engine • QSF5

5 Jul 2015

Checkpoint: Unreal Uncharted Edition

by No_Style | posted in: Editorials & Features | 0

It’s magical until somebody points it out. It’s even more impressive when somebody points it out.

And that’s how I feel about the recently released Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End extended E3 2015 gameplay video. Say what you will about the actual gameplay (I’m still excited for this kind scripted action) but you cannot deny the technical and artistic expertise at work here. Just keeping in mind the fact that the cutscenes are rendered in real-time is enough drop jaws. This NX Gamer walkthrough does an excellent job explaining the latest tricks in Naughty Dog’s arsenal. If you’re interested in in 20+ minute videos that scrutinize graphics, then give that video a look.

I’m equally impressed with Batman: Arkham Knight which is essentially this 2011 Unreal Engine 3.0 technical demo brought to life. I didn’t even put the two together until Digital Foundry pointed out in their Face Off.

These consoles are quite limited in horsepower but as always, it’s what developers do with that horsepower that matters. Arkham Knight looks good and runs well and it’s no wonder that people are focusing on the divisive Batmobile more than anything else. And that’s how it should be.

1 May 2014

BioShock assets rendered in Unreal Engine 4

by No_Style | posted in: Game News | 0

I’m very curious how long it took for this individual to pull this off and how long it would take to port the entire game. And what about other Unreal Engine titles like the Mass Effect trilogy. BioShock’s assets were actually running on Unreal Engine 2.5 and this fellow was able to transfer them into Unreal Engine 4 so I’m wondering if it would be easier to port UE3 assets.

It’s times like this where I wish I knew some developers.

29 Oct 2013

The Battlefield 4 next-gen showdown

by No_Style | posted in: Game News | 0

Battlefield 4’s internal rendering resolution is as follows:

PlayStation 4: 1600 x 900
Xbox One: 1280 x 720

Digital Foundry and others have also found the PlayStation 4 version does a better job maintaining 60 FPS.

I don’t care about how well the PlayStation 4 version fared compared to the Xbox One. I want to know why that is the case. Why did DICE need to render the Xbox One version of the game at 720p?

Was it the inherently weaker GPU?
Was the ESRAM bottlenecking their engine?
Were the SDKs not mature enough?
Did DICE just run out of time to properly exploit the Xbox One?
Is the hypervisor getting in the way? After all, anyone with virtualization experience knows that some hardware performance is lost when passing through a virtualization layer
Did Microsoft reserve too much GPU resources to serve their OS features?

These are just some of the questions that I doubt we’ll ever get an official answer on. I was hoping to get some of those questions answered with this early Digital Foundry comparison but nothing resembling actual analysis materialized.

Throughout the day I read some idiotic statements made by all sorts of clowns. From the die hard fanboys who are blinded by loyalty to those who dismiss this sort of analysis needlessly meticulous.

Here are some of my notes addressing some of the reactions I’ve seen on NeoGAF and Twitter:

Comparison videos on YouTube are worthless. There’s too much compression which makes the differences difficult to discern.
As Digital Foundry found out, gamma problems ruins comparisons
Differences may not be evident on typical desktop monitors, laptop screens or tablets — resolution difference will be more pronounced on a 55″ screen.
These comparisons help consumers make educated purchasing decisions.

Well now that we know what to expect, let us all enjoy this wonderful multiplayer trailer:

11 Aug 2013

Checkpoint: CPU on CPU Violence Edition

by No_Style | posted in: Editorials & Features | 0

I started watching the SaltyBet after watching last week’s GiantBomb’s Unprofessional Friday. NeoGAF was all over it for about a week now but I didn’t get around to hitting the site. The important thing is that I’m now watching this ridiculous stream and enjoying it.

SaltyBet is powered by M.U.G.E.N. fighting game engine. They just loaded a bunch of characters, stages and wrapped it around this simple but effective betting system. It’s automated, runs 24/7 and is accompanied by lots of video game or video game inspired music.

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