RESOGUN was one of the biggest surprises of Gamescom. Featuring rich visuals and engaging gameplay mechanics, Housemarque is set to cement their legacy when it launches on the PlayStation 4. We recently got in touch with various individuals over at Housemarque – with answers compiled by Harry Krueger, Lead Programmer of RESOGUN.
We asked him how the 8GB of GDDR5 RAM and unified architecture of the PS4 is helping the game to run at a slick sixty frames per second and glorious 1080P resolution, to which he replied:
“It is not just helping, it is necessary. With unified architecture we can easily split up our memory usage the way we want and still have fast GPU access to the bits written by CPU. We are using more memory than PS3 has in total just for the flying cubes! The GPU and compute shaders are also being heavily utilized for a lot of things.
“For example, all of the geometry generation (for the cubes and levels), the physics and collisions for the cubes, the particle mayhem you unleash with your Overdrive or Bomb; all of that is being done in compute shaders. There is still plenty of CPU power left over (currently we’re cruising at around 50% CPU usage during gameplay), but with the GPU and compute shaders doing all the fireworks, we do not really even need it,” he added.
We also asked him what kind of crazy weapons we can expect and whether the the number of levels has been finalized.
“We’re planning on having 3 different selectable ships in the game, and each one will sport a different weapon type. Like Stardust HD, the traditional boost and smart bombs will also make a comeback, and this time we’ve also given the player an Overdrive ability. Basically, by collecting green ‘energy’ cubes the enemies drop, the player will be able to build up his Overdrive bar and – once full – ultimately activate it to unleash a super-powerful beam attack.
“We’re planning to have 5 levels available in the main game, and each will have its unique own style, enemy encounters, and geometry for the player to break apart,” he said.
RESOGUN will be available on day one of the PlayStation 4’s launch and will support remote play with the PlayStation Vita.