House Of The Dead 4 arcade - on test in Japan

[Megadrive1988]

thanks to neo2046 on gaming-age for the first part

http://www.kobayan.jp/
http://www.ga-forum.com/showthread.php?p=1588864&posted=1#post1588864

the Japan arcade webpage says that
there will be a location test of The House of the Dead 4 at July 2,3

- new ac board
- wide screen
- upgraded graphics
- more zombies in one screen
- auto fire machine gun / Grenade be the main weapons
- routes selectable

____________________________________



now I am wondering if this HOTD4 on test in Japan is the same HOTD game that Sega showed at E3 as a
"Next Level" next-gen demo, along with Virtua Fighter, AfterBurner and Sonic..


It says above, new ac board.... new arcade board - Could it be the arcade board Sega has been working on for a long time (PowerVR-based) or does it mean a new Xbox 360 arcade board (ATI-based) ?

Sega Sammy has at least two new arcade boards that are known to exist:

1. Aurora - a low-end board with chipset from Renesas Technology which includes an embedded PowerVR MBX core

2. LindBergh (aka System SP) - highend board with next-generation PowerVR GPU - assumed to be PVR Series 5 - note that Dreamcast, NAOMI and NAOMI 2 all used PVR Series 2 chips (PowerVR2 DC)




House Of The Dead 4 is either on LinderBergh / System SP (assumed to have PowerVR Series 5)
or another unnamed board that is likely to be based on one of the next-gen consoles, most likely, Xbox 360
(ATI's Xenos / C1 / R500)

I am absolutely starved for new HIGH-QUALITY Sega games such as HOTD4, AfterBurner, that new Sonic, and a new Daytona.

the HOTD demo looked really exellent....

 

[Fox5]

Well, it'd be about time that an arcade game comes out with better graphics than a home console...

House of the Dead 3 kind of sucked though, but Virtua Cop 3 was cool.

A series 5 system is possible, and very likely if Sammy already has it finished.
I doubt anything xbox or playstation based, current or next gen.

Other alternatives would be simply PC hardware, or something Gamecube based. Nintendo has been making a small push with their arcade initiatives recently, and I believe Sega was one of the members of the triforce initiative, perhaps they could be going with a higher clocked and more memory gamecube derivative? Far less likely than Sega just using something PC based, but Namco recently announced a few new games for the triforce hardware.

 

[Megadrive1988]

the two most likely platforms are next-gen high-end PowerVR based board, or an Xbox 360 based board. nothing else really makes sense.

 

[Fox5]

the two most likely platforms are next-gen high-end PowerVR based board, or an Xbox 360 based board. nothing else really makes sense.

Is the x360 hardware finished yet?

Plus, XNA is supposed to make for easy porting of PC games to X360, so PC cpu plus an ATI gpu could be close enough for a quick port.

 

[Megadrive1988]

the two most likely platforms are next-gen high-end PowerVR based board, or an Xbox 360 based board. nothing else really makes sense.

Is the x360 hardware finished yet?

Plus, XNA is supposed to make for easy porting of PC games to X360, so PC cpu plus an ATI gpu could be close enough for a quick port.

It is done now, basicly, with Beta Kits in the hands of developers - Sega could've even possibly made HOTD4 on Alpha kits - the graphics of the HOTD demo looked like they could have been done on Radeon X800 / X850.

with that said, the high-end PowerVR arcade board is probably a somewhat more likely platform than an Xbox 360 based one, right now.

 

[Fox5]

the two most likely platforms are next-gen high-end PowerVR based board, or an Xbox 360 based board. nothing else really makes sense.

Is the x360 hardware finished yet?

Plus, XNA is supposed to make for easy porting of PC games to X360, so PC cpu plus an ATI gpu could be close enough for a quick port.

It is done now, basicly, with Beta Kits in the hands of developers - Sega could've even possibly made HOTD4 on Alpha kits - the graphics of the HOTD demo looked like they could have been done on Radeon X800 / X850.

with that said, the high-end PowerVR arcade board is probably a somewhat more likely platform than an Xbox 360 based one, right now.

Assuming that the PowerVR hardware is more powerful...btw, what cpu would it use?

And will we finally see high res arcade games? Most arcade games don't even use 480p capable displays.

 

[TEXAN]

The latest word on the street is that the PowerVRS5 runs at 700Mhz and factoring in an average overdraw of 5 is capable of 150+Gpixels/ 150+Gtexels. It can also do 16X MSAA4FREE and 128X anisotropic filtering.

Apparantly it weighs in at a hefty 500 Million transistors.

This is only speculation though.

 

[Pozer]

The latest word on the street is that the PowerVRS5 runs at 700Mhz and factoring in an average overdraw of 5 is capable of 150+Gpixels/ 150+Gtexels. It can also do 16X MSAA4FREE and 128X anisotropic filtering.

Apparantly it weighs in at a hefty 500 Million transistors.

This is only speculation though.

Thats awsomely funny... seriously though, I think these forums are the last place PowerVR is alive and well. Their next chip seems to be always around the corner. Bitboys for the new millenium.

 

[Fox5]

The latest word on the street is that the PowerVRS5 runs at 700Mhz and factoring in an average overdraw of 5 is capable of 150+Gpixels/ 150+Gtexels. It can also do 16X MSAA4FREE and 128X anisotropic filtering.

Apparantly it weighs in at a hefty 500 Million transistors.

This is only speculation though.

Eh, making such a complex chip seems to be a first for PowerVR, haven't they normally been low in transistor count?

And how do we know there's an average overdraw of 5 now? Last I heard it was between 2 and 3, and games haven't been so significantly increasing in polygon counts, they've been going towards bump mapping, or more GTA style environments which don't have much overdraw.
And 30 Gpixels/GTexels with no overdraw? That would still beast any current or near future card, and with free AA and AF, what's the use of all that power right now? Seriously, sounds like a next next gen part.(though really, just about any card now could claim free MSAA, if you didn't take memory bandwidth into account)

 

[jvd]

Eh, making such a complex chip seems to be a first for PowerVR, haven't they normally been low in transistor count?

Yet still very powerfull. In non tnl games the kyro 2 at 15m transistors on 180nm at tnt 2 ultra clock speeds was able to keep up with the 60m transitor 150nm geforce 2 ultra in some games and normaly around geforce 2 gts lvls .

Not bad for a card clocked much lower and much smaller .

Sadly that is the last desktop part we've seen from them

 

[3roxor]

The latest word on the street is that the PowerVRS5 runs at 700Mhz and factoring in an average overdraw of 5 is capable of 150+Gpixels/ 150+Gtexels. It can also do 16X MSAA4FREE and 128X anisotropic filtering.

Apparantly it weighs in at a hefty 500 Million transistors.

How many pipes does the Gpu have and what cpu's architecture does it use Are there also any future game pics available?

 

[pakotlar]

Eh, making such a complex chip seems to be a first for PowerVR, haven't they normally been low in transistor count?

Yet still very powerfull. In non tnl games the kyro 2 at 15m transistors on 180nm at tnt 2 ultra clock speeds was able to keep up with the 60m transitor 150nm geforce 2 ultra in some games and normaly around geforce 2 gts lvls .

Not bad for a card clocked much lower and much smaller .

Sadly that is the last desktop part we've seen from them

Kyro 2's efficiency was absolutely incredible. The kind of IPC they achieved was fantastic. I remember it beating out the geforce 2 pro in a few situations.

edit:

A few situations where kyro 2 beat out the gts: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/kyro2_3.html

Kyro II beating GTS by 20%:
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/kyro2/page12.asp

33% win over GTS and Vodoo 5500 @ 1024 2x AA :
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/kyro2/page14.asp

Prety amazing I think.

 

[jvd]

Yup it was nice. The other cool thing about the naomi was it was scalable with i believe 32 powervr dc chips in it at hte max . THe most we saw i believe was a 4 chip one ? I believe the kyro had the same feature . I wonder if power vr 5 or 6 has it

 

[Fox5]

Yup it was nice. The other cool thing about the naomi was it was scalable with i believe 32 powervr dc chips in it at hte max . THe most we saw i believe was a 4 chip one ? I believe the kyro had the same feature . I wonder if power vr 5 or 6 has it

Where did we ever see a 4 chip one?

And if the Kyro design had some much potential, how come no one jumped on it? A die shrunk clock increased kyro 2 would have offered top of the line performance(coupled with Elan at least), and dual kyro 2's as they were would have been more competitive than the voodoo 5 ever was.

 

[Megadrive1988]

I remember reading that NAOMI was scalable to upto 16 boards. the most used was 3 or 4 boards. but that is one PowerVR2DC chip per board, and I think this was used to drive multipule displays (F355, Airline Pilots) not combine processing power onto one screen the way NAOMI 2 does with 2 PowerVR2DC chips on one board.



as for the PowerVR Series 5 specs that TEXAN mentioned, heh, I will believe that when I see it.

you would need 214 pixel pipelines to reach 150 Gigapixels @ 700 MHz - that is completely impossible - even if you divide that by 5, to take into account the supposed 5x overdraw, that is still 42 pixel pipelines needed. still not going to happen.

the Series 4 was going to have 4 pixel pipes so the most that I could believe Series 5 might have, is 16 or 24 pixel pipes, at most.

with that said, I don't even remember seeing any RUMORED specs for Series 5. it is a total mystery right now, and I am not bold enough to start making up specs

 

[jvd]

I belive that one game f350 or whatever the racing one was with 3 screens used 4 powervr dc chips in it .


Anyway no one jumped on it cause its an ip company. power vr doesn't make the chips . So the company would have to make thier own chips and boards and sell them Thats alot of money to invest when u can just sell an nvidia or ati card

 

[Lazy8s]

Sega Sammy's foremost high-end arcade board for next generation has been announced to be the PowerVR board. Both it and Aurora should be using new cabinet designs, respectively -- the high-end board for high-definition display and Aurora for high integration for affordability.

They're still both announced to be shipping soon.

TEXAN:

16X MSAA4FREE

That term probably wouldn't be used for marketing since the "4" in "FSAA4FREE" had the double meaning of "for" and "4x".

Fox5:

Last I heard it was between 2 and 3

Quake 3: Arena tested at a depth complexity of over 3, even on processors using Early Z overdraw reducing techniques of the time.

or more GTA style environments which don't have much overdraw.

A city environment is prone to layers of pedestrians and cars passing infront of rows of buildings.

though really, just about any card now could claim free MSAA, if you didn't take memory bandwidth into account

An advantage in anti-aliasing for an architecture like PowerVR's would be the ability to sample directly from its tiles without having to use a higher resolution framebuffer.

And if the Kyro design had some much potential, how come no one jumped on it?

Semiconductor companies haven't believed that there's enough of a market in implementing licensed processors for the PC, so PowerVR didn't find another partner after STM got out of that business.

 

[TEXAN]

What do you guys think it shall use for Physics/A.I?

I haven't heard anything about SH-6 & SH-7 even though they were announced to be in development years ago.

I think the system may use a dedicated PPU or a Floating Point Accelerator.

 

[TEXAN]

what's the use of all that power right now?

Arcade games have to be a generation or two ahead of home technology. That's the way the business works.

 

[TEXAN]

House of the Dead 4 Playtest
Sega's next generation begins now.
by Anoop Gantayat
July 3, 2005 - At E3, Sega gave the press a sneak peek at its next generation of games, offering short clips of properties like Afterburner, Sonic the Hedgehog, Virtua Fighter and House of the Dead. We weren't expecting to get our hands on any of these games for quite some time, but one of the games managed to sneak out in playable form today!

Heading out to the massive, seven story Sega Gigo arcade outlet in Tokyo's Ikebukuro district, we stumbled upon House of the Dead 4 on location test. Sega had an early version of the game set up for a two day period, allowing us to get some hands-on time with an actual Japanese-developed next generation game (all the playable next generation titles at E3 were developed in America or Europe). The game was set up with a large, wide-screen, high-definition monitor, contrasting nicely with the nearby Chihiro-based (that's Sega's Xbox arcade board) House of the Dead 3.
House of the Dead 4 clearly knows its roots. You'll recognize the general look of the game, the frequent cinematic sequences that break up the action, and the cheesy dialogue that has made the series famous. We couldn't hear the voices too well, but Sega's managed to produce hilarity three times already, so we expect no less from House of the Dead 4. The game's storyline focuses on a character called James Taylor as well as a girl character. Both look kind of like vampires, although we're not sure if this is a part of the story.

In terms of content, Sega has made some big changes to the game. While blasting away at zombies is still the point of the game, the experience is more intense thanks to the massive number of zombies that come attacking. We were occasionally attacked by more than a dozen zombies at once.

Once again, you'll find a good variety of creatures to blast. Some look like the normal blue-collar-worker zombie, while others don't even resemble people. Some move slowly to attack, while others leap out suddenly, forcing a quick response.

Sega has continued some gameplay trends with this title. You'll once again find clearly marked branching points in the level. One area of the first level lets you select from two different paths by shooting at a small video screen that shows a preview of the path. Similar to part 3, innocents seem to have been kept out of this title all together. The first level was all undead.

The switch to high definition makes HoTD4 stand out.

House of the Dead 3's characters used shotguns. This time, Sega has gone to the next level, giving James and crew machine guns. It's possible to shoot a lot more in less time with a rapid fire weapon. You have to reload by shooting off screen, but your gun holds plenty of ammo in one round. The game also has grenades, but we weren't sure how to toss them.

The gun that you use to play has one cool feature aside from a trigger. A sensor inside the gun can determine when the gun is being shaken. You'll often have to shake the gun in order to get out of situations, usually when an enemy has grabbed hold of you. The game seems to be capable of sensing how hard you're shaking the gun, so shaking hard is the way to go. This is a fun new play mechanic -- hopefully no one will get hurt.

The game comes together nicely for the final boss of the first level. This massive four-armed creature (whose design forms a part of the cabinet) fills the screen, chasing after you as you flee through a shallow canal. He's got his sights set on making you into dinner, and he'll break through anything that gets in the way. Occasionally, he'll grab on to you, and you have to shake the gun in order to get free. You build up a meter during the shaking, which determines how long you can shoot the boss during the next phase of his attack.

As a next generation title, we were most excited about seeing how far the game raised the graphics bar. Sure enough, House of the Dead 4 is a good looking game. Despite the massive number of zombies on screen, Sega's managed to up the zombie detail considerably. And these creatures aren't shy about showing off the detail by filling the screen -- particularly impressive with the first level boss, who likes to stick his tongue out at you. Lighting and environmental detail are also a step up from past titles.

This guy uses two guns a little too well...

House of the Dead 4 may be the most visually impressive arcade game ever made, but it seems to be a step below the visual splendor we've seen from some of the finer upcoming PS3 and Xbox 360 titles. Aside from the massive number of detailed zombies on screen, the most striking visual improvements can be attributed to the switch to high resolution and the use of a high definition monitor. House of the Dead 3 looks last generation in comparison.

Unfortunately, we couldn't determine the arcade board that runs House of the Dead 4. We presume Sega will make an announcement at an upcoming arcade show, and the reign of Naomi, System 246, Chihiro and Triforce will come to an end.

As for home systems, Sega has yet to announce House of the Dead 4 for any next generation system. However, given that every past entry has appeared on a home system, a PS3, Xbox 360 or Revolution release is likely.