Will TT Engine be capable to render photorealistic graphic?

edited September 2010 in Jurassic Park
I'm worried that the TT Engine will not be able to deliver high-end graphic that fully respect the high visual standard that the Jurassic Park brand needs. The movie was a milestone about this, but will the TT graphic engine be capable to render lights effects, enough polygons and detailed textures that the project needs?
When JP will be out, another game will be realeased and, although it's a different genre, it will set the graphic standard: i'm talking of Crysis 2.
How will it compare to JP?

The last photorealistic game TT did was CSI: Hard Evidence and although it has clean and nice graphic, it cannot compete with nowadays standards:

744449-csi4_2008_10_12_22_54_48_65_super.jpg
Crysis_Faces_36.jpg
One of the two is Crysis 2... ;)

Of course all I've said is completely unnuseful if the plan is to release JP for Wii given its old hardware and its crappy and anachronistic 40mb limit...
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Comments

  • edited June 2010
    Probably not and I don't really think they should try. It's not really what they do.
  • edited June 2010
    Probably not and I don't really think they should try. It's not really what they do.

    Ok, but do you think that the game will not look old with graphics like this in 2010/2011? Or even market appealing?
    SS03.jpg
  • edited June 2010
    CSI was an old game. Old old. Don't you guys get that? They can totally pull off realistic Crysis-like graphics with the TTG tool if they wanted to. It's absolutely possible. Game engines are modular. They aren't stuck in a certain set of restrictions. You can add till your heart's content.
  • edited June 2010
    The last photorealistic game TT did was CSI: Hard Evidence and although it has clean and nice graphic, it cannot compete with nowadays standards

    Incorrect. The last one they did was CSI: Deadly Intent this past October.

    1247872130.jpg

    PS: I'm pretty sure that JA screenshot posted above was either taken on a bad PC or from a really early version of the game, because the game looks much better than that.
  • edited June 2010
    None of these screenshots have dinosaurs in them
  • edited June 2010
    I've always wondered about this: how much does graphic quality rely on the engine used, and how much on the artists' design? Because I would say, if you fail to create a detailed realistic looking model, no amount of 3D processing power or whatever it's called will be able to make it look good. Or am I looking at it wrong?
  • edited June 2010
    Hey guys I found a photorealistic screenshot. It looks amazing!

    t-rex-jurassic-park.jpg
  • edited June 2010
    I don't know, the models look a bit waxy to me.
  • edited June 2010
    Lighting is crap.
  • edited June 2010
    That looks terrible. Only games can get away with washed-out graphics like that; if this was in a Hollywood film, it would flop at the box office.
  • edited June 2010
    Then again, I like the idea of an FMV-Renaissance ...
  • edited June 2010
    CSI was an old game. Old old. Don't you guys get that? They can totally pull off realistic Crysis-like graphics with the TTG tool if they wanted to. It's absolutely possible. Game engines are modular. They aren't stuck in a certain set of restrictions. You can add till your heart's content.
    You know that this isn't true, right?

    All GameEngines i at least have seen have their very own featuresets and limitations. Depending on the aspects you want to replace this either works or isn't supported at all.

    Is Crysis looking realistic? Are we talking about CryEngine 1, 2 or 3? Is the TTT able of deferred lightning? ...

    It's safe to assume that the new games will look a lot better than CSI but it's also safe to assume that they won't play in the same league like a well done CryEngine 3 game. But less advanced technology doesn't automatically result into bad looking games, not as long as you have a concept/scenes which take this into account. You can always tweak things, at least to a certain degree.
  • edited June 2010
    ok, but do you agree with me that they have to drop Wii version? The 40mb limit is too...limiting!
  • edited June 2010
    ok, but do you agree with me that they have to drop Wii version? The 40mb limit is too...limiting!

    The CSI and Sam and Max Wii ports were disc releases, they could do the same with these.
  • edited June 2010
    Yeah, get yourself a disk! :O)

    8-inch_floppy_disk.jpg
  • edited June 2010
    My God! That disk is HUGE!
    ...
    I think ulitmately, art direction is more important than the engine itself. Thanks to Ryan Jones, MI and S&M (prior to s3) looked fantastic even when the graphics seem a little dated. I'm just hoping these aren't just cheaply made licensed games pooped out for the naive audience.. "oh look, a Jurassic Park game! Little Jimmy likes dinosaurs!" x every mother in the world = easy buck.
    Worse case scenario, really.
  • edited June 2010
    I hear they are going to use Extremely photo realistic graphics.

    Maybe even like this.
  • edited June 2010
    Marty wrote: »
    I'm just hoping these aren't just cheaply made licensed games pooped out for the naive audience.. "oh look, a Jurassic Park game! Little Jimmy likes dinosaurs!" x every mother in the world = easy buck.
    Worse case scenario, really.
    Nah, Jurassic Park is really a 90s thing. The kids that watched the movies then have now grown up, so the market for these games has grown up as well. Sure, kids might enjoy these games too, but it'd be a mistake to cater only to kids with this, and that's not a mistake I expect Telltale to make. They know what they're doing. :)
  • edited June 2010
    Friar wrote: »
    I hear they are going to use Extremely photo realistic graphics.

    Maybe even like this.

    ahh we can only hope
    *fingers crossed*
  • edited June 2010
    taumel wrote: »
    You know that this isn't true, right?

    All GameEngines i at least have seen have their very own featuresets and limitations. Depending on the aspects you want to replace this either works or isn't supported at all.

    So all the most popular engines nowadays (Quake, Unreal, Source, CryEngine, even TTG's own engine) that have made significant advances since they were initially created means....nothing? For Duke Nukem Forever, they even took the Unreal engine and modified it to create a completely new rendering engine with its own look. My point is anything can be be modified and added to. Especially the Tell Tale Tool, since they've said they're always working on it and adding to it. They can make it do anything they want it to.
  • edited June 2010
    You can't generalise this, it depends on the licence, the engine, on what you want to enhance and so on. Therefore the statement that it's no problem enhancing engine A so that it's able to perform like engine B just doesn't work out.

    Whilst theoretically you might could enhance an engine which grants you the rights to do so, it easily could be a complete waste of ressources because you don't have the knowhow/time/manpower and so on to do it correctly, it might be a drag due to the design of the engine or messes up the workflow somewhere else, to shorten it up whilst your idea could be right for a specific case, it doesn't work as a generalization.

    There are engine designs which work in a open modular way where you can exchange certain elements and write it on your own or make usage of some middleware you licence but again, you can't generalise this and say oh it's no problem enhancing the TTT so that it works/looks like theCryEngine for instance.

    Sometimes it can be quite a pain listening to gamers, some horrible examples exist on certain game magazine sites, and their very special kind of views of what all should be no problem and those lazy incapable programmers who just have to, well, i guess you know what i mean.
  • edited June 2010
    The fact of the matter is Telltale has made improvements to their engine since CSI. You guys have played the new Sam and Max episodes, right? You could take any one of those CSI models, put them into the new engine with its realtime lighting and shadows and complex textures and whatnot, and you'd have something that would look just as photorealistic as the vast majority of PS3 and 360 shooters to have come out in recent years.
  • edited June 2010
    taumel wrote: »
    Whilst theoretically you might could enhance an engine which grants you the rights to do so, it easily could be a complete waste of ressources because you don't have the knowhow/time/manpower and so on to do it correctly, it might be a drag due to the design of the engine or messes up the workflow somewhere else, to shorten it up whilst your idea could be right for a specific case, it doesn't work as a generalization.

    I realize it means extra work, but seriously. The majority of the game developers out there work with the latest rendering technologies*, and gamers expect it. So there's got to be a way to easily streamline it. And if not you can always hire people with the knowhow. And I know that means more money. I'm not saying it won't cost the company more of something, I'm just saying it's more than possible.
    There are engine designs which work in a open modular way where you can exchange certain elements and write it on your own or make usage of some middleware you licence but again, you can't generalise this and say oh it's no problem enhancing the TTT so that it works/looks like theCryEngine for instance.

    Hold on. Are you saying that if one wants to take advantage of certain rendering technologies* in one's engine that they'd have to license it first? I can't think of anything more ridiculous.
    Sometimes it can be quite a pain listening to gamers, some horrible examples exist on certain game magazine sites, and their very special kind of views of what all should be no problem and those lazy incapable programmers who just have to, well, i guess you know what i mean.

    Again, I never said it wouldn't be more work (although the methods that graphics are created with nowadays have become more streamlined and efficient), and I even understand if TTG couldn't/wouldn't do it. I'm just saying it is completely possible to add greater rendering technologies* to an existing engine. And you can generalize that. Any engine has the capability to be more than it is if you have the patience and/or money and knowhow to program it in.


    *When I say rendering technologies, I'm not referring to engines but they way engines render a 3D image. You can't license normal mapping, phong shading, or dynamic lighting for instance, while you can (and must, if you don't already have an engine) license an engine that utilizes these rendering methods.
  • edited June 2010
    But just because something is theoretically possible, doesn't make it automatically likely nor reasonable. As i already suggested, choosing the right way for your GameEngine involes a couple of questions you first have to answer to yourself according to your specific project/situation/strategy.

    You can write you own renderengine, you can licence one, you can use the one which comes with the gameengine, ...

    What's suprising about that? It's the same like for instance with sound. If you can afford it, you will most probably go with a FMOD licence, if you can't you'll use BASS, openAL, ... write you own audio lib whatever. It's the same thing with a lot of components you need for a game (graphics, sound, ai, physics, ...) as long as your game engine is capable of integrating such components.

    Otherwise you might just use such middleware and write the GameEngine on your own or you can't integrate such things because your engine wasn't designed for such purposes or it would mess up your engine's workflow. There are many possibilities why you can and why you can't do such things. But if you don't want to write a certain component on your own due to some of the reasons we have already talked about and can afford the licence, then why not?

    a) There does exist a mature crossplatform soundengine? Let's see what it costs.
    b) We need some more performance and are in need of some advanced occlusion culling. Let's take a look at Umbra.
    And so on...

    Theoretically you could enhance a Quake I engine to a cryEngine 3 but it would be more a complete start from scratch. As this is a money driven business you'll want to go the way which serves you the best.

    Of course you can licence render engines. With shaders the days of fixed function piepelines are over since years, at least on the desktop. Normal mapping is a concept. You're free to implement it on your own (it's all just shadercode) and it has to wok together with the rest of the lightning system. Beside of this, a renderengine is a bit more than just a pack of shading possibilities.
  • edited June 2010
    you can't really bolt on more components until it works. most of those components have interoperability issues. ttg uses their own proprietry engine and fmod sound. they have focused the engine on animation cpabilities rather than fast paced performance. i'm not even sure the majority of the character designs use textures. quite a few look vertex shaded. though that has been improving on the latest releases

    frankly i do agree with the original post that both of these new franchises would be better suited to the realistic look as opposed to the cartoon like look they have used of late...but don't be surprised if these titles end up being made on a different engine. especially jurasic park. that is just screaming out for cryengine2.

    but before we cry out for awesome visuals how about some idea of how jurasic park would even work? seems like a limited scope for adventuring.
  • edited June 2010
    You're kidding yourself if you expect to compare anything Telltale produces to Crysis.

    That's not what Telltale is about.
  • edited June 2010
    not necesarily by choice. crisis has an art team poached straight from movie studio's. hiring standards specifically mention 3+ years at movie special effects places. crytek's budget would probably rival telltales total combined budget and sales from everything they've ever released.
  • edited June 2010
    PariahKing wrote: »
    You're kidding yourself if you expect to compare anything Telltale produces to Crysis.

    That's not what Telltale is about.

    If TT will release a shoot'em'up, I'll shoot'em'all.

    I'm looking toward a real Adventure Game.
    No RPG, no FPS, no RTS.
  • edited June 2010
    So you won't be satisfied with the upcoming Dino Chess as well?
  • edited June 2010
    I'm hoping we won't get photorealistic graphics. I want a slightly exaggerated character design, some great puzzles and a good story! Heh, I often find photorealistic characters rather creepy. But that's probably just me. :D
  • edited June 2010
    Spadge wrote: »
    Heh, I often find photorealistic characters rather creepy. But that's probably just me. :D

    This is known as the uncanny valley.

    uncanny_valley.jpg

    I think it's because the eyes always look dull and lifeless.
  • edited June 2010
    Pale Man wrote: »
    This is known as the uncanny valley.

    That's a very interesting concept.
  • TorTor
    edited June 2010
    Pale Man wrote: »
    This is known as the uncanny valley.
    I'm familiar with the effect (the humanoid robot pictured in the article is a good example) but I didn't know the name for it. Thanks for the link!
  • edited June 2010
    I think movie licenses like Bttf and Jurassic Park lends themselves to realistic graphics so I really hope they'll try to go with that for those games.
    It just wouldn't really be Jurassic Park with cartoony and wacky charactes in it.
    Maybe this is what they're going for:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyGMiwOGBfM
  • edited June 2010
    Crikey, some of you guys are talking as if there's a cartoony-realistic dichotomy, with nothing in between. I would find a Jurassic Park game with graphics along the lines of Telltale's CSI games perfectly acceptable. I really hope they won't go for some totally unnecessary Crysis overkill, not in the last place because my PC couldn't handle it.
  • edited June 2010
    I think Jurassic Park deserves something more than the dated graphics of the CSI games. The movies always looked smashing, with high production values. The efects in the movies were even groundbreaking for it's time.
  • edited June 2010
    Santar wrote: »
    I think Jurassic Park deserves something more than the dated graphics of the CSI games. The movies always looked smashing, with high production values. The efects in the movies were even groundbreaking for it's time.
    Agreed. I still think the original Jurassic Park has better visuals than the majority of actions films today. Besides, Telltale's engine features scalable graphics settings so people with low end PC's can play the game and people with high end PCs can have it looking spectacular.
  • edited June 2010
    SparkTR wrote: »
    Agreed. I still think the original Jurassic Park has better visuals than the majority of actions films today. Besides, Telltale's engine features scalable graphics settings so people with low end PC's can play the game and people with high end PCs can have it looking spectacular.

    Yeah, it's been a while since I last saw them, but I've always thought they look fantastic even by todays standards.
    Lets hope they actually surprise us with the graphics of both these new franchises. It would be really awesome if they stepped outside of the cartoony zany graphic styles I think.
  • edited June 2010
    Dr. Nucleus's assistent: Finally, we've succeeded and as expected we can confirm that also adventure gamers can be turned into visual dependants!
  • edited June 2010
    Yeah the awesome special effects of Jurassic Park bringing dinosaurs to life on the big screen was what made that movie a classic. Without the jaw-dropping "omg it's a dinosaur staring right at me" effects, there's not much there. This will be a tough one for TT. Personally, I think they would have been better off with Maniac Mansion/Day of the Tentacle.
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