Sport Crowds / Enviroments

[GD|eNSo]

Well, i'm hoping to get a response out of this since I feel people on this board a bit more mature and technical to handle this question.

I love sport games. I even enjoy playing sport games, of sports I don't enjoy watching in real-life (basketball for one)

One think that has annoyed me, is how fake the crowed, and at time the enviroments are.

How do you suppose this issue can be fixed, where you don't have like 4 guys X 20000 in the arena? What is stopping us from acheiving real time, unique response from a unique and individual crowed?

Is it possible to have multiple streams of crowds in the backround of a game? (sort of like that train scene in FF8, I believe) With a video rolling in the back with the actual game in front.

I guess its probably the nature of the sport games and the cookie-cutting ports we see, that we won't be able to see the potential of what just the PS3 can pull off. If we can have something like Warhawk where an SPE is reserved just for the water, I don't see why that cannot be acheived for croweds in sport games.

[frosty]

It isn't exactly easy to render 20k 3d models with their own "ai" so to speak, and video will not work because it is 2d, when you pan the camera in 3d you will see the crowd is flat.

[Viper]

1. Time. Sports games are annual and don't get the time required to make background details any form of priority.

2. Streaming video won't work since the camera isn't fixed.

3. The higher the resolution, the more blatant the horrible look of the crowd becomes. I think with time and more familiarity with the new consoles, we'll see more realistic crowds.

Football can have 70,000+ fans with 30,000 needing to be rendered at once given some camera angles. It can be real taxing to render many different fan models with different AI's by the 10's of thousands.

[curryking1]

Ya, it sucks... but I can see why it happens, I totally wish it wasn't that way though.

Playing 2K7, and my god, the audience just turns you off from playing the game every time it remotely cuts to them, or you see their backs while playing or something.

[NickSCFC]

I find something odd in the Pro Evolution Soccer games.

They're HD, running at 720p. The crowd is 3D, but seems to have jaggies like a 480i game!

[Viper]

I find something odd in the Pro Evolution Soccer games.

They're HD, running at 720p. The crowd is 3D, but seems to have jaggies like a 480i game!
http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/760/760553/winning-eleven-pro-evolution-soccer-2007-20070201025343925.jpg

Low resolution textures, low poly count. Sure those aren't sprite based? I don't see any perspective shift between a fan on the far right and a fan on the far left.

[Segitz]

http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/760/760553/winning-eleven-pro-evolution-soccer-2007-20070201025343925.jpg

Low resolution textures, low poly count. Sure those aren't sprite based? I don't see any perspective shift between a fan on the far right and a fan on the far left.

They are 3D, but instanced VERY much. These are the same people over and over and over again. Look for the man in the brown jacket and you see what I mean :D (if this was spritebased, they wouldn't just copy 3 people all over the place)

[NickSCFC]

They're obviously 3D, hence the low poly count (or look of it)/

[GD|eNSo]

1. Time. Sports games are annual and don't get the time required to make background details any form of priority.

2. Streaming video won't work since the camera isn't fixed.

3. The higher the resolution, the more blatant the horrible look of the crowd becomes. I think with time and more familiarity with the new consoles, we'll see more realistic crowds.

Football can have 70,000+ fans with 30,000 needing to be rendered at once given some camera angles. It can be real taxing to render many different fan models with different AI's by the 10's of thousands.

1. Then again, you never really see a significant jump in quality of the game itself let alone the crowd. It's more like "Oh now you can choose to have black or white tape on you players stick!"

2. How about in certain plays or area? Like after a goal? or after a homerun, since the game always cuts to a cut-scence sort of, so you would expect much better in that situation.

3. I understand the quantity, but you would rarely see the 70K crowd ALL at once. It will be a selection of them depending on your camera view and play. In baseball, its just the bottom of the lover half, and then the span of a wide crowd when the ball goes out. Hockey its just a select rows behind the glass. Nothing more. Basketball same thing.

Like some have already said its just a matter in the dev's hands. I think it's not only time to get used the PS3, but it will take time until we have game build specifically for the PS3. Like last season NHL06, which was built on and just for 360 in mind. The other platforms had a different engine, and different play.

One more gripe is the enviroment. Honestly it's not hard to get the goal horns of 30 teams (with some of them being repeats) or atleast give you the option of using you owen horns and goal songs.

Lame crowed, nocrowed response. No " Go 'Team' Go" (actually there was a game that just yelled "go team go") You just have to record the atmosphere from ONE game from each team, and that would do.

[<3frosty]

First a foremost, because its bugging me, crowd is only spelled like so. Its not "crowed". That would be making a noise like a crow.


Second, i agree with Viper as i often seem to do because they DONT have the time to develop these games for years at a time. The developers also seem to have problems getting Madden to run at a smooth 60 fps as it is on the PS3. Imagine having crowds that were in much better detail. Yikes.

Also, despite you wanting the crowd, many people still buy the games. Madden is still a top seller every year. You might care alot, but in a development sense, that would take lots of money and not have alot of effect on sales.

This is like trying to get developers to have shoelaces that actually untie themselves after lots of collisions, or something of that nature. Sure, the crowd is much more obvious and hideous, but we have been dealing with crappy crowds since forever.

They have made improvements at times, though it isnt by large parts.

Also, because we are dealing with a camera that can be freely moved and the game records those for instant-replays, im not sure if they could just simply only have large scale crowds rendered while using replay. However, from my knowledge most people play with a dynamic camera. However, i believe you can have different camera angles that will show different amounts of the crowd. This becomes pretty messy when trying to cheat the system and not have all of the crowd rendered (if that is indeed what they currently do).

Lastly, i have no idea what you are talking about when mentioning goal horns and goal songs.

[FantasyGhost]

Lastly, i have no idea what you are talking about when mentioning goal horns and goal songs.Probably something like a team song.
Like the "You'll never walk alone" song from Liverpool

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_chant