complex as those required to make the Crackdown demo happen... That's painfully obvious to anyone with sense...

 

[hodgy100]

They were leveling the whole map back then in 2010.
But yeah I guess you're right. Shiny physics is better than mathematical physics.



The stuff didn't dissappear and you could keep interacting with it. Ofc all players in the map did share the same environment.

BF4 has specific areas that can trigger the scripted destruction. That's something else than actually really destroying anything that you want.

Not all of BF4 was scripted destruction. jsut the "levolution" stuff. There were many buildings that would dynamicaly get destroyed. it didnt look as cool as CD3 though.

 

[Zedox]

They were leveling the whole map back then in 2010.
But yeah I guess you're right. Shiny physics is better than mathematical physics.



The stuff didn't dissappear and you could keep interacting with it. Ofc all players in the map did share the same environment.

BF4 has specific areas that can trigger the scripted destruction. That's something else than actually really destroying anything that you want.

In Breach, you can see objects disappearing (something that Crackdown doesn't do with the cloud compute) and the objects are around the same shape (a little rectangular block) and size, whereas Crackdown is on a whole different level. These things are only alike in that they destroy buildings into blocks...how they go about it is on two different levels.

 

[Trup1aya]

I want a Halo civil war game (humans vs. outer colonies) with 24v24 and fully destructible environments.

Giggidy giggidy

 

[EloKa]

... you guys know what "the cloud" is and what it does .. right?

 

[NippleViking]

Chromehounds sequel with huge online battles where landslides and avalanches can be triggered; rockface walls of stone-valleys can be shot-out and collapsed to halt pursuit or prevent enemy retreat. Straight-up MechAssault battles through cities, strafing right through collapsible buildings.

Upped destruction for multiplayer in Phantom Dust (RIP).

Spoiler

Hundred-player 3D Doritos Crash Course

 

[AmaterasuOni]

I love how they find new ways to implement DRM. Ingenious!

I don't want this future, no thanks. I'd rather see normal destruction and play offline if possible.

 

[Chris1]

... you guys know what "the cloud" is and what it does .. right?

For anyone that doesn't know what it can do these gifs should help explain:

 

[Spring-Loaded]

For anyone that doesn't know what it can do these gifs should help explain:

are there any that aren't 10fps?"

 

[EloKa]

For anyone that doesn't know what it can do these gifs should help explain:

so .. the cloud can generate gifs?

 

[Triggerhappytel]

Because the middlewear used to make it work was still in development...

So were they intentionally misleading customers or underestimating how much work it would be to get 'The Cloud' offloading calculations when they were throwing it around as a buzzword before the Xbox's launch?