[While the work that goes into creating detailed video game worlds benefts consumers more than small businesses, cool stories about what business are doing with computers are fun for everyone to read. This post originally appeared on HP's The Next Bench blog, but I couldn't help sharing it with you]
I knew that HP computers were used to play games….I do that all the time. I knew that they help run and maintain many of the MMO worlds that gamers explore like World of Warcraft and Rift.
What I didn’t consider is how many game developers rely upon HP Workstations to create the worlds that you play. Take, for instance, Eidos Montreal – the team behind last year’s critical hit, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. In order to make the game, Eidos Montreal relied upon the horsepower of Z-Series Workstations.
Just check out this video.
Here’s a game that talks of global conspiracies in a dystopian, cyberpunk near future. It was incredibly moody – like walking through the set of Blade Runner – and in many ways is a melding of art and technology. Both inside the game….and technically, during its development as well.
According to Stephan D’Astous, GM of Eidos Montreal, game development needs to blend all these disparate parts together and it has to be seamless. But here’s what you might not know: “The HP Workstation group came to our studio. They spoke with our teams – to designers and to programmers. They watched how our teams worked, they saw our pipeline, [and] they understood our needs. The result was a perfect match of hardware, software and middleware,” says Stephan.
Frederic Chappart, R&D Director, commented on Z Workstation stability and the ability to drop in different graphics cards to test compatibility during the development process. In short, “It just worked.”
Patrick Enfedacque, Eidos Montreal’s Lead Gameplay Programmer was impressed as well: “As a programmer, we face a lot of downtime waiting for the code to build or the data to be packed.” With the Z Workstations they were able to build out different parts of the game faster than ever.
Like I said, it’s all about being able to merge art and tech. The results were impressive when it came out last year. Not only was I able to fire up – and play – Deus Ex: Human Revolution on a Pavilion dm1z, it scales up and looks even better on you higher end machines. Y’know, like the Phoenix.
I found one site, TechReport.com, that does an awesome analytical breakdown of how Deus Ex performs and stacks up. Check that link!
On press tours, I remember using an ENVY 17 with Deus Ex as a test game to help illustrate AMD’s Eyefinity tech. There’s something really cool about walking through some future world, spread across three displays. You want an extreme example? Check out this Eyefinity tech demo footage of Deus Ex over at GameVideos.1up.com.
So, we’ve talked (and illustrated) a little bit of the tech behind the game. You curious to check it out?
You should!
Through July 23, you’re able to buy Deus Ex: Human Revolution on Valve’s Steam platform for $17.99! That is a seriously good deal. So if you fancy yourself a gamer and you haven’t played it yet, I highly recommend you look into this.
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