Developers faced a ton of issues due to memory limitations on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and their challenges increased multiple fold as the rate of adoption of more memory among PC gamers increased. In short, memory on consoles was lagging behind and as a result developers were facing serious issues while programming their games. But they still managed somehow and were able to deliver games like The Last of Us.
The new consoles i.e PS4 and Xbox One have a ton of memory now but we already have high end games on PC which already require 8GB of memory. So are we going to see a repeat of what happened last gen? GamingBolt raised this question to Bryan Tarlowski, Marketing Director at Gamebase and Yoonjae Hwang one of the lead engineers on Gamebryo, and also asked them how they will tackle this issue for their engine.
“In next release, Gamebryo will support 64-bit platforms, and 4GB RAM (or 3GB effectively) limit will be removed. Actually this is a requirement from the latest consoles and DCC tools [digital content creation]. On top of it, recent graphics APIs and platforms support GPU virtual memory. Combining both of them will largely reduce the limited memory issue,” the duo said to GamingBolt.
They also detailed the technical changes that they have made to the engine and its source code so that it’s up to players’ expectations from the PS4 and Xbox One.
“One of the key trends in the latest rendering APIs is commandbuffer basedrendering, which enables multi-core CPU utilization for sending graphics commands to GPU, Gamebryo is making progress in increasing this functionality. Also, rather than forcing developers to use a specific lighting/shading scheme like physically based rendering, we are working to offer more flexible material system that allows artists to express their imagination intuitively.”
“To that end, our artists tools, including DCC tool plugins will be deeply integrated to Max/Maya in order to aid artists in producing more detailed in-game graphics.”
We will have more coverage for GameBryo in the coming days so stay tuned.
