![]() "Raycasts are the major contributor to the CPU load, and even across cores we can't compete at a processing level with the SPUs," says Porter. ![]() The PS3's SPU-driven AI code again found a home distributed across the three available Vita ARM cores, though a special emphasis was placed on optimisation. While new NPC types are added to the game, the core systems powering your opponents are identical and, as Porter puts it, "all previous behaviours are supported out of the box". One of the defining elements of the Killzone experience is the AI, and Guerrilla Cambridge was keen to retain the same code for the Vita version. "The major additions have been mechanics built upon the touchscreen - for example, the front-end interactions, melee combat and the hacking game, the vanguard mechanics and the backend economy system." How the Killzone tech was downscaled for Vita "At a game level, again many of the core components of a Killzone game remain untouched and worked pretty much out-the-box on Vita," he says. Overall, he is keen to point out that the key systems that define the Killzone experience are virtually unchanged from their implementation on PlayStation 3. Porter also describes how further opportunities to run the Killzone codebase over multiple cores were explored, and also says that model-skinning - a task carried out on SPU on PS3 - was actually ported to the Vita's graphics chip for Mercenary. the engine supports multiple build targets - PlayStation 3 and PC - so extending to a third platform was relatively painless." Do you want to remain relatively spoiler-free on Killzone: Mercenary while still getting a decent idea of the game's performance level? Here's a lightly edited run-through of the game's first single-player campaign mission. "Killzone: Mercenary is built on top of the Killzone 3 codebase and, at a structural level, much of the framework is identical. Over time, we've migrated most of the original SPU jobs onto the Vita cores and returned back to a fully asynchronous model." That's obviously a lot slower, but provided the hook for a custom job manager on Vita. "We started with the PC framework as reference here: SPU job deployment is modelled as a synchronous process on that platform, with the actual task functionality identical to the PS3. "Obviously a major difference is the absence of SPUs in the hardware, so parallelism models have shifted to utilise the three cores," Porter affirms. Up against the six SPUs and the PPU of the PS3's Cell chip, that's a significant difference to address. ![]() Sony's handheld has a quad-core ARM Cortex A9 processor, but one of those cores is reserved for the operating system and security, leaving three for game developers. With the bombshell dropped that Killzone 3 could conceivably be ported to PC (and presumably more readily adaptable for PlayStation 4), Porter goes on to explain how the engine was adapted to suit the multi-core set-up of the Vita. We've retained the physics model (Havok) but have had to migrate much of the animation system to a new framework - a Sony Computer Entertainment internal library which had seen major revision since KZ3 shipped." "At the lower hardware-interfacing levels, rendering, audio, network and control-system layers have seen most revision, as would be expected. It's been a long and evolutionary process to get from first drop of the source to finished game. "Out of the box, the engine supports multiple build targets - PlayStation 3 and PC - so extending to a third platform was relatively painless. "Killzone: Mercenary is built on top of the Killzone 3 codebase and, at a structural level, much of the framework is identical," he tells us. Uncharted: Golden Abyss captured that feeling, and now Killzone: Mercenary makes its case as the definitive article.įrom a technological perspective, we simply had to find out more, so we spoke to Guerrilla Cambridge about the game's development, making a number of remarkable discoveries in the process - not least the fact that the Killzone 3 engine was actually built to run on multiple platforms, as technical director Matt Porter explains. Remember that feeling when you first played Ridge Racer on PSP? It's the feeling that you're playing a game that has no right to look this good on mobile hardware the sensation that you're getting a full-fat console game running in the palm of your hand. Out now in Europe and days away from its US launch, Killzone: Mercenary for PlayStation Vita is undoubtedly one of the most technologically impressive mobile games on the market, and the first truly worthwhile first-person shooter for Sony's portable games machine.
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