Technology GTA 4 Thread
- Thread starter PaulyPac
- Start date
Niko Bellic 
The dude has a russian/armenian accent and he's supposed to be armenian right?, but his name is clearly Balkan, and would not have two LL's in the last name. Most closely, Niko Belic would be a Croatian first name with a Serbian last name.
How hard is it to make up a Russian or Armenian name? It just takes a fucking google search.
^^^ :fury:
Some achievements for it have popped up on people's gamertags according to mygamercard.net. Idiots.
GTA IV Leak: Microsoft Looking into Early GTA IV Players
Some achievements for it have popped up on people's gamertags according to mygamercard.net. Idiots.
GTA IV Leak: Microsoft Looking into Early GTA IV Players
No, SOFI is right, he's not Russian, all this time I was thinking he was. I just haven't been reading too much of the info about the story.
This is a quote from Dan Houser
Can't reveal gangs too much yet, but one of the things that appealed to us about a) this character (who isn't actually Russian, he's from Eastern Europe.
Prologue
Niko is revealed to be guilty of previous criminal acts in his life, such as killing, selling and smuggling people. He wishes to begin a new life in Liberty City after being persuaded by his cousin Roman, who claims in his e-mails to Niko to be living the "American Dream." It is later revealed that these are lies to hide Roman's own failures. During the course of the story, Niko is looking for someone and will stop at nothing to find him, enlisting help from wherever he can. Niko is said to be in his mid-thirties and is Eastern European.
This is a quote from Dan Houser
Can't reveal gangs too much yet, but one of the things that appealed to us about a) this character (who isn't actually Russian, he's from Eastern Europe.
Prologue
Niko is revealed to be guilty of previous criminal acts in his life, such as killing, selling and smuggling people. He wishes to begin a new life in Liberty City after being persuaded by his cousin Roman, who claims in his e-mails to Niko to be living the "American Dream." It is later revealed that these are lies to hide Roman's own failures. During the course of the story, Niko is looking for someone and will stop at nothing to find him, enlisting help from wherever he can. Niko is said to be in his mid-thirties and is Eastern European.
Following on the heels of the information Rockstar North provided us on the RAGE engine and its application to Grand Theft Auto IV, technical directors Adam Fowler and Sandy Roger and Natural Motion's CEO Torsten Reil explain the tech behind GTA4's character motion. And of course, we have more new screens to feast your eyes on while you try to wrap your head around the technical side of the anticipated late-April release.
Can you briefly explain what Natural Motion's Euphoria Motion synthesis engine does?
Torsten Reil: Euphoria is a real-time simulation of humans. It uses the console's processing power to simulate the human body, muscles and -- most importantly -- motor nervous system. Previously, games have been based on pre-canned animation, stored on disc and played back at more-or-less appropriate times in the game. This meant that you could only see what's already been pre-produced, A game could never be truly surprising and interactive.
Euphoria isn't based on canned animations, but generates human movements live, as the game unfolds. This changes everything. Now, you never know exactly what's going to happen -- it's not pre-animated. Games can be truly surprising and unique. In addition, all characters are truly interactive. GTA4 is the first game to exploit this -- it completely opens up gameplay.
Sandy Roger: Euphoria is the brain and muscles behind our "ragdolls," so that instead of being limp articulated bodies that can only simulate unconscious pedestrians, we can simulate intelligent AI responses while the peds are involved in physical situations.
How did Rockstar come to work with Natural Motion?
Adam Fowler: A few years back Natural Motion demonstrated their Endorphin animation package to us. This used Euphoria style behaviors to generate realistic animation. But this was inside an art package and we could only use the results in-game as canned animation. Now, we thought, if you could do this real-time in-game...
How was it for Rockstar to work with an outside company?
AF: We have worked with some outside companies before but not to this degree. In the last year we had Natural Motion engineers on site for a good six months. They spent a lot of their time making sure Euphoria looked as good as it could in GTA. I think we had a good working relationship and managed to get some great results.
SR: The Natural Motion guys were really good to work with. They really became part of the game team and were totally focused on making the Euphoria driven ragdolls as much a part of the game world itself as possible. We were lucky enough to have an NM engineer on site as well for the latter stages of development which helped enormously.
How was it for Natural Motion to be working on GTA?
TR: It's been a great experience, and an unbelievable title to debut euphoria in. I think our joint initial goals were a lot more modest than what we ended up with. Everyone, especially Sam, has been pushing the envelope further and further throughout development. We wanted to give people something they truly hadn't seen before, and we ended up with much more euphoria in the game than originally planned: More behaviors, more characters, more crazy stuff. I think both companies and teams developed an excellent relationship through the development, and we're really proud of what we've achieved together.
I understand that originally it was only going to be used in cut-scenes, what made you want to implement it in the whole game?
AF: We never really considered Euphoria for cut-scenes; it would be a complete waste of the technology. In the past we have considered using Endorphin to generate cut-scene animations, but did not want a game in which fun stuff was only in cut-scenes.
SR: Well the cut-scene guys were already looking at Endorphin, Natural Motion's offline animation generation tool, but the idea of being able to take that technology and translate it into a real-time element in the game was very exciting and what made us get on board and start seriously considering working together. And the Natural Motion guys said they could do just that!
Was this a challenge?
AF: It was a challenge. Euphoria is only as good as the physics engine it is running on top of. This meant a lot of work went into improving the stability of RAGE physics. The result is we have a great physics engine. The transition from Euphoria back to standard canned animation was hard to get right. Getting characters to transition while lying on ground was hard enough but to do it while the character was in motion -- e.g. walking --was particularly hard to get right. Also managing the relationships between RAGE in San Diego, Natural Motion in Oxford and the game team in Edinburgh was interesting.
SR: Integrating physics based behaviors into the game AI system was definitely challenging. Typically AI results in things like playing an animation on a character, where you can be pretty sure of the result, but when you're asking a pedestrian who's being hit by a car to respond and try and regain their balance the outcome is a lot less certain. But of course that's the most important benefit of using Endorphin in that kind of situation, there's so much variation in the possible outcome, and every time you see it happen it's different.
What are the main differences between Euphoria and the more standard ragdoll physics?
SR: The main difference is that rather than the ragdolls being limp, they are driven by muscle forces to try and achieve specific behaviors. So even in a relatively simple situation like a ragdoll getting hit by a car, there's a lot more purposeful movement in there as the ped tries to protect themselves from the impact, and catch their fall when they hit the ground. The ultimate expression of this is the balance behavior, which lets a ragdoll maintain it's balance even when pushed around by external forces from bullets, cars, etc. -- there's no way you can achieve that result with animation or plain ragdolls.
The open world nature of GTAIV lends itself to moments of random brilliance -- how does Euphoria play into the experience?
AF: Euphoria is perfect for an open world game. We can't produce all the canned animation required to produce realistic results for all the huge variety of situations that GTA presents us with. Euphoria is able to do this as it can use the results from the physics engine to alter its behaviors to respond to the environment. Euphoria is one of the main sources of the moments of random brilliance now.
SR: The main thing that Euphoria adds is the ability for the characters in the game to react in a convincing way to any combination of situations that could happen in the game world, of which there are loads! Peds running across the road to get away and getting hit by a car, or someone getting shot while standing on a set of stairs and loosing their footing to tumble all the way down to the bottom are just two examples I can think of.
How does Euphoria effect the game-play on foot during gun battles?
TR: All characters are simulated by euphoria during gun battles. This means they react completely differently, depending where you hit them. Shoot their shoulder and you see them swing and recoil on that side -- shoot the knee and you'll see them losing support on that leg and tripping over. If they're tough, they'll hold their wound and try and shoot back at you -- all interactively. If they're beaten, they may roll down a flight of stairs, taking other peds down on the way.
SR: Every time a ped gets hit by a bullet they react through Euphoria to the direction and force of the bullet and to their surrounding environment, so each hit gives a different result. Then you throw in explosions and the occasional car driving through the battle and there's an endless number of ways it can play out.
Can you briefly explain what Natural Motion's Euphoria Motion synthesis engine does?
Torsten Reil: Euphoria is a real-time simulation of humans. It uses the console's processing power to simulate the human body, muscles and -- most importantly -- motor nervous system. Previously, games have been based on pre-canned animation, stored on disc and played back at more-or-less appropriate times in the game. This meant that you could only see what's already been pre-produced, A game could never be truly surprising and interactive.
Euphoria isn't based on canned animations, but generates human movements live, as the game unfolds. This changes everything. Now, you never know exactly what's going to happen -- it's not pre-animated. Games can be truly surprising and unique. In addition, all characters are truly interactive. GTA4 is the first game to exploit this -- it completely opens up gameplay.
Sandy Roger: Euphoria is the brain and muscles behind our "ragdolls," so that instead of being limp articulated bodies that can only simulate unconscious pedestrians, we can simulate intelligent AI responses while the peds are involved in physical situations.
How did Rockstar come to work with Natural Motion?
Adam Fowler: A few years back Natural Motion demonstrated their Endorphin animation package to us. This used Euphoria style behaviors to generate realistic animation. But this was inside an art package and we could only use the results in-game as canned animation. Now, we thought, if you could do this real-time in-game...
How was it for Rockstar to work with an outside company?
AF: We have worked with some outside companies before but not to this degree. In the last year we had Natural Motion engineers on site for a good six months. They spent a lot of their time making sure Euphoria looked as good as it could in GTA. I think we had a good working relationship and managed to get some great results.
SR: The Natural Motion guys were really good to work with. They really became part of the game team and were totally focused on making the Euphoria driven ragdolls as much a part of the game world itself as possible. We were lucky enough to have an NM engineer on site as well for the latter stages of development which helped enormously.
How was it for Natural Motion to be working on GTA?
TR: It's been a great experience, and an unbelievable title to debut euphoria in. I think our joint initial goals were a lot more modest than what we ended up with. Everyone, especially Sam, has been pushing the envelope further and further throughout development. We wanted to give people something they truly hadn't seen before, and we ended up with much more euphoria in the game than originally planned: More behaviors, more characters, more crazy stuff. I think both companies and teams developed an excellent relationship through the development, and we're really proud of what we've achieved together.
I understand that originally it was only going to be used in cut-scenes, what made you want to implement it in the whole game?
AF: We never really considered Euphoria for cut-scenes; it would be a complete waste of the technology. In the past we have considered using Endorphin to generate cut-scene animations, but did not want a game in which fun stuff was only in cut-scenes.
SR: Well the cut-scene guys were already looking at Endorphin, Natural Motion's offline animation generation tool, but the idea of being able to take that technology and translate it into a real-time element in the game was very exciting and what made us get on board and start seriously considering working together. And the Natural Motion guys said they could do just that!
Was this a challenge?
AF: It was a challenge. Euphoria is only as good as the physics engine it is running on top of. This meant a lot of work went into improving the stability of RAGE physics. The result is we have a great physics engine. The transition from Euphoria back to standard canned animation was hard to get right. Getting characters to transition while lying on ground was hard enough but to do it while the character was in motion -- e.g. walking --was particularly hard to get right. Also managing the relationships between RAGE in San Diego, Natural Motion in Oxford and the game team in Edinburgh was interesting.
SR: Integrating physics based behaviors into the game AI system was definitely challenging. Typically AI results in things like playing an animation on a character, where you can be pretty sure of the result, but when you're asking a pedestrian who's being hit by a car to respond and try and regain their balance the outcome is a lot less certain. But of course that's the most important benefit of using Endorphin in that kind of situation, there's so much variation in the possible outcome, and every time you see it happen it's different.
What are the main differences between Euphoria and the more standard ragdoll physics?
SR: The main difference is that rather than the ragdolls being limp, they are driven by muscle forces to try and achieve specific behaviors. So even in a relatively simple situation like a ragdoll getting hit by a car, there's a lot more purposeful movement in there as the ped tries to protect themselves from the impact, and catch their fall when they hit the ground. The ultimate expression of this is the balance behavior, which lets a ragdoll maintain it's balance even when pushed around by external forces from bullets, cars, etc. -- there's no way you can achieve that result with animation or plain ragdolls.
The open world nature of GTAIV lends itself to moments of random brilliance -- how does Euphoria play into the experience?
AF: Euphoria is perfect for an open world game. We can't produce all the canned animation required to produce realistic results for all the huge variety of situations that GTA presents us with. Euphoria is able to do this as it can use the results from the physics engine to alter its behaviors to respond to the environment. Euphoria is one of the main sources of the moments of random brilliance now.
SR: The main thing that Euphoria adds is the ability for the characters in the game to react in a convincing way to any combination of situations that could happen in the game world, of which there are loads! Peds running across the road to get away and getting hit by a car, or someone getting shot while standing on a set of stairs and loosing their footing to tumble all the way down to the bottom are just two examples I can think of.
How does Euphoria effect the game-play on foot during gun battles?
TR: All characters are simulated by euphoria during gun battles. This means they react completely differently, depending where you hit them. Shoot their shoulder and you see them swing and recoil on that side -- shoot the knee and you'll see them losing support on that leg and tripping over. If they're tough, they'll hold their wound and try and shoot back at you -- all interactively. If they're beaten, they may roll down a flight of stairs, taking other peds down on the way.
SR: Every time a ped gets hit by a bullet they react through Euphoria to the direction and force of the bullet and to their surrounding environment, so each hit gives a different result. Then you throw in explosions and the occasional car driving through the battle and there's an endless number of ways it can play out.
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