Sony Gamer's Day 2008 (May 6, 2008)

KZ2 isn't going against COD4, but COD5. As much as everyone loves to hate Treyarch, they work off the COD4 codebase and they've will have been working on it for full two years when it's released. They will get the same "just name it" assistance from IW and other Activision studios if it's needed as Guerilla is rumored to get from the Sony UK studios.

 

Please, the AI in COD4 wasn't good, but watching that video, its still better than in KZ2.

aaron spink
speaking for myself inc.

 

Interesting I will watch the videos again

Between the devs team stated that 4 spe were devoted to graphic effects so it may come at a cost.

 

That's still not the same as running it on your own console and TV. Not enough to make those statements that you've done.

 

According to the dev slide, only 4 SPEs/SPUs were devoted to the GAME at that point. AI was shown to run on the PPE/PPU.

 

Yes, PPU + SPU usage slides within:
http://www.develop-conference.com/d.../vwsection/Deferred Rendering in Killzone.pdf

At the time of writing. PPU handled (handles ?) physics, game logic and AI.
They still have 1 "spare" SPU for the game, and 1 for the OS. The conclusion slide is also interesting.

 

Just one spare?

I wonder if they plan on migrating the physics over to the SPEs/SPUs.

 

Whoops, should be 2 spare SPUs, but one of them may be called upon by the OS occasionally, I think. Am not very sure now after all these months. The PPU has a vector unit, so physics should run fine there too.

 

I wonder why they've decided to add so many saturated primary colors. Red Helghast goggles, blue lights on the human soldiers, green targeting reticule on the gun, etc. Kinda ruins the mood of the setting, doesn't it?

I also don't like how there's no use of cover in the movie, he's just shooting the still standing enemies without even trying to hide. Is COD4 like this, too? You certainly get toasted in Halo 3 even in normal difficulty within a few seconds if you keep showing your face around like this...
Cover's just got to be a part of shooters now that Gears, Uncharted and GTA4 (to name an X360, a PS3 and a multiplatform game each have all emphasized it.

 

That's probably because a journalist was playing. If it's the official demoer, I think he'd zoom into the facial expressions, enemy weapons, take cover, check Rolex watch, and dance around the dumb enemies in general. Clearly the AI is not fully developed (or tuned down). I heard the last time they showed it, the mini-boss in the sewer kinda owned them journalists.

 

Depends how you define AI. Are you talking about behavior or gameplay AI?

 

There really shouldn't be a difference in a properly designed game. All I know though, is anyone that blatantly in the open and drawing attention to themselves shouldn't have lasted 5 seconds in any game.

 

On the other hand it makes sense to showcase the game on an easier difficulty setting...

 

Well there is a difference, because I never saw in COD4 characters react so realistically to their surroundings. If they are stupid, then they sure act like realistic stupid soldiers.

 

http://www.gamersyde.com/news_6437_en.html
new trailer here.
BTW, does anyone notice any ambient occlusion in the new footage? especially around explosions and fires?

 

The AI people think K2 lacks is not really computationally heavy.

 

I just wanted to add that cover was very important in the original Killzone, and I imagine they will maintain some of the same approaches in the sequel.

I still play KZ1 on my PS3 and it is surprising how well it holds up. The game just clicked with me.

I went back to Black, but found it unplayable, the strange hit recognition system verus hit animation was to difficult to adjust too.

What I like about the hard difficulty in KZ1, it that headshots will take people down. Whereas on normal you still need 3 shots to the head. The difficulty setting actually helps you more than them, strangely making the game easier.

 

http://www.jeuxvideo.tv/video/killzone-2.html#view:242742

It's just unbeliveably gorgeous, and runs so smooth. Damn !

 

WRT the new killzone movie, it doesnt look to be my sort of game
but im completely blown away, (provided this is what they actually deliver)
the bar WRT graphics has been raised a few notches
looks a bit more colorful than the last outting i saw as well

 

COD 5 would be a November 08 game though, and KZ2 is currently "February 09" But I'd be highly surprised if it didn't get pushed back at least until March/April/May (who launches a game in February?) if not until November 09.

So they wont be directly competing.