Limiting factors in crowd rendering

[Akumajou]

I'm having a bit of an argument on another forum I hope the pros here can settle:

I'm of the opinion that the number of zombies in a scene in Dead Rising (whether 360 or Wii) is limited by performance considerations. That is, more zombies could easily be dropped into a scene, but aren't because of what it would do to the frame-rate.

He's of the opinion that the number of zombies is a hard limit in memory. The implication being, if the Wii (or 360) had more memory - everything else being equal - the developers would be able to put more zombies on screen.

Who's right?

The way I would answer this question is that Dead Rising is a first gen/year 360 game and thats what the game devs were able to do but that in no way actually indicates any real use of that console's power.

Because the PS2 had similar issue in first year versus last year, and so did XBox 1.

My opinion would say that a game like Dead Rising will be completely eclipsed four years from now when game devs are fully using the dev tools because of experience and familiarity as well as the dev tools themselves getting revised and made to be more efficient.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

I stumbled upon this video on another site. It's meant to show the difference between Dead Rising on the Wii and Hitman Blood Money on the PS2.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/257353.html

Look at all those NPCs in Hitman! Are they using billboarding as well? Even so, the shear amount of polygons on-screen impresses me. I mean, I don't see how doing something similar in Chop Till You Drop is a bad thing. These zombies are mindless undead.

 

[Nesh]

I was never expecting the PS2 to do such a thing with Hitman. I underestimated it!! edit: heh Ai is pretty stupid though. Nobody seems to get panicked from all the massacre

The Wii is much more powerful than the PS2. It can do much more. Capcom could have done a much better job, but it looks to me that Dead Rising is more of an effort to get easy money. It is just enough to get the job done

 

[DeadlyNinja]

The environment's pretty small, but what I like is that the bodies don't disappear after 1 second.

 

[Turok]

Would it be reasonable to think that crowd rendering is hindered more by the CPU than the GPU (at least in the current gen of consoles)? I mention this because of a certain chapter in Ninja Gaiden 2 where you ascend a huge flight of stairs while 30 or so enemies flood the screen trying to cut you up into bite sized pieces. While they are still alive, the framerate is at a crawl; the game literally seems like it is playing in slow motion, and when they are all dead and their body parts litter the stairs the framerate is back to 60.

Not to mention the way games like Kameo, Dead Rising, and Heavenly Sword handle the AI of their crowds.