MAG: Shadow War - 256 players! (PS3)

[EvilBoris]

I hope they aren't fobbing us off with a Chromehounds/Endwar persistant battle across a world map, that would be such a cop out.

[JP]

The first in-game screen captures have just been released! It's going to be making an appearance at E3 so hopefully we'll find out more then.













There's another 10 on play3.de.

Not exactly the most attractive game ever but I wasn't expecting it to be due to the number of players in the environment.

[Matt]

TBH, I think that looks too good if they're really putting all those players on screen at once! As usual with this "sounds too amazing to be true" things, I'm skeptical but also hopeful they pull it off.

Right now, I'd take a 64 player BattleField game on console, so jumping from say 32 to 256 players is a technical leap I can't wait to see

[Matt]

Hold on, is this bull****?

Two pics - new explosion on left in pic 2, troops on ground have moved, camera moved forward. Time has definitely passed.

So WTF are the planes and guys jumping out of the planes stationary?

[hudson]

haha, that is seriously pooingly dodgy looking. Them planes and parachute dudes are tatooed on the sky.

[NecronomiconUK]

Got me all excited initially but.... BULLSHOT!!

[hudson]

BULLSHOT!!

Love that term

[Dezm0nd]

heheh you clearly spent many a day playing Spot the difference. What a bullshot

[Matt]

LOL. I enjoy looking at shots of future games to see the graphical techniques At least this is a PS3 title, if it was a 360 game I criticised I'd get accused of being a fanboy. Every cloud....

I'm not 100% sure what's going on with the planes - they're either added afterwards, or they're a bitmap on a block in the gameworld sky. They're not part of the backdrop scenery texture as I originally expected, because their relative position to the backdrop mountains has changed. I can't tell if they're just photoshopped in post or not, which I'd expect, because the low quality jpg doesn't let you see if the smoke is over or under them.

The texture they're pasting up there must exist as a 3D model in some form, because both planes/jumpers are the same animation frame just a slightly different perspective.

Either way, whoever released these mock-ups messed up by treating us like idiots.

[JP]

I'm not even convinced they were applied as 3D models to be honest, looking at the way they've been distorted it looks like they were flattened and then just stretched as a 2D image.

The rest of the images look fine but it does seem that somebody thought they had the bright idea of adding the planes & soldiers without doing a proper job of it.

It's a little surprising really, not that they'd do it but that they'd do it and not bother doing it any better than pasting them as a 2D imagine. How long would it have taken them to add the 3D models to the engine and then got the dev kit to render a still frame?

I've got the horrible feeling that somebody has just used a couple of Googled photos instead of rendering a 3D model.

[Matt]

The hunt is on! Who can find the original Googled pic first

[JP]

[Matt]

Well played

[hudson]

it's just a sad day. Zipper have tried to bum my eyes. Hope all turns out swell.

[Kit]

I can’t see it being part of the skybox. It’s probably a prop to show the other team showing up during setup; one player in the team has to play a commander, so I assume he chooses where to spawn.