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[sugarhigh4242]

QJ.net has an interview with Chris Charla of Backbone Entertainment about the upcoming Death Jr 2: Root of Evil. I was surprised to see this in there:

QJ: Is there a more relaxed feeling in development with this title compared to the first which was one of the first games to be shown for the PSP?

Chris Carla: Not at all! The new-hardware stress is gone, but that just gets replaced by the desire to see what we can do with the hardware. So, instead of stressing about when you get hardware, you stress in a new way about trying to implement lots of new technical features, like HDR lighting.

QJ: HDR lighting on the PSP? You're going to have to talk about that a little! Also, can you talk about what other kinds of technical enhancements you've made to the game's engine since the original Death Jr?

Chris Carla: Well, we used Renderware on our first game on PSP, and it wasn’t exactly perfectly tuned for PSP. After we removed it for DJ2PSP, we found our framerates hit 90fps… Meanwhile we’d been implementing these kinds of effects on PS3, and we were keeping the runtime features between them in synch as much as possible, so before we knew it, thanks to our fantastic tech staff, we had light blooms, High Dynamic Range lighting, and lots of other lighting and frame buffer effects running in the game. The net result is that we’ve probably got some of the most technically advanced features of any title on PSP at this point, which is pretty cool. We’ve done a lot more than that as well; I think people will be pleased by the tech in the game, and our loading times are still extremely short.

http://pspupdates.qj.net/QJ-Interviews-Death-JR-2-Root-of-Evil/pg/49/aid/61523

 

[Lee N]

Well, the PSP doesn't have hardware support for High Dynamic Range colours, so you'll have to fake the HDR lighting... something i've seen done in realtime on both Amiga 1200 and GameBoy Advance.

So yeah, you can always get creative..

 

[AlanHemberger]

that's awesome. 90 fps? SCREW RENDERWARE!

 

[sugarhigh4242]

i just hope all this tech isn't wasted on a sub-par platformer with a lousy camera.

 

[Guns N' Poops]

Death Jr. 2 looks veeery mediocre in the E3 trailer.

 

[SamBishop]

Rebellion is doing something similar with their Asura Engine on the PSP, I think. Both Gun: Showdown and Miami Vice had some faked HDR going on if I remember right.

That said, my bigger issue with Death Jr. is just the art design in general. They seem awfully fond of bathing entire sections of the game in colored lighting, and it doesn't make for an especially pretty game. DJ2 seems to kinda follow in those footsteps, so HDR -- fake or not -- is kinda the least of my worries with the game.

 

[VNZ]

If HDR = bloom, then that's not HDR at all. You can do bloom just fine on just about any render target.

 

[WalkMan]

If HDR = bloom, then that's not HDR at all. You can do bloom just fine on just about any render target.

Brave Story had some bloom.

 

[sugarhigh4242]

Brave Story had some bloom.

tons of PSP games have bloom. For this guy to say DJ2 will have HDR, he better not be talking about bloom.

 

[ccharla]

From something I said to Play magazine in an interview: HDR lighting is also known as high dynamic range lighting. It's more typically associated with next-gen systems, or high end PCs. Basically, instead of having a fixed number of intensities for color and lighting -- usually 8bit/256 intensities for each of the three color channels (red, green, blue) -- with HDR, we have much more granularity available.

In realtime, we detect the brightest element onscreen that the player can see (and that thet screen can display), and the darkest value the player can see, and we dynamically adjust the available color range onscreen to match that. So, you get much brighter brights, and much darker darks, and a world that is much more vibrantly lit.

On DJ1 and most PSP games to date, you had fixed intensity lighting. With HDR we can create much more dramatic lighting. We also have a post effect system, which lets us do things like bloom, motion blur, and egg crate effects (you see that in World of Waffles after you get gassed).

When you're playing, this will all be pretty seamless; DJ2 isn't a tech demo -- we want people to pay attention to the killenating, not the tech -- but hopefully the net effect will be that DJ2PSP will be much more dramatic looking. All the effects aside, nothing beats being able to go through the whole game co-op multiplayer! It really adds a lot to the experience.

Also, the E3 footage was really grainy, sorry. And the camera is vastly improved. It basically stays put behind you (although you can walk towards the camera and sideways without it swinging around or anything), and you can move it at any time with the shoulder buttons, in what is becoming the standard scheme for third person games on PSP. There is also a "side-step"/strafe mode, where the camera is always locked directly behind you, and which is good for shooting. Looks like we're going to ship GMC1 tomorrow am, so uh, play it when it comes out. If you buy two copies I'll buy you a Coke...

If I have time later I'll try to post two screens, one with HDR on and one without so you can see the difference.

 

[Lord Error]

If HDR = bloom, then that's not HDR at all. You can do bloom just fine on just about any render target.

"Faked" HDR can be abstracted as a set of rules, like SotC did. Sure, it didn't technically have the "real" HDR, but it did follow those HDR rules, and the trickery was nicely done.


Oh, we have Chris Charla from Backbone here. Nice.

 

[Shogmaster]

Hey Chris! What's a million x 1000? *runs*

 

[snatches]

I was going to say that is all well and good if your protagonist's in game model is made up of about 8 polygons but then the dev showed up and I don't want to be rude.

 

[Shogmaster]

I was going to say that is all well and good if your protagonist's in game model is made up of about 8 polygons but then the dev showed up and I don't want to be rude.

Dude, this is GAF. We have an obligation to be rude to the devs. I'm pretty sure it's in the TOS.

 

[Lee N]

In realtime, we detect the brightest element onscreen that the player can see (and that thet screen can display), and the darkest value the player can see, and we dynamically adjust the available color range onscreen to match that. So, you get much brighter brights, and much darker darks, and a world that is much more vibrantly lit.

.. and that's exactly how it works in the Amiga 1200 and GameBoy Advance demos I linked to in my previous post. I'm sure you can do it with higher accuracy on the PSP (as in check every/every other pixel for dark/bright elements instead of, say, every 8th). But yeah.. It's a nice way to fake the HDR lighting, but it's really not that impressive.

And as VNZ mentioned, it's not really HDR.

 

[duk]

this is like saying HDR on ps2

 

[WhereSailors]

You can fake anything graphically and then say it's something it's not.

 

[ccharla]

These screens are from an ancient build (March or April 2006) when we could still use the debug menu to turn HDR on and off, so please do not use them for anything except lighting judgement. Also, because this is an ancient build, I have no idea how tuned this lighting was by our artists. These are VRAM dumps from the PSP dev kit, converted in Photoshop from TGA to JPG.

Without HDR


With HDR


As I said, we are in the midst of shipping so I can't really bother any engineers right now, but if someone has time, I will get them to write a more detailed description of how we do these effects.

 

[Ranger X]

Dude, this is GAF. We have an obligation to be rude to the devs. I'm pretty sure it's in the TOS.

Well, serious posts by some devs are like 99% of the time alot more interesting than Gaffers stupid comments of thoughts. (not necessarily including you, i remember you as a generally intelligent poster)

GAF should put the breaks on its "me myself and i" attitude sometimes and there would also be even more interesting posts out of here.

 

[sugarhigh4242]

I feel bad about that "sub par platformer" comment now that Chris is making such thoughtful posts.

though that does seem to be the prevailing opinion of the original DJ.

The HDR implementation does make a noticable difference. Good work Backbone

 

[AlanHemberger]

ya know, people were praising the "HDR" in SOTC, but as soon as it's done on a game that GAF doesn't circle jerk about, you get the "zomg it's not hdr lolz" responses.

 

[SamBishop]

These screens are from an ancient build (March or April 2006) when we could still use the debug menu to turn HDR on and off...

Hey, it's my old boss!

Dude, I take back what I said before. If the rest of the game looks this solid colors-wise, I'm going to be very, very happy. I'm not trying to slight any of the dev team, but the first game went apeshit with purples and reds and greens and blues in huge splashes of color that would very often contrast each other. I can't remember a level that wasn't bathed from head to toe in too much color. This looks way more subdued, and I'm liking it.

I always thought the chracters/universe were rife for a really solid outing, I just didn't know if it could be done without a overly heavy-handed approach to the visuals. Me likey. Since we're on the topic of pulling off hardware tricks, did DJ1 actually use NURBS? I remember there being talk of it when it was the first game really shown off for the system, but I wasn't sure it it was in the same realm of discussion as the system doing 7.1 sound and stuff.

 

[Eric_S]

All the effects aside, nothing beats being able to go through the whole game co-op multiplayer! It really adds a lot to the experience.

Win!

 

[mckmas8808]

Wow nice to see devs digging into the PSP system. Yes tell us more!!!

 

[ccharla]

Since we're on the topic of pulling off hardware tricks, did DJ1 actually use NURBS? I remember there being talk of it when it was the first game really shown off for the system, but I wasn't sure it it was in the same realm of discussion as the system doing 7.1 sound and stuff.

No, when we had to switch to renderware on DJ1, a lot of things that were planned got thrown out the window. (I do want to say that while RW for PSP was not ever as efficient as anyone hoped, the RW tech support guys were really great to work with, and really helped us out a ton.) Also, the PSP was originally specced to run at 333Mhz, and while some um, homebrew apps do, no release game does, and so that does constrain us from some of the optimistic early assertions we had. Not too many games use procedural shadows on PSP, for instance, although if we were at 333, probably some would. The "Capcom dot shadow" is actually tons more useful in most instances, though, especially in platformers.

The PSP really has an amazing amount of potential in it. I think the games out this Christmas and after, from a technical perspective, will be super impressive. Anyway, I have to fulfill my producer role by "producing" some food for the team, but I will try to get someone in the next couple days to do a post about how we pull off some technical things if anyone is interested.

Thanks for all the kind words on DJ. (And the not so kind ones, too! -- they are very motivating as well) Seriously DJ2PSP is leaps and bounds beyond DJ1, so I hope everyone will at least give it a try. The quick bullet point list is: vastly improved camera; lots more platforming; lots more melee combat; lots more moves, lots more story; a flaming toilet paper gun, and of course, HDR lighting...

 

[typhonsentra]

This game moved from "Not even knowing it existed" to "Very interested" in a matter of minutes. :lol

Sounds good ccharla.

 

[Speevy]

Interesting. Has anyone thought about what this would mean for that rumored PSP Oblivion?

 

[kaching]

Interesting. Has anyone thought about what this would mean for that rumored PSP Oblivion?

Probably would be one of the lesser concerns for PSP Oblivion.

 

[Eric_S]

Anyway, I have to fulfill my producer role by "producing" some food for the team, but I will try to get someone in the next couple days to do a post about how we pull off some technical things if anyone is interested.

It'd be a fun read, so shure, why not.

But this:

Also, the PSP was originally specced to run at 333Mhz, and while some um, homebrew apps do, no release game does, and so that does constrain us from some of the optimistic early assertions we had. Not too many games use procedural shadows on PSP, for instance, although if we were at 333, probably some would. The "Capcom dot shadow" is actually tons more useful in most instances, though, especially in platformers.

Is more interesing IMO, ie what could be done with 333Mhz mode, or (if I've interpreted things correctly), having the second MIPS core completely open to devs. I can understand if this isn't possible due to politics, but again it'd be interesting to know what you think could be potentially done on the system if it where openend up a bit more.

 

[VNZ]

By also mimicking tonemapping (in addition to bloom) you pretty much achieve the most prominent effects of an HDR renderer.

 

[Guenther]

Interesting stuff! So developers are digging deeper and deeper. But on the other side I wonder, why there are still many games with dithering?

 

[Mario]

Interesting stuff! So developers are digging deeper and deeper. But on the other side I wonder, why there are still many games with dithering?

In simple terms you get dithering when you use a 16bit display. When you use a 16bit display, you have more room in VRAM to store textures permanently, which means you don't have to transfer so many textures from main memory (which is slow).

I assume its less of a render hit on the GPU as well (will have to check tomorrow).

 

[Guenther]

Yes, I know that using 16 bit color depth results in dithering. But I thought it wouldn´t be an issue with the VRAM and even ST3C compression on PSP. PS2 has only 4 MB VRAM without hardware compression and still there are much less games with dithering.

 

[RuGalz]

Yes, I know that using 16 bit color depth results in dithering. But I thought it wouldn´t be an issue with the VRAM and even ST3C compression on PSP. PS2 has only 4 MB VRAM without hardware compression and still there are much less games with dithering.

Because textures with ST3C compression on PSP gets expanded to full size before it is used so it's not all that useful hardware feature since 4/8bit texture can produce better result a lot of time for small textures. PS2 also has much higher bandwidth than PSP...

 

[Lee N]

I will get them to write a more detailed description of how we do these effects.

Unrelated, but why do you PSP developers insist on running in 16bit mode with dithering? It does look quite awful to be honest.

We know the PSP can do 24 bits graphics, but lately i've seen more and more games run in 16bit. Death Jr 2 included.

Do tell.

 

[wonderfuldays]

These screens are from an ancient build (March or April 2006) when we could still use the debug menu to turn HDR on and off, so please do not use them for anything except lighting judgement. Also, because this is an ancient build, I have no idea how tuned this lighting was by our artists. These are VRAM dumps from the PSP dev kit, converted in Photoshop from TGA to JPG.

Without HDR


With HDR


As I said, we are in the midst of shipping so I can't really bother any engineers right now, but if someone has time, I will get them to write a more detailed description of how we do these effects.

If this is REAL HDR effect, the background should be darker.....
Because you turned front light on....

 

[Lord Error]

but it's really not that impressive.

And as VNZ mentioned, it's not really HDR.

Not impressive?? ??

That's one of the craziest looking A1200 demos I've ever seen (and I've seen TONS) and by far the best looking GA demo I've seen. That HDR scene in GBA demo especially is holyshit awesome!! It looks almost like something pre-rendered.

 

[Lee N]

Not impressive?? ??

That's one of the craziest looking A1200 demos I've ever seen (and I've seen TONS) and by far the best looking GA demo I've seen. That HDR scene in GBA demo especially is holyshit awesome!! It looks almost like something pre-rendered.

It does look good, but the effect is quite simple. What it does is simply to detect pixels brighter than a certain level, make it brighter then apply the same effect to the nearby pixels to add that glowing look.

Of course you have to sacrifice accuracy by not checking every single pixel in a frame to get it to run on slower hardware.

 

[Fafalada]

Yes, I know that using 16 bit color depth results in dithering. But I thought it wouldn´t be an issue with the VRAM and even ST3C compression on PSP. PS2 has only 4 MB VRAM without hardware compression and still there are much less games with dithering.

PS2 with "no hardware" compression still uses textures of exactly the same size as S3TC - 4/8bit, so no, there's no memory advantage there. And even if it were, VRam space is hardly related to texture sizes on PS2, you store textures almost exclusively in main mem.

Also what Rugalz said about PSP. Among other things, lower system bandwith means you want to squeeze more data into VRam, so you start looking at things like using 16bit back buffers (something that very rarely happened on PS2).

.. and that's exactly how it works in the Amiga 1200 and GameBoy Advance

It's also pretty much how it works in HalfLife 2. To be pedantic - if there was a way to "guess" the realworld tone-mapping value (as opposed to the guess-approximation) you would effectively have "true" HDR (as true as it can be on a non HDR display device anyway) so long as you can perform the lighting in single pass(most of it anyway).
Though this works correctly only for tonemapping step - if you want blooms you are stuck with faking them.

To sum up - it's rather inflexible compared to storing HDR color buffer, but it's still HDR as far as the output is concerned. "Faking" is a bit of a misnomer anyway, since any kind of HDR rendering becomes fake the moment you have to resort to tonemapping/blooming/other postprocessing.

 

[HomerSimpson-Man]

I'm a bit late and all but...




...90 fps when they got off renderware?!

 

[Lee N]

It's also pretty much how it works in HalfLife 2. To be pedantic - if there was a way to "guess" the realworld tone-mapping value (as opposed to the guess-approximation) you would effectively have "true" HDR (as true as it can be on a non HDR display device anyway) so long as you can perform the lighting in single pass(most of it anyway).
Though this works correctly only for tonemapping step - if you want blooms you are stuck with faking them.

To sum up - it's rather inflexible compared to storing HDR color buffer, but it's still HDR as far as the output is concerned. "Faking" is a bit of a misnomer anyway, since any kind of HDR rendering becomes fake the moment you have to resort to tonemapping/blooming/other postprocessing.

Well, I'm sure Half-Life 2 used floats or double-floats for the textures internally, and then clip it to the right bit depth, whereas it's all post processing on, say, GBA or A1200. This essientially means that they're using "true" HDR colours for all the calculations for added precision instead of going all pseudo-HDR.

Of course, you can do anything with a software engine, it's just a matter of finding the right balance with precision in order to stay realtime (read: still running at an acceptable frame rate, then we can argue whether <oneframe is still acceptable.. but that's another show).

 

[Lord Error]

It does look good, but the effect is quite simple.

To me, that's actually in a way more impressive than some convoluted, but super-precise method that runs at 20FPS on a latest hardware. I mean it takes certain ingenuity to come up with something so efficient that it makes an effect like this possible on a hardware so ancient

 

[Lee N]

To me, that's actually in a way more impressive than some convoluted, but super-precise method that runs at 20FPS on a latest hardware. I mean it takes certain ingenuity to come up with something so efficient that it makes an effect like this possible on a hardware so ancient

I agree that some of the simplest solutions can also be the most impressive, but in this particular case the effects have been done before, it's only less precise to make it run on older hardware.

When alot of people know exactly how something works, they're not as easily impressed. You gotta find something that no one has seen before to get the real "oh-ah"s. Then again, what's impressive and what's not is completely a matter of personal opinion, so it is a rather pointless discussion.

 

[duk]

it looks better, fake or not

 

[Nostromo]

Well, I'm sure Half-Life 2 used floats or double-floats for the textures internally, and then clip it to the right bit depth, whereas it's all post processing on, say, GBA or A1200. .

There's no such a thing as double floats on current GPUs.
Valve's HDR method involves computing/guessing an automatic exposure value for a frame N , and then using that value while rendering frame N+1.
At the end of every shader they simply append some code like:

half4 tone_mapped_color = hdr_color / exposure;

Yeah, it's simple..yeah it's just linear tone mapping and yeah..it sucks (as tone mapping operator)
Their system is very very clever..

Marco

 

[Lee N]

There's no such a thing as double floats on current GPUs.

That's why I said "either/or", I simply wasn't sure. I know some people use it for internal calculations already but I don't know a whole lot about the latest line of GPUs. I still use a PS 2.0 generation card.

 

[Rlan]

ccharla, you should be able to sort of a few questions I have: Are you guys also doing Sonic Rivals? It's a huge mess as to whom is doing what in the backbone teams.

Sonic Rivals needs some of that lighting, because right now it looks incredibly soft - like someone put vaseline over the screens

 

[sugarhigh4242]

Sony needs to bribe John Carmack to write an engine for PSP.

 

[Chris_C]

it looks better, fake or not

/thread. I mean really, if it looks good enough, who cares whether it's real or not?

 

[Lee N]

it looks better, fake or not

Does it really? I mean, the "no HDR" image is alot darker. But if you turn up the brightness and contrast a little bit, it will look like this.

Then compare it to the "HDR" image.