Wipeout 2048

The game was designed as a testbed for the PlayStation Vita. Studio Liverpool's feedback on the console's features, including the addition of a rear touchscreen and two separate joysticks, were contributive to the Vita's final design. 2048 preserves some technical aspects of its predecessor game Wipeout HD, including downloadable content (DLC), online multiplayer mode, and cross-platform play with PlayStation 3 owners running Wipeout HD. Wipeout 2048 received mainly positive reviews; critics said its graphics and visuals showcased the power of the then-new PlayStation Vita but criticised its long loading times and other technical problems. The game, together with Wipeout HD and its Fury expansion, was remastered for PlayStation 4 and released as Wipeout Omega Collection in 2017.

• Title — Wipeout 2048 • Developer — Studio Liverpool • Publisher — Sony Computer Entertainment • Director — Stuart Tilley • Producer — Martin Harrow • Designer — Karl Jones • Programmer — * Stuart Lovegrove • Chris Roberts • Artist — * Lee Carus-Wescott • Marcus Tanner • Series — Wipeout • Platforms — PlayStation Vita • Genre — Racing • Modes — Single-player, multiplayer

• Illustration — From left to right clockwise, the interface displays the lap and time, current position, number of experience points, speedometer, shield strength and current weapon. Wipeout 2048 is a racing game in which players pilot anti-gravity ships through a variety of scenarios. It is set primarily in 2048 and is a prequel to the first installment of the Wipeout series. Dedicated racetracks have not been built yet, so most races are held on the streets of the fictitious Nova State City. The single-player campaign progresses through the first three years of the Anti-Gravity Racing Championships (AGRC) in 2048, 2049, and 2050. The game includes four types of ships; speed, agility, fighter, and prototype. Speed-class ships typically have higher top speeds and good handling, but weak shields and weapon systems. Agility-class ships have sharp, responsive handling and decent combat capabilities, but aren't too fast. Fighter-class ships sacrifice top speed and handling for durability and firepower. Finally, Prototype ships take a statistic and exaggerate it to extreme levels. For example, the Pir-Hana prototype ship is extremely fast in a straight line but is incapable of steering (being reliant entirely on airbrakes) or slowing down. Each ship is owned by one of five racing teams, and each team has a specific statistic that their ships excel in regardless of ship class. During races, numerous weapons may be picked up by flying over coloured weapon pads. Yellow pads equip the player with offensive weaponry that can be used to destroy other racers whereas green pads provide defensive weapons such as mines, shields, and speed boosts. Game modes including one-on-one races, tournaments, time trials, speed laps, and Zone mode—which revolves around survival as the player's ship automatically accelerates to extreme speeds—have been carried over from Wipeout HD. The online multiplayer mode has the same races and modes as the single-player version. The online multiplayer is cross-platform, allowing players using the PlayStation 3 version of Wipeout HD Fury to play the Fury tracks with the PlayStation Vita. Wipeout 2048 also includes downloadable content (DLC); two DLC packages each offer twelve tracks and twelve ships for cross-platform play.

Studio Liverpool's technical director Stuart Lovegrove said Wipeout 2048 was developed in parallel with the PlayStation Vita handheld gaming console and was a testbed for it. Lovegrove was aware the next Wipeout would be a launch game and said Studio Liverpool had made one before. Chris Roberts, the game's director of graphics, tools and technologies, said Sony Computer Entertainment involved Studio Liverpool at an early stage in the development of the PlayStation Vita and he had a "fairly good idea" of its capabilities. Jon Eggleton, former senior artist of the Wipeout series, said Studio Liverpool influenced the Vita's design. When staff were given development kits for a "next-generation portable [console]", a group was formed to brainstorm hardware details; proposals included a touchscreen device that was not yet conceived by Sony. Eggleton speculated the console was released with two analogue joysticks solely because "Studio Liverpool said it needed two sticks". During early development of Wipeout 2048 and the PlayStation Vita, the studio provided Sony with feedback on the hardware and its libraries, and sent updated application source code to Sony's firmware staff to test their compilers. Lovegrove and Roberts were impressed with the simplicity of the Vita's firmware, which was in contrast to the architecture of the PlayStation 3 home console.

The Wipeout 2048 development team recognised the PlayStation Vita and the PlayStation 3 are different. Lovegrove said designing for the Vita's smaller screen made it easier to develop, avoiding earlier problems of designing a game targeted for an HD screen but the studio had to ensure the game could run at any resolution. Roberts said, "it [was] less of a headache for artists" who wanted to tweak lighting effects. Roberts said the "most obvious" difference between the PlayStation 3's RSX Reality Synthesizer graphics processing unit (GPU) and the PlayStation Vita's ARM architecture is the Vita's lack of stream processing units (SPU). He said most of Wipeout HD SPU code was directed towards GPU support, which includes geometry culling, lighting effects and rendering. According to Roberts, the Vita's GPU and ARM architecture are more capable than the PS3 and handled Wipeout 2048 easily. Lovegrove, who had worked with the ARM architecture on the BBC Micro, said the team did not have to optimise anything to accomplish their goals and that it was enjoyable to see the ARM architecture running the game. • Illustration — The game's development influenced the design of the PlayStation Vita console (first version pictured). Although Wipeout 2048 and Wipeout HD have a shared shader program and did not require retooling for the Vita's architecture, Roberts said fine-tuning the shader effects for the Vita's GPU took significant time and attention. Lovegrove thought the method of working on a PlayStation 3 and its handheld counterpart was identical—a sentiment generally shared by the team—and Roberts said similarities between the systems helped the team "get moving quickly". Roberts added that the lighting system is identical to that of Wipeout HD; both games' ships share image-based lighting with blended, diffuse and specular highlights and effects, and the vertex-based lighting system used for weaponry. According to Roberts, the main difference is the PlayStation Vita's use of the effects via the GPU whereas the PlayStation 3 relies on SPUs. The team decided to use anti-aliased colour buffers rather than depth buffers for real-time shadow rendering, creating better transparency effects because the memory cost of anti-aliasing is eight bits per pixel so 4x multisample anti-aliasing (MSAA) buffers contain the same amount of memory as a 32-bit depth buffer. Roberts also considered tone mapping an improvement, partly because of the Vita's superior support of buffer formats, which gives Wipeout 2048 better exposure control and bloom effects. To accommodate the visual fidelity, the team compromised on the frame rate. Roberts said the decision was made early in development since they initially expected the PlayStation Vita could run PlayStation 3 assets at 30 frames per second (fps). The team used code from Wipeout HD as a reference to make the development process more efficient; the art and technical teams of Studio Liverpool worked in parallel. Lovegrove agreed 30 fps was always the goal because the team wanted to prioritise visual quality. In a Eurogamer interview, Roberts said Studio Liverpool was one of the first developers to use a dynamic framebuffer on the PlayStation 3: an algorithm that reduces resolution when the game engine is stressed, maintaining performance and optimising the frame rate. The technique, known as resolution throttling, was carried over from Wipeout HD to Wipeout 2048: according to Roberts: "If you are dead set on locking frame-rate and resolution your whole game is (graphically) restricted by the worst-case scenario".