Dragon Age Forum News (Mar. 15, 05)

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Here are today's Dragon Age forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

PPU: Physics Processing Units Supported by DA?

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The PPU (and/or dual-core) wouldn't be used just for wavy grass and drifting clouds in RPGs like DA. For one thing, it would enable better and easier use of the Z-dimension, which would no doubt add a layer of richness to plotting and game play.

Many of the things that people have been suggesting for NWN2 and DA - such as use of the Z-dimension - could be enabled by physics middleware like Novodex, and therefore could be accelerated by PPUs.

This includes more detailed rendering and movement of multiple figures in a single scene, more realistic behavior of multiple thrown or launched objects, multiple characters in flight, entry & exit from 2nd floor windows, climbing skill, water and wind effects, and so on.

I think it has already been noted somewhere that DA will use the Z-dimension, it will have more realistic looking figures, and it will enable scenes with many characters in combat - such as archers with flaming arrows. I would assume that they are making use of a physics engine like Novodex, and they are expecting regular users in 2007 to be able to run it.

If Bioware can achieve the effects they are looking for with just physics middleware (or its equivalent) running on a plain 64-bit CPU, then that's great. We won't need to purchase a PPU or have dual-core in order to play DA.

But I hope they advance the game enough that dual-core or PPU assist will unlock a greater level of play, just as more advanced CPUs, sound, and graphics cards unlocked a higher quality of play in NWN.

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Having a pathable Z axis has nothing to do with using a physics engine.

For a game to use physics and have those physics matter, it has to be a physics based game. Like Jade Empire. If someone hits someone else (and you can see it), they've hit them. Simple.

In a rules based game, like Dragon Age or NWN... you hit someone if the rules tell you that you've hit someone, it is a deterministic simulation.

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Unless the physics engine includes an animation library that could somehow be accelerated by hardware ( ) a PPU will have no effect at all on how many animations you can play concurrently.

It would have an effect on many times you could check for collisions on those animations, but not on the animations themselves.

A physics hardware processor will not enable the rendering of more characters. It's not an additional GPU. (As an aside, on SLI - even then you only get advantages in very specific circumstances).

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Flying, second story exiting and climbing have nothing to do with physics, those are gameplay/control mechanics. Not physics.

You would probably be able to do water/wind effect processing... but without knowing more about Novodex et al, I can't make an informed opinion. Even then though, those types of calculations are usually trivial (or can be trivialised).

The only case in which you are going to get a benefit would be if the game was already spending a great deal of time computing physics and if that processing time was able to be offloaded. This is the only real benefit of this type of hardware.

IMO, the most likely uses for this new technology (if it's adopted) would be in simulation style games that make a heavy use of physics (traditionally FPS's).

Even then, I would think they would have to have to have some way of scaling their physics simulations so that the game would run adequately in both software and hardware.

And... If physics make a difference in gameplay - they would probably have to balance their game based on the capabilities of the software physics solution (theoretically what most of their userbase would have).

So even then, having a hardware physics card might not even make any perceivable difference. In the end (as has been mentioned) it will depend on what kind of visual/perceivable pay-off having one of these cards will get you.

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Now, having said all of that. I think that there is a great deal of potential in a physics card. Whether or not it is realized is going to depend largely on whether it is adopted by consumers.

Additionally, it will be interesting to see how the major GPU manufacturers react to this sort of thing. As mentioned in Allen's post, if it catches on... perhaps it's a candidate for inclusion on your next video card?

Word based stats

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no. i want numbers. the higher the numbers the better.

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Like having a strength of: 5.31441e+74 ?

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preciously.

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I'll see what I can do.