Ninjaneering - Andy Mitchell

THG - There continues to be a lot of discussion about pixel and vertex shaders. What kind of effects are really possible with this kind of technology?

AM - Instead of selecting from a fixed menu of capabilities for features such as lighting, everything is now under our control. We're free to develop things no one has seen before. Vertex shaders off-load the CPU to make things like high-resolution shadows and higher order surfaces practical in much of the scene; they also open the door for more complex lighting calculations, such as refraction and nonlinear surface properties. Check out the ocean water effects in many games released next year, for example, and you'll see an incredible difference compared to last year. Pixel shaders give us the ability to do a vast array of non-photorealistic rendering effects, of which 'toon' shading is just the beginning, along with image post-processing using filters of various kinds, and high-dynamic-range lighting effects. Our imaginations are now the major limitation.

The fur demo was a big hit with the developers, and this is just one good example of what can be done using pixel shaders.

THG - Many consumers continue to complain that the speed at which hardware technology is changing continues to push the envelope, but that it is taking longer and longer for the software to catch up. Do you think that the hardware technology is moving so rapidly, and the software development cycle is so long, that software developers are kept unable to use this new technology until the next development cycle?

AM - Arguably, the major change in the DX9 generation is one that will address this issue directly - support for higher-level languages when developing effects. This will bring the same advantages that moving beyond assembly language did for programming the CPU: code reuse through abstraction and modularization, easier maintainability, shared libraries of effects, and tools that shorten the development cycle. While it may take a year or two for this to be fully embraced by developers, I definitely believe it will help us bring games that make use of new hardware technology to market faster.

THG - How do you think that ATI Mojo Day is a benefit to you and your team?

AM - ATI gave us hands-on experience with a suite of new tools under development that we can leverage so we won't have to build our own in-house. Meeting ATI's engineers face-to-face helps establish relationships that we'll rely on in the future as our needs evolve, or if we encounter any problems. And networking with other developers is always a plus when you're a growing company.

Mojo Day is an excellent chance to learn about the technology and how to get it into your projects.

THG - With all the defection of software developers to the console market, do you believe that PC gaming will return to its past glory with the introduction of all these new hardware technologies?

AM - Absolutely. The DX9 generation of hardware (e.g., Radeon 9700) is letting us do things that aren't possible on consoles yet, such as realistic lip-synched facial animation, and pixel effects applied to video streams in real time. We develop Internet games which center on player chat to build the social experience, and this is still painful and awkward on the current generation of consoles. Each new console release seems to bring predictions of the death of PC gaming, but in practice, the cutting edge stuff always shows up first on the PC, while the consoles play catch-up.

THG - Strictly from the programming point of view, do you really see any real world performance gap between Intel and AMD CPUs? Does either one have a real edge when it comes to writing software? Do you use the same code on both, or do you optimize for each CPU brand?

AM - They've been competing extremely closely. We use a mix in-house for development, to help identify any differences early. We like the fact that Microsoft works closely with both companies to optimize their DirectX libraries - that largely frees us from the need to do platform-specific graphics optimization. The coming shift to 64 bit CPUs will bring a new wave of competition, and we'll have to watch to see whether it changes the cost-benefit equation for CPU-specific code paths.