14 DAY TRIAL // Capcom believes that, while its upcoming DmC Devil May Cry game has a framerate locked at 30fps on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles, it still feels like a 60fps game thanks to certain tricks used by developer Ninja Theory.
Framerate in games is an important aspect as while 30fps do look better in terms of visuals, 60fps ones feel better when you’re actually experiencing their gameplay.
In a hectic hack and slash game like the upcoming DmC Devil May Cry, fans want to experience it at 60fps, so the confirmation that the title will see its framerate locked at 30fps has disappointed some people.
The game’s Director, Hideaki Itsuno, however, notes that Ninja Theory and Capcom have applied techniques learned with this year’s Dragon’s Dogma to make the 30fps game feel like a 60fps one.
“During the course of the development of Dragon's Dogma we did a lot of experimentation and happened upon some techniques for working with Unreal Engine, some fairly elaborate techniques, that allow for a controller responsiveness that gives the player the feel of 60 frames per second,” Itsuno told Eurogamer.
Thanks to certain trade secrets and knowledge of the human eye, Itsuno is adamant that players won’t notice the missing frames.
“60 frames per second is a speed the brain and the eye can catch up with and understand,” he said. “But at 30 frames per second there's a technique where you take advantage of the brain's ability to fill in the blanks.”
“So even though you have it running at 30 frames per second, you create the motions and the poses in such a way that the brain will naturally fill in what would have been the extra frames. Also, on the players' side, we made some adjustments to the button response and when it's reflected on screen.”
According to the game’s Technical Art Director, Stuart Adcock, playing the 30fps DmC will make going back to other 30fps games a downgrade in terms of framerate.
“We still feel like as soon as you stop playing DmC and play other games they feel very slow in comparison and a bit sluggish. At least that's for me. We're quite pleased with how responsive and how fluid it feels,” he added.
DmC Devil May Cry is out in January, 2013, but players will be able to convince themselves of its quality later this month, when a demo is released on PS3 and Xbox 360.