We recently had a chance to speak to Digital Extremes creative director Steve Sinclair, currently working on Warframe for the PlayStation 4, about how the developer was using the extra GDDR5 RAM of the console, along with benefits derived from the unified architecture.
Sinclair replied that, “We are using a lot of the memory, but because of texture streaming, we have plenty to spare! That’s a good thing, it gives us options that we never thought we’d have before, and it opens up possibilities for extra detail and video streaming. The unified memory is part of what makes the console so great to develop on. You can use threads to generate textures and graphics assets.
“You can use the GPU to process physics and effects data. It’s key in shipping a console that is great early in the cycle while leaving the ceiling quite high for hybrid computing techniques in the future.”
We also asked a bit about Titanfall since, well, it’s another mech game with soldiers that wall-run and perform parkour. Especially since that game will be exclusive to Microsoft’s Xbox One and Xbox 360 (along with PC) while Warframe will be PlayStation 4-exclusive. He replied, “Huh? What’s TitanFall? Kidding. Saw TitanFall at E3 and it looks amazing and we saw a lot of the parkour stuff we have for our Space Ninjas in there…
“I expect TitanFall to just raise the competitive bar and push us further to keep our fans engaged. That said, without knowing a lot of about the game, Warframe is focused on PvE and Coop. It’s a shooter/MMO blend with crafting and dojo building. We update our game at a staggering pace, which combined with our procedural level generations, keeps the game fresh on a weekly basis. I don’t think it hurts that we’re free either.”
Warframe’s release date for PlayStation 4 is currently to be announced.
