- #MORTAL KOMBAT X GRAPHICS 720P#
- #MORTAL KOMBAT X GRAPHICS CODE#
- #MORTAL KOMBAT X GRAPHICS PS4#
- #MORTAL KOMBAT X GRAPHICS PS3#
For starters, and unlike in earlier 3D outings in the series, most of the action takes place on a 2D plane. Going back to the 2011 reboot, it’s evident that many of NetherRealm’s design choices for the original carried over to Mortal Kombat 11 and the eighth-gen consoles. Optimization is crucial to handing in a consistent, high-framerate experience. It has to be responsive and it has to hit 60 FPS, even on the base consoles, while still delivering a visual spectacle. With Mortal Kombat’s hardcore competitive fanbase, there’s just no way the game could work as a 30 FPS experience. (Ironically, The Evil Within was a third-person horror game that repurposed IdTech 5 to deliver a 30 FPS experience so cinematic, it was actually presented in 21:9 with black bars on the side.)
#MORTAL KOMBAT X GRAPHICS PS3#
IdTech 5, on the other hand, was built from the ground up on the premise of delivering responsive, 60 FPS gameplay on PS3 and Xbox 360, something that Rage definitely delivered on. Fighting games demand minimal input lag, silky smooth framerates, and rock-solid consistency, even at the expense of visuals and scale. Lavish alpha, relatively wide draw distances, and even Nvidia PhysX effects are perfectly acceptable if you’re not targeting the most responsive experience. The bulk of first and third-person shooters built on the engine-from Mass Effect to Bulletstorm targeted a “cinematic” 30 FPS.
Unlike the idTech engine, for instance, few high framerate twitch shooters were made for console using Unreal 3. This focus on visuals over framerate is evident in the kind of seventh-gen titles utilizing Unreal 3.
#MORTAL KOMBAT X GRAPHICS 720P#
Typical workflows and frame budgeting in titles like Gears of War, and Borderlands target a 720p 30 FPS update, for an experience that’s high on visual spectacle, but not particularly responsive. At first glance, Unreal 3 doesn’t look like the ideal engine for this kind of game: Unreal 3 was built with seventh-gen console shooters in mind. The game and its predecessors were built around a rock-solid 60 FPS update. Mortal Kombat 11 is a fighting game low input lag isn’t nice to have-it’s key to a competitive experience. Delving back into source material from that time period, it’s evident that many of the key engine modifications seen in Mortal Kombat 11 have been around for quite a while on NetherRealm’s fork.įRAME-RATE AND KEY OPTIMIZATIONS – REACHING 60 FPSįor starters, let’s talk framerates. If we want to look at the technical underpinnings of NetherRealm’s particular fork of the engine, it makes sense to go travel back, nearly a decade to 2011’s Mortal Kombat, and then to the Injustice games. It’s not even the first Mortal Kombat the studio has handled. Mortal Kombat 11 isn’t NetherRealm’s first Unreal 3-based fighting game. And then, of course, there’s NetherRealm’s take on the engine, adapting it to fit the needs of the fighting game genre. This is the adaptability that has made everything from first and third-person shooters, to RTSs, to adventure games possible on the engine.
#MORTAL KOMBAT X GRAPHICS CODE#
Thanks to the relatively open nature of the engine, with source code available to developers, it’s relatively easy to drop in specific modules to suit the needs of particular titles. At the other end of the spectrum, heavily customized versions of the engine beat at the heart of many visually arresting AAA titles such as Batman: Arkham Knight and the Borderlands series. Thanks to its scalability, indie studios and mobile developers have used it to create remarkable experiences like Infinity Blade on iOS. Since the launch of the original Gears of War in 2006, Epic’s engine has had a surprisingly long lifespan, thanks in large part to a generous, source-available licensing policy. Instead, just like Mortal Kombat X and the 2011 reboot, it’s running on the previous generation Unreal 3. Let’s get this out of the way: If you’ve not been paying attention to tech bylines over the past few weeks, Mortal Kombat 11 does not run on the modern Unreal 4 engine. In this technical deep-dive, we’re going to have a look at how NetherRealm’s latest coaxes a remarkable visual spectacle from ageing hardware and an ageing engine. Amidst the gore, stray eyeballs, and brain matter, it’s time to say goodbye.
#MORTAL KOMBAT X GRAPHICS PS4#
At the cusp of the ninth-gen, at a time when home consoles are more powerful than the supercomputers from Mortal Kombat 2’s time, there’s nothing righter, more appropriate, than for such a long-lived franchise to send off the PS4 and Xbox One, not to mention the now-venerable Unreal 3 engine. Mortal Kombat has always been about visceral, gratuitous action, with gore spatters rendered in as much terrible detail as the hardware of the day allows.