The First Direct Feed High Quality Killzone Footage!

[Squeak]

the hit it takes on bandwidth to resend large meshes numerous times for multitexturing, can be alleviated somewhat by pre-blending the texture on much simpler geometry, and then apply the finished texture to the large model.

That works only on trivial blends. Anything where blending value varies per vertex and/or UV coordinates don't match is out of the question (that includes detail maps).

Oh, okay. Maybe I should just STFU.

 

[Fafalada]

Actually, you weren't completely offbase - you said "simpler" geometry, I read it quickly and assumed you meant simply blanking two texture rectangles together (which is what you'd do when you have matching UV).
The simpler geometry way should work as an approximation for most general cases, but I can't say how good it would look (never really tried it myself).

But at least for stuff like detail maps where different UV sets are just scaled numbers of each other, approximate blend should look accurate enough.

 

[passerby]

Gamespot gives their impressions

Killzone Impressions


Killzone was on hand and playable at the recent Santa Monica Studios media day. The futuristic first-person shooter is being developed by Guerrilla Games in conjunction with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and SCEA Santa Monica Studios and marks the first internally developed first-person shooter for the PlayStation 2. We had a chance to play a few levels in the game, which provided a small sampling of the ambitious title's scope, and we came away quite impressed.

There were several playable levels available, which included small segments of the larger overall levels. The levels were evenly divided between indoor and outdoor settings, and there was a shooting range for practice. The indoor and outdoor levels showed off many of the game's key features, such as the different playable characters' strengths and weaknesses, weapons, squad mechanics, dynamic levels, and some impressive graphics. The demos offered two character choices: Templar, a heavily armed soldier, and Luger, a more stealth-oriented character. Going through the demo levels, it was clear that Templar, with his heavy arsenal, was a better all-around soldier, while Luger was much more precise. The weapons they both started with provided a solid level of firepower, although Templar appeared to have the edge. Despite the slight difference in balance between the characters' weapons, you'll find plenty to use in the game. One particularly cool feature is what appears to be a proximity-based combo system for melee combat. When you're close enough to a foe, you're prompted to press the X button. If you get the timing down, you'll rush at your target and knock your foe around good. The move you perform will vary depending on what weapon you're holding.

The squad mechanics that were shown off make a good case for the game's dynamic artificial intelligence system. The members of your team are smart and look after themselves as you go about your business. The AI perfectly complements the way the levels change because of all the explosions and assorted madness going on. One of the coolest things we saw was a massive airship swooping down from the sky all of a sudden. As the enormous craft came and hovered above the ground, ropes popped out of its belly (showing off the game's proprietary physics system). The downside to the experience was that about a half dozen Helghast troops came sliding down the ropes with guns blazing.

Another of the playable levels in the Killzone demo was a shooting range that featured various targets, such as human silhouettes, for target practice. All of the weapons in the game were littered on the ground behind each of the positions where the players were intended to stand and fire the weapons. After picking up a weapon and taking your position on one of these designated firing platforms, a small pop-up window appears in the corner of the screen that shows a close-up view of the target so you can see where your bullets are hitting.

After taking some target practice and trying out the weapons, it's clear that a great amount of detail has been put in to making sure that all of the pistols, machine guns, rocket launchers, and such are as realistic as possible. The reloading animations for each of the weapons are fairly impressive, thanks to specific animations that show a surprising amount of detail in how the mechanisms of each weapon open up and move when reloading. Many of the weapons feature a primary and secondary fire--for instance, the rocket launcher's primary fire deploys a single rocket, while the secondary fire deploys three rockets all at once.

The sniper rifle is extremely cool since it's been designed to require a great amount of skill to use it, meaning that its targeting reticle is incredibly sensitive when zoomed in at great distances. By pushing in the R3 button or pushing up on the D-pad, you can increase the sniper rifle's zoomed-in view. The right analog stick also controls the weapon's targeting reticule, which requires total precision when aiming.

In addition to taking the handheld weapons for a spin in the target range level, we also tested a few of the stationary gun turrets featured in the game. These weapons, as you might imagine, include weapon placements like a heavy machine gun that is governed by a heat meter, which, if filled, causes your weapon to stop firing for a brief period of time. Other stationary mounts are larger machines in which you strap yourself into a seat, and there barrels on either side that fire at a tremendous rate.

The graphics in the game are looking outstanding despite the fact that the frame rate is still not particularly stable. However, with that said, we were able to try the game in a two-player offline mode, which was still a little rough around the edges but playable. The indoor and outdoor environments all looked good and featured a host of little touches such as particle and weather effects. The environments are large and detailed and feature a good measure of interactivity that's suitably flashy. For example, you can break glass in the game when shooting at enemies, which results in dramatic cascades of particles. The overall graphical quality of the game is really quite impressive and is a testament to the research and development Guerrilla has done with the PlayStation 2 hardware. The use of multilayered textures has allowed for the creation of a powerful and flexible engine.

While the limited demos we saw offered just a glimpse of what the final game is going to be like, Killzone is looking like it's poised to be a big gun in the PlayStation 2 lineup. It's especially refreshing to see that, despite the fact that the console is getting on in years, developers are able to still work some magic on it. We're also especially curious to see just how the single-player and multiplayer modes fold into the story and just what sort of online offerings the game is going to have. While Sony reps at the event were vague, 12-player online games with USB headset support certainly sounds like the right direction to go in. Killzone is currently slated to ship in Q4 2004 for the PlayStation 2. Look for more on the game in the coming months.

By Ricardo Torres, GameSpot [POSTED: 02/20/04 09:22 AM]

 

[darkblu]

i believe the original poster's point was that the geometry does not need to be re-T&L-ed.

I didn't say it would.

The EE doesn't need to re-T&L if you're re-sending the entire finished model (but that requires you keep it around by copying it to main memory, so you'd get a bandwidth hit on the main bus).

main memory? they could apply all passes pertinent to a surface from onboard the sp-ram. instead of processing the scene by texture layers, you process the scene by surfaces (given each of them alone fits in sp-ram), applying all layers to the surface at hand. apropos, that's how pixel shaders work, basically.

Assume you only want the character's arms shiny, it might make more sense to not save the entire model away in main memory and simply re-T&L the arms and then upload them to the GS through the direct interconnect between VU1 and GS.

why store the whole TLed model? - store just the arms.

those 32 texture layers do not have to be diffuse maps, so you do not need to get blotchy mess at the end.

I see little need for 32 layers of opaque texture maps on a model.

so why the blotchy mess comment then?

 

[darkblu]

those 32 texture layers do not have to be diffuse maps, so you do not need to get blotchy mess at the end.

It's still only 8bit calculation precision - unless you are only doing additions it just doesn't go very far.
Try doing multiple dot3 lights in multipass emulation and see how that works out...

i'd use more than one back-buffer : )
seriously, those 32 passes don't have to be all multiplications, they could be alpha-blending, for instance.

Anyway if someone can point me to a justification for drawing a polygon with 32stages, and then show me evidence of that in Killzone media, I am all for believing it.

1. several layers of alpha decals?
2. no evidence, just hypothesizing

 

[Ug Lee]

I think IGN may have (once more) bitten off a little more than they can chew with the '32 layers' comment.

Though darkblu's point about alpha seems quite sound to me.

Also the Gamespot impressions are good 'uns. I really can't wait for this game. Everything about it (save for unstable framerate but come release time it'll be stable I'd imagine) sounds quite tasty.

 

[TTP]

Having seen the game and that particular technique with my own eyes back in August at Guerrilla HQ I can assure you there are no 32 texture layers. I didn't count the passes while they were demoing the LOD routine to but I can argue the model went through no more than 8 passes from "fucking far away I don't see shit" to as close as "get you head out of my ass please".

 

[darkblu]

Having seen the game and that particular technique with my own eyes back in August at Guerrilla HQ I can assure you there are no 32 texture layers. I didn't count the passes while they were demoing the LOD routine to but I can argue the model went through no more than 8 passes from "fucking far away I don't see shit" to as close as "get you head out of my ass please".

technically speaking, LOD count has nothing to do with texture passes, nevertheless you could share some more details of what you saw back them : )

 

[_phil_]

i heard from a coder it ws an average of 5 layer passes.not included frame-buffer "filtering" tech.

 

[PC-Engine]

Not to bash the game, ... [but I'm bashing the game anyways]

Actually, I agree with you - that layered texture thing didn't seem to be very impressive, nor were the visuals - hard to do justice with a video like that tho. The grenade explosions need some work too.

Maybe I'm just not a fan of any FPS that doesn't have "Quake" or "Half-Life" in the title

The grenade physics looks pretty poor. Even Quake I had better grenade physics. Not the explosions but the actual grenade movement when thrown.

 

[marconelly!]

The grenade physics looks pretty poor. Even Quake I had better grenade physics. Not the explosions but the actual grenade movement when thrown.

How so? Have yo useen that last video with the player going through that corridor with the huge cloud of smoke floating from the left, and him throwing the granade into that smoke? I thought the way it bounced and rolled was very realistic.

 

[PC-Engine]

The grenade physics looks pretty poor. Even Quake I had better grenade physics. Not the explosions but the actual grenade movement when thrown.

How so? Have yo useen that last video with the player going through that corridor with the huge cloud of smoke floating from the left, and him throwing the granade into that smoke? I thought the way it bounced and rolled was very realistic.

That's the exact video I was talking about. It moved like a magnet or something.

 

[marconelly!]

Well, I guess unless we find a film footage of a granade being thrown away like that, we can't prove either way. One thing is certain though - a granade is not a rubber ball, and shouldn't bounce around when thrown. I though that granade, just as all other incidental animations shown in the videos, looked really good.

 

[Gandalf]

The footage which has been released here a few days ago was leaked or stolen! It is important to know that the quality doesn’t represent the final game, the footage is played in GOD mode. And that this build of killzone wasn’t made for public, but only for internal bug testing purposed. Besides, this build from killzone is about four months old. Please keep this in mind. More info will follow.

Source

...

 

[Deepak]

From the-magicbox.com

"Sony mentioned the PS2 shooter Killzone will have online support, up to 12 players can battle online, both cooperatively and competitively. Killzone will be released in US in the 4th quarter, the game will have 11 stages, and USB headset support."

 

[Guden Oden]

AWESOME. I have the network adapter for my PS2, but no games to take advantage of it.

Where can I get a PS2-compatible USB headset? Do I have to buy one of those stupid Rainbow Six games where one is bundled, or what?

 

[ChryZ]

AWESOME. I have the network adapter for my PS2, but no games to take advantage of it.

Where can I get a PS2-compatible USB headset? Do I have to buy one of those stupid Rainbow Six games where one is bundled, or what?

Those should be available in Europe too ... sooner or later, I guess

 

[marconelly!]

Where can I get a PS2-compatible USB headset? Do I have to buy one of those stupid Rainbow Six games where one is bundled, or what?

Just buy Karaoke Revolution - you and your girl of choice wil be happy for days to come. You can thank me later

And yeah, you get a headset with it.

 

[cthellis42]

I'm waiting for Konami to make a deal with, like, American Idol, and make a game that combines Karaoke Revolution, DDR, and Para Para into one huge, illustrious project!

 

[Fafalada]

i'd use more than one back-buffer : )
seriously, those 32 passes don't have to be all multiplications, they could be alpha-blending, for instance.

Well the example I used (dot3 emulation) is a pretty even mix of multiplies and adds. But yeah, of course some math will not require more precision, it's just the usefullness of doing so that I question.

1. several layers of alpha decals?
2. no evidence, just hypothesizing

Several - sure. but 32????
Anyway, Personally, if I had 32stages at disposal I would think using them for fancier lighting would have more effect then layering decals on top of each other.
You could do like 2-3 selfshadowed lights with Dot3 diffuse AND specular within that budget.

technically speaking, LOD count has nothing to do with texture passes

Well no, in this case it's all about LOD, Guerilla talked a bit what they are doing awhile back.
Namely, with VU's branching and vertex generating you can pretty trivially vary the number of texture stages according to distance or some other parameter, as well as fade between transitions smoothly.
Killzone isn't the first game to do this either, I've seen it way back with Jak1, but of course not with,ahem, 32 stages