PC Game Alan Wake: Programmed for Quad Core (1 Core for physics!)

[***Deimos***]

boot clipping through the ground has nothing to do with DX10 or physics.. imho.

And, for the record, I think the technology used to achieve certain effect in game is poor metric of comparison. There are many many games which were very successful using "old" technology.

And, there are considerable number of visually impressive games that utterly failed. Afterall, the wow factor of spectacular visual imagery wears off pretty quickly when you're frustrated by the controls, ackward gameplay, lack of objectives or direction, and plot that kills braincells faster than beer.

[uOpt]

Actually from a programming standpoint this annoucement is rather negative than positive.

When you change a program to take advantage of multiple CPU/cores, there are two ways:

1) in a main program, find some "other" work for the other processors to do, "on the side" so to speak.

2) split up whatever single thing you are doing right now so that it is SMP-capable. Do the same work on all processors (just on different moving chunks of data).

The second way is utterly superior in actually utilizing all processors at all times but difficult to implement.

The annoucement posted above admits that they are even proud to do 1). Of course that's still better than doing nothing,

[JuanFlaiter]

I saw it live and I´m 99% sure it`s D3D10

[iddqd]

I saw it live and I´m 99% sure it`s D3D10

Again, it's just bump mapping. A lot of very well-done bump mapping, but still no cigar.

[don_vercetti]

Those add-in physics cards are highly over-rated. Although they are more powerful than a CPU core, a cpu core, like core 2 duo, can be more than adequate for small-mid number of objects.

Except not many people really rate Physics Cards at the minute, aside from Ageia.

Personally, i've been waiting for this game for about 2 years now, can't wait for it to come out.

[theteamaqua]

im thinking of getting Q6600 and OC it to somewhere near 3.6GHz 400fsb (best case scenario), but 3.2GHz at least i hope

[***Deimos***]

Again, it's just bump mapping. A lot of very well-done bump mapping, but still no cigar.

you sound pretty sure... why?
how do you differentiate bump mapping from:
specular maps,
environmental bump mapping,
normal maps,
parallax mapping (photon mapping),
displacement mapping,

[iddqd]

you sound pretty sure... why?
how do you differentiate bump mapping from:
specular maps,
environmental bump mapping,
normal maps,
parallax mapping (photon mapping),
displacement mapping,

TBH I don't see anything special; looks like plain old environmental bump mapping to me.

They may claim it has ray tracing for all I care, it still looks like a higher res version of FarCry.

[Major_A]

Guess it's just me but those screenshots look similar to the ones they showed last year. That being said I would assume it's DX9.

[***Deimos***]

TBH I don't see anything special; looks like plain old environmental bump mapping to me.

They may claim it has ray tracing for all I care, it still looks like a higher res version of FarCry.

well, now that you mention it, every single game made in the last decade can be reduced down to just colourful textures on polygons. Isn't that all that it is?

[Holst]

Remember that this isnt the final game its just a pre-release to show off the fact the came up with 4 tasks for quad core processors...

Clipping bugs and textures are the sort of things that they are likely to be working on at the moment... and these things are MUCH less noticable when your playing the game than when looking at stils.

IMO, it looks pretty nice.
Quite clever that they managed to get some sort of quad core implimentation going. Maybe quad core might be some advantage in games. But this game might still be a year or more away.

As for AGEA... I think this sort of thing is going to HELP them not hinder them.
There biggest problem will be having games made that take advantage of there cards.
Although there cards are expensive at the moment... they may be able to drop the cost allot if they can sell volume. Most people are AT MOST going to have dual core CPU's when games like this release. If those non quad core people can get a decent FPS boost by buying a good value physics card then they might go for it... plus the performance freaks like us will probably buy quad core AND the physics card... this is XS after all!
Remember that "most" games players lag at least 1-2 years behind technolody, just look at the hardware stats valve produces for HL2.

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

[iddqd]

well, now that you mention it, every single game made in the last decade can be reduced down to just colourful textures on polygons. Isn't that all that it is?

Yes, but you can't say that FarCry looks exactly like Quake III. Even if you use exactly the same textures (and quality) and same polygon count, Quake III doesn't have the same shader effects that FarCry does, that make it look more realistic. Such as bump mapping, for example. So no matter how high quality the content for Q3 will be, it won't look as good (until you implement the newer techology, which is theoretically possible with the Q3 source code up for grabs).

But I just can't see anything new in these screenshots. Sure, they have more polygons. But I still see the same problems as in FarCry (such as grass sprites popping out of flat and shiny earth in the foreground).

[***Deimos***]

Yes, but you can't say that FarCry looks exactly like Quake III. Even if you use exactly the same textures (and quality) and same polygon count, Quake III doesn't have the same shader effects that FarCry does, that make it look more realistic. Such as bump mapping, for example. So no matter how high quality the content for Q3 will be, it won't look as good (until you implement the newer techology, which is theoretically possible with the Q3 source code up for grabs).

But I just can't see anything new in these screenshots. Sure, they have more polygons. But I still see the same problems as in FarCry (such as grass sprites popping out of flat and shiny earth in the foreground).

First and foremost, you gotta see the whole IDF Alan Wake clip from youtube.. WOW.. took me a while to roll up my tongue, get the jaw back up in position and find and reposition my eyeballs. Compared to exisitng games, their level of sophistication and seamlessness of technology is unprecedented.

iddqd, in ideal world we would be using much more realistic ray tracing for games, right? Then you could get CGI quality effects of all sorts. But, its very important to note that video game 3D graphics is about using as many shortcuts as possible to achieve as close approximation as possible at playable frame rate to create immersive environment. The how doesn't matter. You pick and tune specific technologies which best suit your purpose.

Imagine for a second Doom3 without dynamic shadows. While you're at it, remove all shadows. The game is no longer scary or thrilling. The illusion is completely broken.. now its cartoony.

There are many new exciting special effects features possible on current and next gen hardware, but not all are well suited to this kind of game. Using displacement mapping on the terrain although it would provide very high level of detail, would probably be impractical computationally. Likewise, it would be inappropriate to have colourful alien light distortion effects like in HL2. And BFG and rail gun special effects are obviously ill-suited for a game like Alan Wake.

Finally, although the IDF guys are quick to showcase quad cores, that *ONLY* 4x performance of single core. Pretty much everything in 3D graphics is exponential. double the resolution of some texture, and you're using up 4x as much space. An extra level of tessalation of tree objects and their polygon count doubles. Apply to the world scene and suddenly you have the burden of processing millions of new polygons. I hope you guys know what I mean.

[elec999]

oh damn, Looks so real.
Thanks

[NickS]

Only engine that will top Source engine in efficiency and amazingness imho. I cant wait for that game

[theteamaqua]

well i wanna see somebench between Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad on that game see what the differences are

[***Deimos***]

Only engine that will top Source engine in efficiency and amazingness imho. I cant wait for that game

IMHO source engine is pretty lame.
I'd take Doom3 engine or Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory engine over it anyday.

source engine water is too reflective, and poor portrail of waves. Lights arent dynamic. You cant shoot out lights. Models are fairly low detail (levels too.. pretty blockly.. HL2). Extensive use of specular EVERYWHERE to make stuff shiny. And, some bump maps. The ony significant impressive thing to me is the facial animation synchronization, and animation.

Back to Alan Wayke,
Do you suppose only several key objects are "physics enabled" and can thus be picked up by the tornado? wOuld the tornado pull up trees? Does the game support deformable terrain..?

[-Acid-]

three letters says it all

OMG

[STEvil]

send the tornado through a city. with skyscrapers, glass, and cars.. lots of cars.

please.

[ANP !!!]

WOW. Is that even a Game. It looks damn Real, Esp the 2nd one.

So will a Dual Core have have lower performance then Quad core in this Game ??

[R101]

send the tornado through a city. with skyscrapers, glass, and cars.. lots of cars.

please.

I think they are saving that for an 8-core demo .

[***Deimos***]

IMHO, they need to pace themselves. Should have let it be with dual core for 2006. Introduce quad core 2007. Make better version 2008. Introduce octuple core 2009. Introduce better version 2010.. etc..

otherwise the # cores grows exponentially and die shrinks can't keep up. It costs many billions for die shrink technology, and not enough time for sales.

Now, Pentium days were good. 1993 to 1997 on about the same architecture (small chip changes).
Heck even better were i486 days.. 1989 to 1993. If they released a version with slightly higher clock speed, you got all hyped up for Christmas time. Its quite unfortunate that:

"In May 2006 Intel announced that production of the 80486 would cease at the end of September 2007"