Bionic Commando: Multithreading and "much higher visual quality on the PC"

[Panji 18]

Informasi terakhir mengatakan bahwa game Bionic Commando akan hadir di PC pada Q1 2009. Tapi kita belum mengetahui secara pasti mengenai detail tentang technology dibalik Diesel Engine. PC Games Hardware berhasil mewawancarai Ben Judd dan Tobias, sang engine programmers game ini. Berikut petikan wawancaranya.

Ben Judd

PCGH: Did you develop your own engine for Bionic Commando or did you license a technology? What were the reasons for developing your own technology/using middleware? What are the advantages when utilizing your own technology/a commercial product?

Ben: All projects currently in development here at GRIN is based on our proprietary engine called the Diesel Engine. We have been working with this engine for many years and new features are implemented daily so that the production teams can always access cutting edge technology.

The reasons why we choose to develop the Diesel Engine were to assure that we have total control over the tech pipeline. We like to take fate in our own hands. Having our own engine lets us decide exactly what features we want to add and when, instead of relying on a licensed engine that might miss lack some functionality. Since our engine team works very close to the production teams the support pipeline is also very fast.

One of the biggest advantages of using the Diesel Engine is that all our games are scripted in LUA by our gameplay programmers. This is very effective since gameplay programmers never have to compile their code, they can modify and reload it without having to restart the game; this indeed saves a lot of time.

PCGH: Bionic Commando will be released on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Will the title, like in a regular Cross Platform Development, be developed simultaneously for Console and PC or will you once again finalize the console development before you started porting Bionic Commando the PC by adding special features?

Ben: In general the gameplay programmers never have to script for a specific hardware platform, as the Diesel Engine takes care of this. If the LUA script works on the PC, it will work on Xbox360 and Playstation 3 as well. Of course there are some platform specific technologies that require custom code, like the support for achievements on Xbox360 for instance, but most of the time gameplay programmers can focus on just creating a great game. This allows us to develop the game simultaneously for all target platforms, even though we optimize the game for each platform both during the development phase.

PCGH: If you develop a special PC build of Bionic Commando, what are your reasons to do so? Is this a general policy at Capcom?

Ben: Capcom has always been a long time support over multi-platform development but recently we have put some serious effort into the PC front. A partnership with GRIN is allowing us to create a top-notch PC version as well as the console Skus so it really is a great collaboration on all fronts.

PCGH: What are the differences between the Console and the PC Version as far as technical aspects is concerned? What technical features can only be realized with the PC as platform? What are technical advantages of the PC in comparison to the consoles?

Ben: The big difference between the PC and the consoles is of course the hardware. The Xbox360 and Playstation 3 each have 512 MB of RAM, while you can get 4GB of PC RAM for $150 at your closest computer store so of course the PC usually packs a heavier punch than the consoles. With Vista, the introduction of DirectX10 and cutting edge graphic cards also enable us to deliver a much higher visual quality on the PC compared to the consoles. Another advantage is that PC now provides much more CPU power, we can for instance push more physics on multi-core machines.

PCGH: Having a closer look at the released PC Screenshots it becomes clear that a very detailed visual presentation plays an important role while developing Bionic Commando. Do you use very modern rendering techniques like Parallax Occlusion Mapping, Soft Shadows, HDR, a lighting model with Deferred Shading, Ambient Occlusion, Shader Model 4.0 or post effects like Tone Mapping and Depth of view? If yes can you please give examples how this modern rendering techniques are utilized in Bionic Commando?

Tobias: We use Deferred Shading for calculating HDR lighting in Bionic Commando, this opens up a lot of doors for doing advanced special effects and gives us the possibility to have a huge amount of dynamic per-pixel light sources per frame. Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, Depth of Field, Tone Mapping, Motion Blur are just a few of the special effects we use in BC.

PCGH: When Developing do you try to utilize modern PC-Technologies like Dual-GPU-Rendering? In other words: As far as overall performance is concerned, can players increase it remarkably by buying a second graphics card or a card with two GPUs? Do you have to add the support for multi GPU setting when developing the PC Version?

Tobias: Bionic Commando scales on both SLI and CrossFire systems.

PCGH: It is no secret that the Xbox 360 and even the PS3 is a suitable platform for a multi threaded engine. In addition Intel has announced that Bionic Commando could be an ideal launch title for the new Quadcore CPU with Nehalem core that can handle up to eight different threads. Is it true that the engine is heavily optimized for multithreading? If yes how many cores are supported? What different tasks can be or are split up into different threads and what is the expected performance gain resulting from two respectively four or even more cores?

Ben: Grin has always had a very good relationship with different hardware manufacturers. Partnering up with Intel has allowed us to get our hands on the very latest cutting edge technology long before the end consumer knows of their existence. This assures that when the hardware is released our games are already supporting it.

The Diesel Engine has been developed to scale across multiple CPU's and is optimized for multithreading. Seeing the game taking the full advantage on a Quadcore CPU makes you smile, and seeing the game take a hack on a dual Quadcore or even an Octacore makes you laugh.

Our engine will actually detect the amount of cores available, and will scale accordingly. Several systems are threaded, like rendering, physics (through PhysX), effects, etc; we are constantly trying to take even more advantage of all the threads available. But if at the end you are limited by your GPU, you probably want to have more content or new things that use the CPU for the same FPS, it's also a direction we are investigating.

PCGH: Many Games offer a detailed physic simulation. Yours too? If so what are the "physical highlights” players can expect in Bionic Commando? Will the physics even have a heavy impact on gameplay?

Ben: Grin was one of the first game developers in the world to work on hardware calculated physics using Ageia technology, and we still work a lot with physics. A lot of features in Bionic Commando are based on physics calculations.

PCGH: You announced a DX10 support for the PC version of Bionic Commando. Why did you decide to integrate the API into the engine?

Tobias: GRIN has always strived to deliver cutting-edge technology so supporting a DX10 rendering back-end was a natural move for us.

PCGH: What were the technical advantages of the DX10 API/Shader Model 4? In what way does it optimize or simplify the rendering process in the PC version of Bionic Commando? Will the game even make use of special DX10.1-Features?

Tobias: Since DX10 allows you to sample individual taps from a MSAA render target it gives us the possibility to support full hardware accelerated MSAA together with Deferred Shading. This is a huge leap forward for engines utilizing Deferred Shading since the lack of being able to support real MSAA has been the number one biggest flaw of using Deferred Shading.

DX10.1 allows you to force the pixel shader to run on a per sample basis, we utilize this to accelerate the lighting passes when doing MSAA rendering.

PCGH: Will the DX 10 visualization differ substantially from the graphics that are rendered with DX 9 hardware or will DX10 just speed up the rendering process? If there are special DX10 visuals, what are the graphical features that can only be rendered with shader model 4 hardware? Can you supply us with a visual proof via screenshot too?

Tobias: At the moment the only visual difference between the DX9- and DX10-version of Bionic Commando is the lack of proper MSAA under DX9.

PCGH: Many fellow developers report that in theory many DX10 effects can be realized with DX9 as well. Do you agree? Do you think DX10 and even DX11 are the Future of gaming graphics? Have you already thought about alternative displaying techniques like Raytracing or Point Rendering?

Tobias: Yes, many DX10 effects can be realized under DX9. However, it often requires a lot of extra work to bend the limitations of the DX9 API. The DX10/DX11 API is also much cleaner than the DX9 API and it gives you a huge amount of new features that's available directly without having to utilize IHV backdoors.

I think many developers who haven't added a DX10 renderer to their engines yet are waiting for DX11 to be released before doing so. When DX11 gets released I believe we will see a significant increase in visual details due to its enhanced multithreading support together with the support for the new Compute Shaders.
We are still a long way from replacing standard triangle rasterization with techniques such as raytracing.

PCGH: Can you at the current state of development tell our readers what hardware will be required to play the game with all detail in 1.280x1.024 (no FSAA/AF) and 1.680x1.050 (4x FSAA/8:1 AF)?

Tobias: No.

layak ditunggu

[setya5785]

main char bakal dapat upgrade skill bernama "JUMP" ato masih harus ngandalin grapple di tangan kirinya yah ^_^

[NOi]

Satu lagi game PhysX , bener nih kata bro bec, untuk sementara di PC ada perang antara Dx 10.1 vs PhysX

[XTC]

Ndak heran kalo pasti lebih bagus di PC Physix lagi...

[Salman]

ya ntar yg bisa nikmatin full dari fitur ne cuma segelintir orang aja........