Dead Rising 3: 720p/30fps
Josh Bridge, executive producer, Capcom Vancouver
Dead Rising 3 has suffered high-profile performance issues since E3. How have you improved the game in the months since?
Josh Bridge: Well, first I'm really proud to say we were running on hardware at E3. We had the kits there and we were running it behind closed doors for press. I was really proud, and I had no shame in saying this is where we're at - this is preview code. Ever since then, and it was happening during that time, content needs to be completed, and then optimisation is the focus. And that's what happened - you've seen it through E3, through Gamescom, through now - the frame-rate's been going up and up. And now we're at locked 30 - and that's just been purely the effort of all aspects of the team, the engineering team and our team all trying to optimise. And that's always what happens as the last step of the development of a product
How much has changed with the Xbox One hardware during development?
Josh Bridge: Apart from
the clockspeed boost that was announced was after E3 - no the hardware hasn't really changed. The evolution has been on the software, and the core drivers that drive that hardware, and that's where a lot of the communication goes back and forth on iterating and improving to make our game more efficient on new tools they give us, or areas we see maybe we can have some help where they can do certain things on their software level.
What native resolution is Dead Rising 3?
Josh Bridge: 720p. And I'm really happy with that, with the sheer amount of stuff we have in an open world game locked at 30fps, that's just brilliant. Of course our UI (user interface) runs at 1080 native on top, but no, we're a 720p game locked at 30fps.
Did you ever want 1080p native?
Josh Bridge: It was not really something we actually set as a mantra. When we first started there was no platform, it was PC and we were just targeting next-gen, and 1080, even before then we thought it'd be prohibitive to even consider that, because essentially you have to do everything twice, which is just massive when you think of it. It's more important that the end image looks awesome - look at how much stuff is on screen, that's always been a Dead Rising sort of brand. That still looks really good, and that's been our goal. I hope it shows - just look at how much insane stuff is going on screen.
How hard has it been getting to 720/30 on Xbox One?
Josh Bridge: It's been... Outside of infancy - every new platform launch, I've now learnt - it's always infancy on tools, and that's the back and forth with tools improving. It's very similar to a PC development environment, so that's been really cool. Happy to not be cross-platform, to be honest - it's a huge challenge for a game like ours. We have to do very specific things with memory allocation and drivers to get our stuff running, and in the past it was like wow, it made our teams quite a bit larger having multiple leads.
I feel sorry for the cross-gen devs!
Josh Bridge: Oh yeah. We couldn't have done this on last-gen. Absolutely not. We tried, believe me we tried to figure out not to have load screens, but we couldn't. There's no way we could stream the amount of content fast enough. It hit a load screen every time.
So where else is that next-gen difference? What else is there you couldn't have done last time out?
Josh Bridge: Well, it's scale. The load screens isn't a bullet point that any gamers are going to be like 'sweet! No load screens!' It's the scale, and the world size - Dead Rising 1 and 2 fit into 3 several times. It's also the depth - where before we'd tell artists not to go there because we don't have the memory or resources, now we're like please go there. Go into that detail. For the designers, it's like can you make the weapon system more interesting and deep. It's the depth and breadth that we've been able to blow out that's just been huge for us.
"The Xbox One hardware hasn't really changed. The evolution has been on the software, and the core drivers that drive that hardware."
Josh Bridge, executive producer, Capcom Vancouver
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