Did SC: Chaos Theory and SC: Double Agent push the Xbox to it limit?
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
I vote for Blizzard's Starcraft: Ghost.
That game pushed the Xbox so hard it didn't even get released...
Darn thing, it was the ONLY reason I bought an Xbox, and it never got released. *(&@#$. Thankfully, turning it into an XBMC media portal made it worth purchasing in the long run.
Regards,
SB
That game pushed the Xbox so hard it didn't even get released...
Darn thing, it was the ONLY reason I bought an Xbox, and it never got released. *(&@#$.
Thankfully, turning it into an XBMC media portal made it worth purchasing in the long run. Regards,
SB
(((interference)))
Veteran
Halo 2, Ninja Gaiden, Doom 3, Half Life 2 probably were pushing the console pretty far
L. Scofield
Veteran
I'd add Conker's Bad Fur Day to the list as well.
The remake of Conker's Bad Fur Day (AKA Live & Reloaded) is the Xbox title that impressed me the most technically. Resolution aside, and sans hyperbole, it literally put to shame many PS360 games.
Honorable mentions go to Chronicles of Riddick and Rallisport Challenge 2.
And to address the main topic of this thread, Chaos Theory was also a nice technical showcase for what still a novel technique: normal mapping used for appearance preserving simplification. Projected shadow maps were quite impressive, considering the hardware, in that title as well.
Honorable mentions go to Chronicles of Riddick and Rallisport Challenge 2.
And to address the main topic of this thread, Chaos Theory was also a nice technical showcase for what still a novel technique: normal mapping used for appearance preserving simplification. Projected shadow maps were quite impressive, considering the hardware, in that title as well.
Johnny_Physics
Newcomer
They would have really pushed the available computing power and memory back then.
Though there are so many shader techniques and such you could have done with more time, or with the knowledge and implementations we have now.
Makes you feel it was true that an unlimited level of effects are possible (like nVIDIA touted for their Geforce 3 level h/w) in a way, just from the standpoint that those pixel and vertex shaders could be used in so many ways and so many more 8 years later.
Though there are so many shader techniques and such you could have done with more time, or with the knowledge and implementations we have now.
Makes you feel it was true that an unlimited level of effects are possible (like nVIDIA touted for their Geforce 3 level h/w) in a way, just from the standpoint that those pixel and vertex shaders could be used in so many ways and so many more 8 years later.
IMHO, Identyfing the title that in absolute has exploited the most, out of the xbox (or any other consolle) hardware, is no easy task, various games has pushed the hardware in different ways, reaching excellent results in some areas (ex. texture, quality and quantity of effects, physics etc..), while making inevitable compromises in other. A better approach to this question would be, (always imho), looking for the game that has offered the best tehnical features/technical compromises ratio. And from that standpoint, i think Halo 2, was superb, since It offers a great overall technical package, without showing signs of significant technical compromises. (great geometrical complexity, great physics and IA, wide open areas, good use of shader effects, good textures, a good number of very detailed enemies onscreen, always with a perfectly stable frame rate). Chaos theory and Double agent were two truly amazing technical achievements as well, showing a plethora of shader effects, some of the best lighting ever seen on last gen consolles , and generally offering a great deal of detail in it's einvoirments. but they hadn't to move the massive, (physics heavy) battles, and open wide areas as in halo 2, so i somewhat consider it to be a bit less impressive overall
Well Halo falls where Splinter Cell excels & vice versa.
You can talk about scale but in the end Splinter cell compensated for its smaller area with much more shaders & lighting. If you are to think like that then there won't be one game that'll stand above the rest.
Those two games are some of the best looking I've seen last-gen.. .. In that case did they really push the Xbox to it very limit?
Impossible to push any piece of hardware to its very limit.
You can allways write more efficient code that will make the software run better.
Then you are talking to blind people or people who have never played both.
Ostepop said:
Impossible? Maybe. But you can reach a point where the code is as clean and efficient as it can be. Usually there is a trade off between one aspect of a program vs. another, so as such not all aspects of the hardware will be 100% utilized. This is what makes pushing a console to its ultimate limit highly unlikely.
Well Halo falls where Splinter Cell excels & vice versa.
You can talk about scale but in the end Splinter cell compensated for its smaller area with much more shaders & lighting. If you are to think like that then there won't be one game that'll stand above the rest.
indeed, as i stated before, it is not simple to judge which game used the most of xbox potential, for this reason, every game has pushed more on some aspects of the rendering than the others. In my opinion halo 2, is one of the games that used the most technical features altoghether while making the least compromises, so it is certainly among the best achievements on the xbox.
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Considering the vast advanced shader capabilities of the original Xbox, it's possible, especially at standard definition and with early 360 games.
What I really wonder is how developers dealt with such a limited amount of RAM. I know many a game, like Halo 2 and the Far Cry titles used some pretty aggressive LOD, but the texture quality in some titles just seems beyond what a 64 MB RAM equipped machine could do. Was texture compression a typically used technique to save space? I do find myself fascinated with the idea of how a 128 MB equipped Xbox would've compared graphically to the system we know. Sure modders have added extra RAM to the system, since IIRC all Xbox's have extra solder points for extra chips for systems to be potential development units for 128 MB, but the games of course are configured and developed to the 64 MB spec. Kinda makes it hard to believe the 360 was originally specified to have 256 MB total, which is pretty interesting to think about too, considering how games might have looked, and the compromises devs would've had to make.
As for technical achievements, I think Far Cry needs to be mentioned, as it is more open than any of the games mentioned, employed global shadowing/self shadowing (even if it was low quality), and all the other fancy stuff. Only real graphical complaint I have for it is the low geometry in some areas.
Yep, uncompressed would take much more memory. It'd be rather silly not to take advantage of the various DXTC formats...
Yep, uncompressed would take much more memory. It'd be rather silly not to take advantage of the various DXTC formats...
*Thinks of the Gamecube and it's underutilized S3TC*
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sometimes, i made myself the same questions
, another thing that i often wonder, is what would have been, xbox's absolute pinnacle from a graphical standpoint, if the consolle had lived more (le'ts say another full year at least), Shaders gave developers a lot of freedom to create new and fancy effects, so there was surelly lots of room to improve in that sense. The tech demo of dead space running on xbox (that looks remarkably similar to the final game released on 360/ps3 and pc), gives a glimpse of what could have been. I totally agree on Fc instincts / Fc instincts evolution, i recently re played it, and was litteraly amazed, Giant open maps, with incredible lighting (lots of stencil shadows, and bloom) , huge quantity of vegetation (that correct me if i'm wrong, are pretty expensive computationaly speaking,) and a vast assortment of effects (shaders on water, motion blur, lots of particles, post process filters), makes it definitely one of the most advanced games of that generation (and all this, was supposed to run on the ps2 too at the beginning.... how? )
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sometimes, i made myself the same questions
Gamecube too..........and we all know how that turned out.......
Though it's probably a safe bet FC: Vengeance was developed on a GC development kit like so many early Wii titles, however it would not be able to reach the same level of complexity as the Xbox in totality. I must say it is nice to know that the Wii can store more info with it's larger RAM amount and I believe better texture compression ratio. Also even without being at the same level of full capability as the Xbox, the ability to still make a good looking game is there. Using a Super Mario Sunshine like water implementation would arguably look a bit better as water isn't as glassy as FC Xbox portrays. Tree, building and vegetation shadows could be pre-calculated a la Far Cry PC, and I would've cut out self shadowing entirely. Polybump/normal mapping would too intensive but the Wii is more than capable of straight up bump mapping on a large scale so I'd use that where applicable. Sure it's not as great, but the effect can still be good when properly applied. Lastly I'd use S3TC for some nice textures. If there is enough computing and geometrical power left I'd shoot for a semi-3D ocean like GTA4 where the immediate area in front is dynamic fading out to undynamic. I wouldn't count on having it react to vehicles and objects though. That's too expensive most likely but I must commend High Voltage for making it work quite awesomely in small quantities in The Conduit.
This makes me want to mess with the Far Cry PC and it's graphics.
The geforce 3 didn't have shaders as much as register combiners, those are a lot less flexible than even the oldest generation of "true" shaders found on DX9 class hardware.
Yes they weren't as powerful as in the next PC generation but Xbox1 pixel shaders were still awesome for it's time
The shader language on Xbox1 to configure these were much more powerful than in DX8 (ps1.1) as you had access to separate .rgb/.a pairing (i.e. 16 instructions per shader instead of 8) as well as Nvidia specific complex instruction such as the wonderful xmma & xfc (fog combiner). So you could do much more interesting & complex shading on Xbox1 than you could on the same hardware on PC DX8 / ps1.1.Here is one of the car pixel shaders from RSC2 that I did 6 years ago:
Code:
#include "Common.xpsh"
tex t0 // colormap
tex t1 // dirtmap
tex t2 // envmap
tex t3 // lightmap
// scale sun light intensity with sun lightmap and add to diffuse
mad v0.rgb, v0.a, t3.rgb, v0.rgb
// create metallic specular
// create specular highlight
+ xmma_x2 r1.a, discard.a, t2.a, t2.a, 1-zero, -HALF, 1-zero
// create dirt color
lrp t1.rgb, 1-t1.rgb, DIRT_MIN_COLOR, DIRT_MAX_COLOR
// scale metallic specular with sun lightmap
+ mul r1.a, r1.a, t3.a
// apply lighting to colormap
// apply lighting to dirtmap
xmma_x2 r0.rgb, t1.rgb, discard.rgb, t0.rgb, v0.rgb, t1.rgb, v0.rgb
// scale highlight with sun lightmap
// scale metallic specular with specular scale
+ xmma t2.a, r1.a, discard.a, t2_sat.a, t3.a, r1.a, SPECULAR_SCALE
// create specular
// scale highlight with highlight color
// scale metallic specular with colormap
xmma discard.rgb, discard.rgb, r1.rgb, t2.a, HIGHLIGHT_COLOR, r1.a, t0.rgb
// scale envmap with fresnel and add to specular
mad r1.rgb, t2.rgb, v1.a, r1.rgb
// scale damage intensity with damagemap
+ mul t0.a, 1-t0.a, v1.b
// add colormap and specular
// scale colormap with damage
// scale specular with damage
xmma discard.rgb, discard.rgb, r0.rgb, r0.rgb, 1-t0.a, r1.rgb, 1-t0.a
// scale dirt intensity with dirtmap
+ mul t1.a, DIRT_INTENSITY, t1.a
// lerp between colormap+specular and dirtmap with dirt intensity
lrp r0.rgb, 1-t1.a, r0.rgb, t1.rgb
xfc fog.a, r0.rgb, fog.rgb, zero, zero, zero, 1-zeroThink I wrote & optimized about 150 pixel shaders by hand like this for RSC2, wonderful & powerful small little language. And very easy to predict performance.
Yes they weren't as powerful as in the next PC generation but Xbox1 pixel shaders were still awesome for it's time
Here is one of the car pixel shaders from RSC2 that I did 6 years ago:
Code:#include "Common.xpsh" tex t0 // colormap tex t1 // dirtmap tex t2 // envmap tex t3 // lightmap // scale sun light intensity with sun lightmap and add to diffuse mad v0.rgb, v0.a, t3.rgb, v0.rgb // create metallic specular // create specular highlight + xmma_x2 r1.a, discard.a, t2.a, t2.a, 1-zero, -HALF, 1-zero // create dirt color lrp t1.rgb, 1-t1.rgb, DIRT_MIN_COLOR, DIRT_MAX_COLOR // scale metallic specular with sun lightmap + mul r1.a, r1.a, t3.a // apply lighting to colormap // apply lighting to dirtmap xmma_x2 r0.rgb, t1.rgb, discard.rgb, t0.rgb, v0.rgb, t1.rgb, v0.rgb // scale highlight with sun lightmap // scale metallic specular with specular scale + xmma t2.a, r1.a, discard.a, t2_sat.a, t3.a, r1.a, SPECULAR_SCALE // create specular // scale highlight with highlight color // scale metallic specular with colormap xmma discard.rgb, discard.rgb, r1.rgb, t2.a, HIGHLIGHT_COLOR, r1.a, t0.rgb // scale envmap with fresnel and add to specular mad r1.rgb, t2.rgb, v1.a, r1.rgb // scale damage intensity with damagemap + mul t0.a, 1-t0.a, v1.b // add colormap and specular // scale colormap with damage // scale specular with damage xmma discard.rgb, discard.rgb, r0.rgb, r0.rgb, 1-t0.a, r1.rgb, 1-t0.a // scale dirt intensity with dirtmap + mul t1.a, DIRT_INTENSITY, t1.a // lerp between colormap+specular and dirtmap with dirt intensity lrp r0.rgb, 1-t1.a, r0.rgb, t1.rgb xfc fog.a, r0.rgb, fog.rgb, zero, zero, zero, 1-zero
Think I wrote & optimized about 150 pixel shaders by hand like this for RSC2, wonderful & powerful small little language. And very easy to predict performance.
what an incredible job you guys did with that game, it's unbelivable how much detail you managed to push at blazing 60 fps, it was also rich of brillant fine details, i clearly remember the first time i played it, it was running onthe track, in the woods, with the leaves that flied as i passed through them at high speed......simply amazing
. it is also of major interest for me, what you said about the flexibility of xbox's shaders, i had long searched for information about that, trying to understand how it would actually compare to a dx 8 part of the time, due to the relative lack of documentation available, only a person directly involved in xbox programming could have cleared this up once and for all @ mobius
yeah, fc vengeance was pretty rushed, and unpolished, as other ubisoft launch era games, so i never really took it as a benchmark for wii capabilities. It's pretty clear that it could look a lot better, using some of the solutions you mentioned for example. However since i still haven't seen nothing on the wii that really and completely compares to fc instincts (or any other shader intensive xbox game for that matter) i wouldn't go as far as saying that wii could perfectly mimic it's graphics.
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