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Shadow Warrior Dev On DX12, PS4 & XB1

06 October 2014

We’ve had the pleasure to ask a few tech questions to Krzysztof Narkowicz, Lead Engine Programmer of Polish studio Flying Wild Hog, mainly known for Hard Reset and Shadow Warrior, which is now about to be released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One after the initial launch on PC. We teased you before, but here’s the full interview, talking of PS4 & XB1 but also of the push for lower level APIs on PC. Enjoy!

 

  • Releasing Shadow Warrior on PlayStation 4 & Xbox One is a first for you on consoles. Many developers have highlighted the ease of development of both PS4 & XB1, do you agree with them or not? What are the main differences with PC development?

Current generation consoles are much more developer friendly. Their hardware is similar to PC and they have great amounts of memory. This means that it’s easier to get a game running. Of course they are still consoles. If you want to get great results - you have to make use of all the differences - like low level access, fast memory or the ability to focus on a single hardware configuration.

 

  • In a previous interview from June, you mentioned that while the game ran at 1080P@60FPS on PlayStation 4, you were targeting 900P@60FPS for Xbox One. However, that was before Microsoft released a percentage of the GPU which was previously reserved for Kinect; did you try and use this to bring the resolution up to 1080P? Is this a noteworthy performance improvement introduced by Microsoft?

It was a noteworthy performance improvement, but we didn’t manage to bring the resolution up to 1080p. We were finishing Xbox version and preparing for certification, so there was no time to optimize the game any further. Shadow Warrior will ship 900p@60FPS on XBox One.

 

  • Did you add or remove any graphical effects at all when porting Shadow Warrior from PC to PS4 & XB1?

We didn’t remove any graphic effects, but many of them were heavily optimized in order to reach our 60 fps target. Some of them, like reflections and SSAO were rewritten from scratch, so some things will look a bit worse and some a bit better. Generally it’s not a big difference in visuals and for most people the graphics will look exactly like the PC version.

 

  • As a PC developer, do you feel that these next generation consoles are disappointing in terms of performance (and Xbox One even more so, having weaker specifications) as newly launched hardware, as other developers have stated? How big of an improvement do you think we’ll see from the first to the last generation of games in these consoles?

PCs with more powerful hardware already existed when the previous generation of consoles launched and still for many years consoles had impressive visuals. I guess with this generation it will be the same.

 

  • Do you think DirectX 12 (and Mantle) will allow PC gamers to finally exploit their full hardware power, much like consoles already do?

These APIs are great and they will allow to get a better performance on the PC. Still they are not as low level as console APIs and won’t allow to utilise the full potential of PC hardware. Additionally on the consoles a developer can focus on a single hardware configuration and on the PC you need to split your time in order to optimize for different setups. Finally consoles have much better developer tools and hardware documentation and in the PC world most hardware vendors aren’t disclosing all the interesting and useful information for developers.

 

  • Thank you for your time. Look forward to our Shadow Warrior console review later this month.