Sine Mora technical post mortem(ish)

[Gitaroo]

Please patch the pipe section in the factory man, I have 5 ppl playing and gave up on the game after dying too many times.

 

[RudeCurve]

Played a little late last night and was blown away by the gorgeous graphics. Been awhile that a developer released a old school side scrolling shmup. Game plays great and some of the stages and bosses reminds me of Darius and In The Hunt. Were you guys inspired by those games?

 

[Billy Idol]

Man, pipe section in factory is killer! Did not die once until this part...where i lost all my credits
Will get through it!!!!!

 

[Molecular]

Finally finished the game this weekend, it was a nice blast. The last two bosses can be tough, but it was rewarding to get through the entire game. Again, the graphics are awesome and really puts the 360 to good use. I hope the Vita port will be a financial success for you.

I noticed that the 360 gets a lot of schmups, definitely more so than PS3. Right now on PS3 I have Super Stardust HD, Soldner X series (2 games actually) and today I am going to get Dyad, because it reminds me of Tempest 2000 on the Jaguar and Nitrous Oxide on PS1.

 

[reptile]

Thank you all for your feedback - greatly appreciated! Since the game has been announced for the other two platforms as well, i thought i add a few machine-specific details to this little technical monologue of mine.

PS3. Although the game was born on the ps3 originally, so many things were added and modified since the switch to the x360, that i really had to go back and polish up the cell version. Resolution/aa/af is the same as the x360 version, and there are some minor differences here and there, probably nothing anyone (except me ) would notice. The SPUs are busy frustum/backface culling per-triangle, using my own code, which is plain C, and not optimised by hand, but i deemed it "good enough" - it's never the bottleneck anyway. As a personal note, i really like the output of the ps3 more than the x360, and although there is some gamma ramp tweaking in the x360 version to undo the "smart" output curve, i still prefer the ps3 version.

Vita. Now this was a b****. And it's all my fault, i insisted on keeping the 60fps _and_ native resolution. Shaders had to be significantly simplified, as i just couldn't find a way to maintain detail and those above at the same time. The vita version has some simplified geometry as well (although not everything, only a few models here and there), and still, geometry processing bottlenecks forced me to use the CPU cores to do some additional culling. Bounding volumes are generated for each 32 tris in each model, used by an async culling job (on 2 cores) to generate new indexbuffers each frame. The game still has some slowdowns (worst case being 45fps) in certain sections, but i think it's not too bad, and the crisp native resolution was definitely worth it. edit: oh and if you happen to have red/cyan anaglyph glasses, there's a little extra for you in the options, keeping in tradition with the other versions

 

[Arwin]

Thanks for that, reptile! Look forward to the Vita version, will very likely get it.

 

[Arwin]

Sounds like it's coming to Vita next week!

 

[Sigfried1977]

Now that would be very nice indeed.

 

[Billy Idol]

I saw it on steam and heard about a PSN release. Game is really really good and highly recommended!

I wonder if we get a PS3 post mortem, and maybe even a PC one...wpuld be great to get insights in differences and difficulties.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Is that Sine More PS Vita trailer on the PS Blog displaying actual Vita footage? If so, then job well done. Looks really quite amazing.

http://www.sonypsvitablog.com/2012/11/sine-mora-release-dates/#more-8984

 

[Arwin]

Is that Sine More PS Vita trailer on the PS Blog displaying actual Vita footage? If so, then job well done. Looks really quite amazing.

http://www.sonypsvitablog.com/2012/11/sine-mora-release-dates/#more-8984

There are youtube clips of Vita gameplay I think.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Is this another cross-buy title?

 

[Arwin]

Is this another cross-buy title?

It doesn't look like it is so far. I've just discovered the Vita version in the store, and it's 14.99 euro (I think its much cheaper in the U.S.). For that price I'd have definitely hoped for a cross-buy package, but it seems not.

EDIT: price has been updated, now 9.99 euro

 

[Arwin]

Liking it a lot so far ...

 

[BoardBonobo]

Just bought this on Vita. Having quite a blast so far...!

 

[minimoke]

Looks awesome on Vita, is it native res?

 

[reptile]

Thank you all for your kind words, and sorry about the problematic EU launch on the Vita, Sony are still fixing the live-area issue as we speak

Some random facts about the Vita version: native res for most elements, except a few of the transparent polys which are rendered at 256x128. (Including the rockworm-blowup particles, that actually do damage you, sorry about that ) The game runs at 60fps, with two notable slowdowns (around 45 fps for a few seconds), and the cutscenes are all 30fps - cutscenes tended to tax the system more so instead of removing more graphical elements, i've decided to lock them at 30. The stereoscopic mode runs at 30fps, and was designed for red/cyan glasses. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to include it in the US version, so it's a kind of EU exclusive feature

 

[Billy Idol]

Thank you all for your kind words, and sorry about the problematic EU launch on the Vita, Sony are still fixing the live-area issue as we speak

Some random facts about the Vita version: native res for most elements, except a few of the transparent polys which are rendered at 256x128. (Including the rockworm-blowup particles, that actually do damage you, sorry about that ) The game runs at 60fps, with two notable slowdowns (around 45 fps for a few seconds), and the cutscenes are all 30fps - cutscenes tended to tax the system more so instead of removing more graphical elements, i've decided to lock them at 30. The stereoscopic mode runs at 30fps, and was designed for red/cyan glasses. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to include it in the US version, so it's a kind of EU exclusive feature

Cool, thanks for the info reptile!

 

[minimoke]

Thank you all for your kind words, and sorry about the problematic EU launch on the Vita, Sony are still fixing the live-area issue as we speak

Some random facts about the Vita version: native res for most elements, except a few of the transparent polys which are rendered at 256x128. (Including the rockworm-blowup particles, that actually do damage you, sorry about that ) The game runs at 60fps, with two notable slowdowns (around 45 fps for a few seconds), and the cutscenes are all 30fps - cutscenes tended to tax the system more so instead of removing more graphical elements, i've decided to lock them at 30. The stereoscopic mode runs at 30fps, and was designed for red/cyan glasses. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to include it in the US version, so it's a kind of EU exclusive feature

Thanks for the Vita info Reptile, can you talk about the engine you used and if it was the same engine used for the PS3 version?