Press doubts

Rrrright, so, first press release out and you read good comments and bad ones of course.
Most of all I'd like to clarify on thing: screenshots are from the TECH DEMO.
A little "testbed" track, not even full-featured as it's NOT its purpose to be "playable" at this very stage. A style, technology, prototype; a comparison paradigm on how to build the actual game.

I've seen some quality jokes on some forums about the graphics being next-gen or not...good fun! :) And I'm not even surprised someone might judge those screenshots as "poor".
One thing I can assure you though: even today, you should see it running. :)

If it runs smoothly on a current mid-level PC, with those specs we released, it's not because it isn't next-gen, it's because we can fit all that stuff using less resources than others, at full quality.

So, present PC/consoles owners should be happy as they'll not be asked to take details *that* down, and hardcore gamers will get far more stuff than other next-gen games can possibly fit on a video card/console memory.

Yes you should see the tech-demo running but I think that won't happen in some time.
But...we might get to convince those skeptics when vehicles' screenshots will be out as well.
This is a new racer guys, no matter how it looks like a WipeOut clone - right now. There's not only speed, there's combat in a totally different way.
It's not your bullets following the track, it's real combat.
It's not just like "ups and downs" on a track, couple of tunnels and a high jump...it's the track's ALIVE.

How? Too soon to say. ;)

The GPU war

Just some thoughts on the recent "word-war" played lately by Nvidia and Ati regarding their respective counterpart. As usual, and as it normally happens in business especially at their level, both companies push their product against their direct competitor...publishing benchmarks, breaking published benchmarks (ironic), "leaking" Mature-rated internal presentations..and so on.

Well, we clearly support (read: "optimize for") Nvidia...as many logos here and there on our website demonstrate. But the real point here is that, till now, Nvidia supported us as well. (I bet you can spot the reciprocal sense of this sentence :))
In this "bi-polar" boards' market developers MUST support and test their applications and games for both manufacturers... and I can assure you we would love to!

While Ati in its "public-confidential" slides cries over the "Nvidia optimized Doom3" (...and I imagine rivers of tears for the Unreal3 Engine - GeForce 6800 presentation)... they actually seem to care much less for developers - at least from our perspective.
How do we know? No, no, it's not because we are registered Ati developers and we know things from within the very heart of Ati...nothing like that.

It's just because we're not actually registered! We gave up after some emails and two online forms to get into their developers program - complete silence on the other side.
Sure, sure we're obviously not Id Software nor Epic Games (which, from what everyone can see, they're more busy with Nvidia than with Ati, at the moment).
Nonetheless we're happily registered with Nvidia since months...and speak continuously with great engineers and developers' managers.
We do hope to get to test our stuff with Ati as well - as we need to - but sincerely, right now, we don't feel like spending resources and additional costs to ensure our code is ***optimized*** for the entire Ati line-up...we just need to know something will eventually "show up" on our old 9600.

All that Ati-complaining about "optimized Nvidia games" looks like pure and simple truth as Nvidia seem to care much more for developers, big names of course but also little promising ones.

...hoping Ati will change its strategy for developers relations as now it looks like a bad, bad loser - GPUs and business apart.

More on FNTC

Lately we found out that our compression ratios were computed comparing FNTC24 with uncompressed 24bit textures - which sounds pretty logical. Since modern hardware doesn't support 24bit texture formats, our ratios increase by almost a third.
All uncompressed 24bit textures are "promoted" to 32bit by the card's driver...and take 32bit/pixel in video memory as well, instead of 24bits.
The only 24bit format supported is actually DXTC - which remains 24bits in memory.

So, our 2.5:1 ratio for maximum quality, becomes 3.5:1 in real life. And this is true for all our declared ratios.

...it might be time for a web-update! ;)

We got shots! :)

Now then... ECTS is gone...fair enough. Someone said it was a poor show this year due to other two shows in Europe, one of which in London as well.

So, hopefully next year it will regain its natural strength and attraction.

Anyway...the news here are that we've finalized the look of the tech demo. I must say...I really, really like the result. Not comparing to anything else...just because it does truly represent the initial vision I had of the game and of the environments.

I hope soon enough we'll be able to release the screenshots on the website...along with some wallpapers goodies...which is always nice! ;)

We all hope you'll like what we have to show.

Almost still alive

Yup, almost! We're actually dying in the process of putting together this demo...but it's worth it. Latest results are more than encouraging..."exciting" would be the right word. Complete buildings are running smoothly and a good per-fragment glow effect is enhancing all the little "lights" on them.

Now it's almost rendering time for me. Menus should be fully online tomorrow and from next Monday on it will be shaders-optimization time.
(Oh god...the fresnel awaits us... fingers crossed! ;))

"Just beat it..."

As usual, after the first "glowing" results, Max is now convinced that glow is indeed a nice effect we should definitely include in our tech demo. ;)

Currently also screen menus are being developed...with some basic configuration options.
Structures texturing is coming along nicely as well.

As if it wasn't enough, we will also feature a famous, licensed, soundtrack for our demo...but that's a surprise! :)

Glow or not glow?!

Oh!
Hi there, I finally got it how this blog works!
Uhm ... my english is not very good so i'll be short.
We are implementing glow effect to our scene trying to obatain the best quality without loosing performance.
Yes, we're working hard to make it ready for the ECTS event, anyway, if Notcom will be there... then you'll see very good quality graphics and fx... and above all amazing speed.

;)
see you later...