DS2 Engine Changes

[Galshin]

Hello, David Adams from Gunfire. I posted this in another thread, but thought I'd put this up top.

If anyone is curious, here's what we did engine side.

It is of course the same engine, but we rewrote huge swaths of the renderer. We wanted to bring it closer in line with more modern engines, while at the same time not dramatically changing the look of the game.

Here's a list of changes we made (beware, technical jargon incoming):

- Changed lighting model to be physically correct. Most modern engines use a physically correct lighting model, and the original Darksiders had a simple Phong lighting model. In practice, this doesn't have to change the way anything looks, but it allowed us to achieve more material variety - metal looking like metal, etc... It's not perfect when you are working with existing assets (because you would ultimately author the assets differently to get the full effect), but I think it adds something to the game. If you go back and look at the old game, all the materials just sort of looked like concrete. Now there is much more variation.

- Added irradiance environment maps. In the original, the ambient lighting was a flat color. In this remaster the ambient lighting comes from a cube map render of the scene. This adds much more depth to the ambient, and creates subtle light bleeding (the lava bleeding up and casting reddish lighting on the ceiling for instance). It also means the reflections in the metal reflect the actual room, so if Death is near lava - there's a lava-ish reflection in the metail in his armor and weapons.

- Improved the SSAO - it's still not great, but it's better (SSAO is my nemesis for some reason)

- Implemented Filmic Tone-Mapping (the original game had no filmic tone mapping)

- Improved the shadow filtering dramatically. It's still the same basic shadowing technique, so there is room for improvement - but this makes the shadows look a lot better even at the same shadow resolutions.

- Implemented shadow casting point lights with transparency (there are a lot more shadow casting lights in the game in general).

- I'm sure there's a few more misc things I'm forgetting.

- All these changes did add more processing time to the renderer, but we did some optimizations which I think in the end should put it at performance parity with the original (barring any technical issues)

The artists then took these changes, and rebalanced all the textures/materials - and relit most of the game. Again, trying to mantain the original look, just "modernizing" it a bit.

I won't claim it's the most advanced engine in the world, but myself and one other guy were the only graphics programmers (even at Vigil that was essentially the case, we never had a massive team of graphics engineers like some other studios do - and we didn't use an off the shelf engine, we - maybe foolishly - rolled our own:p)

That's should give you more insight on the changes that were made engine side. I think it looks hands down better than the original.

And of course, we and Nordic are working hard to make sure we fix any issues.

[Mållgan]

Wow, these are some great fake additions in the game. Where are the graphics options buddy?

[markoh00]

Is it planned to finally get the keybinding option work as it is intended to be? This never worked correct in the original so I was hoping that it would now. Just try to bind arrow keys and you will see what I mean. It took me about 10 minutes to rebind all my keys and it's still far to easy to accidantically click on "reset to defaults". I am still missing mouse scrolling possibility here. IN general it's clear that this is never meant to be a PC game with really bad keyboard+mouse support - especially in the menus.

Regarding the darker colours: just look at the makers in the beginning and tell me that they are NOT more colourful in the original (which for me showed more what a proud and honorful race this was). I think I know the difference between other colours and other contrast. And for me it is hard to believe that this different look should only be the result of another contrast (which also is wrong imo - when the game starts you can actually see the screen get grey).

I would have liked it more if you had implemented the DLC in the normal game the way you did it now here. Or at least give us the choice (option) what look we want.

I made a screenshots of both games and nobody can tell me that those are the same colours:
http://markoh01.lima-city.de/old.jpg
http://markoh01.lima-city.de/new.jpg

[Lex Noisy]

Hello, I have a question for the developer. Is it possible to use the Russian version of the game without changing the voice acting? As I understand the language of the game by changing the incentive downloading a particular file extension .pck voiced with the selected language. For example eng.pck and ru.pck.

If I leave the selected Russian language and at the same time changing the name of the file eng to ru and ru to eng, and then run the game, the entire text is Russian but the voice is lost completely.


From this I understand that the text is not in the locations of these files. Correspondingly switch text is somewhere in other files, for example in the same core.pck, which naturally can not just open and you can not rearrange the localization of text manually.

Is it possible to bring into game the possibility of switching options for localization of the text? Or is there any option to start to address this issue?

[Blevalschitsa]

I don't want to be rude, but, tell me, please, developers, why your engine is a piece of crap? Why don't u bother fixing optimization?

[Marsson]

Originally posted by VANDERSEXXX:

I don't want to be rude, but, tell me, please, developers, why your engine is a piece of crap? Why don't u bother fixing optimization?

Stop being rude, and wait. They're probably working on something.

[Adeptguy]

Oh how fine this thread was to read untill the salt army arrived
Seriously trolls and angry ppl, pls dont post your sh*t in here because we do not get often the chance to ask questions and get actually answers from a dev from a game. Yes this is not the only game that has devs answering questions, im not claiming this one is unique, however almost no other game does it so its unique in SOME way. Not nearly enough devs do it so do NOT spoil this chance for the decent folk who want to have a normal discussion/Q&A session.

[Galshin]

Originally posted by lukaself:

Hi guys! It's nice seeing actual devs here !

If there's one thing we can't take from you, it's that the actual amount of work is impressive.

That said. I don't agree with every choice you made. Particularly regarding the amazing contrast that existed in the original Darksiders. Now that you have explained the reasons, I must say I understand why it had to be done.

Still that doesn't mean I agree with it, I believe that that particular stylized look was what made me like the series in the first place, the vision of Joe MAD was a colourful and vibrant epic world and you chose to sacrifice it, for the sake of technical excellence. I can't help but find everything I see bland and faded in the remaster in spite of the quality of it.

I'll support my claim with two pictures. The first one is the comparison that I find sums it up best and the second one is an original artwork from Joe Madureira. It's not a specific to this scene, mind you.

http://i.imgur.com/WdTArcC.png

http://i.imgur.com/7LUBxxK.jpg

Even Avery's concept designs were hyper saturated ! I believe and I deplore, that what we gained in accuracy we lost in soul and magic.

That screenshot is a single room in a massive game. When we redid the lighting there were bound to be some changes from the original, but for the most part the same lighting treatment was used. While that room may have lost some of the blue in the original lighting, there are plenty of other rooms that got even more color. The game is still very colorful and vibrant.

[Doktor Mandrake]

Ya the colour pallete is still nice and rich from what I can tell

The particle effects seem to be improved as well as far as I can tell, when you see all the sparks flying about from your scythes it looks alot better then what it looked like in the original

[Galshin]

Originally posted by markoh00:

Is it planned to finally get the keybinding option work as it is intended to be? This never worked correct in the original so I was hoping that it would now. Just try to bind arrow keys and you will see what I mean. It took me about 10 minutes to rebind all my keys and it's still far to easy to accidantically click on "reset to defaults". I am still missing mouse scrolling possibility here. IN general it's clear that this is never meant to be a PC game with really bad keyboard+mouse support - especially in the menus.

Regarding the darker colours: just look at the makers in the beginning and tell me that they are NOT more colourful in the original (which for me showed more what a proud and honorful race this was). I think I know the difference between other colours and other contrast. And for me it is hard to believe that this different look should only be the result of another contrast (which also is wrong imo - when the game starts you can actually see the screen get grey).

I would have liked it more if you had implemented the DLC in the normal game the way you did it now here. Or at least give us the choice (option) what look we want.

I made a screenshots of both games and nobody can tell me that those are the same colours:
http://markoh01.lima-city.de/old.jpg
http://markoh01.lima-city.de/new.jpg

Didn't realize you couldn't bind arrow keys, that's something we can look into.

This is actual a good screen shot.

That Maker guy was the only character in the game we didn't have the original high rez textures for, so we did tweak the texture on that one. I like the new coloring better personally (just personal taste really), and it still has a lot of color (the base clothing is blue). But the rest of the shot is a great exampe of the differences betwen the game. Look at the background. A) The crystal has a lot more detail and color, the rocks have a ton more geometry and color (they are a washed out grey in the original, and have a lot more warm coloring in the new version), and the contrast in this shot is also higher in the new one than the old one. On top of that, there is actual light hitting the characters so you can see more of their detail, as opposed to the old one where it is all flat and in shadow (because we couldn't afford the extra light in that scene for performance reasons).

You can see in this one scene quite a few different things that we did as part of the remastering process.

[Dezoul]

After trying the hotfix I am still getting 30fps in tri stone with everything turned off and changing resolutions. Loading up the same file in the original game I get 60fps, not sure what else I can do.

I3-4130 3.4ghz
6g ram
GTX 645
Windows 8.1

[Mållgan]

Originally posted by Dezoul:

After trying the hotfix I am still getting 30fps in tri stone with everything turned off and changing resolutions. Loading up the same file in the original game I get 60fps, not sure what else I can do.

I3-4130 3.4ghz
6g ram
GTX 645
Windows 8.1

I have the same issue too dude.

Pentium 4 2.4ghz
256MB RAM
GTX 230 Ti
Win 95 x64

[Doktor Mandrake]

Originally posted by Generic Player:

Originally posted by Dezoul:

After trying the hotfix I am still getting 30fps in tri stone with everything turned off and changing resolutions. Loading up the same file in the original game I get 60fps, not sure what else I can do.

I3-4130 3.4ghz
6g ram
GTX 645
Windows 8.1

I have the same issue too dude.

Pentium 4 2.4ghz
256MB RAM
GTX 230 Ti
Win 95 x64

lol

[NOT FUFUFAFA]

Right. It has been my long desire to say something to Darksiders creator. Now I have the chance.

The Darksiders 1 has tons of bugs, weird issues and of course achievement bug that will never be solved. There are bunch of complaints on Steam forum asking for a fix... of course it will never come.

Darksiders 2 is no different. Almost zero graphic settings at launch, tons of bugs plaguing the gameplay and of course bunch of weird DLCs causing this whole Franchise Pack drama.

And this 'remaster'? I don't need to say anything else.

You laid the foundation of a supposedly great franchise - great background storyline, terrific voice actors, great graphics (if done right) but failed in every single aspect to complete the works beautifully. As if you didn't have enough motivation to complete it.

If these are the pieces of your hard work, I'd be ashamed if I were you.

Sure they're playable and beatable - I did it myself - but the issues left me with rather sour taste.

[Galshin]

Originally posted by Generic Player:

Wow, these are some great fake additions in the game. Where are the graphics options buddy?

I'll fully admit it's not the most sophisticated graphics engine in the world. We had 2 guys working on it at Vigil (myself included, and I had to run the studio). Most engines have entire engine teams devoted to working on their graphics engine.

This is why there aren't a lot of graphics options, because the graphics engine itself doesn't have a lot of options. It's not because we didn't want to expose anything - we exposed everything we had.

A commercial engine like Unreal or Cryengine has a ton of options because they've built a ton of different techniques into their engine. They might have 3 ways of doing SSAO, or a bunch of different AA techniques, or different versions of their post processing effects at varying levels of performance. When you have 2 guys working on it, you generally have the 1 way to do everything, which doesn't leave room for a lot of options :p

The changes above were pretty significant actually, and I think make the game look quite a bit better.

[Doktor Mandrake]

It still has more in-game options then some other games do