Killzone: Shadow Fall developer Guerrilla Games has stated that the PS4 shooter can handle 24 AI troops on screen before the frame-rate drops. It’s currently locked at 60FPS.Speaking with OPM, lead designer Eric Boltjes said of the leap to PS4, “For me as a game designer what I was really interested in was getting more gameplay elements on screen. More enemy types at the same time, more weapon types. Bigger areas. For me that gives us a lot more ingredients to play around with. Previously we were limited. You could have six or seven guys on screen, only two types, and it had to be at a specific range”
When asked about the on-screen enemy limit, Boltjes replied, “Yes. It’s about 24,” and added, “but that’s just enemy AI. And there are other types of enemy AI, lots of destructibility, lots of dynamic objects. Those have much higher limits but the amount of AI is around 24″.
When asked what would happen if a 25th enemy were to come on screen, he replied, “framerate drops,” and continued, “They’re all autonomous, they create their own effects. They’re busy little bees.” He concluded, “as soon as you push it over [24] then we get performance issues”.
