Naughty Dog on Uncharted 3’s water and other interactive physics objects

[weber_dubois22]

At this year’s Entertainment Expo, Naughty Dog showed off an impressive demonstration for Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception featuring Nathan Drake fighting and traversing his way through a rocking cruise ship in the middle of a storm. A fan recently stated on the NeoGAF forum that, although the tech behind the water is impressive, it requires an inefficient use of resources because the impact to the player’s experience will be small. Arne Meyer, Senior Manager of Marketing Communications for Naughty Dog, responded to this statement with the following:

What do you mean inefficient use of resources? the point with the cruise ship, among other things we've done in the game, large and small, is that it's a fully realized physics object that serves to both ground you in the "world" of the game (so that everything reacts as you would expect if you were rolling around in an ocean) and provides challenges. And there's more to the water than just the simulated ocean -- for us it's the way we've got it sloshing around in the pool, the way it's used as an obstacle and challenge the various sequences you've seen in the E3 demo.



He later added the following:

Ah -- we'll the point is, it may appear "small" to you here, but it's the idea of making these "moving platforms" as physics objects that have lots of potential, and lots of other ways they can be used in the full game. the chandelier in our Chateau demo was an example of a much smaller, interactive physics object in the same vein. the cruise ship is much more complex, and well, you've only seen about 6 minutes of it. :)

Finally, another fan asked if the interactive physics objects will make the combat, platforming and puzzle elements in Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception more challenging. Arne Meyer made the following comments:

It's going to make things very interesting in at least a few scenarios we haven't yet revealed, so obviously I can't talk about it yet. You have to remember, just tilting and then flipping the boat on it's side in the E3 demo - that's stemming from the same underlying tech. So already there should be a glimpse of how it can change things from a battle/traversal perspective. I wouldn't be surprised if we asked you to use your brain a bit more.

SOURCE

Comments

[reedybeanz.livejournal.com]

pshaw. does anyone remember how impressed with the water graphics everyone was back when Uncharted: Drake's Fortune came out? Even Yahtzee had to compliment them, and he makes his living off of disliking everything. Water is one of the very hardest textures to do realistically, second maybe only to human skin, and i think that getting everything perfect, even things that may not seem to be a crucial part of the gameplay or storyline, is one of the things that sets Naughty Dog above the rest. they don't phone it in on the little stuff, and as Arne mentioned, it IS a part of the world and the gameplay in that it's interacting with a physics object that serves as a challenge. so nyah to that fan.
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