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Hellgate: London Tech Interview

Hellgate: London

User Rating:

ESRB: Blood and Gore,Language - Mild,Violence
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Genre(s): Action, Role Playing Game
Home Page: http://www.hellgatelondon.com/

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By: Nick Evanson Sep 26, 2007

YouGamers: Will gamers be able to use AA in the DX9/DX10 versions? Does Hellgate: London have full widescreen support? Will the field of view correctly scale with the aspect ratio?

Thompson: Yes, Anti-Aliasing should work for both DX9 and DX10. We support many different aspect ratios including widescreen.

Fzzaatt! Funky visual effects are guaranteed in Hellgate.

Nothing perks up the undead like a few million volts!

YouGamers: What physics engine does Hellgate: London use - third party middleware or your own? Will there be any support for hardware physics accelerators?

Thompson: We use Havok for our physics engine. We mostly use it for ragdolls and some debris. Since this is a client-server game with technical challenges identical to most MMOs, we don’t have much physics going on which impacts the gameplay.

Line 'em up... knock 'em down.

Rare enemies are... well, rare! But so is their booty.

YouGamers: Lastly, some developers choose to update their engines, to support new technology, in later patches or expansion packs; do you have similar plans at all?

Thompson: Our graphics programmers will continue to improve things in patches and possibly expansions. Since we already have DX10 working, we have many opportunities for adding some more exciting features to the game. We also plan on continuing to work on lowering the min spec. We know that many people in the world don’t have powerful machines, and we want to reach the largest audience possible.

The real Piccadilly doesn't have hordes of mindless villans wandering about... oh, wait! It does!

Atmospherical effects will look and run better if you have a dual core CPU and a DX10 graphics card, with Vista.

It's worth going back to Thompson's comment about what shader models they are using in Hellgate's graphics engine: "SM1.1, SM2.0, SM3.0 and SM4.0" Now in the hardware requirement, shader model 2.0 is stated as being the minimum so what to make of SM1.1 then? There are three possible explanations:

There's a whole bunch of typos going on!
Most of the graphics is done with SM2.0 but a few, for the sake of performance, are done with SM1.1 (which all SM2.0 and higher graphics cards support);
Hellgate: London needs SM2.0 graphics cards as minimum at launch but as stated above, work is being planned to continuing to lower the requirements - which could mean that SM1.1 cards are supported in a later patch.

Whatever the case may be, if you're still using a SM1.1 graphics card, then you should seriously think of getting an upgrade! There are lots of great AGP graphics cards to buy, for all ranges of budgets, so make sure that you're running with SM2.0 as a minimum. It's also great to hear that all the mod cons are being properly used: dual core CPUs, widescreen aspect ratios, anti-aliasing, etc.

Our thanks go to Tyler Thompson for taking time to answer our questions (the devs will be in full "crunch mode" now), and to EA for arranging the interview and images. Hellgate: London is due for launch on Halloween in the US, and a few days later elsewhere in the world. Until then, sit back and enjoy the screenshots.

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