Ninja Theory’s DmC when it hits Xbox 360 and PS3 will be locked at 30 fps, but players will experience the ”feel of 60 frames” because of techniques they picked up for Unreal Engine 3.
At 30 frames our brains know something isn’t quite right, but at 60 it feels silky smooth. Dragon’s Dogma taught the Capcom devs ”some fairly elaborate techniques”.
Fans have been concerned that DmC will be plagued by just 30 frames per second, with only the PC version due later actually offering the higher frame rate. ”During the course of the development of Dragon’s Dogma we did a lot of experimentation and happened upon some techniques for working with Unreal Engine, some fairly elaborate techniques, that allow for a controller responsiveness that gives the player the feel of 60 frames per second,” Hideaki Itsuno said.
”60 frames per second is a speed the brain and the eye can catch up with and understand,” he explained. “But at 30 frames per second there’s a technique where you take advantage of the brain’s ability to fill in the blanks.”
“So even though you have it running at 30 frames per second, you create the motions and the poses in such a way that the brain will naturally fill in what would have been the extra frames.” The director wouldn’t divulge technique details. “Also, on the players’ side, we made some adjustments to the button response and when it’s reflected on screen.”
The reason the Ninja Theory team went with 30 over 60 was to ensure the ”best visual style they were looking for” could be applied. “We were limited a little bit by the engine capabilities,” added Ninja Theory’s Stuart Adcock. “We could have done it at 60 but we would have had to have had very static environments and less combat effects.”
”When we were thinking of doing a Ninja Theory interpretation of it we wanted to bring so much more to the table with visual niceties. We still felt that with 30 we could provide a good experience.”
DmC: Devil May Cry releases on Xbox 360 and PS3 January 15th.
