Of all the games currently in development, there are a few which visually blow the rest out of the park. Star Citizen is one, but another more firmly rooted to the ground, is Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Those who like to get an early look at such games will finally be able to see if the gameplay backs up the aesthetics soon too, as it’s getting a beta release in Q1 2016.
Although originally set for a beta launch towards the end of this year, developer Warhorse pushed things back to give it a little more time to polish things up and instil all of the major features. When released, the beta will include all of the core gameplay mechanics, like first person combat, a few quests from the main story, a small-scale battle (as per PCG) and around 20 per cent of the final game map.
This was all explained in the latest developer diary from the company, which also introduced a new crime system to the game.
It is expected that following the beta Warhorse will have all of the game’s core systems in place and from there it will continue to refine them and further develop the story, which has a couple thousand pages of screenplay to work with already. That means there’s a lot of voice over to record too. It’s a big job, but the game is coming along well it seems.
Kingdom Come Deliverance Gets SVOGI On/Off Comparison; Performance Hit Is Minimal
Kingdom Come Deliverance, due in Summer 2016 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, is a roleplaying game set in the medieval Kingdom of Bohemia. Powered by CRYENGINE and developed by Warhorse Studios (a Czech studio formed by industry veterans), it was successfully kickstarted in January 2014 with £1,106,371 in pledges.
Backers have had access to the Alpha for some time already. One of them, YouTube user Vlad4D, shared a video of Kingdom Come Deliverance Alpha 0.5, which added support for SVOGI; the video shows a number of different scenes with SVOGI disabled and then enabled.
According to him, enabling SVOGI in Kingdom Come Deliverance costs as little as 3FPS (or 6% performance hit).
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We have previously reported on Miscreated, the first released CRYENGINE game to use this feature (though War of the Rights, still in development, is also using it). Hopefully more games will use it – developers have been waiting for quite some time to get a fairly cheap Global Illumination technique.
If you want to know more about CRYENGINE’s SVOGI, here’s some excerpts from the technical documents prepared by Crytek about how it works and its current limitations/issues. Overview
This GI solution is based on voxel ray tracing and provides following effects:
Dynamic indirect light bounce from static and most of dynamic objects.
Large scale AO and indirect shadows from static geometry (vegetation, brushes and terrain).
Works without pre-baking and does not require manual setup of many bounce lights or light volumes.
How It Works
First we prepare voxel representation of the scene geometry (at run-time, on CPU, asynchronously and incrementally).
Every frame on GPU we trace thousands of rays through the voxels (and shadow maps) in order to gather occlusion and in-directional lighting.
Note: Current default configuration provides only diffuse GI, for specular we still need light probes. System may be used as AO add-on to light probes or may completely replace diffuse contribution of light probes.
Current Limitations
Large scale AO and indirect shadows may be cast properly only by static geometry.
GI is not working on some forward rendering components like particles or water.
Some artifacts like ghosting, aliasing, light leaking and noise may be noticeable in some cases.
Procedural vegetation and merged vegetation do not cast occlusion or secondary shadows.
Clouds shadow does not affect sun light bounce.
Mesh (CGF) streaming and object layers run-time activation are not supported yet, objects may be missing in voxelization.
If camera was teleported to completely new location it may take up to few seconds until occlusion is working properly.
Only objects and materials with enabled shadow map casting may produce proper bounced light.
For dynamic objects indirect light bounce is working only in the areas near voxelized static geometry.
Bounce light may have noticeable delay of 1-2 frames.
r_Supersampling=2 makes GI look strange but setting Low spec mode 1 or 2 pretty much restores the look and speed.
Another day, another game with problems because of consoles. This time, it's Kingdom Come: Deliverance, from Warhorse Studios - which is expected to hit the PC in the summer.
Well, the developer is talks with publishers, and it looks like the PC version of the game might be held back to accommodate the release of the console version of the game. Warhorse Studios' PR manager, Tobias Stolz-Zwiling talked with Eurogamer, where he said: "The idea was to release the game in the summer and then to follow up with the console versions. Right now we are still indie developers but we are in negotiations with publishers to, well, we need someone to bring the games into the shops, so we need a distributor, and he kind of wants us to synch it with the console versions. We are still in negotiations, we will see".
Tobias continued, adding: "Best case for you will be summer this year for the PC version and then with the follow-up for consoles; or if the publisher wants us to synch it we will release everything let's say by the end of the year, so we will see about that". So it looks like the PC version could be held back - but it's up to the publisher. With publishers standing in front of the developer, they're going to want to make as much money as possible -as that's their job. Now, if this happens, it means Kingdom Come: Deliverance will be delayed - so that the PC version (which will look way better) won't be released before the console version (which won't look as good). Marketing, yeah.
New Screenshots From Kingdom Come: Deliverance Beta Revealed
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is easily one of the most interesting games on the horizon right now, with its promise of an epic story, as well as rich game mechanics that should give the RGB gaming scene the realism it desires the most. To get you in the mood for the game, the team at Warhorse Studios will be launching a beta phase tomorrow, allowing people to get hands-on with the game and see what it is really made of.
In celebration of the upcoming beta of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, six new screenshots have been released and wow, do they look fantastic! Without a doubt, the games graphics engine can really impress, and we can’t wait to see what kind of hardware it takes to get to the level shown off in the images. The world looks very nicely detailed, with a great lighting engine, lots of realistic characters and so much more. With The Witcher 3 having given us a fantastic RPG world to explore, the pressure is certainly on for this game to do well.
“A humble, young blacksmith loses everything to war. As he tries to fulfill the dying wish of his father, Fate drags him into the thick of a conspiracy to save a kidnapped king and stop a bloody conflict. You will wander the world, fighting as a knight, lurking in the shadows as a rogue, or using the bard’s charm to persuade people to your cause. You will dive deep into a sweeping, epic, nonlinear story from Daniel Vávra, an award-winning designer from the Mafia series. Our unique, first-person combat system lets you wield sword or bow in both one-on-one skirmishes and large-scale battles. All of this – and more – brought to life beautifully with next-genvisuals delivered via CryEngine 3.” – Warhorse Studios
The new beta will be the first introduction to the game’s story, as well as the bulk of the game mechanics, and a bigger map than was made available in the games alpha stage. Even better, the new beta will give us the first important key battle/siege, new weapons and maybe even more!
We thought it was coming, and now the day is here - Kingdom Come: Deliverance has been delayed, with consoles to blame. Developer Warhorse Studios wants a simultaneous release on consoles and PCs, and has delayed the PC version of the game so it can do just that.
PR manager Tobias Stolz-Zwiling said earlier this month: "The idea was to release the game in the summer and then to follow up with the console versions. Right now we are still indie developers but we are in negotiations with publishers to, well, we need someone to bring the games into the shops, so we need a distributor, and he kind of wants us to synch it with the console versions. We are still in negotiations, we will see. Best case for you will be summer this year for the PC version and then with the follow-up for consoles; or if the publisher wants us to synch it we will release everything let's say by the end of the year, so we will see about that".
But now Polygon is reporting that Kingdom Come: Deliverance has been delayed, so that Warhorse can release the game onto the consoles and the PC at the same time.
A ver assim, parece algo tao tecnico e nao-intuitivo, capaz de quebrar a imersão. No entanto, continuo a achar que o Skyrim vai encostar às boxes quando este chegar...
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