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The Gamers Guide To Mantle

Orangey said:
Shame Crytek are dead. :/
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Crytek are not dead at all. Just read an article stating they are back in the black. It does say they are no longer a developer though and are now publishers. I wonder how this effects cryengine.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-07-30-deep-silver-parent-company-buys-homefront-from-crytek

Crytek has shared some details about its plans now that the developer turned publisher has found the funding necessary to get it out of the red.
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humbug said:
Ok, i do wonder though, how an ex-developer under the EA publishers umbrella, now being publishers themselves, how does that work?
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I don't know if i am being honest. Did Crytek ever publish any of there own games? If so they would have the business model to then become just a publisher.
 
Whats happening with Crytek is a little unclear at the moment, the only solid information out and about at the moment is that they're selling off IP. Deep Silver just bought Homefront. Also that Crytek US has all but folded, following the first IP sale the majority of staff quit/were laid off (some confusion on this).

Also seems to be some confusion if Crytek UK was part of the Homefront purchase, either way Crytek UK will cease to exist under that name but may exist in another capacity.

As it is I would say mantle is the least of Cryteks concerns, perhaps some ground work was already done with the engine on some titles (homefront?) which may see other dev studios adopt it, may even be better in the long run!
 
Crytek have 2 games on there wiki this year as publishers and developers. I have not heard of the games.

Arena of Fate

Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age

Perhaps the move to publishing games had already been decided before they got into big trouble or as a way of getting out of trouble.

Hunt is still listed on Wiki as developed and published by Crytek.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunt:_Horrors_of_the_Gilded_Age
 
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LtMatt said:
Fascinating video. Learn how and why Mantle was created. How it will compare to DX12 and why game developers wanted it and what it offers them. Brand new video. Discuss. :cool:



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Not a bad watch.
I do have to wonder what console games he was playing that look as good as the PC ones. It's been a while since I've seen a console game with the detail level, resolution and framerate of the PC version!

I also thought it was interesting the emphasis he put on Mantle being a new API written from the ground up, like he was implying that releasing a new iteration of an existing API is not good. Which to some degree I agree with. Interesting to see if AMD write Mantle 2 from the ground up or if it's one of those nasty iterations of an existing API though.

One thing that does interest me is the capabilities Mantle offers for effects that we've not seen before. Higher FPS is all fine and well, but since most of the games I play run at a pretty steady 120fps (capped as it's my monitor's refresh rate) I am far more interested at the other things Mantle can do. Things like drawing loads of ships or massive armies on screen. Sounds a bit like the Oxide demo, StarSwarm. But in the end weren't Nvidia users able to get better results from DirectX11 than (some) AMD users could get with Mantle? Which would suggest this isn't the sort of thing that DirectX has been obstructing. So interested in what things DirectX has been obstructing if not this. This sort of multiple units o nthe screen at once thing keeps making me think back to Total War, which would probably benefit from this.

What I did then find interesting leading on from this is that if games are gonna start doing things that can't be done in DirectX11, does that mean the games won't support DirectX11 and thus will be exclusive to gamers with AMD GCN cards?
The obvious thing would be that DirectX12 might support very similar abilities so these effects will then be introduced when DirectX12 is released, but that makes this sort of an advancement seem more like something DirectX12 brings us than Mantle. So I can only see games being Mantle exclusives or having a radically different version that work on DirectX without the effects. Which would mean that the extra effects are purely cosmetic and don't affect the game in any way and thus the games could've been made without Mantle.
Following up from this it was interesting to hear him say that he thinks some games may only use Mantle as a graphics API and not DirectX.

He also made no mention of it being open to Nvidia or Intel but did specifically say that the hardware had to use the GCN architecture. So if Nvidia or Intel wanted Mantle it seems they will have to adopt the GCN architecture also. Otherwise you'd expect him to say the hardware needs a highly programmable architecture or something like that. So tying this in with the previous point it looks like we can't expect some games to be exclusive to Mantle and AMD hardware! Interesting...
 
Nvidia did very well to nullify the star swarm app, as long as your using a powerful CPU they have managed to get the CPU Bottlenecking down far enough so that its GPU bound.

In that scenario both AMD with Mantle and Nvidia in DX are GPU bound (as long as Nvidia use a powerful CPU)
Yet if you use a weak CPU with Nvidia and AMD Mantle Mantle comes out on top.

Thief does a much better job of pushing the CPU, with a 290 and a weak AMD CPU you get higher Min FPS than a GTX Titan and a 5Ghz i7. In CF vs SLI that CPU bottlenecking difference is exaggerated even further, as you would expect.

Mantle is capable of much more than just performance improvements, i think we will see that in future titles.
 
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