Metro 2033 - Game discussion thread

[Pave Low]

for those of you who like a "sci-shooter set in a post-nuclear apocalyptic world which combines action, horror, and role-playing game elements. "

THQ and NVIDIA Confirm Extensive DX11 Feature Set and 3D Vision Support for Metro 2033â„¢

Upcoming FPS from 4A Games Will Boast the Most Advanced DX11 Techniques Yet Seen in a PC Title

AGOURA HILLS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--THQ Inc. (NASDAQ:THQI) and NVIDIA today announced that Metro 2033TM, the upcoming first person shooter from 4A Games, will support a number of advanced DX11 features with the latest generation of DX11 graphics cards, as well as NVIDIA 3D Vision support. Metro 2033 will also feature advanced, hardware accelerated physical effects using NVIDIA PhysX.

“Our engineers have been working closely with 4A Games to ensure that Metro 2033 takes full advantage of some of the spectacular effects made possible with the next generation of DX11 hardware”

Gamers with DX11 cards will experience advanced Depth of Field effects as well as Full Tessellation on character models. You can see the results on the official Metro 2033 Flickr Collection at http://www.flickr.com/photos/metro2033.

"The 4A Engine is one of the most advanced game engines we’ve ever worked with, and with DX11 enabled, Metro 2033 is undoubtedly one of the best looking PC games of 2010. Combine this with NVIDIA 3D Vision and PhysX and you will experience mind-blowing visuals." said Tony Tamasi, Senior Vice President of Content and Technology at NVIDIA.

Metro 2033 is scheduled for release in North America and Germany on the 16th March, Australia on the 18th March, and in the UK and the rest of Europe on the 19th March, on the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and PC.

For the latest Metro 2033 news, visit Metro2033Game.com, follow Twitter.com/Metro2033 or become a fan at Facebook.com/Metro2033.

About Metro 2033

Set in the shattered subway of a post apocalyptic Moscow, Metro 2033 is a story of intensive underground survival where the fate of mankind rests in your hands.

In 2013, the world was devastated by an apocalyptic event, annihilating almost all mankind and turning the earth’s surface into a poisonous wasteland. A handful of survivors took refuge in the depths of the Moscow underground, and human civilization entered a new Dark Age.

The year is 2033. An entire generation has been born and raised underground, and their besieged Metro Station-Cities struggle for survival, with each other, and the mutant horrors that await outside.

You are Artyom, born in the last days before the fire, but raised Underground. Having never ventured beyond your Metro Station-City limits, one fateful event sparks a desperate mission to the heart of the Metro system, to warn the remnants of mankind of a terrible impending threat. Your journey takes you from the forgotten catacombs beneath the subway to the desolate wastelands above, where your actions will determine the fate of mankind.

DX11 shots on flickr

Game Website

Screenshots page

[WytchDokta]

Metro 2033 is undoubtedly one of the best looking PC games of 2010.

It's also coming to console.

Been following this one for a while.

[Malleus]

DX11, huh? Right. Real question is: will it be playable on my single core P4 with dx9 graphics card?

Anyway, I'm mildly interested in this one, but the gameplay seems like a script mountain a'la CoD, which doesn't sound too good to me.

[CR6]

DX11, huh? Right. Real question is: will it be playable on my single core P4 with dx9 graphics card?

No, unlikely.

My home system is the same as yours (P4 3GHz HT/Radeon X800XT) which doesn't even do DX 9c so a lot of games that will even run on Xbox 360 won't run on this (NFS Shift, Street Fighter IV are good recent examples)

[Malleus]

No, unlikely.

Well, I've been surprised before (ArmA2 was playable), so who knows. Also, there's an x360 version, so it may end up being very scalable.

System requirements here. The optimum is pretty ridiculous if you ask me, the rest is nothing special.

Minimum:

* Dual core CPU (any Core 2 Duo or better will do)

* DirectX 9, Shader Model 3 compliant graphics cards (GeForce 8800, GeForce GT220 and above)

* 1GB RAM

Recommended:

* Any Quad Core or 3.0+ GHz Dual Core CPU

* DirectX 10 compliant graphics card (GeForce GTX 260 and above)

* 2GB RAM

Optimum:

* Core i7 CPU

* NVIDIA DirectX 11 compliant graphics card (GeForce GTX 480 and 470)

* As much RAM as possible (8GB+)

* Fast HDD or SSD

Enabling 3D Vision

Metro 2033 utilizes NVIDIA 3D Vision with compatible cards and hardware. To play in 3D you will require:

* NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 and above recommended

* A 120Hz (or above) monitor

* NVIDIA 3D Vision kit

* Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7

Edited February 26, 2010 by Malleus

[TAW_Zero]

sounds like a ripoff of the fallout series

[Sup]

If fallout 3 can ripoff of the fallout series with no relation to the original, why cant this?

[WytchDokta]

sounds like a ripoff of the fallout series

Except you can only stay outside for a limited time on Metro 2033. Atleast, that's what they said a few months ago. They also said at that time there would be no HUD/ammo counter per se, but the player would have the transparent mags in weapons. That was a few months ago, on a feature on Inside Xbox. Things could have changed since then.

[Sart]

If fallout 3 can ripoff of the fallout series with no relation to the original, why cant this?

That is so true. I hate how they turned the BOS into a bunch of peace loving hippies.

Metro looks pretty cool, I really liked the trailer.

[WytchDokta]

That is so true. I hate how they turned the BOS into a bunch of peace loving hippies.

I hated the inconsistency of the NPC weapon loadouts. For example, BOS using all types of weapons - some with laser weapons, some with standard 5.56 rifles. It would have suited the theme better if they ONLY used laser weapons (as standard weapons, the heavies should still be using flamethrowers, gatling lasers, rocket launchers/DLC tesla cannon, DLC gauss rifle as a sniper rifle, but no miniguns)

[=warcloud=]

Metro 2033 is very s.t.a.l.k.e.r. -esque imo. This is the first time in a long time i have seen so many first person shooters being available to the pc market in such close proximity of each other, usualy have to wait a lot longer for the next fps game to show up.

[=warcloud=]

Some interesting reading about metro2033 (4 pages) on DF's blog over at eurogamer, DF = digitalfoundry.

Below is some snippets from the Tech Interview: Metro 2033 dated feb 25th, 2010.

What i found interesting was finding out that Oles Shishkovstov who is chief technical

officer of 4A Games who are developnig metro2033 was working as lead programmer and technology architect

on S.T.A.L.K.E.R., maybe that's why i viewed metro2033 as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. -esque,

although.. there is no shared code whatsoever between the 4A and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. X-Ray engines.

Metro 2033 is console-exclusive to Xbox 360 and PC.

The whole game was ported to 360 in 19 working days. Although they weren't eight-hour days.

In metro 2033 The player spends more than half of the game under the ground.

That means deep dark tunnels and poorly-lit rooms (there are no electricity sources apart from the generators).

From the engine perspective - to make it visually interesting, convincing and thrilling -

we needed a huge amount of rather small local light sources. Deferred lighting is the perfect choice.

..each 360 CPU core is approximately a quarter of the same-frequency Nehalem (i7) core.

Add in approximately 1.5 times better performance because of the second,

shared thread for 360 and around 1.3 times for Nehalem,

multiply by three cores and you get around 70 to 85 per cent

of a single modern CPU core on generic (but multi-threaded) code.

Bear in mind though that the above calculation

will not work in the case where the code is properly vectorised.

In that case 360 can actually exceed PC on a per-thread per-clock basis.

So, is it enough? Nope, there is no CPU in the world that is enough for games!

The 360 GPU is a different beast. Compared to today's high-end hardware it is 5-10 times slower depending on what you do.

But performance of hardware is only one side of equation.

Because we as programmers can optimise for the specific GPU

we can reach nearly 100 per cent utilisation of all the sub-units. That's just not possible on a PC.

Digital Foundry: Does PC hardware offer up any additional bonuses in Metro 2033 aside from higher frame-rates and resolutions?

Oles Shishkovstov: Yes and no. When you have more performance on the table,

you can either do nothing as you say, and as most direct console ports do,

or you add the features. Because our platforms got equal attention, we took the second route.

Naturally most of the features are graphics related, but not all.

The internal PhysX tick-rate was doubled on PC resulting in more precise collision detection and joint behavior.

We "render" almost twice the number of sounds (all with wave-tracing) compared to consoles.

That's just a few examples, so that you can see that not only graphics gets a boost.

On the graphics side, here's a partial list:

* Most of the textures are 2048^2 (consoles use 1024^2).

* The shadow-map resolution is up to 9.43 Mpix.

* The shadow filtering is much, much better.

* The parallax mapping is enabled on all surfaces, some with occlusion-mapping (optional).

* We've utilised a lot of "true" volumetric stuff, which is very important in dusty environments.

* From DX10 upwards we use correct "local motion blur", sometimes called "object blur".

* The light-material response is nearly "physically-correct" on the PC on higher quality presets.

* The ambient occlusion is greatly improved (especially on higher-quality presets).

* Sub-surface scattering makes a lot of difference on human faces, hands, etc.

* The geometric detail is somewhat better, because of different LOD selection, not even counting DX11 tessellation.

* We are considering enabling global illumination (as an option) which really enhances the lighting model.

However, that comes with some performance hit, because of literally tens of thousands of secondary light sources.

Digital Foundry: Does this system of AI mean that stealth gameplay is built in as standard, assuming the level design suits it, of course?

Oles Shishkovstov: The most important thing for stealth is a proper feeling system.

If each NPC just knows where its enemy is, nobody can do a perfect stealth.

For us, the goal was Thief's sensory system.

It is described in many articles. For instance "virtual distance" thing is similar to what they described in white papers.

The next thing is behavior. Any stealth game needs additional "seek" and "patrol" behaviors.

And of course, the sound system is really important. A player doesn't care what's happening inside NPCs while they aren't expressing it externally.

So, yes, our NPCs are 100 per cent stealth ready, but you are right, stealth also depends a lot on level design.

Tech Interview: Metro 2033 | DigitalFoundry

[=warcloud=]

On the games official site there is mention of metro2033 being single player only, it said, on a twitter reply ...we focused 100% on SP so expect a longer campaign than most recent FPS's, + lots of replay-ability.

[TAW_Zero]

still gonna get the game

and want to read the book but havin a hard time findin a english copy here

[=warcloud=]

still gonna get the game

and want to read the book but havin a hard time findin a english copy here

I found a link to the Russian copy online �"митрий �"луховский - "МЕТРО" - постъядерный роман

If you can be bothered?, i just used copy & paste russian to english Free Translation Online

[thales100]

Just bought this game from steam.

[TAW_Zero]

gotta let us know how it is

[thales100]

Sure, game will be unlocked on friday 19th.

[=warcloud=]

Can't seem to find a normal pc copy at retail only the exclusive limited edition with a free exclusive copy of red faction guerilla, and from a metro2033 dev on twitter .."lots of questions about a Metro 2033 demo - there won't be one pre-release, we simply don't have time". Maybe a demo after ?.

[PwntUpRage]

Had a copy of this in my hand today at Walmart. Thought I'd read some reviews first before making the purchase.

Video clips like this don't give me too much promise though, yet despite them, early reviews are good.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/ai-lowli...etro-2033/63220

[=warcloud=]

.Video clips like this don't give me too much promise though.

Is that video 360 or pc gameplay ?. the weapon/crosshair movement looked like the gamer was using a controller ?. The AI chatter was a tad annoying as well as the marked enemy that just seems to keep on passing you by without shooting at you, i like the knife throwing, looks atmospheric in the tunnels, outside is cool, is that nuclear fallout or snow, or a mixture ?.

Cool effect as your gas mask reacts to the cold environement. The last part of that vid, lol, is that the 360 software PhysX kicking in making the ragdoll look all wacko ? or is it the nvidia pc PhysX ?. The devs have said there is replayability, so i'm keen to know in what way other than a second or third play through of the sp only campaign. Most of the developers of Metro2033 from what i read are from GSC Gameworld who created the s.t.a.l.k.e.r. games. This game should be good in the atmospheric, paranormal and sound department, some weapons look unique.

[PwntUpRage]

.Video clips like this don't give me too much promise though.

Is that video 360 or pc gameplay ?. the weapon/crosshair movement looked like the gamer was using a controller ?. The AI chatter was a tad annoying as well as the marked enemy that just seems to keep on passing you by without shooting at you, i like the knife throwing, looks atmospheric in the tunnels, outside is cool, is that nuclear fallout or snow, or a mixture ?.

Cool effect as your gas mask reacts to the cold environement. The last part of that vid, lol, is that the 360 software PhysX kicking in making the ragdoll look all wacko ? or is it the nvidia pc PhysX ?. The devs have said there is replayability, so i'm keen to know in what way other than a second or third play through of the sp only campaign. Most of the developers of Metro2033 from what i read are from GSC Gameworld who created the s.t.a.l.k.e.r. games. This game should be good in the atmospheric, paranormal and sound department, some weapons look unique.

I did notice the gun pickup label was an absolute copy of the original Stalker display.

Not sure what platform the vid was from though...

[=warcloud=]

Most of the developers of Metro2033 from what i read are from GSC Gameworld who created the s.t.a.l.k.e.r.

I did notice the gun pickup label was an absolute copy of the original Stalker display.

Well, i personaly think the s.t.a.l.k.e.r. game engine (X-Ray) is starting to look out-of-date, i could be wrong but i think the 4A engine is the transiton. I think THQ would be wise to support games developed on the the 4A Engine, on paper it is quite impressive.

4A-Engine is a complete game development framework designed for Xbox 360®, PLAYSTATION®3 and DirectX9/DirectX10 - equipped PCs, providing the vast array of core technologies, content creation tools, and support infrastructure. 4A recently announced support for the new APIs in DirectX 11 too, which will be supported in Metro 2033. Also be aware that while the 4A engine supports PS3, Metro 2033 will launch just on 360 and PC.

Full specifications of proprietary technology behing Metro 2033, known as 4A Engine, which is called even by its developers “one of the most advanced engines on the planet”.

Rendering

Using innovative visualisation technology, based on human visual system (HVS) perception and response.

• The gamma-correct, linear colour space renderer
  
• High dynamic range rendering (HDR) Using floating-point buffers, allowing for tone mapping, exposure adaption, and blue shift, for camera/eye perceptual rendering
  
• Advanced deferred shading - allows hundreds of lights in frame, in huge, complex scenes
  
• All lighting is fully dynamic (including sun and skies), ability to use light-shaders, with dozens of special effects
  
• Umbra and penumbra - Correct soft shadows, including shadows correctly curved on bumped surface. Shadows from semi-transparent objects like particles.
  
• Weather and day/night model, including light scattering model and god-rays
  
• Volumetric fogging and lighting, even in animated, non-constant density media
  
• Global illumination effects and real-time reflective lights
  
• Parallax occlusion maps and real (geometric) displacement mapping
  
• Hierarchical per-pixel occlusion culling
  
• Real-time colour correction, film grain and noise, correct depth of field
  
• Velocity preserving motion-blur on a scene with millions of polygons and complex shading detail (including object blur)
  
• Deferred reflections - allows a lot of planar real time reflections in a single frame, like water, glass, etc.
  
• Ambient occlusion calculated on both the global scale (pre-calculated) and in real-time in screen space (SSAO)
  
• In addition to standard MSAA, the engine features analytical anti-aliasing (AAA) and "deferred super-sampling" modes which have much lower impact on frame-rate, while correctly ant-ialiasing all surfaces and not just edges
  
• Renderer is highly multi-threaded for multiple CPU cores.
  
• Plus: per-pixel lighting, bumpy reflections and refractions, animated and detail textures, shiny surfaces, cosmetic damage using albedo and bump blending, soft particles, etc.
  

Physics System

Powered by nVidia PhysX technology, can utilise multiple CPU cores, AGEIA PhysX hardware, or nVidia GPU hardware.

• Tightly integrated into the content pipeline and the game itself, including physical materials on all surfaces, physically driven sound, physically driven animations
  
• Rigid body and multi-jointed constructions. Breakable fences, walls , sheds and other objects. Thousands of different physical entities simulated per frame.
  
• Cloth simulation, water physics (including cross-interactions)
  
• Destruction and fracturing, physically based puzzles
  
• Soft body physics on selected special game entities
  
• On hardware-accelerated PhysX platforms engine implements full physically correct behaviour of particles such as smoke, debris, etc.
  

Audio

Multi-threaded high dynamic range Audio system with constant memory usage and data-driven design

• 3D sound positioning, spatialisation and attenuation
  
• Sound path tracing and transfer approximation for correct occlusion and obstruction perceiving.
  
• Reverb, low-pass/high-pass filtering, pitch shifting - all auto-calculated based on sound-path and adjustable by multi-layer environment zones, scripting or programmatically
  
• Dynamically reconstructing audio graphs
  
• OGG-vorbis compressed with adjustable quality, multi-threaded decompression
  

AI and Gameplay

• Deep story-driven experience, dynamic and remarkable missions
  
• Different gameplay styles stealth/brutal, different combat settings
  
• Group behaviour (including support for information sharing and creating dynamic groups of agents that act together)
  
• Designer-friendly visual scripting system, enables designers to script levels and control advanced AI behaviours using the Flow-Graph visual scripting system, placing most AI gameplay control in their hands.
  
• Efficient pathfinding for dynamic environment
  
• Advanced 3D topology dynamic analysis
  
• Virtual vision, hearing, "smelling" - realistic, believable and time and memory efficient implementation enables characters to sense objects in a natural way, depending on the object velocity, luminocity, etc.
  
• Multi-threaded Animation system controlled via visual scripting and flow graph
  

Streaming Technology

[Editor's note: CPU cores/threads mentioned usually means both normal CPUs and Synergetic Processing Units (SPU).]

What i found interesting there is, that there is still support for the AGEIA physic processing unit (PPU), i have a ppu which i still use for GRAW 1 and 2 on windows 7 x64, not quite sure how they will work with nvidia's newer drivers though?, i found only the 8.04.25 PhysX software worked without problems on windows 7 x64. And the "smelling"

[Rocky]

What's the deal with this game, looks stunning, released this week, but no PC reviews online? What gives?

[JohnTC02]

Never Played this game but I found these reviews, don't know if they are any use though.

Metro 2033 PC.

Metro 2033 XBox.