Yet More Team Fortress Two

[Not One Of Us]

Everytime you bastards release another teaser video of the game I get more and more anxious. (http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=game&AppId=960&cc=US)

Looks just ridiculously fun.

[RightWrong]

There should be more game trailers which make me laugh.

[RichardC]

Yeah, I'm not an online gamer at all, but I'm really looking forward to this one.

[nutsak]

I demand more of these little previews!









:edit: Also as soon as he said how much the things cost I thought "FACK NO! YOU JOKE ME!"

[docvego]

simply amazing.

[Gary Whitta]

BRILLIANT.

[tromik]

They previewed it on The 1UP Show on Friday.

No grenades.

[Al]

Why can't I download the video without installing Steam? I don't want to install Steam on this machine. Fuck Steam.

[PeterGinsberg]

Why can't I download the video without installing Steam? I don't want to install Steam on this machine. Fuck Steam.

Chet posted it over here too:
http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=16432

Assuming it's the same video, I don't have steam installed here either.

[Erik]

It's the same video, just lower quality.

[Jason Cross]

Gabe Newell and a Valve animation technology guy demoed this at the R600 press day thing a couple weeks back.

FYI, this video is rendered real-time in the game engine using a single R600 (Radeon HD 2900 XT). The "big deal" about it was that they've gone from 40-something morph targets for Alyx's facial animation to over 400 for the Heavy here. That puts them into the same league as the number of morph targets used in feature films (usually in the 500-1000 range), which gives you dramatically better facial expressions and motion and blah blah yadda yadda is looks great.

If you can find the hi-res version anywhere (or have steam installed to grab it), it's totally worth snagging. The animation is truly impressive.

[DustyTheHamster]

No grenades.

Seriously? In that case please to deliver TF2 now. The lack of grenades just made this game hit the top of my want list.

[Erik]

Technically, the demo still has grenades. Nobody else does, though.

[nKoan]

Nice vid. I'll have to check out the higher res Steam version when I get home tonight.

[Rywill]

This thing just shot to the top of my list based on a video that has essentially no gameplay in it. I watch this and think "OK, these are people who get it." If the in-game characters have the same amount of facial expression and voice as the ones at the end of that clip, I am sold x 10.

[mono]

I absolutely love the style, but I don't think I can go back to TF style gameplay. The objective based stuff from Return to Castle Wolfenstein & Enemy Territory has spoiled me.

Any planned new gameplay modes for TF2, or is it still some Capture the Flag derivation?

[Not One Of Us]

Technically, the demo still has grenades. Nobody else does, though.
Really? I knew they removed them from a lot of the classes, but no one has them anymore? What about concussion grenades? MIRVs? What about specialty weapons, like the Scout's caltrops?

[mouselock]

FYI, this video is rendered real-time in the game engine using a single R600 (Radeon HD 2900 XT). The "big deal" about it was that they've gone from 40-something morph targets for Alyx's facial animation to over 400 for the Heavy here. That puts them into the same league as the number of morph targets used in feature films (usually in the 500-1000 range), which gives you dramatically better facial expressions and motion and blah blah yadda yadda is looks great.

Are the morph targets actually using geometry shaders? I have high, high hopes for geometry shaders in DX10. Imagine all the subtleties of muscles that actually bulge/relax when people move. Faces where you can have subtle lines/wrinkles when you need them and not incur the extra polygon hit when you don't, etc.. really high hopes.

[RepoMan]

OK, here's a hot news item for you all:

Back in the mid-90s I worked for a little company called Protozoa. The company mainly did performance animation. I worked on an attempted game (called Squeezils) that pretty much failed... if I'd known then what I know now about game design, it would've turned out much different, but sadly game design direction was totally lacking.

However, I did work with a guy named Bay Raitt. He was basically a godlike character animator, hopelessly crippled by trying to build characters with a polygon budget that barely topped 200. This was 1996, on DirectX 3. Umm... yeah. (He was also Bonnie Raitt's nephew.)

Imagine my surprise when after the second Lord of the Rings movie came out, I bought a book about how they created Gollum, who we all know was the most awesome CG character ever made up to that point (and probably still). And who was Gollum's lead facial designer? You guessed it -- Bay Raitt.

Well, I just looked him up on LinkedIn (I've been going haywire with LinkedIn lately, trying to get everyone I ever worked with on there) and....

...he now works for Valve, doing facial animation.

So it's very possible that he was involved in doing the Heavy preview we're all spooging about. They're really not kidding when they're talking about "motion picture quality." Real-time Gollum, anyone?

[J. Matthew Zoss]

Screw every game in 2007 that isn't part of the Half-Life 2: Orange Box. Seriously, has there EVER been a title with so much awesomeness in one package?

[Not One Of Us]

BioShock.

[GlaziusFalconar]

FYI, this video is rendered real-time in the game engine using a single R600 (Radeon HD 2900 XT). The "big deal" about it was that they've gone from 40-something morph targets for Alyx's facial animation to over 400 for the Heavy here. That puts them into the same league as the number of morph targets used in feature films (usually in the 500-1000 range), which gives you dramatically better facial expressions and motion and blah blah yadda yadda is looks great.
Oh! Now the whole The Many Moods Of Heavy Weapons Guy thing makes a lot more sense.

I suppose you can tell the tech has finally come full circle when you don't even notice the tech demo.

--GF

But seriously, great trailer.

[Scrax]

Wow that was amazing. Fantasy Russians are so much more awesome than real russians.

[André Costa]

Bay Raitt

Bay Raitt = Awesome. When i was learning 3D modelling i used to read his website/forums (http://cube.phlatt.net/home/spiraloid/). I watched some videos of him using one odd application(Mirai) and i just stood there amazed at his skill AND speed.

[Igor Muravyev]

Cool, but why do you need expressive facial animation in a fast paced multiplayer shooter? It's not like people are going to be standing around and drinking tea..

OMG this is the perfect plot for the next penny arcade strip.

[Marcus]

I think this game is going to be worth the wait. Its looking better and better.

[Scrax]

Cool, but why do you need expressive facial animation in a fast paced multiplayer shooter? It's not like people are going to be standing around and drinking tea.

I do have to agree with you. Where is this going to fit in if at all? Its still just a multiplayer shooter right? There isn't going to be any sort of storyline or cutscenes to marvel at the facial animation and awesome (so far) voicework.

[Johnny Law]

I absolutely love the style, but I don't think I can go back to TF style gameplay. The objective based stuff from Return to Castle Wolfenstein & Enemy Territory has spoiled me.

Any planned new gameplay modes for TF2, or is it still some Capture the Flag derivation?
I believe they're actually drifting away from CtF, although still preserving it for 2forts, and putting more emphasis on capturepoint-style play. I don't have any quotes on hand to back this up but I believe most in-depth TF2 previews mention this.

[RepoMan]

Bay Raitt = Awesome. When i was learning 3D modelling i used to read his website/forums (http://cube.phlatt.net/home/spiraloid/).
Whoa, nice pointer. Looks like they're hiring (http://cube.phlatt.net/forums/spiraloid/viewtopic.php?TopicID=1116). Man, if I were a digital artist I would be up there SO FAST....

Dudes, where is your imagination? This is the next generation of emotes / gestures. I'll bet you any amount of money (well, OK, how about 50 cents?) that they're working on really, really good real-time lip-syncing for people with voice chat. I'll also bet you that they're going to make all the characters grimace when they're shot, sneer when they pull off a headshot, roar with laughter when hosing down fools with the minigun, squint when peering through the sniper scope....

Maybe you'll mainly see it on your teammates... but maybe not.

All of this is going to be HUGE for immersion. HUGE. The only reason we don't miss it now is because we've never had it. Once we get used to it, we'll never want to go back.

[Jason Cross]

I do have to agree with you. Where is this going to fit in if at all? Its still just a multiplayer shooter right? There isn't going to be any sort of storyline or cutscenes to marvel at the facial animation and awesome (so far) voicework.

I dunno. I mean that last scene, where he's laughing and going "hooo-aaah!! CRY SOME MORE!!" is pretty cool. If he's doing that during gameplay, then I totally want to be the medic standing behind him with the healing gun. Seriously.


Are the morph targets actually using geometry shaders? I have high, high hopes for geometry shaders in DX10. Imagine all the subtleties of muscles that actually bulge/relax when people move. Faces where you can have subtle lines/wrinkles when you need them and not incur the extra polygon hit when you don't, etc.. really high hopes.

Valve didn't get into specifics at the time, and weren't keen to get into comparisons in the whole ATI vs Nvidia thing. But ATI was quick to trumpet that they have way, WAY better geometry shader performance than the GeForce 8 cards do (for all we know, it could just be a driver thing). But yeah, the idea of DX10 is that with a combination of geometry shaders and the ability to stream out data from one shader and read it into another without going off the card and through the main system memory bus, AND to queue up lots of shader work of certain types without a lot of driver overhead...all that stuff could lead to dramatically better animation.

Bay Raitt! That's the guy's name...the dude who worked on Gollum and presented the demo with Gabe at the ATI thing. Yep, that's the dude responsible for this. Anyway, they were both talking about how 3D game graphics are getting much better in terms of rendering quality, but the animation is still shit. And the biggest leap forward game graphics need to make is in making everything move right, and not in ever more detailed textures and lighting algorithms.

[André Costa]

EDIT: @Repoman

That post is dated ... 2005 :p


The forum got very slow when he went to Weta to work on LOTR.

[Ben Sones]

all that stuff could lead to dramatically better animation.


That's good news, because that's really the one area where game graphics are really lagging behind. You might have the coolest rendering effects in the world, but that won't save it from bad animation.

[RepoMan]

Andre -- LOTR was done by 2005. You mean the forum got very slow when he went to Valve to work on TF2 :-D And yes, I didn't notice that the job posting was from 2005 until after I'd linked it here.

Good to know I was right, though, thanks Jason :-D With Bay at Valve, I think we can confidently expect the world of computer game real-time animation to get completely turned upside down and revolutionized now. If I know them, they've got ten tons of awesome brewing on the back burners that they haven't even started to show yet.

Back in 1996 it was killing Bay that he had such a miserable budget to work with, because real-time was totally where his heart was (Protozoa was all about doing performance-based real-time animation, digital puppeteering basically, not cinematics). Now his dreams are coming true. I was kind of excited about TF2 before, but NOW I'm PSYCHED.

[Rywill]

All of this is going to be HUGE for immersion. HUGE. The only reason we don't miss it now is because we've never had it. Once we get used to it, we'll never want to go back.
I agree. Although I didn't drink much tea in, say, BF2, I definitely noticed the static faces on the soldiers. It becomes more and more apparent as their body animation gets more and more varied and realistic. I think animated faces, automatic flavor comments (like "Cry some more"), and realtime spatial player voicechat are going to take these games to a new level that will be marvelous to see.