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The Witcher 2Weaknesses of the RED Engine(55 posts)(55 posts)
(55 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted July 19, 2011
Glad someone brought up this topic.. Honestly i felt the greatest weakness of the engine is the "lighting". There are scenes particularly indoor, characters look overly dark or overly bright. They should have a fair balance in that sense.
Posted July 19, 2011
Point 2. Tessellation is over hyped, the implementation in all the games until now the feature is just but a fancy name and a gimmick to sell either the GPU's or the game (or both coupled).

Exception being Crysis 2, but its again self hyped by the users and devs used it.other case..don't discuss this.

Dragon age 2 is the best example, it had DX11 only features...for what!.

Pillar's don't look good, steps look like slopes and ground looks flat without Tesselation in the game!. Couldn't Pillar's be modeled better in the first place, so the STEPS (which has been in every 3D game since time known) and the ground!..cough cough...lazy buggers..and not to mention collision of feet (or floating feet against ground tessellation.)

Wouldn't all of the above actually be modeled, as they are generic tiles/blocks used in that specific game and used repeatedly. Only requiring a one time completion to make a tile/block/place holder. Also wouldn't the GPU load be less with actual 3D models on those simple elements (rather then be tessellation) and also backward compatible with other cards which are not DX11!.

I have to disagree with the OP, for this point..actually GLAD that the Red Engine doesn't have Tessellation! for Witcher 2* and it is definitely not a weakness. There are no areas in the game where I felt tessellation was required, because all the models(with minute details) and terrain objects placements were done so well it never needed tessellation.

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Thou I would like to point out that the weakness I would think about the game is, dithering of shadows. Some sort of smooth filtering could be applied on the areas the shadows fall, so that the individual shadow pixels are not seen and instead just a smooth gradient of contrast difference to show that its a shadow. But again...I think that would change how the game looks overall, also put heavy load (the game already uses a large chunk of GPU processing currently.)
Post edited July 19, 2011 by Anarki_Hunter
Posted July 19, 2011
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Anarki_Hunter: Point 2. Tessellation is over hyped, the implementation in all the games until now the feature is just but a fancy name and a gimmick to sell either the GPU's or the game (or both coupled).

Exception being Crysis 2, but its again self hyped by the users and devs used it.other case..don't discuss this.

Dragon age 2 is the best example, it had DX11 only features...for what!.

Pillar's don't look good, steps look like slopes and ground looks flat without Tesselation in the game!. Couldn't Pillar's be modeled better in the first place, so the STEPS (which has been in every 3D game since time known) and the ground!..cough cough...lazy buggers..and not to mention collision of feet (or floating feet against ground tessellation.)

Wouldn't all of the above actually be modeled, as they are generic tiles/blocks used in that specific game and used repeatedly. Only requiring a one time completion to make a tile/block/place holder. Also wouldn't the GPU load be less with actual 3D models on those simple elements (rather then be tessellation) and also backward compatible with other cards which are not DX11!.

I have to disagree with the OP, for this point..actually GLAD that the Red Engine doesn't have Tessellation! for Witcher 2* and it is definitely not a weakness. There are no areas in the game where I felt tessellation was required, because all the models(with minute details) and terrain objects placements were done so well it never needed tessellation.

---

Thou I would like to point out that the weakness I would think about the game is, dithering of shadows. Some sort of smooth filtering could be applied on the areas the shadows fall, so that the individual shadow pixels are not seen and instead just a smooth gradient of contrast difference to show that its a shadow. But again...I think that would change how the game looks overall, also put heavy load (the game already uses a large chunk of GPU processing currently.)
Tesselation is pretty damn subtle, you have to stare at a picture to notice it, which means it's not very noticeable in-game esp. in FPS lol. Metro 2033 works well with or without tesselation though, so as long as they make it an option, then it'd be fine by me. Hey, someone's gotta tap the PC's beastly horsepower, right?

Agree about the shadows. While it improves performance, even a beastly computer wouldn't be able to get a better shadow.
Posted July 19, 2011
I just have one question for you folks...
Would tesselation make Merigold look any better than she already does?
Posted July 19, 2011
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Ebon-Hawk: I just have one question for you folks...
Would tesselation make Merigold look any better than she already does?
Hard to tell, we don't have the option to turn it on.
Posted July 19, 2011
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Kitad: So today I want to bring the attention to one topic that is not discussed often: the game engine.

Let me say that I love the engine, I think its beautiful, its seamless, its scalable and makes good use of both modern hardware as well and older machines.

However, in what ways is it weak and in what way can it be improved?

I will say tfour things to start:
1. Lack of characters in screen: There is some pivotal scenes in which the game tries to create epic environments, however, it seems that the engine isn't very good at having multiple characters at the same time, and this kinda ruins the mood.
The scenes this was most noticeable to me were the climax of Iorveth path and the climax of chapter 3.
You're probably right. But on the other hand...

WARNING...act 2 spoilers ROCHE-patch: http://s7.directupload.net/images/user/110719/kv9ubau3.jpg

:D
Posted July 19, 2011
Probably related and on-topic.. the battle at Vergen... Basically the battle was not portrayed very well as the soldier animation when they fight looks more like they are dancing.
Posted July 19, 2011
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Ebon-Hawk: I just have one question for you folks...
Would tesselation make Merigold look any better than she already does?
Tessellation doesn't substitute for good artwork. It can make good artwork scale better, and it can render photorealistic work such as displacement mapping that was previously the province of, say, Pixar's RenderMan.

Triss looks a bit airbrushed in game. If you enlarged her to poster size, she'd look severely airbrushed. A displacement-mapped Triss rendered using a sufficiently powerful tessellation engine could be photorealistic down to the peach fuzz on her thighs.

Whether this is actually useful in the context of viewing and playing the game is a different matter. It is too easy to use it badly and produce scenes that render poorly or slowly and waste a lot of GPU compute power.
Posted July 19, 2011
I don't know how having the option would be bad. And I know that many games make a bad use of tessellation, and its probably true that its a waste of resources so far that two folk can use (well so is uber-sampling). But we can think about the future.

Crysis 2 makes good use of tessellation and it really helps improve details of the world
Attachments:
crysis2-dx11-tes.gif (312 Kb)
Posted July 19, 2011
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Kitad: I don't know how having the option would be bad. And I know that many games make a bad use of tessellation, and its probably true that its a waste of resources so far that two folk can use (well so is uber-sampling). But we can think about the future.

Crysis 2 makes good use of tessellation and it really helps improve details of the world
You could also post Witcher 2 walls, where you would like to see improvement.

As I said before, Crysis 2 is the only exception.

Apart from tiling, I would like to see Tessellation on character models. Like Nvidia's alien demo, what if Geralt's character + armor model was tessellated to smudge low/varied amount of damage decals would be amazing.

Imagine a nekker who swipes his claw behind Geralt
1. Afterimage of Nekker's 5 claws could add a -ve depth behind Geralt
2. Depth transcends armor clothing (type..cloth armor would tear, leather armor would show less tear and metal/hard armor could show a dent)
3. If armor was cloth, then the exposed skin with -ve depth with blood could be displayed (and in case of leather then only the skin could be displayed with just a scratch or the inner cloth lining of a shirt with a small exposed area of a skin)
4. Stitch up wounds (which could be permanent with decay overlays)
5. Stitch up clothing (which could be permanent with decay overlays)

Same for the legs, hands, even sword..image that the edges of the sword starts to dull.or the sword starts to heat up when you strike a gargoyle and might get permanently dented if you constantly in a fight against hard/stone armor!.

Drinking potions could increase muscle mass, yeah..a small bit..then when the muscles relax there could be small tears on his armor.

That is what I would like to see with Tessellation, Somewhere constantly displayed on my screen..not tiles of terrain or walls which I pass through and never pay attention sometimes.
Post edited July 19, 2011 by Anarki_Hunter
Posted July 19, 2011
No real free 3D movement (like in Risen). The Witcher 2 rich and detailed environments encourage and reward exploration but being able to jump and climb only in predefined places is restrictive and a bit frustrating.
Posted July 19, 2011
First off, to Ebon-Hawk: If all people do is make articles and posts about all the things they like about the engine and never talk about the problems it has, how are CDP every going to improve it?

Personally, I would rather they make improvements to the engine that allow for more diversified gameplay mechanics (to allow for more quest/mission variety) and find a way to have dialog that changes based on the order in which you do things. The most obvious example I can think of is in Chapter 1, if you go to Loredo before you see Sile fight the Kayran, Geralt will come back from his sneaking mission and tell Roche that he saw Sile. But then when you meet her at the docks, he doesn't know who she is.

And before people jump all over me, I realize that this was prorbably because they are a small studio and didn't have the time and resources to record that much dialog. I am just saying this is an aread I would like to see them improve upon for the next game.
Posted July 19, 2011
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link1264: The most obvious example I can think of is in Chapter 1, if you go to Loredo before you see Sile fight the Kayran, Geralt will come back from his sneaking mission and tell Roche that he saw Sile. But then when you meet her at the docks, he doesn't know who she is.
I can see how they overlooked that. It's very counter-intuitive to do that. Right after the hanging, Dandelion says 'let's have a beer and catch up'. When talking in the inn, noises come from the outside and you meet Sile.

Not to go to the inn to catch up with your old friends is a weird thing to do. It's either RP'ed rudeness or just abusing the limitations of games, i.e. thinking 'meh, they'll be there later anyways, without knowing it was three days since the hanging. I want to to explore for now!'.
Post edited July 19, 2011 by Aaden
Posted July 19, 2011
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MihaiHornet: No real free 3D movement (like in Risen). The Witcher 2 rich and detailed environments encourage and reward exploration but being able to jump and climb only in predefined places is restrictive and a bit frustrating.
This is probably intended. If you are allowed to jump everywhere it's hard to ensure the consistency in the animation (see Oblivion and even the new Fallouts). Note that I'm comparing to the current animations we see in TW2 for jumping/climbing.

By the way, what does everyone think of the closing door mechanism? Do you prefer it over the black screen mechanism (well, some part of the game still uses it) for loading areas? I actuall prefer the latter. Making almost the doors to work as it is in TW2 is immersion breaking as well as annoying.
Post edited July 19, 2011 by vAddicatedGamer
Posted July 19, 2011
in cutscenes tessellation can make a big difference. But it takes alot of effort to implement it in gameplay sequences. On the other hand dx11 is capable to (1) deliver increased performance, when maintaining the available shaders. Or to (2) increase the shader output while maintaining the old performance (determined by the quantity it can decrease by a huge impact of course). Like mentioned by someone else before, I find the biggest issue is with the illumination. Some interiors are outbalanced (compared to the rest). But that's just complaining on a high level.
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The Witcher 2Weaknesses of the RED Engine(55 posts)(55 posts)
(55 posts)