Treyarch Defends Black Ops' Ageing Engine

Treyarch has defended using the seven-year-old IW engine to power Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

In an interview with OXM, game design director David Vondehaar explained that modifications had been made to ensure the game ran robustly, and admitted he was baffled that anyone would criticise the title's technical performance.

“

To me, it's like I never really understood. It runs at 60 and it's gorgeous. What exactly is there to be upset about with the engine?

"Anybody who comes at the engine needs to remember it's the 60 frames they love in the first place," he asserted. "And we can make it beautiful - that's through years and years of working with the engine, improving upon it and improving the pipeline and improving our approach, our lighting rendering.

"People like to talk about the engine, but the truth of the matter is that this isn't like something that was invented six years ago. At this point that engine doesn't resemble anything like any engine - we've ripped out the UI system, the rendering and the lighting are all new, the core gameplay systems are all new.

"To me, it's like I never really understood," Vondehaar concluded. "It runs at 60 and it's gorgeous. What exactly is there to be upset about with the engine?"

The IW Engine has been used by both Infinity Ward and Treyarch for the companies' work on the Call of Duty games. It was first used for Call of Duty 2 back in 2005, and the exact engine being used for Black Ops II is a modified version of the IW 3.0 engine that was used for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, as well as the original Black Ops. The PC version of the game is also confirmed to take advantage of DirectX 11 video cards.

The first image of the Nuketown 2025 pre-order bonus map for Call of Duty: Black Ops II was unveiled yesterday, and the game itself is due to release on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on November 13, and on the Wii U on its respective launch dates.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Editorial Assistant and a meleeing ninja when it comes to COD. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

Kingdom Hearts 2 HD Teased by Nomura

It looks like Kingdom Hearts II is set to join the first game in getting an HD remake, if comments from the game's director are to be believed.

In an interview with Famitsu (via Gematsu), Tetsuya Nomura strongly suggested that an HD remake would be announced following the decision to re-release the first game with supped-up graphics as Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix.

When asked, "Is there gonna be a high-definition version of Kingdom Hearts II later?" he responded with a wry smile and the words, "It’d be unusual if there wasn’t."

The original Kingdom Hearts released back in 2002, with the sequel following four years later in 2006. There's been no confirmation as yet regarding the HD remake of the original game coming West, but rumours surfaced last week that suggested an announcement on that front could be imminent.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Editorial Assistant and has missed Sora, Goofy and Donald. Bad. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com

Blizzard’s Titan Has 100 Developers

Blizzard has revealed that 100 developers are now working on its next MMO project, codenamed Titan. In an interview with Curse Entertainment, Blizzard chief creative officer Rob Pardo said “Titan’s still moving along. I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up that it’s around the corner or anything. It’s a very big project. It’s got a long ways to go. We don’t know yet when we’re going to really start releasing more information. We’re definitely dead in the middle of development at this point. I think we’re over 100 people now on the team working on it.”

When asked about rumors that Titan has been in development for six years, Pardo commented that “It depends on how you look at such things. When we first start a team, we start it really, really small. We might start with just a couple people. We talk about the concepts, we draw some concept art. It definitely has not been in core development for that long. I’d say core development is maybe closer to four-ish years, but even that was with a smaller team.”

We first heard hints of Blizzard’s next MMO back in December 2007, when Blizzard said its new MMO isn’t related to World of Warcraft. Blizzard later began hiring developers and WOW lead designer Jeff Kaplan began working on the project. Blizzard said in 2010 that the project was a long way off and the codename Titan emerged later that year.

Last year, rumors suggested Titan would be shown at BlizzCon, but were later debunked by Blizzard. The last time we heard the title referenced was during an Activision Blizzard earnings call last month when it was referred to as “an all-new MMORPG in the future” in reference to Blizzard’s release calendar.

Little is known about Titan, and it sounds like we might still have a long time to wait before concrete details are revealed. In the meantime, Blizzard released World of Warcraft’s Mists of Pandaria expansion earlier this week. For our thoughts so far, read our Mists of Pandaria review in progress.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following him on Twitter or IGN.

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com