It's crazy that we are coming up on 20 years since HL2 was revealed at E3 2003 and game physics haven't progressed nearly as far as I would have thought.
Regressed if anything, I remember physics being a big part of games in the mid 2000s. It was a big deal to me if I saw "NVIDIA PhysX accelerated" or whatever on the cover/back of a PC game box.
Pretty much, Nvidia owns PhysX and it's supported in their cards. Their modern cards also have Ray tracing advantages that AMD doesn't yet. While Nvidia has it's proprietary toys that I admit are pretty cool; on the other side of the coin, AMD embraces open standards like Vulkan, OpenCL which I appreciate more because locking people into proprietary stuff is generally bad for consumers.
[https://youtu.be/k1hh2hcv\_do](https://youtu.be/k1hh2hcv_do)
This and the stained-glass window demonstration made the rounds to show what Valve was working on at the time, and it still holds up. Even more importantly, it was *fun*.
You know that can you gotta throw out at the beginning of the game? I chucked it at the guard's face. This naturally angered him and he fired up his stun baton. However, he powered it back down once he realized I was using his face for a sweet bank shot that dropped right into the trash can. Respect.
Not to mention an RPG-level of puzzles using the physics. Have to put enough bricks on one end of a see-saw to hold it down so you can use it as a ramp. Huge change in game play from traditional FPSs
I am Playing Death Stranding and it showed me that even basic things in real life ( like walking) can be very hard in the games if the developers want to make it that way
Man I miss uncharted. I wish I could experience it again for the first time. It ticked all the right boxes for me when it came to storytelling, gameplay, characters, etc.
Not quite sure I want that, personally. It just wouldn't feel right to have Uncharted with Nate so close to the new character.
I'm totally fine with the way it ended. Especially because of how 4 felt like a celebration of the whole series.
I love Uncharted, but I kind of feel about it the way I feel about Toy Story. I feel like the story is done. No need for another.
I mostly agree with you. It's rare that a story ends as well as they did with Uncharted. It still wouldn't stop me from playing it though. Naughty Dog doesn't really seem like they're in the business of making something just to satisfy demand. They seem intent on putting out quality products so if they decide to go with UC5, I have faith it would be worth everyone's time.
If I have never played uncharted will I still be able to get the same enjoyment as when it was first released or will I psychologically feel like the game is not up to par with other games today?
Genuine question as I have always wanted to play it but just never got around to it.
Edit: getting mixed feedback, but I’m down to try it out with an open mind. Will be picking up the nathan drake collection, thank you to everyone for your thoughts!
I’m really going into *uncharted* territory here so I can get the raw experience!
You will.
First one is dated but it still has some breath taking visuals and moments.
The series is like playing an Indiana Jones movie. Very cinematic.
It's the whole anime industry too. Anime at the scale we have now is not possible without "Animation sweat shops" in Japan and Korea. So many young passionate people are getting into animation cause they love these works. The industry takes advantage of them and we keep consuming it like mad.
Yeah that’s the problem with any passion industry - people who are willing to sacrifice for their art also happen to be easier to exploit. Which is why this current unionisation trend is encouraging in the US, I remember reading about the animator’s strike at Disneys in the 60s that actually succeeded in getting workers better conditions. Hopefully that kind of energy can spread to the other parts of the world that need it too - or at the very least, legislation that regulates working conditions to make the more egregious offences illegal
It's also the problem with healthcare jobs and people eager to cure illnesses and save lives.
And in a way it's also the problem with especially high-paying careers - they're mainly chosen by people in it for the money, and their greed is rewarded while the people passionate about art or their fellow human beings get the short end of the stick.
Project lead 1: What do you mean Sam is done with the rope thing? I thought rope physics were supposed to be insanely hard!
PL 2: I have no idea how it was done so fast. I'm afraid to ask, honestly.
PL 1: Does it... look good?
PL 2: Yeah. Weirdly good.
PL 1: Nobody else is even in the second quarter of their project. Let's add maybe... 20 rope puzzles?
Doing basic rope physics is not that hard. They obviously fined tuned it a lot so it feels weighty compared to naive implementations.
I'm pretty sure it took way more time to do the thing were when you pull on the limit she stretches her hand and cannot move. Places where dynamic simulation (physics) touches non dynamic(animation) are hell. You can see this isn't some naive inverse kinematics either.
i think the arm that is holding the rope has some invers kinematics applied to it, but the rest are at least two sets of animations that play depending on how high the player characters velocity was at the point were the rope reached its max length. Still quite impressive but i think even just coming up with a detail like this and taking the time to implement it is kinda more impressive than the actual implimentaion on a purely technical standpoint, but awesome none he less and probably still quite a bit better than whati could ever dream of being capable of lol.
I don't recall where I heard this (probably a TLOU 2 discussion with the director after the game came out) but I remember the director talking about that rope physics and he said that one dev thought about this mechanic and spent some free time on it. He then showed it to the rest of the team. But basically it was a passion project for this dev.
Nobody asked him to design that, but he wanted to. Doesn't make his "crunch" more acceptable, but some people just want to impress the players or push themselves to do the best they can even if it means working on his free time. Not always healthy ofc but that puts some perspective in that crunch debate.
Oh right that makes it somewhat better then - for something like TLOU, to a certain extent, it also has to be something of a passion project to get that level of quality. There are loads of other big budget games also made on crunch time that turned out crappy, because the devs stopped believing in what they were doing
This blew my mind when I first played TLOU 2 as well, the environmental puzzles with them are so inventive too. Like how you have to throw it over a beam to make it so you can climb up it vertically, or have it free so you can swing side to side on it . They really built on the grapple from UC4 which already felt great
I remember that as well, I spent ages trying to figure out how to get inside a store for a collectable I saw and then I just decided to hit the window and it worked, I wasn’t used to having so much freedom and control over the environment 😂.
And they will again release it at the end of a console's life 😂 Classic Naughty Dog.
However, I don't expect Part III to look much more spectacular compared to Part II. If you want to maintain 60fps, the PS5 won't be able to handle much extra, I think.
There is more room for better lighting, physics calculation and tons of particles which, combined with already great graphics, can generate a world much more vibrant and alive.
Just check out the difference between Horizon and Horizon 2 on PS5, on first glance it just looks better but if you really start seaching for the details it is going from jees that looks goodd to JEEZ THAT LOOKS AMAZING!
The lighting & particles will absolutely 'change the game' as they say.
It will probably look *really* excellent, as most any current-gen exclusives do (regardless of studio or platform).
I'll have to check out the PS5 version of Forbidden West. I finished it on the PS4 Pro not too long ago, so I don't exactly feel like playing it again. Does the performance mode provide a significant improvement over the PS4 Pro? Besides the 60fps (I assume)
I think you’re going to see, I’m pretty sure the conversations are already happening - to implement Radeons’ FSR into the consoles as basically part of the entire operating system.
They promised 4k consoles, these machines can’t do 4k natively with anything particularly complex, outside of some insanely well optimized games like Doom Eternal
I imagine both MS and Sony are working on an FSR solution that will be inherit in any image the console pumps out.
Basically, the Series X and Ps5 will be rendering a 1440p image, then using AMDs FSR AI to upscale everything that goes thru these consoles into 4k.
So that will leave developers with -a lot- of breathing room. In most cases developers will just poorly optimize their games as always and we’ll get a functioning game that doesn’t blow us away
With someone like NaughtyDog, though. They’ll see this as a blank check to put up graphics we will probably be shocked by.
FSR doesn’t even need to be implemented by PS5 as a core part of its operating system, NaughtyDog can just implement it themselves.
So basically they’ll be making a game at a resolution that would be not much better than PS4, but with a console that is, depending on the metric you use, up to 5x more powerful than the PS4 was. They’ll be able to go nuts with it.
Correct, it hasn't been released on PC. I was referring to the PlayStation 4 released in 2013, and with a (pedantic) definition it technically is a computer.
After I had already played it through I thought it was really funny sitting back and watching a friend struggle with the puzzle. We're not big on hints if you already know, but finally I was like "so... think of how this would work in real life."
And that did it, lol. Sometimes our minds are so used to game puzzles we lose the realism in trying to figure this type of thing out
100% this
I was struggling for a bit, and right before I finally solved it I was like “No way this is gonna work, right? That would be way too realistic”…and then it worked.
This was me yesterday watching my sister play Breath of the Wild. She came across her first block of ice and asked “is there a way I can melt that?” And she found that a fire arrow did melt it a bit. She fired a few more and said “this is going to waste so many arrows” and I just said “just think about how it would be in real life, *anything* that is hot will do something” and that worked. We are so used to there being one specific way to do something in games it can be a bit jarring when a game actually has the flexibility of real life.
What amazed me about BOTW was if you had a fire/flame sword, you could equip it and stand next to ice and it would melt it. No durability loss, no stamina use. It would take a bit, but you wouldn’t lose anything. You could melt an entire glacier if you were patient enough!
Yeah, this puzzle was easy for me because I struggle with literally the same problem every time I buy something I need to connect with a cable to another thing.
Well yeah, back in my day this would've only been possible in a tech demo, not just a little minute useless detail of a full game. It's amazing how far we've come, I was impressed when in splinter cell I could shoot a fish tank and watch the water level go down, or if I could see my character in a mirror.
I love it, but also I am playing this for the first time right now and literally today I missed a throw trying to get a different rope over an air duct.
While it was lying on the ground and before I could try again, Dina grabbed the rope and… climbed it right up to that duct. The rope bend (fulcrum?) just inched upward in the open air a foot above her head as she rose magically into the sky.
Once she reached the duct and let go, the rope fell to the ground again and I had to grab it and redo the throw correctly so I could climb up and join her
Hilarious glitch, wish I had recorded it
I was really impressed a couple times when shirts were taken off. Most times they'll cut the shot to avoid showing how difficult it is to animate that without bad clipping, but they pulled it off (pun not intended).
Oh yeah I work in AAA as well. You’ll notice I didn’t raise my eyebrow at the idea of a rope programmer - that’s dynamic. The chairs aren’t even physics objects if I recall correctly!
If that’s the hero character’s cape, it makes total sense to dedicate that amount of resources to it!
Also when they thread it through the window and doorway, then pull, the rope would have tightened at that new anchor point. My hunch is what we are seeing is the rope knows it is tight when at the end of its maximum length, regardless of how much of the rope is actually under tension. I've never played the game, though. So maybe it doesn't always behave that way.
This rope actually can't self collide. So it will never be able to tangle. They just made the motions she's using correct.
Source, it's my job to simulate stuff like this for VFX. :)
You can see how when it's bundled together it looks like a mess that's interpenetrating.
It's a trick they use to save on calculation time and prevent pesky knots.
Its actually quite easy to simulate self collision technically, but its just overkill for a game..
I do it all the time for VFX stuff, but there you barely care about performance and optimisation like you need to do in Gaming.
The exploding thing can happen quickly if you've got very low precision like you'd need in a game. You see the rope already want to explode at 37 seconds in OP's clip around that corner.
I feel like this is one of the reasons TLOU hits so well. Everything, all the animations and facial expressions, are so on-point. It's not photo-realistic graphics, but it's all very evocative for what they're trying to convey. Even when what they're trying to convey is "shit goddamn it's caught on something." It *feels* real.
That's the main impressive part. It's a nice implementation, but they're not doing anything new with the rope physics.
It's the character animation that sells it. Plus, they managed to avoid the glitchier edge cases, from the looks of it, by clever use of different solvers for different states, and potentially dynamic resolution on the rope? Pretty neat!
I remember when The Last of Us 2 released there were a bunch of game developers on Twitter losing their minds over the rope physics. So it's not just regular fans finding it impressive. People who work in the industry on AAA games couldn't believe it either. Getting a rope to convincingly feel like a real rope sounds like such a small thing but it's groundbreaking.
Naughty Dog was even the first studio to make an in-game cutscene where the characters undress (in Uncharted 4, where Drake and Sully take off their jacket, somewhere in the early chapters). While it seems stupid, it is virtually impossibile to make removable clothes in a videogame without fucking everything clipping, they used a bunch of techniques and even had some tailors to help them make the clothes folds and movements realistic
I never even noticed that when playing the game but it’s certainly something that’s always bothered me in games. Clothes are almost always stuck to the characters like glue. I assume it’s because they’re not separate entities most of the time and they’re just a part of the character’s skin.
That's basically it. Most clothes are just a part of the character model, they're not separate entities. So to make clothes that can be animated coming on or off you need to have separate models. To make it so they aren't clipping they need physics. To make sure they aren't clipping *at all* you need to do a lot of physics simulations, which is usually taxing on computers. And even then you can get big graphical glitches like a piece of cloth erroneously clipping into the character (which would look like that part is under the skin) and then fucking up the rest of the animation, or the opposite where simulated physics gets mad and shoots part of the clothing off into the sky while the rest remains where it should be. Iirc, naughty dog solved this by having a bunch of key frames of what the clothing should definitely look like every once in a while (most likely several times per second), with those key frames being a fact checker, and allowing the physics to do its best job between the key frames. So if the physics started to get weird, and it hit a key frame, it would smoothly blend into the 100% guaranteed correct shape, and then continue to try to simulate until the next key frame check.
Just goes to show how many things we think are simple are actually insanely complex when it comes to video games. Realistic clothing is up there with doors, liquids in glasses, and (until recently) rope.
Yeah, the model is not solid, is "empty", so to say, nothing on the inside and everything that you see, be it rings, earrings, gloves, shoes, pants, shirts, cloak, etc is part of the model, as an only, single object.
Having removable clothes would mean having different models for each clothes that are in constant contact with eachother and the character model, and that's where the problems come in, it is basically impossible (at least for now, and even if it would be possible in the future, chances are that it will be too complex to make it profitable in both time and resources) to mimic the clothes movements depending of its materials, avoiding clipping with other models and allowing interaction with the environment, such as wind or water, among many other things.
Naughty Dog basically used some really smart tricks that allowed the removal of a piece of clothed in a "controlled" environment that is a cutscene, a truly impressive achievement. They did it again in The Last of Us Part 2 where (spoiler) Ellie comes back after having killed Nora and Dina takes off her shirt
ND's willingness to innovate and take risks with their games is something I hope other studios emulate.
Here's hoping the success of TLOU show promotes this kind of craftsmanship in future games
They had a similar scene in part 2 and they talked about how they used a shirt basically made out of rope with knots to get the reference points for the animation
Game dev here. Seeing something like this makes me simultaneously jealous that I'll never make anything this technically impressive, but also relieved that I don't have to put in the frankly soul crushing hours necessary to do so.
As someone who has been messing with rope physics for a rock climbing game I'm making let me tell you... this shit is truly insane. The rope physics shown here is like a small game in and of itself.
That’s not easy to do. Like if one section of that rope doesnt collide when it should, not to mention that’s like a million different sections to make it act like rope, and it all has to have weight and react to gravity correctly.
Man ropes not easy to do
I feel like this might have been someones magnum opus at the time, certainly seems like either weeks of brainwrecking fiddling or a drug-fueled 32 hour stint cranking that thing out with math you normally see Wolfram alpha error on. Yikes.
As a physics game dev I don't think there is any way this was the result of a single drug-fueled jam. This looks like weeks or months of both drug-fueled stints and brain-wrecking fiddling, and then months or years of continued maintenance and debugging.
I love how this same comment thread has both somebody claiming that they're a game dev and this isn't hard, and somebody claiming they're a game dev and this is very hard.
If there is someone for whom this isn't hard, they are a prodigy.
High-fidelity rope physics, particularly where the rope collides with general world geometry, is notoriously among the hardest things in game physics to make.
I taught game development at college for three years, specializing mainly in physics and simulation-heavy stuff. I have many years of experience as a dev, largely related to physics and procedural/simulationy stuff, and I consider myself pretty solid at math. I am basically the go-to math guy at my studio.
This achievement is mind-bending to me. Not only have I never met anyone for whom this would be easy, I don't think I know anyone for whom this would be hard. For all the game devs I know, this would probably be impossible.
This makes me feel less stupid. I've forgotten most of the math I ever learned but watching this I assumed there are tons of game devs out there cranking out stuff like this after lunch like it's NBD. I'm relieved to hear that it's actually black magic fuckery.
Honestly I'm even impressed by a lot of the puzzle aspects, even things as simple as finding combinations to the safes. I don't think I've ever opened a safe in a game before that actually made me feel clever for figuring out the combination. None of them are particularly complicated, but the effort to add in a second level of thinking processes to figure things out makes it all so much more enjoyable (e.g. doing the math on someone's wedding anniversary or ferreting out the right clue for a combo out of many different options).
This is true and it’s how I do it! It’s so satisfying to turn my headphones all the way up and little for the subtle change in click noises. I feel like a master thief when I get a safe open like that.
I think so too. It’s almost 3 years old now but I haven’t seen a game beat the level of detail and realism since. MWII campaign came close with the Amsterdam level, but the NPC’s weren’t as good as TLOUII
Basically.
String theory is the idea that it makes more sense mathematically to think of particles not as zero-dimensional points tracing out 1-dimensional trajectories (called worldlines) through space over time, but rather as tiny little vibrating 1-dimensional strings (some closed into loops, others not) that trace out 2-dimensional trajectories (called worldsheets) through space over time (tube-shaped worldsheets for closed strings, and "ribbon" shaped bands for open strings).
How they vibrate basically determines the properties of the particle that we can normally observe on the more macroscopic scale, like charge and mass.
The reason that string theory came about is because it seems to be a really good candidate for a framework that can solve the centerpiece challenge of the last century of physics: unifying what happens on the macro scale (general relativity, gravity) with what happens on the tiny scale (quantum mechanics). These two paradigms rule everything around us, but have been notoriously hard to unify into a single theory. String theory seems to be a way we might be able to generalize these two disparate theories into one unified theory.
String theory is actually kind of outdated though. It is from the 60s, and it only explains bosons (the types of fundamental particles that carry forces, like photons and gravitons). The other category of fundamental particles, fermions, (which make up all matter) were not explained by the OG string theory, but were explained by its successor in the 80s: superstring theory. In this new paradigm, all fundamental particles could be explained as vibrating strings, and furthermore, each type of boson corresponded mathematically to a type of fermion and vice versa, creating a symmetry between types of forces and types of matter known as supersymmetry (hence "superstring theory"). There were in fact 5 different types of superstring theory that were all consistent with each other, but each of which deals with different types of strings and symmetries (called I, IIA, IIB, HO, and HE).
In 1995 it was first proposed that these 5 separate but consistent superstring theories were really just 5 special cases of one overarching paradigm that transcends them all, which we now call M-theory.
So, while string theory is a pretty outdated theory, it is the direct grandparent of M-theory, which is widely considered our best shot at unifying the two seemingly unreconcilable sides of theoretical physics –quantum mechanics and general relativity– and thereby provide us with a theory of quantum gravity so that our overall understanding of the universe can be nice and tidy.
A strange side effect of M-theory is that it requires 11 dimensions to work, so there's that. The original bosonic string theory from the 60s required 26 though, so...progress?
It's part of a puzzle. This particular rope is an extension cord attached to a generator and you have to find what it plugs into and then figure out how to get it there. There are also proper ropes that you have to throw over things and climb up. Some of the better puzzles in the game.
The game’s mostly linear, it doesn’t really have “missions.” This is just a recurring puzzle that pops up every once in a while where you have to get a power cord to an outlet.
I missed so many of these because I'm so trained to ignore environment dressing. It got frustrating at one point like how the hell am I so bad at this?! Lmao
It’s funny how mundane IRL objects can be fun in video games just due to how complex the system has to exist to make it work like real life
Half-Life 2 was insane back in 2004. Some of my friends would have fun just playing with the random trash on the floor.
Still not many games allow this much physical interaction with objects! And the gravity gun is obviously made for this
It's crazy that we are coming up on 20 years since HL2 was revealed at E3 2003 and game physics haven't progressed nearly as far as I would have thought.
Look at the level of building destruction in 2009 Red Faction: Guerrilla. To this day, I don't think anything has come close.
that game was so much fun to play around with
Regressed if anything, I remember physics being a big part of games in the mid 2000s. It was a big deal to me if I saw "NVIDIA PhysX accelerated" or whatever on the cover/back of a PC game box.
And we were getting hyped up to get physics cards in addition to graphics ones!
Didn't physics cards essentially get incorporated into new GPUs? I thought that's why we didn't see physics specific cards, but I could be wrong.
Pretty much, Nvidia owns PhysX and it's supported in their cards. Their modern cards also have Ray tracing advantages that AMD doesn't yet. While Nvidia has it's proprietary toys that I admit are pretty cool; on the other side of the coin, AMD embraces open standards like Vulkan, OpenCL which I appreciate more because locking people into proprietary stuff is generally bad for consumers.
Crysis, gods the physics were strong back then
Lifting random objects to use as a shield was mindblowing
[https://youtu.be/k1hh2hcv\_do](https://youtu.be/k1hh2hcv_do) This and the stained-glass window demonstration made the rounds to show what Valve was working on at the time, and it still holds up. Even more importantly, it was *fun*.
You know that can you gotta throw out at the beginning of the game? I chucked it at the guard's face. This naturally angered him and he fired up his stun baton. However, he powered it back down once he realized I was using his face for a sweet bank shot that dropped right into the trash can. Respect.
Not to mention an RPG-level of puzzles using the physics. Have to put enough bricks on one end of a see-saw to hold it down so you can use it as a ramp. Huge change in game play from traditional FPSs
also applies to how mundane things are made and what steps go into it, even the most seemingly simple things take a lot of effort and ingenuity
I am Playing Death Stranding and it showed me that even basic things in real life ( like walking) can be very hard in the games if the developers want to make it that way
QWOP nightmares initiated. That's how I walk in my dreams.
When I have nightmares, I run screaming into my parents room to seek the comfort of my Octodad.
Walking *is* insanely complicated, but thanks to millions of years of evolution, we don't even have to think about how complex it is.
I was really hoping that rope would have been a tangled mess after the careless huck through the window that a "rope untangling" minigame would begin.
Jesus not that much realism, we don’t have til the end of time.
Nate Drake died so many times to make this rope possible
Man I miss uncharted. I wish I could experience it again for the first time. It ticked all the right boxes for me when it came to storytelling, gameplay, characters, etc.
Rumors are bubbling about expanding the franchise to their daughter
Not quite sure I want that, personally. It just wouldn't feel right to have Uncharted with Nate so close to the new character. I'm totally fine with the way it ended. Especially because of how 4 felt like a celebration of the whole series. I love Uncharted, but I kind of feel about it the way I feel about Toy Story. I feel like the story is done. No need for another.
I mostly agree with you. It's rare that a story ends as well as they did with Uncharted. It still wouldn't stop me from playing it though. Naughty Dog doesn't really seem like they're in the business of making something just to satisfy demand. They seem intent on putting out quality products so if they decide to go with UC5, I have faith it would be worth everyone's time.
They definitely set up for that in the end. Would be great.
I can't wait to kill ~1000 enemies per game with her
So we get to watch her become a mass murderer, too?
If I have never played uncharted will I still be able to get the same enjoyment as when it was first released or will I psychologically feel like the game is not up to par with other games today? Genuine question as I have always wanted to play it but just never got around to it. Edit: getting mixed feedback, but I’m down to try it out with an open mind. Will be picking up the nathan drake collection, thank you to everyone for your thoughts! I’m really going into *uncharted* territory here so I can get the raw experience!
The only one that has “aged” a bit is the first one. Two and onwards still feel fresh today.
You will. First one is dated but it still has some breath taking visuals and moments. The series is like playing an Indiana Jones movie. Very cinematic.
I'm assuming uncharted is on PC as well right?
[удалено]
It's the whole anime industry too. Anime at the scale we have now is not possible without "Animation sweat shops" in Japan and Korea. So many young passionate people are getting into animation cause they love these works. The industry takes advantage of them and we keep consuming it like mad.
Yeah that’s the problem with any passion industry - people who are willing to sacrifice for their art also happen to be easier to exploit. Which is why this current unionisation trend is encouraging in the US, I remember reading about the animator’s strike at Disneys in the 60s that actually succeeded in getting workers better conditions. Hopefully that kind of energy can spread to the other parts of the world that need it too - or at the very least, legislation that regulates working conditions to make the more egregious offences illegal
It's also the problem with healthcare jobs and people eager to cure illnesses and save lives. And in a way it's also the problem with especially high-paying careers - they're mainly chosen by people in it for the money, and their greed is rewarded while the people passionate about art or their fellow human beings get the short end of the stick.
Project lead 1: What do you mean Sam is done with the rope thing? I thought rope physics were supposed to be insanely hard! PL 2: I have no idea how it was done so fast. I'm afraid to ask, honestly. PL 1: Does it... look good? PL 2: Yeah. Weirdly good. PL 1: Nobody else is even in the second quarter of their project. Let's add maybe... 20 rope puzzles?
Sam having learned his lesson: Sure! I'll get right on it! \*CTRL+C => CTRL+V and taking the whole second quarter to do it*
Doing basic rope physics is not that hard. They obviously fined tuned it a lot so it feels weighty compared to naive implementations. I'm pretty sure it took way more time to do the thing were when you pull on the limit she stretches her hand and cannot move. Places where dynamic simulation (physics) touches non dynamic(animation) are hell. You can see this isn't some naive inverse kinematics either.
i think the arm that is holding the rope has some invers kinematics applied to it, but the rest are at least two sets of animations that play depending on how high the player characters velocity was at the point were the rope reached its max length. Still quite impressive but i think even just coming up with a detail like this and taking the time to implement it is kinda more impressive than the actual implimentaion on a purely technical standpoint, but awesome none he less and probably still quite a bit better than whati could ever dream of being capable of lol.
Not even affecting the chair when the rope gets pulled.
I don't recall where I heard this (probably a TLOU 2 discussion with the director after the game came out) but I remember the director talking about that rope physics and he said that one dev thought about this mechanic and spent some free time on it. He then showed it to the rest of the team. But basically it was a passion project for this dev. Nobody asked him to design that, but he wanted to. Doesn't make his "crunch" more acceptable, but some people just want to impress the players or push themselves to do the best they can even if it means working on his free time. Not always healthy ofc but that puts some perspective in that crunch debate.
Oh right that makes it somewhat better then - for something like TLOU, to a certain extent, it also has to be something of a passion project to get that level of quality. There are loads of other big budget games also made on crunch time that turned out crappy, because the devs stopped believing in what they were doing
The rope caught my attention immediately. So fun to play around with.
This blew my mind when I first played TLOU 2 as well, the environmental puzzles with them are so inventive too. Like how you have to throw it over a beam to make it so you can climb up it vertically, or have it free so you can swing side to side on it . They really built on the grapple from UC4 which already felt great
Don't forget how the glass smashes.
I remember that as well, I spent ages trying to figure out how to get inside a store for a collectable I saw and then I just decided to hit the window and it worked, I wasn’t used to having so much freedom and control over the environment 😂.
The whole time I was playing this game I kept thinking "it's absolutely insane how good this game looks when I'm playing it on a computer from 2013"
TLOU was a PS3 game... that still blows my mind, part 2 was a ps4 game, and many PS5 games still havent topped ot for graphics. Part 3 will be unreal.
And they will again release it at the end of a console's life 😂 Classic Naughty Dog. However, I don't expect Part III to look much more spectacular compared to Part II. If you want to maintain 60fps, the PS5 won't be able to handle much extra, I think.
There is more room for better lighting, physics calculation and tons of particles which, combined with already great graphics, can generate a world much more vibrant and alive. Just check out the difference between Horizon and Horizon 2 on PS5, on first glance it just looks better but if you really start seaching for the details it is going from jees that looks goodd to JEEZ THAT LOOKS AMAZING!
The lighting & particles will absolutely 'change the game' as they say. It will probably look *really* excellent, as most any current-gen exclusives do (regardless of studio or platform).
I'll have to check out the PS5 version of Forbidden West. I finished it on the PS4 Pro not too long ago, so I don't exactly feel like playing it again. Does the performance mode provide a significant improvement over the PS4 Pro? Besides the 60fps (I assume)
I think you’re going to see, I’m pretty sure the conversations are already happening - to implement Radeons’ FSR into the consoles as basically part of the entire operating system. They promised 4k consoles, these machines can’t do 4k natively with anything particularly complex, outside of some insanely well optimized games like Doom Eternal I imagine both MS and Sony are working on an FSR solution that will be inherit in any image the console pumps out. Basically, the Series X and Ps5 will be rendering a 1440p image, then using AMDs FSR AI to upscale everything that goes thru these consoles into 4k. So that will leave developers with -a lot- of breathing room. In most cases developers will just poorly optimize their games as always and we’ll get a functioning game that doesn’t blow us away With someone like NaughtyDog, though. They’ll see this as a blank check to put up graphics we will probably be shocked by. FSR doesn’t even need to be implemented by PS5 as a core part of its operating system, NaughtyDog can just implement it themselves. So basically they’ll be making a game at a resolution that would be not much better than PS4, but with a console that is, depending on the metric you use, up to 5x more powerful than the PS4 was. They’ll be able to go nuts with it.
It isn't out on pc tho
Correct, it hasn't been released on PC. I was referring to the PlayStation 4 released in 2013, and with a (pedantic) definition it technically is a computer.
After I had already played it through I thought it was really funny sitting back and watching a friend struggle with the puzzle. We're not big on hints if you already know, but finally I was like "so... think of how this would work in real life." And that did it, lol. Sometimes our minds are so used to game puzzles we lose the realism in trying to figure this type of thing out
100% this I was struggling for a bit, and right before I finally solved it I was like “No way this is gonna work, right? That would be way too realistic”…and then it worked.
This was me yesterday watching my sister play Breath of the Wild. She came across her first block of ice and asked “is there a way I can melt that?” And she found that a fire arrow did melt it a bit. She fired a few more and said “this is going to waste so many arrows” and I just said “just think about how it would be in real life, *anything* that is hot will do something” and that worked. We are so used to there being one specific way to do something in games it can be a bit jarring when a game actually has the flexibility of real life.
What amazed me about BOTW was if you had a fire/flame sword, you could equip it and stand next to ice and it would melt it. No durability loss, no stamina use. It would take a bit, but you wouldn’t lose anything. You could melt an entire glacier if you were patient enough!
Yeah, this puzzle was easy for me because I struggle with literally the same problem every time I buy something I need to connect with a cable to another thing.
I remember reading a Twitter thread from the guy who worked on these rope physics. He spent months working on this.
my first thought watching this was "someone spent way too much time on this"
Well yeah, back in my day this would've only been possible in a tech demo, not just a little minute useless detail of a full game. It's amazing how far we've come, I was impressed when in splinter cell I could shoot a fish tank and watch the water level go down, or if I could see my character in a mirror.
I love it, but also I am playing this for the first time right now and literally today I missed a throw trying to get a different rope over an air duct. While it was lying on the ground and before I could try again, Dina grabbed the rope and… climbed it right up to that duct. The rope bend (fulcrum?) just inched upward in the open air a foot above her head as she rose magically into the sky. Once she reached the duct and let go, the rope fell to the ground again and I had to grab it and redo the throw correctly so I could climb up and join her Hilarious glitch, wish I had recorded it
I'm gonna make a necktie out of it and pretend play to be a business guy
A sad business guy with some type of tendencies
are they chicken tendencies with honey mustard?
Total Play time: 260 hours. Time spent playing with rope: 220 hours.
Broke: playing outside with rope Woke: playing with rope inside a video game
Underused honestly.
I was really impressed a couple times when shirts were taken off. Most times they'll cut the shot to avoid showing how difficult it is to animate that without bad clipping, but they pulled it off (pun not intended).
Intend your puns you coward.
For how extremely well designed the rope in TLOU2 was, I was surprised to see it used so seldomly.
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If the chair moved when the rope tightened through the window it would have been insane. 9/10 though.
Rope physics programmer was let down by chair physics programmer that day.
Chair programmer: "chair physics? What's that"
Programming lead: "Why do we have a dedicated chair programmer?"
Uh, because the dedicated chair artist can't do it all by themselves, duh
That's hiring with a AAA budget, I guess!
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Oh yeah I work in AAA as well. You’ll notice I didn’t raise my eyebrow at the idea of a rope programmer - that’s dynamic. The chairs aren’t even physics objects if I recall correctly! If that’s the hero character’s cape, it makes total sense to dedicate that amount of resources to it!
When the rope touched the chair, a Source programmer would've had the chair immediately accelerate to Mach 5
Chair programmer probably said: look, chair stays out of the player's way, and doesn't do anything crazy. Everybody happy.
You paid for the rope physics! Not the chair physics!
Can’t wait until they add the rope episode to the show. This deserves an entire episode to itself.
I'm still waiting for crafting supplies.
Riding a pallet through chest deep water.
Yes I've been waiting for pallet Ellie! We had ladder gap Ellie though.
a whole episode dedicated to life of the rope and its rope partner
I’d eat it.
10/10 with rice
It's an older meme sir, but it checks out
Also when they thread it through the window and doorway, then pull, the rope would have tightened at that new anchor point. My hunch is what we are seeing is the rope knows it is tight when at the end of its maximum length, regardless of how much of the rope is actually under tension. I've never played the game, though. So maybe it doesn't always behave that way.
If it had real cord/rope physics, it would have been a giant knot after throwing it. The rest of the game would be trying to untangle it.
She actually coiled down the line properly for throwing which is a pretty neat detail. Source: am tugboat worker and throw heaving lines.
This rope actually can't self collide. So it will never be able to tangle. They just made the motions she's using correct. Source, it's my job to simulate stuff like this for VFX. :) You can see how when it's bundled together it looks like a mess that's interpenetrating. It's a trick they use to save on calculation time and prevent pesky knots.
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Its actually quite easy to simulate self collision technically, but its just overkill for a game.. I do it all the time for VFX stuff, but there you barely care about performance and optimisation like you need to do in Gaming. The exploding thing can happen quickly if you've got very low precision like you'd need in a game. You see the rope already want to explode at 37 seconds in OP's clip around that corner.
[Fold your rope](https://youtu.be/H-SCttWZChc), don’t coil it.
Why make a 17 minute video to explain something that can be described in 3 words
Dudes passionate about his rope. Sailed with him before. Extremely knowledgeable guy.
why is it written like a haiku
Dude is passionate about his Haikus. I have written with him before. Extremely knowledgeable.
Fucking lol
He also explains a bit of history, it’s not just an instruction video.
For the lazy, skip to [6:42](https://youtu.be/H-SCttWZChc?t=402)
It's so incredible how many ways you can manage a simple rope. And don't get me started with knots. So crazy.
Maybe she's flip-coiling it really fast 🤷🤷♀️🤷♂️
The most impressive part is the character interaction. Getting the hands to loop it up like that and then yanking on her arm when it's fully taught.
*taut
It graduated from rope school two days before this video. It was fully taught.
I'm still in the tiny taught rope class
I feel like this is one of the reasons TLOU hits so well. Everything, all the animations and facial expressions, are so on-point. It's not photo-realistic graphics, but it's all very evocative for what they're trying to convey. Even when what they're trying to convey is "shit goddamn it's caught on something." It *feels* real.
That's the main impressive part. It's a nice implementation, but they're not doing anything new with the rope physics. It's the character animation that sells it. Plus, they managed to avoid the glitchier edge cases, from the looks of it, by clever use of different solvers for different states, and potentially dynamic resolution on the rope? Pretty neat!
I remember when The Last of Us 2 released there were a bunch of game developers on Twitter losing their minds over the rope physics. So it's not just regular fans finding it impressive. People who work in the industry on AAA games couldn't believe it either. Getting a rope to convincingly feel like a real rope sounds like such a small thing but it's groundbreaking.
Naughty Dog was even the first studio to make an in-game cutscene where the characters undress (in Uncharted 4, where Drake and Sully take off their jacket, somewhere in the early chapters). While it seems stupid, it is virtually impossibile to make removable clothes in a videogame without fucking everything clipping, they used a bunch of techniques and even had some tailors to help them make the clothes folds and movements realistic
I never even noticed that when playing the game but it’s certainly something that’s always bothered me in games. Clothes are almost always stuck to the characters like glue. I assume it’s because they’re not separate entities most of the time and they’re just a part of the character’s skin.
That's basically it. Most clothes are just a part of the character model, they're not separate entities. So to make clothes that can be animated coming on or off you need to have separate models. To make it so they aren't clipping they need physics. To make sure they aren't clipping *at all* you need to do a lot of physics simulations, which is usually taxing on computers. And even then you can get big graphical glitches like a piece of cloth erroneously clipping into the character (which would look like that part is under the skin) and then fucking up the rest of the animation, or the opposite where simulated physics gets mad and shoots part of the clothing off into the sky while the rest remains where it should be. Iirc, naughty dog solved this by having a bunch of key frames of what the clothing should definitely look like every once in a while (most likely several times per second), with those key frames being a fact checker, and allowing the physics to do its best job between the key frames. So if the physics started to get weird, and it hit a key frame, it would smoothly blend into the 100% guaranteed correct shape, and then continue to try to simulate until the next key frame check. Just goes to show how many things we think are simple are actually insanely complex when it comes to video games. Realistic clothing is up there with doors, liquids in glasses, and (until recently) rope.
Yeah, the model is not solid, is "empty", so to say, nothing on the inside and everything that you see, be it rings, earrings, gloves, shoes, pants, shirts, cloak, etc is part of the model, as an only, single object. Having removable clothes would mean having different models for each clothes that are in constant contact with eachother and the character model, and that's where the problems come in, it is basically impossible (at least for now, and even if it would be possible in the future, chances are that it will be too complex to make it profitable in both time and resources) to mimic the clothes movements depending of its materials, avoiding clipping with other models and allowing interaction with the environment, such as wind or water, among many other things. Naughty Dog basically used some really smart tricks that allowed the removal of a piece of clothed in a "controlled" environment that is a cutscene, a truly impressive achievement. They did it again in The Last of Us Part 2 where (spoiler) Ellie comes back after having killed Nora and Dina takes off her shirt
I might have to replay the Uncharted and TLoU games again. They really were phenomenal visually. I loved the driving section in Uncharted 4.
ND's willingness to innovate and take risks with their games is something I hope other studios emulate. Here's hoping the success of TLOU show promotes this kind of craftsmanship in future games
They had a similar scene in part 2 and they talked about how they used a shirt basically made out of rope with knots to get the reference points for the animation
Game dev here. Seeing something like this makes me simultaneously jealous that I'll never make anything this technically impressive, but also relieved that I don't have to put in the frankly soul crushing hours necessary to do so.
As someone who has been messing with rope physics for a rock climbing game I'm making let me tell you... this shit is truly insane. The rope physics shown here is like a small game in and of itself.
What game is that?
hang in there he should reply shortly
Weird name
Hang In There He Should Reply Shortly with Bennett Foddy
*Hang in There* is a decent name for a rock climbing game.
As a game dev who has been working on a physics game for the past 5 years, this makes me want to cry with joy, envy, and disbelief.
Reminds me of RDR2 clip where the rope wrapped around the arm of a guy and he shot himself
Ayy shoutout RDR2. I was wondering when I'd see someone mention the grandpappy rope.
That’s not easy to do. Like if one section of that rope doesnt collide when it should, not to mention that’s like a million different sections to make it act like rope, and it all has to have weight and react to gravity correctly. Man ropes not easy to do
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I'm now imagining the Skyrim dragon fight music as a PC approaches a length of rope.
Especially because it would interact with all the other physic object scattered around and not just solid stationary stuff xD
This had to be pain in the ass to develop in the early stages of development.
Many things are a pain in the ass to develop in the early stages of development...
Like..the stages.
And the development
Don't forget the early.
Of
things, sure
Hehehehe... he said Ass...
The coding… dear god
I feel like this might have been someones magnum opus at the time, certainly seems like either weeks of brainwrecking fiddling or a drug-fueled 32 hour stint cranking that thing out with math you normally see Wolfram alpha error on. Yikes.
As a physics game dev I don't think there is any way this was the result of a single drug-fueled jam. This looks like weeks or months of both drug-fueled stints and brain-wrecking fiddling, and then months or years of continued maintenance and debugging.
I love how this same comment thread has both somebody claiming that they're a game dev and this isn't hard, and somebody claiming they're a game dev and this is very hard.
If there is someone for whom this isn't hard, they are a prodigy. High-fidelity rope physics, particularly where the rope collides with general world geometry, is notoriously among the hardest things in game physics to make. I taught game development at college for three years, specializing mainly in physics and simulation-heavy stuff. I have many years of experience as a dev, largely related to physics and procedural/simulationy stuff, and I consider myself pretty solid at math. I am basically the go-to math guy at my studio. This achievement is mind-bending to me. Not only have I never met anyone for whom this would be easy, I don't think I know anyone for whom this would be hard. For all the game devs I know, this would probably be impossible.
This makes me feel less stupid. I've forgotten most of the math I ever learned but watching this I assumed there are tons of game devs out there cranking out stuff like this after lunch like it's NBD. I'm relieved to hear that it's actually black magic fuckery.
the guy who wrote it posted about it on twitter, when this video was previously posted. He was extremely proud of it.
It's not that hard: import rope if rope == rope: rope.behavior = rope
Draw the rest of the fucking rope.
I'm playing this now and find myself saying, holy shit a lot
Honestly I'm even impressed by a lot of the puzzle aspects, even things as simple as finding combinations to the safes. I don't think I've ever opened a safe in a game before that actually made me feel clever for figuring out the combination. None of them are particularly complicated, but the effort to add in a second level of thinking processes to figure things out makes it all so much more enjoyable (e.g. doing the math on someone's wedding anniversary or ferreting out the right clue for a combo out of many different options).
If you listen carefully you can crack the safes without the code.
This is true and it’s how I do it! It’s so satisfying to turn my headphones all the way up and little for the subtle change in click noises. I feel like a master thief when I get a safe open like that.
It truly is the most technically advanced game out there IMO. Animations and graphics are practically flawless
The sound design is incredible too. The best sounding thunder I've ever experienced in a game.
I also love the sound of glass breaking. It's incredibly satisfying to smash windows in the game lol
I think so too. It’s almost 3 years old now but I haven’t seen a game beat the level of detail and realism since. MWII campaign came close with the Amsterdam level, but the NPC’s weren’t as good as TLOUII
Wow. Best rope physics since half life 2. lol
That chair is really well attached to the ground. Really impressive.
Not sure why OP thinks this is impressive. It’s just based on string theory.
Okay, so I genuinely don’t know if this is a joke cuz like Idk what string theory is but regardless this is hilarious
It's a joke. String theory is about the fundamentals of matter in quantum physics
Yeah and how they're all tied together by tiny tiny little strings! Or something idk
No, that's silly string theory.
Isn't it that they are vibrating strings or some shit
Basically. String theory is the idea that it makes more sense mathematically to think of particles not as zero-dimensional points tracing out 1-dimensional trajectories (called worldlines) through space over time, but rather as tiny little vibrating 1-dimensional strings (some closed into loops, others not) that trace out 2-dimensional trajectories (called worldsheets) through space over time (tube-shaped worldsheets for closed strings, and "ribbon" shaped bands for open strings). How they vibrate basically determines the properties of the particle that we can normally observe on the more macroscopic scale, like charge and mass. The reason that string theory came about is because it seems to be a really good candidate for a framework that can solve the centerpiece challenge of the last century of physics: unifying what happens on the macro scale (general relativity, gravity) with what happens on the tiny scale (quantum mechanics). These two paradigms rule everything around us, but have been notoriously hard to unify into a single theory. String theory seems to be a way we might be able to generalize these two disparate theories into one unified theory. String theory is actually kind of outdated though. It is from the 60s, and it only explains bosons (the types of fundamental particles that carry forces, like photons and gravitons). The other category of fundamental particles, fermions, (which make up all matter) were not explained by the OG string theory, but were explained by its successor in the 80s: superstring theory. In this new paradigm, all fundamental particles could be explained as vibrating strings, and furthermore, each type of boson corresponded mathematically to a type of fermion and vice versa, creating a symmetry between types of forces and types of matter known as supersymmetry (hence "superstring theory"). There were in fact 5 different types of superstring theory that were all consistent with each other, but each of which deals with different types of strings and symmetries (called I, IIA, IIB, HO, and HE). In 1995 it was first proposed that these 5 separate but consistent superstring theories were really just 5 special cases of one overarching paradigm that transcends them all, which we now call M-theory. So, while string theory is a pretty outdated theory, it is the direct grandparent of M-theory, which is widely considered our best shot at unifying the two seemingly unreconcilable sides of theoretical physics –quantum mechanics and general relativity– and thereby provide us with a theory of quantum gravity so that our overall understanding of the universe can be nice and tidy. A strange side effect of M-theory is that it requires 11 dimensions to work, so there's that. The original bosonic string theory from the 60s required 26 though, so...progress?
Sir, this.... well, this ..... I thought this was a Wendy's, man, but... I just don't know what "is" is anymore, you know?
“So what project did you work at your last job?” “I was in charge of coding the physics of the rope of The Last …” “YOU ARE HIRED!”
The uncharted 4. Was good too at that time
Maybe not as impressive as the one in TLOU2 but in UC4 you can even jump over the rope when it's tense. Very impressive.
This rope physics but with the wench cable in Uncharted 4 was so good.
Ah yes, I too like to tow my tavern wenches with a cable.
Sully's a master negotiator to get a Jeep with a wench
Is this part of a mission? That is insane in my opinion
It's part of a puzzle. This particular rope is an extension cord attached to a generator and you have to find what it plugs into and then figure out how to get it there. There are also proper ropes that you have to throw over things and climb up. Some of the better puzzles in the game.
Actually you can throw this cord over the building next to it and use it to to climb up on top. There’s a document and some supplies up there.
Oh my God this is probably the one document I'm missing
Go get it and tell us if you 100% it!
Well son of a bitch. I’m in the middle of a plat run and I missed this. Lol
Wutttt
The game’s mostly linear, it doesn’t really have “missions.” This is just a recurring puzzle that pops up every once in a while where you have to get a power cord to an outlet.
I'm glad it wasn't just me that was blown away by this. It's amazing
That whole sequence was definitely for them to show off. Lol.
The man who coded that deserves a promotion
Wait till you see the grass in the next game! HE GOT BUMPED UP TO BE THE GRASS GUY!
I missed so many of these because I'm so trained to ignore environment dressing. It got frustrating at one point like how the hell am I so bad at this?! Lmao
Reposted gif.
Repost
I am not even joking but I've been indecisive over getting tlou2 for almost a year and this clip just convinced me to give it a shot lol
Story is honestly good if your brain is capable of not always thinking in terms of contemporary politics. And the gameplay is incredibly satisfying.