Killzone: Mercenary

Wynix said:
Without doubt this game will become Vita's graphical and technical showcase, it raises the bar significantly.

Hopefully this puts pressure on other studios at Sony to lift their game, such as Sony Bend; The low res used in Uncharted:GA makes me want to gouge my eyes out, completely ruins the game for me.
Click to expand...

Uncharted: GA was amazing for a launch game (and it's still amazing compared to most). Bend posted a detailed technical discussion of their development process, and I don't think they have much to be ashamed of. But they also indicated that they learnt so much during the process, that they'd love to get another chance at an Uncharted game, and that they could probably achieve significantly more.

So we'll just have to hope we'll get another one!
 
Sigfried1977 said:
Seriously though, what's up with the kind of patch sizes you need to cope with for games like Killzone Mercenary. Given the prices of the proprietary memory cards, having a 1 GB+ patch that addresses some fairly mimor issues is ridiculous. The patch takes up more space on the card than Rayman Legends does. Some of the save file sizes are kind of ridiculous as well. Little Big Planet's save file is more than a hundred mega bytes.
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Well they are big games! You can hardly expect a PS3-like Killzone game taking up only 1GB. ;) I don't know what's in the Killzone patch, mind you - it seems like it's all of multiplayer or something. For Little Big Planet, it's very likely packs that contain all the DLC - even if you are playing the game without having bought any DLC, you can still play levels and co-op games with others that did get all the DLC, that's why you end up getting all of the DLC regardless I think.

I've decided for myself that I will buy games on cart if they're significantly above 2GB, and keep the rest digital. So Rayman Legends was a digital purchase for me, but Killzone I got on cart.
 
I'm curious about the reflections... Is it done at full res? Does it use the current frame or the past one? does it discard alpha blended objects? Is it a mostly hacky framebuffer copy, or does it do some sort of raymarching agains the depth buffer? Does it have a discrete number of surface angles and positions at a given time, or can it be arbitrary?
 
The article mentions that raycasting is extremely expensive vs the PS3 (which is true, PS3 raycasting is cheap even vs the 360 thanks to the SPEs), so I would assume that any place where they could choose an alternative solution, they would have. ;)
 
Arwin said:
The article mentions that raycasting is extremely expensive vs the PS3 (which is true, PS3 raycasting is cheap even vs the 360 thanks to the SPEs), so I would assume that any place where they could choose an alternative solution, they would have. ;)
Click to expand...

Well, from what I understood, that referred to raycasting against level geometry for AI, a different problem altogether.
 
milk said:
I'm curious about the reflections...
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Smart questions. :mrgreen:

Most of the answers can be derived from "it's on mobile hardware". Anything you do at native res means up to half a million pixels. So it really is an 'every cycle counts' situation.

The reflections are part of the forward render pass, if a material uses them then per-pixel they cost one dependant texture read and add around 8 cycles (there are some other costs too - VS and interpolators, etc). Running another full screen pass just for reflections wouldn't be practical - you'd waste a lot of time, memory and bandwidth not just on the extra pass but also the intermediate data - especially for cases where there aren't reflections covering much of the screen.

does it discard alpha blended objects?
Click to expand...
It depends how close they are. You don't want the gun/muzzle flash reflecting, for example (and some other more subtle corner cases) but you also don't want gaps, so it is highly temporal.
 
Very cool game so far! I am still fighting Vitas controls, which I am not familiar with.

Style and atmosphere is pure Killzone...great game!
 
In a DF interview, developer teams of AC Liberation said that they slow down the vita GPU frequency. How about KZ? Does KZ use slower frequency or maximum frequency? How fast ? Thx!
 
Thanks Graham, very informative. That and its great HDR puts this game's engine closer to Shadow Falls than actual Killzone 3 in some respects. I also liked the way you guys compare current frame against a compressed version of the past one to determine minimal framerate, by the DF article I thought it was tied to actual World-space camera speed, but that method would break in instances with many dynamic objects as if for example you were inside a moving vehicle and most of the screen was actually occupied by its geometry rather than outside's static content. If OMB ends up making it in on a next interation of this tech, than the velocity buffer could be used instead.
 
One question about save games: I did play for about half an hour or so. I restarted the game today and I have to start from the beginning.

Is there no auto save at checkpoints? Can I save manually?
 
Billy Idol said:
One question about save games: I did play for about half an hour or so. I restarted the game today and I have to start from the beginning.

Is there no auto save at checkpoints? Can I save manually?
Click to expand...

It saves the game at the end of each contact. There are saves points during a contract but they are only used to respawn you when you die. I just never quit the game, simply jump out and leave it suspended in the background.
 
Billy Idol said:
How do I do this? Press the home button and leave it like this? Can I do this during gameplay while in pause mode?
Click to expand...

Press th ps button, then swipe left or right to go to any other app. Your game stays paused :) ! You guys are making me jealous, gotto get a Vita again, considering Sony hasn't confirmed ps4 plans for my country at all, I am tempted even more.
 
Billy Idol said:
How do I do this? Press the home button and leave it like this? Can I do this during gameplay while in pause mode?
Click to expand...

You can do it anytime. Just hit the PS button and it will suspend the game. You then just slide it to one side or put the Vita to sleep. It's one of the reason I like the Vita so much. Being able to just suspend a game and jump straight back in whenever I want is just so awesome!!

It also bodes well for a similar PS4 experience. After all Sony have already done it with the Vita!
 
I am really surprised how good this game is. For me, the experience is much closer to Killzone 2 than KZ3. Not only in terms of gameplay, but also in terms of visuals. sometimes they are quite breath taking and it just looks right! In fact, up to now, I would rank the games as
KZ 2 > KZ: M > KZ 3.

And I really love the suspend mode of the Vita, I can play whenever I have a couple of minutes and pick it up at directly where I left...nice.
 
Finished the game. Really amazing. Besides the super nice presentation, which looked astounding at times, the good story embedded in the Killzone time line...I liked the gameplay best. And I am surprised that I actually not only got familiar with the touchscreen controlls but that I also appreciate them...stealth kill with touch screen is quite cool :)

Great job Graham and co. Was really worth buying a Vita for :)

No, lets try Uncharted and see how it compares...
 
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