
A Brain Dump of What I Worked on for Uncharted 4 - phodo
http://allenchou.net/2016/05/a-brain-dump-of-what-i-worked-on-for-uncharted-4/
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speps
Actual article : [http://allenchou.net/2016/05/a-brain-dump-of-what-i-
worked-o...](http://allenchou.net/2016/05/a-brain-dump-of-what-i-worked-on-
for-uncharted-4/)

Interesting comment : "Yes. We don’t have specific titles and do whatever is
needed."

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samdoidge
In reference to employee titles / roles.

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epaga
8 mentions of Last of Us shows how influential some of the mechanics in that
game were for future games - this is obviously especially the case for Naughty
Dog themselves, but there were so many innovative takes on that genre in Last
of Us that I'm sure many other dev studios have been impacted by the ideas and
near flawless execution.

Haven't played Uncharted 4, but Last of Us is a masterpiece.

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criddell
> but Last of Us is a masterpiece

Really? I bought and played that game on the PS3 and thought it was pretty
good and that's about it. I didn't think any part of it was especially novel.

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saturdaysaint
I wouldn't begrudge anyone holding this opinion - I would struggle to point to
any gameplay element as a true breakthrough - but the polish, quality of
storytelling (that prologue!), and first rate acting/animation really set it
apart for me. Like everything Naughty Dog, I would rate it as a lot closer to
a "Steven Speilberg" level of cinematic/dramatic presentation, whereas most
AAA games I can think of (Fallout 4, Starcraft II and GTA:V come to mind) are
closer to schlocky B-movies IMO. Ultimately, that's not a gameplay feature,
but I think it provides a compelling sense of motivation that makes playing
their games uniquely immersive.

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criddell
The prologue was very good. I'm normally hammering away at the buttons on the
controller trying to skip the cut scenes (I'm looking at you Metal Gear
Solid), but that one I watched.

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snuxoll
> Metal Gear Solid

I can understand wanting to skip past the lengthy dialogue, but you're missing
out on a lot of the kooky fun of the MGS franchise if you just skip past the
cutscenes. If it's not your thing that's totally fine, but the MGS story is
best enjoyed when not taken too seriously and just as a fun ride, and I'm
guessing that might be your issue with it (please, correct me if I am off base
here!)

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criddell
My problem with the cutscenes in MGS was the quantity and length of them. I
realize it's totally subjective, but I just wanted to play the game. I never
did finish though, that game was too long.

BTW, that's another thing that Last of Us got right - the length of the game
was perfect (for me).

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snuxoll
Fair enough! I find the opposite issue with most MGS games, personally, they
are often rather brief (MGS4 excluded, the cutscenes in that took forever) -
though that's an advantage in my eyes since I'm easily able to replay them in
a night or two when I feel like.

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partisan
I love the way this article is written. Sometimes these types of articles go
deep into personality and politics and you really get that anywhere you go.
Here you get a peek into the nitty gritty while keeping it at a layman level.
Plus, it gives you a chance to imagine how you might solve the problems he
faced.

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xiphias
This looks like a CV to me that he can use in the future whenever he applies
for a job/promotion

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illumin8
This is probably the best type of CV imaginable - actual project work for a
AAA game title, with screenshots and easy to understand commentary on what
worked and what didn't.

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danso
FWIW, the dev cross-posted to r/gamedev:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/4itbxq/a_brain_dum...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/4itbxq/a_brain_dump_of_what_i_worked_on_for_uncharted_4/)

Interesting tidbit: ActionScript was his first language and he still uses it
to prototype tools.

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eridius
This article is great. I've played through most of the game at this point, and
I've really been noticing how good the single-player AI behavior is. Your AI
buddy is pretty good about picking places to go, when to follow, when to lead,
finding their own routes up cliffs and such that have multiple choices, etc.
About the only oddity I've noticed is in combat areas, your buddy sometimes
moves from cover to cover in full view of enemies or otherwise hunkers down in
cover in a position that's actually in view of an enemy, and it doesn't matter
(presumably enemies simply don't ever see your buddy unless they've already
seen you). From a gameplay perspective this is absolutely the right choice,
and it's such a minor thing that I really only noticed it because I looked
specifically for it, I'm just kind of amused.

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lost_name
Someday I sincerely hope to publish a game. When I read articles like this,
though, I begin to realize just how little I understand about working on a
project like that. I can't even begin to understand how they make all these
systems work together in the same environment.

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kin
Just had to chime in and say thank you for such an amazing two games. Loving
Uncharted 4 so far. I know you worked on mostly NPC AI, but this is the most
beautiful game I've played and my PS4 sounds like it's about to die.

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zurn
Those identifiers in the screenshot look lispy... wonder if their tooling is
still in lisp even though they switched to C++ for the engines?

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lispm
[http://www.naughtydog.com/docs/Naughty-Dog-
GDC08-Adventures-...](http://www.naughtydog.com/docs/Naughty-Dog-
GDC08-Adventures-In-Data-Compilation.pdf)

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rndstr
I don't play games but have always been into 3D graphics and Visual Computing.
Interesting read and watching the gameplay trailer afterwards was fun and very
impressive:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB0xy74Zrj8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB0xy74Zrj8)

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Retric
So, is this guy supposed to be secretly kryptonian or something? Because
bullets, body armor, fences etc seem to be a non issue.

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Volscio
To complement this, I found this video interesting in demonstrating some of
the technical achievements and flourishes in Uncharted 4:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts2am8WRBXQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts2am8WRBXQ)

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Graham24
Is it still commonplace for them to get a percentage of sales as a bonus?

I know someone who worked on Tomb Raider 2, 3 and 4. he's not poor.

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indy
I don't think that's ever been commonplace. The games industry is known for
long hours and relatively low wages

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aiaf
What does "going gold" mean in the videogames industry?

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monocasa
Releasing the final contents of the disc to manufacturing. Think 'gold
master'.

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bronz
gamasutra provides a link to the blog post where this actually came from. i
just want to say that his blog is one of the best i have ever seen and that
you should check it out. it has tons of posts that are just as interesting as
this one except about getting hired at naughty dog, implementing a physics
engine and much more.

