The technology of Alan Wake *spawn

Rangers said:
Too be fair also, Remedy is a very small team compared to some of these other studios. Around 50 people. Though, they had a long time on the game as well.
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Team Ico are a small team also, I hope they come through with The Last Guardian technically. Ambitious projects like AW and TLG usually take a turn for the worst somewhere down the pipeline.

Also I'm new here, I've been learning a lot from you guys and hope to learn a whole lot more. Thanks.
 
Hopefully digital foundry can do an interview about the game engine. There's no way of knowing their decision making process without more info. Obviously if they could do everything they want at 720p with MSAA, they would. The one thing we know is they needed MSAA for their use of A2C. If they'd decided to stick with 720p, they would have had to cut something else, and maybe they felt it would have looked worse. We'll never know because we'll never get to see that game.
 
Can someone explain to me who don't get the technical stuff, what is really the problem with what Remedy is doing? If the game turns out looking better with low res + extra "bling", what is it that irritates people?
 
Svensk Viking said:
Can someone explain to me who don't get the technical stuff, what is really the problem with what Remedy is doing? If the game turns out looking better with low res + extra "bling", what is it that irritates people?
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That remedy told the game was 720p and they dont do bullshots.
And a massive influx of new members who want confirmation on the 540p claims.
 
dragonelite said:
That remedy told the game was 720p and they dont do bullshots.
And a massive influx of new members who want confirmation on the 540p claims.
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Link?

Still think it's funny by far the most attention AW has got is this, by people rushing to deride the game now. If AW had remained 720P I imagine the main AW thread would still have tumbleweeds in it.
 
Rangers said:
Link?

Still think it's funny by far the most attention AW has got is this, by people rushing to deride the game now. If AW had remained 720P I imagine the main AW thread would still have tumbleweeds in it.
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I think it refers to the previous statement of the remedy's forum.
 
Which very few people would know about unless they were really searching it out as a result of this controversy...not causing this controversy.
 
assurdum said:
I think it refers to the previous statement of the remedy's forum.
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Yeah it heard it on the forum i dont believe it myself i mean every game does it. Making bullshots:rolleyes:

A other question i had if remedy dropped the 4xmsaa to 2xmsaa instead of resolution how would that influence the alpha 2 coverage? Because remedy said that with 4xmsaa they get like 5x sampling on the alpha2coverage would dropping msaa to 2xmsaa mean they get like 2~3 times sampling.
 
dragonelite said:
A other question i had if remedy dropped the 4xmsaa to 2xmsaa instead of resolution how would that influence the alpha 2 coverage? Because remedy said that with 4xmsaa they get like 5x sampling on the alpha2coverage would dropping msaa to 2xmsaa mean they get like 2~3 times sampling.
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720p with 2*MSAA is still very effective in hiding the A2C artifacts [See Just Cause 2,Farcry 2 & FF13], 960*540/4*MSAA may be better at covering up the artifacts due to the 5 samples but its not just those 5 samples, its also the blur caused due to upscaling since everything seem to be less artifacting if you apply a blur to it. (think GTA4 PS3)
 
nightshade said:
720p with 2*MSAA is still very effective in hiding the A2C artifacts [See Just Cause 2,Farcry 2 & FF13], 960*540/4*MSAA may be better at covering up the artifacts due to the 5 samples but its not just those 5 samples, its also the blur caused due to upscaling since everything seem to be less artifacting if you apply a blur to it. (think GTA4 PS3)
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Okey thanks for the answer. That's probably the reason why Bad company 2 snow foliage looks so nasty at times.
 
Lycan said:
Pardon my ignorance, but if the game was running at 720 p not so long ago, how could Remedy have changed it ? I mean is there a "switch" to modify resolution that could be turned on and off at will, even at the latest stage of development ? :smile:
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Continued to adapt engine to hardware to get the best balance and still realise their vision. IIRC the older videos had lots of framerate problems and tearing. About tearing dunno if the explanation by Rememdy is fully trusthworthy as in videos being out of sync. Who would release such stuff, why would it affect most if not all AW videos etc. Going 540p could have been the step to stabilise framerate and tearing while maintaing all the effects intact.

About comment "We dont do bullshots" that can be true if they refer to SSAA with PC version that is now on hold but the engine is fully functional. :p
 
Nebula said:
Continued to adapt engine to hardware to get the best balance and still realise their vision. IIRC the older videos had lots of framerate problems and tearing. About tearing dunno if the explanation by Rememdy is fully trusthworthy as in videos being out of sync. Who would release such stuff, why would it affect most if not all AW videos etc. Going 540p could have been the step to stabilise framerate and tearing while maintaing all the effects intact.
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I would rather deal with some tearing, optimized out as best as possible, than 540P. However, how late in development can a resolution change really be made?

Seems since PC games run at countless resolutions, it cant be obscenely difficult.
 
Rangers said:
Seems since PC games run at countless resolutions, it cant be obscenely difficult.
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I guess it is difficult. Since you just can't lower the res & say "Good to Go"...cause once you do the change its final therefore you gotta check through the whole game to make sure its right.
 
Alucardx23 said:
Could there be a case where the opaque geometry framebuffer is being upscaled to 720P and then combined with the other higher resolution post processing effects?
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Yes, depending on what the post-processing effects are. Things like colour grading aren't going to make any visual difference if applied at 720p or 540p and upscaled, but there will be a processing cost, whereas actually drawing pixels in post (eg. grain), rendering in 720p will add fidelity. Without any idea what post effects are being applied, typical use suggests post effects will be being applied on a 540p backbuffer. Regards the dev quote...
These are used for example for cascaded shadow maps from sun & moon, shadow maps from flashlights, flares and street lights, z-prepass, tiled color buffers, light buffers for deferred rendering, vector blur, screen-space ambient occlusion, auto-exposure, HUD, video buffers, menus and so on
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The HUD is probably the only thing not being upscaled. The cost of upscaling (probably on GPU rather than CPU) is needed to maintain fidelity in the UI. If they didn't care about a blurry UI, which really does look rough, then they could have composited a 540p UI and had Xenos upscale through the principle video pipeline as normal. If they want a 720p UI, there's no other choices beyond render a 720p backbuffer or upscale a lower-resolution backbuffer to 720p via software before overlaying UI.
 
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