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Rendering a Frame of Deus Ex: Human Revolution
An anonymous reader writes "Video games are among the most computationally intensive applications. The amount of calculation achieved in a few milliseconds can sometimes be mind-blowing. This post about the breakdown of a frame rendering in Deus Ex: Human Revolution takes us through the different steps of the process. It explains in detail the rendering passes involved, the techniques as well as the algorithms processed by a computer — 60 times per second."
Over 500 draw calls per frame. I've only ever tinkered in basic OpenGL stuff, but does that seem like an awful lot to anyone else? I was always told to reduce draw calls and to use the newer OpenGL features as they were able to batch commands on thousands of vectors, etc. (or are we talking about different types of draw calls?)
Especially as a lot of the work is done in shaders and shared between passes according to the article?
Wonder what kind of texture etc. bandwidth that's pushing.
I'd have more sympathy with you if the new-releases list on Steam these days wasn't completely buried by "retro 8-bit style" indie roguelikes which look dreadful and usually play that way as well.
These days, I've gone beyond "it's not the graphics that matter, it's the gameplay" to "they both matter, seriously". The former has become a go-to excuse for lazy development.
Rendering a game is kiddy stuff...
--- until you are expected to believer a theatrical quality experience while running a game on hardware costing no more than $500 retail list.