RIGS released!
Date
October 12, 2016
Views
155 Views
Reading Time
< 1 Min Read
Finally, it is here! RIGS, a PlayStation 4 title exclusive for the Morpheus headset, has been released. Working on this game was an amazing experience, having to create a game in parallel with the hardware being developed (and being told “Don’t drop it, there’s only four of those in the world”). In addition to the performance challenges (the game needed to run at a rock-solid 60FPS to make the best use of Morpheus’ reprojection technology), there were a number of areas where we just had to drop the traditional way of doing it as it doesn’t translate well in VR, such as HUDs having to be embedded in the cockpit or making sure that cutscenes never rotated the player.
Implementing 3D audio with FMOD
Date
September 9, 2015
Views
154 Views
Reading Time
2 Mins Read
One of the great things about FMOD is its ability to play sounds in 3D space, internally handling all the details of panning, volume rolloff and Doppler effects without requiring too much trouble from the developer’s side. I’ve recently started adding sound effects to Tannhauser and I’d like to share with other people some of the problems I’ve had – perhaps it will save someone a bit of time. Setting up the listener The listener is the player’s “head” in 3D space. It is setup by calling set3DListenerAttributes() and receives a position, a velocity, as well as a forward and up vectors. However, make sure that the forward and up vectors are normalised: due to a bug in my code the forward vector hadn’t been normalised and it was causing the sounds to always play at full volume from both speakers. 3D sounds are initially placed at the listener If a 3D sound is created without being set to start paused, it will begin playing at the listener’s location. Even if the sound’s 3D attributes are set immediately afterwards, you’ll likely still get a noticeable “pop” as the sound starts playing and gets relocated. To avoid this, create the sound as initially paused, set the attributes and then unpause it. Minimum sound instance distance Setting the minimum distance on a channel allows us to define how audible the sound is as you get further away from it. Something I am currently playing with, however, is having different minimum distances for the player and for other ships, making the player’s actions more noticeable in the chaos of battle. Too many active sounds There are explosions in Tannhausers. Lots of explosions. On a bad day, there are over fifteen ships all flinging large amounts of missiles, torpedoes and other fun things at…
August development highlights
Date
August 25, 2015
Views
159 Views
Reading Time
3 Mins Read
With having to split time between programming the game, creating the art assets and trying to get the game out there while juggling a family and a full time job, time is a rare commodity these days! To try and make more progress in the actual game, I’m starting a monthly column of development highlights, showcasing the new stuff that is making its way into the game. Requisition system Until now, the player was always given three gunships to assist him, which was extremely useful in the beginning of the game as it provided a way to even the odds against hostile fleets. However, as a game progressed, the allied ships would become less as less useful as the player began tackling harder factions, the little gunships finding themselves turned into space dust without really contributing anything to the battle. The new requisition system targets this issue. As the player is part of a greater Empire, he can now request that the Imperial Headquarters provides additional ships to his fleet. This bringing a kind of currency to the game, Requisition Units, which can be earned both by conquering sectors and by keeping them under Imperial control. No longer constrained to gunships, the player can now bring Imperial battlecruisers and battleships to his fleet. Missile interceptors In Tannhauser there are several kinds of weapons but of all of them, missiles in their many variants can be some of the most difficult to counter. Particularly as the size of ships grows larger and armour gets heavier, dodging out of the way of torpedoes becomes as difficult as negotiating the Greek bailout. To assist a Captain who finds himself on the wrong side of missile barrages, the new missile interceptor module has been added, which will attempt to shoot down nearby missiles as long as there is enough…
Killzone Shadow Fall – Intercept
Date
June 9, 2014
Views
152 Views
Reading Time
< 1 Min Read
Something that we’ve been working at for a while at Guerrilla Games is a DLC for Shadow Fall, called Intercept. This adds a new game mode where the player fights cooperatively (with three other players) against the Helghast hordes, having to keep uplink connections active as the enemy waves become harder and harder. This game was created a join effort between Guerrilla Games Cambridge and Amsterdam and it truly makes for a brilliant multiplayer experience which is vastly different from any of the other game modes. Oh, and you can use jetpacks. And call for artillery strikes (which was quite fun to implement, by the way). What’s there not to like? “BOOM-shakalaka!”… yes I’m aware no one says that while they’re playing. Usually there’s also more swearing involved.
And we’ve shipped!
Date
September 12, 2013
Views
148 Views
Reading Time
< 1 Min Read
After much work from the Cambridge team and many days spent implementing all sorts of special abilities, tweaking the radar and optimising data packets to make our multiplayer run smoothly, Killzone: Mercenary is finally out there! Single player campaign, multiplayer (8 players!) over wireless and 6 maps to start with, it is by far the finest first person shooter on a mobile platform.
Killzone: Mercenary revealed
Date
August 15, 2012
Views
154 Views
Reading Time
< 1 Min Read
And here is, at last, the game which I have been working on for the past several months! Killzone: Mercenary is a first person shooter for Sony’s VITA, being developed by Sony Cambridge. The linked trailer is just a teaser for the time being, but it certainly gives an idea of the level of quality we are aiming for.
