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    BioShock Infinite

    Game » consists of 20 releases. Released Mar 26, 2013

    The third game in the BioShock series leaves the bottom of the sea behind for an entirely new setting - the floating city of Columbia, circa 1912. Come to retrieve a girl named Elizabeth, ex-detective Booker DeWitt finds more in store for him there than he could ever imagine.

    Additional information about the Bioshock: Infinite engine.

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    mordukai

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    #1  Edited By mordukai

    In an interesting response to a thread on the Irrational Game forum Chris Kline, the Technical director for Bioshock: Infinite, shared some more information about the game's engine.  
     


    Over the last few years we've been put together an world-class team of engineers with a single goal: do whatever it takes to bring the Columbia and the amazing world of BioShock Infinite to life. We're talking about a world where entire buildings are moving around in the sky, you're fighting AIs at 90mph on Sky-Lines as you dangle high above the earth, and racing through vicious weather to rescue Elizabeth while battling your way through hordes of enemies determined to stop you at any cost. Right from the outset we realized that this was going to be a monumental undertaking on the tech side, but decided it was a challenge that we simply had to take on in order to give gamers the kind of quality experience they've come to expect from Irrational Games and BioShock.

    We started out by taking a look at the original BioShock engine, and very quickly realized that the tools in that engine were too underpowered and unwieldy for the depth and complexity of the gameplay and narrative we had planned -- our very patient but long-suffering designers and artists were due for a total toolset overhaul. That alone was one of the most compelling factors behind our decision to abandon that engine and start over with UE3 as a base.

    But UE3 out of the box was not enough to meet the demands of this game, so we took out a knife and started doing some surgery:

    • Given the intelligence and sheer number of AI we planned to throw at the player, we needed an entirely new AI system that was both more efficient and gave designers the ability to author their own behaviors. And because smooth and complex animation is the key to looking intelligent, we got down to business building a new animation system on top of NaturalMotion's 'Morpheme' technology.

    • All major FPS engines (CryEngine 3, UE3, id Tech 5) are designed and optimized for static environments that the player moves through, which is a reasonable choice because, even if there are trees moving in the wind, the ground under the player's feet isn't going anywhere. Unfortunately for our tech team (but good for you) everything in Columbia is capable of moving. The very ground beneath your feet could fall out of the sky at any moment, which makes for some awesome gameplay and visuals but required us to create a completely new technology that we're calling "Floating Worlds". You saw a little of this in the gameplay demo video (in the part right after Saltonstall jumps on the Sky-Line) and you'll be seeing a lot more of it in the future.

    • To meet the aesthetic goals of our art team, our rendering gurus had to write a whole new renderer for BioShock Infinite based on Deferred Lighting (a technique used in Uncharted 2, CryEngine3, and Killzone 2), and on top of that they've developed a proprietary per-pixel dynamic relighting scheme that allows characters and dynamic objects to receive global illumination.

    • BioShock 1's audio system was... umm... "sub-optimal". This time around our sound team demanded a new audio pipeline based on AudioKinetic's WWise technology that supported 5.1 with adjustable dynamic range and a fully dynamic mixing system. Not only did our engineers rise to that task, but they subsequently took it up a notch and implemented both a custom sound propagation system (so voices properly echo down corridors and around buildings) and a dynamic wind audio system that reinforces the dynamic weather in the world.

    • Finally, we've built a whole new parallel processing framework (a "job architecture", in programmer lingo) that lets the engine take advantage of as many cores as you can throw at it. This will let us eke out all the power of the PS3 and 360, and also give hardcore PC gamers something to show off their rigs with.

    That's just a sample of some of the major changes we've done so far on our way to building BioShock Infinite. Hopefully in the future we'll be talking some more about these and some others I haven't mentioned, so please subscribe to our podcast and keep your ears open!

    You can view the entire thread by going here.
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    deactivated-5fb7c57ae2335

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    Sounds fucking awesome.

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    Geno

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    #3  Edited By Geno
    @Mordukai said: 

     they've developed a proprietary per-pixel dynamic relighting scheme that allows characters and dynamic objects to receive global illumination.

    adjustable dynamic range and a fully dynamic mixing system. Not only did our engineers rise to that task, but they subsequently took it up a notch and implemented both a custom sound propagation system (so voices properly echo down corridors and around buildings) and a dynamic wind audio system that reinforces the dynamic weather in the world.

     lets the engine take advantage of as many cores as you can throw at it. This will let us eke out all the power of the PS3 and 360, and also give hardcore PC gamers something to show off their rigs with.

    Excited.
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    BraveToaster

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    #4  Edited By BraveToaster
    @InfamousBIG said:
    " Sounds fucking awesome. "
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    mordukai

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    #5  Edited By mordukai
    @InfamousBIG: Very much exited. I was over the moon when I heard that the original Bioshock team was back on a Bioshock game. It's also good to see that they basiclly took everything they did on the first Bioshock game and threw it out the window and just decided to rebuild the engine, again. 
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    rav84

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    #6  Edited By rav84

    Lots of technical jargon... but I like what I read!

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    mordukai

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    #7  Edited By mordukai
    @rav84 said:
    " Lots of technical jargon... but I like what I read! "
    If you like what you read then you will like their podcast. They share a lot of information about past and future games. 
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    Geno

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    #8  Edited By Geno

    I like how they made sort of a subtle knock against two of the industry's most technologically advanced engines (CE3 and IT5). "Yeah, those are pretty good, and imma let them finish, but our engine works while you're swinging from building to building in a dynamically shifting city thousands of feet above the ground, just sayin".

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    Diamond

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    #9  Edited By Diamond

    Well it's true how heavily most engines & games are based around static environments.  I'll bet that the vast majority of Infinite will just be static structures with the illusion of movement too, though.  If every single structure can be taken out of the sky in relation to other structures, that will be interesting.
     
    I wonder what exactly they're doing to UE3's parallel processing that it lacked before?

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    Red12b

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    #10  Edited By Red12b

    I reiterate the notion of 
     
    SOUNDS FUCKING AWESOME 
     
    These guys seem to have their heads in the right place.  
     

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    ajamafalous

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    #11  Edited By ajamafalous

    Good to see the love for high-end PCs.

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    SeriouslyNow

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    #12  Edited By SeriouslyNow

    I think the whole thing hints at some cataclysmic end game sequence where Columbia will fall from the sky en masse.

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    OverLord00

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    #13  Edited By OverLord00
    @SeriouslyNow:  Sounds fucking awesome!
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    BBQBram

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    #14  Edited By BBQBram

    Sounds great, they seem to be pushing their own limits, which is what all devs should aspire to do.

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    02sfraser

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    #15  Edited By 02sfraser

    That is sounding amazing! I cannot wait for this game!

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    kelbear

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    #16  Edited By kelbear

    I really liked their audio effects at a distance in the gameplay trailer.

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    ryanwho

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    #17  Edited By ryanwho

    Just tell me I can turn off that shitty bloom lighting.

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