Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/259450
20 ■ CGW Ja n u a r y / Fe b ru a r y 2 014 GAMING "The combination of GPU compute, GDDR5 bandwidth, and unified memory make the special effects possible," says Seppo Halonen, engine architect at Housemarque. "The volu- metric data, loose cubes, and the enemy geometry together take several gigabytes of memory and a large chunk of GPU processing time, as well. Without unified memory, we could not feed the compute shaders." The unified memory architecture provided by the new con- soles has advantages that are not found on current desktop PCs. "On the PC, for instance, PCIe bus already would be a serious bottleneck. What some people miss is that our cubes are not point sprites, they are complete polygon cubes. Point sprites are what we use for bomb and overdrive, and we use them by the million." Knack on the PS4 is also taking advantage of GPU compute to help bring the title character to life. "Knack himself is a bit of a showcase for the power of the PS4 – his size-changing character model comprises up to 5,000 individually rendered objects, which explode off him in a variety of different ways when he performs special attacks and techniques," says Nick According, associate producer at Sony. "Only the power of the PS4 could allow us to give players control of such a dynamic character, while at the same time maintaining a smooth frame rate and a native 1080p resolution." The advantages that the new consoles bring to the table are not only for the giant "Triple-A" scale games, but can be utilized effectively for the indie-size teams, as well. Supergiant is most well known for its independent hit Bastion, but with its next game, Transistor, the studio is taking full advantage of this extra power by increasing the complexities of its shaders and the density of content in its levels. "The difference, " Jurney says, "is that it's now available to us as a small team because of the ease of implementation and the reduced need for optimization to make [the title] shippable." Cloudy with a Chance of Everything We are living in a cloud generation. When we say "cloud," we mean one or more computer servers ensconced in one of the thousands of data centers spread across the globe. As bandwidth has expanded over the last decade, so have the purposes of these data centers. The old generation of cloud access merely meant storing your saved games on the serv- ers. Now, developers have the ability to off-load computations that are less sensitive to latency onto the cloud, allowing for the game system to take on additional loads from other, more latency-sensitive operations. Greenawalt definitely sees the potential of this technol- ogy. "While Microsoft introduced some limited cloud-based services on the Xbox 360 with features like cloud saves, as a developer, the possibilities of cloud computing have taken a huge step forward on the Xbox One." The huge step Greenawalt speaks of in Forza 5 is with its AI "Drivatars." As players get behind the virtual wheel in the game, the title tracks their strengths and weaknesses via their Drivatar profiles. These stats are reported back up to the Xbox Live servers, which crunch all that data across millions of play- ers. These AI profiles then power the human-like opponents in a player's races when the person is not racing against real people. In Forza 5, the computer-generated racers on the tracks that the player is up against in the Career and Arcade modes are all Drivatars that were pre-trained by the computer. "The result for the player is AI opponents that behave noth- ing like traditional racing AI," says Greenawalt. "These aren't merely brain-dead cars stuck to the racing line and turning laps with no situational awareness." The variability that the Drivatars provide to the racing experi- ence is what makes Forza 5 so addictive. It's never the same game twice, and that's what players want. "I think we've just scratched the surface of what is possible ■ TURN 10 STUDIOS is driving up the quality of the visuals and sound in its Forza 5 Motorsport for the Xbox One.