Climax Studios brought the Dead Nation: Apocalypse Edition to the PS4 just recently. Despite RESOGUN running at 60 FPS, Dead Nation on the PS4 only ran 30 FPS. Was there any special reason? GamingBolt spoke to SCE Worldwide Studios XDEV Studio Europe executive producer James Hawkins and Climax senior technical designer Claire Blackshaw about the same.
Hawkins stated that, “RESOGUN has the advantage of being developed specifically with the PS4 in mind, where Dead Nation was developed specifically for the PS3.
“Due to the complexities and dependencies of the original game, and especially the way that the original game utilizes the PS3 architecture so as to avoid dropping below 30fps at all times, we decided early on that it was better to put our effort into genuinely new features and ensuring it looked great at a solid 30fps, just like it does on the PS3 but in full HD and with improved visual effects.”
The site also asked about the differences between porting a PS3 game to the PS4 and developing a PS4 title from the ground up, along with the challenges faced. Blackshaw said, “The PS4 is a great platform to work on and port to as it’s a more standard hardware and the tools are great. One of the big challenges with Dead Nation was going from 32bit to 64bit given the optimized data formats. Once that hurdle was overcome it was mostly smooth sailing, adding new PS4 features and polishing.”
