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I worked on True Crime: Streets of LA which had similar streaming gameplay and also worked on Blizzard's upcoming next-gen MMO, so I know a bit about this as we

by zach 15y ago

I worked on True Crime: Streets of LA which had similar streaming gameplay and also worked on Blizzard's upcoming next-gen MMO, so I know a bit about this as well. All those considerations you mention are true (and I remember them fondly), but I think the problem here is that whatever budgets are imposed on player-creators are not adequate. As I think the author implies, the problems are authoring guidelines and asset design. I don't even know if there are texture, vertex or other budgets imposed in Second Life, but I can tell you for sure that they were a big part of art creation in True Crime. The areas like Hollywood Boulevard with lots of recognizable buildings were really taxing on those budgets, but they made them work. Without those guidelines, even experienced artists can overshoot the mark. Ideally, within Second Life, these creative limitations can be integrated into the game, so that it gets increasingly expensive to claim a large amount of an area's graphical resources.

malkia 15y ago
Hi Zach! I miss the luxoflux bunch (I had to help briefly on the first True Crime with the xbox audio, and we pretty much stole all the QA from you guys for Spiderman, which I think is what killed TC:LA (not enough testing)) I really don't know when comes to creative decisions (I'm very bad at that). At the end of the day I can only say we can stream this much and this much (say max 1 stereo stream for music, 6-7 mono voices occasionally, and rest for streaming geometry,t exture). So part of all this was adjusting, testing to get it right. This is what the author misses - user provided content would never get the same amount of testing, as there is simply no money behind that. For that reason they should limit themselves as much as possible. But I'm begining to go into waters I've never been (never worked on MMO, so what the hell do I know :)) Cheers! I think we met, or at least said Hi couple of times, when walking by! (I'm still at Treyarch)
- zach 15y ago
  Oh yeah, Malkia! I'm sorry I didn't recognize you, big guy. Jeff Lander was so thankful you came in, he wanted to kidnap you to keep you at Luxo! You were great! Yeah, we had some crazy QA requirements for True Crime. It blows me away that there were parts of the map maybe only driven through a few times (we didn't have the resources to do that many complete drivethroughs - 240 square miles is just so big). We have so many "glitch videos" on YouTube I think it autocompletes the word glitch after our game's name! But that's very true - the iteration was a huge part of the process and of setting those limits. I couldn't imagine us not being able to go back to an artist and tell them it was chugging. I know some other studios did this thing where anytime the frame rate dropped below 30fps they put a bright red border up! We did fine with just a graphical meter and some really talented environmental artists. That's another thing - the folks who made our environments got increasingly better at delivering stuff under our budgets, because they were constantly getting feedback about it. Without that, you just can't get the best quality.

by zach 15y ago

malkia 15y ago

Hi Zach! I miss the luxoflux bunch (I had to help briefly on the first True Crime with the xbox audio, and we pretty much stole all the QA from you guys for Spiderman, which I think is what killed TC:LA (not enough testing)) I really don't know when comes to creative decisions (I'm very bad at that). At the end of the day I can only say we can stream this much and this much (say max 1 stereo stream for music, 6-7 mono voices occasionally, and rest for streaming geometry,t exture). So part of all this was adjusting, testing to get it right. This is what the author misses - user provided content would never get the same amount of testing, as there is simply no money behind that. For that reason they should limit themselves as much as possible. But I'm begining to go into waters I've never been (never worked on MMO, so what the hell do I know :)) Cheers! I think we met, or at least said Hi couple of times, when walking by! (I'm still at Treyarch)

zach 15y ago
Oh yeah, Malkia! I'm sorry I didn't recognize you, big guy. Jeff Lander was so thankful you came in, he wanted to kidnap you to keep you at Luxo! You were great! Yeah, we had some crazy QA requirements for True Crime. It blows me away that there were parts of the map maybe only driven through a few times (we didn't have the resources to do that many complete drivethroughs - 240 square miles is just so big). We have so many "glitch videos" on YouTube I think it autocompletes the word glitch after our game's name! But that's very true - the iteration was a huge part of the process and of setting those limits. I couldn't imagine us not being able to go back to an artist and tell them it was chugging. I know some other studios did this thing where anytime the frame rate dropped below 30fps they put a bright red border up! We did fine with just a graphical meter and some really talented environmental artists. That's another thing - the folks who made our environments got increasingly better at delivering stuff under our budgets, because they were constantly getting feedback about it. Without that, you just can't get the best quality.