GDC Demo - Chinatown
by Eric Preisz · 03/16/2010 (11:09 pm) · 48 comments
We saved the best for last. In the last blog, we showed off Sector, a few other screenshots, and the looping video that we played at our booth. But Chinatown, developed by Luma Arcade and assisted by our internal studio, raises the bar for what's doable in Torque 3D. One of the reasons is our deferred lighting system
Deferring lighting reduces the amount of work that occurs in your pixel shading hardware. And if you follow Richard Huddy of ATI ( formerly NVIDIA ), as I've done over the past ten years, then you know that any interesting GPU bound game at any reasonable resolution is likely bound by pixel work. In shader model 4.0 cards, the pixel and vertex hardware is unified. So if your game is limited by pixel performance then you are also probably going to sacrifice vertex count as well. By performing the lighting last, you only perform expensive lighting operations on pixels that will actually contribute to the final picture. The fastest pixel shader is the one that never runs.
Luma designed Chinatown to show our lighting on their great art. There are hundreds of lights scattered through out this city. Awesome!
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#2
03/16/2010 (11:38 pm)
Sure, we will add some video. Wanted to get these up ASAP. 
#3
03/16/2010 (11:45 pm)
Also how about some super high resolution screenshot? Nothing screams nexgen like 720p~1080p resolution screenshots :)
#4
03/17/2010 (12:01 am)
Awesome, great screen shots and video from previous blog, impatiently waiting for more video! 
#5
03/17/2010 (12:12 am)
Excellent work there. Shadows and lighting are superb! 
#6
03/17/2010 (2:21 am)
WOW, stunning, I can't say anything else !!! Ah yes, we can be proud to own this engine ^^ 
#7
Any chance to see that in realtime? Maybe in a browser?
03/17/2010 (3:58 am)
The best graphics is worthless with 5 fps. Performance has the highest priority.Any chance to see that in realtime? Maybe in a browser?
#8
Also I second the video and may be playable browser demo requests. :)))
03/17/2010 (4:31 am)
Looks good. But I think levels lucks of details a little bit, like dirt between border and the road or on the down side of the walls, some papers on the sideways, may be a little bit of different junk or very small rocks. Although it still looks very good, small details would make it more believable I think. Anyway nice work. :)Also I second the video and may be playable browser demo requests. :)))
#9
03/17/2010 (5:45 am)
@Thomas: I played with it in the booth for a bit, as did a number of people, and the performance was very playable...
#10
03/17/2010 (7:11 am)
We were able to get the demo to run around 30 Hz on a fairly beefy machine. We did very little to optimize so we are expecting that after some tuning we will be able to target 30 Hz on lower end machines and 60 Hz on a high end spec. We would need to finish the optimization before we could send it into the wild. 
#11
where is the racing kit? they appear to have caught the ADD bug that GG used to be so famous for.
03/17/2010 (7:22 am)
I see all of these great things that Luma arcade is working on. Everything except what we were told a year or so that they were going to deliver...where is the racing kit? they appear to have caught the ADD bug that GG used to be so famous for.
#12
edit: also on the last image on the flikr reel the normals on the brick are flipped the wrong way.
03/17/2010 (7:48 am)
well up until a few days ago the racing kit was listed on Lumas web page for Q2 2010, and to be fair they never promised a specific release date just that it was under developmentedit: also on the last image on the flikr reel the normals on the brick are flipped the wrong way.
#13
Will this demo be publicly accessible at some point in the future?
03/17/2010 (7:59 am)
Hey very cool shots there.Will this demo be publicly accessible at some point in the future?
#15
The Normal map seems to be correct for me.
Sometimes lighter edges can fake an illusion of a wrong bump.
03/17/2010 (10:03 am)
@ Ken JohnstonThe Normal map seems to be correct for me.
Sometimes lighter edges can fake an illusion of a wrong bump.
#16
03/17/2010 (10:14 am)
hmm, perhaps, still looks a little weird, its like the HZ grout lines are popping out instead of in, still very awesome screenshots great work LUMA!
#17
The overall feel of this game reminds me of Dark Sector
03/17/2010 (10:42 am)
I think the environments look like its been rushed out. Like people said above, some scenes look real empty. I think also there seems to be a lack of normal maps within the scene making it not feel as nexgen. You might want to consider making the level more graphic intensive to truly test the power of Torque 3D. The overall feel of this game reminds me of Dark Sector
#18
03/17/2010 (11:17 am)
you have to also realize this is a tech demo not a game, so it being empty makes sense as it accomplishes the intent which is to demonstrate the power of the deferred rendering and the lighting abilities of the engine with professional AAA quality assets 
#19
03/17/2010 (11:26 am)
Sweet. Waiting for the video and the download soon. 
#20
With regards to optimizations...are these coming in the form of modifications to the Torque 3D source code or is it more of an asset optimization path?
If the optimizations are being implemented as mods to the Torque source...then will those mods become a permanent part of the T3D product?
Thanks
--RB
03/17/2010 (11:45 am)
@Eric...sweet pix.With regards to optimizations...are these coming in the form of modifications to the Torque 3D source code or is it more of an asset optimization path?
If the optimizations are being implemented as mods to the Torque source...then will those mods become a permanent part of the T3D product?
Thanks
--RB
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