Improvements to GOWIII since E3 demo explained

Although many of you have only just got your hands on the God of War III demo, due to it releasing to the PlayStation Store only last week, the demo actually dates back to E3 2009. That’s coming up to a year ago, and twelve months is a very long time in video game development: so what have Sony Santa Monica done to improve the game’s engine in that time? The studio’s art director, Ken Feldman, lists many of the additions:.

“The E3 content is over a year old,” Feldman writes on the God of War forums. “The team has learned a lot since then, so the final game should reflect that effort. Off the top of my head features added since E3 include: anti-aliasing on the CPU – looks much better then the 2x at E3; motion-blur that works for the camera, object and inner object; lens flare/god ray tech; reflection and refraction; improved character lighting; and improved texture streaming – the E3 demo was problematic and had blurry textures due to streaming not texture authoring. That has been fixed.”

In addition to better anti-aliasing and sharper textures, Feldman later adds that the game’s shadows have been greatly improved for the game’s release:

“A significant improvement I forgot to mention is dynamic shadows. Ben Diamand, one of our coders, spent nearly the entire project writing shadow code. In the end it really paid off. The last couple months we had a couple tech artists dedicated to dialing in the tweakers so there would be no shadow pixelization in the game. A big issue I have is bad looking shadow casting on characters up-close. When shadows are done right, you shouldn’t even notice them. When they crawl, it becomes the focus and takes away from everything else. The final build of the game, I hardly noticed the shadows, they were so well done.”

That’s certainly good to hear. God of War III releases for the PlayStation 3 later this month.

Readers Comments (15)

  1. Well, with so much time between E3 and the game’s release, it’s expected that such improvements would be made.

    Also, it’s pretty nuts that one of the coders spent most of the project working on JUST shadows, lol.

  2. LOl no duhhh

  3. Moocows111111 March 1, 2010 @ 19:23

    Very Sweet, if the demo was pretty good, then the actual game would be incredibly better. I can’t wait until the game comes out.

  4. Damn, I rather want to play with an updated build than just read about the improvements (‘Cuz seriously, it just makes the wait even worse).

  5. Well the recent vids are proof that the final game has undergone some major updates since the demo… Day one purchase for me!!!

  6. man…..things just keep getting better…

  7. I thought E3 demo had Streaming textures, just like Uncharted 2, so the current demo IMO looks awesome, but now after reading this i am ready to drop my jaws again.

  8. And it really shows. Go check the GoW III thread, I just posted a comparison from old to new and it is just amazing.

  9. @sonyjunkie: oh wow…..this really is a big change 0_o

  10. I won’t be getting GOW3 just yet, since I barely have the time to play so many games. I still have to finish Borderlands, I’m getting FFXI and FFXIII, so I got games to play for a while, but this looks and sounds awesome.

  11. well i got the demo from E3 a while ago so it will be interesting to compare the differences one i download the new one of psn.

  12. @Scotspeed: It’s the same E3 demo that just went public. If we want to see the changes first hand, well. . . . . we’ve gotta play the full game =P

  13. The demo was already ridiculously good enough. They could have released it as-is at that point and it still would have been fantastic. This extra year is only going to secure even better reviews, more acclaim, attention, and sales.

  14. nice touches they added to the game, i already have my GOW 3 ultimate edition all paid off, now all i have to do is wait for his beast of a game

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