Thief - Interview @ DSO Gaming

DSO Gaming interviewed Eidos-Montreal's Jean-Normand Bucci about Thief's various graphic features on the PC.

DSOGaming: Before we begin, please introduce yourselves to our readers.

Jean-Normand Bucci: My name is Jean-Normand Bucci and I’m Thief’s art technical director at Eidos-Montréal.  I’ve been working in the videogame industry for a little less than 10 years, always in art fields.

DSOGaming: Will the PC version receive some extra love with exclusive graphical features? Will there be a slider for FOV, and will there be any mouse acceleration/smoothing toggle options?

Jean-Normand Bucci: The PC version will support all the graphical features of the next-gen consoles with numerous improvements, including even better anti-aliasing, higher resolution shadows and support for multi-monitor. Thief on PC will also be amongst the first batch of games that support AMD’s new Mantle API for high performance graphics.

A FOV slider and mouse sensitivity options will be included in the game. We don’t apply acceleration or smoothing to our mouse based camera controls – we want you to have direct control of Garrett’s POV.

DSOGaming: Let’s talk about physics. What kind of destructibility and interactivity can players expect from this new title? Are you using PhysX, Havok, or your own physics engine?

Jean-Normand Bucci: We have integrated the latest PhysX version although destruction is not one of Thief’s main gameplay pillars.  We developed the tools we needed for the vision we had for Thief and although destruction has never been a major part factor of the original games we do have breakable objects, pushable objects and so on.

DSOGaming: A lot of people believe that Ray Tracing is the holy grail of lighting. What’s your opinion on both Path Tracing and Ray Tracing, and do you see them being used in next-gen titles?

Jean-Normand Bucci: I believe Raytracing is better suited for reflection than improving the lighting. We use similar things to raytracing techniques for the reflection, we both raytrace the geometry on screen plus simplified geometry for the things that aren’t on-screen.