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CD Projekt's Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0 + Phantom Liberty Expansion Thread
- Thread starter Sam Ecorners
- Start date
Mods? I have one such mod (last updated 17 Dec 2020, thanks a lot) installed. It's an .ini value and so far I am not convinced it does anything.
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Gargaune
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If you're talking about your hologram bug, I was merely speculating that it might be the result of a new frustrum culling bug, not draw distance. What you described sort of reminded me of a Fallout 4 mod I tried where some objects were blinking out while they should've still been visible near the edge of the screen, and I thought that maybe their bounding volumes were smaller than the visible meshes, but that was all an educated guess, at best.
But I have no idea whether CDPR's been messing with the culling or the hologram asset or if it's something else entirely, nor how far modders have dug into REDengine functionality. The only confirmed "downgrade" I brought up is the one where devs broke surface reflections in 1.3, which they then fixed it in 1.31, but still missed some affected assets.
If you're talking about draw distance in general, Perkel's probably right, I don't see any reason why CDPR would go the extra mile of hardcoding a downgrade on top of an existing .ini variable. Did they reduce draw distance on PC, is that a definite?
I don't have my own screenshot evidence, but there are people reporting draw distance being reduced, and complaints began nearly after the first hotfixes: https://forums.cdprojektred.com/index.php?threads/stop-decreasing-render-distance.11078156/ (Jan 29, 2021). There are similar complaints on reddit and here too.
The so called Draw Distance Boost mod (https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/238?tab=posts&BH=3) seems to increase the rendering distance of geometry and shadows, but I wonder if there are separate variables for other types of data - lights, characters, etc. I can testify that even with the mod, there is still significant pop in of geometry and shadows when driving.
I was wondering if there are engine variables that can be fished out by trial and error with the CET, or is it possible that some of the configuration is hardcoded. What does your educated guess say?
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When you think about how many things in this game were broken by the utterly retarded decision to go with first person everywhere, it's just depressing. In Witcher 3 it was possible to have characters that look good in every dialogue even with the older engine, because the designers know the camera position and can place lights by hand. In Cyberpunk because it's oh so important that you can move around during conversation, much immerse, they can't do that anymore and as a result conversations in daytime can have your characters look awful because of lighting. Not being able to see your character while he talks ruins a host of factors related to your experience of the story... and all this shit, just so that the FOV can be pushed down so the game can run on old hardware/consoles. Which was of course shilled to gulliable idiots as "better immersion", "you are V" and whatnot.
Gargaune
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Talking pure hypotheticals? Take something like draw distance for lights, that's something that's subject to revision and you therefore want to control (and they did, if you're right that it was downgraded). And any programmer that just wrote that as number in the code would get a right bollocking, it's gotta be defined as a variable either in the source or in an external config file. If it's in a config file, "modding" it is obviously easy, if it's in the source it gets more complicated - is it read as a data type or fetched through a function, what's the visibility access, I just dunno.
Now, the reason I don't stop at "if it's in the code, no soup for you" is actually the Bethesda example. You've got the Script Extender which, if I recall correctly, was based on decompiled code back in the Morrowind days, and because Bethesda doesn't make huge changes as they progress, every time they launch a new title the author just fills in the blanks. How it works is that the SE reimplements internal functions that were not included in the public Papyrus API, which then allows modders to overload or extend the scripting functionality that was available to Bethesda's designers. And while the SE is ostensibly a content scripting interface, you've had engine-relevant fixes roll out on it, e.g. Fallout 4's High FPS Physics Fix or Buffout 4.
On the face of it, Cyber Engine Tweaks seems to be Cyberpunk's own SE, but I don't know how it's done or how far it reaches, I haven't looked into it beyond the Readme and a Windows Defender scan. If it has similar capabilities and if your relevant functions are accessible, if might be able to override those hypothetical source-level light draw distance values. But I'm working off a lot of guesses here.
Pretty sure that's an insult.
Thanks. I was wondering, based on your experience, how likely is that these values might be accessible through scripting. There is one comment I saw in the Draw Distance mod's discussion that prompted me to ask this. One guy says:
https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/9402743-draw-distance-boost/page-30#entry99115298
"I have looked around a bit but haven't really been able to find anything of use. You can use CET to dump all the game options and also use CET to edit it on the fly like so:
Code:
GameOptions.Set("Rendering", "DepthPrepassDistanceFactor", "24")No one reported further on that, so I'll try and see if I find any options that let me reduce the annoying pop in. I'll have the time to do it later, but was already curious.
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Gargaune
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A bit out of my depth, haven't touched renderer code since university and I don't thinker that far with most games. Though that comment you quoted would suggest CET's interface is fairly developed. Let us know if you have any luck.
I do wonder whether developers these days are relying on DOF to somewhat alleviate the sight of LOD pop-in, because it doesn't look like the latter technique's gotten much improvement over more than a decade. Which sucks for me, 'cause I usually don't like DOF in gameplay.
I've dumped what seems to be the list of the GameOptions class' properties and I'm currently looking through that list. Few of the properties will be important to what we call "drawing distance", and there are many where the meaning is not obvious, at least not to me.
Here are a few interesting ones. The full list was of around 1100:
The .ini tweak that increases the drawing distance:
is found in this list as:
Therefore I guess most of the properties that interest me would be in the Streaming section.
I'm not sure what most of these mean though.
The Rendering section also seems like it may have something interesting:
I also presume that each section before a slash means that I can write this property in an ini file in a format like:
[Rendering]
[Shadows]
CascadeDegreesLimit = 0.000000
Here are a few interesting ones. The full list was of around 1100:
I knew it that the green lights were turning on automatically as soon as I reach the intersection and now I can turn it off. I wonder if it will break the AI traffic.
The .ini tweak that increases the drawing distance:
is found in this list as:
Therefore I guess most of the properties that interest me would be in the Streaming section.
I'm not sure what most of these mean though.
The Rendering section also seems like it may have something interesting:
I also presume that each section before a slash means that I can write this property in an ini file in a format like:
[Rendering]
[Shadows]
CascadeDegreesLimit = 0.000000
Gargaune
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Honestly, I think sifting through all that would be more trouble than it's worth.
That reminds me, I got an axe to grind. All those complaints that there's no traffic in Cyberpunk? I took this screenshot to prove 'em wrong...
Ten seconds later I took this screenshot because the game just doesn't want us to have nice things.
For the love of FUCK! This isn't a rare occurrence either, you routinely come across cars just stuck in traffic. Sometimes on a single lane, sometimes across all of 'em, sometimes they honk at an invisible obstruction, sometimes they move another few metres if you pop in and out of Photomode, sometimes they just pop out of existence when you swing the camera. It's just fucking ridiculous.
rusty_shackleford
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who makes this complaint?
the complaint is the traffic isn't real, it's just generated out of sight, and the AI has no idea how to properly drive as shown by your third screenshot which therefore makes driving with traffic nearly impossible
rusty_shackleford
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or just get the mod that lets you disable most traffic so you can drive on the proper side of the road
T.Ashpool
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i wonder if the current traffic "ai" is just a placeholder or if real traffic ai was never planned from the beginning and this is what cdpr thought they could get away with. i'm no game director or programmer but if you are making an open world game based in a city with tons of cars driving around in it, isn't one of the first things you have to think about how to give the traffic some sort of reactivity so that the whole simulation aspect doesn't fall flat on it's face the moment you step outside into the open world? it's just completly immersion breaking that you can park in the middle of the road and the cars behind you are not even trying to drive past you.
what's really crazy is that some sort of traffic ai has been a standard feature in games for 20 years. correct me if i'm wrong but the first mafia game from 2002 is also a game that just uses it's city as a backdrop to tell the story but even they had some sort of traffic ai and that game was also made by a couple slavs in a basement. i remember my shock the first time i played 2077 and there were cars clipping through buildings one after the other at the turnaround in the city center like they were on rails. the cg trailer they showed when they were announcing the game showed some car chases with police and such and i just took it for granted that cdpr would implement these basic ass features that even third rate gta clones made in china for mobile phones have. it honestly felt like some first year student's hobby project or something and not a AAA production. the whole thing made me realize how cdpr have lots of people who are talented in creating pretty stuff on screen but they have no gameplay people working there who know what they are doing. i refuse to believe that the game director of 2077 played any other open world game in the last 20 years or else there would be no way he would allow the game to be made for four years without pushing for some sort of traffic ai.
what's really crazy is that some sort of traffic ai has been a standard feature in games for 20 years. correct me if i'm wrong but the first mafia game from 2002 is also a game that just uses it's city as a backdrop to tell the story but even they had some sort of traffic ai and that game was also made by a couple slavs in a basement. i remember my shock the first time i played 2077 and there were cars clipping through buildings one after the other at the turnaround in the city center like they were on rails. the cg trailer they showed when they were announcing the game showed some car chases with police and such and i just took it for granted that cdpr would implement these basic ass features that even third rate gta clones made in china for mobile phones have. it honestly felt like some first year student's hobby project or something and not a AAA production. the whole thing made me realize how cdpr have lots of people who are talented in creating pretty stuff on screen but they have no gameplay people working there who know what they are doing. i refuse to believe that the game director of 2077 played any other open world game in the last 20 years or else there would be no way he would allow the game to be made for four years without pushing for some sort of traffic ai.
gerey
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2002?
Try 1997 when the first GTA got released, and that was developed by a bunch of inbred, sheepfucking Scots. And I'm sure you could reach even further back to find more examples of impressive dynamic pathfinding for NPCs in games. Hell, some autists even made his own version of GTA for the Amiga (called Payback) because he was butthurt Rockstar (then DMA) refused to port the game to the system.
As for Mafia 1 itself, not only did they manage to implement a functional and dynamic traffic system, but a police system that is unmatched to this day. Not only do the cops in Mafia 1 react differently towards you depending on the crime you've committed (fining you, trying to arrest you, resorting to lethal force), but they are able to determine if you've committed a traffic violation (crossing a red light, speeding, etc.), and their behavior even reflects the technology of the time - they are not a hivemind that instantly knows you've committed a crime and will give chase the moment they see you - if you manage to get away from the pursuing police and then encounter another cop car, chances are they are not going to be aware of what you've done.
They're, as one would expect, capable of giving chase on foot and by car, call for reinforcements, set up roadblocks etc.
Naturally, the system isn't perfect, but it's miles ahead of what Cyberpunk 2077 has in place.
Hell, even the police in GTA 1 could do most of this stuff.
I honestly can't think of any GTA-esque game in recent memory, regardless of developer, that lacked these features. From Watch Dogs to Mafia 3, all had police AI that mostly succeeded in emulating GTA in that regard.
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rusty_shackleford
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World reactivity in cyberpunk basically doesn't exist which is probably what makes the whole thing fall apart -- for me, at least. It's a moviegame with RPG elements attached. If you focus entirely on the main storyline it's probably pretty good -- I did enjoy when I was essentially forced into this route at the start. If you like to explore and do side missions and stuff... your experience might be like mine and you'll end up dropping it.
gerey
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Hence why I feel that the comparison to Mafia 1 is pretty apt.
When Mafia 1 got released it was mistakenly being compared to GTA 3, only for people to quickly realize that outside of the main story the game had close to zero content - at most you had a car stealing sidequest that would give you the ability to use said cars in subsequent missions. As Ashpool said, the city really was just a backdrop, but the chief difference between it and the city in 2077 is that the urban environment of Mafia 1 gave a fairly convincing illusion of being alive, dynamic and realistic.
The NPCs reacted as you'd expect people to react (within the confines of their limited AI) when the player did something - walk around with a drawn weapon and civilians will run away and the police will try to arrest you, try to steal someone's car and they may just try to fight you off, cross a red light and people will angrily honk their horns in your wake, park a car in the middle of the street and other drivers will eventually try to move around it etc.
And this was 2002, a niche game made by a bunch of autistic Slavs.
What I am morbidly curious to find out is just how CDPR managed to fuck up what were features that are considered industry standards in this day and age.
Gargaune
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Sometimes it feels like CBP's open world was designed like an expensive, elaborate backdrop for a focused, linear plot, and I still want to do a second playthrough some day where I zerg-rush the main quest to see how that works out. But I don't actually believe that's what the devs intended. I know I sound like a broken record by now, but I genuinely think a lot of the game's problems with structure and gameplay flow stem from CDPR's Witcher 3 world design making a poor fit for the dense, urban environment of Night City, it was a mistake to rely so much on it.
One part of that which ties in to what you're saying here is that it's one thing to have negative space comprised of forests and hills, wilderness basically, and it's another for it to consist of on-rails traffic, locked buildings and effectively non-interactive NPCs. It might look similar in the abstract, if you're tabulating clicks on an Excel sheet, but the player's expectations and perceptions are completely different.
Yep. CDPR have masterful art direction, no doubt about it, but they have yet to gain a proper grasp on the artistry of gameplay.
My money is on the theory that the city was not meant as just a backdrop, but they simply released the game with less than half the planned content being implemented. They just made sure they have the critical path functioning, so players can finish the story.
Justicar
Dead game
There was supposed to be much more sandbox content for sure. In 2020 gameplay you can see button prompts for entering combat mode in vehicles meaning they planned for players to have option of shooting from cars whenever they want so there were non scripted chases planned (otherwise why do you need option of shooting from cars whenever you want) but like always they rushed the game before it was ready. You can see that animations for vehicle combat are all there because AI will sometimes shoot out of passenger windows it's just blocked for the player.
They did it with Glitcher 1, 2 and 3 but they had excuse of running out of money then. With Cyberbug they have no excuse for rushing the game out they fucked up hard.
Here you go combat mode on the button prompts. If you watch the interviews when journos ask the devs what do they think about meeting the deadline they say people are scared but optimistic
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I don't think you design something as intricate as that graphically and audio-wise just as a backdrop. I think the thing they're denying is just obviously true: they were on the road to making the game people were expecting (a CDPR RPG-like-thing where you make your own character for a change, with an open world and an established lore), but when Keanu agreed they felt (rightly or wrongly) that they had to milk the opportunity, so development from then on was focused on getting that (pretty decent) linear story out and functional - while development on the rest of the game languished, relatively speaking, and it what was there was just duck-taped together for release. It makes absolutely no sense to have all that groundwork laid for fixers, getting to know fixers, etc. - that all belongs to the story of someone who's exploring the city and establishing themselvse. It's totally unnecessary for the Johnny story as it stands, which could have stood alone as an action-adventure - no need for all that RPG-ish faff.
They will deny this till they're blue in the face, but we all know that's what happened, it's just obvious. I think they can weasel out of it by saying that they had something like the Johnny story planned for the endgame. Sure, something like it, with some standard good voice-actor.
It made me laugh when I saw that they'd be "developing Pacifica" for upcoming DLC. Again, it's obvious that there must have been a whole bunch of stuff planned for Pacifica with the Voodoo boys and Netwach (another thing that was touted in one of the hype videos as a faction you could possibly join, but vestigial in the released game), probably connected ultimately with the AI stuff in the politician's quest, and the Delamains going bonkers, as well as with the endgame story (and probably no doubt it did involve something like the story we have now, involving Alt and Johnny, as the climax of V's story, but a story you'd built the groundwork for by actually playing a fucking RPG up to that point).
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tritosine2k
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Well there's no denying you wound up a street kid . And the usual fixer cold call got old quite fast.
well leaving that for other hopefully postponed backgrounds wouldn't be such an issue.
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Gargaune
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Guys, that's not what I said - I said I don't believe CDPR envisioned their open world as a backdrop, but that the final product turned out superficial enough, gameplay-wise, to feel like one. As for why, sure, it's obvious that reprioritising around Johnny midway through development had significant consequences on resource allocation, though I suspect consequences were primarily in the narrative dimension and the game would've still suffered in gameplay scope due to miscalculations in core design.
Oh, God, we're gonna get a lifepath DLC, aren't we? Another 15-minute intro quest followed up by a 3-minute late-game encounter.
I want the 6-month montage DLC, but I doubt we'll get that. It would be too good.
Gargaune
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Hadn't thought of that, but yeah, it could be. With a decent enough story, agency and some meaningful exploration of the city, it could help balance out the main plot a little bit. But I doubt CDPR will roll out a massive DLC that's only available to a fresh player character.
I still want a proper megabuilding megadungeon expansion, though.
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