Borderlands [PC]

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Darkdrium

20% Cooler
Jun 6, 2008
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Sweet. I just checked around the internets, seems like an interesting game. I might check it out on the PC if I can run it (8800 GTS 640MB good enough? It is for UT3 maxed out so...), else PS3. But then on PS3 there's Uncharted 2 which I'm sure to really like D: (And I don't have monies/time to play two games at once.)
 

Soggy_Popcorn

THE Irish Ninja
Feb 3, 2008
564
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Sweet. I just checked around the internets, seems like an interesting game. I might check it out on the PC if I can run it (8800 GTS 640MB good enough? It is for UT3 maxed out so...), else PS3. But then on PS3 there's Uncharted 2 which I'm sure to really like D: (And I don't have monies/time to play two games at once.)

I swear, if this game doesn't run like butter, I will be furious. There are no incredible shader effects and uber-dynamic lighting crap like crysis. Neither are there massive textures or lines of sight. It is designed to look like a cartoon. Pretty simple. It had better run great then.
 

dub

Feb 12, 2002
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apparently...

Randy Pitchford -
"The PC version "destroys" the console versions in more than one field"
old, I know - still :']

It's not really cell shading. Sure, we draw a black outlines around objects in the post processing, but there aren't "cells" of color in the typical cell shading sense. The textures have sort of a sketchy, concept art look to them, but it's not cell shading in the traditional sense.
Glad to hear that from someone working there because I keep reading people writing "cell shading" when it doesn't look cell shaded at all. (Mind people call anything with a cartoon look 'cellshaded' nowadays)
I for one am happy the games using a funky post-processing method rather than bland everyday methods.
 
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TomWithTheWeather

Die Paper Robots!
May 8, 2001
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tomwiththeweather.blogspot.com
I swear, if this game doesn't run like butter, I will be furious. There are no incredible shader effects and uber-dynamic lighting crap like crysis. Neither are there massive textures or lines of sight. It is designed to look like a cartoon. Pretty simple. It had better run great then.

The game runs well, and certainly better than Crysis, but you underestimate the graphic fidelity.

There are many complicated shader effects. Not only in materials and particles, but the post processing has a special shader that draws black outlines around things and it's not cheap.

There are textures as massive as any other current-gen game. This isn't cell shading, everything is texture-mapped.

There are some very long view distances too. Remember the part about this game being somewhat open-world?

Also, the lighting/shadowing is all dynamic with a day/night cycle.

;)
 

Soggy_Popcorn

THE Irish Ninja
Feb 3, 2008
564
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The game runs well, and certainly better than Crysis, but you underestimate the graphic fidelity.

There are many complicated shader effects. Not only in materials and particles, but the post processing has a special shader that draws black outlines around things and it's not cheap.

There are textures as massive as any other current-gen game. This isn't cell shading, everything is texture-mapped.

There are some very long view distances too. Remember the part about this game being somewhat open-world?

Also, the lighting/shadowing is all dynamic with a day/night cycle.

;)

Well, this is half reassuring. Nice fancy visual effects. But you didn't say it performed smooth! ;)

1) Drawing outlines is power hungry? There's all kinds of worse shading than that layered really deep in UT3 materials.

2) I actually meant something like the id approach to mega-awesome-uber textures or something :D

3) Well, from what I've seen, it looks outdoors, but I meant Arma 2 long. Like, kilometers long.

4) As Kantham says, um...no precalculated lightmaps? On UE3? I doubt you meant that.

I don't mean to offend the guy who actually works on the game, I'm just not clear on all this.
 
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Kantham

Fool.
Sep 17, 2004
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Ambient occlusion is probably even more hungry than simple outlines. I'm far from worried.
 

TomWithTheWeather

Die Paper Robots!
May 8, 2001
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No lightmaps on anything nor any light builds required in development? Odd to hear this is done on the UE3.

We don't use UE3's stock lighting. We wrote our own that performs better. We do use shadow maps in some places that act as a shadow LOD of sorts out beyond the render distance of the dynamic shadows, so there is a small compile time, but it's never any longer that a minute or so. It's usually only a few seconds for most of our maps. We don't use any light-maps as far as I know.

Well, this is half reassuring. Nice fancy visual effects. But you didn't say it performed smooth! ;)

1) Drawing outlines is power hungry? There's all kinds of worse shading than that layered really deep in UT3 materials.

2) I actually meant something like the id approach to mega-awesome-uber textures or something :D

3) Well, from what I've seen, it looks outdoors, but I meant Arma 2 long. Like, kilometers long.

4) As Kantham says, um...no precalculated lightmaps? On UE3? I doubt you meant that.

I don't mean to offend the guy who actually works on the game, I'm just not clear on all this.

Borderlands preforming smooth is the same as any other PC game. It depends on your hardware.

1. It's a dynamic full screen effect that renders in every frame. It's not something that's painted on the texture or a part of every material. This, layered with DoF, fog, AO, etc, is never cheap.

2. Ah, no we don't us anything like that, just traditional texturing methods.

3. Borderlands isn't Arma2. We have different goals with our game. We do have big open areas with lots of content, but the level structure isn't the same as Arma.

4. See the first quote above.

Ambient occlusion is probably even more hungry than simple outlines. I'm far from worried.

We do use ambient occlusion but the game does run well.
 
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Kantham

Fool.
Sep 17, 2004
18,034
2
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Ok so the object outline trick, if I get this right, is some kind of "reversed" ambient occlusion trick? Makes sense. This "gearbox-build" lighting sounds interesting. As far as I know a lot of other games on the market did use anything else than Unreal Engine's 3 retail lighting. IE Beast and so on.

Regarding the game how many difficulty levels are they planning? I'm guessing the videos of NPC standing still is just a matter of difficulty level, and further on harder level enemies will strafe around, jump, and duck?
 

BobTheBeheader

New Member
Aug 31, 2005
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I always like games with a large arsenal, and it seems like this game fits the bill.

I think saying the game has 600,000+ weapons is more of a marketing device then anything else.

Look at Diablo 2, for example. It's got, like, 100 or however many weapons, however if you factor in all the possible combinations for prefixes and suffixes, you've got many thousands. And that's not even counting rare/unique/set/socketed weapons.

I bet that's sort of what they mean when they talk about the number of different guns in Borderlands.
 

ilkman

Active Member
Mar 1, 2001
3,559
1
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East coast
I always like games with a large arsenal, and it seems like this game fits the bill.

I think saying the game has 600,000+ weapons is more of a marketing device then anything else.

Look at Diablo 2, for example. It's got, like, 100 or however many weapons, however if you factor in all the possible combinations for prefixes and suffixes, you've got many thousands. And that's not even counting rare/unique/set/socketed weapons.

I bet that's sort of what they mean when they talk about the number of different guns in Borderlands.

That's exactly what they mean; prefixes and suffixes. I doubt there are that many models. I think changing the function of the gun is enough to say its a whole new gun especially with all the crazy things guns do in video games.

I remember reading in an early interview about the weapons system, one of the designers was saying that they aren't going to go all 'balance crazy' on the system. The beauty of the system is you never know what you'll get. So if you get a super duper weapon then good for you. They wouldn't change that.

I hope it's still that way.
 

BobTheBeheader

New Member
Aug 31, 2005
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That's exactly what they mean; prefixes and suffixes. I doubt there are that many models. I think changing the function of the gun is enough to say its a whole new gun especially with all the crazy things guns do in video games.

I remember reading in an early interview about the weapons system, one of the designers was saying that they aren't going to go all 'balance crazy' on the system. The beauty of the system is you never know what you'll get. So if you get a super duper weapon then good for you. They wouldn't change that.

I hope it's still that way.

Hmm, interesting...
 

Capt.Toilet

Good news everyone!
Feb 16, 2004
5,826
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AK-47
AK-47 w/ silencer
AK-47 w/ scope
AK-47 w/ silencer & scope
AK-47 w/ bayonet
AK-47 w/ bayonet & scope
AK-47 w/ bayonet & silencer

You get the picture