Multiplat Yakuza games

[dwwaino]

Made obligatory thread for LADPYIHehdhajajjxjajnsjne specific stuff

Multiplat - Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii - 28/2/24

So what do we call it? PYIH? LADPYIH?

www.bigfooty.com

 

[dwwaino]

So no K3? I am disappoint.

They said they have more announcements

Not sure if it will be at TGG as that will probably be for Yakuza of the Caribbean but they always have more than one bun in the oven

 

[Cooldude]

 

[RPCB]

 

[RPCB]

I know right. How can a series so serious

Spoiler

ever be that wild?

 

[dwwaino]

People were commenting this game in the days before on RGG socials and I didn't believe them either. It just sounded bonkers. But it's real and it looks awesome and that's why RGG is so good.

 

[dwwaino]

RGG socials posting the last few months is making sense. It started with K1 and this lined up with TV show announcement and eventually Switch announcement (how cool was Shishido actor as the dad in the new trailer). Once they got to K2 they heavily posted Majima scenes which lead to everyone asking "Majima Gaiden?" and thar turned out to be the case. Then they were posting almost nothing but Y3 until very recently before suddenly stopping anything about older games about a week out from the summit. Are they just going through the games in order? Maybe, but why not continue with Y4?

I'm sure their socials for the next week or two will be dominated by Pirates, TV show and probably some IW promo still but if they don't pick up series posting with Y4 after TGG then I think it's still fair to speculate that K3 is in the "more announcements to come". They would have been working on Pirates before IW was released and there were parts of Rich Island in the Pirates trailer that looked like they could have been Okinawa.

I think we can just about put a line through the continuation of Judgement at this point too unfortunately.

 

[RPCB]

Yep.

 

[dwwaino]

Yep.

I was just watching an interview with Colin Moriarty about the development of Concord and it was just absurd. 8 years at $400million is bonkers. It makes no sense. What were they doing that took so long and cost so much? Apparently they didn't even have an MVP (minimum viable product) until Sony bought them out 18 months ago and poured in another $200million. Now I'm far from an expert or work in IT but learnt a lot about software development (from planning to design methodology) when I did my programming cert IV and also learnt a lot about how game studios worked about 15-20 years ago when I had a couple good mates at Krome (one was even a lead). I understand how RGG develop through interviews and dissecting their games as I play and don't know why other studios aren't the same.

RGG are known for their reusability. They admitted this and it's evident in their games. They don't make anything to use once but everything from their assets to their code is designed from the start to be reused (which is why it's obvious K3 is coming at some point). Everyone also sticks to one role. If your job is minigames you're doing minigames for every game. They actually respect the four pillars of object orientated programming and apply it to everything which is how they're able to take anything from one game and simply plug it into the next.

How you work on a game as a team you have the master project on a server and to work on your part you would check files out so no one else can alter them, then when you're done you "push" them back to the server where it will be reviewed by someone more senior and if it's ok and doesn't break the project then the updates are committed and everyone can sync the updated project. While you are waiting for your code/assets/whatever to be reviewed you are able to work on other parts of the game or another project. This is how RGG are operating. They will have 2-3 projects on the go at once and because there is so much reusability anything for one game will also be ready for another game. So it's not hard to imagine how much of Pirates was developed during IW.

This way RGG are able to also retain their workforce. Take so many other studios where you keep hearing about layoffs after games release - they aren't working on the next project or it's too far back in progress and some disciplines simply aren't needed at that point. Since other studios are also making everything from scratch it's hard work too much on the next game when you have to wait for the engine techs and programmers to be freed up to lay the ground foundations.

I noticed too that RGG games don't bother with make baked 3D assets unless they're important or "hero" assets. They will use a lot of flat surfaces with PBO type textures if they want to simulate detail, but they won't even "bake" a high poly over a low poly if it's something like a door handle to hide the corners. Next time you play something look at a light post or door knob. It will probably be only 8 sides. This is normal but typically you would create an extremely high poly version and bake that into the low poly and it mostly hides the corners of the low poly version. So they are literally halving the time it takes to create 3D assets by simply not bothering to create a second model.

The fact that in K1 they were able to literally lift the animations out of the original Y1 and reuse them so many years later means that as a studio they have maintained some amazing discipline in the way they design and develop even if they've upgraded their engine multiple times in between.