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Season Pass: Giant Pile of Gushing Praise #2
Azherae
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
Let me preface by saying that my position in life allows me to know exactly what all the devs were talking about and how they achieved everything, terminology, etc, therefore this post is not really about 'how cool it is' exactly.
I want to congratulate the team from the bottom of my heart for having the vision, the daring, and the forward thinking to expect and desire this to be possible, even six years ago, because six years ago, the technology to do this at the scale we are seeing, even at the scale they probably envisioned, would not have been viable.
So much of what was shown in that update 'relies' on tech that has become available only recently, both from the input and somewhat even the output perspective, that 'being ready for it' and having that as the main plan from the beginning gives me hope for a ton of things, but anyways, in we go!
1. The wind. Thank you thank you thank you thank you I needed this in an MMORPG so much. Almost all my time with games like Monster Hunter is spent wishing that an MMO could do it, and I explicitly remember being in a windstorm in FFXI and just... thinking how much it would increase the already immersive flow if there was some reaction on my character.
2. The snow effects. I know how these are done, and I know they're not strictly speaking 'very hard to do', but artistically they're really hard to do right and I'm blown away by how precisely placed and perfectly chosen the positions for the snow are, even to the point where it melts perfectly even when the heightmap isn't directly driving it (or maybe it is, and you've taken it even further with new tech).
3. The footsteps. Sound design is so important to this. Memories of 'hating the sound of mud-squelching shoes in Pashhow Marshlands' now rushing back. It's 'obvious', but so many games overlook the obvious, that I am just truly SO appreciative to see a team that is trying to make it to this level.
4. Semirandom flower rotations. I know how these are done too, so for me, the key part is actually just how perfectly placed, spaced, and modeled, the flowers themselves are. They look like they're going to be highly performant, while still probably looking at least not-immersion-breaking even at very close ranges.
5. Mushrooms! The thing about these isn't what we saw, it's the amount of implications for every other biome. The underlying structure used to make the mushrooms work is part of the terrain CODE, I'm almost certain, and that means it can be used for so many other things in so many other places that I expect Verra to be even more of an explorer's paradise than it seemed possible to be.
6. Spawner interactions. This goes along with the mushrooms. This is also part of realizing the way creatures move, and knowing that there's probably some detection in there, a basic implementation capable of making at least the herbivores appear to be grazing. Not sure if it is in, but if you told me it was, I'd believe it. Any creatures that 'spawn and/or move differently due to spring bringing out the shrooms' will just be beyond top tier.
7. The specific implementation of lighting vs fog. Fog models are easy to build but hard to make perform, I think. Maybe it's different now in UE5, but even if it is 'easy now', the artistic skill applied is impressive at least to me, and I work with someone who does this sort of thing for multiple small projects, so I know how a lot of this works too. Will we see denser fog actually 'rolling in'? I'm just imagining this at sea.
8. Cloth physics. Separate from the concept of the wind itself, knowing that even if you can't tie the physical material or shader settings to 'put snow on people's armor', that we're most likely getting 'wind effects', water effects, and a bunch of other minor changes that would reasonably tie into this data, is great. It's 'what I'd expect' from this generation of games, but more importantly, the 'gust' effect on the headdress shows the amount of detail consideration relative to this, and knowing the way it's implemented gives me additional hope for both 'sandstorms' and 'wind effects based on dragon attacks and big spells'.
9. The ice melting. I imagined that one happening in much slower time, and realizing that the probable implementation means that it's a deform and not necessary to re-render, means that tiny bit of ever-so-slow dynamism to keep one feeling like the world is real. It's a touch that I don't think many would even aim for these days, and the games that do that sort of thing enough to care never had the technology available.
10. Rivulets running off stone. I need to go back to get the exact terms used here, to verify that they are what I am thinking of, but I'm gushing right now first. Even if manually placed, I'm going to spend time literally 'watching while the rain causes water to drip and then run off of places'. Knowing that the heightmap puddle method is being used means that a manually placed depression under such a runoff point will add even more realism without even needing to specifically check for a 'runoff-to-surface' interaction, is just so soothing right now.
And above all else, my faith in the other systems is somewhat bolstered by this alone, because the care and dedication shines through in it. I have thought many times over the last few months that if Ashes turns out to be this beautiful, this intentional, this lovingly made, and then messes up its other systems, it will literally make me cry. Now, though I should have had this level of faith before, I believe that it would make you all cry too, and therefore that you won't let it happen.
Thank you, Intrepid, we stand awaiting your next show of love for the genre.
I want to congratulate the team from the bottom of my heart for having the vision, the daring, and the forward thinking to expect and desire this to be possible, even six years ago, because six years ago, the technology to do this at the scale we are seeing, even at the scale they probably envisioned, would not have been viable.
So much of what was shown in that update 'relies' on tech that has become available only recently, both from the input and somewhat even the output perspective, that 'being ready for it' and having that as the main plan from the beginning gives me hope for a ton of things, but anyways, in we go!
1. The wind. Thank you thank you thank you thank you I needed this in an MMORPG so much. Almost all my time with games like Monster Hunter is spent wishing that an MMO could do it, and I explicitly remember being in a windstorm in FFXI and just... thinking how much it would increase the already immersive flow if there was some reaction on my character.
2. The snow effects. I know how these are done, and I know they're not strictly speaking 'very hard to do', but artistically they're really hard to do right and I'm blown away by how precisely placed and perfectly chosen the positions for the snow are, even to the point where it melts perfectly even when the heightmap isn't directly driving it (or maybe it is, and you've taken it even further with new tech).
3. The footsteps. Sound design is so important to this. Memories of 'hating the sound of mud-squelching shoes in Pashhow Marshlands' now rushing back. It's 'obvious', but so many games overlook the obvious, that I am just truly SO appreciative to see a team that is trying to make it to this level.
4. Semirandom flower rotations. I know how these are done too, so for me, the key part is actually just how perfectly placed, spaced, and modeled, the flowers themselves are. They look like they're going to be highly performant, while still probably looking at least not-immersion-breaking even at very close ranges.
5. Mushrooms! The thing about these isn't what we saw, it's the amount of implications for every other biome. The underlying structure used to make the mushrooms work is part of the terrain CODE, I'm almost certain, and that means it can be used for so many other things in so many other places that I expect Verra to be even more of an explorer's paradise than it seemed possible to be.
6. Spawner interactions. This goes along with the mushrooms. This is also part of realizing the way creatures move, and knowing that there's probably some detection in there, a basic implementation capable of making at least the herbivores appear to be grazing. Not sure if it is in, but if you told me it was, I'd believe it. Any creatures that 'spawn and/or move differently due to spring bringing out the shrooms' will just be beyond top tier.
7. The specific implementation of lighting vs fog. Fog models are easy to build but hard to make perform, I think. Maybe it's different now in UE5, but even if it is 'easy now', the artistic skill applied is impressive at least to me, and I work with someone who does this sort of thing for multiple small projects, so I know how a lot of this works too. Will we see denser fog actually 'rolling in'? I'm just imagining this at sea.
8. Cloth physics. Separate from the concept of the wind itself, knowing that even if you can't tie the physical material or shader settings to 'put snow on people's armor', that we're most likely getting 'wind effects', water effects, and a bunch of other minor changes that would reasonably tie into this data, is great. It's 'what I'd expect' from this generation of games, but more importantly, the 'gust' effect on the headdress shows the amount of detail consideration relative to this, and knowing the way it's implemented gives me additional hope for both 'sandstorms' and 'wind effects based on dragon attacks and big spells'.
9. The ice melting. I imagined that one happening in much slower time, and realizing that the probable implementation means that it's a deform and not necessary to re-render, means that tiny bit of ever-so-slow dynamism to keep one feeling like the world is real. It's a touch that I don't think many would even aim for these days, and the games that do that sort of thing enough to care never had the technology available.
10. Rivulets running off stone. I need to go back to get the exact terms used here, to verify that they are what I am thinking of, but I'm gushing right now first. Even if manually placed, I'm going to spend time literally 'watching while the rain causes water to drip and then run off of places'. Knowing that the heightmap puddle method is being used means that a manually placed depression under such a runoff point will add even more realism without even needing to specifically check for a 'runoff-to-surface' interaction, is just so soothing right now.
And above all else, my faith in the other systems is somewhat bolstered by this alone, because the care and dedication shines through in it. I have thought many times over the last few months that if Ashes turns out to be this beautiful, this intentional, this lovingly made, and then messes up its other systems, it will literally make me cry. Now, though I should have had this level of faith before, I believe that it would make you all cry too, and therefore that you won't let it happen.
Thank you, Intrepid, we stand awaiting your next show of love for the genre.
Sorry, my native language is Erlang.
16
Comments
The foliage on the trees growing in and falling down. The blooming of flowers, and the decay into scrub brush. Dirt becoming mud and drying before dust devils rise up.
And most of all (for me) those mountain peaks on the horizon - I can’t wait to explore this world.
The only reason I didn't mention the trees is because I had to ask @GrandSerpent what exactly she thought they were doing, since it was the one thing that I would have been guessing at without her explanation. I really want to see them close up now. Will big shrubs have the same effect? Will Palm trees? Was that all seriously 'we can deform and rotate UVs on individual branches'? Are the trees themselves pseudo-dynamically generated?
They could do an entire extra mini-video on just the trees and I'd watch it repeatedly.
I don't doubt the devs helped ue5 develop but the days of full manual labour disappeared with ue5.
Luckily, we have very talented people who love the project.
I believe they said the trees were created in SpeedTree, so I doubt the base structure of the trees is pseudo-dynamically generated in the way you're thinking.
I thought SpeedTree itself had a procedural mode, though? Even if you modeled everything outside of the flow, you could still link up the underlying nodes and structure using a terrain+event based hashtable to decide which trees within the modeler would be world-placed.
Also, I'm thinking more in terms of 'Character Creator: Version Tree' where they effectively have linked in-engine 'sliders' for tree properties so the trees don't look exactly the same I thought of this because of the other thing they use to combine meshes on characters, but then again their mesh-combine work might not be the same type of thing?
I need to go rewatch that other tech demo now.
This means it's relatively easy to create multiple variations of any given asset, within a range of parameters. Here's an example from SpeedTree's docs.
However, these variants are generally exported from SpeedTree to static meshes, with some annotations for how those meshes should respond to wind, along with automatically-generated LODs. The original parametric model isn't used directly by the game engine.
So, in summary, SpeedTree and similar tools can generate a nearly endless number of permutations of a given piece of foliage, but only a few hand-picked snapshots will actually be used in-game. Even with modern hardware, it wouldn't really be computationally feasible to have an entire forest of unique trees, whereas many instances of the same tree can be rendered comparatively easily.
I'd be sad, but I don't spend enough time around trees. I'll be over here on this coastline looking for shells that only 'wash ashore' in the summer, (this is what I thought of first when I saw the mushrooms).
From a user perspective:
I was charmed at the footprints in the snow at the beginning.
My eyes widened as the weather darkened into a storm and the snow melted away at super speed.
The wind catching the feathers on the hat. The cloak billowing.
The sprouts "shooting up" from the ground and blooming into a sea of wildflowers - I smiled.
The sunset casting shadows from THE TUFTS OF GRASS (!!)
The height of the trees and the way they enclose the camera's frame.
But my favourite moment was the wind blowing over the grassy plain!!
I mean - I've seen that effect in breath of the wild already - but this was with another layer of realism that I was not expecting!! Especially impresed at the ripples in the sunlight!!! SO BEAUTIFUL.
You guys should find a way to let players pick a spot in Verra, and turn it into an animated desktop background.
That would be AMAZING.