ZEQ2 : Interactive Anime Experience

Friday, July 13, 2007

forums are pretty dead so I'll help the cause a bit..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyai0Yabjis


UFC GAME TRAILER NIKKA

WORD LIFE

Friday, July 13, 2007

'scuse me while I wipe the white stain off my pants, but DAMN, that looks awesome, the Fight Night of UFC games

I want, I so want. When's it out?

Friday, July 13, 2007

I wonder how the fight mechanics would work. But other than that the graphics and the entire feeling are awesome.

Friday, July 13, 2007

By the looks of it, it looks highly context sensitive and seems to have a fair bit of motion synthesis involved, giving a realistic variety of move choices for the situation. I'm expecting something along the lines of Fight Night with heavy use of the analogue stick, atleast for the striking.

I'm really curious as to how they'll work the submissions, as that is something that NO GAME has ever got right, most submission systems in games either are 'if you get it locked in, they tap out' (UFC Dreamcast game) or 'silly mini games' (WWE Smackdown games). Also the mat movement would be interesting to hear about, how you'll be able to change position or do stuff like the powerbomb it showed in the trailer.

Also: If you haven't yet, go watch the interview with Rampage on IGN, the dude's funny as heck, as usual.

Friday, July 13, 2007

It looks like they went a little overboard on the specular maps (or lack thereof perhaps if it's a global specular). I see some subtle clothing physics that help add to image along with some vertex deformations on contact, but a strong skin shader could go a long way to help boost the image realism. Shader-based pores/deformations, generated pigmentation, light penetration (luminescence maps), and basically the fixed specular levels (the guys are freakin' shining like metal right now) could really do wonders for a character-centric fighting game such as this.

Friday, July 13, 2007

The specularity looks like it's from the sweat mapping more than going overboard on specular maps, as with Fight Night Round 3. A sub-surface-scattering shader cerainly would help a fair bit and dilute the gleam, but such cutting edge graphical technologies shouldn't be expected from a third tier game such as this, especially as, being published by THQ, they'll be on an extremely tight schedule. I'm surprised they even have physical reactions to impacts and the like, though that is a lot more important for the realism factor in such a game than shaders.

They could be flat shaded giant pink bunnies, but aslong as they moved and reacted as they should for such a combat game it would look truly convincing. That's one area a lot of developers fall down on, animation, interaction and reaction of characters and environments, they focus too much on graphical realism and ignore the fact that lack of motion realism kills any sense of immersion.

Friday, July 13, 2007

I think it all depends on what your mind wants to expect in this case. There's actually a VERY deep-rooted psychological and artistic balance that dates decades in relation to photorealistic versus non-photorealistic (NPR) concepts. In more recent rendering studies, it's often found, as you mentioned, that even if an image retains pure lighting and shading quality of a realistic counterpart, it will not fully be perceived as realistic unless thousands of minor details are exactly in place as well. This is primarily why most games will not be able to capture true realism for some time. Even with activity increasing for procedural based animations, materials, and so forth that reflect properly, there are a slew of other very subtle and often completely organic concepts that are still in their infancy of development.

Quoted from Jerome Thoma's paper :

"The issue is that the more realistic a virtual character is, the more it becomes disturbing if small details are flawed."

Basically, there's so many levels of perceptual abstraction involved in classifying an image as realistic or not that the closer you get, the more flaws you notice that are out of place. Whilst most gamers don't openly perceive these flaws as they actually fill the gaps with associative byproducts of NPR, these aspects still exist in large.

Subconsciously speaking, non-photorealistic concepts challenge the mind to invent and imaginatively assume aspects whilst realistic concepts are moreso blunt and unyielding. However, until the point where realism reaches a pinnacle of pure reproduction in both visual and responsive nature, there will be non-photorealistic ideology to fill in the gaps of perception.

I've attached the original study and rendering document that I've provided my facts from below. I welcome anyone to at least read the first few chapters on the study of abstract and psychological differences in how we perceive various concepts : real and otherwise.

NPR- Advanced.pdf

Jerome Thoma's Master Thesis Paper

Friday, July 13, 2007

what in Lloyds name are you talking about, hehe.

maybe there a bit over shiney but this is the first we've seen of the game, theyll probably fix a lot of things.

all I know is like alex said, they better not mess up submissions. there's so many variables to mma that it makes me wonder if they can really pull it off. different types of takedowns, positions, submissions from all those positions, and striking which has punches, kicks, knees, elbows. hopefully they don't mess it up.

it also looks like there might be a like special move type of thing because they have rampage powerbombing chuck which he doesnt do much, so maybe its a like timing thing.