Next gen talk is continuing to ramp up with each passing day. Recently, Sony revealed new details on the upcoming PS5, which we now know is officially coming out in Holiday season of 2020, while Sony have also confirmed that the console will be unveiled in full next year as well. And as next gen approaches, discussions of what it will enable developers to do with new hardware are becoming more pertinent.
We recently conducted an interview with Grzegorz Kurek and Andrzej Sugier, game director and game designer respectively at Mass Creations – who’re at work on the upcoming beat ’em up Shing! After speaking about their game for a bit, we eventually moved on to next-gen talk, and when asked about what difference PS5’s AMD Zen 2 CPU in particular will make in particular, their response was simple: “Physics, physics and physics!”
“CPU power in today’s games is mostly used to handle physics, CPU particles and animations,” they said. “New CPUs will allow for higher fidelity in the worlds we create. More stuff could animate, interact with each other, be destroyed or moved. We use physics in Shing! for fighting. When you hit an enemy, you apply actual force to his body – it feels better but at the same time it is heavy on the CPU.
“Also the chopped off parts are physical objects, so we have to manage how many of them can be on screen at the same time. We had to pass on an option to cut the same enemy more than once when it dies, because it generated a lot of stress for the CPU. On new platforms it shouldn’t be such big of a deal.“
With a reveal for the PS5 – and the Xbox Scarlett – not too far away, we will likely find out soon enough just what these consoles will be able to do, not just in theory, but in practice as well. The possibilities for now seem exciting, so here’s hoping they live up to the expectations.
Meanwhile, Mass Creations’ Shing! is due out in 2020 for the PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Our full interview with Mass Creations will be live soon, so stay tuned.
