Psygnosis: The Road Ahead

Earlier this week, Psygnosis' Technology Director Dominic Mallinson spoke out on what his company has in store for the PC and the PlayStation.

Psygnosis is taking its time to look two to three years into the future and figure out what needs to be done to incorporate current and upcoming technologies, both hardware and software, into its titles.

So what does it see as the emerging technologies that are going to make games better for you the gamer? AGP, 3D acceleration, 3D APIs, online gaming, and new Intel microprocessors.

Mallinson, being at the helm of Psygnosis' technology, started talking about 3D acceleration. According to Mallinson, 1997 was the year 3D finally grew up. He sees 1998 as the year the mainstream market - not just hard-core gamers - gets involved with choosing 3D accelerators with new PCs, or as add-on boards for their current PCs.

Currently, G Police (a title that looks absolutely amazing under 3D acceleration) will be one of the last titles to come stamped with a "3D accelerator recommended" label that will require the game to have some form of hardware acceleration. Although Psygnosis isn't building specific games for specific chipsets, it is looking to support 3D boards through Microsoft's Direct X technologies.

The 3D API (application programming interface) controversy has been one of the hot topics on the Web - partly because of the rift that separates the two core rendering technologies: OpenGL and Direct X. Both have their evangelists, but Psygnosis has chosen Direct X and Direct 3D technologies because of the basic fact that those technologies have improved over time.

Looking at the new titles coming out of Psygnosis, all definitely show off the 3D power that API has to offer without relegating gamers to upgrade their systems every three months.

Mallinson did state that certain titles have been worked on under OpenGL but that using the other API didn't show off a great performance leap from using Direct X. He continued to say that the company is working on one or two titles that are using the OpenGL API currently, but wouldn't reveal what those titles were or what genre they were in.

Regardless (and luckily), all the games coming up will support both Windows 95/98 and Windows NT. Most of the titles are developed on Windows NT machines because NT is more crashproof than the 95/98 platform. Once a game moves into a stable level under NT, it is then ported down to 95/98 where it is checked for compatibility. This will come to the relief of many NT fans who want to make sure more games will run on their Windows NT boxes.

Moving into brand-new hardware technologies, AGP (accelerated graphics port) seemed to keep popping up in Mallinson's presentation. Why? AGP allows new video boards to process more throughput information in the form of textures and other graphical information. It doesn't speed up a game but it will give gamers more eye candy. In many cases, AGP makes games much more immersive than one pushed through the PCI bus.

G Police has a special option that shows off the AGP technology with a setting called "extreme." Graphically, buildings take on much deeper textures, video billboards show video-like commercials as you fly past, in some ways it felt like you were flying in a futuristic world that you only previously could get through in a movie. Specs under the extreme mode aren't perfect (22fps under 640x480 and 19fps under 1024x768 on a NVIDIA Riva 128 AGP board) but the potential for improvement as AGP technology is more understood will definitely make leaps and bounds in speed.

Online gaming is also a new realm for Psygnosis and it is going to get into the ambitious world of building online communities soon. Mallinson thinks that these new environments "should allow players to express themselves by immersing them into the game." How do they intend to do that? Currently, he talked about the very early stages of development of an RPG-like game.

Mallinson thinks that true online gaming won't take off until 1999 though because the infrastructure isn't in place yet to support the demands of a complex game. As an example, he thinks that Ultima Online is a great game - and one that breaks new ground - but it is a game that's too slow for the average gamer. Mallinson says you've got to be a "tolerant gamer" to deal with UO's downsides.

Other efforts that Psygnosis is looking at include the ability to download new vehicles and levels for its PC-based titles as well as an attempt to launch an online gaming service someday.

Mallinson spoke of Psygnosis' close ties with Intel and how Intel is making a real jump ahead with new processor technologies. Although Mallinson couldn't comment on what Intel was doing with the upcoming Merced and Deschutes chips, he said that Psygnosis would be more focused on 32-bit technology right now - at least until Intel's upcoming 64-bit processors begin to take hold of the market.

And what about consoles? GameSpot News asked Psygnosis what other tricks it could pull out of the PlayStation considering that many are wondering how much untapped potential is left in the system (especially considering that the next PlayStation isn't due until 1999 or 2000).

Mallinson answered that Sony has recently sent a program out that helps programmers optimize code for the PlayStation by analyzing the performance of the hardware. With optimized code, Mallinson said there could be a 10-15 percent performance boost in upcoming PlayStation-based games.

Other tricks that Mallinson mentioned are in the realm of higher resolutions and frame rates. He said that some companies have played with the idea and he suspects that this will show up in more games.

When GameSpot News asked if Psygnosis (which has ties to Sony) has any influence over what features would be included with the PlayStation 2, Mallinson responded that he's sure that Sony would listen to almost anyone about the feature set of the upcoming console and Psygnosis didn't really have a say in it.

The company is also looking at DVD, force feedback, head-mounted displays, arcade titles, and 3D audio as well.

DVD, Mallinson believes, won't really be as beneficial to gamers until late in '98 when more people will have DVD drives in new machines. 3D audio is very intriguing to Psygnosis as it watches technologies like Aureal's A3D show up in new sound boards. The technology allows the gamer to get surround sound audio effects through only two speakers. This and other technologies including Qsound will be supported through Microsoft's DirectSound 3D API.

Lastly, force feedback will be supported in more titles from the company through Direct X and will show up with that support in G Police and Shadow Master. Other topics that were touched on included PC-mounted cameras, true lighting, better reflections, agents in online games that would look after your areas when you weren't there, better realism, and better AI.