Tools and tricks: 2160p rendering, antialiasing (4xMSAA + 4xSGSSAA), Racer_S camera and HUD hack, in-game Photo Mode.

Try telling me that isn’t the sexiest wheel you’ve ever seen in a car game. I’d get run over just to be closer to that wheel, to feel like it was a part of me. Tools and tricks: 2160p rendering, antialiasing (4xMSAA + 4xSGSSAA), Racer_S camera and HUD hack, in-game Photo Mode.

By the way, I’ve been doing a spot of housekeeping. All the images on Dead End Thrills are now stored externally, and mirrored in case Flickr changes its policies or links. I’ve purged the local media library to keep the site slim, and its backups are now daily rather than weekly. I’m also optimising the database ‘by hand’ to keep this process brief. The Print Art section has a few broken links which I’ll fix after the weekend, and the Realtime Art section shouldn’t have any broken links at all (thought it probably has). I’ve also refined the downsampling routine for the images so that the 1080p versions are now (finally) perfect: no jaggies, no halos, no destructive blurs or softening… no inconsistencies of any kind. These latest Hot Pursuit images testify to that, and I’ll be applying it back throughout all the 2160p downsamples over the next ‘little while’. Now all I need’s a deck of cards, etc. Tools and tricks: 2160p rendering, antialiasing (4xMSAA + 4xSGSSAA), Racer_S camera and HUD hack, in-game Photo Mode.

I’ve heard Stuart Black called many things less flattering than ‘senior designer of Black‘ or ‘veteran artist at the fondly remembered Mucky Foot’. Yet every time I’ve met the guy I’ve enjoyed his pitches. Apparently he’s trouble, yet I find his ideas reassuring. (Not that these things are mutually exclusive, of course.) I’ve also heard that he wanted an all-terrain robot dog in dismal FPS Bodycount, and that the consensus was that such brainwaves should have been shut down sooner. My response to this is: if you make an FPS these days that doesn’t feature an all-terrain robot dog, why f’ing bother? Bodycount had character, ideas and health packs when Black was still involved; and in the end had nothing. I know what kind of folly I prefer. I say all this because Black also liked to harp on about the need for supporting artillery to be well inside the scene, as much an actor as any co-op partner or enemy. Did he get this idea from his time at Criterion or just leave it there when he left? Tools and tricks: 2160p rendering, antialiasing (4xMSAA + 4xSGSSAA), Racer_S camera and HUD hack, in-game Photo Mode.

My secret shame is that I never did get the quality right for Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit. Well, that and the thing with the prayer candle and the bishop’s daughter. And that business with Randy Quaid. Anyway. I’m pretty sure no one else got the quality right, either, what with the game being made of hoodoo dust and whatever else the chaps at DICE infused it with. The more cohesive a game’s look, the greater the desire to render it properly. I’m looking into new resizing algorithms for this one. Then I might look for some medicine. Tools and tricks: 2160p rendering, antialiasing (4xMSAA + 4xSGSSAA), Racer_S camera and HUD hack, in-game Photo Mode.

Tools and tricks: unrestricted camera, 2160p rendering, antialiasing (injected ‘ultra-quality’ SMAA), HUD removed in Photoshop.

Tools and tricks: unrestricted camera, 2160p rendering, antialiasing (injected ‘ultra-quality’ SMAA), HUD removed in Photoshop.

RTS rendering has reached a point where zooming out to anything remotely playable feels like a retreat. Via the literally groundbreaking Company Of Heroes, it’s no longer a case of quantity over quality. Fog of war, meet musket smoke and the rigging of sails. But if this is why I can do stuff with Creative Assembly’s magnificent Total War, it’s not necessarily why I will. That’s more about chaos – or indeed the planned spontaneity of AI in battle. Pause, point, zoom… What you find is up to the machine. Tools and tricks: unrestricted camera, 2160p rendering, antialiasing (injected ‘ultra-quality’ SMAA), HUD removed in Photoshop.