MLB The Show Graphics Discussion Thread

[canes21]

Re: MLB The Show Graphics Discussion Thread

How do they force an animation based gameplay system? Isn't that completely up to the developers?

[emoji336] mobile device

Yes.

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[tnixen]

Re: MLB The Show Graphics Discussion Thread

Kind of sounds like we can not have both with MLB The Show.

It’s either great gameplay or great graphics and SDS will continue to pick great gameplay I guess.

I really wish we could have both!!!!!!

[breakfastcat]

Re: MLB The Show Graphics Discussion Thread

Hasn't The Show already been an animation based gameplay system for basically it's entire existence? At least since the PS3 days. It's gotten much better over the years but getting stuck in animations has been a thing for as long as I can remember with this franchise.

[Shaffer26]

Re: MLB The Show Graphics Discussion Thread

Man, there has been a TON said in this thread and a lot of it justified. SDS's feet should be held to the fire on some of these issues, no doubt.

I mean who would've thought a few years ago this game would be made for the Playstation, Xbox and Switch? That's a HUGE change and really stresses a studio like no other, I am sure. I understand 1000% why they wanted to do that and will never speak a bad word on that move because who wouldn't want their baby on multiple platforms?

But you can't have it both ways, you can't cater to older tech AND break new ground on innovative ways to enhance the baseball genre. I think in an honest moment most at SDS would love to change and challenge the video game space to go for bigger and try for better but WE have to be real. We are stuck right now and I don't know when this will be changing as the higher ups will always and forever lean on the path of the almighty dollar.

[tnixen]

Re: MLB The Show Graphics Discussion Thread

I would LOVE to be a fly on the wall at the SDS offices to listen to all their reactions to all the negative feedback they are getting so far for 24.

I wonder what they really think about us? lol

[puppies_on_acid]

Re: MLB The Show Graphics Discussion Thread

Kind of sounds like we can not have both with MLB The Show.

It’s either great gameplay or great graphics and SDS will continue to pick great gameplay I guess.

I really wish we could have both!!!!!!

There's no technical reason we can't have both. From where I'm sitting they only really need to finish their PBR rendering pipeline and add ray-tracing (it doesn't even need to be full ray-tracing) and the game engine will pretty much be up to par with most other modern engines. Then the player models need to be redone from scratch, which isn't a limitation of the engine. Then they just need to figure out how to make wind actually affect things like jerseys, trees, flags (yes yes I know the flags move in the wind, but they are predetermined animations). I mean their physics engine (outside of ball physics) is basically non-existent.

Having said all that, I don't know how easy the above would be to implement into their existing game engine. The PBR pipeline and new player models should be easy. The rest could need a complete overhaul of the engine. I would need to see it to make that call.

[Cod]

Re: MLB The Show Graphics Discussion Thread

How do they force an animation based gameplay system? Isn't that completely up to the developers?

When animations load in new, modern gameplay engines, they expect the player to be in (or very near) a specific spot. Thus, when the animation is triggered, if the player is outside that determined zone, the player is "transported" to the zone.

Yes.

If this was true, then the development teams at EA Canada and EA Tiburon would have eliminated many of the animation problems related to gameplay they've had since moving to Frostbite. The "skating" animation in FIFA is a prime example of this.

The NBA 2K series made an engine jump after NBA2k14 and that's the same time people started complaining about the gameplay regressing. Granted, they have almost 10 years to fix the problem and they've done a great job; however, they're also using a custom engine built for basketball (not sure if it's still Eco-Motion or not).

[Cod]

Re: MLB The Show Graphics Discussion Thread

The PBR pipeline and new player models should be easy. The rest could need a complete overhaul of the engine. I would need to see it to make that call.

I highly doubt the in-house game engine they're using supports PBR workflows. UE didn't support it until 4.XX and not sure when Unity did, but I know it does. DICE was updating the Frostbite engine to support PBR workflows, but not sure if that was completed and/or released. I just remember them discussing the roadmap at a convention I attended a few years back.


EDIT: Looks like EA started the conversion in late 2014. Still unsure if/when it was completed. Source - https://www.ea.com/frostbite/news/mo...rostbite-to-pb

[Cod]

Re: MLB The Show Graphics Discussion Thread

Hasn't The Show already been an animation based gameplay system for basically it's entire existence? At least since the PS3 days. It's gotten much better over the years but getting stuck in animations has been a thing for as long as I can remember with this franchise.

Yes, it really started occurring with the jump to PS3; however, the team has done a good job fixing different parts of it where they can. For example, remember how awful tagging used to be? Now the tag animations are much more fluid and less forced. There are definitely areas they can fix, but there are also some extreme limitations, especially when looking at longer, complex animations like fielding a ball in the outfield and coming up throwing in a fluid manner.

[puppies_on_acid]

Re: MLB The Show Graphics Discussion Thread

I highly doubt the in-house game engine they're using supports PBR workflows. UE didn't support it until 4.XX and not sure when Unity did, but I know it does. DICE was updating the Frostbite engine to support PBR workflows, but not sure if that was completed and/or released. I just remember them discussing the roadmap at a convention I attended a few years back.


EDIT: Looks like EA started the conversion in late 2014. Still unsure if/when it was completed. Source - https://www.ea.com/frostbite/news/mo...rostbite-to-pb

We already know the engine supports PBR to an extent. That was a feature showcase for The Show '16. But as I mentioned in a previous post several pages back, their implementation is very minimal and it isn't applied to a lot of stuff in the game.

Here's the video where they talk about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3bFjR_9qWA

[Cod]

Re: MLB The Show Graphics Discussion Thread

We already know the engine supports PBR to an extent. That was a feature showcase for The Show '16. But as I mentioned in a previous post several pages back, their implementation is very minimal and it isn't applied to a lot of stuff in the game.

Here's the video where they talk about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3bFjR_9qWA

Thanks for sharing. After watching a few times, the entire focus seemed to be on the lighting engine. However, that will only help so much if you aren't starting with quality assets. PBR relies heavily on texture and model quality if you want realism and frankly, from what I've seen, a lot of the textures used in MLBTS aren't quite good enough to support PBR. Memory limitations? Framerate limitations? It could be any number of things.

[puppies_on_acid]

Re: MLB The Show Graphics Discussion Thread

Thanks for sharing. After watching a few times, the entire focus seemed to be on the lighting engine. However, that will only help so much if you aren't starting with quality assets. PBR relies heavily on texture and model quality if you want realism and frankly, from what I've seen, a lot of the textures used in MLBTS aren't quite good enough to support PBR. Memory limitations? Framerate limitations? It could be any number of things.

I agree. For PBR you will run into memory limitations, but really only if it isn't optimized correctly.

[canes21]

Re: MLB The Show Graphics Discussion Thread

When animations load in new, modern gameplay engines, they expect the player to be in (or very near) a specific spot. Thus, when the animation is triggered, if the player is outside that determined zone, the player is "transported" to the zone.


If this was true, then the development teams at EA Canada and EA Tiburon would have eliminated many of the animation problems related to gameplay they've had since moving to Frostbite. The "skating" animation in FIFA is a prime example of this.

The NBA 2K series made an engine jump after NBA2k14 and that's the same time people started complaining about the gameplay regressing. Granted, they have almost 10 years to fix the problem and they've done a great job; however, they're also using a custom engine built for basketball (not sure if it's still Eco-Motion or not).

Many of these developers have done well to reduce sliding around when animations play out. Animation technology has definitely improved over the years, but you're not going to eliminate sliding around and minuscule teleporting unless you go heavily into the motion matching and procedural route which still is not something you see often.

Modern engines are not any worse than past engines when it comes to sliding, skating, etc. That stuff is only as bad as the development team allows it to be. It used to be a lot worse in sports games than it is now, but it obviously is still an issue at times. It's the nature of having games revolving around sports where things happen so quickly and require so much precision in so many during facets.

Until they are able to create a system in their engines that allows for animations to properly adjust on the fly, we're always going to be dealing with some sliding around. The devs can only hope to get in enough animations to really hide it as best they can.

[Cod]

Re: MLB The Show Graphics Discussion Thread

Until they are able to create a system in their engines that allows for animations to properly adjust on the fly, we're always going to be dealing with some sliding around. The devs can only hope to get in enough animations to really hide it as best they can.

Agree with what you're saying and unfortunately, not sure were ever going to get there without game engines designed specifically for sports games. I thought EA did a great job with the IGNITE engine as it was on it's way to greatness, but unfortunately, they dropped it way to soon for Frostbite.

[canes21]

Re: MLB The Show Graphics Discussion Thread

Agree with what you're saying and unfortunately, not sure were ever going to get there without game engines designed specifically for sports games. I thought EA did a great job with the IGNITE engine as it was on it's way to greatness, but unfortunately, they dropped it way to soon for Frostbite.

We will. Sports games are far from the only ones dealing with this issue. Any game with melee combat of any sort also deals with it a lot. So many RPGs. Even game like The Witcher series have pretty of sliding around to get everyone in the right spots for their animations.

Game engines are getting more and more powerful and as things become more and more common, advancements will be made to where we get to a point where things like procedural animations are the standard and not the outlier.

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