Killzone 2 VS Gears of War 2 through the eyes of a programmer

[jetrii]

Procrastinato said:

jetrii said:

 

Now, lets see what Gears of War 2 would look like if it didn't have so much organic matter and features industrial levels similar to those that populate Killzone 2.

http://www.gamershell.com/static/screenshots/12987/366502_full.jpg

http://www.gamershell.com/static/screenshots/12987/366504_full.jpg

They look pretty good, and even then, they still have organic matter and bright scenes. Although I think Killzone 2 does have better shadows, aside from it being an art direction choice, it makes parts of the game easier to render since they can use lower resolution textures and hide it with darkness.

 

On my PC games when I turn shadows on stuff gets slower.  How do I make it so the shadows make stuff faster, by hiding the bad textures?  Is there a trick?

 

There are a lot of different methods to make shadows. Some of them require little power and look bad, some of them require a moderate amount of power and look good, and other require a lot of power and look amazing. Most games go for moderate/good or little power/decent. Real shadows are extremely power intensive and can cut a game's FPS by half.

However, you can also use fake shadows (shadows are already fake, I guess this would be fake fake shadows). Lets say you have a light in an otherwise completely dark spot. Instead of having a light there and having the engine do the math for it 30 times per second, you could edit the texture of the wall too look as if they had a light on them and just stop processing the math for that wall. When the character gets near, then they may switch back to the normal mode and no one knows. The same trick can be applied to shadows, just apply simple post-processing or easier, just make the game dark from the start. Dark games can be made to look better easier than light games can.