Dev: PS4 Has None of the “1 FPS Barrier” From Last Gen, Pleasantly Surprised With Graphics API

Haemimont Games’ Tropico 5 is still a ways off from being released for the PlayStation 4 (there’s only a Q3/Q4 2014 release window given rather than an actual date) but the development team is still hard at work on it. Head programmer Ivan-Assen Ivanov spoke to GamingBolt about the upgrades done to accommodate the PS4 and how easy or difficult it was to port the engine over to the current gen console.

Ivanov stated that, “We’re offloading more and more work to the additional CPU cores offered by the PS4 – which will ultimately benefit other platforms, too. Most of the porting work was in the low-level rendering code, since the graphics API is pretty different. Porting was a long period of nothing or almost nothing visible on the screen, and suddenly most of the game was up and running at an amazing frame-rate! None of that ‘1 fps barrier’ notorious in the previous console generation.”

How has the overall experience been for the PS4’s API especially given Haemimont’s experience with multiple platforms? “This is our first game for any Sony platform, and we’re pleasantly surprised. We’re looking forward to spending more time with PS4 on future projects.”

Stay tuned for more information on Tropico 5, which is currently available on PC, Linux and Mac and releasing for Xbox 360 on November 11th.