Japanese developers start to embrace AMD's Mantle
Thus far, it has only been mostly western developers who are developing games that'll use Mantle technology. At AMD's Future of Compute event though, that changed. Two giants in the Japanese video games industry have signed on. Who are they? Read on to find out.
A summary of what AMD's Mantle is.
While western developers (particularly EA and Crytek) have been rather enthusiastic about Mantle support in their games, the same couldn't be said for eastern ones. Last Thursday though, at AMD's Future of Compute event, the scales tipped slightly as two Japanese giants threw their lot in by integrating Mantle into their games.
Right at the start of the presentation, AMD brought to the stage Yosuke Saito, an executive producer at Japanese RPG giant Square Enix. Square Enix is famous for their RPGs, which includes the Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and Secret of Mana series, as well as more recent additions like Tomb Raider and Deus Ex. Saito-san announced that Dragon Quest X, the Dragon Quest MMO, which was released in Japan last year, will see Mantle support.
Yosuke Saito is the executive producer of Dragon Quest X
Sadly, for those of us who are eagerly anticipating an announcement on when we can expect Dragon Quest X in English, Saito-san didn't have any information to divulge regarding that, nor did he make any other announcements regarding Mantle integration into upcoming games like Kingdom Hearts 3 or Final Fantasy XV.
The other Japanese developer present at AMD's event was Capcom. And unlike Square Enix's barebones announcement, Capcom had some meaty material for us.. The makers of Resident Evil, Dead Rising, Onimusha, Devil May Cry and Monster Hunter (among many, many other titles) took to the stage to announce that they have plans to integrate AMD's Mantle into their technology.
Capcom's Masaru Ijuin, on stage to talk about Capcom's plan regarding Mantle.
Capcom's current engine is called Panta Rhei and will be premiering with Deep Down, Capcom's upcoming action RPG. It's this engine that will be using Mantle in the future.
Capcom explains what Panta Rhei is.
While Capcom didn't announce any particular title that would make use of the new advancements that Mantle would provide (more draw calls, less idle time between GPU cycles), they did show off another trailer of Resident Evil Revelations 2. One might think that might be a hint that perhaps the new Resident Evil would be using Mantle tech in some way but until there's official word from Capcom about this, treat it as rumor for now.
Capcom envisions Mantle integration into their tech would improve their ability to create more realistic games, not just with better graphics but also with better environments and objects.
How Capcom envisions the addition of Mantle would help games. This is how things currently are, with idle time spaced in between cycles.
This one is after the planned Mantle integration. More things done in a shorter amount of time.
The yellow circles are interactive objects. The current pipeline shows just a handful, while with Mantle integration, it's loads more. Nearly every object in the scene will be interactive, with less of a performance hit when compared to if it's done without Mantle tech.
At the end of the presentation, Capcom showed us a quick video of a game that looks similar to Deep Down. Capcom didn't say what the game actually was (or if it was just a tech demo) but they showed us what will be possible, from enhanced lighting to more realistic textures.
A still from the demo Capcom showed us. It looks like Deep Down, but Capcom didn't say where it came from.
Not many games are supporting Mantle right now but AMD's pushing hard to get companies to use it in the future. While many would think that Mantle is in direct competition with DirectX 12, AMD has repeatedly said (at the event and elsewhere) that both are meant to work hand in hand with each other. If that's true (and we have really no reason to think otherwise), expect many more games to integrate Mantle into their engines in the future. Who knows, since AMD chips are in all the current consoles, we might even see Mantle make the leap from PC gaming to console games!
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