[HN Gopher] Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2
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Northlight technology in Alan Wake 2
Author : vblanco
Score : 211 points
Date : 2023-11-07 18:32 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.remedygames.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.remedygames.com)
| simbolit wrote:
| Love the tone of the article.
|
| Example:
|
| Our marketing folks would say the characters are more responsive
| and lifelike than ever before; our internal dev notes described
| it as "the characters won't bump or get stuck into objects in
| tight spaces".
| wilg wrote:
| The perennial problem with marketing language seems to be that
| everything needs to be reworded to "make sense" to someone who
| doesn't know anything about the actual product that is being
| marketed.
| mpalmer wrote:
| Not nearly as big a problem as the positive spin they feel
| compelled put on everything. When everything sounds like a
| win, nothing does.
| aydio wrote:
| "Winflation"?
| Smoosh wrote:
| Hype~r~inflation
| kevingadd wrote:
| Considering their size (a few hundred people for the whole studio
| AFAIK), Remedy consistently punches above their weight when it
| comes to graphics. Off the top of my head only Remedy and CD
| Projekt Red are able to compete with the big dogs (Unreal, Unity,
| EA Frostbite) when it comes to image fidelity and performance.
| Their GDC/siggraph/etc presentations are fantastic for anyone
| interested in computer graphics or technical art.
|
| Alan Wake 2 is easily one of the most beautiful (from a technical
| perspective - IMO also from an artistic one but that's a 100%
| subjective thing) games ever released and it still looks good
| even when you turn all the settings down, which is a true
| achievement. It's hard to make a game scale down to older
| hardware while still looking good.
|
| Though as commentators like Digital Foundry have noted, the game
| runs really badly if your GPU doesn't support Mesh Shaders (they
| mention the use of those for culling in the article). Mesh
| Shaders in this case enable a lot of really smart culling and
| dynamic level of detail so that things like coffee cups or tires
| can be perfectly round without having the 'every NPC has 10k-poly
| teeth in their mouth' problem that's currently sabotaging Cities
| Skylines 2's performance, and this is one of the big advantages
| offered by Unreal 5's Nanite.
| dharma1 wrote:
| Some extremely good GPU devs in Finland, demoscene prob has a
| lot to do with it. Remedy rocks.
|
| Isn't CD Projekt Red moving to UE5 for future titles? Shame,
| Cyberpunk was gorgeous - would have loved a multiplayer game
| with that engine.
| capableweb wrote:
| Funnily enough, both Colossal Order (Cities: Skylines 2 devs)
| and Remedy are Finnish companies, yet only one suffers from
| GPU performance issues.
| dharma1 wrote:
| One is a small company developing a city builder in Unity,
| the other are ex demoscene GPU gods building a custom
| state-of-the-art engine themselves. Nuff said!
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > would have loved a multiplayer game with that engine.
|
| this strikes me as an extremely silly statement. Their engine
| doesn't seem to have multiplayer.
| dharma1 wrote:
| REDengine doesn't do multiplayer at the moment, but it
| could in the future if they kept developing it / more games
| with it. I'm sure they'll make great games with Unreal too
| xu_ituairo wrote:
| Your reply would have been a lot nicer without the first
| sentence
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| that's ok
| rstat1 wrote:
| Only for the next Witcher series. Cyberpunk 2 (w/e it ends up
| being called) is still on their in house engine.
|
| (Don't ask me for a source, I don't remember where I saw that
| info)
| justinclift wrote:
| > Cyberpunk 2 (w/e it ends up being called) is still on
| their in house engine.
|
| How sure of that are you?
|
| There are several reports that the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077
| will be using UE5 as well.
|
| As in, CD Projekt Red have purposely switched all future
| projects to UE5.
|
| * https://screenrant.com/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-
| dlc-la...
|
| * https://kotaku.com/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-
| expansion-...
| rstat1 wrote:
| Ok then they changed it. At one point it was still on the
| in house engine.
| justinclift wrote:
| No worries. :)
| simbolit wrote:
| Remedy has 360 employees.
|
| CDPR has 1236 employees.
|
| DICE (makers of Frostbite) has 714 employees.
|
| Epic has 2200 employees (before the recent layoffs).
|
| all numbers from Wikipedia.
| jguegant wrote:
| Frostbite is its own sub-company within the E.A umbrella.
| While Frostbite is used by the titles from DICE and we share
| parts of our offices, the two companies are rrally distinct
| for a couple of years now.
|
| Frostbite had roughly 300 employees when I joined 2 years
| ago.
| simbolit wrote:
| Thanks for correcting me, I am just an idiot with a
| Wikipedia addiction.
| treprinum wrote:
| Remedy are basically Future Crew famous for Unreal/Second
| Reality (demo). Who else should push GPU to its limits than the
| ones who defined/popularized modern computer graphics?
| Centigonal wrote:
| If you haven't seen Second Reality, it's definitely worth a
| watch, even as a historical artifact. Pushing the limits of
| what was possible in 1993.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFv7mHTf0nA
| Flow wrote:
| Here's a 60fps video of the same demo. The demo-sceners
| work really hard to make everything 60fps(1 vbl), so
| watching it in any other frame-rate feels wrong.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw17c70uJes
| phs2501 wrote:
| Nitpicky: for a lot of parts that would have actually
| been 70Hz (from the 320x200 VGA mode 13h), and having run
| the demo back in 1993 it definitely was not as smooth as
| in the video above on my 486/66MHz (and the Pentium had
| only been out for a few months at the time).
| katbyte wrote:
| Shame I won't be able to play it as it's only on the epic game
| store, which I refuse to use
| kevingadd wrote:
| The console versions are quite good
| squidsoup wrote:
| I usually can't stand playing anything at 30fps, but the
| combat and pacing are deliberately slow in Alan Wake II,
| and I've been surprised how little it has bothered me
| (quality mode on PS5).
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| why?
| p1necone wrote:
| Not OP, but after getting used to Steam and GOG I don't
| really want to use anything that doesn't have text reviews.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| That's fair, as it's your preference. It's my preference
| too to use steam just because it's where I have the most
| games and I like keeping things tidy and in 1 place.
| Though it's not an ideological stance, which "refuse"
| leads me to believe. I'm genuinely curious about the
| reason an adult would take that position. Last time I
| asked (a couple of years ago) on Reddit I didn't get,
| ummm, mature responses.
|
| If there is a game I'm interested in, I'd use whatever is
| cheaper/available for it.
| shinymark wrote:
| I agree with you. I want to play Alan Wake 2 on PC and
| since it is only sold on the Epic Store I will buy it
| there.
|
| If it was on Steam I would have likely bought it on
| Steam. But it's not. So in my case at least, this
| exclusive is effectively driving me to buy on the Epic
| Store.
|
| I find it sort of funny that many (not all) complaints
| about the Epic Store are the same things gamers
| complained about when Steam was released 20 years ago.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I think it is only fair to compare the Epic vs modern
| Steam. That Steam had the same issues 20 years ago, is
| kind of irrelevant if expectations have risen.
| rstat1 wrote:
| My reason for refusing to give the Epic store money is
| pretty simple: Paid exclusives are bullshit. Especially
| when they're used as fodder to promote "competition",
| when such things are anything but.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| That's fair. I view it as just business. It certainly
| doesn't affect me or any consumer. It only affects Valve,
| which I don't care about. Maybe valve should pay
| developers more. Epic takes far less than steam does from
| developers, so I definitely understand the appeal to
| developers.
| rstat1 wrote:
| It does effect you. Its a reduction of choice that
| benefits no one.
|
| And since there's a vastly bigger audience on Steam vs
| the Epic Store, I don't really think that split matters
| as much as people would have you believe.
| doikor wrote:
| This usually applies but for Alan Wake 2 Epic is the
| publisher. So your argument is like getting angry at
| Valve for not releasing their games (dota, cs, half life,
| etc) on Epic store or GOG.
| rstat1 wrote:
| Well I wasn't specifically thinking about Epic the
| publisher there, because yes I agree that is dumb and I
| didn't actually know that Epic was the publisher here. I
| thought it was just another dumb exclusivity thing.
| boppo1 wrote:
| >Alan Wake 2 is easily one of the most beautiful (from a
| technical perspective - IMO also from an artistic one but
| that's a 100% subjective thing) games ever released
|
| I just don't see it. Looks like RE2make to me. And as far as
| art direction Dishonored 2/DOTO are dramatically better looking
| wilg wrote:
| I see it!
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Capcom's engine is extremely impressive especially the fact
| it can handle extremely beautiful triple AAA games then they
| can also go around and port old nintendo DS games as well.
| capableweb wrote:
| > without having the 'every NPC has 10k-poly teeth in their
| mouth' problem that's currently sabotaging Cities Skylines 2's
| performance
|
| Sad to see an otherwise good comment end with a misconception.
| The problems with the performance is much grander than just
| "teeth rendered but not visible" (https://blog.paavo.me/cities-
| skylines-2-performance/), although I guess it's a illustrative
| point. Missing LODs and lack of culling are the grander issues.
| lloeki wrote:
| > Missing LODs and lack of culling
|
| That is the exact start of the sentence of which you quoted
| the end of:
|
| > Mesh Shaders in this case enable a lot of really smart
| culling and dynamic level of detail
| Sharlin wrote:
| "Teeth rendered but not visible" is just saying "missing lods
| and lack of culling" in a rhetorically more effective way. I
| don't think anybody thinks it's the teeth _specifically_
| causing the perf issues, they 're merely a concrete example.
| Cu3PO42 wrote:
| Insomniac Games (Spider-Man (2), Ratchet&Clank: Rift Apart) and
| Guerilla Games (Horizon Forbidden West) also both have amazing
| looking engines.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Also Naughty Dog
| Centigonal wrote:
| Remedy was started by Demoscene hackers, including a bunch of
| Future Crew folks.
|
| You can draw a pretty clean line from the incredible _Second
| Reality_ demo[1] in 1993 to _Alan Wake 2_ thirty years later.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw17c70uJes
| pixelpoet wrote:
| Not to mention crucial middleware like Umbra visibility, the
| development of Nvidia's RTX, an AI revolution or two, ...
|
| As I've commented before on HN, honestly I could write a
| small book about these Finnish demoscene gods.
| pjbeam wrote:
| If you do please advertise it on HN. I'll buy a copy.
| Sharlin wrote:
| You don't exactly need Mesh Shaders or any other state-of-the-
| art techniques to cull 99% of C:S2's polys. Just some simple
| stuff that games have done since the 90s.
| holoduke wrote:
| Its refreshing to see something different than another unreal
| engine based game. It must be extremely challenging to have your
| own inhouse engine. The engine is one thing. The tooling to build
| levels, animations etc is maybe even harder. I guess it also
| gives some advantages. More control over low level architecture
| gives you more opportunities to optimize. Harder with a all
| purpose engine like Unreal. Cant wait to play this game.
| dundarious wrote:
| The continued legacy of demoscene.
| squidsoup wrote:
| Technical achievements aside, this game is delightful,
| particularly if you're a fan of Twin Peaks or scandi noir. Highly
| recommended if you have a penchant for the weird or macabre. A
| milestone in interactive storytelling.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Is this reasonably okay for someone who hasn't played Control
| or AW1, if they're not strict about needing to know all the
| backstory?
| wilg wrote:
| Yeah I played it without playing either. I did watch an AW1
| recap halfway through. But its basically all so crazy its fun
| not knowing stuff too.
| lfkdev wrote:
| Alan Wake has nothing todo with Control. AW1 is not important
| to know, but you'll miss some details.
| wilg wrote:
| > Alan Wake has nothing todo with Control.
|
| Interesting theory.
| anaisbetts wrote:
| ...did we play the same game?
| rickstanley wrote:
| It has though. There are hints "everywhere" (not to be
| specific, otherwise I'll spoil it) in the game, but it's
| not vital to play AW2, I would add what you said about AW1,
| "you'll miss some details."
|
| AW2 is a step forward to the shared universe of Remedy.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Control had a whole DLC devoted to the link (haven't played
| AW2 yet).
|
| https://control.fandom.com/wiki/AWE_(expansion)
| squidsoup wrote:
| The Alan Wake and Tom Zane characters are mentioned in
| Control a number of times, and the FBC make several
| appearances in Alan Wake II.
| anaisbetts wrote:
| Start here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=309aaFblCJI, then
| watch the next few videos in the series until the end of
| Control (Control Pt. 1 => Alan Wake Pt. 1+2 => Control Pt. 2)
| and you will be completely thoroughly caught up
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| I think it deserves a lot of praise, but also some criticism:
|
| * While it may keep their creative vision "pure", the lack of
| lower graphical settings makes it run pretty terribly on an RTX
| 3080, which is very frustrating. You can brute-force this
| problem away with DLSS, but I like native resolution and I'm
| sick of DLSS being used as a crutch.
|
| * The difficulty is all over the place. "Story" mode is likely
| too easy, while "Normal" varies between being reasonable and
| damn near impossible. A weaker enemy can take 2 bullets in
| Story, and 10 in normal. That's frustrating when ammo is so
| tight early on. In general, the game lacks a good "progression"
| of difficulty. It's a roller-coaster instead of a curve.
|
| * To add on to the difficulty, the mechanics do not feel as
| consistent in AW2 as AW1. Why do some enemy types have a shield
| you need to burn away, while others don't? (Despite looking
| similar) For others, it's unclear which ones will vanish with a
| little light and which ones require an intense light - and what
| exactly gets them to disappear. Why can't the flashlight have a
| bit more grace when a target leaves the crosshair for 0.1
| seconds? Why do so many enemies have extendo-reach and
| teleporting? Why isn't dodging timing better telegraphed? Etc.
|
| * The story, at least so far, hasn't hit the same highs for me.
| It feels a little like we're doing the same thing over again,
| and it doesn't hit as hard the second time after the reveals
| and twists from AW1 are already used up.
| zaptrem wrote:
| I've found DLSS Quality mode actually looks better than no
| DLSS at all in most games.
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| That's because DLSS2 actually also antialiases the game
| fairly well and cheap, compared to other methods commonly
| used.
| wilg wrote:
| Doesn't make much sense to me to be OK with lower graphical
| settings but not DLSS. Just use DLSS.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| I don't like the kind of artifacts or presentation that
| DLSS creates. It's a different kind of image than one with
| native, but say - lower foliage density or a lower-
| resolution mesh, etc.
| Geee wrote:
| Just use DLSS. It looks great and the graphics settings are
| designed around it. I'm not sure if the earlier DLSS versions
| were crappy, but this latest one doesn't seem to have any
| weird artifacts.
|
| I much prefer setting DLSS on performance and playing with
| medium settings and raytracing on a 3090. The game looks way
| better that way.
| kevingadd wrote:
| I'm on a 3080 and it ran fine for me. Did you turn off ray-
| traced direct/indirect lighting? Those really require a 40
| series, even at low quality levels. Is your native resolution
| 4K? At 4K I needed to turn on DLSS, but I was also able to
| set most of the quality knobs (other than RT) to medium or
| high, not low. I wonder if maybe you're running into some
| sort of driver problem.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| I turned everything to the lowest available setting, except
| textures, which I kept on high. I checked and that setting
| doesn't seem to make any difference on my card.
|
| Native resolution is 1440p.
|
| Most of the time it hovers around 60-ish, but it dips into
| the 40's occasionally and is overall inconsistent. To me,
| at 1440p, that's not acceptable.
|
| Drivers are the latest Nvidia offers, but I didn't scrape
| the old ones out with DDU - hopefully that's not necessary.
| imiric wrote:
| I'm a few hours in, and it's enjoyable, but I'm not blown away
| by the gameplay as much as the graphics and sound design. It's
| a fairly linear affair with a lot of backtracking, and I find
| the Mind Place system tedious. It's a glorified menu system
| that blocks off progression until you've pinned some notes to
| predetermined places on the board, or watched some cutscenes
| where the character miraculously figures out what to do next.
| It's not engaging in any way, and just takes me out of the core
| game loop.
|
| But I love the numerous references to Control and Max Payne,
| and how they've integrated it into the same universe. I can't
| wait for the Max Payne remakes, and hopefully the next
| installment in the series. I just wish it could be done without
| association with Rockstar. They ruined the experience of MP3,
| which was a solid game, but Rockstar's Social Club launcher is
| a garbage piece of software.
| squidsoup wrote:
| > watched some cutscenes where the character miraculously
| figures out what to do next
|
| Some of your criticisms are fair I think, but this is
| actually deliberate and explained as the story continues.
| Saga is clearly doing more than "profiling".
| SirMaster wrote:
| In the first example it's still really jarring how much their
| feet slide around on the ground, or sliding in place as they walk
| into an object without moving. I wonder when this will ever be
| solved.
|
| Don't get me wrong, the engine is incredible and the visuals and
| systems are some of the best we have seen.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I've seen a demonstration of a solution on the YouTube channel
| Two Minute Papers - it was actually about an algorithm that
| blended animations so that the transitions looked natural.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I wonder how long it will be before we stop using animation
| and switch to an actual bipedal physics simulation where the
| agent actually knows how to walk and jump and run.
| Keyframe wrote:
| We were there over a decade ago with Euphoria, but I think
| they've stopped selling/developing it? GTA 4 used it.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HauN98naZ9U
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| I'm surprised it's still a problem. Years ago a basketball game
| franchise bragged that the PS3 allowed them to do foot planting
| with inverse kinematics. Years before that, Shadow of the
| Colossus shipped on PS2... with IK foot planting.
| ux-app wrote:
| It's always a tradeoff between responsive movement and
| realistic movement. RDR2 has very realistic animations, with
| the tradeoff being slightly "floaty" controls.
|
| Personally I prefer snappy movement i.e. when I press left the
| screen character moves left immediately. A more realistic
| looking animation system introduces a delay while you wait for
| the feet animation to "catch up" to player input.
| jordanthoms wrote:
| I guess the problem there is pretty fundamental - in reality
| you'd be tensing muscles and shifting your weight etc before
| the snappy movement, but the game only knows that you want to
| move when you move the stick or push a button - so it either
| has to show that realistic motion after your button press and
| introduce latency, or sacrifice the realism in the
| animations.
| throwaway879423 wrote:
| Am I the only who have no interest in graphics fidelity, but
| would like to see more physics engines created to play with? Like
| a fully destructible world would be fun.
| cubefox wrote:
| There was actually a regress in this respect. Some ten years
| ago there was a "destructible physics" boom in many big games,
| but nowadays most games abandoned it. There seems to be a
| trade-off between graphical fidelity and the opportunity for
| physics-based manipulation of the environment.
| Geee wrote:
| Remedy's previous game, Control, had probably one of the most
| impressive destructive environments.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12NORuGfcLc
| cubefox wrote:
| The game seems to use relatively simple flat geometry, like
| concrete walls and large glass windows. I would be
| surprised if they kept the destruction physics with the
| intricate geometry of Alan Wake 2.
| roboror wrote:
| You should check out Teardown, very impressive physics engine
| made mostly by a single developer.
| nathants wrote:
| try fortnite solos on performance mode with a 240+ hz monitor.
| smolder wrote:
| The game "The Finals" has an impressively destructible world,
| and good quality graphics to boot. It just completed an open
| beta period, but will return soon for a full release.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| the team behind some of the best content on the unreal
| marketplace did work on this game iirc.
|
| https://mawiunited.com/
|
| Wonderful content. I hope we see more shops like this building
| content for ue5
| rickstanley wrote:
| I would love to know how they feel today about using D in their
| ecosystem, that is, if they still are, and see what challenges
| they have faced during AW2 development.
|
| For reference:
|
| - Using an Emerging Language in Quantum Break (https://ubm-
| twvideo01.s3.amazonaws.com/o1/vault/gdceurope201... );
|
| - DConf 2016: Quantum Break: AAA Gaming With Some D Code -- Ethan
| Watson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YjLW7anNfc).
| spookie wrote:
| Same, would love to know more about it!
| dom96 wrote:
| Same. My guess is that they no longer use D, seeing as the
| person doing those talks no longer works there and other big
| places like Facebook have ceased using it. But I'd love to be
| proven wrong!
| ferbivore wrote:
| I don't think it was ever officially confirmed, but word is
| they excised all the D from their codebase after Quantum Break.
| They're certainly not looking for D programmers now.
|
| Possible starting point if you want to dig for sources:
| https://forum.dlang.org/post/lymybpygzfalbdgoaizr@forum.dlan...
| debugnik wrote:
| Yet another team that switches to Luau for scripting; they even
| made their own VS Code extension.
|
| I gave Luau a try recently but the syntax for external type
| declarations is undocumented and unstable, which made it awkward
| to test properly, and the available VS Code extensions default to
| a Roblox environment until you mess with their settings.
|
| So mixed feelings for now, I guess this is why they built their
| own tooling for it.
| hipadev23 wrote:
| > but the syntax for external type declarations is undocumented
|
| https://luau-lang.org/typecheck
|
| https://luau-lang.org/grammar
| debugnik wrote:
| That's not it, I mean the "declare" statements that aren't
| even listed in the grammar, but are needed to give the type
| checker information about C API exports; I had to discover
| them by digging through source code. The analyzer even
| hardcodes a bunch of them.
|
| luau-lsp for example ships this globalTypes.d.lua file[1] for
| Roblox development and lets you configure your own.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/JohnnyMorganz/luau-
| lsp/blob/4b7872349d9b8...
| d--b wrote:
| The rendering is really impressive. Character animation is not
| great. It's really an area where video games need to improve.
| Hopefully AI will help...
| Archelaos wrote:
| Somehow the movement of the characters feels still quite uncanny
| to me. In the video about the "voxel-based character controller"
| the walking looks more like gliding. And in the first few second
| in "NPC locomotion" the walking just does not seem right. I think
| it is the fact that each step looks exactly the same and everyone
| uses the same step size. So the character are awkwardly tightly
| coordinated. One can see more variety later in the video, when
| the characters change individually between walking and running.
| That looks much more realistic. -- I wonder what makes it so
| difficult to generally achieve more variety in the movement
| details.
| ljm wrote:
| A lot of it becomes un-noticeable when you're in the middle of
| the action. You're too busy looking at other things.
|
| Although to support your point, pretty much every friendly NPC
| is stationary. Once the hostile zone in on you you're not
| looking at how they walk - they're shrouded in mist anyway.
|
| IMO control was a tech demo for all of this and it also
| supports why the enemy count is much lower and framed as a
| horror story.
| antiterra wrote:
| > "the characters won't bump or get stuck into objects in tight
| spaces".
|
| After playing the first 'boss' in AW2, this is an amusing claim
| to read. The controls and environment interaction are maddening.
| Pr0ject217 wrote:
| I want to read it, but I don't want any spoilers (or, remove any
| surprise). I'll check it out after I've played the game!
| Strom wrote:
| There are no spoilers in the article. It's less revealing than
| the trailer.
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(page generated 2023-11-07 23:00 UTC)