Developer(s) | 4A Games |
---|---|
Initial release | March 2010 |
Middleware | PhysX |
Platform | Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Luna, Stadia |
License | Proprietary |
Website | www |
The 4A Engine is a graphics middleware engine developed by 4A Games for use in its video games Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light, Metro Exodus , and Arktika.1 . It supports Direct3D APIs 9 through 12, OpenGL 3.2, Nvidia PhysX, [1] and Nvidia 3D Vision.
The engine was developed in Ukraine by a set of people who split off from GSC Game World a year before the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl , notably Oles Shishkovtsov and Oleksandr Maksimchuk, the programmers who worked on the development of the X-Ray engine used in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. video game series. The engine itself is capable of running on PC, the Xbox 360, and the PlayStation 3. [2]
Shishkovtsov and his colleagues split from the development of S.T.A.L.K.E.R because that "its inherent inability to be multi-threaded, the weak and error-prone networking model, and simply awful resource and memory management which prohibited any kind of streaming or simply keeping the working set small enough for 'next-gen' consoles" along with its "terrible text-based scripting", which he explained led to the delays in the original game. [2]
The engine is multi-threaded such that only PhysX had a dedicated thread [2] and uses a task-model without any pre-conditioning or pre/post-synchronising, allowing tasks to be done in parallel. When the Xbox 360 iteration had been measured during development, they were running it at "approximately 3,000 tasks per 30ms frame on Xbox 360 on CPU-intensive scenes with all hardware threads at 100 percent load". Shishkovtsov also said that the GeForce 6 series architecture of the RSX Reality Synthesizer in the PlayStation 3 proved to be very useful during development noted that there were many "wasted cycles". The engine can utilise a deferred shading pipeline, and uses tesselation for greater performance, and also has HDR (complete with blue shift), real-time reflections, colour correction, film grain and noise, and the engine also supports multi-core rendering. [3]
The 4A Engine implementation of Metro 2033 features volumetric fog, double PhysX precision, object blur, sub-surface scattering for skin shaders, parallax mapping on all surfaces and greater geometric detail with a less aggressive LOD(s).
Using PhysX, the engine uses many features such as destructible environments, and cloth and water simulations, and particles that can be fully affected by environmental factors. [1] The audio in the engine features 3D sound positioning, spatialisation and attenuation. [3]
There have been accusations that the 4A Engine is a modified version of the X-Ray engine used in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series, instead of an original development. 4A denied the accusations. [4] Shishkovtsov also noted that porting the original engine to consoles would have proved extremely difficult. [4]
A physics processing unit (PPU) is a dedicated microprocessor designed to handle the calculations of physics, especially in the physics engine of video games. It is an example of hardware acceleration.
PhysX is an open-source realtime physics engine middleware SDK developed by Nvidia as part of the Nvidia GameWorks software suite.
GSC Game World is a Ukrainian video game developer based in Kyiv with a second temporary office in Prague. Founded in Kyiv in 1995 by Sergiy Grygorovych, it is best known for the Cossacks and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of games. GSC Game World was the first company in Ukraine to localize PC games to the Russian language. In 2002, it became a publishing house, GSC World Publishing.
The Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) is a proprietary game engine of Rockstar Games, developed by the RAGE Technology Group division of Rockstar San Diego, based on the Angel Game Engine. Since its first game, Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis in 2006, released for the Xbox 360 and Wii, the engine has been used by Rockstar Games's internal studios to develop advanced open world games for computers and consoles.
The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, with detailed launch and game information announced later that month at the 2005 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). As a seventh-generation console, it primarily competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii.
Frostbite is a game engine developed by DICE, designed for cross-platform use on Microsoft Windows, seventh generation game consoles PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, eighth generation game consoles PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch and ninth generation game consoles PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, in addition to usage in the now defunct cloud streaming service Google Stadia.
In the field of 3D computer graphics, deferred shading is a screen-space shading technique that is performed on a second rendering pass, after the vertex and pixel shaders are rendered. It was first suggested by Michael Deering in 1988.
MT Framework is a game engine created by Capcom. "MT" stands for "Multi-Thread", "Meta Tools" and "Multi-Target". While initially MT Framework was intended to power 2006's Dead Rising and Lost Planet: Extreme Condition only, Capcom later decided for their internal development divisions to adopt it as their default engine. As a result, the vast majority of their internally developed video games for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 platforms were created on it, including four new titles and three remastered ports of past titles in the Resident Evil series. The visuals of the first games built with the engine were well received, and MT Framework has also won a CEDEC award.
The Xbox is a home video game console manufactured by Microsoft that is the first installment in the Xbox series of video game consoles. It was released as Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console market on November 15, 2001, in North America, followed by Australia, Europe and Japan in 2002. It is classified as a sixth-generation console, competing with Sony's PlayStation 2, Sega's Dreamcast and Nintendo's GameCube. It was also the first major console produced by an American company since the release of the Atari Jaguar in 1993.
Metro 2033 is a 2010 first-person shooter survival horror video game developed by 4A Games and published by THQ. The story is based on Dmitry Glukhovsky's novel of the same name, where survivors of a nuclear war have taken refuge in the Metro tunnels of Moscow. Players control Artyom, a man who must save his home station from the dangers lurking within the Metro. In the game, players encounter human and mutant enemies, who can be killed with a variety of firearms. Players must also wear a gas mask to explore areas covered in nuclear radiation, both underground and on the surface.
4A Games Limited is a Ukrainian-Maltese video game developer based in Sliema, Malta. The company was founded in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2006 by three developers who departed from GSC Game World. In 2014, 4A Games moved its headquarters to Sliema, wherein the Kyiv office was retained as a sub-studio. The company is best known for developing the Metro video game series.
Platform exclusivity refers to the status of a video game being developed for and released only on certain platforms. Most commonly, it refers to only being released on a specific video game console or through a specific vendor's platforms—either permanently, or for a definite period of time.
Metro: Last Light is a 2013 first-person shooter video game developed by 4A Games and published by Deep Silver. A sequel to the video game Metro 2033 and the second installment in the Metro series, its story follows Artyom, a young soldier living in the Moscow Metro after a devastating nuclear war. Tasked with finding the mysterious Dark Ones, Artyom must venture to different parts of the metro system, and the surface filled with radiated gases, and fight against different factions and mutated monsters. The game improves on various gameplay mechanics of 2033, and introduces elements such as weapon customization.
Metro is a post-apocalyptic fiction franchise consisting primarily of novels and video games that began with the 2002 release of Russian writer Dmitry Glukhovsky's novel Metro 2033. It was followed by his sequels Metro 2034 and Metro 2035, as well as by many other books by different authors, including Tullio Avoledo, Pierre Bordage, Robert J. Szmidt and Shimun Vrochek. Ukrainian studio 4A Games created the original novel's video game adaptation Metro 2033, followed by Metro: Last Light and Metro Exodus.
Video gaming in Ukraine began to emerge in the 1990s and is slowly growing. Subsequently, in the 2000s, several major video game series started appearing.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a first-person shooter survival horror video game franchise developed by Ukrainian game developer GSC Game World. The series is set in an alternate version of the present-day Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine, where, according to the series' backstory, a mysterious second Chernobyl disaster took place in 2006. As a result, the physical, chemical, and biological processes in the area were altered, spawning numerous nature-defying anomalies, artifacts, and mutants. The player takes the role of a "stalker" - a name given to trespassers and adventurers who have come to explore the exclusion zone and its strange phenomena.
The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third console in the Xbox series. It was first released in North America, parts of Europe, Australia, and South America in November 2013 and in Japan, China, and other European countries in September 2014. It is the first Xbox game console to be released in China, specifically in the Shanghai Free-Trade Zone. Microsoft marketed the device as an "all-in-one entertainment system", hence the name "Xbox One". An eighth-generation console, it mainly competed against Sony's PlayStation 4 and Nintendo's Wii U and later the Nintendo Switch.
The Xbox system software is the operating system developed exclusively for Microsoft's Xbox home video game consoles. Across the four generations of Xbox consoles, the software has been based on a version of Microsoft Windows and incorporating DirectX features optimized for the home consoles. The user interface, the Xbox Dashboard, provides access to games, media players, and applications, and integrates with the Xbox network for online functionality.
Metro Exodus is a 2019 first-person shooter game developed by 4A Games and published by Deep Silver. The game is the third installment in the Metro video game series, which is based on Dmitry Glukhovsky's novels. It is a sequel to Metro: Last Light and the book Metro 2035, and follows protagonist Artyom and his crew as they flee the Moscow Metro and set off with their allies on an intercontinental journey through Russia and parts of Kazakhstan on a locomotive called Aurora. The story takes place over a year, during which Artyom visits locations such as the Volga River and the Caspian Sea. The game improves on the gameplay mechanics of Last Light; it includes several miniature open world locations and has linear levels like earlier games in the series.