http://blog.us.playstation.com/2007/10/03/uncharted-drakes-fortune-update/
Hey there everybody! Wanted to let you know that we hit Beta on Sunday, September 16th! That's a huge milestone and it means we're one step closer to finishing Uncharted. The team really pulled together to help achieve this deadline and we couldn't be more excited about the progress we've made. Finally, most everything is in the game and we are just chasing down the last bugs and making a few minor balancing tweaks here and there.
We've had our last major focus test week last week too, and we received the data we need to make sure that the gameplay is finely tuned for our final release. This is a process that we take very seriously here at Naughty Dog and something we've been doing since the Crash Bandicoot days. We test the game over the course of a week and track a huge number of statistics from the types of weapons used, the amount of time spent in each area, and the number of times the players died. We then use this data to smooth out the difficulty and fix any puzzles or layouts that are too tricky to figure out. This will be the fourth time we do a full focus test like this and we are actually going to squeeze a final mini test in right before we Gold Master to make sure a bug didn't creep in to mess up our tuning.
It's also at this stage that a bunch of people in the office who have been so busy making the game, finally get a chance to sit down and play it. A lot of people have been so heads down that they are discovering areas in the game they'd never seen before. And because the cinematics are usually some of the last elements that go in, most people haven't really seen the story unfold in its entirety. Our own Naughty Dogs make great gameplay testers too!
So we have a little less than 4 weeks to go now, but our bug count is actually shrinking instead of growing. There are going to be a lot of late nights ahead of us, but we're finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. And as a sign that we're almost launching, the official game website has gone up - Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.
Also, we partnered with GameSpot to give you a sneak peak behind the scenes of our game. Check it out here and here.
"Yes, we will be creating a downloadable demo for the PSN. We don't have a final date on when it will be up, but it will be before our release date."
"As for multiplayer, we opted to stick to making the most compelling single player game possible this time. But there is a lot of game there and some pretty good replay value with multiple difficulty levels, hidden treasures, medal points, and some really cool unlockables."
Here's a translation of a foreign magazine containing new info - Credit goes to VG Aficionado of E-mpire
- They're still optimizing the frame rate, will end up running at constant 30 fps. Sometimes it goes up to 45 fps with all effects on, but they aim at constant 30 fps as already mentioned. Less than 30 fps is considered a bug.
- All textures have been drawn, there are no scanned textures. That's why it looks somewhat cartoony.
- Jetski level has 6 million polygons + water reflection + refraction + bump mapping + jitter + shadows + a good number of characters + physics + AI + volumetric explosions + etc
- It should take 12 hours to complete.
- The AI will learn your behavior and react accordingly. Experienced gamers will have a hard time. They're proud of the AI.
- There are no scripted events when you fight with the AI. You'll never see the same situation twice (to some extent, of course).
- No auto-aim.
- The effects still aren't final. They'll improve close to the very end of the project for optimization's sake.
- There's a lot of stuff we haven't seen yet. It's like a movie where a lot of things happen, and it will have lots of varied action: shooting, fighting, platforming, puzzles, enigmas, races, treasure hunting ("you'll be finding things"), etc.
- Real time HDR lighting: if there's a sunset, everything on screen will have a reddish tone. Everything will be real time.
- 720p allows better geometry. We might not see anything better than Uncharted geometry-wise at 1080p.
- PS3 devkits let them know all the game stats when they're developing it (duh): GPU load, texture memory, level memory, shadow memory, buffers, how is streaming affected, frame rate, etc.
- "I love the AI. The fact that it learns from the player's actions and that it adjusts the difficulty itself is awesomenage. We haven't even exploited half of what the Cell can do. Besides the CPU power, we've got the GPUs (sic) inside the PS3, where you can send some tasks to spare Cell from "digesting" them, so that you get more free CPU time. PS3 still has a lot of untapped power."
- They didn't have the time to include a co-op mode and getting the game finished in November. Tons of ideas left out of it, might make it to Uncharted 2. (This is usual in game development)
- Nathan Drake has 3000 animations.
- Real time cutscenes, no prerendered stuff. It's all real time, in-engine.
Now for some Before/After shots. First screen is from Sony's Gamer Day. New screen is from recent
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Can you say, UPGRADE?
November 20th.
Yes, Im hyped for this game if you cant tell :)
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