Marvel's Spider-Man: A Technical Postmortem

In this 2019 GDC talk, Insomniac Games' Elan Ruskin discusses the challenges of rapidly growing asset count, and adapting rendering, streaming, and lighting to build a New York City that fits on a Blu-Ray for Marvel's Spider-Man.
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[@Cloroqx]

You can tell this man works at Insomniac Studios. Great talk.

[@ezerffgcvvv]

Yep, because he looks like someone who never sleeps...

[@Nick-kb2jc]

Other than him wearing an Insomniac shirt and giving a talk on an Insomniac game, what other indicators are there? Can someone explain? I’m confused.

[@mymoomin0952]

@@Nick-kb2jc insomniac means someone who can't sleep, so they're saying he looks like he doesn't sleep

[@MatheusLB2009]

"Somebody modeled cars that had these beautifully detailed motors and animations on them. The-hood-never-opens!" That's dedication my friends

[@shmookins]

Or mismanagement since he expressed frustration and the audience laughed. That's basically wasted work.

[@MatheusLB2009]

@@shmookins i know, i was just fooling around

[@youngspecial64]

​@@shmookinsGood thing insomniac knows how to correct mistakes.

[@SamHaugen]

So cool that he actually shouts out Digital Foundry.

[@videogamesare1]

no idea what he is talking about....but super interesting and really learned how crazy technical this all is...

[@JoeSkeen]

Yeah, video games are so insanely complex. I'm not justifying publishers releasing unfinished games, but these talks make you realize how difficult it is to get everything working together perfectly.

[@rolandsmash]

Half the time I have no idea what he’s talking about, but he’s so clearly in command of the technicalities and enthusiastic about the work that’s its kind of delightful to watch him go.

[@EeekiE]

Anyone that thinks an SSD just speeds up loading times, and doesn’t contribute to the richness of a game or the performance of a game needs to watch this. The speed vs size vs duplication balancing act means being able to stream faster directly releases more CPU or GPU resources to spend on prettying things up. It also directly impacts game design, world layout, lines of sight, and the speed you can travel through it.

[@bigbunda8591]

SSDs will bring the developers bison out here because their not going to be limited by a slow hardrive

[@omargonzales3]

I don't know what you just said but spiderman PS4 looks dope on ps5 with fast ssd and that's all I care lol

[@xtradressn2895]

man hopefully spiderman 2 is ps5 exclusive

[@mutalix]

@@xtradressn2895 It is a PS5 exclusive.

[@youngspecial64]

Indeed... thanks to the SSD? The Speed and Momentum of Web-Swinging sounds absolutely unbelievable in Spider-Man 2. And not just that as well. There are so many things within Spider-Man 2 that are taking advantage of the SSD. It's insane.

[@rtxarkham8912]

As a game developer from Vietnam I got to say this video is gold. I have learnt a lot valuable things from this. Thank Insomniac, for sharing the tricks and for the game itself.

[@ACGreviews]

Excellent talk.

[@cray-1]

Stop giving this man speed.

[@Hebdomad7]

**plays at 2x speed**

[@FreeER]

said on twitter it's intentionally at ~1.5x since most people watch technical talks sped up ( twitter.com/despair/status/1128050615379054592 )... still playing at 2x ie. 3x lol

[@peoplepeople21]

@@FreeER no, he's making a joke

[@FreeER]

@@peoplepeople21 obviously, and I gave factual information as to why he's [edit: the speaker, Elan Ruskin's] doing it. Welcome to the internet, where you can get a joke and still do more than spam emojis at it.

[@peoplepeople21]

@@FreeER you gave factual information about why he made the joke, doesn't that ruin the joke

[@MrBump2]

Wow, I had no clue how integral Houdini was to making the entire city. That's insane. Gorgeous game.

[@crashmancer]

There's another talk that's all about how they used Houdini on this game: kzbin.info/www/bejne/apLaaqivn56Ad6c

This guy knows very well what he is talking about, amazing to know what is happening behind the scenes and how they overcome limitations!

[@michiganjack1337]

Pretty awesome Digital Foundry shoutout

[@EricDFreak]

@@samsabruskongen developers, because they saw the good job they did

[@nintendude794]

@@samsabruskongen how do you figure?

[@nolram]

This might just be my favourite GDC talk. Maybe second favourite. Top 3 for sure.

[@SkywardSpork]

I only just found out the last few weeks GDC has a youtube channel (never thought to check) it's filled the holes in my week where I'm out of podcasts it's fascinating to watch

[@crashmancer]

GDC also has a bunch of free content on the GDC Vault: www.gdcvault.com/free

[@alneirfernandes8492]

It's the best GDC I've ever seen.

[@needlessoptions]

fr

[@NoCoArts]

the people behind AAA game engines are nothing short of geniuses.

[@dvstokyo]

One of the best presentations ever. It is interesting and made for people that don't know anything about technical details. The best way to understand how games are made.

[@lewisnorth1188]

I've watched this talk a few times over the past year while I've been learning about game programming and every time I watch it I go "OH I understand that now!" I'm such a nerd haha

[@nintendude794]

@@lewisnorth1188 sounds like a metroidvania experience ;)

[@TheGoncas2]

An amazing presentation and amazing talker!

[@shanemcmahon2618]

57:45 For puddle talk

[@thormariusborge2777]

Ok AAA engineer talking... so out of my league, but I really appreciate the video. Will watch anyways. :D

[@zachcooper6236]

Watching stuff like this makes me appreciate the work that goes into games more. I really hope these lessons spread throughout the industry and make for a net increase in release quality.

[@IceFire1800]

the other developers will care and appreciate it, but its the management who often dont give a shit

[@lucasandrescosta391]

Man the SSD in the PS5 is going to solve a lot of these problems, specially the duplication problem.

[@EricDFreak]

The duplication problem is not so much in the hard drive but in the disc it self

[@trigtriggytrigga]

It's like looking down at your book while taking notes in class and looking up back at the screen, only realising the professor skipped 20 slides ahead from what your were jotting down.

[@LostinaMemory]

This is so interesting knowing what goes on behind the scenes.

[@Ghostie.]

This guy's clearly very smart.

[@Jonifico]

Because he talks fast?

[@MysticThistle]

@@Jonifico Because he has a lot of knowledge.. he covers a lot of very technical subjects within 45 mins and understands people's questions in a heartbeat while formulating a succinct answer at the same time.. many people probably worked on these solutions and he understands them all, in-depth

[@ForgedPlanetTV]

@@MysticThistle The video doesn't explain them all in depth, but I guess the way he talks about them quickly indicates he knows a lot about them. I mean a lot of these things are relatively simple to understand if you've done math, it's the code itself and implementation that is incredibly complex and hard to understand. Great video though.

[@BuckshotBill118]

@@MysticThistle One cannot teach without first having a deep understanding of the inner workings.

[@Chidoro41]

Jonathan Peña always someone in these threads

[@boomerbomb1]

Even though I have no idea what he's talking about this makes you really appreciate the final product

[@n00dles4]

love this talk, one of the best tech postmortems I've seen

[@kapilsalokhe4795]

Awesome talk. He made it simple enough that people not working in games industry would understand

[@DoctorSquirt]

Seeing all the work and details put into these games makes me appreciate them and the people who created them so much more..

[@Flipside3D]

I can totally imagine his voice being Peter Parker

[@crashmancer]

He's from New York

[@jewymchoser]

Such an wonderful labor of love! There really should be a Nobel equivalent award to recognize the magic you and other dedicated teams have achieved.

[@TadejKanizar]

A really great talk with lots of specific information.

[@fawazr]

Great talk. I wish the questions asked were better. For instance, I've always wondered if the relative lack of ground elevation in the game was a aesthetic choice or an engine limitation. For instance, something resembling Tudor City or The Cloisters would've been a nice touch. Anyway, I'm impressed by the ingenuity utilized to optimize gameplay.

[@swyxTV]

fawazr i dont get it. theres plenty of flat elevated surfaces in the game? how does ground elevation make a difference? genuine question also manhattan is pretty flat

[@_gamma.]

Those engine tools are insane! Awesome talk

[@petrofsko]

A wonderful insight into the technicalities of making the recent modern triple A blockbuster marvel spiderman told by a young member of insomniac studios

[@swyxTV]

CEVAY YERLOO young? some commenters said he ran the eng team? not that its mutually exclusive

[@armpap1]

@@swyxTV He has 16 years of industry experience (not counting internship) and he finished his masters at 2002, so even if he skipped 3 years of school he is at least 35yo.

[@vincybadman871]

No idea what 90% of these things are. Loved the talk nonetheless.

[@BovineThreat]

The 3D model index buffer compression at 27:00 is exactly how PNG image compression works :) Instead of storing the values, store the differences in adjacent values, then compress that using a general-purpose algorithm.

[@fafanir82]

My monkey brain don't understand

[@shmookins]

Great talk and hilarious ending. Thanks for sharing. I look forward to seeing Insy talk about Spiderman PS5 once it's launched.

[@phlegios]

Finally, an actual tech talk! There was a lot of things I didn't understand at all, but there were a couple of things I did understand. This has to be the best tech talk that I've seen on GDC. Too bad Elan didn't specify how RAM and HDD work together in loading in the textures and AI, along with everything else. Would be interesting to know how much actual RAM games like Spider-Man use. It's a mystery to me. I was more or less familiar with what he was saying about streaming since I did a fair bit of research on Mass Effect 1's streaming tech. Long story short - awesome talk!

[@crashmancer]

One of the rapid-fire appendix slides at the end has a pie chart of memory. 49:56

[@phlegios]

@@crashmancer Ah, probably got distracted. Thanks:)

[@UnknownZA]

Excellent video this! Thank you for the upload.

[@fabianoperes2155]

One of the best GDC I've seen.

[@AsasinoManik]

Spiderman the game: A journey from 0KB to 4TBs to 45GBs

[@bryanedds8922]

Great talk! Even better at .75 speed!

[@VariantAEC]

Minor shout-out to DF... Also DF was wrong; those distant pedestrians LODs aren't billboards!

[@zxcvb_bvcxz]

A lot of work going into disc optimisation - most of that is going to get installed on to hard drive, plus I wonder how many people are digital only now?

[@Aidiakapi]

Many people would still put it on HDD's and have spinning heads too, so seek time will remain important probably until SSD's are actually cheaper than HDD's.

[@zxcvb_bvcxz]

@@Aidiakapi This is even more interesting now a Digital Foundry discussion about the PS5 mentions a Spiderman demo where loading speed is massively increased.

[@Aidiakapi]

@@zxcvb_bvcxz Interesting, time to look that up, thanks!

[@PMX]

42:14 I love this talk 😅

[@candice1989fx]

Is it available to change the GDC logo music a little bit or just do some EQ to it? The high frequency part is too grating.

[@hsatarrafai8252]

This is why Sony Bought Insomniac... The secret Sauce Sourse's

[@cerebralm]

"these five rakes we stepped on" ooooo this is gonna be a great talk :D Edit: halfway through. holy crap am I glad I had coffee today 0____0

[@SephonDK]

Five minutes in and I'm already completely overwhelmed

[@cerebralm]

@@SephonDK one of the few educational videos thats probably worth watching on 0.5x speed

[@solidspiderznake8100]

40:57 this is the stuff of nightmares ( 'O______o')*

[@MaxRovensky]

Such an incredible talk

[@ColeEdits]

He reminds me of an adult version of Eddie from IT (2017) ahaha, good guy. Good talk. Entertaining too. Funny.

[@RazorRake]

I am going to go play it right now and swing through the city looking for those missing MIP maps

[@SacWebDeveloper]

Wild that the devs went to all this effort just for Spider Man. I wonder what a GTA San Andreas talk sounds like.

[@ryanJoss]

So texture stream was a great technology for maintaining "real-life" graphical look in a rendering a big scale.

[@XGames-94]

47:26 serenading to the city

[@cornelius600]

I do appreciate a man with a passion.

[@neoshenlong]

I can't understand anything but it is amazing.

[@-Gous-]

Never saw someone talking about a game like that, first time for me, how interessting

[@BallyBoy95]

No idea what he's talking about, I just know he knows his job very well and is enthusiastic aha

[@nickplays2022]

Got the game recently on sale. I haven't been a huge fan of Spiderman since childhood but was curious about the tech side of the game

[@50sts]

40:58 This would be a great effect for a horror game.

[@TheKenttt]

This is the branch of game development that I will need to hire someone else to do because I have no idea how this black magic works.

[@StardustSauce]

manhattan is the city that hibernates

[@nickplays2022]

While watching this vid, I developed an urge to test out Houdini... Although I am not sure that I will have time to get back to it the 2nd time in the next 365 days of the Education license

[@rufus5208]

As a person who barely knows how to turn on their computer, none of this makes sense. But I enjoyed the talk regardless.

[@deanoodles]

Now imagine asking Activision to put in this much effort 😂... They would've made a shitty game in 6 months

[@TheJohdu]

brilliant talk. thanks!

[@snoodballla9632]

play back .75 works great,

[@eferrari96]

I really wanna see how their PS5 games turns out to be with the new SSD.

[@vivekanandaathukuri8575]

I don't understand even half of it. But still its fun to watch.

[@nickplays2022]

23:32 I've never heard of such strategy of purposeful file duplication. I guess you have to have precise control over your assets layout to achieve that which you don't have if you use a 3rd party game engine and its asset pipeline

[@lewisnorth1188]

That's pretty common in games, that's why you get 100GB+ file sizes sometimes

[@gunasekaranrassiappan3268]

Cos it's their own game engine , they have control everything, including what happens in a frame. Which is cool

[@diegodelgadillo5874]

I understand nearly none of this but it is so interesting.

[@EeekiE]

PS5 era Spider-man will be 100x easier to develop, and yet with far richer and more interactive worlds.

[@IceFire1800]

you say that, but the ambition will rise to make it just as, if not more difficult

[@turgor127]

Holly shit, spoony makes videogames!

[@chand911]

"Well that's the TLDR" Was it though?

[@antwango]

Now Cerny's wired interview makes sense sort of lol.... Ok theres alot happening, theres alot of smart world building / debuilding / streaming going on... What crazy programming trickery will PS5 allow? This guy is amazing in the Q n A he knows everything even before its asked... I bet working with this guys is either amazing or quite scary?

[@iamarugin]

720p is a bit high resolution. 240p would be enough.

[@RAYED2008]

I understood nothing, but I watched everything.

[@markelishaev617]

Wow, not for my level yet but still nice to see the possibilities and how to approach optimization problems

[@focusotter]

That awkward moment where the audience laughs at his joke and you have no idea why.

[@nintendude794]

Which joke?

[@dancingbubbles1126]

Great speaker.

[@AgentMcQueen]

I love this!

[@pfarnach]

Watching at 0.75x

[@user-kk5qe9fj2l]

great talk and great humour.

[@damanichildrey84]

NBA Live needs this guy.

[@legendarymasterofstuffness5257]

Oh I can make spiderman do silly faces Just what you want to hear while making a game

[@wombat7961]

Jeopardy starts @ 51:47

[@ethanjohnson3642]

Okay.

[@RR-kl4qy]

Bro try switching it off and on.

[@MasterofTights]

Can't tweet at Abdul, but HLODs is what they are known as in Unreal and a few other companies I worked at, rather than imposters.

[@Radicalshikami]

what and amazing talk

[@FreeScience]

Thanks for talking about the duplication stuff. But I'm wondering if this is really an excuse for why every AAA game is >30GB. You guys had a specific problem to solve, but not every games has to do this extreme streaming.

[@ZalvaTionZ]

Modern assets take tons of space anyway. Pretty hard to fit all of that into sub 30gb space.

[@HalfgildWynac]

In the talk, it was quite apparent that duplication did not add all that much, not like 70% on top. It did add ENOUGH that the game was larger than they wanted. Most of it was probably textures (usually DXT1 or DXT5) and cutscene animation, which means that you cannot easily reduce the size if you hope to keep all the objects. A pack of 2048×2048 textures for an object is 10-15 MB (and a quarter of that size for 1024×1024). Players these days do like everything to look sharp. Actually, I was surprised to know that they saved up a bit of space on localisations. These take a relatively small amount of space by today's standards(I mean, text takes very little, and voices are less than 1 GB for 20 hours of audio)

[@NeoTechni]

This seems familiar, is this the same one you guys put up before?

[@billywashington5]

This man is a freak of nature. Wow!

[@Montesama314]

I'm not educated in this, so I'm gonna assume he's saying, "We used cocaine and magic." Got it.

[@micks4522]

idk what's going on but I like what I see

[@PLASTICHEARTSPODCAST]

wow amazing insight! Loved it!!!!

[@josiahstanton4508]

I really have no idea what he is saying but it’s fascinating

[@slot9]

41:30 wow that is incredibly funny!