Black & White vs Color + ED vs HD - Bandwidth, Memory

[PellePlutt]

Actually, I think texture compression would remove most of the benefits you might see from using B&W textures, at least on current hardware. Unless I'm mistaken, the detailed alpha version of DXTC uses the same number of bits for color and alpha information in an RGBA texture, for example.

 

[Iron Tiger]

To quote myself (in a thread about Assassin's Creed):
"Grayscale is the new distance fog."

 

[Squeak]

Considering how important spatial, branch and temporal coherence is to pixel shading performance these days, calculating one channel instead of three would only yield a modest boost I would guess.

Cheers

But you could triple the resolution then?
Monochrome textures would mean much less opportunity for blockyness in S3TC textures.
Also the dynamic range would be vastly improved, making 32bit rendering seem like excessive luxury.
Of course all this would only work on a very few genre games, and not too often, or it would get very old very fast.

 

[Blade47167]

Anyone seen Saboteur?

According to Playstation: The Official Magazine

The game utilizes the unique "Will to Fight" system, which paints the world in an intense, film noir black and white with only Nazi paraphernalia (like swastikas) in color.

Maybe someone can find more out about the game but from the pictures shown it looks pretty neat. Apparently you are some sort of WWII hero who goes in and sabotages Nazi operations. Its being developed by Pandemic with no publisher yet announced.

Edit:
Game Site
http://www.saboteurthegame.com/

Image:

 

[zed]

Nazi paraphernalia (like swastikas) in color

the swastika is typically drawn black on a white background (the border is red though)

 

[Blade47167]

the swastika is typically drawn black on a white background (the border is red though)

There was some pics that actually had Swastikas but I refrained from posting. They were Black symbol on red background.

 

[Betanumerical]

Anyone seen Saboteur?

According to Playstation: The Official Magazine


Maybe someone can find more out about the game but from the pictures shown it looks pretty neat. Apparently you are some sort of WWII hero who goes in and sabotages Nazi operations. Its being developed by Pandemic with no publisher yet announced.

Edit:
Game Site
http://www.saboteurthegame.com/

I just watched the trailer, and it goes from BW (nighttime) to colour (daytime), maybe colour is only for daytime though?.

 

[Tisan]

I just watched the trailer, and it goes from BW (nighttime) to colour (daytime), maybe colour is only for daytime though?.

The idea is that how well you're doing fighting against the Nazi's is reflected in the restoration of the world to colour. Quite a neat idea, and an easy way to show where one needs to act as well.

 

[Betanumerical]

The idea is that how well you're doing fighting against the Nazi's is reflected in the restoration of the world to colour. Quite a neat idea, and an easy way to show where one needs to act as well.

So you restore parts of (Germany I presume) to colour by doing objectives?, thats all kinds off assume.

 

[_phil_]

Post processing the removal of saturation and having a full BW engine is not the same thing.In the first case the GPU would still do all the calculation (lighting ,shading) in RGB.

 

[Tisan]

So you restore parts of (Germany I presume) to colour by doing objectives?, thats all kinds off assume.

I'm not entirely sure I follow you there, but if you mean that I'm guessing at this part of the gameplay, then here's a source.

If you can take out Germans in parts of the city that are displayed in black and white, you'll restore color to the city and the residents will be happy.

Sounds neat to me :]

But yeah, as phil said, it seems to be saturation, and not rendered in B&W.

 

[Colourless]

Working in RGB then desturating down to Black and White has some extra advantages then using just plain black and white textures. The interaction between coloured lights and colourled textures can allow for some interesting effects when converted to Black and White.

 

[AlNom]

How so? (by that I mean, consider what components/data you are using from the coloured data to convert it into a grey scale)

 

[Colourless]

Just simple things like Red light Shining on a Red Texture will result in a visable texture, but if green light was used it would appear black. This isn't that different to using colour lighting normally, but when you desaturate you can't tell what the colour of the lights are and can produce interesting effects such as for example you could have your art designed so a specific coloured light (on say a hand held torch) will so up 'hidden' details when illuminating specific surfaces.