Well, what's impossible on Mobile are modern rendering techniques, they are heavy (even for high end PC rigs). So basically I'm just recreating the same rendering behaviors in a cheaper and faster way (without sacrificing too much on quality). You have to think out of the box (like in the old days), and every little operation means calculation. For example, I never use slow mathematical operations (like sinus and cosinus), I always try to get approximates numbers that are 10 to 20 times faster than standard build-in operations. Obviously, there is a small trade off, which is precision but even so, they still look amazing on such small device. For the shadows, I've implemented a novel technique that doesn't requires light to get camera depth (here 2245). Traditional shadowmapping techniques requires one camera per light source (6 for point light shadows), depth information (which cost scene to be drawn twice and also means twice drawcalls per shadows sources on your scene). My implementation it's just 1 extra drawcall per mesh casting shadows, it automatically handle light position/direction (for the correct projection and view), blending, attenuation and shadows falloff. And it supports multiples shadows per mesh casting shadows. To give you an idea how fast my implementation is, the cost of rendering shadows in a character is about 6-10 times faster than rendering diffuse lighting on it. If you remember RE Remake on GC or Re 3.5, it's a similar shadow technique but improved a little bit more with more flexible features. Same goes for my full scene reflections, you can find it few pages back but it is true that every object can have scene reflected on them). I'm planning on release both techniques to Unity developers once FM get published. Curiously, Crytek implemented the same reflection system in their last update of CryEngine3.
its really great that the game is this weighty. 2.5 gb this is a good new because that mean big content.
Tatoforever, Your team will make a huge step releasing this tittle for mobile platforms. In my case it's gonna be an instabuy. BTW. Will this game support the retina display for iPad 4?
Now that you mentioned, Resident Evil 3.5 had some real time shadow effects that made the game look like it had better graphics than the oficial resident evil 4, and it was in a gamecube. To se it, theres a lot of this in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0e3qYoR6m8o I dont think that Capcom was using Mt framework on this version, wich is a very light engine, but it was something diferent of what we have in actual resident evil games, and in my opinion, looked better. These effects, like shadows that appear when theres lightning, the clothes moving with the character making everything looks much more natural, I can see on what Tato showed us until now in FM. I´m really impressed with the game having only 1,8 gb, I was waiting for a lot more. But I was wondering, we will only know more about the story and characters when the game comes out ? and since we will have 2 characters, the way to control them will be similar to the one in resident evil 0 ?
@jujumafon, It is safe to say we've used RE3.5 as a good starting point on our references, for everything (environments, enemies, features, etc) and then introduced our own unique stuff which we found really original. Btw, RE3.5 game engine was purely PC, they had to cut off features to fit in the GC. Possibly one of the reason why RE went to a different direction (technology wise). Also big publishers like to make lot of money and made RE action oriented to covers as much people as possible which was a big let-down to survival horror fans. Still, RE4 was a nice game, but i would have love to have it under a different name instead of using the iconic saga name to make profit out of it. The sized 1.8GBs is compressed, uncompressed (which is the space that appears on itunes) it's about twice that. Regarding controls, It's somewhat similar but without tank controls (which are character relative movement), you move your characters in camera space (with camera relative-movement). It's feels more natural and quite easy to control on touch devices.
3.6 gb uncompressed? But Apple's limit is 2 gb. Did they tell you that they'd allow your app to exceed the limit?
My dream was to see that version of resident evil finished, or that they have released at least a freaking demo... About the change between survival horror and action oriented, I agree with you, capcom has become a mercenary company, wich is a shame, I love their games and characters. I noticed those resemblances between RE 3.5 and FM, I always loved survival horrors, but with time, they gradually lost their soul to become action games instead. Im from 1986, I play games since they exist, and in these points, its a little sad to remember what was to play games with the feeling like, the first time you play resident evil 1, or silent hill 2, and see what those series have become today. What caught my attention since FM started, whas that you actually care with what these games really have to be, the feeling it have to pass the player, and I followed the development since then. Funny thing is, I´m a psychologist, and I work on a psychiatric hospital, so, try to imagine how fascinated I was when I knew about this game.
Even if we pass the 2GB compressed size, that's not a problem with Apple. They already know how big FM is.
We've made an extensive in deep research about psychology, psychiatry and the human mind (from an historical POV till present). Just imagine and those elements exposed in new way, extremely detailed/documented (but at the same time touching peoples imagination far to the unconsciousness) in a survival horror game! I believe we've pushed some boundaries in survival horror game's on that regard. Like i said in earlier posts, FM's plot means really something and it have a real soul. You'll fall in love with, instantly.
Heard PR Talk like this too often already, not that I don't believe you, but I think I will decide myself (or even let reviewers decide) how great this all will turn out instead of getting me hyped beyond expectations you can't meet.
Finally, Apple supporting instead of circumventing great games. Best of luck to you, Tato. Look forward to that release date and that very much hyped story
Hm... so this game is still in development I see. That's unfortunate. I really hope it comes out before the next generation iPhone, or I fear this game will never come out. It seems like it was announced back when the 3GS was the iPhone to get... I could go on and on about how it feels like it has been forever since this game was announced, but I'll just leave it at that. It does seem like it keeps getting delayed, and then the new hardware comes out, and you can expect yet another delay. I don't know... :\ It looks like there's some good progress being made on it, though. It's just a little frustrating that I feel like we have been waiting almost 3 years for an iPhone game. They don't usually take that long to create haha. Edit: Strike that. We HAVE been waiting 3 years for it. Originally developed with the 3GS in mind and being compatible with the 2nd generation... then the 2nd generation support was dropped... probably 3GS is over and done with now too. Also, it was originally slated for 2010! Then Halloween 2010, then... God knows what other dates they came up with. I echo my thoughts again: I fear this game will never come out. They just keep delaying... the new iDevices come out, they delay it some more to accommodate them... and in turn, shut off their support for the previous iDevices. I know iPhone games generally take a shorter period of time to create because they're simple, and this is quite an epic undertaking. But I really do fear this will be Duke Nukem Forever of the iPhone, as in it will take a decade and a half to make, and when it finally does come out, no one will care and it will turn out to suck. No offense.
You got an excellent point about the reference to Duke Nukem. I feel the same way because I expected the game to hit before Christmas (Toto's word). At the same time, it's impressive to see deves working really hard to release an epic game. Gameloft for instance with its huge resource can't even release a decent game with soul! So yeah, Tato said he will announce the release date in a couple of weeks and that is great news to look forward to.
@MasterChief3624 There's tons of small tiny games to play while FM is being finished. If you read about Duke Nukem Forever failure, you'll understand better the situation (and it's quite different from ours). First off, 3D Reamls re-started the Duke Nukem project 4-5 times (from scratch). They started with their own engine and licensed two mores and finally end-up on Unreal Engine. That was simply a badly underestimated production and poor management. [Edit:] The average development time of a good game (not a tiny one) it's about 3 years (depending on game features, design and budget). But in the case of Duke Nukem standard development charts can't simply be applied. They simply blew out everything in an astronomical scale. Too bad i was a DN fan, they ended up re-doing a quick Unreal-like FPS generic game which turned out to be very bad. I'm an industry veteran, I worked on Gameloft titles (PS3, Wii and mobile). I helped build their engine (the one they use to build all their current games) before launching my company and i know exactly the dangers of such bad practices. Bare with us, we aren't doing what 3D realms did with Duke Nukem. You'll be surprised and smile when you play Forgotten Memories. In our case we are simply finishing developing the game and pushing it forward, nothing have changed, we are using the same engine (improving it by the way), developing our own framework and the project didn't started from scratch (never), it have been simply improved even more. Yes, the game should have been the store this year but we stated clearly when interviewed by Slide2Play that we wont give any release that until we where sure that it will hit the store on that date. Our hopes back to January was a Christmas release but it was our hope, we didn't officially announced a date for this Christmas. Such kind of delays are common in game industry. Most notable reasons, adding important (or missing) features, improving, shaping, polishing, finding money (which fortunately we don't have to worry about it). I understand your frustrations and i know it's a your natural reactions of not having the game to play with. But it will be even worse if you have to pay for an unfinished/unpolished version of Forgotten Memories (like most games in the App Store with all due respect to fellow developers). Is that what you want? I don't think so. To be honest, we don't really mind if the game needs more time to be what we want it to be. At the end it would be a win/win situation for both us. I know, it's hard to be patient, we are also dying to put FM on your hands, we are getting there, it's getting close. Warm regards from Psychoz Team.
Tato, take your time and don't worry about the steady stream of naysayers. I have confidence in you and your game.
