Chief technical officer Oles Shishkovstov from 4A Games wouldn’t go into much detail but did reveal they’re toying with new approaches to visuals as well, leaning more on physics.
Apparently their artists are still in the tinkering stage and haven’t made concrete any plans yet on how to approach the graphics for their new project.
”For the game we are working on now, our designers have shifted to a more sand-box-style experience - less linear but still hugely story-driven. I will not go into details, but it requires some work from programmers as well. Also, we are improving graphics in very different aspects, like recently we did a physically-based global ambient occlusion (instead of local, like SSAO). I will not talk about PBR (physically-based rendering) here, because here we are at the stage when artists are still adapting their mentality to it,” Oles Shishkovstov told Digital Foundry.
He also touches briefly on Microsoft and AMD’s new fancy API - DirectX 12 and Mantle.
”Aside from them being much more close to the (modern) metal, those APIs are a paradigm-shift in API design. DX11 was ‘I will keep track of everything for you’. DX12 says ‘now it’s your responsibility’ - so it could be a much thinner layer. As for Mantle, it is a temporary API, in my honest opinion,” added Shishkovstov.
Check out the full interview between 4A Games’ Oles Shishkovstov and Digital Foundry for more on Metro Redux, which releases this week for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 - dramatically improving the original two games.
