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Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Promises “Filmic” Ray Tracing Effects on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S

Lunatic_Gamer

Gold Member
star-wars-jedi-cal.jpg


Speaking with StarWars.com in a recent interview, director Stig Asmussen stated that ray tracing was the “biggest” improvement Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is receiving when compared to the first game, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

He added that PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S allow developer Respawn Entertainment to do real-time lighting in the sequel to achieve quality levels unlike any game before, something not possible on previous-generation consoles.

So I think the biggest thing is ray tracing or lighting,” said Asmussen. “That’s allowing us to do real-time lighting, all the time, at a fidelity that’s well beyond anything that we’ve ever produced before.

“Since it’s real-time, we get to see the changes as we tweak the lights — immediately, essentially. That means that we have more time to polish, that means that we can iterate more, and we can get better results that feel more filmic.”

Asmussen was also all praise about the new solid-state drives of current-generation consoles. He noted that the lightning-fast drives allow Star Wars Jedi: Survivor “to load tons of content really quickly”.

Bringing up PlayStation 5 specifically, Asmussen confirmed that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor will once again support the adaptive triggers and haptic feedback of the DualSense controller. He might even have teased that the sequel will support improved haptics compared to the first game.

 
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TheSHEEEP

Gold Member
How about a Jedi game that promises proper light saber combat and not just this floaty animation-driven AC/Arkham style nonsense?
Now THAT would be something interesting.

Last good implementation of light saber combat that actually put you in control of the swings instead of just predefined animations is now almost 20 years old...
 
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Redneckerz

Those long posts don't cover that red neck boy
Maybe now developers are finally tapping into the hardware of next-gen machines, some 2 years after they are introduced.

Which would make sense though - Early releases usually don't tap into the machine well, so here is to stuff like RTGI being a thing instead of rasterization + a few RT effects bolted on for scoring points.
 

DukeNukem00

Banned
How about a Jedi game that promises proper light saber combat and not just this floaty animation-driven AC/Arkham style nonsense?
Now THAT would be something interesting.

Last good implementation of light saber combat that actually put you in control of the swings instead of just predefined animations is now almost 20 years old...



Nobody is gonna do something like this now, plus you can only do that stuff with a mouse.
 

Ozriel

M$FT
How about a Jedi game that promises proper light saber combat and not just this floaty animation-driven AC/Arkham style nonsense?
Now THAT would be something interesting.

Last good implementation of light saber combat that actually put you in control of the swings instead of just predefined animations is now almost 20 years old...


Here you go:


Direct link to download Unity so you can make the game to your taste.

The rest of us will accept the limitations and enjoy Respawn’s game.
 

TheSHEEEP

Gold Member
Nobody is gonna do something like this now
At least not EA, which only aims at the casual crowd anyway with titles like that.
But nobody? Idk. From Software showed that you can do AAA develpment of titles aimed at a more hardcore audience that likes being given more control than "press X to make cool animation happen".

But yeah, as usual, indies and small-mid size studios would be the main hope for good light saber combat.
And I see no way studios like that would be given the SW license, so you're most likely right.

plus you can only do that stuff with a mouse.
Not even remotely true. Saber movement in the Jedi Knight games is tied to camera and character movement.
Of course, mouse is superior for that. But that never stopped camera+character movement being implemented with controllers as well.
Especially with the slower saber styles (which were pretty much the only ones used in competitive back then), I'd argue you could definitely pull it off with an analogue stick (or two).
Hell, the Jedi Knight games themselves were ported to consoles (at least XBox). Buggy as hell ports, though, unfortunately - but those bugs were not related to saber control, iirc.

But it wouldn't even have to be the exact same way. Jedi Knight combat is the best light saber combat there is, but it is still clunky af and the sabers jump around like crazy on collision sometimes.
It could be improved in many ways. You could lock the camera and move only the saber, you could do a Mount & Blade or Kingdom Come-style 4/8-directional input, etc.
There are many ways to give the player more control over their melee weapon than above mentioned "press X to make cool animation happen".

Direct link to download Unity so you can make the game to your taste.
I prefer Godot engine, and I'm working on something entirely unrelated already.
I'm afraid I won't have the time. But hey, if you can get Disney to give me the license, who knows ;)
 
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ToTTenTranz

Banned
It's also been confirmed that Respawn is using Unreal Engine 5 for this game.
As this is not a cross-gen game, we should expect it to look great.
 

DukeNukem00

Banned
Not even remotely true. Saber movement in the Jedi Knight games is tied to camera and character movement.
Of course, mouse is superior for that. But that never stopped camera+character movement being implemented with controllers as well.
Especially with the slower saber styles (which were pretty much the only ones used in competitive back then), I'd argue you could definitely pull it off with an analogue stick (or two).
Hell, the Jedi Knight games themselves were ported to consoles (at least XBox). Buggy as hell ports, though, unfortunately - but those bugs were not related to saber control, iirc.

But it wouldn't even have to be the exact same way. Jedi Knight combat is the best light saber combat there is, but it is still clunky af and the sabers jump around like crazy on collision sometimes.
It could be improved in many ways. You could lock the camera and move only the saber, you could do a Mount & Blade or Kingdom Come-style 4/8-directional input, etc.
There are many ways to give the player more control over their melee weapon than above mentioned "press X to make cool animation happen".
100% true. Look at the video. Its physically impossible to replicate almost every movement with a pad. These games being ported to consoles is how the norm was, they ported games even if they were close to non functional on consoles. There is a gdc one hour presentation on how they ported a PC only Jedi Outcast to consoles, what they had to do. Half the presentation is how difficult it was to translate a mouse and keyboard gamedesign to a controller. Its a half measure where you have basic functionality, but you cant do anything more advanced.
 
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TheSHEEEP

Gold Member
100% true. Look at the video. Its physically impossible to replicate almost every movement with a pad. These games being ported to consoles is how the norm was, they ported games even if they were close to non functional on consoles. There is a gdc one hour presentation on how they ported a PC only Jedi Outcast to consoles, what they had to do. Half the presentation is how difficult it was to translate a mouse and keyboard gamedesign to a controller. Its a half measure where you have basic functionality, but you cant do anything more advanced.
We are talking only about the saber combat here.
Of course it is a ton of work to port every aspect of a game that was meant for kb&m over to controller. The UI alone would be an extreme amount of work. And Jedi Outcast also had a huge chunk of FPS gameplay - horrible one at that, btw, I still think that the Jedi Knight games have the worst FPS combat there is with the most horrible controls even with kb&m. I could rant about this for hours lol
You are taking all of that and lumping it into our one topic here.
You are also taking a GDC talk from what, 2003 and ignore the progress that was made in porting and platform-driven UI design since then.

But again, we are only talking about the saber combat here.
Kingdom Come has comparable higher-control melee weapon combat, Mount & Blade has it (although super simplified), others have it. All games that are also on console.

There is also the point that controllers are generally not able to compete with kb&m in many games and so their audiences are not allowed to compete with each other (separate player pools).
And that's perfectly fine.
There would be nothing wrong with having "more advanced" things only doable with a mouse, but not a controller. As long as the controller variant is still playable and fun and doesn't have to compete with the mouse one.
 
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Dr.D00p

Member
Unreal Engine powered game...heart sinks.

Can't wait to see an I9 13900K, RTX 409Ti, 32GB DDR5 6400, 10GBs NVMe SSD equipped rig, reduced to a stuttering, shader compiling clusterfuck.
 

Nankatsu

Gold Member


Nobody is gonna do something like this now, plus you can only do that stuff with a mouse.


This game with dismemberment mod was fantastic back in the day.

Add also the Movie battles mod and man, I do really miss that game. One of my most played games as a kid.
 
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Kenpachii

Member
Unreal Engine powered game...heart sinks.

Can't wait to see an I9 13900K, RTX 409Ti, 32GB DDR5 6400, 10GBs NVMe SSD equipped rig, reduced to a stuttering, shader compiling clusterfuck.

Honestly after matrix demo, not sure if i care for any unreal engine 5 game.
 

Azurro

Banned
I'm glad they are embracing raytraced lighting. It's the only raytracing that matters. Could have easily went for low resolution raytraced reflections like so many other games.

True, ray traced reflections are nice but barely noticeable for the amount of performance loss.
 

winjer

Gold Member
Alex would like to have a word with you.



Truth be told, ray-tracing in games have been acting upon 3 effects, for the most part: reflections, shadows and global illumination.
Hitman is a good example of this division in RT implementations. The game has an option for sun shadows, another for reflections. And no implementation for global illumination.
Alex is just being pedantic for the sake of it.
 

Dunker99

Neo Member
It would be lovely if there could be a thread about this game that’s not filled with:

1. People hoping for a completely different game because they hated the first one (seriously, just go and play a different game, there are plenty out there. Lots of us loved Jedi Fallen Order)
2. People complaining about the main character because he’s white and male (and “boring”).
 

OmegaSupreme

advanced basic bitch
It would be lovely if there could be a thread about this game that’s not filled with:

1. People hoping for a completely different game because they hated the first one (seriously, just go and play a different game, there are plenty out there. Lots of us loved Jedi Fallen Order)
2. People complaining about the main character because he’s white and male (and “boring”).
Doubt you'll see that here.
 

rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
At least not EA, which only aims at the casual crowd anyway with titles like that.
But nobody? Idk. From Software showed that you can do AAA develpment of titles aimed at a more hardcore audience that likes being given more control than "press X to make cool animation happen".

But yeah, as usual, indies and small-mid size studios would be the main hope for good light saber combat.
And I see no way studios like that would be given the SW license, so you're most likely right.


Not even remotely true. Saber movement in the Jedi Knight games is tied to camera and character movement.
Of course, mouse is superior for that. But that never stopped camera+character movement being implemented with controllers as well.
Especially with the slower saber styles (which were pretty much the only ones used in competitive back then), I'd argue you could definitely pull it off with an analogue stick (or two).
Hell, the Jedi Knight games themselves were ported to consoles (at least XBox). Buggy as hell ports, though, unfortunately - but those bugs were not related to saber control, iirc.

But it wouldn't even have to be the exact same way. Jedi Knight combat is the best light saber combat there is, but it is still clunky af and the sabers jump around like crazy on collision sometimes.
It could be improved in many ways. You could lock the camera and move only the saber, you could do a Mount & Blade or Kingdom Come-style 4/8-directional input, etc.
There are many ways to give the player more control over their melee weapon than above mentioned "press X to make cool animation happen".


I prefer Godot engine, and I'm working on something entirely unrelated already.
I'm afraid I won't have the time. But hey, if you can get Disney to give me the license, who knows ;)
-No. Medium style horizontal swing is deadly. Time stamped:




-Lock-on can burn in hell. Give us 100% of camera control like it is.
 
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RoadHazard

Gold Member
Alex would like to have a word with you.



He's wrong. In real life they're two aspects of the same thing, but not in games. Even if both are done using RT, it's not like there's a single "unified lighting" implementation that handles both automatically. It's two different ways to use RT (evident by the fact that you can enable one but not the other if you want to). With a full pathtracer you might have a more unified solution, but that's not happening anytime soon (except as a proof of concept in very simple/old games).
 

TheSHEEEP

Gold Member
-No. Medium style horizontal swing is deadly. Time stamped:




-Lock-on can burn in hell. Give us 100% of camera control like it is.

I actually played that game competitively for a short while and was active in a lot of community servers for years.
Non-heavy styles do have occasional uses, yes, but only if your opponent makes a mistake and leaves their defense open when using heavy style. Which is generally the case when fighting AI.

Good human players don't do that, though.
They know that other styles' attacks (with the exception of those special combo moves) can not get through their own heavy attacks, which they'll also use defensively.
The faster movement speed during faster attacks is nowhere near enough to make up for that massive disadvantage.
So what this guy talks about in the video is just not how things work in real PvP, at least not with better players.

What this all leads to is that you'll use the heavy attacks 90% of the time when you know what you are doing and occasionally switch it up to surprise your opponent or lure them in.
But even using 100% heavy style is absolutely possible in a competitive environment.
While using anything else 100% will only get you killed.

Bear in mind, though, that is for vanilla lightsaber combat. Which hasn't changed in decades now (yeah I'm old, I guess).
I know that nowadays most players that remain use that multiplayer mod (Movie Battles or sth), but that was after my time. It is possible that that mod makes other styles more viable.
 
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rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
I actually played that game competitively for a short while and was active in a lot of community servers for years.
Non-heavy styles do have occasional uses, yes, but only if your opponent makes a mistake and leaves their defense open when using heavy style. Which is generally the case when fighting AI.

Good human players don't do that, though.
They know that other styles' attacks (with the exception of those special combo moves) can not get through their own heavy attacks, which they'll also use defensively.
The faster movement speed during faster attacks is nowhere near enough to make up for that massive disadvantage.
So what this guy talks about in the video is just not how things work in real PvP, at least not with better players.

What this all leads to is that you'll use the heavy attacks 90% of the time when you know what you are doing and occasionally switch it up to surprise your opponent or lure them in.
But even using 100% heavy style is absolutely possible in a competitive environment.
While using anything else 100% will only get you killed.

Bear in mind, though, that is for vanilla lightsaber combat. Which hasn't changed in decades now (yeah I'm old, I guess).
I know that nowadays most players that remain use that multiplayer mod (Movie Battles or sth), but that was after my time. It is possible that that mod makes other styles more viable.
I still play even today. AI sucks. Tons of good players use the medium style rapid horizontal swings and can be very deadly vs any other style/saber.
 
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TheSHEEEP

Gold Member
I still play even today. AI sucks. Tons of good players use the medium style rapid swings and can be very deadly vs any other style/saber.
Well, I disagree.
Maybe I should get back into it and show them how it's done... then again, I might just get my ass handed to me cause 20 years older me doesn't have quite the same reflexes...

But this entire discussion kind of proves a point about gameplay, doesn't it?
At least there is something that CAN be discussed in-depth and strongly relates to player skill combined with game mechanics.
I don't think you'll find discussions like that about Star Wars: Tomb Raider (aka Fallen Order) and I highly doubt you'll find them about this next entry.
 
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Cool. The graphics in the first game were great, the combat itself and having the travel all the way across a map if you missed something was a pain though.
 
He's wrong. In real life they're two aspects of the same thing, but not in games. Even if both are done using RT, it's not like there's a single "unified lighting" implementation that handles both automatically. It's two different ways to use RT (evident by the fact that you can enable one but not the other if you want to). With a full pathtracer you might have a more unified solution, but that's not happening anytime soon (except as a proof of concept in very simple/old games).
Yeah, not sure what Alex is talking about here. Reflections and lighting are separate in terms of ray tracing techniques. Hence why you can turn one off without having much of an impact on the other in some games.

Sometimes I think he just likes to say people are wrong jus so he can disagree about something. He’s definitely not my favourite DF presenter.
 
Unreal Engine powered game...heart sinks.

Can't wait to see an I9 13900K, RTX 409Ti, 32GB DDR5 6400, 10GBs NVMe SSD equipped rig, reduced to a stuttering, shader compiling clusterfuck.
This is a actual video game company and not a special projects team. I sincerely doubt there is going to be 50 AI objects on screen all the time all reflecting and casting light. Pre compile shaders. Fixed
It would be lovely if there could be a thread about this game that’s not filled with:

1. People hoping for a completely different game because they hated the first one (seriously, just go and play a different game, there are plenty out there. Lots of us loved Jedi Fallen Order)
2. People complaining about the main character because he’s white and male (and “boring”).
I really enjoyed the first one and your number 2 complaint is wrong. People complained he was a boring ginger.
 
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