Xbox One Console Reviews
- Thread starter Gemini
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Last week, our friends at Team Dakota opened up the free Project Spark beta to all Xbox One owners. This week, the team is excited to share a collaboration with Linkin Park; the band’s new video “Guilty all the Same” is being released today as a fully remixable gameplay experience in Project Spark. Take a look at the video:
Now that you’ve seen what Linkin Park and Team Dakota have created, you can utilize Project Spark’s audio remix station to make a new music video, music game, or whatever else you’d like.
Learn more about Project Spark at www.projectspark.com or search for “Project Spark” in the Xbox Games Store.
Project Spark, Xbox One By Jeff Rubenstein
permalink: http://majornelson.com/2014/03/25/project-spark-linkin-park/
Project spark will transform gaming
Ah gotcha. The B team.
Oh shit
Facebook has just announced that it's buying Oculus Rift for $2 billion. Seriously.
"Mobile is the platform of today, and now we're also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow," Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says. "Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate."
Oculus are equally chuffed. "We are excited to work with Mark and the Facebook team to deliver the very best virtual reality platform in the world," Brendan Iribe, co-founder and CEO of Oculus VR says in a PR release. "We believe virtual reality will be heavily defined by social experiences that connect people in magical, new ways. It is a transformative and disruptive technology, that enables the world to experience the impossible, and it's only just the beginning."
The deal is made up of around $400 million in cash payouts, with the rest being made up of Facebook shares. It's not a done deal yet; it's expected to be finalised in Q2 2014.
UPDATE - Here's a full statement from Mark Zuckerberg:
Facebook has just announced that it's buying Oculus Rift for $2 billion. Seriously.
"Mobile is the platform of today, and now we're also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow," Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says. "Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate."
Oculus are equally chuffed. "We are excited to work with Mark and the Facebook team to deliver the very best virtual reality platform in the world," Brendan Iribe, co-founder and CEO of Oculus VR says in a PR release. "We believe virtual reality will be heavily defined by social experiences that connect people in magical, new ways. It is a transformative and disruptive technology, that enables the world to experience the impossible, and it's only just the beginning."
The deal is made up of around $400 million in cash payouts, with the rest being made up of Facebook shares. It's not a done deal yet; it's expected to be finalised in Q2 2014.
UPDATE - Here's a full statement from Mark Zuckerberg:
Wtf?...
Now that Facebook is buying Oculus Rift, people have all sorts of opinions. Unsurprisingly, reactions have been rather negative: Oculus was supposed to be the future of gaming! Now that Facebook is involved, everything is ruined!
Or something like that. You don't have to browse for very long to find reactions like this—one of the first comments on our own post on the news was, to quote, "NO NO NO NO NO FUCK FUCK FUCK!"
While we don't yet know how the acquisition will influence Oculus Rift or the future of Facebook, you can't really blame people for reacting the way they have. For one, while the move might bring virtual reality to the mainstream, the potential drawbacks of this move might not be worth it, as far some gamers are concerned. People can't help but think about how Facebook handles user data/personal information, how much Facebook loves advertisements, and about its social games—all of which make it hard for some to have faith in how things will turn out for the Oculus. Plus, there's a lot of snark about how the backers of the original Kickstarter project aren't monetarily benefiting from this move, even though they did receive the dev kit they were promised.
There's always the possibility that things will turn out fine, of course. There's no way to know either way! But with all of this in mind, here's how the internet has reacted to Facebook buying the Oculus Rift—much of what you'll find online is doom and gloom, but not all of it is:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Finally, John Carmack can make Facebook games</p>— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) <a href="https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/statuses/448576328498151424">March 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
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http://kotaku.com/the-internet-reacts-to-facebook-buying-oculus-rift-1551579758
Notch Cancels Oculus Rift Version of Minecraft Because Facebook “Creeps” Him Out
No sooner do we get the (shocking) news that Facebook buys VR company Oculus then Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson tweets that he has cancelled the planned Oculus version of the game.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus. I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out.</p>— Markus Persson (@notch) <a href="https://twitter.com/notch/statuses/448586381565390848">March 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
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Minecraft is Notch’s game so it is ultimately up to him on whether it does or does not come out for any particular platform. This is a bit disappointing seeing as how that game would have really shined using the Oculus Rift.
Stay tuned for more news on this and the Facebook acquisition of Oculus VR as it develops.
Source: Notch on Twitter
They need to do something about this.
In this brave new connected world, there are few things more arduous than waiting for a progress bar to reach 100%. It's a necessary evil, but there are ways to minimise your mental torture if you know how. Here's a few ways to speed up the installation process and troubleshoot any common problems you might encounter along the way.
Sometimes Xbox Live can interfere with the from-disc installation, and can even slow down the entire process. To speed up the root installation and avoid the risk of any delays, disconnect from Xbox Live, install the game and then reconnect to Xbox Live. Here's how you do it:
1. Disconnect your Xbox One console from Xbox Live by either unplugging your ethernet cable from the back of the console or select "Disconnect Wireless" from the Network sub-menu in the console's Settings section.
2. Power cycle your Xbox One console by holding down the Xbox button on the front of the console for ten seconds.
3. Restart your Xbox One console and let the game install.
4. Reconnect to Xbox Live. Be aware that you may be prompted to install an update for the game after you reconnect to Xbox Live.
When you first insert a game disc into your console, it'll check to see whether the game is already installed. If it isn't, you'll be prompted to go ahead with the install by going to My Games and Apps, and manually selecting the game that you want to use. Once the process has begun, you'll see the progress bar just below the game's logo. You can also prioritise or pause downloads from the My Games and Apps menu to make sure the download you want is the one that finishes first.
If your on-disc installations are running smoothly, but you're having problems downloading or installing a game or app directly from Xbox Live, first off make sure that you are connected to the internet, to the service and signed in with the profile that originally purchased the content. To do this go to the console's Settings menu, select Network, and then under Current network status, you'll be able to see whether you're connected to Xbox Live and the strength of your local connection.
Then, make sure that you have enough space on your hard drive to install the content. If everything is a-ok and the download still isn't finishing up, you may have to do a little further digging. I've recently had apps get stuck on 100% download and still fail to install. If this happens, the trick seems to be to uninstall the app entirely, search for it again from the online Store, and starting the download again from scratch.
If you're still stalling, go to your notifications at the left of your home screen (or simply say "Xbox, go to notifications" to go straight there). Double-check to see if there are any notifications about low or unavailable hard drive space - the console should alert you when you're running low. If there is one there, you'll have to delete something to free up space. To do that, go to My Games and Apps, select the ones you want to delete, press the menu button whilst hovering over its icon and select uninstall. Whilst choosing items to delete, bear in mind that games will take up way more space than apps.
Fix the problem? Check out the Xbox Support page for further solutions to the most commonly encountered troubles, or let us know below and we'll attempt to sort it out together.
In this brave new connected world, there are few things more arduous than waiting for a progress bar to reach 100%. It's a necessary evil, but there are ways to minimise your mental torture if you know how. Here's a few ways to speed up the installation process and troubleshoot any common problems you might encounter along the way.
Sometimes Xbox Live can interfere with the from-disc installation, and can even slow down the entire process. To speed up the root installation and avoid the risk of any delays, disconnect from Xbox Live, install the game and then reconnect to Xbox Live. Here's how you do it:
1. Disconnect your Xbox One console from Xbox Live by either unplugging your ethernet cable from the back of the console or select "Disconnect Wireless" from the Network sub-menu in the console's Settings section.
2. Power cycle your Xbox One console by holding down the Xbox button on the front of the console for ten seconds.
3. Restart your Xbox One console and let the game install.
4. Reconnect to Xbox Live. Be aware that you may be prompted to install an update for the game after you reconnect to Xbox Live.
When you first insert a game disc into your console, it'll check to see whether the game is already installed. If it isn't, you'll be prompted to go ahead with the install by going to My Games and Apps, and manually selecting the game that you want to use. Once the process has begun, you'll see the progress bar just below the game's logo. You can also prioritise or pause downloads from the My Games and Apps menu to make sure the download you want is the one that finishes first.
If your on-disc installations are running smoothly, but you're having problems downloading or installing a game or app directly from Xbox Live, first off make sure that you are connected to the internet, to the service and signed in with the profile that originally purchased the content. To do this go to the console's Settings menu, select Network, and then under Current network status, you'll be able to see whether you're connected to Xbox Live and the strength of your local connection.
Then, make sure that you have enough space on your hard drive to install the content. If everything is a-ok and the download still isn't finishing up, you may have to do a little further digging. I've recently had apps get stuck on 100% download and still fail to install. If this happens, the trick seems to be to uninstall the app entirely, search for it again from the online Store, and starting the download again from scratch.
If you're still stalling, go to your notifications at the left of your home screen (or simply say "Xbox, go to notifications" to go straight there). Double-check to see if there are any notifications about low or unavailable hard drive space - the console should alert you when you're running low. If there is one there, you'll have to delete something to free up space. To do that, go to My Games and Apps, select the ones you want to delete, press the menu button whilst hovering over its icon and select uninstall. Whilst choosing items to delete, bear in mind that games will take up way more space than apps.
Fix the problem? Check out the Xbox Support page for further solutions to the most commonly encountered troubles, or let us know below and we'll attempt to sort it out together.
You might already be able to earn double XP in Titanfall through the use of Burn Cards, but that doesn’t mean Respawn’s shooter won’t get its fair share of double XP weekend events.
On Twitter, studio head Vince Zampella confirmed that events rewarding players with double XP are incoming.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/cookies144">@cookies144</a> yes</p>— Vince Zampella (@VinceZampella) <a href="https://twitter.com/VinceZampella/statuses/448569526087450624">March 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
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Earlier, we learned that brand new game modes will also be coming to Titanfall in the future. Zampella confirmed today that they will not be a part of paid DLC and will be “free to all”.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/YaBoyZD3">@YaBoyZD3</a> Modes we release will be free to all, not part of DLC.</p>— Vince Zampella (@VinceZampella) <a href="https://twitter.com/VinceZampella/statuses/448570645001953280">March 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
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As a bit of a side note, Zampella also made it clear that the team will be tweaking the in-game “Gooser” challenge that requires players to kill 50 Pilots in the air after ejecting from their Titan.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/theRealAlico">@theRealAlico</a> yes</p>— Vince Zampella (@VinceZampella) <a href="https://twitter.com/VinceZampella/statuses/448571345173889024">March 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
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Lastly, Zampella was unable to give an ETA on the launch of private matches, but he reassured followers that they are “coming soon”.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/igotgame">@igotgame</a> private matches coming soon</p>— Vince Zampella (@VinceZampella) <a href="https://twitter.com/VinceZampella/statuses/448569853985583104">March 25, 2014</a></blockquote>
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Still looking for an Xbox One and/or Titanfall? The Xbox One Titanfall bundle is now $450 on Amazon and the Microsoft Store.
Respawn Entertainment is now beginning to enforce anticheat measures on the PC version of Titanfall.
According to a recent news posting on the official website, the studio has been using FairFight to detect cheaters on PC and began enforcing those bans last Friday, March 21.
You can read up on the full FAQ below for specific details, but the gist of it is that cheaters will now be forced to play with other cheaters if Respawn feels a user has broken Titanfall’s code of conduct, similar to the system Rockstar adopted in Grand Theft Auto Online.
“We will be continuing to tweak the algorithm over time to catch more cheaters,” Respawn says.
FAQ
How do I know if I’m banned?
Here’s what you’d see at the Private Lobby screen:
If you don’t see that, then you aren’t banned.
So what happens if I get banned?
Great news: you get to keep playing Titanfall! Less-great news: you only get to play with other cheaters. You can play with other banned players in something that will resemble the Wimbledon of aimbot contests. Hopefully the aimbot cheat you paid for really is the best, or these all-cheater matches could be frustrating for you. Good luck.
If I’m banned, what happens if I make a party with my non-cheater friends?
When anyone in your party is banned, then everyone in your party will be treated as banned for that play session. If you are a non-cheater and you invite a cheater friend into a party, you will be stuck playing against cheaters. If you stop inviting your cheater friend, you will once again get to play with the non-cheater population. You do not get permanently tainted just by playing with a cheater – you are only banned for cheating if you are actually cheating.
The lesson here, kids, is don’t cheat!
With the Xbox One’s new Reputation System, Microsoft aims to “match you with other gamers you’ll enjoy, and create the best gaming community online”.
Those were the words of Xbox Live program manager Micheal Dunn who detailed the console’s new reputation algorithms in a recent news update. He says that, with the Xbox One, Microsoft ”redesigned the Xbox Live community-powered reputation system from Xbox 360 to help better inform players about their behavior in the community.”
“The algorithm looks to identify players that are repeatedly disruptive across the community on Xbox Live,” he continued. “The vast majority of players do not regularly receive feedback from other players and, thus, will stay at the “Good Player” reputation level.”
Here’s a breakdown of the different levels of Reputation:
- “Good Players” – The majority of gamers will fall into this level. As we’ve said before, we have plans to introduce rewards for good behavior and look forward to sharing more in the future!
- Warnings for “Needs Work” – Beginning this month, some players will start receiving reputation warnings as their reputations drop due to feedback from the community. The purpose of these communications is to remind players about their effect on the community and encourage them to have more positive interactions. These warnings are based on community feedback collected since Xbox One launched.
- Penalties for “Avoid Me” – If players do not heed warnings and continue to have a negative impact on other players and the Xbox Live community, they will begin to experience penalties. For example, people with an “Avoid Me” rating will have reduced matchmaking pairings and may be unable to use certain privileges such as Twitch broadcasting.
Dunn says that the algorithm was designed to avoid penalizing players for bad reports over a few weeks of play. It also takes into consideration that some reports are false and are only issued by players through spite or for the sake of griefing. So, by the sounds of it, you won’t have to worry if you don’t cause any trouble.
In addition to the system Dunn detailed above, recent reports have indicated that Microsoft is also looking into ways to reward players for good behavior, rather than simply punishing users for bad behavior. According to Microsoft partner and development lead Frank Savage, these features will be implemented in an upcoming Xbox One system update.
What do you think of the Xbox One’s reputation system? Is it effective?
Rocksteady Studios' return to the Batman franchise leaves the previous generation of game consoles behind. And unlike last year's Batman game, Batman: Arkham Origins, which felt like a stopgap, Arkham Knight feels like a franchise — and a developer — at its peak.
In a hands-off demonstration of Batman: Arkham Knight at last week's Game Developers Conference, Rocksteady gave us a tour of Batman's new playground and some of his new toys, including the all-new Batmobile.
One of the biggest, most obvious changes in this year's game is the scope and size of Gotham City. Dax Ginn, brand marketing producer at Rocksteady, boasted that the city of Arkham Knight is some 20 times larger than that of Arkham Asylum's playable area. What that really means is a Gotham stuffed with taller skyscrapers ("epic verticality," Rocksteady says), greater visual detail and more diverse areas. Gotham will have visually distinct districts, like a neon-lit Chinatown, that will help players better identify what part of town they're in.
Dax said Arkham Knight's Gotham packs in both an "insane scale, but with that intimate detail we've provided in other games."
That detail comes through in the game's hugely impressive Unreal Engine 3-powered graphics. It's the best-looking Batman to date, thanks to some gorgeous lighting, slick reflective surfaces throughout and grand vistas that offer wide views of the city's gothic industrial architecture. Arkham Knight impresses technically in other ways; transitioning seamlessly between open-world exploration and interior settings or one-on-one conversations. There were no visible loading times in Arkham Knight.
Gotham City itself has been adapted to accommodate Arkham Knight's most prominent new feature: the addition of a drivable Batmobile. The city's streets are wider and its buildings are highly destructible, two features that show off the powerful, "wrecking ball" design of Batman's heavily armored ride.
"That was one of the key factors in designing Gotham City," Ginn said. "It needed to be a playground that fulfills that fantasy of driving that iconic vehicle.
"[After Arkham City,] we were thinking about, 'Where do we go next? How do we fulfill that ultimate Batman power fantasy?'" he explained. "For us, the Batmobile was the final piece of the puzzle. We've been wanting to do it for a long time, but really needed next-gen horsepower to pull that off."
"It changes Batman's abilities in every conceivable way," Ginn said. "We didn't want the Batmobile to feel like a bolted-on driving section, we wanted it to feel completely integrated into Batman's move set in every single way. It augments his ability to move through the city, his navigational abilities, his offensive abilities, his defensive abilities. Every feature of the Batmobile has been designed to integrate with Batman's move set in a very particular way."
Using the Batmobile, Batman can move through the city at previously unseen speeds. He can engage in car-to-car combat, taking out enemy vehicles with "immobilizer missiles" and powerful sideswipes. The Batmobile is also at the core of new driving-based Riddler challenges, a blend of high-speed obstacle courses and driving puzzles.
Rocksteady appears cognizant of the Batmobile's tricky integration into the Arkham series' tried and true, freeform movement. They're making the Batmobile a thing of convenience. Simply call the car in with the press of the left shoulder button and it will come to meet you. Batman will simply hop into the driver's seat, making getting in and out pretty seamless.
Batman's car also augments his more familiar method of traversal: flying through Gotham City using a combination of gliding and grapple gun slingshotting. When driving the Batmobile, players have the option to launch Batman from the driver's seat quickly into the air, using his inertia to propel him high into the sky. Batman's grapple gun has gotten an extra boost as well, allowing him to latch onto buildings from greater distances. One of the gun's best new features adds a reversal move; with it, Batman can perform a quick, 180 degree turnaround while maintaining his flight speed.
Arkham Knight introduces another concept that makes Batman an even more formidable vigilante: gadgets while gliding. As he flies through Gotham City, he can deploy certain gadgets mid-flight. Rocksteady demonstrated how Batman could use his line launcher — the tightrope-firing gadget that provides him with an instant perch — in mid-glide. Ginn said Rocksteady is keeping some "gadgets while gliding" features secret for now, but confirmed that Batman will be now able to toss batarangs from the air.
Batman has a handful of new tricks in hand-to-hand combat, one of the Arkham series' most lauded components. He can perform throw counters, tossing an enemy into another enemy, and disarm foes, then snatch their melee weapons for his own use. Environmental counters are also in play. Batman can, for example, smash a thug's head into a nearby electrical panel to quickly disable him.
Rocksteady also showed off a new move, the "fear takedown." The takedown can be used in stealth situations to incapacitate multiple enemies — particularly heavily armed thugs — in the span of a second, reducing the amount of laborious one-by-one takedowns required when players aimed for stealthiness in previous games.
Batman: Arkham Knight's other major addition to the franchise comes in the form of an all-new enemy. While the Scarecrow appears to play a major role in the game's conflict, it's the eponymous Arkham Knight who will serve as Batman's mysterious new adversary. Ginn called the Arkham Knight, an original character created for the game, "very significant," but chose to keep his identity and importance secret for now.
Whatever the Arkham Knight's role, he'll close out what the game's developer refers to as the "Arkham Rocksteady trilogy."
"This is it. We are closing the book on Arkham and using the power of next-gen," Ginn said. Rocksteady's "epic conclusion" comes to PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One sometime later this year.
Who else? Are you referring to the dude in charge of Drive Club?
Rocksteady explains why Batman: Arkham Knight could only work on PS4, Xbox One and PC and is giving Wii U, Xbox 360 and PS3 a pass.
In an interview with NowGamer, Rocksteady's Dax Ginn explained that the decision to release Batman: Arkham Knight on PS4, Xbox One and PC and not Wii U, PS3 and Xbox 360, was made in response to the question: "what do we have to do to make the Batmobile work?".
"It was the one thing we hadn’t done," Ginn explained. "Once we decided we were going to commit to the Batmobile, all these other technical decisions were made for us."
"We knew that we had to do it right – the imagination of the experience of driving the Batmobile that people have is that it’s fast, that it’s destructive, it’s kind of a tank in Gotham City, but it’s also highly technical – all of those things can only be done on next-gen," said Ginn.
We asked Ginn whether this means that Arkham Knight is a game that just wouldn't have worked on PS3 and Xbox 360.
"Not in the way that people imagine it. It’s the power fantasy of driving this legendary vehicle; if it can only do a top speed of 25 mph that’s not the power fantasy and that’s why we couldn’t have done that previously," Ginn responded.
We followed up with Ginn to ask whether that's the same issue that's arisen with the Wii U, whether the console doesn't have the power for Rocksteady to do what they wanted with Arkham Knight.
"We have to make our technology choices specifically with reference to the gameplay objectives that we want, so we choose the platforms that are going to give us that," said Ginn.
For more on Batman: Arkham Knight, the game's new villain and the Batmobile, check out our full interview with Rocksteady's Dax Ginn.
Microsoft is getting "closer and closer" to launching the Kinect for Windows v2, according to a post on the official Kinect for Windows Blog, which offers a first look at the new hardware and its components.
The sensor's design is similar to that of the Kinect for Xbox One. It sports a "Kinect" on the top panel and a conservative power indicator replacing the console's Xbox Nexus branding.
The new sensor requires hub and the power supply to operate. The hub can support three connections, including the sensor, USB 3.0 output to PC and power, while the power supply supports voltages from 100-240 volts.
Developed with a shared set of technologies as the console version, the new Kinect features higher fidelity with an HD color camera and a noise-isolating multi-microphone array to filter ambient sounds. Microsoft's proprietary Time-of-Flight technology, an expanded field of view, improved skeletal tracking and new active infrared are also integrated into the second version.
Director of Kinect for Windows, Bob Heddle, revealed last May that the new-generation Kinect sensor was set to launch in 2014 shortly after Microsoft confirmed its existence the day of the Xbox One's reveal.
"Just as the new Kinect sensor will bring opportunities for revolutionizing gaming and entertainment, the new Kinect for Windows sensor will revolutionize computing experiences," Heddle wrote at the time.
Development studio Apache recently released a video of a face swap demo experimenting with some of the Kinect for Windows v2 sensor and SDK features.
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- Source
- Kinect for Windows
Following Amazon's acquisition of Killer Instinct developer Double Helix Games last month, publisher Microsoft Studios brought a new developer onto the title, one well-versed in fighting games: Iron Galaxy Studios. We spoke with Dave Lang, CEO of Iron Galaxy, about a project he characterized as "probably the biggest thing we've ever done."
"This is an amazing opportunity to work on a game and a genre we are super passionate about," said Lang during a phone interview with Polygon last week. Iron Galaxy's fighting pedigree includes 2011's Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike Online Edition and 2013's Divekick.
"Before we were ever talking about this, I was a fan of the game. And to get to now take it over and start with this great base, and expand it and put new stuff on top of it, everyone in the company is super pumped up, and we can't wait to show people what we're going to be doing down the road," Lang continued.
Double Helix is currently finishing up Killer Instinct's first season of content. That includes the season's eighth and final add-on character, the cyborg knight Fulgore, whom you can see in the new trailer below. Fulgore will be released on April 9 in a long-awaited title update that will also add Arcade Mode and online lobbies featuring eight-player rooms and spectating functionality.
While doing all of that, the company has been helping to bring Iron Galaxy up to speed on Killer Instinct, which runs on proprietary technology that Double Helix developed, the Hex engine. According to Lang, approximately 10 individuals from his studio flew out to Irvine, Calif.-based Double Helix earlier this month and spent a week there to familiarize themselves with the company's existing development tools and pipelines.
"This is a brand-new engine, this is a brand-new process, and we're just coming to terms with what's possible," Lang explained.
The One That Got Away
Iron Galaxy Studios was founded in Chicago in August 2008, and the company opened a second office in Orlando, Fla., in August 2012. Lang told Polygon that when Microsoft Studios was shopping around the Killer Instinct intellectual property a while back, Iron Galaxy pitched itself as a company that could take on the long-running fighting game franchise. But at the time, the studio was already working on its first original game, the Xbox Live Arcade title Wreckateer, and didn't have the team size to handle both projects simultaneously.
"I was always kind of bummed out about it," said Lang. "It's, like, the one that got away."
Then, about four months ago, he got a call from Microsoft. At that point, Lang wasn't aware of Amazon's plans to buy Double Helix, so Microsoft filled him in, explained that it was looking to transition Killer Instinct to a new developer and asked if he was still interested.
"I immediately jumped at it. There's nothing we were going to not do to work on it next," said Lang.
At the same time, Lang felt some trepidation about "[stepping] on another developer's toes." He wondered if the people at Double Helix would harbor some resentment toward the studio replacing them on a game they built from the ground up into a successful reboot of a long-dormant series. But Double Helix and Microsoft have had an "amicable parting of ways," said Lang, adding that the studio has been "really good at handing off stuff to us and giving us a push."
"It's been a privilege to work with our partners at Microsoft to help bring back Killer Instinct. Throughout production, we've been inspired by players and fans to make KI the best it can be. Now, we're excited to join that community, eager to see what the talented team at Iron Galaxy turns loose for season 2," said a Double Helix representative in a statement to Polygon.
What's Next?
Lang declined to speak with any specificity about the future plans that Microsoft and Iron Galaxy have for Killer Instinct. But he did confirm that his studio won't be turning the game — which was received well, perhaps surprisingly, upon its release as an Xbox One-exclusive launch title — into something completely different. He noted that Iron Galaxy likely wouldn't have signed on if the people at the studio weren't already big fans of what Double Helix accomplished. The way he sees it, the studio "destroyed" its two main goals: to make a "tournament-credible" fighting game and make it accessible at the same time.
"If we were going to work on this game and go, 'Oh, we want to change everything,' if we were in that position, it'd be a mess. I’m not sure if we would have taken the gig," said Lang. "What they have is not [broken]. What they have is amazing, and it's good, and we just want to layer new stuff on top of that that keeps the pace intact."
Since its inception in 2008, Iron Galaxy has made a name for itself largely by pitching in on other studios' projects, often by providing consulting for specific implementations of technology such as Unreal Engine 3 on PlayStation 3. The developers there also have a lot of experience working on fighting games, including the Online Edition of Street Fighter 3 3rd Strike: Fight for the Future, 2012's Marvel vs. Capcom Origins, 2013's Darkstalkers Resurrection and Divekick, which was the studio's second original project.
Lang told Polygon that Microsoft Studios has built "a big internal team" to support Killer Instinct and that he's been really happy with the publisher's approach, because the people there understand Iron Galaxy's strengths and are letting the studio do things its own way.
"The thing I like about working with Microsoft is, once they get what you're about, they don't try to make you do stuff you're not comfortable with," said Lang. "They could have [come] in and they could have been like, 'Listen, here's — we're going to do X, Y and Z because we know that works, blah, blah, blah.' They didn't do that at all, and, because of that, that makes the pressure of working on something this big, it makes it bearable."
Lang believes that Iron Galaxy's particular history — its experience as a tech-first studio and a team of fighting game fanatics — makes the company poised to succeed now with Killer Instinct, and Microsoft's hands-off attitude helps a lot.
"This is now a title with some prestige. This is, like, probably — I think it's probably the biggest thing we've ever done, like, the most important game we've ever worked on," said Lang. "I feel like, as a company, we've been doing a lot of really cool work to get to this point, and I think this is our chance to shine."
When CryTek was tasked with creating visually stunning game for the Xbox One, they found themselves with a problem to solve: how to create an experience that would show off the graphical fidelity of the console on a weaker hardware than their usual PC target?
The technology and solutions they used were explained in depth during a panel at the Game Developers Conference titled “Moving to the Next Generation – The Rendering Technology of Ryse”, hosted by Senior Rendering Engineer Nicolas Schulz.
Here’s what we learned from the panel:
- The project had a small team of rendering engineers fully dedicated to the game.
- It was designed as a “visual showcase” for the Xbox One from the get go despite the fact that the target hardware was less powerful than the usual PC target CryTek used.
- This created a major challenge: How can you still get people excited for next-gen visuals?
- Since Crysis 3 was already a visually rich game just adding more visual fidelity wasn’t an option on weaker hardware, and post processing was already maxed in the previous generation. That pushed CryTek to focus on the details instead, like shading, material definition, lighting quality and global illumination effects.
- Physically Based Shading was used for the game, creating an interaction between light and materials similar to the real world. This had considerable implications as it enforced a plausible material model and defined clear rules for assets, enhancing consistency across the board. It also involved More complex BRDFs (bidirectional reflectance distribution function), Fresnel, normalization of specular highlights, energy conservation in general.
- The lighting model was especially affected as the developer had to be careful to preserve material integrity.
- The Oren-nayar model was used for BDRF, as it takes in account retro-reflection based on surface roughness. It improves quality for rough materials like stone, but it still offers similar results to the traditional Lambertian model for smooth materials.
- To enable deferred shading the team started from the code of Crysis 2.
- Initially Forward+ rendering with MSAA anti-aliasing was considered, but then the team decided to go with Deferred rendering for most materials and Forward+ only with materials with specific shading requirements like hair and eyes. Forward+ remains an interesting option for future development.
- Physically Based Shading is very prone to specular aliasing, and that was fixed by applying a variance filter in screen space, that also helps on thin, highly reflective geometry.
- Unfortunately the filter created noticeable outline artifact. It was partly fixed by reducing specular reflectance for dielectrics, but ultimately the team decided that temporal stability was more relevant than the additional artifacts.
- No analytical light models for direct lighting were used in Ryse, as the scenario doesn’t include artificial light sources.
- Indirect lighting was made using localized environment probes augmented by screen space reflections. Ambient lights were used to break uniformity.
- There are around 100 probes per level. Specular cubemaps are 256×256 pixels.
- To avoid flat ambient, CryTek added multiplicative “ambient light” sources applied on top of probes.
Without ambient lights
- Glossy real time local reflections were implemented via screen space reflections, that were first used in the DirectX 11 version of Crysis 2.
- They were further evolved in Ryse to work with materials of different roughness.
- Simple raytracing is performed to get mirror reflections. Convolved versions of the reflections and alpha are built by repeated downsampling and gaussian filtering. This is cheaper and simpler than Voxel cone tracing and gives slightly lesser results.
Facial rendering was an extremely important part of Ryse, especially due to the high amount of cutscenes, and raising the quality of characters was one of the designated project goals.
- It relied largely on general improvements of lighting and shading, with specific solutions implemented for facial features.
- The standard BDRF is more advanced than the one used for the Nvidia Human Head demo.
- Subsurface Scattering was used to simulate skin translucency. It was optimized for skin, but was also used for marble.
Subsurface Scattering Disabled
Subsurface Scattering Enabled
- Skin translucency also shared an unified solutions with foliage, showing the light bleeding through ears and nostrils.
- Density and thickness were specified by the artists via translucency maps.
With advanced facial rendering equally advanced hair rendering is required, and CryTek researched the topic intensively.
- Kajiya-Kay model was used instead of Marschner because it’s cheaper and still works well, as hair rendering can be very performance intensive.
- A direction map specifying the hair tangent was deemed essential for quality.
- The main challenge for hair was avoiding aliasing and making it look smooth, especially for individual facial hair and beards.
- Alpha tested hair can look wiry, while alpha blended hair is smooth, but has well-known shortcomings, including sorting issues (it blurs with the background), and it requires forward shading.
- Using high MSAA anti-aliasing was not feasible on consoles for real-time rendering.
- Fully alpha blended hair was selected, and a new “Thin Hair” feature was created. The issues were solved via a “depth fixup” pass, by combining it with approximated alpha tested depth values.
- Forward+ rendering was used and shading was applied using a light list generated during tiled shading.
The much discussed rendering resolution and upscaling were also explained:
- Scene rendering is done at 900p, which is the sweet spot between quality per pixel and number of pixels
- Swapchain backbuffer (all in-game UI and menus) is rendered at 1080p, as text is very prone to upscaling artifacts.
- The scene gets upscaled after rendering using a custom upscaling pass, since CryTek hadn’t yet evaluated the Xbox One’s hardware upscaler.
Finally, an enormous static shadow map is generated only once when each level loads or when transitioning to a different area, taking advantage of the increased memory of the Xbox One. It includes all the static objects in the level and avoids re-rendering distant objects with every frame. The shadow map is 8192×8192 16 bit, weighs 128 mb and covers an 1 square kilometer area of the game’s world, providing sufficient resolution. This saves between 40 and 60% draw calls in shadow map passes.
One thing is for sure: despite being a launch game, Ryse is still one of the most visually impressive titles of the generation. It’s no surprise that compromises had to be made here and there, but the results are definitely pleasing. If you want to see how the game looks with and without some of the effects mentioned above, you can check it out here. For further reference you can find the slides of the presentation here.
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