Once upon a time, in 1988, in one distant, comprehensive bedroom, from the window of which a wonderful view of the San Jose Valley opened, 27 people gathered. We would doubt the brilliant prospects of the event at which 27 men are sitting in someone’s bedroom and discussing computer games. However, the story reasoned differently, and with such a gathering in the house of the gamemerator Chris Crawford, GDC, Game Developers Conference, the world now well -known conference of the game developers, which this year visited twenty -five thousand people and where, of course, we also visited, also visited.
For some exhibition of the type of “gamemaker”, this figure might seem very modest, but the essence of the GDC is not in quantity, but as: 25,000 developers collected in one place create a critical mass in which the chain reaction of the division of rumors and reproduction begins news of varying degrees of epic.
In previous years, the GDC took place rather boring. In one corner, Sony shows his move from under the floors, in the other they boast of who squeezed out how many percent of the console capacity, and in the conference hall some star gameplay reading a 36-hour lecture on the narrative and the games of the future, in which the player will not need press more than one button.
But there was no time to miss the GDC 2013, because it was here that a new generation started – no, not even consoles, a new generation of the gaming industry. Programmers were finally released from the cells, and they rushed to show the latest technologies, brag about who could make shader eyes, and whom the engine allows the engine to distinguish on the nurses, the underwear worn under the dressing gown.
Once again, the developers tried to swing to the Holy Grail – photorealism, about which everyone heard, but no one saw him. And yet he is. So far, very small, breaking through timid sprouts made of flat decorations and angular models, but still photorealism.
"San Fran-Cisco"
GDC 2013 in San Francisco began the next day after the completion of Pax East in Boston. And this, by the way, is the other end of the United States. Therefore, the first two days out of five stands were closed, and the developers were pulled from Boston – tired, but satisfied.
The conference was held at the George Muscovy Convention Center, in the very center of San Francisco, between skyscrapers and trams, among street musicians and expensive hotels. But unlike Pax East, where the whole action took place under the roof of one gigantic pavilion, the GDC conference was located in three buildings at once. And all five days, while the main action took place, citizens with smart people and yellow badges wandered back and forth through the streets.
The most stinging head that Activision and Nvidia used to demonstrate their technology.
Between the northern and southern pavilions, traffic was small – they were united by an underground passage. But on the approaches to the western there were always crowds. And there the developers were caught by promoters of the nearest nightclubs, promising free dinners. And this is nothing-for example, in Las Vegas, on D.I.C.E. Summit, which we told you about in the last issue of Gamery, at the exit from the pavilions with complete connivance of the police, “shameful cards” were heard with phones and prices.
However, not only three pavilions were a journalist alive. GDC 2013 launched shoots to neighboring hotels and clubs, where large and not very companies lured the press informative reports promising press releases and, what a sin to melt, buffet.
The main events, however, were held in the pavilions. The number of industry representatives gathered in one place was amazing. There were literally all famous companies here. If D.I.C.E. Summit was mainly the congress of the rich elite and celebrities, the GDC turned out to be an extremely democratic place. You could just walk, peering at the badge. Here are the developers who are talking about each other Zynga And Gearbox. Here are a circle and the creators are absorbed by the hamburgers Simcity Together with the main artist. But the developers rush along the hall with a flock Thatgamecompany and modestly squints Jenov Chen.
[[Bullet]] Jenova Chen is satisfied – Journey again “Game of the Year” and winner in a bunch of nominations.
There were few celebrities, however, at the conference – unless Warren Spector looked, Mr. Violet Tentuver, Tim Shaifer from Mr Double Fine And at the stand Wargaming Viktor Kisly flickered constantly. But the lack of celebrities is even good. It’s easier to patch out secrets from ordinary employees of companies that are usually hidden behind the streamlined press releases PR department from unattended bosses. Why, for example, the release of Simcity turned out to be so … peculiar. Or as the NVIDIA programmer sees the current state of three -dimensional graphics.
Living faces
Research department Activision presented the technology for creating photorealistic persons. You can believe the word: if the screenshot of a pretty brunette is to increase the entire page, the effect of what you look at a real photo will not be lost. Pay attention to the eyes – this is not a simple texture and not a three -dimensional model, but a complex shader that gives the eyeball the effect of the volume. There is no hair, since you can make a beautiful hair with fluttering hair, but it will look unnatural, please in the “ominous valley” and destroy the entire effect of realism.
It is a pity, this is only a screenshot, and to show the possibilities of animation they chose the head of a bald man who is crooked on camera. The sensation did not work, since a week earlier the company NVIDIA conducted a demonstration of a similar project Face Works , Moreover, I used the same model of the bald comrade as Activision. So both demonstrations looked like twins in the literal and figurative sense.
Photorealistic brunette from Activision. The feeling of reality of the picture does not disappear, even if you give part of the face, for example, the eye, close -up.
Subsequently, it turned out that Nvidia and Activision borrowed a “speaking head” at the Institute of Creative Technologies at the University of South California, where the system was developed Light Stage. Many cameras allow you to create a three -dimensional face model with an accuracy of tenths of a millimeter, and special photographic equipment records even subtleties such as underground dispersion of light on the human skin. After creating the face model, an advanced assembly system records the facial facial expressions.
If the Demo version Face Works from Nvidia worked on a computer with a video card Titan , then Activision programmers launched a demo on a laptop two years ago. On a more powerful computer with GeForce GTX 680 speed reached 180 frames per second. The model dynamically changes its complexity: for example, when wrinkles and folds appear, the number of landfills in the right places automatically increases, and when the skin is smoothed out, it again decreases to the required minimum.
Will such faces appear in games? It is possible, although to expect the appearance of faces at the level of that beauty in the beret, most likely, you should not. One such face weighs at least 400 megabytes, and this is after all optimizations, since the initial data also occupy as many as 32 gigabytes. Although, on the other hand, it is necessary to clog the three-four-layer Blu-ray discs on 100-128 GB and the hard drives for five terabytes?
Queues and virtual reality
For two days in the exhibition hall behind closed doors, the sound of hammers was heard and drank. They collected stands. On the third day of the conference, the hall opened.
What was happening inside a regular game exhibition was like little. “Gamemir” could boast of “classic” stands of AL “Gamery” only two or three companies. Wargaming was allowed to play in World of Warplanes , And behind closed doors showed World of Tanks: Blitz and card game " Generals ". The most elegant was the stand Game Insight – Two girls even attended it in partly immodest armor. Sony did not bring the new console and did not show, even the controllers did not give anyone in her hands, demonstrating exclusively under glass.
[[Bullet]] Awarding ceremony became the main event GDC. The evening of the third day of the conference, two more ahead.
Other companies with large stands – Intel, Crytek, Nvidia, Unity – showed not games, but the possibilities of engines. Solder stands around them small stands with a variety of tools. Most of all there were cloud technologies and animation tools – skeletal and front. And next to the automatic generator of SpeedTree trees, companies are located that offers the generation of weather and even cities – from medieval to futuristic.
A quarter of the entire exhibition hall was taken for those who wanted to get a job: on dozens of small stands, you could go to a mini-interview with Ubisoft, Microsoft, Riot or Sony. Serious lines of people who wanted to try strength in employment accumulated there.
However, the queue of a modest stand was the longer Oculus vr , where the developers showed everyone in the action of the helmet Oculus Rift (The same three hundred -dollar helmet that was funded on Kickstarter). The impressions of him are the most pleasant: a bright convincing picture, a short delay of the picture when moving the head, deep 3D. The only thing that I did not like was granularity, but the developers say that a version with much greater resolution will go to the market.
Trends of a new generation
The GDC 2013 became clearer the paths along which the game industry is moving. So, for example, Wii U , It seems that they finally crossed out of the list of prefixes of the new generation. Epic Games stopped pulling the elephant by the tail and clearly stated that the engine Unreal Engine 4 WITH WILL WITH WITH WITH WITH. At the same time, a studio Dice noted that Battlefield 4 It will also bypass this platform – and not because it is weak (since the game comes to the weaker PS3 and Xbox 360), but simply “to avoid risks”.
[[Bullet]] Animation takes away a lot of energy, so that at the first opportunity, Mocap-actors ran to the dining room to replenish the forces.
Translated into human language: in Dice they simply do not want to spend strength on the development of the architecture of the new platform, perhaps even consider it unpromising. Probably a few years ago Nintendo There was a wonderful plan – to gain a foothold in the market early, to tear the technology race, to scold the developers for yourself. However, while the plan is in doubt. Wii U is a wonderful console in itself, but it came out very late and turned out to be too weak, unable to stand out even against the backdrop of their age PS3 and Xbox 360. The recent decrease in prices also did not help, and sales of WII U is left to be desired.
Sony this time almost did not talk about technologies, but intensely promoted the PS4 among the developers, trying to convince them that the consoles ceased to be a cross of concentration camps and meat grinders and turned into a place friendly to the developers where everyone can show their talents. The company organized the event Indie Arcade , on which playable versions of 25 indie projects for PS4, PS3, Vita and PlayStation Mobile were presented.
Sony Vice President Adam Boyce said that now they are completely open to indie. If desired, developers can even sell finished products, but alpha versions of games, and as an example the release of beta version cited the release Dust 514. This will help players support money in the early stages of development, as it once happened to the ingenious Minecraft.
Lucky technologies for small platforms
The new generation of graphics comes not only to consoles. Browsers and mobile platforms have long joined the technological race and more and more catch up with their senior comrades. After the Irish company HAVOK I bought it Intel , There was almost nothing about her. And so Havok is returning: at the GDC 2013, the company introduced a new engine for mobile phones – Project Anarchy , – including the very famous physical module Havok, graphic module Vision Engine , as well as tools for creating animation and artificial intelligence. Moreover, all this wealth can be obtained for free. It is possible that at Unity A very, very cool competitor will appear soon.
[[Bullet]] Director Diablo 3 Jay Wilson talks about the shortcomings of the game. So carried away that I even forgot to remove the cap.
On the browser front Epic Games continues to introduce its Unreal Engine 3 engine to our browsers so that we can play AAA-Class projects right from the pages of the site. The previous attempts were not very successful, but now the studio has united with the developers Firefox , who wrote a new version JavaScript , highly increasing engine performance. The authors of the technology hope that it will take root not only on PC, but also on mobile platforms.
That is, in addition to jokes, the developers in the foreseeable future will be able to porten almost any game on the basis of UE3 without any problems – for example – for example, Bioshock Infinite. True, no one will do this, since the same Bioshock takes more than 15 gigabytes of the place, and while he is loading, the player has time to have https://mr-vegas-casino.co.uk/ breakfast, sleep, have lunch, and then sleep a little more and have dinner. But they are also going to solve this problem – by adding a streaming technology of data (remember that at the PS4 presentation it was also about such things: the games can be started to go long before they were completely loaded), but so far you have to load at least the level.
PC is alive!
Five years ago PC Gaming Alliance , The fate of games on a PC is not indifferent to the company under its wing, published entertaining statistics: in 2012, the profit from the staff at the staff was $ 20 billion. This is about the same as on consoles, with an important difference – the console market does not grow, and the staff gained 8% over the year. The number of PC players, according to approximate estimates, has reached a billion people. “We can say that now the PC industry is stronger than ever,” said Matt Carriage, the head of PC Gaming Alliance.
If you look closely, it becomes clear that such outstanding numbers have been obtained, firstly, thanks to free games, and secondly, thanks to the Chinese, whose share accounts for 7 billion sales and a significant contribution to growth dynamics.
[[Bullet]] Kodzima promised that the Fox Engine engine would distinguish the nurses of nurses, translucent through the bathrobe. Alas, we never saw at the presentation of this chip, although we looked very carefully. But it still looks very cool.
And here's another good news for PC fans: the mobile games market is growing at a completely indecent pace and after a couple of years he threatens to increase current incomes of three times by three times. It would seem that the connection between the PC and the mobile phones? Analysts believe that the connection is the most direct. The growth of the mobile sector helps to support an indie-boom that gives rise to the release of a huge number of niche games, many of which work on PC.
And why don't they work? It is easy to porten, the audience is large, there is Steam. In fact, two markets merge into one, providing each other with mutual support.
After the PC Gaming Alliance performance, we came up to chat with Matt Cargoer. In combination, he is a leading Intel strategist, so the conversation came to the “iron” prospects of games by itself. Everything is fine here: the technological limit of reducing processors is still ahead, their speed grows by 10-15% per year (and progress is geometric, since the percentages are formed). In addition, more and more microcircuits are now processing graphics. In the future, according to Truyer, there are prospects for "puff" processors. As for quantum computers, they still continue to ripen in university laboratories.
Awarding of heroes
Under the curtain GDC 2013, a traditional ceremony of presenting awards to the most distinguished games, studios and developers took place. First, the results of the festival of independent games were summed up, which has been collecting a rich harvest of interesting indie projects for a year now. This year, the winner was a black and white two-dimensional quest Cart Life , who took the main prize, as well as prizes for the best plot and the most successful innovations. A spacecraft simulator FTL: Faster than Light won the nomination "Best Design". The creators of the puzzle World of Goo introduced the jury to the court Little Inferno , Having received a prize for technical superiority. A stylish adventure Kentucky Road Zero quite expectedly won in the nomination "Best visual design". However, you can read about this in detail in our report with the IGF – for this it is enough to turn over only a few pages.
The course on photorealism was supported by the game announced during the GDC, Battlefield 4 and Metal Gear Solid 5.
Then the distribution of elephants began to ministers of the "big" gaming industry. There were no special surprises. The ceremony led by Tim Shaifer turned into an event to deify and ascertain the honors of the Great Journey , which was both the best game of the year and the best loaded game, grabbing prizes for innovation along the path, the best sound, the best visual design and the best game design.
The prize for the best technologies could also give her, but in the end the organizers decided to award the victory Far Cry 3. Zombies from The Walking Dead managed to scratch their reward for the best plot, Dishonored quietly stole the prize of spectator sympathies, and a puzzle was recognized as the best game for mobile devices The Room.
Studio Subset Games , created the above FTL: Faster than Light, noted as the most successful newcomers of the year. Needless to say, they turned out to be very successful. And finally, the former EA President John Richitello handed the former Vice President EA Ray Muzik and another former vice president of EA Greg Zeschuk for outstanding achievements in the game industry.
Just imagine, a bunch of former EA presidents reward each other for successes in the game field! There was something comical, symbolic and life-affirming in this scene.
After the awarding, we caught Jenov Chen at the exit of the hall. He gave the prize for the "game of the year" to his colleagues. We forced him to pick up the prize back, pose for photos and demanded to talk about future plans to Thatgamecompany. Genov was in a good mood and promised the announcement – albeit not by summer, but by the end of the year for sure. At least some certainty!
Scandal with dancers
GDC, of course, is a serious event, but still, among business conversations and abstruse lectures, you can have fun and have fun. A major conference sponsor, company Yetizen , invited three dancers to one of the events. Just do not think anything bad, no “private dances”, the struggle in the mini-bass, playing the “bottle” for stripping and other things-ordinary Go-go-dance in the relevant mini-orders, which have long become the norm at any gaming exhibition.
[Bullet]] To prove the great PS4 opportunities, the famous UNREAL Engine 4 demo was launched on it, the PC version of which worked for the GTX 680. True, it seemed to us that the demo was greatly simplified. Yes, and the console itself was not shown at the exhibition, but only twisted the video.
Last year, the sponsors already ordered a similar “Perfoman”, and then everything worked out, except that the most stiff developers grumbled that this was not e3. But this time easily dressed girls caught the eye of Brand Romero (John Romero's wife). Maybe she would not have noticed, but the day before, the brand gave a lecture on the inadmissibility of women's operation as models at gaming exhibitions – in her opinion, this is sexual discrimination that prevents the normal attitude to women in the gaming industry.
And after this speech, she sees how such a disgrace is not going on at any exhibitions there, but at her native GDC, while it is listed as part of the leadership Igda – companies conducting this very conference.
A mini-scandal erupted. Romero resigned from the post of the co -chair of the IgDA and broke out of the prosecution speeches in the press. Girls were removed to hell. IgDA Executive Director apologized, saying that "some actions taken by the dancers were unexpected and did not receive approval from our side".
As a result, everyone is happy, only from now on pretty girls on GDC will be even smaller. Nothing, but now the conference has become a little closer to its roots-to those 27 men in one bedroom, with which everything once began.
GDC 2013 showed that the game industry is on horseback, and the PC platform is going through the best times in history. The reports ooze optimism, the bosses are smiling happily, journalists meticulously choose buffes, large companies actively hire employees, and a hundred flowers bloom in the development market for development. If the main scandal of the event is the excessive nude of the pair of dancers, it means that the industry has no other problems.
In addition, the other day it became known that video games began to attract the attention of large investors, and the shares of publishers went up. In a word, by all signs this and next year will be an excellent time for games.
Smart Valley
Developers are trying to add photorealistic faces to the games not at all at their whim. In 1978, the Japanese robotics Masakhiro Mori opened the effect of the “sinister valley”: the more robots were like a person, the more cute they seemed, but only until a certain moment. The robot was no longer perceived as a mechanism, but as a strange creature, masking under a person, and caused an inexplicable sense of disgust. It seems to be similar, but still it is clear that a fake. Maybe such robots began to resemble the corpses of living people, or maybe the brain instinctively perceived the fake as a deception and an attempt to pass itself “for its”.
Psychologists are still trying to bring the scientific base under the effect of the “ominous valley”, and the horror masters are already using it in practice, creating vampires and walking corpses – humanoid creatures scare us more than the fuel -eyed monsters with tentacles. However, the developers of ordinary games The effect of the "ominous valley" only interferes. In order for the player he likes the character, he has to make him obviously unrealistic. For realistic setting, this approach does not work. So the heroes go to various kinds of masks and helmets.
The new technologies for creating photorealistic individuals, according to the developers, will help to jump over the “ominous valley”, allowing you to create realistic characters who can sympathize, empathize with their joys and grief. But the jump should be big if you do not jump – it can only be worse. They say that animated film Final Fantasy: The Spirits with It failed at the box office precisely thanks to this effect, and since then in three -dimensional cartoons they have avoided showing realistic people. Will the games be able to take a sufficient run?