4A Engine
Encyclopedia
The 4A Engine is a graphics middle-ware engine developed by 4A Games
for use in their video game Metro 2033, published by THQ
. It supports Direct3D
APIs 9, 10, and 11, along with NVidia
's PhysX, and also NVidia's 3D Vision.
by a set of people who split off from GSC Game World
a year before the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
, notably Oles Shishkovtsov and Aleksandr Maksimchuk, the programmers who worked on the development of X-Ray engine used in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. video game series. The engine itself is capable of running on PC, the Xbox 360
, and the Playstation 3
.
Shishkovtsov and his colleagues split from the development of S.T.A.L.K.E.R because that "its inherent inability to be multi-threaded, the weak and error-prone networking model, and simply awful resource and memory management which prohibited any kind of streaming or simply keeping the working set small enough for 'next-gen' consoles" along with its "terrible text-based scripting", which he explained led to the delays in the original game.
The game is multi-threaded in such that only PhysX had a dedicated thread, and uses a task-model without any pre-conditioning or pre/post-synchronising, allowing tasks to be done in parallel. When the Xbox 360 iteration had been measured during development, they were running it at "approximately 3,000 tasks per 30ms frame on Xbox 360 on CPU-intensive scenes with all hardware threads at 100 per cent load". Shishkovtsov also said that the NV40 architecture of the RSX in the Playstation 3 proved to be very useful during development noted that there were many "wasted cycles". The engine can utilise a deferred shading pipeline, and uses tesselation for greater performance, and also has HDR (complete with blue shift), real-time reflections, colour correction, film grain and noise, and the engine also supports multi-core rendering.
Metro 2033 featured superior volumetric fog, double PhysX precision, object blur, sub-surface scattering for skin shaders, parallax mapping on all surfaces and greater geometric detail with a less aggressive LOD(s).
Using PhysX
, the engine uses many features such as destructible environments, and cloth and water simulations, and particles that can be fully affected by environmental factors. The audio in the engine features 3D sound positioning, spatialisation and attenuation.
4A Games
4A Games is a video game development company in Ukraine, which is known for Metro 2033.-History:The company was formed in Kiev, Ukraine. It was founded by former employees of GSC Game World, a year before the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, in particular Oles Shyskovtsov and...
for use in their video game Metro 2033, published by THQ
THQ
THQ Inc. is an American developer and publisher of video games. Founded in 1989 in the United States, the company develops products for video game consoles, handheld game systems, as well as for personal computers and wireless devices...
. It supports Direct3D
Direct3D
Direct3D is part of Microsoft's DirectX application programming interface . Direct3D is available for Microsoft Windows operating systems , and for other platforms through the open source software Wine. It is the base for the graphics API on the Xbox and Xbox 360 console systems...
APIs 9, 10, and 11, along with NVidia
NVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
's PhysX, and also NVidia's 3D Vision.
Development
The engine was developed in UkraineUkraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
by a set of people who split off from GSC Game World
GSC Game World
GSC Game World is a Kiev-based computer game developer. Founded in 1995 in Kiev, Ukraine, it released titles such as Cossacks: European Wars, American Conquest, Alexander, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat...
a year before the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is a first-person shooter video game by the Ukrainian developer GSC Game World, published in 2007.It features an alternate reality theme, where a second nuclear disaster occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Exclusion Zone in the near future and causes...
, notably Oles Shishkovtsov and Aleksandr Maksimchuk, the programmers who worked on the development of X-Ray engine used in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. video game series. The engine itself is capable of running on PC, the Xbox 360
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
, and the Playstation 3
PlayStation 3
The is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment and the successor to the PlayStation 2 as part of the PlayStation series. The PlayStation 3 competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
.
Shishkovtsov and his colleagues split from the development of S.T.A.L.K.E.R because that "its inherent inability to be multi-threaded, the weak and error-prone networking model, and simply awful resource and memory management which prohibited any kind of streaming or simply keeping the working set small enough for 'next-gen' consoles" along with its "terrible text-based scripting", which he explained led to the delays in the original game.
The game is multi-threaded in such that only PhysX had a dedicated thread, and uses a task-model without any pre-conditioning or pre/post-synchronising, allowing tasks to be done in parallel. When the Xbox 360 iteration had been measured during development, they were running it at "approximately 3,000 tasks per 30ms frame on Xbox 360 on CPU-intensive scenes with all hardware threads at 100 per cent load". Shishkovtsov also said that the NV40 architecture of the RSX in the Playstation 3 proved to be very useful during development noted that there were many "wasted cycles". The engine can utilise a deferred shading pipeline, and uses tesselation for greater performance, and also has HDR (complete with blue shift), real-time reflections, colour correction, film grain and noise, and the engine also supports multi-core rendering.
Metro 2033 featured superior volumetric fog, double PhysX precision, object blur, sub-surface scattering for skin shaders, parallax mapping on all surfaces and greater geometric detail with a less aggressive LOD(s).
Using PhysX
PhysX
PhysX is a proprietary realtime physics engine middleware SDK developed by Ageia with the purchase of ETH Zurich spin-off NovodeX in 2004...
, the engine uses many features such as destructible environments, and cloth and water simulations, and particles that can be fully affected by environmental factors. The audio in the engine features 3D sound positioning, spatialisation and attenuation.